Note: This is intended to be a sequel and something of a companion piece to The Beak of the Crow (ongoing, rated T). The Warden is Daen Tabris, male city elf rogue, and the poisoning he refers to in this chapter is the subject of Beak.

CHAPTER 1

"We can...um, get a room when we reach Denerim," I mumble over my shoulder. Zevran has followed me into the forest with the usual thinly veiled excuses, and the tips of my ears burn with the knowledge that the others are probably exchanging knowing looks and a lot of irreverent comments right now. And, in Wynne's case, followed by a hefty sigh and a skyward glance. I have come to admire Wynne, but she is as bad as the alienage aunties sometimes.

His breath falls hot on my neck and an arm cast in bronze encircles my waist, hand resting on my belt. "With thick walls?" he purrs, chest tight against my back, and kisses my ear. I shiver—I cannot help it—and try to wiggle away from him. This only makes him add another arm, wrists crossed, and I feel more than hear the jingle of metal as he works at my belt.

"Zev, no, come on! I'm serious! It's getting cold, and we need to find firewood!" I squeak. How embarrassing. Twenty-one years I have, and he makes those numerals switch places with a single breath. I am trying to stop him, truly, but he has started to nip at my ear instead and this never fails to make me want to collapse immediately.

"And we shall have wood, amora." His mouth smiles against my ear.

"You know that's not what I meant," I retort. I don't want to hurt him, but the loosening of my pants and sudden warmth inside them means that he has won the fight with my belt. Things were going to get very awkward, very fast. So I elbow him in the gut.

"So cruel," he gasps, bent over in half with his hands on his knees. I fumble with my pants and glare at him. I know he is exaggerating. His abdomen is practically rock, curse him, and I doubt he felt my elbow as much as my elbow had felt his muscles. Meanwhile, my skinny alienage abs are almost as flat and smooth as Morrigan's, and defined by a visible rib cage rather than muscle. I have a little more muscle on me now than before I left home, but no matter how much I eat and fight, even Leliana has better definition. And then I got poisoned, and I woke up feeling and looking like I had just left the alienage yesterday. Life just isn't fair.

I rub my tingling elbow, retie my pants and buckle up my belt. How in Andraste's name does he always undo my laces so fast? I remember how openly he speaks of seducing marks, and I suppose I can only count myself lucky that he decided to go with a plain old ambush when we first met instead of something else. Traps and archers and mages and a crazy blond Crow, I can handle. Hands in my pants...clearly not so much.

He straightens, and I can tell he is thinking the same thing. How, I cannot say, but his face is more transparent to me now even if Alistair still claims we should not trust him. He still guards his thoughts behind a half smile and lidded amber eyes, but I know what he is hiding when he does those things.

"Look, we're really close to Denerim, but we aren't going to make it if we freeze to death first," I admonish. We are traveling with Arl Eamon's retinue, heading towards Denerim so that the Arl can call the Landsmeet. I do not entirely like or trust him—he is too much like the nobles in Denerim—but I respect that he is a good leader, which is more than I can say for most. There was a sudden snowfall, and many of the wagon wheels froze overnight. Arl Eamon is all smiles for his men, but I can tell that he is getting a little anxious about making it to Denerim ahead of the Blight. His face is fairly hidden behind that beard of his, but his eyes speak volumes. I thought that maybe setting up a lot of fires around the wagons would help melt the ice faster and volunteered to find some wood. He seemed grateful for the suggestion and sent some of his own men out too, although they conspicuously started out in a different direction. I suppose he hasn't had much opportunity to travel in the wintertime. I haven't, either, but fire is the only way to get out of the alienage after the gates freeze shut, which they often do in winter.

I have warned Zevran about Fereldans in general and tried to be subtle from the first day on the road with the Arl, but subtle is hard when your partner insists on massages and haircuts and very unsubtle attempts at steering you towards his tent. His men politely pretend not to see anything, but Arl Eamon has definitely noticed, and made sure I noticed him noticing. (Thank you, Zev.) I think he was trying to tell me that I was lucky he was willing to overlook Zev and me for now. Lucky, my foot. I know he needs a Warden who isn't Alistair, even if the Warden is an elf. Or, worse, an elf with a thing for men, especially one man in particular who is Antivan and a Crow to boot.

I do not know how I will explain Zevran to my father when he finds out, as he surely will. He thought my reluctance on my wedding day was because of nerves. Nesiara was beautiful and smart, and I probably could have been content enough with her. But beauty and smarts alone do nothing for me. I have known this since I was very young, and have kept it hidden from everyone, even Shianni and Soris. It's a good thing we're all practically related in the alienage; no one thought it was strange that I didn't go bug-eyed around girls. I had almost, with Morrigan...but she was interesting to me in ways I cannot explain. We were not honest with one another.

Anyway, perhaps Zev will tire of me before we even get home.

Maker. The very thought makes me want to slam my head against a tree a few times.

Zevran is looking at me with lazy eyes, and I look back at him, raising an eyebrow to query a silent what? "The firewood is not going anywhere, amora," he drawls. I love the way he says that—amora—I do not know what it means, but it is a word he uses only for me. There are other words, ayana and something that sounds like "got-o," but amora is the one he uses the most. "The world is frozen around us. Look at the trees, the way their slender arms glisten. They are saying to you, 'slow down, stop as we have, sit with us for a little while and admire our beauty. When the snow melts, you will never see us looking this magnificent again.'"

I do look at the trees, because I can't help but do what he says when he uses that voice. They are beautiful. I remember how awed I was by the Brecilian Forest when we first entered its heart proper, after we had met the Dalish camped on the outskirts. The whole place seemed magical, like I had just stepped into a completely different world, a city whose buildings were leaves and wood and dappled shade that struck you with patches of hot and cool with every step. When we met our first sylvan, I almost didn't want to hurt it, thinking that to do so would be sacrilegious or something—until Alistair told me that trees aren't supposed to move, and Morrigan added that the sylvans in particular were just trees possessed by demons. Abomination trees. That was sacrilegious. At least they didn't explode.

The forest we are in now is technically part of the Brecilian, according to one of Arl Eamon's maps, but it is more like a tributary to a river. It is still magnificent. And thankfully werewolf-free. And no bears! Alistair says that they are all asleep right now, which seems strange, as it is still daytime. I am not objecting, though. It would have been very distracting to run into a bear now.

I am glad that I got to see the forest both in the spring of its revival and when it is quiet and painted and carved with frost and snow. The alienage in fresh snow looks like the frosted gingerbread castles Shianni and I used to stare at in the windows of a fancy bakery nobles like to go to, if those gingerbread castles were dropped a few times before the frosting. But the forest is a thing sculpted in the finest design, every tree defined down to its most delicate extremes by lines of white, like the hair-fine curls and whorls of handwriting I see on notes my father receives from the noble he works for. Walking through all of this—I could have never dreamed of it, even high up in the boughs of our vhenedhal staring at the horizon. I can't wait to describe it to Shianni and Soris.

And maybe...

He turns and grins, and I almost say it. But I can't tell him that, can I? It's on the tip of my tongue, but Zev is elusive and a wanderer and I am always a little afraid that he will leave me if I get too serious. I hide it behind my fist and cough a few more times to continue the charade.

I shouldn't criticize him for the masks; I am almost as bad. He says he didn't grow up in an alienage and he isn't Fereldan, so he doesn't know what it is like when I try to explain it to him. But I am sure he does, if the Crow life is as bad as it sounds. Masks maintain that which one is scared to lose.

I thank Andraste when I hear a familiar whuff in the distance. The warning sound barely gives us enough time to adjust our clothes and armor before Soris comes barreling out of a copse of saplings. He is clutching a piece of tree crosswise between his jaws. It's somewhere between a branch and a log and we both dance back when he almost drops it on our toes. He sits on his haunches and pants, grinning, his stubby tail clearing the ground behind him of snow with its wagging.

"Good boy," I say, scratching his giant head behind a crooked ear. I can hardly believe how scared I had been of him when he came running up to us after Ostagar those many months ago, barking like a maniac and launching himself straight into a darkspawn ambush Alistair and I somehow hadn't sensed. The only mabari I knew before then were the trained ones that belonged to nobles, and it never meant anything good if they were at their master's side in the alienage. They're swords with fur and teeth. Soris is so unlike them, all slobbery and smelling to high heaven, and nowhere near as pretty—he saw his fair share of action in the king's army long before I arrived. But I'm sure he could slaughter a whole pack of those mabari in a fight any day.

Zevran bends over and picks up the branch Soris has found. "Well, I believe our firewood problems are solved," he says, standing the piece upright like a staff. "A few more of these cut up and we shall have quite a good fire in no time, no?"

"Come on, Soris. Show us where you found those."

We follow him a few hundred feet into the forest, and he stands waiting for us beside a pile of dried deadwood sheltered from damp by the body of the tree they fell from. I have a sneaking suspicion that he could hear us from here. And no surprise attack on Zev's dignity? I shoot Soris a sharp look and he looks up at me with his mouth wide open and his tongue lolling everywhere, eyes huge and innocent. Oh, dear. He is always smarter than I give him credit for. I scratch him again and he covers my hand in drool. "Good boy."

I spare a quick apology to Mikhael and use Starfang to chop the deadwood into manageable chunks for us to carry back. Zevran creates a makeshift frame out of some other branches that we fit to Soris' back, and we load a good amount of the pieces of wood on top, our belts coming off yet again to lash the wood down. I redo my laces and tie them as tight as possible, and I still have to hold my pants up with one hand while Zevran seems to keep his on through sheer will alone. He watches me struggle while I gather firewood one-handed and grins.

"Not that I mind," he says, his arms already full of a neat stack of wood, "but perhaps we should purchase you some better fitting garments in Denerim."

"I just need to put some of that weight I lost back on," I grunt. "Who knew poison could take so much out of you?"

He turns away quickly at that, but I catch the stillness in his eyes and wish I could kick myself. Even Soris seems to cast a reproachful glance at me.

I have only just managed to balance my own armful of firewood against my pants so that they stay up. So I bump my forehead against his shoulder to catch his attention and stand on tiptoes as he turns to kiss him on the mouth. It is an impulse and I had meant it as an apology, so I fall back to my feet quickly and miss the feel of his mouth against mine immediately, however brief of a touch it had been. I can only hope that it was not the wrong thing to do. Zevran kisses everywhere except the lips, it seems.

When I look up at him, he is staring at me with a half smile and lazy lids, and for once I do not know what it means. Or I do not want to know. "Sorry," I say, both an explanation and an apology for the kiss.

He turns away. "We should return," he says. I follow, thinking of how stupid I am. Was. No, am. I can't help it. He is my first...anything, really. I just don't know what to do around him, and I hardly think all of those times with the nobles really count as experience.

Maker. Maybe Wynne was right about all of this, that old bat.

Zev drops back suddenly, rubbing the top of my head with the side of his cheek. "We must work on your technique when we find that room you spoke of, amora," he murmurs. "I feel as though I have just received a peck from a newly hatched chick."

I laugh, embarrassment rising in my face. Two leapfrogs one to make me twelve years old again.

We crunch through the snow side by side, Soris trotting easily ahead.

I wish for this moment to last, too.

Antivan: Ayana = a type of Antivan mythological fairy, invariably small and female with long blonde hair and black eyes, and thought to be a guardian of sorts. Known to aid kind-hearted travelers and to give gifts, especially gold and silver (inspired by the anjana of Cantabrian myth)

The current title is a placeholder until I can think of something better. I don't even get what it means. Seems like a pretty fast way to go splat.

Until next time. -K

[Edited 2013.06.16]