#aresson lavellan

[sivellelavellan]

The Forest-roamer

For Jodie and her Inquisitor, Aresson Lavellan.

The leather is worn and peeling on the underside of the heel, the sole flattened from use. His fingers slid absently over the roughness of the damaged edges, vision blurring with unfocused thoughts that reconvened as he tilted his head up and followed the dust motes that drifted aimlessly in the late afternoon bars of light. The exposed high beams above his quarters was quiet and smelled distinctly of sawdust, the way he remembered crouching under the table of the weapon master, the shafts of arrows being sanded down to slender elegance. He remembers the sharp rap of the grip of a hammer on the crown of his head more clearly than anything else. The reprimand at the discovery of a barefoot, mud-smeared child in such a place so unsuited for children.

He stands, hands balling into persistent fists as he tries to walk along the ceiling beams frowning at the slap of his shoes on the sturdy wood. Heel caught on the edge, he feels the air whistle past the point of his ear as he trips over the edge, his stomach in his throat. He reaches up and manages to hook the fingers of his right hand back over the splintered edge and the borrowed boots fall to the ground in a flutter of limp boot shafts. He barely acknowledges the way they seem like discarded clothing at a bedside, or a fresh kill on a hunt, before his grip slackens and he swings himself over and drops onto the loft railing.

The ball of his right foot misses the ledge altogether and he ends up tumbling head over heels onto the dusty carpet with a groan. He knows it will bruise. He can see the color of purple over the skin, ridges like the dusky hills he can see as the arravels relocate yet again. The tree line thick unyielding, the fringes of canopy like misshapen footprints on the sky. His doing that time. The arrow shaft buried between the eyes of an unlucky templar, purpling around the edges, red along the bridge of a broken nose, splinters in his fingers. Mudstains and bloodstains and electricity crackling in a young boy’s palms.

He pushes himself up by the heels of his hands, standing despite the soreness in his tailbone. He grimaces and forces his legs to move and to push forward and makes his way to the stairs, leaping clumsily down them two at a time with bare feet stinging from the roughness of cold stone. He feels anchored this way, without the barrier of roughshod shoes to dull his ability to keep a grip on the perilous ground.

Josephine nearly faints when he enters the main hall to greet the diplomats with his toes kneading the plush carpets.