Flutiebear: Rambling My Way Through Thedas

Gwaelin's pulse skipped. If she squinted, she thought she could still see the cave looming on the horizon behind them. "Should not we leave the swamp first?"

"A long way yet remains. 'Tis slower to leave this swamp than to enter it. Besides," he added without really looking at her. "Thou hadst an eventful day. Thou needest rest."

Gwaelin was about to protest, when once again she noticed the sweat-streaked soot smudged on Alef's cheeks, the deep circles under his eyes; and she realized that he might be speaking more to himself than to her. She exhaled through her teeth, then nodded. "All right."

They'd come to a small copse of trees, less skeletal than the rest. A few shriveled leaves still clung to the branches—not green, not even particularly leaf-like, but which tenaciously held onto the memory of what a leaf ought to be. Besides her and Alef, it was the closest thing to life in the swamp that Gwaelin had seen thus far.

In the center of the trees was a small patch of earth that, while not dry precisely, was at least less acid-soaked than the rest of the swamp. Alef set her down upon a fallen log that was too stiff and scarred to rot.

"We might risk a fire, at least for a short time," he said, rolling out his shoulders. "Thou art cold as ice."

Blushing to think he'd noticed something as intimate as her body temperature, Gwaelin busied herself with scrounging around her log for the driest-looking sticks and twigs and assembling at the center of the clearing. "What if the Dragonlord's minions should discover us? We are defenseless."

"Aye, that is a risk." Stretching, Alef bent over and grabbed his toes, a feat of remarkable flexibility in such thick plate. The act displayed his haunches to great advantage. "But thou art not defenseless. Thou hast me."