Snippet #1394138

Jasper had arrived in enough time to see the party of two humans and an elf enter the tavern, followed in rather short order by another pair, this one a man surprisingly taller than he and a woman with white hair. Something told him he'd be seeing more of the lot of them if he stuck around much longer. It seemed that every slightly-abnormal individual within miles was attracted to the cause like flies to honey. He might not be so useful after all, some to think of it.

Either way, that was not a discussion he had any wish to be a part of presently; it was not as though he had any particular opinion about what the Wardens chose to do. If something eventually came up, he would voice his concern then, but until such time as this happened, he was under no illusions that his two coppers was worth any more than that.

Rather than bother crowding in to listen to what was sure to amount to a good deal of arguing, then, he simply dropped the reins to his mare and wandered the general area for a while. Now that he had nothing specifically to be doing, he took his time walking about, collecting the stories and scuttlebutt from refugees and town residents alike. He was rather fond of such conversation; playing the ignorant traveler was ever the best way to get a feel for how things really were. Too often in court he had heard nobles toss around phrases like "the people" and "the will of the common man" without really having any sense of what such a thing would mean. He had resolved long ago not to be one of those nobles.

Perhaps it was a moot point. He doubted his title would be his for much longer, anyway. Eventually his parents would see sense and stop trying to get him to return to the keep like a good hawk to her jesses. Such gentle prisons, both of those things, but he had always been of the mind that birds should fly as they liked. And he? Well, much as some days might bring him to the contrary desire, he was no bird, but that made his desire to decide things for himself no less potent. Was that childish of him, to shirk the responsibility that the very fact of his birth had laid at his feet? Perhaps, if it was looked at from this angle alone, as people were more often than not wont to do.

On his way out of the refugee camp (a few silvers lighter, courtesy of the pickpocket child he'd not had the heart to stop), he spotted a group of dirty-faced children playing some kind of game in the dust which had accumulated on the side of the road. Drawing closer, he observed that they had in fact sketched themselves a story. "Well hullo there lads and lass. Mind tellin' me what ya've got there?" he asked quietly, roughening his speech a little. Perhaps ironically, he had learned from experience that it was less intimidating than the speech of someone overly educated. Well, maybe it wasn't that ironic at all.

The girl, small and with twin braids down her back, was the first to speak. "It's a story," she explained somewhat sullenly, "See? That's a Darkspawn, and those are the Grey Wardens. But my brother says I can't be a Grey Warden because I'm a girl." Jasper angled his head to get a look at the picture. Most of the figures looked the same to him, but then that one on the left was a little bigger and also a trifle uglier, so he figured that had to be the Darkspawn. At the comment about a girl being a Grey Warden, though, he resisted the urge to chuckle and instead fixed the boys with his best mock-stern look (or at least the best one he could use without scaring them too badly).

"Well that's awfully silly of them. I happen to know that girls make the very best Grey Wardens. That's why there aren't a lot of them, see? Because if there were, all us boys would be jealous." This of course brought a huge grin to the girl's face, and she charged at her friends, shouting something about being the best Grey Warden of them all. Jasper rolled his eyes and shook his head, ambling onwards to see what he could see. Eventually, he'd circle back to the tavern, and hopefully the meeting would be over by then and he'd find someone to catch him up on what he missed.