The moment Talin offers up that explanation, Astrid swallows it hook, line, and sinker (because why shouldn’t she?), and she knocks her shoulder companionably against his while blowing on her cup of hot tea.
She buys it so easily because it’s her same reasoning. They often come out here for a break from city life. The justification is usually hunting — catching some food to supplement the Gallows’ stores — and it is that, sure, but it’s also the pleasant company and fresh air and sprawling space and the smell of dew, flourishing trees, rich earth, far from Kirkwall’s grimy docks and stinking streets. The companionable silence as they set up or break down camp, skinning rabbits, washing off their bloody hands.
“It’s better, innit?” Astrid says.
There’s always a tension carried in their bones in the city: the tight quarters, the crowds, the constant noise which keeps their hackles permanently raised. She relaxes more out here. She thinks she sees the same thing in Talin, too: his affected languor a little less affected.
“Out here, always feels like I can let down my hair.”
Her hair is long and loose today, spilling messy over her shoulders, only parts of it wound into braids.
no subject
The moment Talin offers up that explanation, Astrid swallows it hook, line, and sinker (because why shouldn’t she?), and she knocks her shoulder companionably against his while blowing on her cup of hot tea.
She buys it so easily because it’s her same reasoning. They often come out here for a break from city life. The justification is usually hunting — catching some food to supplement the Gallows’ stores — and it is that, sure, but it’s also the pleasant company and fresh air and sprawling space and the smell of dew, flourishing trees, rich earth, far from Kirkwall’s grimy docks and stinking streets. The companionable silence as they set up or break down camp, skinning rabbits, washing off their bloody hands.
“It’s better, innit?” Astrid says.
There’s always a tension carried in their bones in the city: the tight quarters, the crowds, the constant noise which keeps their hackles permanently raised. She relaxes more out here. She thinks she sees the same thing in Talin, too: his affected languor a little less affected.
“Out here, always feels like I can let down my hair.”
Her hair is long and loose today, spilling messy over her shoulders, only parts of it wound into braids.
“—Metaphorically, like.”