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9:32 Dragon Age
Elenya was wandering through the Fade, dreaming of a mother she hadn't seen in almost twenty years, when she was suddenly jarred from her sleep. It took her a few moments to remember where she was: a tent in the middle of nowhere, headed to Vigil's Keep to become a Grey Warden. It took her even longer to figure out what it was that had awoken her: silence. Complete and utter silence, like none she'd ever experienced before.
Growing up in the Fereldan Tower of Magi had been noisy. The Tower had been crammed full top to bottom with mages and Templars alike. The apprentices slept in large dorm rooms filled with other children, and even after being Harrowed the mages had to share their rooms with at least one other person. And there was the constant sound of steel boots clanking against the floor and plate armor creaking as the Templars wandered the halls in their neverending vigilance. There was no privacy, and there was rarely any quiet—even in the middle of the night.
To awaken now to a total lack of noise was unsettling. There should be the sounds of the fire crackling, of the person on watch pacing through and around the campsite, of various animals going about their nighttime business—but there was nothing. Curiosity pulled at her, urging her to investigate.
She pulled back the furs covering her bedroll and immediately started shivering; it was late in the year and the nights were growing cold. She wrapped herself in the thick cloak that one of the Wardens accompanying her had given her earlier in the day and pulled on her light boots.
Elenya gasped aloud when she pulled back the tent flap and peered outside. It wasn’t just the freezing air rushing in that took her breath from her, it was also the fact that the landscape looked completely different from how it had been when they’d made camp hours ago. What had once been a land of green and brown was now pure white.
There was a brief feeling of vertigo as she stepped out of the tent—both the ground and the sky seemed to be so completely filled with white that one could almost have difficulty telling up from down. Elenya had heard of snow, of course, had read about it, but she’d never seen it before except on the distant mountaintops in the west that had sometimes been visible during their journey.
As she looked up into the sky in wonder, she immediately knew that it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life. What seemed like thousands and thousands of white, fluffy flakes of snow fell gently from the frigid air, blocking out the stars completely.
Wanting desperately to experience the snowfall as well as see it, she shrugged off her cloak and let it fall to the ground behind her. Feet crunching in several inches of snow, she walked towards where the campfire had been not too long ago, the logs that had been afire only a few hours ago now dark and smoldering from the onslaught of the winter storm.
Elenya tilted her head up to the sky, watching the snowflakes fall gently to the ground. This was what had awoken her, she knew—the snow seemed to block out all noises, to cast a hush over the land. It was almost as if nothing else in the world existed, save for this tiny clearing.
Her head still tipped upwards, she laughed lightly as she felt the cold flakes of snow press feather-light kisses against her face. They caught in her eyelashes, causing tiny prisms of light to obscure her vision. She opened her mouth to catch some of the flakes, smiling as they melted on her tongue into a drink more refreshing than any water she’d ever tasted.
Slowly, her hand drifted upwards, palm cupped to catch the flakes as she slowly turned around and around, watching the snow fall downwards in a whirl of white. The snow was falling harder now, and soon her brown hair was coated so completely that it looked almost silver.
There was a sense of movement behind her and she felt her cloak being draped over her shoulders once again. “What in the Maker’s name are you doing?” asked Laurent, the Grey Warden that had taken the last watch of the night. “You’re going to freeze to death out here!”
He tried to usher her back towards her tent, but Elenya stood her ground. “I was dancing,” she said, her voice muted by the falling snow. “It’s so beautiful out here.”
Laurent looked at her questioningly. “Haven’t you ever seen snow before?”
Elenya shook her head. “If I have, I don’t remember. I was only five when they sent me to the Tower; I can’t recall much before that.” Save for her mother’s beautiful face, eyes filled with sadness as she watched her daughter being taken away by the Templars. That was her memory alone, though, and she would not share it with others.
“There’s got to be windows in the Tower,” Laurent said reasonably.
“There are,” Elenya agreed. “But they’re so high up and so small that you can’t really see anything besides the top of the sky.” She frowned. “And mages only really look out of them for the first year or so after arriving there.” Her expression turned sad. “Eventually it gets too hard to look at even that tiny sliver of a world we’ll never be a part of.”
Laurent looked at her with sympathy. “Mages get a bad break, don’t they?”
Elenya’s face had been tipped up towards the sky again, but she tilted her head back down to look at the young Warden thoughtfully. “Yes, we do. Though there aren’t many in Ferelden who would believe that.”
He smiled at her. “I believe it. I mean, you’re standing out here in the middle of a Blighted storm, just because you’ve never seen snow before.” He laughed.
Elenya found herself joining in on the laughter, the tinkling soprano of her voice mixing nicely with the deep baritone of his.
“I can’t help it,” she finally said with a soft smile. “I just never realized how…beautiful the world is. I mean, it’s one thing to read about things like snow and waterfalls and wildflowers—but it’s another thing entirely to actually see them.” She looked at him questioningly. “Does that make any sense?”
Laurent nodded. “Yeah. It does.” He looked thoughtful. “I guess I had sort of the opposite experience as you. I grew up in the Anderfels, not far from Weisshaupt Fortress, actually. Being up in the mountains, it’s cold there for most of the year, even in the summer it’s fairly mild.
“Then when I turned eighteen, I got it into my mind that I wanted to travel the world, see everything there was to see. I spent a few months just wandering from place to place, taking in everything, just like you are—but none of it seemed all that different from home. Then I got to Antiva.” A large grin spread across his face. “Maker, it was so damn hot there I thought I was going to catch fire!”
Elenya laughed. “And did you?” she asked teasingly.
Laurent looked at her, the grin still lingering. “No, but I did get sunburned something awful.” His smile softened. “What I’m trying to say through all this babbling, is that I know what you mean, about there being a difference between hearing about something and actually seeing it. Before I went to Rialto, I never would have thought a person could get that Blighted hot.”
“I never thought a person could get this Blighted cold,” Elenya said through chattering teeth, the cold finally getting to her.
Laurent looked at her with concern. “You should get back to your warm bed. The snow will still be here in the morning, I promise.” He laughed. “At the rate this stuff is falling, there’s going to be snow on the ground for a week at least.”
Elenya nodded as she pulled her cloak tighter around her. She cast her eyes up to the sky one last time before heading back to the warmth of her tent. As she pulled back the flap, she stopped and turned around. “Laurent,” she called softly. She waited until he turned around to look at her. “Thank you. For treating me like a real person.”
Laurent frowned at her. “Maker’s breath, Elenya—you are a real person. And besides…” he smiled at her, “someone who likes dancing in the snow can’t be all that bad.”
Elenya smiled at him before ducking back into her tent. As she nestled down into the furs once more, she lay there, listening to the peaceful silence of the falling snow. Whatever trials she may face as a future Grey Warden, she knew it would be worth it to see other sights as lovely as the one she’d seen tonight.