At the moment she is alone in her quarters, her students minded by Roul in the courtyard running focus drills as she flits through letters that yet needed sending, sheaves of research on the fade, and the beginnings of a ledger of poultices, potions, and their ingredients. With much of the clutter tucked away there is room enough for Benevenuta to weave her way close and, indeed, lay on the somewhat scruffy chaise Adelaide has made use of as her bed come nightfall.
The cut of Beneventua's bodice earns quirk of the brow and faint sigh, but little more. She is here, she is healthy, Adelaide can ask for little else. Though the rather- she would not say erratic, but lack of placidity in Beneventua's gestures gives her pause.
"Nothing of note. The Tranquil work in the Library, the unharrowed apprentices have some trouble sleeping and for that I've recommended talking to myself or one of the senior enchanters- failing that? Sleeping draughts. It is not the best solution but it is what we have. How fared your trip?"
The hesitation before she sits is easily covered - assessing, only, a pause. Deciding where to lay her coat once she removes it, the pause where in her own rooms she might have shed the bodice over her darkened samite blouse as well and does not, here, though she toes her slippers from her feet and lays dramatically back, an elbow over her face, her sly smile peeking out from underneath. It is not quite Adelaide's lap, but her message had been theatrical and so...
"Cold."
Theatricality. It underscores what likely is a genuine glimpse at what happens behind her serene gaze - but not an unconsciously given one. Dorian she has befriended inadvertently, unintentionally, but while he might not court with his vulnerabilities, Benevenuta has fewer such compunction and wishes to be Adelaide's friend. Her confidante. A trusted voice. Adelaide is a healer - a kind, honest, pragmatic woman, unfashionably sensible in Orlais and impossibly fussy here in Ferelden.
She shows nothing untrue. But it is a choice to show it, coolly made, with an eye to an outcome.
It is the only sort of choice she's accustomed to making.
"It is a far cry from Nevarra. Redcliffe was - ah. Did Dorian speak of it, with you?"
(From Nevarra, from the Orlais. But 'we' so quickly would be clumsy. Let Adelaide draw her own affinity between them, strangers in a foreign, clumsy land.)
"I told you to dress warmly." And Benevenuta had mocked her concern. Lightly, gently, yes, but mocked none the less as one did with...friends. That is what one did with friends as far as Adelaide could recall- she'd had a few in the Spire. One dear, most now dead, and that but a bare year afterward she is so uncertain-
No.
One chides (gently), one teases (gently), and one offers relief. That is what has her hand, pooling blue light, stretching out over Benevenuta's head to offer her half of the deal. Something for her skull and her drunken foolishness. Soothing magic spills from her palm into her hair, easing the ache of a migraine in a wash not entirely unlike water. "Nevarra is never quite this cold, nor this muddy- at least of what my sister would write to me. I have not spoken with Dorian as of yet. Is he as unwell as you?"
She shakes her coat with a lazy hand, her concessions to Ferelden weather (grudging as ever), but tilts her head under Adelaide's palm in an open expression of relief and gratitude. It is her own doing, of course, this headache - but one must make sacrifices, from time to time. For friends.
"He carries it a little better. Experience, you know."
Not that Benevenuta is some wide eyed Circle naif, but nor is she quite a match for a man who was once hauled by the ankle from a whorehouse.
It is a tentative thing, the idle brushing of her fingertips across Benevenuta's forehead. Something she could explain away as required for the healing- something that needn't mean anything. The bare press of skin to skin to check for temperature, for illness, for aches other than the physical before it's gone. "There is more of him that is available to carry it. That helps a great deal."
Somehow she's less irate and more fondly exasperated with both of them. Somehow.
Beneath Adelaide's hand and her magic, Benevenuta closes her eyes, just a sparse hint of an insouciant smile shaping her bow mouth, as if it naturally follows that Adelaide should be as tolerant of the northern mages turning a trip to Redcliffe into some sort of private weekend bender. (There are worse things they might’ve done to pass the time. No frogs were lit aflame. Again.)
"He was dressed very inappropriately," she informs her, languid. "I told him that is what he needs me for - to keep him warm, so you won't gesture at him-"
with a fair mimic of what she had previously described as 'Orlesian gesturing', though she doesn't bother to lift herself or her eyelids.
"He would have ridden back in the dark, all a-tilt. But we camped."
"Are you implying that I ought to seek him out and fuss at him for being quite so insensibly dressed? This is not the North, Benevenuta." She says with a sigh, the last brushes of magic smoothing away the ache of travel and drink. Attention now thoroughly diverted Adelaide turns from her desk to peer down at her, brow faintly quirked. The next waft of magic from her fingers is a low pulse of warmth that should spread and sooth a chilled body after so much time in the wind. "While I do not mean to think you delicate; it is not weather one rides or walks about with one's chest out. You are going to lose skin should you continue to do so and I will not mend it."
Not for such foolishness.
But the swipe of her thumb, the faintly fond twist of her lips says otherwise. "Tell me you did not burn anything while camping drunk."
"I am telling you I prevented the necessity," she says, sedately, her sharp, fox's face softened by her lingering smile. "We camped entirely without incident, and he has yet both of his nipples."
The warmth of Adelaide's magic eases some of the tension in her - not all, but enough to make a difference. She is not a bit chastened, either because she's shameless (yes) or because she doesn't believe Adelaide wouldn't (...that as well), and though her worry for Dorian hasn't quite dissipated...
It is easy, being here. And she is eased by it, for all that a part of her mind always works.
"I shall take your word for it, as I've no desire to go hunting after them." Well that might be somewhat untrue but she isn't about to admit to it. For now she has her work (a good deal of it) and the company of one of the more tolerable and sensible mages. It's enough.
Perhaps they might've gotten on well enough before the circles dissolved- the rifts, the war. That they can now is more than a little settling.
"Did the trip go well? Aside from your indulgences. You and Dorian were nonspecific as to why you were leaving."
"A personal matter ," she says, after a moment - not an awkward pause, when she's so comfortable where she is, but a moment of decision. It isn't hers to confide, for all that she carries her own lingering tensions from it. "Of Dorian's - I was...made aware, and so I accompanied him."
She weighs it a moment, how to say what she might say -
"It is the thing to do," almost as if she's testing the idea, "as his friend."
"That it is." Adelaide isn't terribly surprised the Northern Mages have thrown in with one another- their temperament and sensibility seem to mesh as much as their sense of fashion and propriety. Quite a bit and quite a little in turn, though it does make for interesting conversation and gossip among the apprentices.
She brushes a bit of Benevenuta's hair from her forehead, offering another low pulse of warmth.
"As much as tending to someone's hangover without chiding them for it, I suppose."
Benevenuta's little laugh is a charming thing, like the rest of her - she tilts a little to look up at Adelaide, still smiling. "Yes," she says, with lingering humour, "yes, precisely as much as that. I am very grateful. There has been not a single gesture."
"Perhaps a little chiding." She taps her fingers against Benevenuta's cheek in the barest of reprimands. "We are public officials, it does not do to be seen in such a state, blah, blah, blah."
The blah, blah, blah gets her another of those laughs, a breath chuffed out in amusement, resting her head back against the chaise beneath Adelaide's hand. "Oh, we were in the woods, Adelaide, there were no witnesses bar the fennecs. I walked quite steadily to you, and if I happened to have a headache, I'm sure no one could blame me in these trying times."
It feels like it's been ages since she's been able to be this easy with anyone. Maybe it's Northern charm. Maybe it's Benevenuta being as nonthreatening as humanly possible. Maybe she's weary of being so wound up all the time- she doesn't know. But she is glad for another laugh. "And what if the fennecs should gossip, mm? The trees have ears in those woods."
"Then the fennecs will tell them that in spite of everything, we are not untouchable statues of Andraste," she says, playfully light-hearted. "And the world will end. Cats will lie with dogs and fire will fall from the sky."
A considering beat.
"With slightly more frequency than it presently does."
"The Dalish might begin to wear shoes, dwarves may start to dream, and Fereldans actually begin to produce decent wine. It'd be the end of the world as we know it." She taps the tip of Benevenuta's nose, a teasing, chiding gesture.
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The cut of Beneventua's bodice earns quirk of the brow and faint sigh, but little more. She is here, she is healthy, Adelaide can ask for little else. Though the rather- she would not say erratic, but lack of placidity in Beneventua's gestures gives her pause.
"Nothing of note. The Tranquil work in the Library, the unharrowed apprentices have some trouble sleeping and for that I've recommended talking to myself or one of the senior enchanters- failing that? Sleeping draughts. It is not the best solution but it is what we have. How fared your trip?"
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"Cold."
Theatricality. It underscores what likely is a genuine glimpse at what happens behind her serene gaze - but not an unconsciously given one. Dorian she has befriended inadvertently, unintentionally, but while he might not court with his vulnerabilities, Benevenuta has fewer such compunction and wishes to be Adelaide's friend. Her confidante. A trusted voice. Adelaide is a healer - a kind, honest, pragmatic woman, unfashionably sensible in Orlais and impossibly fussy here in Ferelden.
She shows nothing untrue. But it is a choice to show it, coolly made, with an eye to an outcome.
It is the only sort of choice she's accustomed to making.
"It is a far cry from Nevarra. Redcliffe was - ah. Did Dorian speak of it, with you?"
(From Nevarra, from the Orlais. But 'we' so quickly would be clumsy. Let Adelaide draw her own affinity between them, strangers in a foreign, clumsy land.)
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No.
One chides (gently), one teases (gently), and one offers relief. That is what has her hand, pooling blue light, stretching out over Benevenuta's head to offer her half of the deal. Something for her skull and her drunken foolishness. Soothing magic spills from her palm into her hair, easing the ache of a migraine in a wash not entirely unlike water. "Nevarra is never quite this cold, nor this muddy- at least of what my sister would write to me. I have not spoken with Dorian as of yet. Is he as unwell as you?"
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"He carries it a little better. Experience, you know."
Not that Benevenuta is some wide eyed Circle naif, but nor is she quite a match for a man who was once hauled by the ankle from a whorehouse.
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Somehow she's less irate and more fondly exasperated with both of them. Somehow.
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"He was dressed very inappropriately," she informs her, languid. "I told him that is what he needs me for - to keep him warm, so you won't gesture at him-"
with a fair mimic of what she had previously described as 'Orlesian gesturing', though she doesn't bother to lift herself or her eyelids.
"He would have ridden back in the dark, all a-tilt. But we camped."
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Not for such foolishness.
But the swipe of her thumb, the faintly fond twist of her lips says otherwise. "Tell me you did not burn anything while camping drunk."
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The warmth of Adelaide's magic eases some of the tension in her - not all, but enough to make a difference. She is not a bit chastened, either because she's shameless (yes) or because she doesn't believe Adelaide wouldn't (...that as well), and though her worry for Dorian hasn't quite dissipated...
It is easy, being here. And she is eased by it, for all that a part of her mind always works.
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Perhaps they might've gotten on well enough before the circles dissolved- the rifts, the war. That they can now is more than a little settling.
"Did the trip go well? Aside from your indulgences. You and Dorian were nonspecific as to why you were leaving."
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She weighs it a moment, how to say what she might say -
"It is the thing to do," almost as if she's testing the idea, "as his friend."
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She brushes a bit of Benevenuta's hair from her forehead, offering another low pulse of warmth.
"As much as tending to someone's hangover without chiding them for it, I suppose."
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Orlesian or otherwise.
(Besides the magical ones.)
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Which is only funny because it's true.
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A considering beat.
"With slightly more frequency than it presently does."
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