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He will not face Ysalwen in templar plate.

Cullen isn't entirely sure about this whole 'sword instruction for arcane warriors' enterprise, but that's the one thing he is entirely positive about: he will not face one of his former charges like this in the uniform of the Order.

What this means is that after much dithering and fretting -- too much, he tells himself sternly; it's a simple problem, with a simple solution -- he produces simple black leather armor, a purely functional cuirass, and plain pauldrons, vambraces, and greaves.

The goal is to only be the regular, average kind of threatening.

Whatever his goals, Cullen is standing out back looking at the lake in the company of two practice swords, a wooden shield, a slim book with a plain cover, and a jug of switchel at his feet. He is frowning, as though the lake has offended him.

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Ysalwen crouches down at that point, too, leaning her weight into Liranan's side.

It's comforting.

"Mmph. Second nature I can do. Eventually. Is there anything in particular I should be thinking about as I practice? Just arm position and the feel when I get it right? Or -- "

There are ways to think when you're working magic, Ysalwen knows that well enough. There are ways most definitely not to think when you're doing the same.

Is sword work that different?

He's nodding.

"Your form. Arm position, your balance, posture, every way it feels when you move, from start to finish. The challenge will be to stay focused throughout." Crooked smile. "When it begins to hurt, and when it starts to become boring -- usually around your fortieth repetition -- that's when it's most important to renew your focus."

"Breathing, too?"

She's got the half-abstracted expression of someone making mental notes that they seriously intend to remember.

Her eyes clear, suddenly, and one corner of her mouth curves in a slight smile.

"Focus, hmm? That's -- I've learned a lot about that in the last little while. I'll let you know if you're more or less worried about my capability in that than you should be. Once I know myself, I mean."

Up go Cullen's eyebrows.

"I'd thought to judge by the standards to which I was held in my own training, but as you like"

She smiles very faintly.

"Training is very different from actual combat, and -- I mean. We've both been in that. It's -- there's a focus you need when you've got an arrow in your side, burns on your arm and leg, and no respite in sight. I -- have slight doubts that the ache in my arms is going to make me lose it, not when I know how important learning what you're teaching is."

A pause.

"That's all I'm saying."

Ah.

His mouth tightens.

Cullen pulls his knees a little closer to his chest, looks out at the lake.

Says:

"That's called endurance."

"Not when you're casting through it."

She's very quiet when she says that.

"Anyway."

She says it's important -- but she won't listen to him when this is something he knows. That endurance isn't just about standing there and taking it; it's being able to do something, anything, to keep them off you, for as long as you can.

It's the one thing he could cling to, after Kinloch: he endured. It might have been luck. Probably a large part of it was. But it took work. It took focus.

Why is he bothering with this if she won't trust his knowledge? With all her talk of how friendship can mend things, and that's what she wants --

Cullen closes his eyes suddenly. Makes himself breathe in with one line --

Though all before me is Shadow --

-- hold with another --

Yet shall the Maker be my guide.

-- and release, with the last.

I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond.

He opens his eyes. The lake hasn't changed. The feeling of something pressing hard against his chest, trying to get out of his skin -- that's a little better.

Edited 2015-10-25 23:55 (UTC)

Friends are allowed to have different opinions. Friends are allowed to disagree.

And blind trust and belief doesn't seem to be in either of their natures, not anymore.

So it goes.

"Anyway. I promise to practice. And if I can't think through it, or even if I can, I'll tell you and ask -- questions about where I'm failing? Unless -- do you want to watch me hit at the air a hundred times in a row? Is that how this begins? Now that you know what I know. Sort of."

Distant, as he works off his left vambrace and glove:

"Either would work. Whatever you'd like."

There's grass here. There's not grass in Kirkwall. Not like this.

Cullen runs his bare palm over it. It's... nice.

"Okay," she says, a little warily.

Maybe more than a little.

And if she shifts back, to add some distance between them, at least she stretches her legs out afterward, so the actual space between them remains the same.

Just -- her core is a little farther away.

"Sure."

She moves. He notices.

It doesn't matter, he figures, until the mabari starts growling.

They don't have to do this again. He won't assume they will, unless she asks. She's in charge.

It's not as though Cullen did much, but he's suddenly very tired. Without warning he flops down on his back, looking up at the clouds, running fingers through the grass as though it were a woman's hair.

They used to do that in the practice yard before he took his vows. He used to do it as a child. The soil here smells wrong, but it's comforting nonetheless.

(He feels the need to hit something. But he can save it for his return to the Gallows.)

Oh, they are definitely doing this again.

Something is very, very wrong with him. She knew it -- how could you be there and not know it, but --

She flops back down as well, tilting herself sideways away from Liranan, and he takes that cue to go flop down beside Cullen, huffing as he does so.

Bipeds are difficult.

Honestly.

They are lucky he likes them!

Without moving, and without ire:

"Your breath is terrible."

Liranan whuffs again, right in Cullen's face.

"He does it on purpose," Ysalwen observes.

She may be making a grass whistle.

(She will never tell anyone that Morrigan taught her.)

Cullen wrinkles his nose and doesn't breathe until it's safe.

"I've siblings," he says. "They're not so different."

His hand rises from the grass and rests on Liranan's head.

"Really?"

She thinks about leaning up on her elbows and decides better of it.

"Do you mind talking about them? I've never had any. Not the kind you grow up with, anyway."

Liranan, meanwhile, lifts up his head so that he can lick at Cullen's fingers. Salt!

"There's not much to tell," he says, mild, figuring it'll just be easier to go along with whatever Liranan wants. "I've an older sister, and a younger brother and sister. Two nephews I've never met, and a brother- and sister-in-law to go with them. I haven't seen them since I left home."

"That's big."

It sounds it, anyway. Right?

Maybe it's small for humans. She doesn't exactly know.

"You said they were in Honnleath, before the Blight, didn't you. Did you ever see the stone statue there, out on the green?"

Or maybe Shale wasn't there before he left. (When did he leave?)

"It's... perhaps a little larger than most. But not out of the ordinary."

Cullen resumes scratching behind Liranan's ears. "My sisters made crowns from wildflowers and put them on the statue, yes. And garlands and such, with their friends. I suppose no one will do that there any more for decades, now. Until the land heals."

If it ever does.

"Oh. Um. Well. That statue was a golem. Shale? I was there, for a bit, and we -- well. We woke her up. She came with us against the Blight."

A pause.

"I'm sure she liked the flower crowns. Not so much the pigeons. She really hates pigeons."

His hand stills on Liranan's head.

Cullen breathes in.

Out again.

Says, dry:

"So much for that childhood memory."

"No, it's still sweet! She tells stories about Honnleath sometimes."

Ysalwen grimaces, but only a little, still staring up at the sky.

"Some things I did not want to know about what people got up to under the statue after dark."

Now you know, Cullen! Sharing is caring.

Liranan licks Cullen's face.

Cullen wrinkles his nose -- both thanks to the mabari, and to Ysalwen's comment.

"I assure you," he says, "none of those stories were about me."

"They're probably about people that got married, eventually."

Well.

"I hope they did, anyway. It seems -- nice."