Beth's not sure she'll ever be used to the Frostback Mountains, where the snow falls heavy long before winter hits anywhere else. They were supposed to beat the icy winds across to Ferelden. A package too large for ravens too carry, too sensitive to entrust to couriers from outside Riftwatch, and a bann at the end of their journey in need of charming--inevitably, you'll need a diplomat, and you'll need someone to protect her.
Not that she needs a lot of protecting, but it'd suck a lot worse to be out here alone. And there's a familiarity to the travel, if not the way the weather makes it harder: They go as far as they can, and then they rest, all so they can do the same thing when the sun rises again. Beth digs out enough snow to make a pit and builds a fire of whatever she can find, then puts up a tent, secures their wagon, and makes sure their horse is as comfortable as horses get in weather like this. Gabranth tries to hunt--sometimes successful, sometimes not. And then they eat, either roasted meat or a share of the rations they brought with them.
It feels like home, even if she's freezing instead of sticky with sweat, curling up into the smallest ball she can manage. (Maybe it'd be easier if she'd ever seen real snow before, but she's not convinced that anything prepares you for cold like this.) And one night, after they've eaten a nug and tossed its bones out past the circle of firelight, she asks, "Did you ever do stuff like this? Where you're from."
“My work was solitary, save for those serving under my command.”
No, is the answer he means, though he’s disinclined to be so succinct when this— meager shelter and the distraction of conversation braced against howling wind, frigid frost— is all that remains as a paltry salve for suffering. It would be worse, were they not together in this, and he knows it.
"Yeah, but like--camping. Hunting. Survival stuff." It's hard to picture him spending much time with people, so that's not especially surprising, but she still does't feel like she has a good idea of what his world was like. Only that he was someone distinct within it. Someone she suspects was lonely.
(He always seems lonely to her, even now.)
Gabranth's question draws a self-conscious huff from her, as she tries to tuck her chin just a bit more into the collar of her coat. "I'm always cold here. It's not a big deal."
He is, in truth. Her estimation isn't far from the hidden mark: here, without his helmet in place, it's always more difficult to mask the isolation he's fitted around himself as surely as his own armor.
Armor that is no doubt far more insulating than the coat she wears, and while it isn't pity that has his stare fixed for a lingering beat, it is near enough to empathy that he raises an arm halfway in subtle invitation.
I'm okay, is what she's pretty sure she should say. It's not like the snow and ice is new, even if the wind feels chillier than it did yesterday. But she's not about to pass up being a little closer to Gabranth, and she's definitely not going to brush off an offer of warmth.
So she scoots over until their sides touch and his arm can settle around her narrow frame. It's the nearest she can remember being to him, at least outside of a fight, and that realization comes with the sense of pleasant embarrassment she associates with stupid crushes on people who aren't interested. But it does, at least, make her cheeks feel a little warmer to think of it.
"In Georgia," she says, because the things she'd say to a normal guy she liked probably wouldn't do anything except make this awkward, "it hardly ever freezes. And I thought that was bad. You seem used to it, though."
His arm now encircling her finds the drape of his heavy cloak, drawing it across between gauntleted knuckles so that it curls just around her shoulders, held in place by his own fingertips. An idle adjustment, nothing he seems to take notice of, his gaze set straight ahead towards flickering flames.
"The cold suits me more than heat. But I've no true experience with hunting, building shelter— survival, as you call it."
Only executed humans, huh is on her tongue. She knows better than to say it. But it's hard not to think of, the way he's been relegated to bringing death all over again. Tomorrow, I'll try and catch something.
"This is all we did sometimes." She says it quietly, but they're so near that the wind can't catch the words and blow them away. "Lived in the woods and ate snakes. And it sucked--sometimes I woke up and I didn't even wanna move. But the company was good."
A glance up at him. He'd probably be warmer, at least a little, with the helmet covering his face. And his face is its own kind of mask, sharp features that don't always convey what's going on behind them. But it's nice to be able to see it, all the same.
It is the truth, in fact, whether she voices it or not. His killing hadn't been done for petty sport, but he'd never strayed from duty for its sake either, and justice was ever swift in its demands.
"I make for poorer substitution in that regard." He exhales, bearing no self-pity in the truth of it: he does not laugh, he does not sing or tell jokes— he can do no more than keep her warm, and perhaps that is not near enough for what she needs to continue pressing forwards through this frigid squall.
The attestation is, of course, that she comes from nowhere. Some mudsnake country, lost outside of recent memory's clutches, or perhaps a town wiped from the map by an unsteady cartographer. Her accent grants no clues, even within the enhanced echoes of a metal helm.
Black steel curves back over her head in imitation of some goat's horns, no demons or insects. Frippery is otherwise wasted on her costume; sleek lines speak of an appreciation for battle's quickness, not its grandeur.
The one point of largess is carefully designed. Anyone striking at the glittering scales of a fish that pass across one shoulder will find their weapon intractably jammed in a great black pauldron, bearing the angry visage of a goat's head, snarling.
Once, in a place by the ocean, they had called it the capricorn. Now, it's a nameless beast, and Judge Jone bears it for the mystique. She is quiet, at proceedings, thoughtful, or perhaps just intractably behind. It is hard to tell, when her expression is hidden in dark blackness.
When asked her opinion, however, she offers it willingly. "A hunger strike met with violence will only embolden the rebels, who have already made clear their willingness to lay down their lives for this petty cause."
A pause, and then, "put an embargo on the importation of fresh foods, if retribution is what you seek. I doubt the common man will be so pleased to join their strike, against his will and judgement."
For that singular despairing origin, she is lesser than him— or is he lesser than her? No matter. Favor is their only fortune, these two without kin or country to speak of, and it is earned with every fulfilled promise made in Archadia's name.
Still. Here, now, they disagree on approach. And he’ll not bear the sting of her failure, should it come to that.
“Embargos will do nothing to cow their efforts,” he counters, leaning forward to rest his weight more fully at a proud incline. “A starving dog bites twice as severely, for it knows its days are at an end.”
“And it is not the show of force his Majesty so often favors.” If Gabranth knows anything of Emperor Gramis, he remains ever certain that much remains true, peripheral stare fixed on Jone where she stands opposite to him.
In the end, after a short time spent in deliberation, they are granted leave of both strategies, and make their exit in quiet isolation down long corridors.
“You speak too freely.” He breathes after a moment’s pause: certain now they’ll not be overheard.
The meeting, a tiring thing, is adjured, and Jone is left to reflect on her own failings. She has done much of that, of late. Having no other companions, she summons the ghosts of her past, interrogates them, and weathers their imagined disappointment. They always want more, or less, or something she cannot give.
If she could give them what they wanted, after all, they wouldn't be dead.
Hearing a voice in criticism from a live body is a strange and heady relief. She does not turn her head-- she no longer needs to. The single line of vision her visor presents her with is enough. More metal, more horns. A judge not well respected, but most certainly feared. Unsurprising, and she cannot suffer the energy for disappointment.
"Then naught has changed since these horns were donned," she says without humor. Had I the option to die talking, it would have been taken.
Her accent remains so much her own, and he finds he pities her for it in some ways. There would be less tension among the Magistrate proper if she would simply conform herself and keep her head tucked low, as he so often does. Yet he cannot force her to adapt more than she already has, and he isn’t a man given to open mercies.
She will do as she must, and he the same.
“Tell me,” it’s quiet, the slow start to his own earnest inquiry: unlike the others, he isn’t inclined to pass judgment on his own kind.
Her accent remains the same, backwater vowels clipped into short and choppy words, but her diction has been learned, painstakingly. The effect (she has heard, in echoing hallways) is not unlike a dog with fine vocabulary. But it is her own. She will keep it.
"Principle precludes me from clutching pearls for the sake of doomed men," Jone says, "or honoring them on the field of battle, if such can be avoided. They say death is better than their lot in life; I ask only that they follow through with such commitments."
The sooner this upstart insurrection is put to sword, the less in life it will cost overall— and though Gabranth had indeed been the one to advocate for violence, he does not thirst perpetually for innocent bloodshed.
“Should your resolve come into question, I will back you— yet you must endeavor to bear no mercies in the coming days ahead. Be cruel, Judge Magister. It will spare you trial under watchful gaze.”
Where Emperor Gramis has waned in his fury, Vayne Solidor is kindled ever more. His ambitions troubling to an aging monarch upon shadowed throne, and Gabranth, for all his efforts, is uncertain just how keen his own observations in the matter truly are.
Should something overturn, whether in regards to senate or imperial stature, there are more obvious targets for ire amongst allies.
She had been expecting to be used as a weapon-- indeed, that had been the appeal. A field of blood was to be her home, an realm where she could rest in its warm fury. Simple, direct, payment for all her disillusioned disappointments.
And yet, there is this.
"You seek to aid me," she murmurs. "What need have you in return?"
She will give it. Tools of war do not need gifts, though bargains, allies, are still within their metal grasp.
“Only that you do not turn trust to betrayal.” It isn’t a gift, he would argue that much without hesitation or subtlety on his part.
“Our genesis is far more alike in nature than its own difference."
Drace had been the one to tolerate him, the one to speak reason and see the simplicity of service, rather than the gilt glory imperial prosperity provides. In many ways, he follows in her footsteps— though with far less grace to spare.
The Fade is a strange and terrible place. Once, it brought Astarion to Thedas. Now, it has brought Fenris and Astarion to a place called the Forgotten Realms, whatever that means. The important thing is, this is Astarion's home. They travel together, slow and halting as it is. Everything is terribly unfamiliar, but Fenris does not allow himself to complain overmuch.
This is what Astarion must have felt, after all. And now he is renewed, for all the good and ill it brings him-- both, it seems, in equal measure.
As night draws its curtains on the second day, Fenris asks a question he has been puzzling over for the last handful of hours. "You need blood to survive, don't you?"
It’s strange to need it once more. He resents it, really, it’s like feeling his old master’s hands bearing down across his shoulders when he’d been— for all the good and ill it brought him— so free of it in Thedas. Oh, that’s not to say he’ll refuse, he’s no saint, not even in the company of a dear friend, but. Well. He’s allowed to dislike the reasons for this little gift.
In firelight his red eyes slide over to consider Fenris more fully. His lips pursing slightly in thought.
“I’m quite capable of feeding on vermin for supper, you know. It doesn’t have to be you.”
Fenris laughs in that quiet way he does, a single huff barely audible and living comfortably in his throat. "They would call elves that, in Tevinter. Vermes. Rattus."
But enough nostalgia. Fenris turns to look at Astarion, green eyes glittering in the dark. "Would that be healthy, for you? I do not know how this... vampirism works."
“Mm. Well.” he doesn’t relish that tidbit of trivia. Impossible to guess why. “There is a difference, when it comes to quality. Nutrition, as it were.”
No boar or beast is going to cut it for very long, Fenris is right about that.
“Here’s the thing, darling. It’s been a very long time since I’ve done this.” They're on day two of their sure to be miserable adventures in not-Thedas. Day two of him remembering what it feels like to have to bleed something dry for his own sake. Small numbers in regards to forays into self-control are never good. “If I lose control of myself? It could leave you weak. Or worse. Dead.
And I know we haven’t talked about it, but—
Your former master is dead. And believe me I was very happy to hear about it when you let loose the floodgates, really.” There’s good news and then there’s happy news— and then there’s news that encompasses both in its details. It had been that at the time. “...but mine is not. So I’d like you to keep in mind how much he’d like nothing more than to have me back, and that a lovely creature such as yourself— one that I’m particularly weak to— would only make a nice plus one to that.”
“If I weaken you now, if a hunter or two should find us right then and there, why, I don’t think my poor heart could live with the guilt.”
Fenris listens, accustomed to waiting and wading through the useless sentences for the words that matter. It fills him with a spike of anger. "Your master- do you know where he lives?"
For that moment, the world is but a pinhole, and only this information matters.
"Ah ah ah. Don't." Do not start with the righteous vengeance, Fenris. That's a train he knows he's not going to be able to keep tethered to the tracks once it gets going, and so his hand lifts, reflecting the glow of the fire at their side.
"Of course I know where he lives. How could I possibly forget?"
He can't imagine anything's changed, not even if they were away fighting darkspawn for a thousand years: Cazador was nothing if not consistent.
"That, however, is none of your business, and you're going to sit here nicely in camp with me and have a lovely little conversation about something— anything— else."
Fenris takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose (a clearly practiced feat, with his gauntlets still on) and lets it go. It's Astarion's life. He must live it on his own terms.
Perhaps it is better, not to be consumed by rage and blood-lust as he was. As he still is, at the faceless and nameless who allowed it to happen.
"I trust you," Fenris says, switching the subject back to his own blood. "I do not wish you to suffer on my account. I have never given blood freely before."
And he thinks it would be a powerful thing, to do so for the sake of a friend, and not at the behest of an owner.
It is hard to tell, in the aftermath, how long their stay in the 'land of respite' created by the gods had been. Both within that world and without, now that they have all been returned to Ivalice. As best Fran has been able to tell it has not been so long that any particularly telling absences might have been noted, but even that is hardly anything well-defined.
Still, it matters little enough to she and Balthier. They have ever carved their own path, even if they have, for the moment, taken their separate paths. A brief divergence, with a scheduled rendevous; not a common occurrence but one she has no complaint with. If there are matter Balthier would see to himself, she will not deny him that.
She is not expecting that she might come across anyone else who had been displaced by the gods. Nor anyone at all, this close to the shadow of Nalbina, as she picks her way across the sands of Dalmasca and her ears gently flick back and forth as she makes her way across the sand, careful but not wary.
(It is not the monsters here that she is concerned over. There are few here that would cause her great trouble. But she has found herself dragged into another realm once already; better to not do so again.)
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Not that she needs a lot of protecting, but it'd suck a lot worse to be out here alone. And there's a familiarity to the travel, if not the way the weather makes it harder: They go as far as they can, and then they rest, all so they can do the same thing when the sun rises again. Beth digs out enough snow to make a pit and builds a fire of whatever she can find, then puts up a tent, secures their wagon, and makes sure their horse is as comfortable as horses get in weather like this. Gabranth tries to hunt--sometimes successful, sometimes not. And then they eat, either roasted meat or a share of the rations they brought with them.
It feels like home, even if she's freezing instead of sticky with sweat, curling up into the smallest ball she can manage. (Maybe it'd be easier if she'd ever seen real snow before, but she's not convinced that anything prepares you for cold like this.) And one night, after they've eaten a nug and tossed its bones out past the circle of firelight, she asks, "Did you ever do stuff like this? Where you're from."
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No, is the answer he means, though he’s disinclined to be so succinct when this— meager shelter and the distraction of conversation braced against howling wind, frigid frost— is all that remains as a paltry salve for suffering. It would be worse, were they not together in this, and he knows it.
“...are you cold?”
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(He always seems lonely to her, even now.)
Gabranth's question draws a self-conscious huff from her, as she tries to tuck her chin just a bit more into the collar of her coat. "I'm always cold here. It's not a big deal."
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Armor that is no doubt far more insulating than the coat she wears, and while it isn't pity that has his stare fixed for a lingering beat, it is near enough to empathy that he raises an arm halfway in subtle invitation.
"Come here."
The rest of their conversation can wait.
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So she scoots over until their sides touch and his arm can settle around her narrow frame. It's the nearest she can remember being to him, at least outside of a fight, and that realization comes with the sense of pleasant embarrassment she associates with stupid crushes on people who aren't interested. But it does, at least, make her cheeks feel a little warmer to think of it.
"In Georgia," she says, because the things she'd say to a normal guy she liked probably wouldn't do anything except make this awkward, "it hardly ever freezes. And I thought that was bad. You seem used to it, though."
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"The cold suits me more than heat. But I've no true experience with hunting, building shelter— survival, as you call it."
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"This is all we did sometimes." She says it quietly, but they're so near that the wind can't catch the words and blow them away. "Lived in the woods and ate snakes. And it sucked--sometimes I woke up and I didn't even wanna move. But the company was good."
A glance up at him. He'd probably be warmer, at least a little, with the helmet covering his face. And his face is its own kind of mask, sharp features that don't always convey what's going on behind them. But it's nice to be able to see it, all the same.
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"I make for poorer substitution in that regard." He exhales, bearing no self-pity in the truth of it: he does not laugh, he does not sing or tell jokes— he can do no more than keep her warm, and perhaps that is not near enough for what she needs to continue pressing forwards through this frigid squall.
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as promised,
Black steel curves back over her head in imitation of some goat's horns, no demons or insects. Frippery is otherwise wasted on her costume; sleek lines speak of an appreciation for battle's quickness, not its grandeur.
The one point of largess is carefully designed. Anyone striking at the glittering scales of a fish that pass across one shoulder will find their weapon intractably jammed in a great black pauldron, bearing the angry visage of a goat's head, snarling.
Once, in a place by the ocean, they had called it the capricorn. Now, it's a nameless beast, and Judge Jone bears it for the mystique. She is quiet, at proceedings, thoughtful, or perhaps just intractably behind. It is hard to tell, when her expression is hidden in dark blackness.
When asked her opinion, however, she offers it willingly. "A hunger strike met with violence will only embolden the rebels, who have already made clear their willingness to lay down their lives for this petty cause."
A pause, and then, "put an embargo on the importation of fresh foods, if retribution is what you seek. I doubt the common man will be so pleased to join their strike, against his will and judgement."
[loud, incessant screaming]
Still. Here, now, they disagree on approach. And he’ll not bear the sting of her failure, should it come to that.
“Embargos will do nothing to cow their efforts,” he counters, leaning forward to rest his weight more fully at a proud incline. “A starving dog bites twice as severely, for it knows its days are at an end.”
“And it is not the show of force his Majesty so often favors.” If Gabranth knows anything of Emperor Gramis, he remains ever certain that much remains true, peripheral stare fixed on Jone where she stands opposite to him.
In the end, after a short time spent in deliberation, they are granted leave of both strategies, and make their exit in quiet isolation down long corridors.
“You speak too freely.” He breathes after a moment’s pause: certain now they’ll not be overheard.
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If she could give them what they wanted, after all, they wouldn't be dead.
Hearing a voice in criticism from a live body is a strange and heady relief. She does not turn her head-- she no longer needs to. The single line of vision her visor presents her with is enough. More metal, more horns. A judge not well respected, but most certainly feared. Unsurprising, and she cannot suffer the energy for disappointment.
"Then naught has changed since these horns were donned," she says without humor. Had I the option to die talking, it would have been taken.
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She will do as she must, and he the same.
“Tell me,” it’s quiet, the slow start to his own earnest inquiry: unlike the others, he isn’t inclined to pass judgment on his own kind.
“Do you pity them, these rebels?”
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"Principle precludes me from clutching pearls for the sake of doomed men," Jone says, "or honoring them on the field of battle, if such can be avoided. They say death is better than their lot in life; I ask only that they follow through with such commitments."
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The sooner this upstart insurrection is put to sword, the less in life it will cost overall— and though Gabranth had indeed been the one to advocate for violence, he does not thirst perpetually for innocent bloodshed.
“Should your resolve come into question, I will back you— yet you must endeavor to bear no mercies in the coming days ahead. Be cruel, Judge Magister. It will spare you trial under watchful gaze.”
Where Emperor Gramis has waned in his fury, Vayne Solidor is kindled ever more. His ambitions troubling to an aging monarch upon shadowed throne, and Gabranth, for all his efforts, is uncertain just how keen his own observations in the matter truly are.
Should something overturn, whether in regards to senate or imperial stature, there are more obvious targets for ire amongst allies.
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And yet, there is this.
"You seek to aid me," she murmurs. "What need have you in return?"
She will give it. Tools of war do not need gifts, though bargains, allies, are still within their metal grasp.
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“Our genesis is far more alike in nature than its own difference."
Drace had been the one to tolerate him, the one to speak reason and see the simplicity of service, rather than the gilt glory imperial prosperity provides. In many ways, he follows in her footsteps— though with far less grace to spare.
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lapidarian damn, matching my own ye olde game here
i try, i try.
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u kno who.
This is what Astarion must have felt, after all. And now he is renewed, for all the good and ill it brings him-- both, it seems, in equal measure.
As night draws its curtains on the second day, Fenris asks a question he has been puzzling over for the last handful of hours. "You need blood to survive, don't you?"
cue the BG3 romance cutscene music etc
In firelight his red eyes slide over to consider Fenris more fully. His lips pursing slightly in thought.
“I’m quite capable of feeding on vermin for supper, you know. It doesn’t have to be you.”
It doesn’t have to be, he says. Not no.
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But enough nostalgia. Fenris turns to look at Astarion, green eyes glittering in the dark. "Would that be healthy, for you? I do not know how this... vampirism works."
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No boar or beast is going to cut it for very long, Fenris is right about that.
“Here’s the thing, darling. It’s been a very long time since I’ve done this.” They're on day two of their sure to be miserable adventures in not-Thedas. Day two of him remembering what it feels like to have to bleed something dry for his own sake. Small numbers in regards to forays into self-control are never good. “If I lose control of myself? It could leave you weak. Or worse. Dead.
And I know we haven’t talked about it, but—
Your former master is dead. And believe me I was very happy to hear about it when you let loose the floodgates, really.” There’s good news and then there’s happy news— and then there’s news that encompasses both in its details. It had been that at the time. “...but mine is not. So I’d like you to keep in mind how much he’d like nothing more than to have me back, and that a lovely creature such as yourself— one that I’m particularly weak to— would only make a nice plus one to that.”
“If I weaken you now, if a hunter or two should find us right then and there, why, I don’t think my poor heart could live with the guilt.”
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For that moment, the world is but a pinhole, and only this information matters.
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"Of course I know where he lives. How could I possibly forget?"
He can't imagine anything's changed, not even if they were away fighting darkspawn for a thousand years: Cazador was nothing if not consistent.
"That, however, is none of your business, and you're going to sit here nicely in camp with me and have a lovely little conversation about something— anything— else."
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Perhaps it is better, not to be consumed by rage and blood-lust as he was. As he still is, at the faceless and nameless who allowed it to happen.
"I trust you," Fenris says, switching the subject back to his own blood. "I do not wish you to suffer on my account. I have never given blood freely before."
And he thinks it would be a powerful thing, to do so for the sake of a friend, and not at the behest of an owner.
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uhhh cw bad things happening to animals??
F e n r i s
romance~~~~~~
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/wanders in fifteen minutes late, without starbucks
Still, it matters little enough to she and Balthier. They have ever carved their own path, even if they have, for the moment, taken their separate paths. A brief divergence, with a scheduled rendevous; not a common occurrence but one she has no complaint with. If there are matter Balthier would see to himself, she will not deny him that.
She is not expecting that she might come across anyone else who had been displaced by the gods. Nor anyone at all, this close to the shadow of Nalbina, as she picks her way across the sands of Dalmasca and her ears gently flick back and forth as she makes her way across the sand, careful but not wary.
(It is not the monsters here that she is concerned over. There are few here that would cause her great trouble. But she has found herself dragged into another realm once already; better to not do so again.)