She's on her way home from Taniquetil, sitting on the train reading a logic paper, singing idly along with the tune a kid three rows down started up, when there's suddenly a creature in her train car and it lunges at her.
She and her bench and her newsreader are abruptly all elsewhere.
At least she and Rúmil waited on children?
Ambela continues to be a Noldo learning a new language. Some of the exotic vocabulary is waiting for Stalas, but she's got a startlingly good command of the grammar and what vocabulary Tev knows how to define for her a few days in.
Speaking of Stalas, that sounds a whole lot like him running along the road in the middle of the night. The sound of Stalas running in his armour is... distinctive.
She has slept once since she got here but this is not that time.
"Stalas?"
He slows, turns off the road, finds the campsite.
"Mirelótë! Hi! We found the thing, I'm taking it back to Redcliffe, but I can spare a minute to talk. How have the language lessons been going?"
"Very well! Some of the vocabulary Tev thinks you'll do better at explaining."
"Any of it you remember offhand and think I can cover in less than five minutes?"
"...well, let's find out. So, gods: the humans call theirs the Maker and say that he made the world and everything in it and about a thousand years ago he fell in love with a human woman named Andraste and that's why he likes humans best. They also say that the reason there are darkspawn is that a bunch of mages once went into the Fade to look for the Maker, and when they reached the Golden City where he lives it turned dark and horrible and became the Black City and they came out of the Fade as the first darkspawn. Elves used to have gods of their own, and before the Maker there were different ones for humans, and the qunari as far as I can tell just worship their own governmental structure. The dwarves of Orzammar don't go in for any of that nonsense; we say that when we die we return to the Stone, and whether or not you believe it's full of dead dwarves watching over their descendants, at least there's no doubt that it exists."
"Okay. I'll come back and meet you on the road again once I've made the delivery."
Off he zooms.
Gosh, he's fast.
Ambela goes back to singing and stargazing and contemplating grammar.
The stars around here are reasonably pretty. Unfamiliar, of course.
Tev wakes up in the morning and goes through his standard breakfast-and-cleanup routine. When he notices the footprints in the snow, he says, "Did Stalas come by?"
"Yes he is. In his armour, anyway. Out of the armour he's slower than I am."
"It makes him... kind of like a golem? There's lyrium involved somehow. You'd have to ask him for the details."
"Caridin made it for him," he adds. "...it's kind of strange sometimes, travelling with someone who's friends with the most famous smith who ever lived."
"Well, I've never heard of any of them, so it's less weird than Stalas. And he's a prince, and Ambrose is going to be King of Ferelden - oh, that's right, I haven't explained nobility yet, have I..."
Vocabulary lesson! Kings and queens are hereditary rulers of countries. Princes and princesses are their children. In Ferelden there are also three different ranks of nobility, who rule subsections of the country, administering to their own lands and then answering in turn to the king: a teyrn rules a teyrnir, which is very big; an arl rules an arling, which is of medium size; a bann rules a bannorn, which is relatively small. Ambrose's friend Eamon who they are trying to save from being poisoned is in fact the Arl of Redcliffe, which is why it's so important to save him, because he has political influence which he can use to help them save the world from the Blight but only if he is alive to do so.
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