Droplets of water beaded at her chin, returning to the basin below. Amalia lifted her heavy curtain of hair and circled her palm around to the back of her neck, before straightening and drying her face and hands. The early summer was quite warm this year, and while she was used to such things, that didnāt make them pleasant. Twisting her hair into a braid, she pinned it all so that it would stay above her nape, heedless of the wisps that escaped at either side.
The way she recalled it, there was a sure way to spend a day like this, or at least part of one. From the corner of her room, she took up her harp, adjusting the strap so that it sat comfortably at her back, and then removed a small length of rope from her other things and looped it around her waist a few times for the moment, just above her belt. She contemplated her armament for a moment, and contented herself with the knife already at her waist.
On her way out of the Alienage, she spotted Ithilian beneath the vhenadahl, and changed course so as to come stand nearby him. He had been behaving unusually, of late, though perhaps it would not seem so to someone who knew him less well than she did. Though she usually did not inquire after such matters, believing that he would tell her if he wished to, she also found herself in the rather unusual position of wanting to inquire after his thoughts even if he was not inclined to share. She checked the impulse however, and asked a different question instead.
āI am going to the sea. Perhaps you would like to come?ā
Ithilian had nearly drifted into sleep. He had a tendency to do so of late, though while his body often felt tired, his mind was beginning to grow restless.
He thought a great deal. Recently he thought of little other than what had occurred to Emerion, of Templars and their leader, and his place in all of it. For the longest time, he thought he had no place in it, no business getting between mages and their jailors. The tattoos marking his skin separated him from the problems of their Chantry; he was not their business, and they were not his. Recent events had shown him otherwise. Perhaps the clans deep in the forests or along the mountain slopes could ignore what was happening here, but Ithilian could not.
As for Emerion, he wondered if grief was simply an old acquaintance, allowed to slink back in when it wished, stay for a while, and then take its leave. He felt no great heartache for the loss of his friend, and this bothered him. Perhaps it had simply been too long, and too much had been established in the place of that friendship since they had known each other. Perhaps some part of Ithilian had been angry at him for endangering the Alienage by arriving here in the first place.
The sea might help, he supposed. Grunting his assent, Ithilian stood and went to collect a few things. Better shoes, a carving knife and a small hunk of wood that was beginning to look like a fennec, and Parshaara. He wore a light, sleeveless tunic, his bare arms dotted in places with scars of varying sizes. He'd even slashed at a bit of his hair, if only to prevent it from reaching too far down the back of his neck.
They walked in silence as they often did. Ithilian for one wished to hold off on speaking until they were out of the city, away from the voices and the noise, the air a little clearer around them, smelling less of sweat and filth, and more like the sea. He'd been meaning to speak to Amalia about all of this, but needed to collect his thoughts first. He was not an elf that came to rushed conclusions anymore. Or at least, he tried not to.
"Do you want to leave?" he asked finally, a bit out of the blue, but not exactly blurted. "The Alienage, I mean. Eventually I hope there will be nothing to hold us there." He wasn't exactly old yet, but his years had not been kind to him, and he was far from young. Amalia was younger, though her years had been no less harsh. He did not want to live at the bottom of Lowtown forever. Nor did he want her to.
Amalia was silent for a while, though her facial expression indicated she was contemplating the question. When theyād first reached sand, sheād stopped and taken her boots off, tying them each to one end of the rope she had and setting that over her shoulder, and so the ground was warm beneath her bare feet, and she relished the feeling of the grains of sand between her toes as she tread over it.
She still hadnāt answered by the time they reached their destination, a small cove tucked away from the main road into and out of Kirkwall. It was a familiar one, too, with a small cliff jutting out towards the sea on her left, along with a more gradual slope to the seaside, dotted here and there with large, smooth, slate-colored stones. She left her shoes near the top of the slope and descended all the way down to the bottom, so that the waves washed over her feet when they came up onto the sand. It smelledā¦ not like home, not anymore. But it smelled familiar, the salt tang in the air and baking stone and the plants behind them on the other side of the road.
After a slow, comfortable minute of thought spent looking out over the blue expanse, glossed almost to mirror-shine by the harsh light of the sun, she spoke. āI do if you do,ā she said at last. She had never had much of an enduring sense of place. Her early life had been spent on Qunari lands exclusively, but the Qunari were not attached to places, particularly. Land was something to be conquered or defended, then cared for and cultivated, but it had no emotional significance. And after her training, sheād been on the move most of the time, between Tevinter, Seheron, Rivain, and Par Vollen. She hadnāt stayed so long in one place until the Alienage, but she wasnāt especially attached to it. She cared about what happened to the people there, of courseāshe was not without a heart.
But she wasnāt tethered there by any means. She could leave, and she would not regret it. Not if kadan was leaving, too. āBut where would we go?ā No Dalish group would accept her, and frankly, she didnāt think that was what he would want to do, either. Not after everything. Conversely, it would be difficult for him to live anywhere with a high concentration of humans. Of course, there was always the possibility of going nowhere in particular, justā¦ moving, as the case may be. She wouldnāt mind it, but she was curious as to what heād meant.
It was indeed what Ithilian had in mind, or at least what he thought of as they settled back into the cove. He had refused to allow himself to think too much on it; there was still work to be done here, and he didn't want to risk anyone else by spending too much time daydreaming. But though he no longer saw returning to the Dalish as an option, their way of life had been forever ingrained into who he was, just as Amalia would never be entirely separated from her own upbringing. And part of being Dalish was always being on the move. The Dalish had no home. The very idea of it was foreign to them. Home was wherever the right people were, and he now had her assurance that she would follow, if he wanted to leave.
"I don't know," he admitted, absently continuing his work on his carving. He'd been planning to give it to Lia, though she already had a small collection. "Maybe north? Somewhere a little warmer." He knew she wasn't fond of the cold. It was also perhaps more politically stable than the south. No Blights to recover from, no civil wars looming ahead. He wouldn't think of going so far as to be near Tevinter and all the complications that could arise from that, but... surely there was some place in between.
There was... one other matter that troubled him, something that had been on his mind since even before the troubles with Emerion and the looming disaster in Kirkwall. "Marcus will come back for you someday." It wasn't stated as a question, because he knew it to be fact, and he knew it to be a problem they would eventually need to deal with, or they would die. From what scarce dealings with the man Ithilian had, he knew he was not the type to give up, especially on such a personal matter. And while there were still a few things binding them to Kirkwall, Marcus would affect them no matter where they went.
"Do you want to track him down? Kill him?" He imagined that would be no simple task for the two of them, outcasts from whatever society they could try to enter, to face down the might of a magister, but it was a necessary task to secure their freedom. And Ithilian wanted nothing more than that for Amalia.
The truth of the matter was, Amalia really didnāt particularly want to kill Marcus. He was a terrible excuse for a human being, that was true, and heād hurt her in a way she had not fully understood at the time, to say nothing of the wounds that had been left on her flesh. But it was the past, and she was content to be done with it. She had learned already that it need have no hold on her future. What was moreā¦ she wondered now if sheād be able to do it. With greater distance from the events, she understood that though he had betrayed her, there was a time also when they had been friends. They never would be again, but it was still a fact difficult to forget.
But regardless of how she felt, she knew it may well be necessary. He wouldnāt stop whatever gambit he was attempting to play until one or both of them was dead. āHe would have a difficult time finding us,ā she said, leaning back onto her palms. āWe would have an even more difficult time getting to him, in Tevinter.ā It wasnāt a place she wanted to risk going anyway, for entirely separate reasons.
āBut it seems that as of late he has been seeking influence outside of it. If we keep our eyes and ears open, weāll encounter him eventually.ā And when they did, wellā¦ it would be for the last time, one way or another. No more escapes, not by either of them. She did not desire to live with this pursuit always dogging her shadow.
"And we'll make sure we have the advantage when we do," Ithilian said. Obviously it wouldn't be so easy as that; if Marcus so much as caught wind of them, he would undoubtedly attempt to lure them in, make them think they had the advantage. More than that, they would probably only have one shot. Neither side would tolerate another retreat.
"We'll be cautious. We'll avoid Tevinter. But we will finish this. And then, when it's over, we'll find something for ourselves. If it happens to be back here in Kirkwall, so be it. It's not the prettiest place I could think of to live out my days in, but it's not nothing, either." As much as Ithilian resented Kirkwall at times, he could not fail to recognize that the years since he'd arrived had been the most important time of his life.
And much of that was due to the woman he currently sat beside. She was the reason he could no longer recognize the hateful, broken person he had been after the Blight, one of the only reasons he was able to have the confidence to attach himself again, to raise a child again and watch her make her own way, to trust in people he would have spat on in his youth. The knowledge that he had a similarly positive effect on her in return only confirmed the words she often spoke to him, that he was enough. For her, for himself, for whatever he wanted to do in this world.
Loosening the strap holding her harp to her back, Amalia brought it to her lap, brow creased thoughtfully. āSomething for ourselves,ā she murmured, thumbing a string. It was still a bit odd, to think in terms like that, but it wasnāt unpleasant. She had no idea what sheād want, if she could choose for only her own sake and Ithilianās, but it was a question worth consideration. Her expression eased, becoming a small smile, and she nodded. āThat soundsā¦ pleasant. I shall look forward to it.ā
The way she recalled it, there was a sure way to spend a day like this, or at least part of one. From the corner of her room, she took up her harp, adjusting the strap so that it sat comfortably at her back, and then removed a small length of rope from her other things and looped it around her waist a few times for the moment, just above her belt. She contemplated her armament for a moment, and contented herself with the knife already at her waist.
On her way out of the Alienage, she spotted Ithilian beneath the vhenadahl, and changed course so as to come stand nearby him. He had been behaving unusually, of late, though perhaps it would not seem so to someone who knew him less well than she did. Though she usually did not inquire after such matters, believing that he would tell her if he wished to, she also found herself in the rather unusual position of wanting to inquire after his thoughts even if he was not inclined to share. She checked the impulse however, and asked a different question instead.
āI am going to the sea. Perhaps you would like to come?ā
Ithilian had nearly drifted into sleep. He had a tendency to do so of late, though while his body often felt tired, his mind was beginning to grow restless.
He thought a great deal. Recently he thought of little other than what had occurred to Emerion, of Templars and their leader, and his place in all of it. For the longest time, he thought he had no place in it, no business getting between mages and their jailors. The tattoos marking his skin separated him from the problems of their Chantry; he was not their business, and they were not his. Recent events had shown him otherwise. Perhaps the clans deep in the forests or along the mountain slopes could ignore what was happening here, but Ithilian could not.
As for Emerion, he wondered if grief was simply an old acquaintance, allowed to slink back in when it wished, stay for a while, and then take its leave. He felt no great heartache for the loss of his friend, and this bothered him. Perhaps it had simply been too long, and too much had been established in the place of that friendship since they had known each other. Perhaps some part of Ithilian had been angry at him for endangering the Alienage by arriving here in the first place.
The sea might help, he supposed. Grunting his assent, Ithilian stood and went to collect a few things. Better shoes, a carving knife and a small hunk of wood that was beginning to look like a fennec, and Parshaara. He wore a light, sleeveless tunic, his bare arms dotted in places with scars of varying sizes. He'd even slashed at a bit of his hair, if only to prevent it from reaching too far down the back of his neck.
They walked in silence as they often did. Ithilian for one wished to hold off on speaking until they were out of the city, away from the voices and the noise, the air a little clearer around them, smelling less of sweat and filth, and more like the sea. He'd been meaning to speak to Amalia about all of this, but needed to collect his thoughts first. He was not an elf that came to rushed conclusions anymore. Or at least, he tried not to.
"Do you want to leave?" he asked finally, a bit out of the blue, but not exactly blurted. "The Alienage, I mean. Eventually I hope there will be nothing to hold us there." He wasn't exactly old yet, but his years had not been kind to him, and he was far from young. Amalia was younger, though her years had been no less harsh. He did not want to live at the bottom of Lowtown forever. Nor did he want her to.
Amalia was silent for a while, though her facial expression indicated she was contemplating the question. When theyād first reached sand, sheād stopped and taken her boots off, tying them each to one end of the rope she had and setting that over her shoulder, and so the ground was warm beneath her bare feet, and she relished the feeling of the grains of sand between her toes as she tread over it.
She still hadnāt answered by the time they reached their destination, a small cove tucked away from the main road into and out of Kirkwall. It was a familiar one, too, with a small cliff jutting out towards the sea on her left, along with a more gradual slope to the seaside, dotted here and there with large, smooth, slate-colored stones. She left her shoes near the top of the slope and descended all the way down to the bottom, so that the waves washed over her feet when they came up onto the sand. It smelledā¦ not like home, not anymore. But it smelled familiar, the salt tang in the air and baking stone and the plants behind them on the other side of the road.
After a slow, comfortable minute of thought spent looking out over the blue expanse, glossed almost to mirror-shine by the harsh light of the sun, she spoke. āI do if you do,ā she said at last. She had never had much of an enduring sense of place. Her early life had been spent on Qunari lands exclusively, but the Qunari were not attached to places, particularly. Land was something to be conquered or defended, then cared for and cultivated, but it had no emotional significance. And after her training, sheād been on the move most of the time, between Tevinter, Seheron, Rivain, and Par Vollen. She hadnāt stayed so long in one place until the Alienage, but she wasnāt especially attached to it. She cared about what happened to the people there, of courseāshe was not without a heart.
But she wasnāt tethered there by any means. She could leave, and she would not regret it. Not if kadan was leaving, too. āBut where would we go?ā No Dalish group would accept her, and frankly, she didnāt think that was what he would want to do, either. Not after everything. Conversely, it would be difficult for him to live anywhere with a high concentration of humans. Of course, there was always the possibility of going nowhere in particular, justā¦ moving, as the case may be. She wouldnāt mind it, but she was curious as to what heād meant.
It was indeed what Ithilian had in mind, or at least what he thought of as they settled back into the cove. He had refused to allow himself to think too much on it; there was still work to be done here, and he didn't want to risk anyone else by spending too much time daydreaming. But though he no longer saw returning to the Dalish as an option, their way of life had been forever ingrained into who he was, just as Amalia would never be entirely separated from her own upbringing. And part of being Dalish was always being on the move. The Dalish had no home. The very idea of it was foreign to them. Home was wherever the right people were, and he now had her assurance that she would follow, if he wanted to leave.
"I don't know," he admitted, absently continuing his work on his carving. He'd been planning to give it to Lia, though she already had a small collection. "Maybe north? Somewhere a little warmer." He knew she wasn't fond of the cold. It was also perhaps more politically stable than the south. No Blights to recover from, no civil wars looming ahead. He wouldn't think of going so far as to be near Tevinter and all the complications that could arise from that, but... surely there was some place in between.
There was... one other matter that troubled him, something that had been on his mind since even before the troubles with Emerion and the looming disaster in Kirkwall. "Marcus will come back for you someday." It wasn't stated as a question, because he knew it to be fact, and he knew it to be a problem they would eventually need to deal with, or they would die. From what scarce dealings with the man Ithilian had, he knew he was not the type to give up, especially on such a personal matter. And while there were still a few things binding them to Kirkwall, Marcus would affect them no matter where they went.
"Do you want to track him down? Kill him?" He imagined that would be no simple task for the two of them, outcasts from whatever society they could try to enter, to face down the might of a magister, but it was a necessary task to secure their freedom. And Ithilian wanted nothing more than that for Amalia.
The truth of the matter was, Amalia really didnāt particularly want to kill Marcus. He was a terrible excuse for a human being, that was true, and heād hurt her in a way she had not fully understood at the time, to say nothing of the wounds that had been left on her flesh. But it was the past, and she was content to be done with it. She had learned already that it need have no hold on her future. What was moreā¦ she wondered now if sheād be able to do it. With greater distance from the events, she understood that though he had betrayed her, there was a time also when they had been friends. They never would be again, but it was still a fact difficult to forget.
But regardless of how she felt, she knew it may well be necessary. He wouldnāt stop whatever gambit he was attempting to play until one or both of them was dead. āHe would have a difficult time finding us,ā she said, leaning back onto her palms. āWe would have an even more difficult time getting to him, in Tevinter.ā It wasnāt a place she wanted to risk going anyway, for entirely separate reasons.
āBut it seems that as of late he has been seeking influence outside of it. If we keep our eyes and ears open, weāll encounter him eventually.ā And when they did, wellā¦ it would be for the last time, one way or another. No more escapes, not by either of them. She did not desire to live with this pursuit always dogging her shadow.
"And we'll make sure we have the advantage when we do," Ithilian said. Obviously it wouldn't be so easy as that; if Marcus so much as caught wind of them, he would undoubtedly attempt to lure them in, make them think they had the advantage. More than that, they would probably only have one shot. Neither side would tolerate another retreat.
"We'll be cautious. We'll avoid Tevinter. But we will finish this. And then, when it's over, we'll find something for ourselves. If it happens to be back here in Kirkwall, so be it. It's not the prettiest place I could think of to live out my days in, but it's not nothing, either." As much as Ithilian resented Kirkwall at times, he could not fail to recognize that the years since he'd arrived had been the most important time of his life.
And much of that was due to the woman he currently sat beside. She was the reason he could no longer recognize the hateful, broken person he had been after the Blight, one of the only reasons he was able to have the confidence to attach himself again, to raise a child again and watch her make her own way, to trust in people he would have spat on in his youth. The knowledge that he had a similarly positive effect on her in return only confirmed the words she often spoke to him, that he was enough. For her, for himself, for whatever he wanted to do in this world.
Loosening the strap holding her harp to her back, Amalia brought it to her lap, brow creased thoughtfully. āSomething for ourselves,ā she murmured, thumbing a string. It was still a bit odd, to think in terms like that, but it wasnāt unpleasant. She had no idea what sheād want, if she could choose for only her own sake and Ithilianās, but it was a question worth consideration. Her expression eased, becoming a small smile, and she nodded. āThat soundsā¦ pleasant. I shall look forward to it.ā