As if emerging from a pool of cold water, Eilahnen came shuddering back to the present. Blinking, she looked around.

She'd been lost in thought for a long time; darkness had fallen over the camp and the last rays of light chased away, not to be seen again until morning. She felt their absence too keenly just then, and a fresh wave of shivers overtook her.

She'd strayed from what she'd set out to do, by coming here; no longer able to ignore or deny the things that Elendren had said to her, Eilahnen had meant to sit and think critically about her future. Confront issues she'd been avoiding. But instead, as she had countless times over the past year, she'd fallen into the past. She'd been clutched so tightly in her memory's grip that she blinked in momentary confusion at the fires glowing far below her, at the moonlight shimmering on the sea.

She wasn't in that fateful village anymore, but distance did nothing to dim the picture. Even though she'd surfaced from the clutching memory, she knew what happened next. Almost against her will, the rest of the story played out in her mind as she looked broodingly out to the water.

The shouting had only been the beginning.

Unbeknownst to Eilahnen or her father, the strained truce between the villagers and the Dalish had come to an abrupt end just minutes before their playful chatter.

She'd learned, after the fact, that Melhanon had been returning to his tent from a check-in with the Herdmaster when he was assailed by several screaming farmers—at least a dozen men, half as many women, and one teenaged girl, caught in the steel grip of both parents, who were leading the pack. He'd had a hard time discerning the layered din, but eventually the cause for their fury got through: the young girl was pregnant, and she'd claimed that one of the young Lavellan men was the father.

And it turned out to be true. When the Keeper whirled on the crowd of elves that had amassed at the loud and angry scene, a young elf with a long blonde braid named Parthren stumbled forward, all wide eyes and terrified stammering. He'd barely been older than Eilahnen at the time. 'Love', he'd cried, 'we're in love!' And the young girl had nodded furiously in agreement, eyes streaming with tears. Parthren confessed that they'd been meeting for months, since shortly after the Dalish made camp by the village. And they'd planned to elope, since he knew the Dalish would never accept a shemlen living among them. They just hadn't been fast enough.

And every word the young man said had been a fire under the villagers' feet. Parthren had, in the villagers' eyes, done the worst of the worst. To live by the elves, for a time, was acceptable. To trade was agreeable. But to have a dirty, savage knife-ear soil an innocent young girl? It was the most intolerable of crimes, and a lesson well-known to most elves: you didn't touch a shemlen.

Parthren's situation had looked grim indeed.

The girl's father had thrown her into her mother's arms, and descended on the boy, bellowing like a bull. When he hit the ground, the crowd of elves parted. By the time the second blow had been dealt, Parthren's mother and father had leapt into the mix; they were both smaller than the brute of a man that was attacking their son, but of course, that didn't matter to them. The entire scene was saturated in the hair-raising screams of the young shemlen girl, as she railed against her mother's hold. And Melhanon was powerless to prevent what happened next.

Prejudice had finally won out, and an awful fight erupted.

The shouting Eilahnen and her father had heard was the elves retreating to their aravels, to get weapons, to hide their children, to spread the news.

The laughter had died on their lips at the sound, and then a moment later the flap of their tent had been ripped open by one of the more amateur hunters. He was breathing hard, with a cut over his eye oozing blood down the side of his face. For a split second, the tent was utterly silent, the occupants frozen. Then—

'The shems,' he'd gasped. 'They're attacking.'

Her father had wasted no time. He sprang into action, eyes hard as steel, voice rough as gravel.

'Now? Where are they, and how many?'

'Gods, Athras, it's all of them. They're everywhere. They've entered the camp, we couldn't—'

'Then we need to move. Now.' He'd bitten the words out as he leapt to the corner of the tent, grabbing the sword he'd left leaning there in its sheath. 'Get back in there, find Melhanon. Tell him it's time! Go, NOW, dammit!'

When the hunter had plunged back out of the tent and sprinted away, Eilahnen had still been frozen in fear and shock, rooted to the spot. Her father had whirled on her and grabbed her by the arm, just as a loud booming crash had hit the air, and an orange light had filtered through the cloth of their tent. Fire.

'I need to find your mother, get her out of there,' he'd barked. He'd looked her directly in the eye then, just for a second, and although he had no magic those eyes had cast a spell on her. 'You stay here, Eilahnen, I mean it. This is where you're safest. Your mother and I will be back for you, just do not move!' And then he was gone.

Eilahnen had stood, shivering and lost, listening to the shouts and crashes going on around her. She'd had no idea then that her life was about to change.

Not a minute after her father had disappeared, she'd heard a crashing sound just outside of the tent. The flap opened up, and someone tumbled through—but it hadn't been her mother, or her father. It wasn't even one of her clan.

It had been a young shemlen man, no older than she. They'd come face to face, each staring directly at the other. She'd seen fear in his eyes—more fear even than anger. And he'd been wielding a long dagger.

'Get out. Get out now.' She'd spoken without meaning to, and had surprised herself at how steady and calm she'd sounded, despite the painful racing of her heart. 'You don't belong here.'

'Neither do you.' He'd taken a step towards her as he spoke, and she noticed that his voice hadn't even fully matured yet. His shoulders were set, but he'd seemed definitely reluctant. 'You or any of the others. You never should've come here.' Advancing steadily now, he'd lifted the knife.

'Get back. I mean it!'

But he hadn't stopped. It was clear that he was driven by a sense of duty—duty to the crazed mass that had fallen upon her family.

His role was clear...and so was hers. Body suddenly surging into action, she'd dove to the side, where her pack lay forgotten on the ground. Delving into one of the side pockets, she'd come back grasping her own dagger—the one Athras had given to her when he'd deemed her skilled enough to use it well. The dark steel gleamed in her hand, and feeling its weight in her palm had given her strength. She'd looked back at the village boy, eyes now round as saucers, and had tried to give him a final warning.

'I don't want to hurt you.'

He'd merely shaken his head quickly, mechanically. 'There's no choice.' And had lunged.

It had been the first time she'd ever had to fight for her life; the first time anyone had ever actually tried to hurt her.

He was clumsy; somewhat less experienced than she was. But he had the upper hand in size and strength, and that made it so she couldn't relax, even for a second. After sizing her up for another beat, he'd sent a testing jab her way, underestimating her. She'd sidestepped it easily, and took advantage of his closeness to slice a gash across his cheek that had bloomed brightly and instantly red.

The sound of his cursing had rung in her ears as he'd whirled to face her and grabbed her knife arm, and she was forced to do the same. As they entered into the grapple, it was her will and desperation more than anything that stopped him from crushing her, and she could feel the pressure of his strength surging down her entire body, checking against her own.

It seemed to her that they'd wrestled for an eternity, and eventually he'd managed to topple her back, and had very nearly landed a devastating blow that would have buried his blade in her chest. But a burst of adrenaline had her deflecting his arm, sidestepping his body; his own momentum had him sprawling down on his hands and knees, and Eilahnen had closed in on that moment of weakness. Whirling as fast as she could, she'd dropped a knee into the center of his back, and used the hilt of her dagger to land a blow to the back of his head. He'd been unconscious when his head hit the ground.

Victory was hers, but she hadn't stopped to take a breath. She realized later that she could have killed him, but in the heat of the moment, the thought never crossed Eilahnen's mind. She hadn't wanted these peoples' blood on her hands. She'd only wanted to escape.

Grabbing her pack and slinging it over her shoulder, she'd leapt through the flap of the tent—straight into her mother's arms, with Athras right behind her. Brierdahla had started to sob when she'd seen the shemlen sprawled on the ground.

'We need to go,' her father had boomed. 'We can't wait any longer! The clan is moving, now.' Her mother had hustled her across the short strip of grass to their aravel with Athras bringing up the rear, and when they were all inside he'd pulled the steps up behind them, sealing the door.

For Eilahnen, the rest had passed in a sort of blur. Throwing down the hatch at the bow of the aravel and seizing the halla's reins, her father had urged the halla onward and steered them into a line of other fleeing aravels as the clan collectively lit out from the village. As they passed, Eilahnen had looked out a window, and seen mayhem. Several of the tents they'd been forced to leave behind and a few of the villager's wooden houses were on fire, sending hot flame spewing high into the sky. The last stragglers of the clan were running behind the aravels closest to them and leaping into the backs, where arms waited to catch them and pull them in. Villagers ran behind them, screaming and throwing stones; one threw a sword like a javelin, but it blessedly missed its mark.

And the halla had flown; even when the village was a speck on the horizon, the fleet hadn't dared slow their pace. This had brought about a drawn-out period of anguished uncertainty. For many, the reason for the shemlen's attack was a complete mystery, and more than a few members of the clan were left to wonder if their missing family members had simply leapt into a different aravel...or not. Eilahnen's mother had forced her to lay down, and had checked her thoroughly for injuries. After determining she had none, she'd soothed Eilahnen as they rode, rubbing her back until her shivering stopped, and then thrown a blanket over her, told her to rest. She'd pretended to sleep; when Brierdahla was convinced she'd dropped off, she had moved towards the head of the aravel to speak with her husband in muted, tense voices. Eilahnen listened in, but like her, neither of them really knew what had happened or why.

Only when dark had fallen, when many, many miles separated them from the village, did the Keeper give the signal for the landships to stop.

The clan members had stopped the halla, and everybody had piled out of the aravels, milling around in the darkness, trying to find beloved faces using only the light of the stars. Relieved cries had started to chorus in the air as a fire was hurriedly built, and by the time they had light and warmth to crowd around, most everybody had been accounted for by the grasping hands of their kin. Blankets were passed around to ward off the night's chill, and the Herdmaster tended to the weary halla.

Once everyone present had settled around the makeshift camp, a vast circle of faces looking both frightened and uncertain, facts were finally exchanged.

First came a count of the people present, in the search for casualties. Many were wounded in the sudden attack on the camp, and many of those injuries would need further attention. But the finished head count revealed news that seemed to be the blessing of the gods themselves; no elven lives had been lost in the fight.

Even Parthren had managed to survive—several reported having seen him slip away from the brawl after wriggling free of his attacker. Through multiple witnesses, it was recounted that he had taken his lover by the hand, and together they had run to the nearest barn. They'd stolen a fast horse, and had torn away from the village, headed north. As far as anyone knew, they had not been pursued, and had in all likelihood made a clean escape.

Eilahnen had felt a weight lifted from her heart; no irreversible damage had been done to her clan. Many shed tears of relief—but none matched the fervor of Parthren's parents, who had spent several hours believing their son to be gone from this world.

The tents had been left behind and destroyed, so injuries had to be treated in the open night air, and the Hearthmistress and Keeper's First had bustled around their make-shift camp, attending to the wounded in order of urgency. Lastly, there was the repair of the aravels damaged in the flight. Long into the night, the elves sat clustered together, huddled around the fire, exchanging information. With the Keeper's and many other key witnesses' help, the entire story had been pieced together, and at last everyone knew what had really happened.

Responses were understandably mixed; some clan members wanted to get back in the aravels and travel further still from the village to ensure their safety, scared of being pursued. Others wanted to ride back under cover of night, and burn everything to the ground.

But sanity had prevailed, and instead they'd finally decided to just turn in for the night, and carry on at dawn. Eilahnen had slept nestled between her parents that night, at their insistence, and the security it brought had been a welcome relief.

And then...continue on they had. If the Dalish knew of anything, it was of how to endure.

They had traveled steadily Eastward as months had passed, stopping to make camp in wild, remote crevices that shemlen never touched. The Keeper had decided that for the clan's collective peace of mind, there would be no trade with any shemlen for a good, long while. As they'd traveled, Eilahnen had tried to take each day as it came, and think of nothing more. They had lit out from the village on the coat-tails of autumn, and in the bitter cold of Wintermarch, she'd celebrated her name day and turned seventeen. And shortly after that, the Hahren had approached her about taking her vallas'lin.

She remembered saying yes to the ritual; remembered it clearly. She had still been confident in her devotion to June's path, and she'd begun her preparations alongside her mother and father full of pride, and the excitement that comes with a rite of passage. After a week of old and sacred ritual, the time had come; her ceremony had taken place in the deep of winter, in a small clearing in a thick wood, under the silver light of a full moon.

She remembered the wash of prayer around her as clearly as if it had been yesterday—the voices of her kin rising around her, as she herself rose to spiritual adulthood—or so she'd thought. And she remembered her own silence, reflecting the hallowed silence of the Hahren. She especially remembered the pain, hot and insistent, doing its best to pull moans of distress from her she'd had to fight to hold back.

She had emerged victorious, and from that night on, whenever she'd looked into her mother's hand-mirror, a face bearing the sacred markings of June had stared back at her.

But her sense of purpose was not to last. As winter had raged on, the seed planted in Eilahnen by the village pogrom had started to sprout. When spring broke through to thaw the winter's chill, it really started to grow. And by the time the days had given way to the warm rains of Cloudsreach, Eilahnen's sense of direction had well and truly abandoned her, and that was a shameful secret that she kept to herself. Her clan had finally made it back to Wycome Valley—a place that had always held peace and refuge for them—and the rolling green hills and rocky cliffsides had once again encouraged them to settle in for a more permanent stay than any they'd experienced since the village.

All and any apprenticeships had been put aside while they had traveled from west coast to east, searching for a place to set up a true camp; most of the places they'd been stopping in didn't really allow for the spread and bustle of daily studies. Due to this, Eilahnen hadn't had to worry about beginning her lessons as her doubts had internally mounted. But when the Keeper announced that they would be staying on in the valley, plans had been laid out at once to begin a new season of lessons for the clan's apprentices.

And now...here they were.

Sighing deeply, Eilahnen flopped onto her back and gazed at the stars. She was all alone, on a starry night in Bloomingtide, high above the camp that already felt like home after little more than a month. And although the collective needs of the clan had been met for now, Eilahnen herself couldn't be more at odds. It had been six months since they'd fled from the village—six months since she'd had to fight that boy, and had felt the fear for her life pumping through her veins. And in that time, it had gone and changed her, to the point where looking into her mother's hand mirror had her confronting a virtual stranger. She no longer recognized herself.

Oddly enough, it was another stranger that had forced her to finally question her choices...finally confront her real issues.

And what issues are those? Staring up at those stars, Eilahnen finally let herself answer.

It hadn't just been fear coursing through her veins during that fateful encounter. Shamed as she was to admit it, there had been excitement at the core. Excitement, an an eagerness to prove herself, to herself.

She had been taught to fight over many years, but in all that time, her skills had been only theoretical—she technically knew what to do, but had never actually needed to put the skills to use.

And then, all of a sudden, she'd had to fight to survive. Her mind and body had been given something for the first time that day, something she'd never truly had up until then: a challenge. A test with an uncertain outcome, a real task of real importance. Something in which she had to succeed, because if she didn't, it would matter.

As the realization hit, Eilahnen shut her eyes and groaned.

When she'd beaten that shemlen boy, she'd done more than just save her own life. She'd proven to herself that there was more, that she was capable of more, than just crafting. She'd seen herself in a new light, noticed a new angle. And had liked what she saw.

And that was all it had taken. Slowly as the months passed, Eilahnen had realized with dread that crafting held no such excitement for her—nothing that made her heart pound and muscles sing. And she wasn't, couldn't be like her mother; she didn't take pride in the beautiful things she made for the clan to use. More and more sharply as the time had passed, she noticed nothing but the absolute lack of satisfaction the work gave her.

Since she had tasted the thrill of true challenge, its allure wouldn't leave her alone.

Lately, her mind had started whispering to her that people changed; that you really couldn't help who you were.

But until tonight, she had battled those thoughts back as fiercely as she could. The guilt of remembering her parents' excitement had been hitting her like a physical wall for months now; all she had ever done was love her people, her parents especially, and now it looked like she was bound to disappoint them. What else would she have done, but fight it? On top of that, there was another catch; if she did come clean to her parents with her unhappiness and try to quit her apprenticeship, they would almost certainly feel lied to and betrayed. They would be hurt and angry, and they wouldn't trust her anymore. And for what? She had no alternative goal in mind, and as furious as that made her, it wasn't changing.

Laying here on the ground, finally allowing herself to think it through, she was still squirming. Her parents were so important to her that she was invested in making them happy.

But what will happen to you, if you actually do this? The thought pressed at her insistently, shouting at her, and she cringed.

The truth was that she didn't know. She avoided thinking of the long-term future. But she wasn't fool enough to forget that time passed for everyone, and that the future would eventually become her present. What would happen to her, if she had devoted her life to a duty that brought her no joy? No satisfaction?

You'll have chosen to make yourself miserable, for the benefit of people who don't live your life.

The words in her head were her own, but the voice was Elendren's. His honey-colored glare splashed against the eyelids she'd squeezed shut, judging her even in her solitude, adding to her struggle.

What business was it of his? She brought her hands up to rake over her face, anguished at the voices crammed in her head, wishing that Elendren's, so abrasive, would leave her alone. What business did a stranger have looking at her, seeing what she hadn't, and dropping it in her lap?

She hadn't asked for the attack on the camp to happen, hadn't wanted her feelings to change...but then again, she thought bitterly, who ever did ask for such things?

The voice, still Elendren's, spoke again in her head.

You have to make your own choices. You have to live for yourself.

The elf shook her head weakly, biting off a dry sob. She was only now learning the hard lesson that it was impossible to lie to yourself in the end.

But live for herself? It was a concept completely foreign to her. In all her life, she had never felt constrained by the guiding hands of her people. She'd been content to live by their ideas, not feeling the need to challenge what she was told or how she spent her time.

But she'd evidently been a fool. That guidance, well intentioned as it was, had led her to a place that made her unhappy, and she had followed along willingly...

The realization slammed into her then, all of a sudden, the answer to her questions the night she and Elendren had argued: Elendren was right.

She had settled for an easy role in life, one where she didn't have to try hard. She was wasting her potential. And she was comforting herself by being a martyr.

Her thoughts started ricocheting in her head at that point, almost too fast and too many for her to follow, and for a time, she let the tears welling in her eyes fall.

So what did she do now? What action did she take? Strike out, or stay safe? What if she took the chance of telling her parents the truth, and they resented her for it? On the other hand, what if they didn't? What if she had over-thought everything—again—and didn't give her parents the credit they deserved? What if they learned to accept how she felt? But what on earth would she be, if not a Weavewoman? What if...?

Dozens of what-ifs.

Next came the torrent of shame—first for not being strong enough to shoulder her resolve, and then for lying. Lying to her parents, lying to her clan, lying to herself. Lie, lie, lie...

After some time, through her sobs and the storm of self-criticism, a single question eventually made its way to the forefront. Once it did, her mind fell quickly silent.

Enough with lies. What is the truth?

It was the most important question she could ask herself right now, and Eilahnen knew it, because the answer to this question would determine what she had to do next. She didn't have the answer, but the time had undeniably come for her to uncover it.

She was the only one who could.

And so she laid there, tears drying, skin distantly chilled against the cool rock, and let herself think.

Time passed—she didn't know how much of it, and it didn't matter to her. For once, she wasn't listening to the rustling of the wind, the calls of the wilderness around her, the distant crash of the ocean, or the voices of her clan. She was listening only to herself.

And when she finally resurfaced from her mind, she had the answer, at least in part, to that most important question.

The truth was that Eilahnen was a person who wanted to be more than just a crafter.

She was a person who wanted to be shaken, and bruised. A person who would chase after life, rather than let it come to her. A person who wanted to claw her way to success, and then sit there grinning at the summit, knowing that her pain had been worth it.

As soon as she'd finished with this revelation, she was completely still. It was a heavy thing, shocking and intimate, to suddenly be in the presence of your unveiled self—even if the image wasn't perfect. Eilahnen simply laid there with eyes open wide and her breath a little shaky, embracing this long-awaited clarity.

After savoring the moment, she gathered her courage and sat up. On trembling legs, she righted herself, took one final look at the moon-lit ocean, and then turned her back, starting her way back to camp.

She didn't know the future, and she didn't know what the outcome of her choices would be. But she knew what she had to do next.

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