[It's easy enough to miss, of course, when you've spent all your life in a place where those who grind bones to bake bread are easily spotted as hulking, bad-smelling, foul-tempered beasts; someone a little more attentive to checking for elongated teeth might've clocked the sharper implications beneath a phrase like richer to drink, but Rosella —
Rosella is used to looking for darkness in the places where one would expect it: in fire-razed kingdoms and caves shaped like skulls and twisted castles high up in savage and inhospitable mountains. Darkness doesn't coalesce inside people with good manners despite their sharp tongues, who look as though they've been put through a wringer that could only be undeserved.]
Well, yes, but your fine costume...let me see, I might have a needle to mend it, if you like.
[Even as she says it, her gaze slides away with something that bears touches of shame — like she already knows there's little that could even be done to help, and that anything she might offer would be paltry at best, but still thoroughly unable to just stand there doing nothing.
It's when he comments on her own costume, though, that an outlet appears; she digs in her pocket and ends up producing a small talisman carved of what appears to be solid obsidian, with unintelligible markings that sort of resemble hieroglyphs.]
Oh! It's because I had this, I'm certain. It's an amulet some awful old hags gave me, that offers protection from the undead and the like. It certainly doesn't make all the jumping and howling any less spooky, to be sure, but — well, it is a bit more bearable knowing such things can't harm you.
[Fun fact: the talisman has no actual powers of anything at present, which Astarion might well notice if he looks at it. Unbeknownst to Rosella, her protection through the haunted house came in the form of an unseen defender, not a little piece of carved obsidian.]
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Rosella is used to looking for darkness in the places where one would expect it: in fire-razed kingdoms and caves shaped like skulls and twisted castles high up in savage and inhospitable mountains. Darkness doesn't coalesce inside people with good manners despite their sharp tongues, who look as though they've been put through a wringer that could only be undeserved.]
Well, yes, but your fine costume...let me see, I might have a needle to mend it, if you like.
[Even as she says it, her gaze slides away with something that bears touches of shame — like she already knows there's little that could even be done to help, and that anything she might offer would be paltry at best, but still thoroughly unable to just stand there doing nothing.
It's when he comments on her own costume, though, that an outlet appears; she digs in her pocket and ends up producing a small talisman carved of what appears to be solid obsidian, with unintelligible markings that sort of resemble hieroglyphs.]
Oh! It's because I had this, I'm certain. It's an amulet some awful old hags gave me, that offers protection from the undead and the like. It certainly doesn't make all the jumping and howling any less spooky, to be sure, but — well, it is a bit more bearable knowing such things can't harm you.
[Fun fact: the talisman has no actual powers of anything at present, which Astarion might well notice if he looks at it. Unbeknownst to Rosella, her protection through the haunted house came in the form of an unseen defender, not a little piece of carved obsidian.]