Later
Alarian gets up and takes their plate into the kitchen at the inquisitors arrival to the Table. The two exchange threatening glances as they pass and Ali shoves open the revolving door into the kitchen. Sera and Krem are already seated at the small kitchen table laughing about something. Alarian sits silently and picks at their food “Hey tiny what's new?” Sera gives them a playful nudge on the arm and they freeze, swallowing hard. Sera glances at Krem and whispers into his ear “did I do something wrong?” When Ali still isn't moving and stares straight ahead unblinking. Krem shrugs. Bull comes into the kitchen to find the scene “What did you two do? See this is why your grounded.” Sera bangs on the table “Hey we ain't done nothin! And your not me mum you can't ground me!” Bull crosses his arms and glances at Krem “I'm the closest thing to his dad though, so I can ground him.” Krem rolls his eyes and frowns. “I won't ask again, what did you two do.” Bull says calmly. “Uhh well, you see Chief, what happened was Sera here, we were chatting with Ali and then Sera nudged them in the arm lightly and umm...this happened.” He points both his hands towards the still unmoving Alarian. Bull nods “I see. Well I was actually going to have a little chat with them myself.” He walks over to Alarian and shakes their shoulder lightly “Wake up kid come on.” Ali blinks rapidly, coming back to reality. “Hmm?” Bull tugs them up out of their chair “I wanna talk to you.” He gruffly says dragging them out of the room and down the dimly lit corridor to his room and sits them down at a wooden table over by his window then sits across from Alarian. “I want to talk to you about your arm.” Bull says passing them a glass of water. “What about it?” Bull points to his eyepatch “you wanna know how long it took me to get used to having one eye? Well it took a very long time. And you and I have something in common.” He turns his wrist over “numbers. For different reasons of course, but still. I know how you feel to some extent. Yeah it hurts like hell, but you gotta push through it. Your going to have those for your whole life Alarian. If you ever need some muscle or anything, or just someone taller with a group of crazy warriors tell me. Okay?” Ali nods and starts to cry “why you crying?” They sniffle “it's just a constant reminder of that terrible place and it's going to be there always and I can never get away. And the other part of why I'm crying is no ones ever really done that for me, so thank you.” Bull nods slowly “Your Welcome, Kadan.” He hugs them, wrapping them up, being wary of their arm. “Hey bull?” He looks down at them and releases them noticing he's slightly crushing them with his bulk “what?” Alarian takes a few breaths before regaining composure “what's Kadan mean?” Bull laughs “It's Qunari for Loved one, or Close one. You're my close friend, so I call you Kadan. And Krem is the closest thing I have to an adopted son and I'm the closest thing to his father so I call him Kadan too. And you are young so I call you Imekari, child.” Ali nods in understanding “And I call you Mehtar, Warrior. Because that's what you are, your a big brawny warrior who crush people...and really like Dragons.” Bull laughs “you and me both. Come on kid I'll take you back. Good talk.” He holds the door and they step into the hallway and go on their way back to the kitchen. “Hey Bull, how'd you lose your eye anyway?” Ali asks as they walk along, Bull chuckles “you'll have to ask Krem, it involves him, a river, a mace, a group of tevene soldiers and a very grumpy old lady. You'll probably find it incredibly amusing. Krem even does sound effects and everything, much like how you tell your stories.” Alarian smiles and barges in to the kitchen swinging the door open and finds Sera with Cullen in a headlock “He tried to steal my cookie and no one steals my cookies.” Sera lets him go and Cullen stands up, grumbles and goes back into the dining room “how was your chat?” Sera asks plopping into a chair. “It was good, we talked about scars and stuff.” Sera makes a face “why?” Alarian shrugs “why not?”
Sera smooths her hair and gets out of the chair and walks across the kitchen and kicks open the dining room door, walking in very calmly as the Inquisition and others look at her “Zevran your wardens back.” She says and points to the open kitchen door. Ali waves hello “I was talking with bull nothing serious.” Zevran nods and he and Leliana excuse themselves from the table. The three companions walk back to their quarters, Zevran says goodnight and goes to sleep, Leliana follows Ali into their room to help them get ready for bed. She digs through the dresser and finds a pair of sleeping pants and a tee shirt handing them to Ali, who takes them and goes behind the dressing screen. They tear off the shirt and the sleeve that was earlier ripped and hastily sewn back together comes apart again. Alarian steps from behind the screen holding the shirt in one hand and the ripped sleeve in the other “umm Leliana?” Ali calls softly to Leliana whose sitting at the desk reviewing some notes, she looks up and sees the torn shirt “how'd this happen?” Leliana asks taking the shirt from their hands, placing it on the desk and turns back to them. They fidgit jumping from foot to foot thinking of how to explain. Leliana walks over to the bed and sits down tapping the spot next to her “come sit next to me.” Alarian walks over and sits down after going behind the screen and taking off their binder and replacing it with a tee shirt. “So how'd you rip your shirt? Your not in trouble I just want to know.” Leliana reassures them. Ali takes a breath then rapidly says “I was walking through the hallways and then Bull say me and asked why I looked sad and I didn't answer and then he asked again so I ripped off my sleeve and showed him the numbers then we spent an hour talking about scars and I started crying and ahdjsnjhanggk.” They wring their hands anxiously waiting for a response. Leliana waits a moment before responding “Okay, one that was really fast wow ha. Two, it's perfectly normal that you feel that way. Three, if you ever want to talk to someone, I'm always up to talk. And four, you need to go to sleep.” Ali laughs and Leliana starts to as well. Alarian finishes getting dressed, and pulls out a book from the bookcase by the window. “Can you read me a book first?” They sit eagerly on the bed with their legs crossed, Leliana takes the book and looks through it “A chapter.” She says and begins reading “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs Macready and three servants. (Their names were Ivy, Margaret and Betty, but they do not come into the story much.) He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair which grew over most of his face as well as on his head, and they liked him almost at once; but on the first evening when he came out to meet them at the front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy (who was the youngest) was a little afraid of him, and Edmund (who was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it. As soon as they had said good night to the Professor and gone upstairs on the first night, the boys came into the girls' room and they all talked it over. "We've fallen on our feet and no mistake," said Peter. "This is going to be perfectly splendid. That old chap will let us do anything we like." “I think he's an old dear,” said Susan. "Oh, come off it!" said Edmund, who was tired and pretending not to be tired, which always made him bad-tempered. "Don't go on talking like that." "Like what?" said Susan; "and anyway, it's time you were in bed." "Trying to talk like Mother," said Edmund. "And who are you to say when I'm to go to bed? Go to bed yourself." "Hadn't we all better go to bed?" said Lucy. "There's sure to be a row if we're heard talking here." "No there won't," said Peter. "I tell you this is the sort of house where no one's going to mind what we do. Anyway, they won't hear us. It's about ten minutes' walk from here down to that dining-room, and any amount of stairs and passages in between." "What's that noise?" said Lucy suddenly. It was a far larger house than she had ever been in before and the thought of all those long passages and rows of doors leading into empty rooms was beginning to make her feel a little creepy. “It's only a bird silly,” said Edmund. "It's an owl," said Peter. "This is going to be a wonderful place for birds. I shall go to bed now. I say, let's go and explore tomorrow. You might find anything in a place like this. Did you see those mountains as we came along? And the woods? There might be eagles. There might be stags. There'll be hawks." “Badgers!” Said Lucy. “Foxes!” Said Edmund “Rabbits!” Said Susan. But when next morning came there was a steady rain falling, so thick that when you looked out of the window you could see neither the mountains nor the woods nor even the stream in the garden. "Of course it would be raining!" said Edmund. They had just finished their breakfast with the Professor and were upstairs in the room he had set apart for them - a long, low room with two windows looking out in one direction and two in another. "Do stop grumbling, Ed," said Susan. "Ten to one it'll clear up in an hour or so. And in the meantime we're pretty well off. There's a wireless and lots of books." "Not for me” said Peter; "I'm going to explore in the house." Everyone agreed to this and that was how the adventures began. It was the sort of house that you never seem to come to the end of, and it was full of unexpected places. The first few doors they tried led only into spare bedrooms, as everyone had expected that they would; but soon they came to a very long room full of pictures and there they found a suit of armour; and after that was a room all hung with green, with a harp in one corner; and then came three steps down and five steps up, and then a kind of little upstairs hall and a door that led out on to a balcony, and then a whole series of rooms that led into each other and were lined with books - most of them very old books and some bigger than a Bible in a church. And shortly after that they looked into a room that was quite empty except for one big wardrobe; the sort that has a looking-glass in the door. There was nothing else in the room at all except a dead blue-bottle on the window-sill. "Nothing there!" said Peter, and they all trooped out again - all except Lucy. She stayed behind because she thought it would be worth while trying the door of the wardrobe, even though she felt almost sure that it would be locked. To her surprise it opened quite easily, and two moth-balls dropped out. Looking into the inside, she saw several coats hanging up - mostly long fur coats. There was nothing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur. She immediately stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them, leaving the door open, of course, because she knew that it is very foolish to shut oneself into any wardrobe. Soon she went further in and found that there was a second row of coats hanging up behind the first one. It was almost quite dark in there and she kept her arms stretched out in front of her so as not to bump her face into the back of the wardrobe. She took a step further in - then two or three steps always expecting to feel woodwork against the tips of her fingers. But she could not feel it. "This must be a simply enormous wardrobe!" thought Lucy, going still further in and pushing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was something crunching under her feet. "I wonder is that more mothballs?" she thought, stooping down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold. "This is very queer," she said, and went on a step or two further. Next moment she found that what was rubbing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but something hard and rough and even prickly. "Why, it is just like branches of trees!" exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air. Lucy felt a little frightened, but she felt very inquisitive and excited as well. She looked back over her shoulder and there, between the dark tree trunks; she could still see the open doorway of the wardrobe and even catch a glimpse of the empty room from which she had set out. (She had, of course, left the door open, for she knew that it is a very silly thing to shut oneself into a wardrobe.) It seemed to be still daylight there. "I can always get back if anything goes wrong," thought Lucy. She began to walk forward, crunch-crunch over the snow and through the wood towards the other light. In about ten minutes she reached it and found it was a lamp-post. As she stood looking at it, wondering why there was a lamp-post in the middle of a wood and wondering what to do next, she heard a pitter patter of feet coming towards her. And soon after that a very strange person stepped out from among the trees into the light of the lamp-post. He was only a little taller than Lucy herself and he carried over his head an umbrella, white with snow. From the waist upwards he was like a man, but his legs were shaped like a goat's (the hair on them was glossy black) and instead of feet he had goat's hoofs. He also had a tail, but Lucy did not notice this at first because it was neatly caught up over the arm that held the umbrella so as to keep it from trailing in the snow. He had a red woollen muffler round his neck and his skin was rather reddish too. He had a strange, but pleasant little face, with a short pointed beard and curly hair, and out of the hair there stuck two horns, one on each side of his forehead. One of his hands, as I have said, held the umbrella: in the other arm he carried several brown-paper parcels. What with the parcels and the snow it looked just as if he had been doing his Christmas shopping. He was a Faun. And when he saw Lucy he gave such a start of surprise that he dropped all his parcels. “Good gracious me!” exclaimed the Faun.” Leliana places a leather bookmark on the page the stopped at “Aaand that's where we’ll stop for the night.” Alarian frowns and leans back against the pillow “Fine.” They exclaime exasperatedly. Leliana smirks and tucks them in “goodnight.” She says as she gets up and places the book back in its place by the window, then goes to the door and exits closing it silently behind her leaving Ali alone with their thoughts, soon to be overcome by sleep.
The End! The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S Lewis is one of my favorites and so I wrote in chapter one so you get a story time within a story time. And my Italics button isn't working but the part where she's reading should be in italics.
What are your favorite books?
Until next time,
Max
My favorite book is Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata. I think you would like it.
ReplyDeleteWhat's it about, I've never heard of it.
DeleteIt's about two sisters moving and growing up together and observing the way the Japanese are treated in their community.(spoiler) The older sister gets leukemia and the younger takes care of her. (end spoiler) It's a sad and sweet story.
DeleteI'll try to find a copy of it! Thanks for the recommendation!
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