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He stretched like a cat - his long lean limbs reaching out across the length of the bed, back arching, toes curling, eyes closed, a crooked smile on his face - before taking another drag on the elfroot cigarette hanging loosely in his long fingers. Isabella leaned over him, tangling their limbs together and plucking the cigarette from his fingers and taking a long pull.
She wasn't high but she wasn't exactly not high either. Things just felt a little fuzzy around the edges. Could just be the afterglow, she thinks. It really had been a fun night. She'd hire him again even.
The hazy golden light spilling out from the oil lamp on the nightstand was just a hint more intense than it should be, catching the apostate's blonde hair. To her eyes, it looked woven with strands of gold. It hung loose now, falling around his face, just skating his collar bone, touselled, and she had the sudden urge to reach out and tangle her fingers in it.
The air in the windowless room was thick and heavy, smelled of sex and sweat and beeswax.
She looked at him contemplatively. He had the feel of a run-away, she decided. Someone who was new to freedom, and didn't take it for granted. His skin is just a touch too pale for the time of year, she noted, and he had raised scars across his back like lash wounds.
Escaped from the Circle then, she thinks, a little sadly. Someone like this should not be locked up somewhere like that
"So, what's your story, sweet thing?" She asks, "Because I'm betting you didn't escape the Circle just to work in a brothel in Denerim."
A quick flicker of surprise on his face and then it was gone. Replaced with a broad, easy smile.
He turned on his side to face her, resting his head one hand and snaking the other up her chest to cup her rather volumous breast.
"Oh the Pearls not so bad really - 3 squares, plenty of tits to fondle" he emphasized his words with a broad mischevous grin and a squeeze, "no looming templars to rap my knuckles and tell me a bad boy. Although..." He drew out the last word, raising an eyebrow.
"Hey who's the paying customer here?" Isabela laughed, smacking his wandering hand away and passing the cigarette back to him. He giggled, catching her hand kissing her knuckles.
A surprisingly intimate act, she thinks, considering the setting.
She lets the silence hang between them a moment and he sighed.
"Truthfully, there isn't a lot of work for a runaway apostates. They don't exactly teach us how to live outside those walls," he said, a surprising note of bitterness entering his voice, "I have few skills outside magic. I like this well enough - I'm good at it -" he smirks. "- annnd I need the coin. I'm trying to get to Kirkwall. I have a ... friend there."
"Good friend." Isabela said, taking another drag. The silence stretched again.
"You know... I have space on my crew for a mage, and healers are rare. We're leaving in a week, running some routes up and down the coast, and we expect to dock in Kirkwall about 2 months after that. Dangerous work, but a good way to have some fun, make some coin. And you can still get to your friend at the end of it. Think about it?" She keeps her voice casual, but she's intrigued by him.
She sees herself in him in strange and unsettling ways. He was a man clawing for freedom and she could relate. He was also hiding, she surmised, behind that irreverence, the careful, cutting humor, the mischief and the smiles.
"That would.. wow. Yes, absolutely. I would love that." He said, almost breathless, "I'd look good with the wind in my hair, wouldn't I?" He flipped his hair flirtatiously.
"Then you're in," She smiled, "just bring your magic touch with you, sweet thing."
"Happy give you another demonstration, my Captain" he said as he pushed her back down onto the bed.
Oh, he is fun, Isabela thought, before thinking stopped for a while.
When Isabela returned a couple of days later, he wasn't there.
"Where's the leggy blonde gone? The one with the electricity trick?"
There had been a templar raid, just the day previous, she was told.
"Pulled 'im out in shackles, they did." She had said, shaking her head, "head bleeding and all and he still didn't stop with that snark. He was a good worker though, healed up me girls too. Ain't harmed a fly that one. Bloody templars."
Isabela nodded, realizing suddenly she had never gotten his name. She hoped that wherever he was, whatever came, he found his freedom.