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Aen Surana, newly Harrowed, windswept, ill from the ferry ride, kept his eyes mostly to the intricately stamped armor over Duncan's broad back the duration of the journey from Kinloch Hold. Aen listlessly slouched along the dock, into the foreign canopies of trees, lost in the overwhelmingly complex detail of every leaf and stone and blade of grass announcing the start of his journey to Ostagar. Even the smell of the road unsettled, like waking up from a dream in which Aen was convinced he still slept beside a sooty hearthstone only to taste the ash of his memories well past breakfast; and should he be spared the ash, it was to the scent of rain on rotting logs and upturned soil and the coppery tang of heat as a new rabble of soldiers might march past with the sun on their maille.

In the Circle, Aen had been considered Tall For His Age (or full of Presence at the very least) - but the world outside the Tower offered no comparison, in that of age and race and gender, than elves who wore their ears untrimmed and sweated and labored and built themselves up into compact things with labor-thick bones under sunned hides draped by inglorious rags. The Circle Magi, both elven and non, were indeed a gaunt and austere lot by dint of their trade; appetites delicate from captivity and sedentary deskwork, what fat this might have collected around their middles was trundled away up tower stairs day in and day out. It also held that the Templars on the lower rung of command doubled as the hard laborers and supplies couriers, cobbling the bodies of the mages with disuse, for any skinny escapee with as low stamina had less chance for survival beyond the tower's shelter.

So Aen Surana remained a skulking ghoul next to which elves he could barter into the comparison. Aen was also flat-eared, not quite literally, by the ritual infancy trimming that servant-class elves had popularized through Orlais two ages past. It was by the sake of symmetry and desirability, that most elves born outside Dalish holds would find themselves with smaller ears, ears that had been shaved and pinned into their sleek shape, ears that had been made safe against louse and tick and wound and infection (so the docit would recant, and thirty coppers to he for the operation).

Footsore and road-weary, Aen would wither from Duncan's concern. His back screamed under the weight of his pack; he knew true hunger for the first time in his life; the open landscape of their travel left him disoriented while the dust of the road settled in grimy patches over the damp sweat of his robes. He sorely missed his tiny apprentice bed in the overcrowded apprentice dorm, the cloying beeswax aroma of the Tower's chantry, the constant hushed bustle of familiar dreary faces inside familiar dreary walls. He sorely missed those he had come to count as colleagues and family, and even felt a heaviness in his chest for those he might have counted as enemy.

"You wouldn't happen to be another mage, would you?"

Aen's stomach gives a small hop in the throes of homesickness. That tone of voice, the nasal infliction, specific to a certain branch of Chantry schooling, coming from the man just beyond the stone archway. Aen's smile is wan. "You wouldn't happen to be another Templar, would you?"

"Huh. Not exactly." The man scratches his stubbled chin, moves to hold his hand out as if to shake, but drops it last minute to his side, stepping back with a clank of armor and a low wave. "I'm the newest Warden, Alistair."

"Duncan sent me to find you."

"Ah, you're the new recruit then. Ein, was it?"

"Aen, actually, and a mage as well if you've no protest, ser Templar."

Alistair coughs, clears his throat. "No, I… Let me apologize for that. Very much not a Templar, if you can believe it. Not that it should matter, as we are all supposed to cooperate against the Blight, aren't we? You know, afternoon hand-holding and campfire song and the like."

Aen's smile goes distant, pale eyes sparkling in the late afternoon sun. "Hmm, yes, and I am both a mage and an elf. All we need to complete our troupe is a stoic dwarven padfoot and some Seherian outlaw. We might inspire a minstrel's epic."

Alistair grins, hiding the expression behind a fidget at his nose. "Met the King, I take it."

The tension in Aen's stomach shifts lower, tightens, a sweeter pain. "Curiously enthusiastic, our Royal Highness. Not even a Warden yet and he practically marries me."

"Hah. Ever notice how he refers to the order as 'The Fabled Grey Wardens'? Fabled, as in doesn't exist. No wonder Loghain can't take us seriously."

Aen sniffs, ring-heavy hands crossed behind his back, rocking forward on his heels. "Almost insulted he didn't ask after my Griffin."

"Ha!" Alistair shakes his head, pinching his eyes shut, attempting to sober. "Well, that's enough of that. Did Duncan say where we're to meet him?"

"Center of the camp."

"Right. Let's hunt up your fellow Warden candidates," Alistair rubs his chin before pointing down at Aen's shoes, " - and get you a proper set of boots. You're going to need them where we're going."

Aen could not stop staring at Daveth. When he wasn't sneaking glances Alistair's way (a striking resemblance to someone, couldn't quite figure it out), or contemplating the tree branches overhead (none of them taller than the Tower, surely), or shooting a fireball into the mouth of a frenzied wolf (to preserve the pelts, which were worth coin), he was staring at the charismatic provincial cutpurse. He'd never seen anyone built quite that way who could move so fast, for starters, so the interest kipped on a while as purely academic. Then, less meaningfully, Aen realized that he had never studied anyone built quite that way, at all, since most Templars kept their Heavy Plate on at all times and the ones who didn't looked more like Ser Jory.

Daveth proved himself braver than the Knight with whom they traveled, which earned Aen's respect, and even showed a fair sense of humor, which earned Aen's fondness. The rogue in question then revealed his propensity to flirt at the most inopportune moments, namely in the middle of a Hurlock ambush, which earned Aen's immediate and helpless infatuation.

When Morrigan first made her appearance, it was to Daveth Aen nervously glanced before stepping between his fellows and the unknown interloper. When they made their report to Duncan, it was to Daveth Aen relinquished the recount of meeting the swamp witch, though Daveth's version had more frogs in it than prudent (they looked at us like they had souls, like they was telling us to turn back). When they took the darkspawn taint into their bodies, it was over Daveth's corpse that Aen lingered, helping Duncan strip the armor for the Quartermaster.

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Alistair liked to hum, deep in the back of his throat, before asking a question. "So, 'Aen'. What's that short for, anyway?"

Aen considered that hum the most appealing noise in the history of all Thedas, right up there with the sound of tearing bread and the wet drop of a quill-tip into a full inkpot. He pauses to enjoy the warmth of Alistair's curiosity before answering, "Not short for anything, I don't suppose."

"You 'don't suppose'?" Humor colors Alistair's confusion, as if he already knew the answer and was just talking like that and grinning out of the side of his face to turn Aen's knees to jelly. On purpose. The sod. "What, you took a falling book to the head and can't remember your own name now?"

Aen cannot get the breath in to answer straight away, and this irritation shows in his words, "I set my own swaddling krattel afire; the infant the Circle took in could hardly remember not to soil itself."

"Oh..." Alistair's eyebrows jump, and he shrugs. "Fair enough."

"I think, in anger, an elder once called me Ainla O'innegh or O'linnoch or something. Could have been a Dalish curse more than my actual name, but there you go. A mouthful of syllables as difficult to pronounce as it is to spell. Good riddance."

"At least you got over the trouser-soiling habit."

Aen chuckles, the raw edge of embarrassment ebbing as he and Alistair trundle down the boggy forest path - careful on the heels of their guide, who is casting annoyed glances over her white shoulder at no interruption. Aen moves their conversation on to the more recent circumstance of grief and shock and betrayal and the noises that had moments ago been coming out of his fellow Warden that were nowhere near as nice as a hum or a laugh. "How fare you, Alistair?"

"Oh, peachy." There is a bite to Alistair's usual sarcasm, wounded and over-tired.

Morrigan halts mid-stride, testing the wind. "We are clear of the horde and shall camp here for the night. No fires, and if either of you snore I shall not hesitate to sew shut the offending nostrils."

Alistair drops his shield and kneels to the leaf-litter with a groan, settling back on his haunches with his swordtip digging idle circles in the dirt. Aen shuffles closer, sweeping a bit of the forest bracken aside so that they might sit back-to-back for a bit of warmth. Alistair starts at the contact. "You don't need to do that. I'll be fine."

"Just as well, at least one of us might be."

"Oh... of course. Sorry." A hard sigh. "Maker, everyone is gone." Alistair leans back against Aen's bony shoulders, regarding the smoky night sky through the grasping fingers of dark branches, a fleeing bit of wildlife darting from tree to tree in black silhouette. "You get some sleep."

Aen's chest jumps with a silent grunt. "This mage just spent nearly a day and a half in a bed, unconscious. You get some sleep."

"I told you first."

Aen elbows Alistair, the hollow thump of bone meeting shield. "You elected me leader."

Alistair elbows similarly, the creak of armor that can't quite reach the thin body squared at the middle of his back. "I can pull rank on important things, and there's no need for us to both keep awake."

Morrigan pipes up at last, bewailing under her breath, "There is need for you to kindly shut your flapping maws. Dire need. Most urgent, dire necessity and need. You, little Mage, let the Templar alone to his childish weeping. You, inconsolable prat of a Templar, do not presume to make demands of your betters."

There is a small scuffle of undergrowth, two weary and chagrined Wardens elbowing each other over who made the swamp-witch angry while vying for the softest patch of dirt on which to rest their heads, wounded and over-tired and merrily distracted by the nonsense of their quarrel.

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