most of my sweet memories were buried in the sand

[asunders]

Who| cole + OPEN
What| making friends with stray cats + figuring out how food tastes
Where| a random alleyway in the capitol, the tribute center restaurant
When| after the latest arena
Warnings/Notes| none yet



CAPITOL ALLEYWAY.

Everyone can see him. It doesn't matter what he does, because he can feel the weight of their eyes on him. Everyone can see him, and he can't slip away like he used to. Once, the weight of their eyes would have made him panic. But he's a little more used to being seen by now. Varric has been helping him. Instead, he tugs his hat back down over his eyes to obscure his face and makes his way around a city that seems too clean after being in Thedas for so long.

The people here are untouchable. Their thoughts are shrouded from him. He's left with the noise his own mind makes inside of his head, which is different and a little strange. He probably makes a strange sight, crouched at the end of a small alleyway with a loaf of bread in his hands. Murmuring quietly to the stray cats congregated there.

I'm not going to hurt you. You must be hungry.

It's harder to help, without those thoughts at his fingertips. But this is one small way that he can. The cats of Skyhold used to bat their paws at him even when they couldn't see him. These ones approach tentatively, spurred on by his gentle coaxing an the bread in his hands.

He can help the hungry cats. He can help.

TRIBUTE CENTER

He's never had to eat before. Back in the Spire, before he knew what he was, Cole vaguely remembers the feeling of hunger that had appeared only because he'd thought it's what he might feel. He thought he was human, back then. Or -- something else. Something more real, and more substantial than he felt, slipping through the cracks and into the darkness. But he had never actually eaten anything, even back then. He wasn't even really sure that he could.

Now the feeling is back, that odd gnawing sensation. But he doesn't really know what to eat, so he goes to the restaurant at the bottom of the tribute center and orders something at random off the menu. Or, it's more like he closes his eyes and picks at random.

The avoxes make his heart ache. They can't speak, and he can't hear them the way he would have been able to, once. They scurry away from him like scared mice as soon as he tries to speak to them. Leaving him with assorted oddities. Pickles, peanut butter. An apple and fish. Cole bites into a pickle and immediately shudders at the taste.

No, no pickles. No, they're not for him.

Unless he dipped them in peanut butter?

Someone please stop him.

Comments

[asunders]

"I think I'd like your cooking," he replies, flipping half-heartedly through a menu. Squinting at the selections, mouthing words that he's never really heard before in his life. "Dorian, what's vodka? And there's something here that's called a...sex on the beach...I don't think that's right."

He's got the drink menu instead of the regular menu. And everything has weird names.

[tevintage]

Dorian had to laugh - he had to. He had no idea what vodka was - had never heard of it, in Thedas - but sex on a beach... He reached over to take the menu from him.

"Ah. Alcohol. And here I was wondering if you got the escort menu. It must be a drink of some kind, though I must tell you that sex on a beach in incredibly overrated and I don't suggest trying it."

Or, you know, sex at all for that matter. At least not for... twenty years. Give or take.

"Well, perhaps I will see if I can cook for you sometime, then," He said, smiling warmly as he looked through the actual food side of the menu. "Do you have any idea what kind of food you would like to try? Something that you saw one of us eat, perhaps, that you were curious about?"

[asunders]

Cole used to watch people in Skyhold with some fascination, but he was always preoccupied with their thoughts and feelings, and paid very little attention to the day-to-day details like what they happened to eat. "I think...I'd eat anything you wanted me to. I trust you."

Dorian is his friend, after all. Or at least, Cole would like to think that they are friends.

"Sex on a beach is an odd thing to call something you drink. There are very many odd things here."

Like the clothes they've put him in, which he tugs at uncomfortably with a frown.