The first time Anders escaped from the tower (the first time he got across the lake at least) it had been two years since he had felt the soft whisper of grass beneath his feet, wet and muddy as he pulled himself up the slippery banks of the good side of Lake Calenhad. The mud squelched beneath his toes and he grinned stupidly at the sensation.
Two years, and he was finally free. This had been his best plan ever.
Anders had lost his slippers in the swim, but he knew they were terrible footwear for running anyway –which is probably why they were standard issue– and running was exactly what he had in mind at the moment.
The rolling brown hills that cast shadows over the little fishing village were nothing like the vast steppes of the Anderfels. When he had been cooped up in that stuffy tower, and when he had found the excuse –for there were only two windows for mages in the Circle, and he had to be with Karl to go on the higher floors– he had stared out over blue water to that same boring old muddy brown hill, with equally boring muddy brown buildings and it was so foreign and so strange to him that people would choose to live there.
But now… now he was running up that hill, feeling the ache in his muscles and the breeze rolling off of the lake. Now he would see what lay beyond that two years old brown wall (last time, he had been too busy trying to get out of his cuffs to notice much of anything). He would see Ferelden properly.
He ran, and when the incline fell away to flatness and brush, he kept running, feet pounding on the gravel paths, robes sopping wet and chaffing like mad.
A dog barks somewhere and Anders has a flash of memory, of cold lands and smaller feet, running bare on a rocky hillside, playing with the family dog when he should have been watching the goats. In the tower, that memory would have hurt, but here he was free. If Anders wanted, he would build a house of a hillside and have goats and children that he would love even if the Maker cursed them with magic. His front gate would have 'no Tempars allowed' writ across it.
But in two years of soft slippers and walk-don't-run, feet developed a certain softness that Anders had not factored into his plan. He felt the soles of his feet like raw sandpaper beneath him, but he kept running.
That was the farthest he had ever gotten from the tower, and it wasn't very far, but it was a start. The Templars caught him sitting in a ditch by the side of the road, the soft skin of his feet blistered and scratched where hot gravel had cut into them, and where he had run on, getting dirt in the cuts and blood on the road –which had probably made it easier for the Templars to follow him with his phylactery– They caught him on his arse, healing the soles of his feet because he could finally run no farther.
When Anders got back to the tower, he was allowed new robes –allowed was a bit rich. His last ones barely survived the swim across Lake Calenhad- and he made sure to get them too big. Telling the First Enchanter that he was sure he was about to grow taller anyway.
Now, sprinting through the windowless halls, he hears the clanking of angry Templars behind him. They wouldn't have known that Anders' had set up that grease spell above the stairs if he hadn't blown a raspberry at them before taking off. His bare feet are visible now as he hikes long robes up around his knees, padding as fast as he can along the stone corridors, letting his feet practice running of hard floors, their soles growing tougher and thicker for gravel roads. Developing the calluses that he knows will come in handy for next time he has the chance at escape.