Thanks, Laya! <3 This one was also requested by @jtownnn c:
This is a fic about Fenris being a dad when Leander is very young, and specifically about how he chooses to parent though he has few examples to work from. And also, this isn't going to be the most articulate, but the world he hopes his son will grow up in and all the skills he will have access to that Fenris was denied:
Fenris sat up the rest of the way and settled Leander into his lap. The babe peered back at him, face shifting through several expressions. Already, his eyes had begun to shift from an indeterminate grey to a muddy green. Fenris had wondered often what they would become; what he would become, given time.
"Shall I read to you?" Fenris asked. Leander reached out and grasped a handful of Fenris's hair, which immediately tangled around his fingers.
"Very well," he said, and balanced the book he'd been reading precariously on one knee. "This is the language I spoke when I lived far away. You have not often heard it. Perhaps you will not hear it when you are older. I will read it to you now."
Leander made an inquisitive noise and slumped against his shoulder, industriously trying to shove a handful of hair into his mouth. Fenris carefully disentangled himself, replaced the hair with a corner of blanket, and began to read to his son.
Thank you for the tags @pinayelf @inquisimer and @greypetrel! Most of what I'm working on is secret for the moment, but I have been playing with this little piece c:
Tagging back @ndostairlyrium @daggerbean @vakarians-babe @ruthvelyan @dungeons-and-dragon-age @idolsgf @nightwardenminthara @bitchesofostwick @zenstrike @star--nymph and @transprincecaspian, no pressure!
From a piece about Adhlea (Cullen and Emma's daughter) and Leander (Fenris and Maria's eldest):
Adhlea was almost certain she was being punished for something.
She wasn’t sure what—she’d been very good ever since she’d finally gotten a little sister—but these stiff clothes and pinchy shoes could only mean she was being punished. It really didn’t make any sense at all. She’d told her mamae as much before they’d left the house and her mother had laughed.
“It is a tradition, ma vherain. This is important to your Papa, so you must do your very best to sit still and pay attention. Here—if you have any questions, you may write them down in this little notebook and save them for later. I think it is rude to talk during services. Ah—here is your papa now. ”
Well, Adhlea could feel the notebook knock against her leg while she kicked her heels in the foyer of the lady Hawke’s manor now, but she had no interest at all in writing anything down.
“But why will we have to be sitting for the whole time?” she asked, peering up at her Papa. He tugged at the cuffs of his shirt, eyes tilted up at the corners, and opened his mouth to answer.
“Because the Mother gets to be taller than everyone else,” a small voice piped from the doorway, and Adhlea grimaced.
“Ta said so,” Leander went on, sauntering into the room with his nose in the air. “He said it’s a sign of respect. And respect means we got to sit down.”
“Hello, Leander,” Adhlea said begrudgingly, summoning something like a smile. She was trying. Hard. She was.
“Also,” Leander went on grandly, as if she hadn’t spoken at all, “there is going to be smoke. On purpose.”
“I know that,” Adhlea said, the smile crawling away from her face. She couldn’t help it; her mamae and papa wanted the two of them to be friends so badly that they didn’t seem to notice how hard Leander always worked to irritate her.
“Well then, where does it come from?” he asked, his eyebrows squinching up in that way she hated. Always asking her questions he knew she didn’t have the answers for—always!
“It is time to go,” the boy’s father said, appearing in the doorway with little warning. Adhlea took a step back, feeling the warmth of her father’s hand at her shoulder.
“Messere Hawke,” Papa said, squeezing her slightly before bowing. “Where is the Ch–ah—is your wife not planning on joining us?”
“Hawke needs to rest,” the shorter man said gravely.
While his attention was focused on her father, Adhlea took the opportunity to peer up and up at him. Leander’s father was brown like her mamae and marked all over like her mamae, but Adhlea had been expressly forbidden to ask about the blue lines the way she asked about her mamae's vallaslin. It is private, her mamae had said, and Adhlea knew what private meant, she did, only they were very interesting lines and once she swore she had seen them light up and she really did want to know what they were and—
“Young Lavellan,” the man said gravely. Adhlea ducked her head at once, squirming in her shoes. Her papa nudged her gently and she remembered herself.
Manners, he had told her often, always matter.
“Good morning, Messere,” she said, executing a neat bow of her own. “Thank you for coming with us to the Chantry.”
Silence.
Leander scuffed his bare foot on the tile floor and Adhlea grimaced again. It was unfair that he never had to wear shoes and she did—yet another thing Leander could hold over her head. Ugh. And now she would probably have to sit with him for the whole service. Who knew how long that could be? Years, probably, and her stomach was already gurgling. She should have tried to eat more of her breakfast, but it had seemed too hard.
“Yes,” the man said at last, “of course. Well?”
“Let’s go!” Leander said, and barreled past her for the door.
Adhlea realized with no small amount of satisfaction that he had to stand on his toes to reach the handle properly. She was taller than him, at least; she would have to make certain he knew it as soon as possible.
Tagged by @greypetrel and @palipunk (on the other blog); thank you both!
*Gonna say in advance that I am still getting straight who all writes fic and/or does art, especially if I follow both of your personal and fan blogs, so if I sometimes tag you and sometimes don't just lmk if you do/don't want to be in on these things and I will do my best to oblige! I know people are busy/life is a pain in the ass lately and I don't want anyone to feel pressured or stressed or left out over it
I've been working on my Morrigan scarf, pictured below (hand for scale) and am getting close to finishing the main body of it. I'm really excited for some of the finishing touches, which will hopefully include fringe-like elements along the bottom edge. If they work out right, they'll look similar to feathers (fingers crossed), but if not they'll be irregularly-sized pieces that more closely resemble her skirt. We'll see c:
And here's a bit of writing from an unfinished chapter of Book of Memories; I've been fiddling with the beginning on and off for months, but I would really like to post it sometime in the next few weeks.
(CW for fantasy racism and blood/injury):
He could have sworn he'd only taken his eyes off the children for a moment—hardly any time at all for them to get into any trouble—but just then, Leander ran up, his fine tunic torn at one shoulder, his cheek bloodied, and he was panting.
“What’s happened?” Fenris asked, his body shifting slightly in a way that Cullen immediately recognized.
Neither of them were sufficiently armed, but Cullen reached for the support of a sword hilt anyway, his hand falling to his belt knife instead. Fenris crouched, bringing his face level with the boy’s, and Leander pointed toward a crowd forming near the small side garden.
“Adhlea,” he panted, and that was enough—Cullen was already running. He didn’t bother to make sure the Hawkes were following. His daughter needed him, was in danger perhaps—nothing could slow him now.
Adhlea was, in fact, in the center of the crowd. He could hear her piping voice even before he managed to shove through the crowd of bodies.
“You take it back, you—you Blight of a boy!” she was yelling, accompanied by a yelp that was not hers. “Or say that to my face, coward!”
Cullen went on elbowing his way through the huddle of people, his mind racing: Why hadn’t someone pulled her away from whatever was happening? What could possibly have made her this angry? The undercurrent of this all, the fear that made the rest of it unbearable, was this:
She is a new mage. If she hurts someone with magic in front of all these people, what can I do to keep her safe?
“Mongrel,” a garbled voice said. “You and that other—oomph!”
There was a dull sound, flesh striking flesh, and Cullen made his way to the front at last. There was a reason nobody had interrupted her: somehow, Adhlea had called up a barrier, and the bubble of it stood between them and the observers. She seemed well enough—though blood was dripping from her chin—and the boy she was pummeling seemed to be in one piece, for all that she had him pinned.
Maker preserve him. Maker preserve them all.
“Adhlea Rose,” Cullen bellowed, and more than one of the surrounding observers took a step back. “You stop that this instant.”
His daughter didn’t seem to hear him at all; she raised a bloody fist and aimed for the boy’s cheek. Fenris was faster; in a moment, he’d reached through the barrier with one hand, the tattoos that marked the backs of his hands and arms lighting up all at once. He pulled her, squirming, from the barrier by the back of her nice Chantry dress.
Some other time, Cullen might have found this funny; she looked rather like a kitten picked up by a rather annoyed cat. In the moment, he only felt fear.
“Adhlea,” he said sharply, and she stopped fighting. The barrier had popped soundlessly as soon as she’d left it. The boy was summarily scooped up by an older woman—presumably a caretaker—and tugged back from their little quartet.
“What happened?” Cullen demanded, crouching to examine her carefully.
One of her teeth had been knocked loose, leaving an empty space on the upper row of her mouth. Her hands were both bloody about the knuckles, and her lip was already swelling. The redness around her eye would almost certainly be a black eye soon enough, and if the laundress could get the blood out of the gown it would be a miracle.
“He said I was trash,” Leander said unexpectedly, though his green eyes were fixed on Adhlea, “I thought it was stupid. I can’t be trash, because trash is a thing and I’m not a thing. But he said he could prove it and—”
“He was going to shove Leander into the trash can!” Adhlea said, shaking with indignation, tears spilling from her injured eye, “I couldn’t let him—it’s not fair! We didn’t do anything to him!”
Tagging: @ndostairlyrium @daggerbean @layalu (unless you prefer the other blog?) @idolsgf @brother-genitivi
