#☼ ･°･⊱ answered asks ic. ∣ messenger ravens.

[avrorean]

@valorcorrupt. 🎬 ↳ clips of the past (accepting!)

The girl had never truly felt cold before. Her house had always been a warm place, fit snugly on one of Nevarra’s layered hills with its bright blue door and the orange trees that grew outside her window, where she took naps to the sound of the rolling of the sea in the middle of the day. But there had been no orange trees once the Templars brought her across the ocean, and the sun had felt like it had lost all of its warmth.

Instead, it had just felt wet, which made the persistent cold even worse. It hadn’t rained, but the fog that had settled over the dark ground hadn’t lifted for days and had only ever grown worse once they reached the lake. The girl sniffled – whether from cold or the threat of new, miserable little tears it was hard to say – tugging the scratchy old blanket tighter around herself as another violent shiver shook her tiny body. That, at least, had garnered her the attention of the old man who had lent it to her, looking up from his place currently rowing the boat. 

(“Don’t you worry now, li’il one. Won’t be much longer now and that tower’ll have ya bundled up warm an’ proper. Promise from ol’ Kester.”) 

The little girl blinked her wide, wet eyes up at him. The old man’s smile was friendly, but it was no good despite his intent. The girl had barely started reading in her own language before she’d been taken, and she hardly understood a word of the common tongue as of yet. If she had caught one word in twenty when someone spoke to her mother or father, it was a success, and the old man’s accent was impossibly thick. The only person she could get any thought across to was her escort, Templar Alban; he wasn’t a cruel guardian, but he was cold. Cold as the lake and the wind and this hard green country, and despite speaking plain Nevarran, he didn’t seem to want to talk to her much at all unless he needed to. Not even to tell her what the old man had said. It had stopped disappointing her during the early days of the voyage, shortly after she’d finally stopped crying.

But the old man hadn’t been wrong, at least insofar as Alban would have known; the boat ride hadn’t taken too much longer before the knock of wood against the dock signaled their arrival, and the armored man lifted her out of the little wooden dinghy and, for once, carried her the rest of the way inside. His armor’s cold, too, the child thought as the large wooden doors parted before them.

Inside was indeed warmer, and reactively the girl shuddered in the Templar’s arms with relief as the warm air worked itself right away to combating the cold in her bones, but even that hadn’t dissuaded the rise of fear at the number of armored men waiting within the grey halls. There were only a dozen or so, but to her, it felt like a hundred. Cold and faceless in their helmets and still like statues. Just like the ones that chased mama, she thought, shrinking back into Alban’s arms. Even if he was a Templar too, at least he was familiar.

Alban clearly hadn’t felt the same, however. Gently, but unsympathetically, her templar escort peeled her off and sat her feet-first on the ground, pulling the scratchy blanket the old man had given her away and leaving her standing before two more old, bearded men. One was hard-faced and armored, the other in colorful robes that reminded her of the bright rugs in her house and laugh lines at his eyes beneath his long hair. 

“Hush now.” It had felt like forever since Alban had last said more than a few words to her, much less in her own tongue, so the girl stared up at him with a jump. “Do not cause a fuss. This is the last of it, so behave yourself.” 

(“Maker be praised for your safe return, Templar Alban. This is the mage from Nevarra?”) 

Though he addressed her escort, the Old Templar’s unflinching eyes had fallen firmly onto her, watchful and analytical, as though he’d found an animal in the woods and was debating on whether or not it would try and bite him. The little girl shrank beneath it and backed away several steps until she felt the light touch of Alban at her back, holding her in place.

(“Do not intimidate the poor girl, Greagoir. By your templar’s accounts, the journey has been an ordeal.”) The old man with a long beard chastised, which only made the Old Templar’s scowl deepen. (“Be welcome to your new home, █ █ █ █ █.”)

Alban translated the last part for her this time. The girl bit her lip sullenly, digging her chilled fingers into her muddied skirt and said nothing. The Bearded Man merely smiled in a way that seemed like understanding, before turning back to the Old Templar to mutter sharp words together. The girl didn’t think she wanted to know what they were arguing about. Instead her big purple eyes wandered the walls of her new environment. Tall and grand, yes, with its high walls that had no pictures or tapestries and bars on the few windows she could see. 

Colorless. Dull. 

She hated this. She wanted to go home, to her mother and father and her little baby brother, who’d just started to crawl. To take a nap by her window with the orange tree and sneak figs from the big bowl in the kitchen. She wanted to feel her mother’s arms around her. The feeling of her father’s tightly wrapped hair beneath her fingers when he sat her on his shoulders, and the way he’d securely hold her legs to keep her from falling. Every time she asked Templar Alban when they could go back, he ignored her, which had only amplified her cries and tantrums on the ship, which Alban had simply let run their course by herself until she was too tired to cry anymore. The girl didn’t think she had anymore tears to cry, but as these strange, cold people talked around her, she felt them burn the corners of her eyes again. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.

(“... the reidentification forms on my desk. Is that necessary? The child is-”)

(“Blame the girl’s family, Irving, not I.”)

Another sniffle, unbidden, snapped the attention of the Old Templar and the Bearded Man back to her. She shrank again. The two conferred again, quieter this time, and made a motion to the Templars she couldn't quite understand, but they clearly knew what to do.

Templar Alban nudged her again, giving a quiet command to walk to one of the vestibules by the door. As her tiny feet shuffled three steps for every one of his long, armored strides, she found herself distracted briefly by the intricate webbing of vine-line bars that caged it off from the rest of the room. It had been the first thing the girl might have called pretty.

But the hint of wonder was brief. When the Old Templar and the Bearded Man approached her again, it had felt as though all the coldness from without had come flooding back inside. She didn’t know why, but the Old Templar had begun to recite something; what it was, she couldn’t have begun to say, but she noticed that Templar Alban had stood straighter, his hands locked firmly behind his back in a soldier’s respect. And then they’d started pulling things out of a velvet lined box that another, faceless templar had brought them: a vial, a wooden medallion-like circle covered in strange writing, and something sharp. 

Terror seized her then, as the Old Templar’s recitation made the strange and scary objects begin to glow, but Templar Alban had a firm grip on her tiny wrist, keeping her palm stretched out no matter how hard she tried to wiggle free from his metal grip. She ignored the Bearded Man’s attempt to soothe her, thrashing and whimpering in the Templar’s hold. She could get out. She had to get out. If she could just run back out the door, the kind old man with the boat had to take her across, right? He could row her all the way back home, she bet. He had a boat and these faceless, armored men didn’t. But Alban held her firm. The words she wanted to plea wouldn’t come, but as the strange device glowed red, the whimpering was more than sufficient a plea to get across. The Templar was unmoved, but had the decency to look uncomfortable.

“Hold still,” he said quietly as the Bearded Man and the Old Templar approached her with their sharp and glowing things, finished with their chanting. “It will only hurt for a second.”

[avrorean]

@theshirallen. [ approval ] - ian volunteers to be the one to go into the Fade after connor in redcliffe ↳Approval memes (not accepting)

Nanna knows by heart now how many days it takes to travel from Redcliffe to the Tower; she had spent more than enough time practicing the route when she'd been hunched over a map with Alistair in clumsy attempts to parse out how to navigate it. But here, as she stood before the dais of the arl of Redcliffe with near a dozen mages standing at the ready, watching her for the signal to proceed, Nanna found she couldn't remember when exactly they'd gotten back. After that first night out of the Tower, everything had been a blur of footfalls and murmured reassurances to the group that followed her. Had the trip been slower this time? Had she slept? She wasn't sure. She still wasn't sure she was even awake right now.

"Nanna?" The soft voice broke through the white noise of her thoughts and the empty stare at the ritual site, similar if not the same as the Harrowing, to look at Ian. "You don't have to go back in the Fade. I can-"

"You needn't do that." Her tone was sharp and dull all at once, turning back only briefly to look at him without really looking. She watched him press his lips together, contemplating. From the corner of her eye, she saw Irving looking her over, sombre, but nodding. It was ready. The question to be asked was, was she? Nanna didn't think she wanted the answer.

"You are still recovering from..." The words stuck in her throat. They knew, they both knew, but Nanna couldn't say it. It was still too fresh, and if she let a single thought sit upon it, the emotional sticks holding back the dam of her grief would crumble and cripple her. They wouldn't be able to count on her. So she forced her eyes forward. She didn't need to wait, didn't need a second opinion, didn't need someone else to pick up her slack. She needed to do. She was fine. It was fine. What was one more demon to stare down with their hands in a mage? What was one more time lost in the fade? Nothing. Nothing.

Connor wouldn't be like the others in the bones of the Tower.

This one wouldn't die.

"I can endure the ritual, Ian. Thank you."

Nanna Disapproves (but will appreciate it later)

[avrorean]

@hoboblaidd. “Normally I hate people who whine all the time… but, in your case, it would be okay to complain. Be selfish. Say what you want once in a while.” Just pretend it’s in his usual cadence of speech lol. ↳ Fruits Basket - Vol. 1

His eyes lingered on her again. Nanna didn’t have to look at Solas to feel it. It happened sometimes, when a moment fell quiet the weight of them sunk warm and distant as the setting sun over their camp while his thoughts wandered endless paths behind his eyes, sometimes old and sad, sometimes drifting too close to something that felt to her like pity.

Each time, like now, she let it go. It was her own fault, after all. There were times that Nanna forgot that Solas had spent most of his life apart from the Chantry or its Circles, his unique brand of apostasy somehow a shield from the struggles of even the most skillful southern apostate’s life - the hows of which Nanna had never figured out. 

At least, that was what she assumed of him for how startled Solas' expression grew when he overheard some of the Circle mages in Skyhold. Or that for all she had grown to see her childhood home for what it was, there were still things that Nanna hadn’t fully grasped weren’t the norm until his expression shifted in response to something she said. That there was such a thing as being too comfortable, even with her closest. The burden of her experience was not something she intended for anyone, and Nanna would have thought ten years would have been enough to teach her to better guard her tongue.

She’d resolved to do it too, even here in the quiet of the Inquisition's camp at end of day. Her with her book in the fading light of the sun and him lingering near, lost amid thought that only seemed to grow heavier with each second that passed.

“It would be alright to complain,” he said at last, his voice barely a thrum over the soft shuffling ambience of the campsite. No doubt giving voice to whatever rolling wave of thought he’d been nursing. “Be selfish. Say what you want once in a while.”

Only now did she raise from her book to meet the weight of his gaze, and a tilt of her head was Nanna's only response to him for several seconds.

“Do I not have plenty?” her voice is light and playful in contrast to his distant tone, but he does not rise to meet her this time. That wasn’t what he meant, says the soft reproach in his eyes, but for once he did not elaborate.

Nanna sighed then, allowing the book to lay forgotten and sliding closer to him and opting to simply rest her head against his shoulder, her own offering of reassurance.  

“You needn’t worry so for me," she said smiling, softer this time as her arm looped like a vine through his. “I am content to just be here.”

[avrorean]

Duncan could have taken anyone. There were plenty with more talent. But you survived, and they died. Why did you take their place?

"You speak as though I could argue against conscription. If the Knight-Commander's repeated calls for my punishment could not sway Duncan, do you suppose my advocacy for another would have changed his mind? That was not my choice."

The heat in her voice was more steam than fire, and it dissipated just as quickly. And all she could think of was the line on a map she drew mark a path so out of their way to avoid returning. You survived and they died. They died. They died.

"The rest was."

[avrorean]

@mercysought. "It will always be the fate of such as ones like you, as it stands." his voice comes as a whisper first, another voice from a distant cell perhaps but too full to have spent any amount of time in a warden, decrepit prison. It is full and with each breath, the dim lights in the sconces shine brighter - like they were given no other choice "For all knowledge, all your strength, all your devotion. They still cannot see it. To them? There will always be something about you that will always be out of place." from the darkness of the cell beyond, thin lines are drawn against worn, ancient stones.

The shape of a man, bending stone to his image “If you really wanted to leave," the sound ripples, the metal cage that keeps her from freedom rattles. In the centre of the bars, the metal burns brightly from red to yellow to pure white before falling to the stone with no sound "you should have said so in the first place.”

// rook might be coming to break her out of warden prison, but elgar'nan sees potential first 8)

The black iron bars of the Warden fortress seemed a little less fearsome from within; even though the gloom settled deep in the brick and bone that built its ancient structure, something about it still felt fragile as the light from the overcast sun slid faint sunbeams through her tiny window, as though the cracks in the stone would break apart like dead leaves in the wind from one, solid gust. But if it were fragile, Nanna would be more breakable still, with her head rested against the cold, unmoving stone, her eyes keeping watch for the little changes that she might be able to catch outside. Her one solace of late. 

It was not much, truth be told, but focusing on finding them kept her from blurring the days together. A glimpse of dried grass shifting in the wind, or a bird with outstretched talons snatching up a mouse or a snake that had dared lift its head above ground. She would stay up to watch the stars shift at night, or which colors appeared more at one sunset than another.  It was focus in apathy, little ways to keep her mind sharp against delusion in steadfast and ordered silence when longing and betrayal dared hang too heavy on her bones and drag her beneath the stone. And oh, how it threatened, some days. 

To know that she was here at the hands of those she had been trying to save… her brothers. The thought almost lets slip a derisive laugh. Beyond her own borders, the Order had never been worth much to her as a brotherhood, always dealing in silence when she needed them, shaky on her feet as a leader. Yet even so, her research on the blight, and its cure, had been as much for them as any of her own. A chance at freedom, if they chose it. The Grey Wardens should not be an Order that lasts forever, in her eyes. At some point, their duty should be allowed to end. But the First Warden hadn’t seen it that way – treachery, he’d called it, a threat against their very nature. So his men had ambushed Nanna at her least expecting, left her locked away in a warded cell where she was little more than a watched inconvenience.

She was tired. The thought had intruded more frequently as days past long and slow in her colorless cell. So tired.

When the silence broke, Nanna wasn’t even sure she hadn’t just imagined it. The whisper was a distant thing, soft and ethereal, but with each muttered word the cell brightened. She felt magic. An energy she hadn’t felt in weeks surged her to her feet, hunting and eager. The mage still didn’t dare draw near the bars of her cell, the rejection of her magic thrumming maliciously, but she drew as near as she dared. 

“What- Is someone there?”

Someone. Something. Nanna thought she saw a figure in the shadow, a man, a warden perhaps. But it spoke to something deep within her in a way Nanna wasn't certain how to name. The voice reverberated in her ribcage, as though it bent to the presence as the fortress around her seemed to, warping and warming like iron in the forge. Like the bars on her cell, glowing bright and bending with fire like the sun.

A spirit?

Something about that realization was more comforting, somehow. A spirit, rather than a man, something more than the cold eyes of Wardens. A cold hand drawing near to an open flame. Still, Nanna hesitated.

Do not, something else whispered, an old instinct scratching in the back of her mind with a voice that was sometimes hard to remember. Do not, it says again as iron fell limp and ineffective to the floor, opening her way for escape. Something is not right. 

But even in its silence, the bars rung of freedom and warmth and promise as they rolled harmless and despelled on the floor, knocking against her boot as though a gentle beckoning to follow. Nanna’s eyes rise again, violet suddenly bright with life and hope and questions, always questions toward the shadow lurking in the dark. All the whys and hows and whats bubbled in her chest, but she forced them down. Who knew how much time she had?

Her lips press together. She steps through the bars.

[avrorean]

@theshirallen [ approval ] - he's a ferret and he's sleeping on her pillow ↳Approval memes (accepting)

Her hands were planted firmly on her hips as she takes in the new appearance of her guest, but the smile the sight brings forth is delighted.

"Made sure to engage yourself in the most comfortable spot on the bed, hm?" She mused, running a finger over the bridge of his nose, in turn earning her a tiny, ferret yawn that threatened to make her laugh.

With a flick of magic the curtain opened then, just enough for the sun to wash small bands across the bed where Ian slept without making it hard on his eyes once he woke. He can sleep here warmly for a while.

Nanna Approves

[avrorean]

@hoboblaidd [ APPROVAL ] + him killing the mages after All New Faded for Her

Her eyes do not catch his when he stalked towards them, a familiar shadow threatening to dim the world in its wrath, but there is a plea in them regardless. A hand lightly extended. Nanna did not know these mages, and yet does in countless others. Mercy, she wanted to beg him. They did not know. They know only to react in fear.

And yet the words were a cold weight, frozen in her throat.

"We didn't know it was just a spirit," the mage had begged. "The book said it could help us-!"

It wouldn't have been the first time she thinks of the Circle, just as it would not be the first time she'd seen the handiwork of the knife of ignorance. The features of the Kirkwall mage slim and shift into that of the blood mage in her minds eye, curled in a heap on the bloodstained floor of Kinloch. It was still a little too clear in her mind.

"I know I have no right to ask for mercy, but I didn't mean for this death and destruction," the mage had begged. "We were just trying to free ourselves-!"

If she thought too deeply on it, Nanna could still feel the way her chest had constricted in the ruins of the second floor library. The particular way the lightning spell had stiffened her fingers before it had loosed almost on instinct. Mercy had not abound with her that day, either.

So she stilled her protests. Her eyes turn to stone where Wisdom rested, the last traces of its existence drifting out of the air in a manner seemed in some way to remind her of the river it had rested by in its final moment. She notes the hum of a final harmony in its wake before it was drowned out by the cacophony of rage and fire. She does not move her gaze again until it is the Inquisitor's hand on her shoulder, quietly urging their departure.

Nanna's approval remains unchanged.

[avrorean]

@hoboblaidd. [ APPROVAL ] + trying to set her up at the winter palace because he's too blind to realize she's got a whole Thing going on

↳Approval memes (accepting)

There was nothing quite like the success, more or less, of thwarting the threat to Orlais to signal that it was acceptable to get truly and properly drunk.

Without further need or care for appearances, Nanna's arm is slung through Solas's in a way prior decorum and expectation had prevented, the Warden's laugh a warm trail of giggles as the apostate lead her around the confused court with the firm insistence on finding her a suitable dance partner before the night lets out. The reasons varied from the romantic to the absurd, and she squeezes his arm to remind him that he'd pointed the same man out thrice already, or that the noble lady he'd made off to introduce her to was more drunk than they were.

Across the room, Nanna locked eyes with Leliana, and she catches a glimpse of the old bard in the way her eyes sparkle at the sight, the hint of a grin pressed into a glass of wine that even she was so rarely allowed to see these days. There would be a letter later, she knew, that a pair of amber eyes would glean over with wry amusement and only the mildest disapproval that he was not there to add to the scandal. And that it remained a secret even now only gave more enjoyment to the moment, even as she tugged on his arm with a giddy, inebriated smile to match his own.

"Do you not have your own dance to attend to?"

Nanna Slightly Approves but thinks it's extremely funny

[avrorean]

@littlehoundthings. “ 'course I came. You called me. What’s wrong? “ ↳ reassurance prompts (accepting)

Of course he came.

There was never any doubt in that, Ashe ever the protector in that close little group of theirs in the Circle. But the conversation is one Nanna is uneasy with all the same, taking a second too long to draw her eyes away from the window where the view of Amaranthine's crashing shore rolled in comfortable consistency.

She makes herself turn to meet his gaze with her own, steeled with determination of what was to come.

"I have received reports from some of my men in the north of strange activity from the Blight. Some uncertain new development, I know not the details as of yet." Nanna did well to keep her expression and tone level, but could not hide the way her hands fidgeted and toyed with one of many random objects that usually settled on her desk. "I plan on leaving soon to investigate - I am uncertain when I will be returning, but... I thought you should know."

[avrorean]

@isalarevas. ' hey nan' guess what. ' she doesn't give her the chance to respond, she only picks her up & tosses her instantly---- right over into the river, which is soft enough to land in dreav supposes. :)

Perhaps it was her own fault, for not paying attention. Nanna had been too preoccupied with her own new little discoveries, ever distracted in the world around here when all seemed safe. And perhaps that was the problem - all only ever seemed safe. Especially when alone with Dreav Tabris.

A half attentive Huh-? was all she managed to squeak out.

Somehow, in span of the brief seconds in which she was lifted high enough for violet to meet blue at level, Nanna was not inclined to think she weighed anything to the elf. Certainly not enough to dissuade her from the effort to send the mage flying.

And fly she did. Only briefly did she catch the wicked grin across the older woman's face before the world spun, and then she was in the air, breathless and floating for barely a second before plummeting, briefly screaming, before the crash of a small body hitting the water broke the careful peace of the forest.

The most she could say was that the water was blessfully shallow, even for her, only reaching under her shoulders standing up; it was still a Fereldan river, however, and Fereldan anything was still dreadfully cold.

"DREAV!"

[avrorean]

Jowan's sins are yours. You saw the evil in him and held your tongue. Mercy for a friend over justice. The people of Redcliffe, their blood is on your hands.

"Desperation is not evil." The insistence is sharp, fists clenched tight at her sides. "Jowan should not have been put in that situation to begin with."

This might have wracked her, once. When she was still young, still clutching so tightly to the ideals of the Circle, the structure that she'd known her whole life, this would have shaken her, and she would have accepted it. Now, however, the accusation angered her.

That did not make her relationship to Jowan -- to Levyn -- uncomplicated. The betrayal, the lie, did not disappear. But he was still her people. Her friend, once. And an understanding from years beyond the walls of Kinloch guided her gaze her now where ignorance once left her to fear.

"He was hardly more than a child - thoughtless and careless, yes, but to say it was due to the evils of blood magic is a malicious falsehood. He, by his own admission, was not at the skill for which they would have given him his Harrowing, and not one of his mentors would help him reach it. Even had he not resorted to blood magic, they would have made him Tranquil anyway. If there is an evil at play to set these events in motion, it is, as ever, within the foundations of the Circle."

As for Redcliffe? ... Well.

"We saved who we could, Connor included. That Redcliffe survived is something we ought be thankful."

[avrorean]

Your fingers shake; your healing is weak. Your friends will suffer when you cannot mend the simplest of wounds.

"Well, what ought be done?" Despite the phrasing as a question, Nanna did not seem to be awaiting an answer. Only a disinterested shrug of her shoulders bothered to accompany the thought.

"My magic has long since taken its shape; I might bend it, weave something anew with it, or set it to a new branch, but I cannot force what it is not inclined to. It is, after all, why I learned herbalism."

Even if that motivation had been driven solely by spite and the unnecessary perfectionism of a child. Nanna could hardly scale herself against a moderate healer, much less a talented one, but that did not mean she was unable to help in an emergency.

"Do I wish it, at times, to have taken on a less combative nature? Certainly. But there are wants and I wishes enough for me to sort through without weighing myself with the wants of things that could never have been to begin with. Let healing be left to healers who know their work. I am more than able to defend in the meanwhile."

[avrorean]

If you had gone to the Circle sooner, you could have saved more of them.

"I know."

It is a dead tone, distant and dispassionate; it may as well have been a note in some history book for all it seemed to distance her, something she'd been made to study in a corner of the apprentices' library that doesn't exist anymore. But it's a thought Nanna has become so familiar with, she could have drawn its face alongside the ones they'd lost. She knows. She knows.

The tide of memory rises, something Nanna had nearly drowned in once. In its wake, she hadn't been able to see anything. Claw marks in the wood of the barrier door. The children huddled in the secondary hall to flee the massacre of ripped rugs and overturned cots in the bedrooms they could no longer hide in. Keili mumbling madly by the wall in a war of fear and relief. It had pulled her under more times than she cared to admit to. Grief had filled her lungs so completely that every night at camp was an exercise in remembering how to breathe.

For all that wisp of a girl had nodded and dutifully repeated her loyalty to the Circle, deep down Nanna knew what she had been doing. She hadn't wanted to admit to the doubt in the teachings she'd been instilled with all her life, the widening of her perspectives with every new experience. That even living on the run from a Regent and a Blight was so much easier to exist without walls and eyes at every turn. She hadn't wanted to go back. So in her roundabout route of finding the elves, the dwarves, the Arl, she hadn't. And everyone she'd ever known had paid for it.

You could have saved more of them. She knows it now as she knew it then. It's only a thought now, floating on the surface without so much weight as it had near a decade ago, but the reminder is always there, tied to her like a dock. The tide had receded, but the waves would always be there.

"I know," she says again. "It is why I act now."

[avrorean]

"That's not a name I've heard everyday, and in truth, he may be known as one of the Emanators from the stars above. A force that may as well be part of the cosmic fabric." Caelus was never pleased in bringing these details to light. However, Ferelden was going to embark through the waves of another dangerous circumstance. Needless to say? He doesn't want to see another world fade into stardust. It leaves him tensed as the Trailblazer meets the Warden eye to eye, a conviction strong in his features as he lays a picture down before her. On the table, the man, the myth, Lukas Kane could be perceived in all of his morbid infamy. Even now, a mere glance would cause an unnatural tremor through the land. That was no measure made by mythical beast or Darkspawn. It was simply aura. "To get through this, I'm going to need your power Nanna."

The Warden inhales deeply, weighing her words with care before deigning to respond. He did seem so set on it, but as the Warden-Commander leaned forward on her elbows, the look in her grim expression might already communicate her answer.

"I have it on authority," she said gravely, sliding the photo back across the table. "That this individual has already been banned from this atmosphere."

[avrorean]

"Are you the freezy chair cause I'd take my pants off for you."

Nanna could hardly help herself. There were times she regretted telling Inara the tale of the dread freezy chair from back in Old Man Sweeney's day, but in times like these, doubled over with a laugh perhaps a little too hard, it tended to be worth it.

"You might, perhaps, find issue in getting me warmed up."

[avrorean]

You deserve an hour in the freezy chair.

"Irving banned that for a reason."