wip wednesday :D
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have a depressing oddly interpreted take on the taint affecting alistair and rowena 😘
The taint came for his hands first.
A side effect of days spent clutching a sword and shield no doubt. His veins went fast, running black and blue overnight. He didn't like looking at them, but Rowena traced them over every night. Hardened bones were next. Protruding metacarpals and thinned knuckles and a noticeable creak in the mornings. Then the pain began. The ache. Days where his joints stiffened to stone, where a grasp clenched too tight refused to come undone, where splaying fingers to their fullest extent proved too much.
Rowena often caught him staring at his hands in the corner of her eye. Busy hands, curious hands, hands made to fidget and gesture and move above all else, now immobile. His worry token went untouched for months, as did many of the things he loved to hold. Flowers in the garden. The mabari's paws. Rowena.
There was a time when Alistair couldn't keep his hands off of her. Affection of the physical kind was a bright and shiny concept and it took time for him to adjust. Rowena could touch him anywhere, after all. It came easy to her, the affection, the initiation. His cheek, his chin, his collarbone--anywhere would do. Eventually, he came to reciprocate. Tentatively at first, as if asking for permission, but confidence came with the security of her affection. Touch became a comfort. A hand around her waist, on her jaw, in her hair. Anywhere would do.
It couldn't have been more different now. He shied away when she reached for his arm to hold, twitched when she kissed his neck in the mornings. Evening baths became sparser until they no longer existed at all, and this Rowena could hardly bear--facing this truth that the old rituals had died, so she clung to the last of them.
No amount of massage relieved the pain, but Rowena would be damned if she didn't try. Nightly, he let her take his hands in her own.
It was a relief each time to see that despite the Taint, Alistair's hands were still his own, broad and square-fingered and devastatingly gentle. Calloused on the underside and scarred by his earliest days with a blade, too young and eager to know any better. And those nights by the firelight, nights where she took his palm in her hands and massaged the ache away, she could see that Alistair's hands were still freckled, just barely. The sun could still shine on him and leave honeyed kisses against his skin and this was one thing the taint could never take. No darkspawn could take the sun.
The night she realized this, she wept silently. She'd stopped him before he could speak, pressed his freckled hand to her cheek before he could pull away, and whispered, "Bathe with me."
Months later, the taint came for her.
For Rowena, it was her vision and it was swift. [reduntant fix this queen lol]
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Hey man, some advice from someone on their way into their mid twenties: don’t continue into higher education if you don’t want to. I know it’s easier said than done, but I mean it wholeheartedly. School is draining, and if just the thought of it is causing you stress, than actually going will be worse. It’s hard when it feels as though there’s all of this pressure to not disappoint yourself parents or anyone else that expects this of you, but you are what matters most. You should be your top priority. You should do the things that are in your own best interest. I tried to go to college multiple times after graduating (and struggling to do so immensely despite the fact that I’m smart and school came easy to me. I was just incredibly burnt out on life by that point) and it never ended up working out. College isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. You’re not less than or a failure for not doing what society tells you you have to do to be successful. You can find meaningful work that doesn’t break your body and soul without college. You can maintain or create new friendships without college. Put yourself first, and you’re doing great 💜
thank you 😭
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