They pick up the hounds on their way back across the encampment. Sher and Abarie are thrilled to see Sav and Tali, though at first they sniff their hands, ears pressed flat against their skulls. Something has them unsure, something in the way Tali and Sav smell—the taint now swirling in their blood, most likely. It takes a few moments, a few quiet whispers and coos to the mabari, but eventually, they seem reassured. Comforted once more, Sher and Abarie both begin to wag their short tails happily. After that, Abarie trots close to Talvinder's heels, her tongue lolling as she pants happily. Sher, however, is a bit more dignified, keeping his tongue in his mouth as he follows Savreen.
Both dogs, regardless of their discipline, perk up as they near the Warden tents, sniffing the air as the scent of roasting venison wafts toward them on the wind. Tali can hear laughter, chatter, the sounds of a party, as strange as that feels so close to battle. It is entirely unsurprising when the first person she sees is Huguette, standing taller than nearly anyone else, her bright red hair a shock of color against the canvas tents. She gesticulates furiously, bickering with a younger, smaller, and far slimmer man, whose white-blonde hair seems almost to blend with his pale freckled skin. He crosses his arms over his bound chest, uncrosses them to gesticulate in turn, then crosses them again. As Tali approaches, their words finally reach her ears.
"Oswin, you imbecile, do you want bland venison?"
"I'd like to have venison that's not too salty, thank you very much."
"Not too—by the Maker, you Fereldans are all the same! I've put exactly three grains of salt on this whole leg!"
"Oh come on, Huggy. You put some of that, that weird bark—"
"It's cinnamon! And it tastes good with meat and pepper and nutmeg and, believe it or not, salt!" Oswin looks dubiously at Huguette, wrinkling his nose. "I tell you what, Oswin, mon frère. Why don't we arm wrestle for it, like last time?" There is the hint of a joke in the way she says 'last time' that Tali thinks must mean she won. At that, Oswin throws up his hands, exasperated, and capitulates. Tali can see thin, wiry muscles beneath the milky blue-white of his freckled skin, but they're clearly no match for Huguette's arms, like a year-old sapling compared to a full tree.
"Fine, Huguette, fine. But make damn well sure that you don't do anything too…anything too Orlesian. And if I catch you putting any bloody slugs on the fire—" Though Tali's only ever known one person who is able to roll their whole body with their eyes, Huguette comes pretty close as she rolls her eyes at Oswin.
"Oh, worry not, petit ami. I would not waste fresh escargots on so…Fereldan a palate." It is at this moment that she spots Alistair, and then immediately after, Tali and Sav. With dizzying speed she drops the argument with Oswin, beams, beckons them over, and calls out to the others. "At last! Alistair's brought the recruits, everyone!" Tali feels six more pairs of eyes turn to her and Savreen, and their judgement is strange and heavy as they try to decide what to make of these new members of the order. Huguette, having won victory over Oswin, goes to season a second haunch of meat, waiting to go onto the spit over the fire. "We were wondering when you would arrive, frère cadet, I thought you'd gotten lost," she says jovially to Alistair.
"I found them as fast as I could. Don't blame me for the fact that this place is huge!" His excuse has no venom in it, no real frustration as he jabs back at Huguette, a hint of a smile on his face. As Huguette laughs, Alistair grabs three wooden mugs and fills them from a keg off to the side, then shoves two of them into Tali and Sav's hands and keeps one for himself, going to sit at a roughly hewn wooden table with several of the others. Everyone looks at the new recruits, silent, and Talvinder and Savreen stand staring back, also silent, unsure if this is some sort of tradition or if they're meant to speak. After the silence has drug on just enough to be noticeable, Alistair groans and smacks his forehead.
"Yeah, right. Their names. Everybody, this is Savreen and Talvinder, they're—"
"Savreen Kaur of House Cousland," Sav corrects him quietly, but quickly, passing her mug to Tali as she does so. Tali knows it's because for all she's lost, all they've lost, she's not ready to lose the name of their family just yet. Tali says nothing, just scratches Abarie's ear and takes a long swig of the bland, bitter ale in her mug, replenishing it with the some of that in Sav's mug. A small buzz goes through the Wardens sitting around, and eventually one of them laughs lightly, a little musically. It's a tall, thin man, with dark brown skin and high cheekbones, his hair braided in long, side-swept cornrows that start at the left of his skull and cascade down over his right shoulder. His dark brown eyes twinkle as he looks about at all the others, and when he speaks it's with the accent of the Storm Coast, lilting, soft in the consonants.
"Well, it's a good thing Junlei's off to Orlais with Tauriel," he says, and most of the others laugh at that, too, while Tali looks at him with confusion until he elaborates. "June hates nobles, my friends. Lucky you, you'll get to prove yourselves before she has to meet you."
"And your name is…?" Savreen is polite, reserved, and the man responds in kind, inclining his head with a smile.
"Caomhin, of Bailéisc. It's a pleasure to meet you both, and a greater pleasure that you survived the Joining." At that, he raises his mug in a toast, and all the other Wardens drink. Sensing that this is some sort of cue, Tali does the same. Sav, careful in her observance, drinks no alcohol, and when Huguette notices, she produces a kettle from somewhere and begins steeping some tea. Tali tries not to think too hard about where it comes from—likely the same place she keeps the spices she mentioned to Oswin, and her pockets certainly are large enough, after all.
"If we're doing introductions," a gruff voice says, an air of indifference about it, "can we get it over with? The sooner you all are done yapping, the sooner I get to go enjoy my meal in peace before the battle." Alistair clicks his tongue, shaking his head, and he turns slightly, angling himself to face a stocky dwarf sitting on a broken pillar across the fire.
"I'm wounded, Roderick. I thought you liked listening to me yap. The scowls and grunts were particularly misleading." At that, Roderick both scowls and grunts, crossing his arms with a casual, but still careful, motion, being sure not to spill any of his ale. His long black hair and beard are braided ornately together, covering much of the light olive-toned skin of his face, but his expression is clear, gray eyes exasperated under heavy, well-groomed eyebrows. He doesn't respond to Alistair's wheedling, instead directing his next words to Tali and Sav.
"Roderick. Denerim." He lifts his ale back to his lips, and with that he's made it clear he's finished speaking, much to everyone else's disappointment.
"Rod, you're supposed to be the life of the party." The speaker, an older woman, perhaps a few years younger than Duncan, stands, and then moves across the fire to rest her elbow on Roderick's head. His scowl deepens, but he doesn't move her, and Tali gets the sense that as gruff as Roderick pretends to be, he really quite likes his fellow Wardens anyway. "We can't take you anywhere."
"Marion, you can take me anywhere, just don't expect me to bloody chit chat." She laughs, thin lips opening to teeth with a chip in one of the canines, weather-tanned skin wrinkling at the corners of her eyes, her mouth, her cheeks, pulling down the tip of her long, pointed nose.
"Well then where would we get our entertainment?" Alistair asks dryly, nudging the other Wardens at the table to scoot aside and make room for Tali and Sav. Caomhin scoots around to the other side, sitting next to the last two unintroduced Wardens. Tali and Sav join them, sitting next to Alistair on the rough bench as Oswin ambles back over from arguing with Huguette. "That's Marion, mage from Denerim. They knew each other before the Wardens, as did Elisota, though she's gone to Weisshaupt," Alistair adds quickly, gesturing to the older woman who has started speaking more privately with Roderick, still teasing him. Her gray-streaked brown hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail, emphasizing the angular planes of her face, and its ends brush against her shoulders and neck as she moves. As Alistair continues speaking, Tali turns back to the table.
"This," he says, gesturing to the first of a set of elven twins, "is Dahna, and this is their brother, Wenalen." Dahna inclines their head, a gentle smile stretched across their lips that makes small semi-circles form under their wide-set dark eyes, widening their flat nostrils. There are moles studded across their warm tan skin, and their thick black hair is pulled up into a bun at the top of their skull. Their vallaslin circles most of their face, lines intersecting at their forehead and running down around their cheeks, through their lips, meeting once more at their chin and continuing in a branching line down their throat. They seem about average height for an elf, built strongly, wider and taller than their brother, though in many ways they look very alike. Wenalen's smile as he acknowledges Tali and Sav, though, is more jaunty, a bit more crooked, and there's a slight lid to his half-moon shaped black eyes where there isn't on Dahna's. His hair is cropped close to his skull, showing a few scars across his scalp, and the vallaslin that covers his face, from his cheeks to his hairline and then again on his chin, looks like the spreading roots and branches of a great tree.
"And I'm Oswin," Oswin says, grin wide as he refills his mug of ale. He then downs nearly half of it in one long series of gulps, the apple of his throat bobbing heartily.
"Won't your skin burn?" Tali asks, because truthfully it's all she can think of, watching him walk around only in his trousers and his bound chest, skin blindingly bright in the late afternoon sun. Oswin laughs and shakes his head before answering.
"Not when I'm slathered in elfroot paste," he says, as though it's something Tali should clearly know about. She's never heard of elfroot paste before, let alone how it's supposed to prevent sunburn. "Besides, I wanna have all the warmth I can get before summer ends." His words are an opportunity for small talk, one that Savreen senses adroitly.
"Is the weather different where you come from in Ferelden?" she asks, and Oswin smiles widely at the chance to talk more about himself before elbowing Wenalen to shove aside and make more space on the bench. He sits almost on Wenalen's lap, and the elf suppresses a smile.
"I'm from Swelbosmere," Oswin says by way of explanation once he's sat. His voice is matter-of-fact, as though that's all the information he need share, but Tali and Sav both only look at him blankly. Eventually, he continues, flapping a bony hand expectantly as he talks. "You know, the highest village in the Frostbacks? Closest to the Orlesian border? Snow? Snow all the time?" Tali's never heard of it, so she shrugs, and Oswin looks disappointed.
"Os, you know no one besides you knows where that is," Dahna says, smiling into their mug while Wenalen laughs. Caohmin smiles too, then sighs, takes another drink, rubbing his free hand in circles on Dahna's back.
"Well at least—at least—" Wenalen laughs harder as Oswin struggles to find a retort, and even Alistair chuckles into his mug. When Tali looks over at him, she sees the way his ears twitch as he laughs, faint freckles dancing on his cheeks and at the corners of his crinkled eyes, and she can't help but smile a bit, too. Alistair needn't grow on her, but he is, and quickly.
"At least what, toothpick?" Dahna's voice is a challenge, and Oswin's skin is turning blotchy, and Wenalen's laughter is infectious: Caomhin chuckles now, too. Finally, Oswin responds, his voice short—but more joking than anything—as he points forcefully at Dahna.
"At least I can reach the top shelf!" Dahna feigns hurt, raising a hand to their chest, gasping in mock pain, closing their eyes and pouting.
"Do you hear that, Caomhin? I'm short. Can you believe it?"
"You're not an inch under perfect, mo ghrá." As the two of them nuzzle noses and kiss lightly, Oswin groans and Wenalen mimes slitting his own throat. Alistair rolls his eyes a little, looking at Tali as if to say can you believe them, at it again?
"You both are disgusting," Oswin says, taking a hearty swig of ale while Dahna and Caomhin dissolve into giggles, Caomhin pulling them onto his lap. Wenalen, clearly unhappy with this turn of events, feigns his own death from embarrassment, collapsing to the table. It makes Tali laugh, lost in the moment, and she turns to Sav, expecting to see her smiling, too.
She is, but it doesn't reach her eyes, and Tali feels the grin slipping from her own face as she remembers sitting around such a similar table, making fun of Fergus and Oriana in the early stages of their courtship, Sav and Ranjit and Sikander all together. She swallows back the lump in her throat with a gulp of ale, and when she looks back to Alistair, she sees sorrow in his eyes, sorrow and recognition. In a small gesture, perhaps the only one he can think of, he bumps his mug against hers.
"To the new recruits," he says, his voice suddenly loud as he makes to stand. With a gesture of invitation to the other Wardens, Alistair raises his mug up above his head and turns to look at all gathered around their small fire. As though it's a signal for which she's been waiting, Huguette jumps up, hands Sav a new mug, smaller, steaming with fragrant tea, and then hurries back to pick up her own.
"May your blades always be sharp." Marion speaks immediately after Alistair, and there's an air about the words that says they're tradition, that says everyone knows them by heart. She's followed by Roderick, who has transitioned from grumpy to solemn, a faint glimmer in his eyes.
"And your armor always be strong."
"May you always outrun the Darkspawn," Caomhin comes next, and Tali wonders if perhaps they're speaking in order of when they joined the Wardens. Huguette calls from her seat,
"And may you never need to outrun the Archdemon!"
"May your blood run strong against the taint," Dahna and Wenalen speak together, their voices overlapping, and Oswin follows them.
"And may your Calling never find you." As he finishes speaking, all of them raise their mugs, clap a hand to their chests, and speak in unison.
"In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death, sacrifice." Words still ringing on the air, Alistair claps Tali on the back, and they all drink, long and deep, until their mugs are drained. A moment of silence passes, all of them wiping their mouths, Tali beginning to feel the ale tingling in her joints and belly, floating like bubbles in her skull. Then Huguette speaks, and Marion and Roderick go back to their conversation, and the gentle, easy atmosphere returns to the group, if perhaps a little more somber.
"And with that, mes amis, it is time to eat."
As the afternoon fades to evening, the laughter grows louder, the jokes more bawdy and biting, the Wardens more raucous. Oswin feeds scraps to Abarie, play-wrestling her from time to time before he gets too drunk and ends up just throwing sticks for her. After the final haunch of venison has been seasoned and roasted, along with some roots that Huguette dug up and spiced (she even gathered fresh herbs from somewhere, though Tali's not sure where), and they've cycled through most of the drinking songs it seems Roderick and Oswin know, and the sky has begun to turn to pinks and oranges, someone bangs a fist on the table and calls out:
"Time for the ritewine!" Tali has slowed down after her first mug of ale, sipping lightly at her second for what feels like must have been an hour or two, and so the feeling of warm fuzziness has largely receded, back to a tiny little buzz in her fingertips. Beyond Sav, though, none of the others have been so conscientious, and most are clearly intoxicated, all still lighthearted. Wenalen laughs the loudest, roses blooming on his cheeks, and Oswin decided on mug four that the ground was his new seat, Wenalen's lap his table, and so he's been sitting there for the last two mugs, head resting on Wenalen's thigh as he laughs at every joke—though he laughs loudest at Wenalen's. Marion holds her ale the best of all of them, better even than Roderick, and she sits with him and Huguette, close to the fire, using a battered deck of cards spread on an ancient stone block to play some sort of game that resembles Wicked Grace but with far more complicated and arbitrary rules. Through it all, Alistair has been both the butt and the source of countless jokes, and Talvinder thinks his face surely must hurt from all the laughing and smiling. He leans against the table, body turned and angled to allow him to see as many of the other Wardens as possible, and his arm stretches out behind Tali's back. Even Sav has laughed at some of the jokes, and on her second mug of tea Huguette added some honey, the sweetness of which makes her grin.
At the call for ritewine, Dahna raises their mug in assent, tapping Caomhin on the back from where they sit draped across his lap. He stands from the bench, still holding them, and sets them down on the other side where they wobble slightly, laughing as they regain their balance before heading for their tent. Not for the first time, Tali wonders how they'll all face the battle in a few hours, when the moon rises. When she casts a questioning glance at Alistair, he seems to take her meaning almost immediately, leaning over to explain.
"Warden stamina. Takes a lot more to stay drunk once you get drunk." Even his words are a little clumsy, his tongue a little thick in his mouth. "We'll all be stone cold by the time we put our armor on, trust me." Tali nods, not quite believing him, elbows on her knees, hands circling her mug. As Dahna returns from their tent, a mostly full chipped bottle in their hands and two smaller, empty ones beneath their arms, all the others produce similar containers: jars or bottles, sealed with aged corks, wax, tops screwed tightly—Marion's is even stoppered with magic.
"What's—" Savreen begins to ask, face turned toward Alistair as she sits, back straight, posture impeccable, petting Sher on the head with one hand and holding her third mug of tea with the other.
"Ritewine?" Alistair guesses her question as he's pulling a leather-bound flask from a pocket, and Sav nods. "It's a tradition, comes from old Blights when Wardens were allowed to seize supplies. Never wasted a bottle of anything hard, no matter how much was left, so they poured them together. Or that's what they say, at any rate. I think it's probably just an excuse to haze us all." As he speaks, Dahna approaches, offers the empty bottles to Tali and Sav, and smiles. "Each recruit, if they drink, that is, starts their own bottle after they've made through the Joining, usually by taking a little bit from all the other Wardens present." Sav thanks Dahna, but shakes her head, while Tali accepts the proffered bottle. Alistair grins at that, opens his flask, and pours a glug of its contents into her bottle, the first to do so. Dahna follows suit, then the others.
The smiles, through all of it, are infectious, the atmosphere joyous—a far cry from the night before, as Duncan and Alistair had readied the Joining chalice.
"You sure you can handle this one?" Marion asks just before tipping the mouth of her bottle down to Tali's, eyebrows raised. "It's pretty strong stuff." Roderick scoffs.
"The lass is nearly the same height as our own sunshine boy," he says, jerking his thumb at Alistair. "I'll wager she's six-foot-three if she's an inch. Besides, look at those muscles! She can hold her drink, can't you, girl?" For some reason, Roderick's conspiratorial tone toward her—one she'd hardly expected, though perhaps it's the drink working on him—makes Tali bubble with pride. She nods, and Marion sighs a little, laughs, and then pours. The liquid that comes out is thick, syrupy, flecked with the blue light of Lyrium, smelling slightly of lightning and fermented peaches.
Once all of them have poured in at least a gulp or two of liquid, Caomhin with an apologetic grimace—"it's basically vinegar," he says—Oswin with a delightedly maniacal expression—"wish Sadia were here instead of Weisshaupt, her bottle's disgusting"—Wenalen and Huguette both with ear-to-ear grins—"remember when Junlei tried to hit Duncan over the head with the bottle we gave her?" "Maker do I ever, right after she got caught sneaking around trying to run away"—Tali's bottle is just about half full, and the mixture inside is cloudy and dark. The fire burns hot, coals jewel-red and well-established, and Tali turns slightly to Sav, sitting next to Dahna and Caomhin, Sher at her feet. This time, her cousin has a true smile as she watches Tali, one that reaches her eyes, even if it is small. Meanwhile, Oswin throws a stick, kindling meant for the fire, and Abarie barks excitedly and runs off after it.
"All right all right, everyone's contributed a bit of the good old conscription ale?" Alistair calls out, double checking. The others all nod and cheer, and some shout get on with it, raising their bottles or flasks or jars into the air. Alistair turns to Tali, a mischievous grin on his face. "Bottoms up, recruit," he says, "time for your real Joining drink." Tali takes a breath, steels herself, and takes a large swig.
It's absolute swill—Caomhin was right, it does taste like vinegar—and it burns going down her throat, but when she coughs, and the others laugh and cheer and drink from their own bottles, she can taste some of the Lyrium fermented wine from Marion's bottle, and a bit of lichen ale from Roderick's, and mead and sour fruit cider and the sharp hint of birch liquor, and a dozen other indistinguishable flavors. All the Wardens look at her expectantly as she comes up for air, eyes watering, hand pounding at her chest, and she can feel the alcohol again, rippling and warm in her veins.
"Tastes rather jammy," she says, trying to force dryness into her tone, sarcasm, and it brings forth a cheer from the whole group, another toast, another drink. Boldened by the alcohol and the atmosphere, Tali reaches over, drapes an arm around her cousin. Whatever has passed between them, she wants so desperately in this moment to feel some little joy. Some hope. In response, Sav laughs lightly, softly, a little bittersweetly, and winds an arm around Tali's waist. It is a relief, it is approval, and Tali lets it carry her away, riding the blissful celebration of now, only now, no past and no future to think of.
But it doesn't last, can't last, and soon the sky is growing dark and Savreen is standing, beckoning to Tali, an apologetic look on her face.
"The meeting," she says by way of reminder. Tali nods, disappointed, head a little fuzzy, and when Alistair hands her a cork, she shoves it roughly into her bottle, still a third full, and ducks into their tent to tuck it into her bedroll. She slaps her face a few times, trying to sober herself up and out of her tipsy state. Though she thinks it works, when she turns to leave, she trips, nearly falling into Alistair's lap, catching herself on his thigh. Their noses nearly touch, and for a second, Tali is looking right into his eyes, and she sees a tiny speck of brown flecking his iris that is darker than the rest, and she can smell some sort of herbal liquor on his breath and the warm, minty smell of birch root.
Then she catches her own breath, smiles, laughs, pulls herself back, and tries to ignore the blush that's rising on her chest and face as all the others let out oooohs and ahhhhhhs. There's even an Alistair I think the new recruits like you! from Oswin before Alistair pulls him into a headlock. With that, Tali salutes everyone, whistles for Abarie (who trots up, stick still in her mouth), and turns to follow Sav and Sher, a little unsteady, but still feeling that hope, the first real hope she's felt since before Highever, hope that maybe she will feel at home again someday, someday soon.