serannas | Clan Ashara, assemble!

Ellana turned her head, fingers deftly braiding her hair. This was a rare moment of inactivity for her. Even when she disappeared into the woods, it was for the purpose of gathering wood. But today everyone seemed content to keep their duties to themselves and the cook fires were burning bright, allowing her to slip away.

"How so?" she asked, reaching the end of her braid.

"Oh, you know, the usual," He said, eyes crinkling with self-deprecating amusement. "I was trying to tell her about the dwarves - or well, specifically, about this one particular dwarven legend about--" He cut himself off, laughing. "Sorry. She got angry with me for wasting her time, demanded to know what I'd been doing the last few days, and did not like my answer. I got away before that staff came down on my head." He was teasing, of course, she wouldn't have hit him, but that didn't mean that she wouldn't have wanted to.

"I wouldn't want her to take it out on you." Yeah, because that would totally happen, Gavin.

"Really?" she asked, tying off her braid and turning towards him a bit more. "I know nothing of dwarves. And you wouldn't be wasting my time at all if you wanted to tell me. The Keeper -- she just wants to stay focused on the clan." Which was perfectly reasonable, Ellana supposed, but not how the young mage viewed things. She wanted to know about places beyond the aravels and self-imposed borders. Not being a hunter or a trader, or even an explorer like Gavin meant that Ellana had never seen a human or dwarf before.

"I think if she caught me spinning dwarven stories to you, I wouldn't be able to walk for days," He teased in a low voice, grinning. Really, he was pleased. "But I'd be happy to tell you anything you want to hear about. As long as we're out of earshot from the clan."

He grinned, tilting his head as he watched her. "It's nice to see you taking a break, though."

"If you're worried, we could walk further on," she suggested. Because she really did want to hear of the dwarves.

Her eyes sparkled with amusement. "Would you believe that Sulahni threatened to throw halla droppings at me if I didn't take a day off trying to assist her? She says the halla are going to love me more than her, but we both know that's not true."

He laughed, tickling the water with his bare toes. "I can absolutely believe that," He grinned. "Putting us all to shame with your work ethic," he teased, before looking around.

"Come on. We can pretend we're fishing - maybe actually catch a fish - and I'll tell you about the paragons of Orzammar."

"There's only so long you can attend to a fire before it gets boring," she admitted, getting up to follow him along the water line.

"Please do! Orzammar is a strange name. Is that a dwarven city?"

"A massive dwarven city," Gavin whispered as he picked his way down the river bank, hopping from one stone to the next. "Imagine if you hollowed out a mountain, and lived inside of it. The sky replaced by rock, high high above, too dark to see where it ends. Below you, rock so hot that it's molten - churning and glowing as it lights the city above it. And the noise - Ellana, the noise! As if a hundred drums made of iron were slamming in your chest. You can feel it vibrate through your feet, right to the tips of your fingers."

He grinned.

"And a beard on nearly every man in sight."

"They can't even see the sky?" The thought was certainly depressing. "It sounds so stifling. But there must be good qualities too." She laughed about the beards. "Now that would be a sight! Much different than here, that's for sure."

Moving to catch up with him, she stepped out onto a flat stone in the stream, keeping her arms out for balance.

"Are they very short? I've heard they are."

"Some have never seen the sky in their entire lives," Gavin said cheerfully, despite the solemn subject matter.

He stood on a stone, thoughtfully, using one hand to try to gauge the average dwarf's height against his chest.

"About here," he said, his hand at his midsection. "Not all of them live underground - but the ones that do are sort of like us. They keep the old ways. The ones above ground are treated a little differently."

"Treated differently how? Are they treated badly?" Ellana wished the clan could respect tradition while still moving forward, but it seemed most were content to just repeat their history and speak of the day's hunting. At least Gavin had seen what it was like out there.

"They're never allowed back. Race-traitors." He gave a lopsided smile at that - after all, he'd been called the same, and worse, and at least their clan hadn't kicked him out. "So really, they don't come in to contact much at all, except the traders. They let some of them in, sometimes. But they're not allowed to stay."

Gavin had never been content repeating elvish history. When he'd been trying to apprentice under the storyteller, he kept changing the endings, adding dragons and forbidden trysts and once he even added a new god to the pantheon.

"Oh." Ellana hated that term. She felt that wanting to learn about another race or wanting to step outside the bounds of the clan didn't mean that she was going to turn her back on being an elf, but not everyone in the clan agreed. It was why she kept most of her curiosities to herself. But the ones her age, they understood. Gavin went out into the world, Beleth traded with humans. Even Cyril and Merrick played tricks on them. She wished she had a reason to go with them, one that wouldn't anger Keeper Deheune.

"I think once you've felt the sun on your face and the wind in your hair, that you wouldn't wish to stay underground forever anyway." But to those who knew nothing else, it must not have seemed a hardship. "How long were you down in Or-- Orzammar?" Was that its name?

"I think once you've you've seen even a sliver of the world it's hard not to wish to see the rest," He agreed, though maybe more than he ought to have. He kneeled on the rock, looking into the shallows for fish, wiggling his fingers on the surface like bait.

"Orzammar," He confirmed. "And a few days - maybe a week? It was hard to tell time down there. I kept waking up at weird times." He laughed. "I didn't stay too long. They don't really like outsiders anyway, and I didn't have a lot to trade. I only got in, in the first place, because I befriended one of the merchants that has a contract with them."

He saw something in the water and his hand shot out to try to grab it, but came back empty.

"I don't think I'd be able to sleep down there, with the drum beat sounds." Ellana set her hands on her knees, leaning down to watch Gavin attempt to catch a fish.

"The people down there seem to like it, though? Don't they ever feel trapped?"

"Doesn't everyone?" Gavin laughed, but it rang a little hollow - too true, for him, to be funny.

He fell silent for a moment, watching the water, before asking in a quiet voice: "Do you think I'm a traitor, Ellana?"

The question caught her by surprise, but only briefly. Even though he wasn't looking her way, her expression softened as the answer immediately came to her.

"Not at all. Besides, if you're a traitor, then so am I. Sometimes I wish I could leave, but I would always come back. I want to see what's out there, outside of the clan, as you do." There was a pause as she moved to another stone. "But the Keeper won't allow it. She won't let a mage go." Ellana knew it was because the woman wanted to protect her from Templars, yet sometimes she felt as trapped as those dwarves underground must have felt.

"The outside isn't very kind to mages, it's true," he said, giving her a small, sympathetic smile. He had relaxed, at her words. It was enough, that at least they all didn't hate him. That some of them understood. That was enough.

His smile widened, however, despite his thoughts, and he said, "Well, if you ever need an accomplice to sneak away, at least you know who to come to."

Ellana laughed, wishing she could, even for just a few days. But she couldn't disappoint their Keeper like that. She'd been so good to keep Ellana around, even though she was third in line for future Keeper. She could have been sent to another clan, but after losing her parents, Keeper Deheune thought the girl had suffered enough trauma. And Ellana had no wish to lose the woman's favor.

"I'll bear it in mind. Was Orzammar the last place you visited before returning here?"

Gavin shook his head.

"No. I stopped by Kirkwall, on my way back - for a hot half minute. Took the entirety of two seconds to realise that it was one of the most dangerous places I've been in a while. Besides - I was out of anything worth trading, which is always a sign that it's time to come home."

"Oh, I'm glad you left quickly! Isn't that where all the trouble started a few years ago with the mages and the Templars? I wouldn't want to be in that city, even if I wasn't a mage." As it is, she felt relieved that Gavin hadn't come across any trouble there.

"So you didn't bring any trinkets back?" She tried not to sound too disappointed there.

That brought a twinkle to his eye, and a grin to his lips. "Now, now. When have I ever failed you?" He asked. A rhetorical question, of course, considering that he failed his clan basically every day, but that was beside the point. He tilted his head as he padded down his pockets for a moment, and then:

"Ahh, here it is." He pulled out a very small package from his pocket - a perfect, delicate comb, of some kind of opalescent white stone. He stepped over a few rocks and held it out to her. "Will this suffice for my toll?" He teased.

Her eyes widened and she carefully took the comb from him, holding it tightly so she didn't drop it in the water. In fact, she stepped out of the center of the stream and to the shore to be doubly safe before holding it up to examine it.

"It's beautiful!" Her fingers ran down the teeth of the comb, marveling at how it was so perfectly constructed, not like their crude combs of animal bone. She would never have called their own crude, of course. The crafter worked hard, and even carved patterns into the combs. But this one shone in the light and the teeth were so small! "I love it. Thank you, Gavin. Where did you get it?"

He followed her, hopping between stones and nearly slipping on one - falling face first into the water would have been perfect - but he managed to reach the shore without incident. He grinned, leaning in to watch her check it over.

"Good, I'd hoped you like it. I met a trader - a someone down on his luck man from Orlais, trying to get to Tevinter and getting hopelessly lost. I guided him back to Starkhaven and he thanked me with this, and a rather tasty meal."

And a very interesting night, but that was not really a story to tell to the clan.

Clan Ashara, assemble!

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