A jaunty tune echoed through the empty shop, and the man whistling sat upon the front counter swinging his legs back and forth as he fletched another score of arrows. Ashton had peeled back most of the layers of the guardsman plate, the chest and arm pieces thrown haphazardly on the far side of the counter. He had yet to kick off the leggings and boots of the uniform, but at least he could breath now without the clinking of chains fouling up his ears. He looked down the length of wood, verifying that it was straight enough to fly true and once satisfied, set about adding a set of goose feathers to the tail end.
It was busy work, something to keep him preoccupied while he waited. He had morning duty that day, and had woken before the sun. By the time the sun broke the horizon, he'd already made one round through Lowtown with Snuffy and was beginning a quick check of Hightown. By late afternoon, he was allowed his leave and went straight to his shop. Snuffy on the other hand made a beeline upstairs to the lavish pillow she called a bed. While Ashton was accustomed to early dawn hours, she was not a morning creature. With a deft cut of a sharp blade, he cut grooves into the end of the shaft, and applied the glue and feathers before tying it off with a length of twine. He then set the half-finished arrow aside next to a number of similar shafts and began to repeat the process on another.
He was waiting for his very valuable employee to make her appearance. He'd sent Lia a missive that told to meet him at the shop, something to do with her continued employment. Since the Qunari incident, and his preoccupation with the guard, there hadn't been much of a shop to be an employee of. It was hard to hawk wares when such wares didn't exist, after all.
As often occurred, missives sent to the Alienage took a while to find their targets. Lia was not spending much time home of late, preferring to be out and about, or hunting, or spending time with Amalia or Ithilian, or with friends her age around the dilapidated elven buildings. When the missive did reach her, though, she made her way slowly up to the shop, grabbing her hunting gear first in case Ashton wanted her help in a different manner. She expected it would be cleaning duty today, if Ashton wanted to get the shop back up and running again, but she preferred to be prepared.
Wearing the same hooded shawl she commonly found herself donning, the elven girl warily made her way up through Lowtown, not speaking or really looking at anyone if she could help it. Amalia’s words still rattled around in her mind, but she didn’t really know how to interpret them when she felt eyes on her in passing.
Maybe she would talk to Amalia again about it sometime. For now, she had arrived at Ashton’s shop, pushing her way through the door to find her boss sitting on the counter, half of his guard armor removed from his person. “Enjoying the new job?” she asked, though her tone was not entirely interested. It had certainly been taking a good deal of his time, considering that she had stopped needing to come into work for a while now.
Setting her pack down against a wall and propping her bow and quiver up next to it, she turned around and looked expectantly at Ashton. “You wanted me for something?”
"In a sense, I guess I am. It's hard and thankless, and there's always the danger of getting stabbed in the face-- but that's nothing new, really. I'm just getting paid to get stabbed now," He said, winding the twine around the spine of one last arrow before laying his undivided attention on her. "You don't realize how much gunk is in the city until you start trying to scrape it out."
With that, Ashton drew his legs in and sat cross legged on the counter, elbows on his knees propping his head up. The job was difficult and sometimes he felt like he was never getting anywhere. No matter how many times he apprehended a criminal, routed a bandit, or helped the town drunk home, there was always another to take their place. If it wasn't due to his new found sense of blind optimism, he might've felt like he was drowning.
But he refused to see it that way. Every person he helped, every criminal he put behind bars, and every bandit he put down may have saved someone's life and it put him closer to the top, where he finally could enact real change. It was a long term goal, but he wasn't going anywhere fast. He looked at Lia and tilted his head in his puppy-like fashion and shrugged. "I'm sorry about the letter. I would've came for you personally, but the Alienage," he said, jerking his head to the guardsman plate, "Doesn't take too kindly to the uniform." And for good reason too. He always gave the Alienage a wide berth, out of respect, and out of common sense. Besides, they had both Ithilian and Amalia-- they'd be able to guard the Alienage better than the entire guard.
There was a lingering silence for a moment as he continued to stare at the uniform. "Tell me," he began, still staring, "What do you think? Honestly." Ashton asked, turning back to her. He was there when she relayed the story of how she ended up in the Gallows' prisoner, and remembered the guilt he felt for allowing it happen outside of his shop, and the helplessness that came with it. He wondered what she thought of him now, that he was one of them.
"Everyone wants to know what I think..." the elven girl mumbled in response. She sighed, though, and lifted herself up onto the counter. "I wouldn't mind knowing, too." She shrugged. First Amalia, and now Ashton, though Lia was fairly certain she wasn't going to be as comfortable opening up about anything to Ashton. He was right about the uniform... it wasn't doing him any favors.
She brought her feet up into a crosslegged position. "What I think... I think you were just fine before this. You weren't like other shem. You didn't need to tell anyone how to live. You didn't need power that you could hold over people." In the end, that had to be the root of it. Becoming a guard was about having more power for himself, for something that he decided he wanted to do. And if it was because of what happened to her... she didn't know what to think about that. But she didn't want her own misfortunes pushing the direction of someone else's life.
"I don't think ambition does people much good. Maybe you're different, I don't know. But I don't think all the men that took me joined the guard just so they could grab elven girls. Maybe some of them were more like you at some point, until they spent too much time with the gunk."
Ashton sat with a tip lipped frown marring his face, at least at first. It all broke moments after Lia had finished speaking, and he responded with a light hearted laugh. "Oh Lia, I thought you'd know me well enough to realize that I am still anything but ordinary. Like for example, one of my best friends is a tranquil, another is Sparrow and the love of my life is a Warden mage. Taking a step back and looking at it all, that's weird.," With that came another hearty chuckle. Ashton was Ashton, even a spiffy new uniform would have a tough time taking that away from him. As if to reinforce the point, Ashton dangled a leg off the lip of the counter and kicked it in a childlike manner.
"Look, I'm not going to sit here and preach at you. We both know I'm not the preaching type, and I have this feeling that having a heart-to-heart with me of all people wasn't exactly on your schedule this morning." He leaned backward on his hands and shrugged. If she wanted to talk, he'd listen, but if not then it was her choice. "So I'll tell you what I told Nos, and we'll leave it at that. Deal? All I want to do, is to do more than what I was doing before. I've already spent my time in the gunk, and I'm not planning on returning. I've turned the page on that part of my life."
"Now," He said, clapping his hands together. "Let's get to the meat of this little conference, yeah? Riddle me one more question. What are your plans for the future? What would you do if I told you I was closing down shop tomorrow? -- Hypothetically speaking of course. No one's getting fired... Yet." He threatened with a dance of the eyebrows. "Between you and me," He said, checking over his shoulders, "Snuffy's been slacking."
He was right; she hadn't really planned to do this right now, nor did she want to. But the subject was brought up, and while Lia didn't really feel like tearing through it at the moment, she didn't feel like backing down from it, either. She had enough knowledge of these kinds of things to know that just ignoring them was only going to make them worse.
"I didn't say you were ordinary. I was just trying to say that you're not infallible." She scratched at the back of her head, thinking. "Just... I don't know, ask yourself a lot why you do the things you do. So you don't forget." She didn't see how he was done with the gunk, as he had said. Working for them or putting them in the Gallows, there was no getting around them either way. But he obviously wanted to move on, so she didn't keep the talk there any longer.
A knowing grin spread across his face as he nodded his understanding. "Sweetheart, now you're the one preaching. To the choir, actually." She needn't tell him that he was not infallible. It was already something he knew and experienced first hand. He knew the mistakes he made and bore them on his shoulders, he didn't try to hide from them but learn and move on. There was a lot of fumbling involved, but at least he felt like he was fumbling forward. He placed a hand on the crown of her head and gave it a little ruffle.
She'd seen the closing shop coming, at least for a little while. He obviously didn't have the time to devote to this place anymore, and it was starting to show. He couldn't be a guard and a store-owner both, especially with the current demand on guards in Kirkwall at the moment. "Uh... I'd probably stay and find work in the Alienage. There's always something to do. Pay wouldn't be as good, obviously, if I got paid at all. But it's not like all that many elves actually make any money here." The jab at Snuffy got a tiny smirk from her, but that was all he was getting.
"You don't have to feel bad about closing the place down. Really, I'm better off than most kids my age. I'll be fine."
"I told you, hypothetically closing shop," he said, using finger quotes to emphasize the word, "In the end, it's not my decision to make." He leaned back and reached behind the counter, plucking an envelope he had stuffed away prior. He held it between his fingers, examining the outside before placing it on the counter and pressing it toward her. "It's yours."
With that bombshell dropped, he felt some sort of explanation was in order. "Now, as we both know, I've been busy of late," He said, pointing at the uniform, "And I can't run a shop and be a guard at the same time. I'm good, just not that good." he said, talking to his feet. "Now, before you start screaming charity, this isn't me doing you a favor. This is a business deal. That envelope has a bunch of lease papers and contracts. I'm willing to loan out the shop to you for a flat monthly payment," which was, of course, generous, "that begins when you get it up off the ground."
He made his way away the counter and began to pace the store and making a show of inspecting the property. "I'm not going to throw you into it and hope for the best. That'd be dumb. No, I'll get you into contact with my suppliers, show you how to balance the books, keep inventory, all of that technical junk that doesn't involve me being bored off my ass tending the front counter." He stopped near the wall, where he then crossed his arms and leaned against it. "This all assuming you agree, of course. No pressure or anything, you don't have to come up with a snap decision now. Take the papers home, look over all the contracts and stuff with Ithilian, make sure they're legit, and get back to me with what you want to do. If you think you're not up to it, well, then we'll shut her down."
"But. If you decide that this is what you want to do, then we'll make it happen."
That was all a bit much to take in, and it showed on Lia's face when her mouth dumbly hung open for a moment. "Uh..." she said, staring down at the envelope for a moment, before dragging it over to her by placing a single finger on it, like it was too hot to really grab. "Wow... that's... uh. Yeah..."
Elves didn't really run stores on their own. There was Rilien in Hightown, of course, but being Tranquil and incredibly skillful with working enchantments had a way of smoothing things out. She was just a normal person, and still a very young person. Sixteen year old girls in the Alienage were usually most concerned about who their parents were going to pawn them off to in a marriage, not with running stores, managing supplies and books and inventory and customers. She'd done some of that before, of course, when Ashton wasn't around, but it had always been clear that she was the helper, the servant, keeping the place tidy, not running it herself.
"I'll definitely have to talk it over," she said, finally taking the envelope. "But... yeah, I think I can make it work. With help." She would certainly need a lot of that, but it just so happened that Lia knew some of the best help around.
"Thanks, Ashton, this is... yeah, you know. Thanks."
It was busy work, something to keep him preoccupied while he waited. He had morning duty that day, and had woken before the sun. By the time the sun broke the horizon, he'd already made one round through Lowtown with Snuffy and was beginning a quick check of Hightown. By late afternoon, he was allowed his leave and went straight to his shop. Snuffy on the other hand made a beeline upstairs to the lavish pillow she called a bed. While Ashton was accustomed to early dawn hours, she was not a morning creature. With a deft cut of a sharp blade, he cut grooves into the end of the shaft, and applied the glue and feathers before tying it off with a length of twine. He then set the half-finished arrow aside next to a number of similar shafts and began to repeat the process on another.
He was waiting for his very valuable employee to make her appearance. He'd sent Lia a missive that told to meet him at the shop, something to do with her continued employment. Since the Qunari incident, and his preoccupation with the guard, there hadn't been much of a shop to be an employee of. It was hard to hawk wares when such wares didn't exist, after all.
As often occurred, missives sent to the Alienage took a while to find their targets. Lia was not spending much time home of late, preferring to be out and about, or hunting, or spending time with Amalia or Ithilian, or with friends her age around the dilapidated elven buildings. When the missive did reach her, though, she made her way slowly up to the shop, grabbing her hunting gear first in case Ashton wanted her help in a different manner. She expected it would be cleaning duty today, if Ashton wanted to get the shop back up and running again, but she preferred to be prepared.
Wearing the same hooded shawl she commonly found herself donning, the elven girl warily made her way up through Lowtown, not speaking or really looking at anyone if she could help it. Amalia’s words still rattled around in her mind, but she didn’t really know how to interpret them when she felt eyes on her in passing.
Maybe she would talk to Amalia again about it sometime. For now, she had arrived at Ashton’s shop, pushing her way through the door to find her boss sitting on the counter, half of his guard armor removed from his person. “Enjoying the new job?” she asked, though her tone was not entirely interested. It had certainly been taking a good deal of his time, considering that she had stopped needing to come into work for a while now.
Setting her pack down against a wall and propping her bow and quiver up next to it, she turned around and looked expectantly at Ashton. “You wanted me for something?”
"In a sense, I guess I am. It's hard and thankless, and there's always the danger of getting stabbed in the face-- but that's nothing new, really. I'm just getting paid to get stabbed now," He said, winding the twine around the spine of one last arrow before laying his undivided attention on her. "You don't realize how much gunk is in the city until you start trying to scrape it out."
With that, Ashton drew his legs in and sat cross legged on the counter, elbows on his knees propping his head up. The job was difficult and sometimes he felt like he was never getting anywhere. No matter how many times he apprehended a criminal, routed a bandit, or helped the town drunk home, there was always another to take their place. If it wasn't due to his new found sense of blind optimism, he might've felt like he was drowning.
But he refused to see it that way. Every person he helped, every criminal he put behind bars, and every bandit he put down may have saved someone's life and it put him closer to the top, where he finally could enact real change. It was a long term goal, but he wasn't going anywhere fast. He looked at Lia and tilted his head in his puppy-like fashion and shrugged. "I'm sorry about the letter. I would've came for you personally, but the Alienage," he said, jerking his head to the guardsman plate, "Doesn't take too kindly to the uniform." And for good reason too. He always gave the Alienage a wide berth, out of respect, and out of common sense. Besides, they had both Ithilian and Amalia-- they'd be able to guard the Alienage better than the entire guard.
There was a lingering silence for a moment as he continued to stare at the uniform. "Tell me," he began, still staring, "What do you think? Honestly." Ashton asked, turning back to her. He was there when she relayed the story of how she ended up in the Gallows' prisoner, and remembered the guilt he felt for allowing it happen outside of his shop, and the helplessness that came with it. He wondered what she thought of him now, that he was one of them.
"Everyone wants to know what I think..." the elven girl mumbled in response. She sighed, though, and lifted herself up onto the counter. "I wouldn't mind knowing, too." She shrugged. First Amalia, and now Ashton, though Lia was fairly certain she wasn't going to be as comfortable opening up about anything to Ashton. He was right about the uniform... it wasn't doing him any favors.
She brought her feet up into a crosslegged position. "What I think... I think you were just fine before this. You weren't like other shem. You didn't need to tell anyone how to live. You didn't need power that you could hold over people." In the end, that had to be the root of it. Becoming a guard was about having more power for himself, for something that he decided he wanted to do. And if it was because of what happened to her... she didn't know what to think about that. But she didn't want her own misfortunes pushing the direction of someone else's life.
"I don't think ambition does people much good. Maybe you're different, I don't know. But I don't think all the men that took me joined the guard just so they could grab elven girls. Maybe some of them were more like you at some point, until they spent too much time with the gunk."
Ashton sat with a tip lipped frown marring his face, at least at first. It all broke moments after Lia had finished speaking, and he responded with a light hearted laugh. "Oh Lia, I thought you'd know me well enough to realize that I am still anything but ordinary. Like for example, one of my best friends is a tranquil, another is Sparrow and the love of my life is a Warden mage. Taking a step back and looking at it all, that's weird.," With that came another hearty chuckle. Ashton was Ashton, even a spiffy new uniform would have a tough time taking that away from him. As if to reinforce the point, Ashton dangled a leg off the lip of the counter and kicked it in a childlike manner.
"Look, I'm not going to sit here and preach at you. We both know I'm not the preaching type, and I have this feeling that having a heart-to-heart with me of all people wasn't exactly on your schedule this morning." He leaned backward on his hands and shrugged. If she wanted to talk, he'd listen, but if not then it was her choice. "So I'll tell you what I told Nos, and we'll leave it at that. Deal? All I want to do, is to do more than what I was doing before. I've already spent my time in the gunk, and I'm not planning on returning. I've turned the page on that part of my life."
"Now," He said, clapping his hands together. "Let's get to the meat of this little conference, yeah? Riddle me one more question. What are your plans for the future? What would you do if I told you I was closing down shop tomorrow? -- Hypothetically speaking of course. No one's getting fired... Yet." He threatened with a dance of the eyebrows. "Between you and me," He said, checking over his shoulders, "Snuffy's been slacking."
He was right; she hadn't really planned to do this right now, nor did she want to. But the subject was brought up, and while Lia didn't really feel like tearing through it at the moment, she didn't feel like backing down from it, either. She had enough knowledge of these kinds of things to know that just ignoring them was only going to make them worse.
"I didn't say you were ordinary. I was just trying to say that you're not infallible." She scratched at the back of her head, thinking. "Just... I don't know, ask yourself a lot why you do the things you do. So you don't forget." She didn't see how he was done with the gunk, as he had said. Working for them or putting them in the Gallows, there was no getting around them either way. But he obviously wanted to move on, so she didn't keep the talk there any longer.
A knowing grin spread across his face as he nodded his understanding. "Sweetheart, now you're the one preaching. To the choir, actually." She needn't tell him that he was not infallible. It was already something he knew and experienced first hand. He knew the mistakes he made and bore them on his shoulders, he didn't try to hide from them but learn and move on. There was a lot of fumbling involved, but at least he felt like he was fumbling forward. He placed a hand on the crown of her head and gave it a little ruffle.
She'd seen the closing shop coming, at least for a little while. He obviously didn't have the time to devote to this place anymore, and it was starting to show. He couldn't be a guard and a store-owner both, especially with the current demand on guards in Kirkwall at the moment. "Uh... I'd probably stay and find work in the Alienage. There's always something to do. Pay wouldn't be as good, obviously, if I got paid at all. But it's not like all that many elves actually make any money here." The jab at Snuffy got a tiny smirk from her, but that was all he was getting.
"You don't have to feel bad about closing the place down. Really, I'm better off than most kids my age. I'll be fine."
"I told you, hypothetically closing shop," he said, using finger quotes to emphasize the word, "In the end, it's not my decision to make." He leaned back and reached behind the counter, plucking an envelope he had stuffed away prior. He held it between his fingers, examining the outside before placing it on the counter and pressing it toward her. "It's yours."
With that bombshell dropped, he felt some sort of explanation was in order. "Now, as we both know, I've been busy of late," He said, pointing at the uniform, "And I can't run a shop and be a guard at the same time. I'm good, just not that good." he said, talking to his feet. "Now, before you start screaming charity, this isn't me doing you a favor. This is a business deal. That envelope has a bunch of lease papers and contracts. I'm willing to loan out the shop to you for a flat monthly payment," which was, of course, generous, "that begins when you get it up off the ground."
He made his way away the counter and began to pace the store and making a show of inspecting the property. "I'm not going to throw you into it and hope for the best. That'd be dumb. No, I'll get you into contact with my suppliers, show you how to balance the books, keep inventory, all of that technical junk that doesn't involve me being bored off my ass tending the front counter." He stopped near the wall, where he then crossed his arms and leaned against it. "This all assuming you agree, of course. No pressure or anything, you don't have to come up with a snap decision now. Take the papers home, look over all the contracts and stuff with Ithilian, make sure they're legit, and get back to me with what you want to do. If you think you're not up to it, well, then we'll shut her down."
"But. If you decide that this is what you want to do, then we'll make it happen."
That was all a bit much to take in, and it showed on Lia's face when her mouth dumbly hung open for a moment. "Uh..." she said, staring down at the envelope for a moment, before dragging it over to her by placing a single finger on it, like it was too hot to really grab. "Wow... that's... uh. Yeah..."
Elves didn't really run stores on their own. There was Rilien in Hightown, of course, but being Tranquil and incredibly skillful with working enchantments had a way of smoothing things out. She was just a normal person, and still a very young person. Sixteen year old girls in the Alienage were usually most concerned about who their parents were going to pawn them off to in a marriage, not with running stores, managing supplies and books and inventory and customers. She'd done some of that before, of course, when Ashton wasn't around, but it had always been clear that she was the helper, the servant, keeping the place tidy, not running it herself.
"I'll definitely have to talk it over," she said, finally taking the envelope. "But... yeah, I think I can make it work. With help." She would certainly need a lot of that, but it just so happened that Lia knew some of the best help around.
"Thanks, Ashton, this is... yeah, you know. Thanks."