Enabel 👏🏻Enabel 👏🏻 Enabel
Of all the elves she’s met, Enabel is tall- rather so, especially in comparison to Leliana’s squires, most of whom only reach her earlobe if they stand side by side. And her tenure as a warrior and hunter both has molded her body into something truly formidable- something stalwart- filling her waist and shoulders with hard ridges of firm muscles, conceding nothing at all to the usual, lithe grace of the Elvhen.
But unlike The Iron Bull, who embraces his conspicuousness with pride, there is a quiet reservation to the way Enabel carries herself. She is, at all times, deeply aware of how much space she occupies. Josephine has never caught her towering over any of her companions, or even the servant girls. It has taken her a while to realize that is not self-effacing, but an unequivocal respect of other people’s space, regardless of status or relations. Enabel, it appears, is determined to keep an amount of space between herself and everyone else at all times.
And yet Josephine does not detect anything is amiss until Enabel recoils, so violently that it startles her. For a split second, she even sees Enabel draw herself to her full height- gone was the calm, easy slope of her shoulders, replaced by a high-strung, rigid tautness. She doesn’t even realize how relaxed the warrior was until she is suddenly no longer so... And then Enabel is backpedaling away from the fence surrounding the training yard, and away from her.
“Apologies, Lady Ambassador,” She says, “I overstepped.”
“Oh, it’s- It is nothing to worry about, I assure you.” Josephine, winded, attempts to put as much conviction into the words as she can.
It has the opposite effect of making her sound vaguely frantic, and a familiar frown bleeds into the lines of Enabel’s face. She tilts her head; pale, sweat-matted curls fall into place over her cheek and shield her scar from sight, a tic Josephine knows is a wall of defense. The hand which she’s used to reach over the space between them and tuck a lock of loose hair behind Josephine’s ear is held against her rib, like she must trap it for fear it might act out against her will again.
Something almost slips from the pink, thin press of Enabel’s lips. Josephine can only wait, rooted to the spot with anticipation, watching as the still-unspoken words come together in the warrior’s mind. At last, with a deep, measured exhale, Enabel shrugs off her discomfiture and looks at Josephine.
She does not draw close again.
“You should get going, Lady Ambassador,” She mutters, gentle and kind, “There’s only sweat and blood of soldiers here.”
Josephine is very aware of that fact, as she is aware that the two of them make quite the pair- with the glint of gold threads in her attire shimmering against Enabel’s bare skin- and that she has overstayed her welcome in what was only meant to be a short announcement. With a muttered goodbye, she hurried away, back to her office and its endless stream of letters. She dares not look back as she begins to walk away.
(If she later realizes that she can’t stop twirling her hair around her finger, or gazes out of any window she walks past, looking toward the training yard, then Josephine keeps it solely to herself.)
