Then it's time to turn in. Cassandra will wake her for breakfast.

She sleeps pretty deeply, apparently.

Cassandra knows a couple tricks. Working with trainees will do that.

She startles awake! 

And then tries to reflexively punch Cassandra, if she's in arms' reach still.

She is not. Working with trainees will do that too.

"Excellent reflexes."

...Blegh.

"I was sleeping," she grumbles. 

"And now you are not. The food is ready, as is the tea."

She sits up. Grumpily. (Normally she's fast to bounce out of bed, but...)

(She was talking to El.)

"Where's the tea?" is all she says, though.

"By the fire. When you're ready."

She rolls to her feet. "I'm good."

Then breakfast, and they can get an early start.

Bellona can work fast, thankfully, and once they're out in the field - it becomes a bit more obvious that she's military. She doesn't have a military demeanor, but she interacts comfortably with soldiers, and she pretty quickly wraps her head around the differences in their technology and military culture when planning. (She also, though, clearly expects a pretty alien military culture; she seems to find how little backtalk she gets unsettling and unhelpful, and is steadily encouraging anyone who ends up even briefly under her command to "Tell me when I'm being a right idiot." ("Amestris keeps putting scientists in charge of soldiers," she confides to Cassandra. "I have no idea how they didn't expect that to lead to wide scale 'insubordination.'"))

"Lack of social skills themselves, I suspect."

" - Yeah."

"The - uh, person? - leading Amestris didn't really... Want to understand people, either, and intentionally cast away a lot of what he considered his 'weaknesses.'"

"And his downfall was then caused by his own hubris."

She smiles a little. "Nearly literally."

"A poetic ending."

"I'm almost nervous about telling the whole story to Varric," she teases. 

"I expect he will still take liberties."

"Bet you that what really happened is weirder than what he comes up with on his own."

"I think I will let that one lie."

Giggle! "You don't want to watch while I tell him my story in bits and pieces and see if he guesses what happened next?"

"But that would spoil the surprise."

"His guesses, or my story?"

"Both."