Chapter 2 - Gossip In the Grain
I AM A WOMAN WHO SOMETIMES STICKS TO HER WORD
Hopefully, the rest of these parts come a little quicker, but I make no promises.
Chapter 2 of Hymns from the Vigil is finally here
but please have a snippet beneath the cut!
(divider from here)
Sometimes, there are murmurs that the Grey Wardens acquired their name not by their armor proudly glinting dull silver as they stood proud in their line of duty, but rather, it came from the abysmal rations they're served to this day.
During moments like this, Davrin is inclined to believe them.
Long gone are the days of trays filled with colorful arrays of vegetables. Whatever roots and berries might be in season. Mushrooms expertly foraged. That special sauce his mother would whip up, mashing the ingredients together with a pestle. Mint and onion grass and a type of nut of which he can't quite recall the variety. Maybe it varied. He can't even remember. Just that it tasted like springtime and made any dish, no matter how inedible it might be, a delicacy.
In the tin bowl before him, he pushes around the thick porridge. An amorphous blob of sustenance (allegedly) sloshes against the metal. Sloughs off the curve of his spoon. It reminds him of the pulp that sat in a pool of cold river water, settling against the stiff netting below. Over and over again it would be smoothed and worked until it no longer was wood pulp but rather pages that would find themselves pressed into books. Bound together and made useful, unlike this fucking slop.
"It ain't getting any prettier staring at it." He blinks, one moment sitting on the riverside beside a girl whose vallaslin was still healing, scabbing against her cheeks, as she smoothed wood pulp into paper. The next, he is back here in the High Anderfels, snowed into this fortress before heading out on his next assignment. The Wandering Hills. Landforms that seem to move about and take cattle and limbs in their wake. Their most recent casualties were followed by a thin vein of Blight, singing, twisting its way into the locals' thoughts and fears. As the pink and oddly chipper Beren—now urging him to eat—explained to him, the hills are said to whisper in the night. A slithering unreal sort of sound. A thing of nightmares. Now, it's potentially tinged with Blight, so it only makes sense the Wardens would be called upon to investigate.
As a boy, he might have shivered at the sentiment, but at this point, he might as well live out his time before his ever ticking expiration date comes to fruition. No better way to spend that than fighting a moving hill, he supposes.
With a sigh, he lifts a chunk of porridge and immediately wonders if too much time has elapsed to go home, at least for a good meal. He dare not close his eyes, nor even blink, for fear that he might see the disappointment in his mother's eyes. The last he saw her was when he said he was leaving. His face still bandaged, he didn't anticipate just how impossible it would be to bandage his heart. Or at the very least, his fingertips as he desperately tried to pick up all the pieces when he departed without even a passing glance from her.
again the rest is on ao3 bYE
