And he'd almost forgotten the smell.
It made Ithilian's nose twitch at first, mouth settling into an ever comfortable scowl as the scents of industry, poverty and oppression floated to his nostrils. For the briefest of moments he wondered if he had simply stayed in Ferelden... but no, he never would have been able to live with himself. Not after being here, not after seeing. The Relaferin clan was doing well, all things considered, but the elves here were not. And while he would no doubt have been a very useful and productive member of a clan such as they, Amalia's words had hung over him every day he'd spent away. I am not you, and I will not be enough. The Relaferin had the Brecilian as their protection, for it was not so weak as to be killed by a Blight, but the elves cornered into the Kirkwall Alienage had no one but each other, no cover from the oncoming storms, no one to stand up for them save Amalia. He wondered briefly if any of them had died while he was gone, anything he could have prevented. If Amalia had died. He'd find out soon enough.
As Ithilian passed the shemlen hunter's shop, he gave no thought to catching the eye of a passing guard, surprised at the lone elf who held an uncovered, disfigured and mutilated head above the others. His armor was not nearly so ragged as it had been when he'd left; his padded coat had been made anew, the patches and holes gone, the studded leather chestplate over that largely clean of blade nicks and repaired arrow punctures. It was as if the man himself had the wear and tear of the road removed, though of course some of the scars were impossible to cleanse.
He'd made the right choice. Even if some had died, even if their hope had sagged. Even if Lia and the Qunari woman were lost to him, he'd made the right choice. Reborn was entirely the wrong word for it, but it was hard to deny just how much he had needed time alone, time away, to return of his own accord to the place where his life had fallen apart before his eyes, and to let go of it. He'd been able to find the correct place, though the exact patch of earth was difficult to find now that the bloodstains had vanished into the earth or been washed away by the rains. How long he had simply sat there and listened for them he could not know, and though he knew not what words were said, Ithilian knew that when he left that place, his goodbyes had been said. Years too late, but late was better than never.
Vir sulahn'nehn. Vir dirthera. Vir samahl la numin. Vir lath sa'vunin.
He wondered just who the funeral had been for.
The vhenadahl stood strong as ever, Ithilian was glad to see. It was late morning, and the majority of the Alienage's inhabitants were out and about, though a few of them stopped to take note of the elven warrior make his way down the steps, vallaslin etched into his neck. A few gave cautious greetings, some he suspected too intimidated to speak to him personally, the pillar of elven defiance that he was. That was all well; there was one specific person he meant to seek out before any others.
In contrast to Ithilian's rather renewed appearance, the Qunari that sat in the boughs of the great elven-tree was a considerably the worse for wear of late. Forced to take on Viddethari at a much faster rate than she had initially suspected, she was now making daily trips outside the Alienage to see various clusters of them at clockwork intervals. None of the old ones were yet ready to be free from her instruction, either; the Qun was not something one learned in the space of a single year, no matter how long it had seemed. With no Tamassran present, what should have been the duties of several fell to one: her. Her nights were little more restful-- the City Guard did not bother itself protecting the Alienage, and the Coterie seemed only to grow bolder by the day. Perhaps she simply grew more weary. Aurora and Nostariel, too, were not going to teach themselves, and she had all but halted her pursuit of craft to accomodate everything she had to do.
It was an effort that had left her with darkened wisteria-colored circles beneath her eyes and an uncommon hitch in her stride; the result of the fact that her potions could not quite heal her injuries fast enough to keep up with the new ones she tended to accrue. For neither did the demands of the Qun slow, and it was not only for the elves here that she fought. Not even, perhaps, mostly for them, though it would be impossible to know that given her relentless continuation of the same task.
She had not reached her limits quite yet, however. Even so, she quietly chose to avoid the searching young faces that wound 'round the base of the tree, seeking her without calling her name, for this or that bit of entertainment, perhaps. She simply could not accomodate their wishes right now, and so she lay betwixt the branches of the vhenadahl, and wondered how long it would be until she failed them somehow. Back propped against the trunk, she had one knee angled upwards, forming a triangle with the wood she sat upon, her other leg dangling freely from the side of the limb. She was silent, and none thought to look up for what they sought.
Head tipped back against the bark, she'd let her eyes fall closed for what seemed the scarcest moment when she heard the approach of someone new entering the Alienage. She felt compelled to look, as she had every time for nearly a year now, and part of her openly mocked the rest for continuing such a futile endeavor. Still, she had to look, because it might be danger, and she was the only one left who could deal with that. Slowly, her eyes cracked open to the leafy canopy, sunlight filtering in through the gaps in the light green of the leaves. Tilting her head sideways and down, she almost laughed at herself. Hissra. She was surely conjuring illusions, now. But she did not laugh, and for a long moment, she did not speak. Blinking once, twice, three times, she managed to ascertain that her visual faculties were indeed working, which perhaps warranted... something.
"You have been gone long, Ithilian."
It was not her usual place, nor did she seem entirely her usual self. Ithilian felt a pang of guilt for that, but what he had done simply could not have been rushed. What he did needed to be his choice, else he never would have been free of it. Amalia looked... tired was perhaps the wrong word, for it did not describe it adequately. He imagined he had looked similar in the days leading to the fall of his clan, when he had pushed himself beyond his typical capabilities for months on end, waiting for something, anything, to relieve the pressure and let him rest. Of course, it never came. If she would let him take the pressure off of her once more, he would be more than happy to do so.
"Some wounds take a long time to heal," he answered back from the base of the tree, peering up at her perch with his remaining eye. His hands rested on the belt tied over his coat, where Parshaara was contained. His elven blades were kept in a pair of sheaths on his back, his Dalish longbow sheathed upon his rear. The elf was a small arsenal of weaponry compared to those around him. Again he almost felt guilty for the renewal he had clearly gone through, when compared to the wear that showed upon her very face.
"Before I left, what I said... I was a fool. It took me far too long to see that. I had to leave, had to return to where I lost everything, and... let go. I am sorry I was not able to return sooner, but I knew that I would not be able to help these people if I could not first come to terms with myself." There. He'd wanted to say that for a long time. Honestly, he wasn't really sure what he wanted in return. He did not need approval, or forgiveness. Maybe he just wanted to say that he finally believed he could be enough.
Amalia was silent for a while, letting the words hang in the air as she studied him, cataloging the changes in his appearance and demeanor. Finally, she nodded simply and shifted, jumping down from the tree branch to stand on a level with him. Though she landed a little harder than she would have preferred, she stood straight, rolling her left shoulder. There was still a large, blue bruise there from a few days ago. "If you were unwise, you were not alone in it. I have lived only one way, learned to see only certain things. I overstepped myself. I shan't make the mistake again." Her glance flickered to Parshaara, and a crease appeared between her eyebrows, but when she spoke again, it was of something else.
"In the meantime, little has changed here. If there is anything in particular you would know, I am likely in a position to speak of it." Presumption was what had driven her astray in the first place, and she would not at present say anything else unless he asked.
Ithilian silently agreed with her. He could not be certain, but he suspected that she had almost begun to see him as one of her kind. Qunari. But the one thing that he said back in the Hanged Man that he agreed with was that he was no Qunari, and even if she saw fit to call him Sataareth, he did not want to be Qunari. He was a Dalish elf, one of the People, and always would be. The Keeper of Relaferin clan had offered him the chance to officially join them, even if he chose not to stay, but Ithilian had refused. He was not yet ready to belong to a clan again, but he knew that someday, that was what he wanted to have again. It would not be the same, never be the same, but it didn't need to be. It would be different, and beautiful in its own way. That was what he wanted.
For now, there was the business here to attend to. He felt awkward asking it at first, but he was glad for the chance to ask the question himself. "How is Lia?" He did not need to be Qunari, and she did not need to be an elf, for their interests to align, and for them to have the chance to remain... friends. If that was the appropriate word. Perhaps there wasn't an appropriate word for it. They simply were.
"Taking care of herself quite well," Amalia replied simply, having expected this question at least. "Her father is deceased; an illness took him a few months into the intervening year. She was... distraught, at first, but she manages now. Admirably, for one so young." She considered mentioning that nobody else had died in the past year, but it didn't seem particularly important. She would have said so if anyone had, of course, but honestly nothing was all that different besides the rising strength of the Coterie. Rumors placed some new figure behind that, but nothing was yet certain about the situation.
Though natural curiosity bid her ask some questions of her own, she knew well enough what it was to need closure, and she didn't have to understand the particulars to know that these were matters best left alone, unless he wished to speak of them. She'd buried enough ghosts of her own, though she expected he had not yet had cause to visit his own grave, as she once had. But that was not for thinking of in daylight, was it? "Two new families have moved in, and one left, I believe to join the Dalish on Sundermont. The rest yet remain."
Ithilian sniffed slightly in displeasure upon hearing that the Sabrae clan was still here at all. They should have moved on by now. Lack of halla or no, Kirkwall was no place for a group of free elves to linger near. As far as Lia went... the Gods had an interesting way of answering prayers that had never been spoken. He could not deny that he'd wanted to be a father again when he met her, that seeing the fire and strength within her had reminded him of his lost daughter and wife, but such thoughts were what led him into the height of his misery, and he would not follow that again. Lia was not his daughter, and would never be his daughter. He would look out for her as he would any of his clan, but if Amalia spoke true, and he knew she had, she was capable of caring for herself. She did not need him, and he would not impose himself upon her without her request.
"She's strong," he commented. "Stronger than most of the elves here. She belongs with the People someday. Not in this Alienage." Of course, it would be years before she would be able to make a choice such as that, and strength was little without cunning to match it. He would see to it that her strength did not get her into trouble.
"And you?" he asked, almost cautiously. He noted the bruises, the heavy landing, the hitch in her step speaking of the healing wounds she no doubt hid. "I would say you look well, but... I think I would be lying." He would understand if she did not wish to speak of anything, but perhaps it was a lack of speaking that had led them into difficulty. When so much went assumed and unsaid, the messages could easily be mistaken.
"None of them belong here," Amalia replied, tone laced lightly with irritation. Nobody belonged in such squalor. The Qun would not have tolerated it; that she did was wholly from necessity. Nevertheless, it was there she stopped on this particular subject, aware that she needn't make the point any sharper. It was evident enough. The query into her personal state, she found peculiar, more for the sheer novelty than anything. She rarely gave others cause to inquire so, though she was aware that she was not in the best shape, presently. The Qunari woman huffed a light breath, her mouth flashing upwards for the briefest moment.
"I have endured worse. I will endure this. I expect it will be easier, now." Though she had on several occasions found herself the unwitting recipient of that mercenary's assistance, more often than not, she'd been dealing with the Alienage's more violent problems on her own. That would be unlikely, in the future. These were his people, after all, if he'd returned, and she'd allow him to do what he would for them. The word Sataareth would not pass her lips, not anymore, but that wouldn't stop it from fitting.
Her eyes fell again on the dragon-bone blade, and she ventured the question. Well, statement, more precisely, but the question was implied. "You kept it. I don't understand."
Since they were speaking of it, Ithilian slid the blade out and looked at it himself. "Maybe it was something you said. About it not finding a purpose unless it was by my hand. You etched a single word into it, and I warped it into something that agreed with my misery. Maybe some part of me knew that was wrong." Honestly, he didn't really know. He'd been well into his ale by that time, and really the conversation with Amalia was all he remembered clearly. Everything after that was a blur of pain and dizziness.
"I didn't forget what you said, you know. Even drunk as I intended to be. Perhaps I'd had enough of who I was. But rather than let that simply be the end of it, I decided to start again, and make the sacrifice of my clan mean something. Also... I really wanted to set some darkspawn on fire." The good side of his lips curled upward slightly, but it lasted only a moment before returning.
"I... actually brought something for you," he said, reaching into a pocket, and growing slightly red on the good side of his face. "Near where my da'vhenan passed, an ironbark tree grew. The craftsman of the clan I found offered to make something of it, but I thought it better to do myself. I am no craftsman of great skill, but I felt I needed to." He pulled out what looked to be a necklace of some kind, a talisman of gleaming ironbark attached to a thin silver chain, light by the way he held it in his palm. The symbol was a strikingly simple swirl shaped as a teardrop, beginning at the top and curling around into the center.
"The symbol is that of Mythal, protector and mother, she who leads alongside Elgar'nan, the force of fatherhood and vengeance. It... may not have any practical purpose for you, but I would like you to have it all the same, if you wish." He held it out to her, palm upturned. Perhaps they could both carry favors from cultures they would never belong to.
For once, words were not ready to the Qunari's tongue, and indeed, it felt something like a lead weight in her mouth. Her first instinct had been to refuse; she would only be flying in the face of everything she'd ever learned of other people if she didn't. And yet, the symbolism was far from lost on her. She was Dalish no more than he was Qunari-- less, since she could do nothing regarding the circumstances of her birth. But the blade at his hip was proof, easily recognizable by one of her people, that he was the concern of a Qunari, whatever form that may take. Perhaps... perhaps it was acceptable for her to be of concern to him as well, if indeed that was what this meant. If it had been any of her folk, the interpretation would have been obvious; the Qunari did not give of the work of their hands without purpose. But here she was not so sure.
Warily, as though she expected the offer to be withdrawn at any moment (and part of her always would), she reached for the delicate object in his hand, taking it with a nearly reverential solemnity. Brushing her bare thumb over the wood, she contemplated the symbol for a moment. Protection, was it? It was more fitting than she would have guessed, truly. Perhaps she had not inadvertantly burned all of her bridges in her carelessness, after all. Inclining her head, she worked free the clasp and affixed the thin chain about her neck. "Then I shall keep a piece of your people as you have kept a piece of mine." This satisfied her; had she been living among the humans this long, she may have found herself considerably more frustrated ere now, but there was something heartening in watching a group of people care enough to look out for one another, as she was used to.
A small pause, then: "...I am glad of your return, Ithilian. Thank you."
"Glad to be back," Ithilian said, pleased with how that went, "though I can't say I missed the smell. Now, I'll need to find the hahren, and see if there's somewhere I might be able to rest my head. I'm sure they've given away my old house. I trust you'll come find me if I can assist with anything." He was rather looking forward to some rest. He... had not fared very well on the sea voyage back here. The Dalish did not handle the water easily.
It made Ithilian's nose twitch at first, mouth settling into an ever comfortable scowl as the scents of industry, poverty and oppression floated to his nostrils. For the briefest of moments he wondered if he had simply stayed in Ferelden... but no, he never would have been able to live with himself. Not after being here, not after seeing. The Relaferin clan was doing well, all things considered, but the elves here were not. And while he would no doubt have been a very useful and productive member of a clan such as they, Amalia's words had hung over him every day he'd spent away. I am not you, and I will not be enough. The Relaferin had the Brecilian as their protection, for it was not so weak as to be killed by a Blight, but the elves cornered into the Kirkwall Alienage had no one but each other, no cover from the oncoming storms, no one to stand up for them save Amalia. He wondered briefly if any of them had died while he was gone, anything he could have prevented. If Amalia had died. He'd find out soon enough.
As Ithilian passed the shemlen hunter's shop, he gave no thought to catching the eye of a passing guard, surprised at the lone elf who held an uncovered, disfigured and mutilated head above the others. His armor was not nearly so ragged as it had been when he'd left; his padded coat had been made anew, the patches and holes gone, the studded leather chestplate over that largely clean of blade nicks and repaired arrow punctures. It was as if the man himself had the wear and tear of the road removed, though of course some of the scars were impossible to cleanse.
He'd made the right choice. Even if some had died, even if their hope had sagged. Even if Lia and the Qunari woman were lost to him, he'd made the right choice. Reborn was entirely the wrong word for it, but it was hard to deny just how much he had needed time alone, time away, to return of his own accord to the place where his life had fallen apart before his eyes, and to let go of it. He'd been able to find the correct place, though the exact patch of earth was difficult to find now that the bloodstains had vanished into the earth or been washed away by the rains. How long he had simply sat there and listened for them he could not know, and though he knew not what words were said, Ithilian knew that when he left that place, his goodbyes had been said. Years too late, but late was better than never.
Vir sulahn'nehn. Vir dirthera. Vir samahl la numin. Vir lath sa'vunin.
He wondered just who the funeral had been for.
The vhenadahl stood strong as ever, Ithilian was glad to see. It was late morning, and the majority of the Alienage's inhabitants were out and about, though a few of them stopped to take note of the elven warrior make his way down the steps, vallaslin etched into his neck. A few gave cautious greetings, some he suspected too intimidated to speak to him personally, the pillar of elven defiance that he was. That was all well; there was one specific person he meant to seek out before any others.
In contrast to Ithilian's rather renewed appearance, the Qunari that sat in the boughs of the great elven-tree was a considerably the worse for wear of late. Forced to take on Viddethari at a much faster rate than she had initially suspected, she was now making daily trips outside the Alienage to see various clusters of them at clockwork intervals. None of the old ones were yet ready to be free from her instruction, either; the Qun was not something one learned in the space of a single year, no matter how long it had seemed. With no Tamassran present, what should have been the duties of several fell to one: her. Her nights were little more restful-- the City Guard did not bother itself protecting the Alienage, and the Coterie seemed only to grow bolder by the day. Perhaps she simply grew more weary. Aurora and Nostariel, too, were not going to teach themselves, and she had all but halted her pursuit of craft to accomodate everything she had to do.
It was an effort that had left her with darkened wisteria-colored circles beneath her eyes and an uncommon hitch in her stride; the result of the fact that her potions could not quite heal her injuries fast enough to keep up with the new ones she tended to accrue. For neither did the demands of the Qun slow, and it was not only for the elves here that she fought. Not even, perhaps, mostly for them, though it would be impossible to know that given her relentless continuation of the same task.
She had not reached her limits quite yet, however. Even so, she quietly chose to avoid the searching young faces that wound 'round the base of the tree, seeking her without calling her name, for this or that bit of entertainment, perhaps. She simply could not accomodate their wishes right now, and so she lay betwixt the branches of the vhenadahl, and wondered how long it would be until she failed them somehow. Back propped against the trunk, she had one knee angled upwards, forming a triangle with the wood she sat upon, her other leg dangling freely from the side of the limb. She was silent, and none thought to look up for what they sought.
Head tipped back against the bark, she'd let her eyes fall closed for what seemed the scarcest moment when she heard the approach of someone new entering the Alienage. She felt compelled to look, as she had every time for nearly a year now, and part of her openly mocked the rest for continuing such a futile endeavor. Still, she had to look, because it might be danger, and she was the only one left who could deal with that. Slowly, her eyes cracked open to the leafy canopy, sunlight filtering in through the gaps in the light green of the leaves. Tilting her head sideways and down, she almost laughed at herself. Hissra. She was surely conjuring illusions, now. But she did not laugh, and for a long moment, she did not speak. Blinking once, twice, three times, she managed to ascertain that her visual faculties were indeed working, which perhaps warranted... something.
"You have been gone long, Ithilian."
It was not her usual place, nor did she seem entirely her usual self. Ithilian felt a pang of guilt for that, but what he had done simply could not have been rushed. What he did needed to be his choice, else he never would have been free of it. Amalia looked... tired was perhaps the wrong word, for it did not describe it adequately. He imagined he had looked similar in the days leading to the fall of his clan, when he had pushed himself beyond his typical capabilities for months on end, waiting for something, anything, to relieve the pressure and let him rest. Of course, it never came. If she would let him take the pressure off of her once more, he would be more than happy to do so.
"Some wounds take a long time to heal," he answered back from the base of the tree, peering up at her perch with his remaining eye. His hands rested on the belt tied over his coat, where Parshaara was contained. His elven blades were kept in a pair of sheaths on his back, his Dalish longbow sheathed upon his rear. The elf was a small arsenal of weaponry compared to those around him. Again he almost felt guilty for the renewal he had clearly gone through, when compared to the wear that showed upon her very face.
"Before I left, what I said... I was a fool. It took me far too long to see that. I had to leave, had to return to where I lost everything, and... let go. I am sorry I was not able to return sooner, but I knew that I would not be able to help these people if I could not first come to terms with myself." There. He'd wanted to say that for a long time. Honestly, he wasn't really sure what he wanted in return. He did not need approval, or forgiveness. Maybe he just wanted to say that he finally believed he could be enough.
Amalia was silent for a while, letting the words hang in the air as she studied him, cataloging the changes in his appearance and demeanor. Finally, she nodded simply and shifted, jumping down from the tree branch to stand on a level with him. Though she landed a little harder than she would have preferred, she stood straight, rolling her left shoulder. There was still a large, blue bruise there from a few days ago. "If you were unwise, you were not alone in it. I have lived only one way, learned to see only certain things. I overstepped myself. I shan't make the mistake again." Her glance flickered to Parshaara, and a crease appeared between her eyebrows, but when she spoke again, it was of something else.
"In the meantime, little has changed here. If there is anything in particular you would know, I am likely in a position to speak of it." Presumption was what had driven her astray in the first place, and she would not at present say anything else unless he asked.
Ithilian silently agreed with her. He could not be certain, but he suspected that she had almost begun to see him as one of her kind. Qunari. But the one thing that he said back in the Hanged Man that he agreed with was that he was no Qunari, and even if she saw fit to call him Sataareth, he did not want to be Qunari. He was a Dalish elf, one of the People, and always would be. The Keeper of Relaferin clan had offered him the chance to officially join them, even if he chose not to stay, but Ithilian had refused. He was not yet ready to belong to a clan again, but he knew that someday, that was what he wanted to have again. It would not be the same, never be the same, but it didn't need to be. It would be different, and beautiful in its own way. That was what he wanted.
For now, there was the business here to attend to. He felt awkward asking it at first, but he was glad for the chance to ask the question himself. "How is Lia?" He did not need to be Qunari, and she did not need to be an elf, for their interests to align, and for them to have the chance to remain... friends. If that was the appropriate word. Perhaps there wasn't an appropriate word for it. They simply were.
"Taking care of herself quite well," Amalia replied simply, having expected this question at least. "Her father is deceased; an illness took him a few months into the intervening year. She was... distraught, at first, but she manages now. Admirably, for one so young." She considered mentioning that nobody else had died in the past year, but it didn't seem particularly important. She would have said so if anyone had, of course, but honestly nothing was all that different besides the rising strength of the Coterie. Rumors placed some new figure behind that, but nothing was yet certain about the situation.
Though natural curiosity bid her ask some questions of her own, she knew well enough what it was to need closure, and she didn't have to understand the particulars to know that these were matters best left alone, unless he wished to speak of them. She'd buried enough ghosts of her own, though she expected he had not yet had cause to visit his own grave, as she once had. But that was not for thinking of in daylight, was it? "Two new families have moved in, and one left, I believe to join the Dalish on Sundermont. The rest yet remain."
Ithilian sniffed slightly in displeasure upon hearing that the Sabrae clan was still here at all. They should have moved on by now. Lack of halla or no, Kirkwall was no place for a group of free elves to linger near. As far as Lia went... the Gods had an interesting way of answering prayers that had never been spoken. He could not deny that he'd wanted to be a father again when he met her, that seeing the fire and strength within her had reminded him of his lost daughter and wife, but such thoughts were what led him into the height of his misery, and he would not follow that again. Lia was not his daughter, and would never be his daughter. He would look out for her as he would any of his clan, but if Amalia spoke true, and he knew she had, she was capable of caring for herself. She did not need him, and he would not impose himself upon her without her request.
"She's strong," he commented. "Stronger than most of the elves here. She belongs with the People someday. Not in this Alienage." Of course, it would be years before she would be able to make a choice such as that, and strength was little without cunning to match it. He would see to it that her strength did not get her into trouble.
"And you?" he asked, almost cautiously. He noted the bruises, the heavy landing, the hitch in her step speaking of the healing wounds she no doubt hid. "I would say you look well, but... I think I would be lying." He would understand if she did not wish to speak of anything, but perhaps it was a lack of speaking that had led them into difficulty. When so much went assumed and unsaid, the messages could easily be mistaken.
"None of them belong here," Amalia replied, tone laced lightly with irritation. Nobody belonged in such squalor. The Qun would not have tolerated it; that she did was wholly from necessity. Nevertheless, it was there she stopped on this particular subject, aware that she needn't make the point any sharper. It was evident enough. The query into her personal state, she found peculiar, more for the sheer novelty than anything. She rarely gave others cause to inquire so, though she was aware that she was not in the best shape, presently. The Qunari woman huffed a light breath, her mouth flashing upwards for the briefest moment.
"I have endured worse. I will endure this. I expect it will be easier, now." Though she had on several occasions found herself the unwitting recipient of that mercenary's assistance, more often than not, she'd been dealing with the Alienage's more violent problems on her own. That would be unlikely, in the future. These were his people, after all, if he'd returned, and she'd allow him to do what he would for them. The word Sataareth would not pass her lips, not anymore, but that wouldn't stop it from fitting.
Her eyes fell again on the dragon-bone blade, and she ventured the question. Well, statement, more precisely, but the question was implied. "You kept it. I don't understand."
Since they were speaking of it, Ithilian slid the blade out and looked at it himself. "Maybe it was something you said. About it not finding a purpose unless it was by my hand. You etched a single word into it, and I warped it into something that agreed with my misery. Maybe some part of me knew that was wrong." Honestly, he didn't really know. He'd been well into his ale by that time, and really the conversation with Amalia was all he remembered clearly. Everything after that was a blur of pain and dizziness.
"I didn't forget what you said, you know. Even drunk as I intended to be. Perhaps I'd had enough of who I was. But rather than let that simply be the end of it, I decided to start again, and make the sacrifice of my clan mean something. Also... I really wanted to set some darkspawn on fire." The good side of his lips curled upward slightly, but it lasted only a moment before returning.
"I... actually brought something for you," he said, reaching into a pocket, and growing slightly red on the good side of his face. "Near where my da'vhenan passed, an ironbark tree grew. The craftsman of the clan I found offered to make something of it, but I thought it better to do myself. I am no craftsman of great skill, but I felt I needed to." He pulled out what looked to be a necklace of some kind, a talisman of gleaming ironbark attached to a thin silver chain, light by the way he held it in his palm. The symbol was a strikingly simple swirl shaped as a teardrop, beginning at the top and curling around into the center.
"The symbol is that of Mythal, protector and mother, she who leads alongside Elgar'nan, the force of fatherhood and vengeance. It... may not have any practical purpose for you, but I would like you to have it all the same, if you wish." He held it out to her, palm upturned. Perhaps they could both carry favors from cultures they would never belong to.
For once, words were not ready to the Qunari's tongue, and indeed, it felt something like a lead weight in her mouth. Her first instinct had been to refuse; she would only be flying in the face of everything she'd ever learned of other people if she didn't. And yet, the symbolism was far from lost on her. She was Dalish no more than he was Qunari-- less, since she could do nothing regarding the circumstances of her birth. But the blade at his hip was proof, easily recognizable by one of her people, that he was the concern of a Qunari, whatever form that may take. Perhaps... perhaps it was acceptable for her to be of concern to him as well, if indeed that was what this meant. If it had been any of her folk, the interpretation would have been obvious; the Qunari did not give of the work of their hands without purpose. But here she was not so sure.
Warily, as though she expected the offer to be withdrawn at any moment (and part of her always would), she reached for the delicate object in his hand, taking it with a nearly reverential solemnity. Brushing her bare thumb over the wood, she contemplated the symbol for a moment. Protection, was it? It was more fitting than she would have guessed, truly. Perhaps she had not inadvertantly burned all of her bridges in her carelessness, after all. Inclining her head, she worked free the clasp and affixed the thin chain about her neck. "Then I shall keep a piece of your people as you have kept a piece of mine." This satisfied her; had she been living among the humans this long, she may have found herself considerably more frustrated ere now, but there was something heartening in watching a group of people care enough to look out for one another, as she was used to.
A small pause, then: "...I am glad of your return, Ithilian. Thank you."
"Glad to be back," Ithilian said, pleased with how that went, "though I can't say I missed the smell. Now, I'll need to find the hahren, and see if there's somewhere I might be able to rest my head. I'm sure they've given away my old house. I trust you'll come find me if I can assist with anything." He was rather looking forward to some rest. He... had not fared very well on the sea voyage back here. The Dalish did not handle the water easily.