[NDPD, for Sarah]

[a_royal_bastard]

Things hadn't gotten too much more normal lately, but if Alistair was anything, he was the kind of man who could adapt. He spent his first week or so learning about his new environment. Now, with his hut made, he was starting to settle in that way, too. They were all things he could focus on that weren't thoughts about what could be happening back

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[stayastranger]

"Looks like you've made a new friend," Sarah called out. The dog was huge, worryingly so, but the interaction seemed so friendly, she couldn't hide a smile as she walked over. Settling in here was difficult. Anything that made this place a little warmer, a little more pleasant, had to be lauded. Strange as it still was to deal with someone so like Devon, she thought she ought to stop and see how Alistair was doing.

[a_royal_bastard]

"Whether I want to or not, apparently," he said in response, letting out a short laugh as he looked up from the dog to Sarah. The Mabari lifted his head to look up at her too, and Alistair was reminded of the first time the other Warden's hound had seen him. The only feeling that could accurately describe it was feeling as though it was sizing him up.

"Easy," he said to the animal, who immediately sat down again and looked up at him for instructions on what to do. If there was any sign that it'd picked him as his master, it was that.

Alistair stood up a few moments after, brushing off the sand from his shorts. Looking down at the dog again, he added, "I don't actually know where he came from. Well, I mean, I know the breed - they're all over the country I'm from - but..."

This wasn't Ferelden. This apparently was nowhere close to Ferelden - that much people had made perfectly clear. He had a feeling it was yet another instance of him being really confused.

It was probably a bad sign he was getting used to it.

[stayastranger]

It was a curious feeling. Sarah had been looked over and assessed by all kinds of people in dozens of ways, but she'd never been sized up by an animal quite like that; yet there was a decided intelligence in its expression that made her wonder about it. Stepping cautiously closer, she held her hand out toward it to sniff, willing to let it come to its own decision about her.

"But not here," she supplied. "I... don't know. This place is like that sometimes. Familiar things show up unexpectedly. Or gifts. If you don't know him, he... might just be a present. Or someone else's."

[a_royal_bastard]

"I'm starting to think this place can do just about anything," he said, rolling his eyes. He would believe pretty much anything now, to be honest. To be fair, he'd sort of been at that point back home, too.

The hound sniffed her hand and eventually seemed satisfied, even going so far as to lick it. Alistair was just glad he was behaving.

"They pick their masters. I guess I'm the lucky one," he said, raising a brow as he looked at the hound again. What he was going to do with a war hound on an island like this, he didn't know. "I have to question his taste, but it doesn't look like I can do much about it."