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Then I’m afraid I’m out of ideas.

[ One would think free breakfast would be a start, but Richard is as dry now as he was when he first answered her call. ]

May I ask why you decided to join Riftwatch?

[ It's a good question, isn't it? Adrasteia takes a moment to mentally compose her answer. ] The Inquisition feels too large for my voice to do more than add to the cacophony. Riftwatch is small enough, focused enough, that it may do some good. Besides, I heard there were Wardens here, and I was wondering what the others were up to. Where they had focused their attention in the war effort.

[ All of which is true. What she doesn't say includes I never made it back to Weisshaupt after Adamant and I felt like I wasn't doing enough, or the right things, and I wanted the comfort of the familiar in unfamiliar times. ]

Edited (formatting, my nemesis) 2021-03-28 19:43 (UTC)

The notion of a focused effort may have been exaggerated, [ Dickerson is all too willing to hedge that expectation, invisible sheers nosed in through the optimism, snip snip, ] but the people here are mostly kind and unified in their willingness to risk life and limb for whatever disparate task is most recently deemed essential to the war effort.

[ He pauses to sigh once he’s said it, and goes back to forking at his toast under curds of cooling egg. ]

Warden Ellis has saved my life on at least two occasions.

[ One of them while dreaming, but far be it from him to canonize dirty deeds only. ]

Yes, I'm coming to understand that. [ The part about being 'focused' that is, anyway.

The other admission, however, has her raising her eyebrows but smiling. ]

Warden Ellis is a good Warden, a good man. I can't say that I'm surprised.

[ Just gonna finish off her sausage here, thanks. ]

He would disagree.

[ Just a casual observation, brief and to the point as Richard gives up on his fork and folds the toast up in his fingers to finish it off that way. ]

How well do you know him?

I imagine so.

[ That's the way of Ellis. It's also the way of Adrasteia, to insist someone is a good person even if they themselves would disagree with that evaluation.

She has no regrets in that direction. ]

I knew of him, before Adamant. We were never close, before. Why?

I’m a curious person.

[ This feels at least slightly more normal and polite than professing to be a curious human. ]

And it’s by his grace that we’re spending this time together.

[ He pushes the last of the bread in past his teeth in a lump, and effectively excuses himself from any kind of immediate answer with the time it’ll take him to chew it down. ]

[ Adrasteia nods at that. They're both curious people, clearly, or none of this would be happening. ]

Running water seeks its own level. Something my father used to say.

I'm glad that Ellis has people in his corner. [ She'd worried, upon her arrival to Kirkwall and learning he was here, that he didn't. That he had no one and was just existing, surviving as part of a group but functionally separate. It's nice to know that isn't entirely true.

She waits for him to finish chewing before asking: ] Do you miss your home terribly?

He’s done well for himself here.

[ His saying so is more calculated and considered than the sentiment should call for. It’s an easy observation to make, word choice and framing the only complications. He makes it sound as though Ellis has started a farm, and seems to know it, staying further elaboration with a drink of water. ]

I miss pieces of it that were important to me. [ Easy, reasonable, dry at a glance. He misses his cat and his god.

Otherwise there’s no love lost between him and the snakehole he crawled out of. ]

What about you?

Hm.

[ Adrasteia smiles to herself. She's very glad to hear that Ellis has done well, made friends, a lasting impression on several it would seem.

Also, who wouldn't miss the pieces of home that were important to them? But it's interesting, that his answer isn't just 'yes'. She has the impression that Richard is very particular about the things he says.

She's just not sure what that says about him. ]

I grew up near Amaranthine, do you know anything about it?

It sounds familiar.

[ Doubtless he’s read or overheard something in the year and a half he’s been here, even if the overall focus of his study has been directed towards the Fade and its spirits. His curiosity is too low key to suggest any immediate association between the name and anything the Darkspawn might’ve gotten up to there in decades past.

He’s only interested because she’s asked -- but he is interested. Breakfast has fueled some life back into him, worn down as he is. ]

It's a trading port and a place that is very proud of being where and what it is. It's also the Warden's arling in Ferelden. There's a route that runs between Amaranthine and Denerim, called the Pilgrim's Path. Anyway. It's off the Amaranthine Sea, southeast of here, along Ferelden's eastern coastline.

Wardens are very important there. The Hero of Ferelden saved the city from a darkspawn attack that happened just months after the Blight ended.

[ She opens her hands on the table in front of her, wondering if any of that information was even of any particular use towards answering his question.

Adrasteia takes a drink of her ale before she continues. ]

I've been a Warden since I was seventeen. I got as far from Amaranthine as I could; ended up in Orlais, in the Blasted Hills. I've never been back.

It's a lovely city, don't get me wrong. But there's nothing left there for me to miss.

[ He’s quiet while he does the math, cool eyes locked on across the table, steady, measuring connection at odds with his earlier slither in and out of eye contact. In any other month, at any other time, he might say I’m sorry that happened to you or that must have been very difficult.

Here and now, scruffy and ill-rested, he asks: ]

How did you survive?

I was fifteen and living with cousins outside of town, in the wake of the blight and my parents' deaths as a result. The area was overrun almost immediately; there were Wardens around, fighting. I did what I could to protect my cousins, which was mostly setting any creature on fire that came too close.

[ Adrasteia takes another sip of ale and shakes her head. ]

I was very lucky that no one was paying much attention, or I could have been shipped off to a Circle immediately.

[ Thedosians don’t fuck around with their origin stories, do they? Unsure what he expected, Richard nods on a distinct delay to allow for imagination to play itself out. ]

That is fortunate, [ he agrees, presumably on the subject of avoiding Circles and not her dead parents. ] I’m sorry about your family.

It's alright. It's not an uncommon tale, especially amongst Wardens.

[ Most of them have dead family. ]

But thank you.

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