pikapeppa:

Lath’sal’in: Elvhen for “the act of fondling a loved one’s hair”.

This little accompaniment goes with my multichapter Abellan fic, The One Who Will Live On. 

Read on AO3 instead.

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“You’re quite fond of my hair, aren’t you?”

Abelas’s hand stilled at the sound of Athera’s sleepy murmur. Then he resumed the careful, slow stroking of her chestnut strands. “Yes. I suppose I am,” he said. Her hair was damp and tousled at the moment from their earlier activities, but it was thick and glossy all the same, and uncommonly long from what he’d seen of this blunted time. The length of it was like a reminder of home.

Athera shifted slightly, nestling her cheek more securely against his bare chest. “No one’s done this before,” she told him. “Stroked my hair like this, I mean. I like it.”

He hummed a soft acknowledgement, and they fell back into a cozy silence.

His fingertips drifted smoothly along her scalp and through the dark ropes of her hair, and eventually he spoke again. “Long hair was fashionable in Arlathan, before the fall. Elaborate braids spilling down the back were a sign of status.”

She lifted her face to grace him with a cheeky smile. “So what you’re saying is that you were a high-class elf.”

“I was a captain of Mythal’s army and the head Sentinel of her temple,” he reminded her, and she chuckled.

“All right, messere upper-crust,” she teased gently. “I get the picture.” Then she grinned more widely, her ice-grey eyes sparkling with amusement. “So I wonder what would that make Solas then, if he was in old Elvhenan? I suppose he’d be one of us common folk with his bald head.”

Abelas gave her a tiny smile, but didn’t reply. Her remark was close and yet so distant from the truth. But he couldn’t tell her that the Dread Wolf had purposely shorn his elaborate dreadlocks to show solidarity with his rebel uprising.

He carefully brushed her hair back from her face, then gently squeezed her shoulder. “Sit up,” he said.

“Bossy. Your nobility is showing,” she said with a smirk, but she sat up nonetheless, settling into a cross-legged position on the bed as Abelas slid out from beneath her and padded over to her armoire. He picked up a handful of small linen strips, then walked back over to the bed.

He sat behind her on the bed and began gathering her hair, pulling it over her shoulders so it hung in a sleek curtain along her naked back. Then he gathered a small section of hair toward the left side of her head and began plaiting it.

She turned her head slightly to grin at him. “You’re braiding my hair?”

“Yes,” he replied. His fingers darted and flicked along the wavy lock, the intricate plait taking shape as his hands moved from her scalp down to the center of her back.

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