The book parts from her grasp easilyβsomething on Cuisine in the North, unimportant to her in general except that Cedric needed her help. She's led, eminently biddable, to the desk and the plate, and when she sits and looks at it... She could not be further from hunger.
The pang hurt, yes; she needs to eat, yes; but to actually do itβ She looks at the plate and feels not desire but a faint disgust. It's a new experience, an unfamiliar sensation: sometimes you get so hungry, you circle right back around to not hungry at all.
She makes a face, picks up the fork, eats dutifully in silence, sips her tea with all the jolly enthusiasm of a recruit mucking out latrines. At the corner of the desk sits a pile of books, the top a collection of Dalish myths and legends, various treatises on the nature and origins of darkspawn below, a chantry brother's history of the Deep Roads on the bottom. Each book already has numerous scraps sticking out of the pages, markers for interesting information and passages to return to.
Ness has been returned from Sarrux's Pass for less than a week.
Plate cleared, she wipes her mouth with a handkerchief and looks over to Cedric. Her eyes can't linger on him long, gaze glancing off his face, shoulders curled in.
"Thank you for the meal. I didn't realize how hungry I was."
Cedric thunks into the chair opposite, pages the book slow. Place to put his eyes, other than dead on her, not the way she's jumping for it. And anyway, he'd like to know what kind of monster kebab don't take meat β
"Sure," He sets the book aside, leans out over his elbows. Clock the rest of the stack and its disparate subjects: Darkspawn, Dalish. Wycome, "Gets like that, sometimes."
His eyes finally find her face again. He isn't asking about hunger when he asks,
"Oh, no, I was well-fed in Candlekeep," comes brightly, conversationalβnot deflection, whatever else he may be referring to has passed entirely over her head. "I've simply beenβ well. There's a lot about Sarrux's Pass that I didn't understand, and then there's all the work I have to catch up on. Eating hasn't seemed all that... important, I suppose."
Her brow furrows, something about that sentence catching her ear. Sometimes you say things in complete earnest, so sure of their rationality, and then you hear them out loud and they sound so much worse than you thought they would. It's strange, and uncomfortable, and not something she has the time or, frankly, the desire to interrogate right now.
So she smiles at Cedric, meeting his gaze finally.
"I apologize for the diversionβwe were talking about chocolate, weren't we? Looking into substitutes?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
same, no worries!!
The pang hurt, yes; she needs to eat, yes; but to actually do itβ She looks at the plate and feels not desire but a faint disgust. It's a new experience, an unfamiliar sensation: sometimes you get so hungry, you circle right back around to not hungry at all.
She makes a face, picks up the fork, eats dutifully in silence, sips her tea with all the jolly enthusiasm of a recruit mucking out latrines. At the corner of the desk sits a pile of books, the top a collection of Dalish myths and legends, various treatises on the nature and origins of darkspawn below, a chantry brother's history of the Deep Roads on the bottom. Each book already has numerous scraps sticking out of the pages, markers for interesting information and passages to return to.
Ness has been returned from Sarrux's Pass for less than a week.
Plate cleared, she wipes her mouth with a handkerchief and looks over to Cedric. Her eyes can't linger on him long, gaze glancing off his face, shoulders curled in.
"Thank you for the meal. I didn't realize how hungry I was."
no subject
"Sure," He sets the book aside, leans out over his elbows. Clock the rest of the stack and its disparate subjects: Darkspawn, Dalish. Wycome, "Gets like that, sometimes."
His eyes finally find her face again. He isn't asking about hunger when he asks,
"It get like that before?"
no subject
Her brow furrows, something about that sentence catching her ear. Sometimes you say things in complete earnest, so sure of their rationality, and then you hear them out loud and they sound so much worse than you thought they would. It's strange, and uncomfortable, and not something she has the time or, frankly, the desire to interrogate right now.
So she smiles at Cedric, meeting his gaze finally.
"I apologize for the diversionβwe were talking about chocolate, weren't we? Looking into substitutes?"