ladyspitfire: (ʙᴀᴛᴛʟᴇ | a desert sun)
Elissa Cousland ([personal profile] ladyspitfire) wrote in [community profile] exsiliumlogs2013-01-01 03:57 pm

find there's no need to hide

Date & Time: Forward-dated to January 4th or 5th.
Location: The mountains outside of Exsilium.
Characters: Elissa and Loki.
Summary: Elissa goes exploring on her own and finds someone's humble abode. Things don't go so well.
Warnings: None for now!


It became increasingly obvious as the trip continued that Elissa hadn't been exploring or walking great distances in months.

Back in Thedas and Ferelden proper, she hardly ever took the time to pay for horses on her journeys. Everywhere she went, she walked. The year she spent with her friends fighting the Blight had them roughing it in all manner of weather, hardly ever spending time in towns unless there was some great need to halt their progress. Her time in Amaranthine as Commander softened her; though there were long marches, she oftentimes had a bed to return to after some days or weeks of travel, comfort behind stone walls and food at the table. Since then, she'd wandered alone, but her arrival in Exsilium served to make her complacent again. She'd longed for a real stretch of her legs and oftentimes contemplated leaving the city...only to talk herself out of it. Not this time, though.

She did not try to use one of the Initiative's vehicles. She didn't understand them enough to make an attempt. Instead, she walked, and the steady burn in her legs after two days of almost non-stop travel was a reminder of how she had fallen out of shape. But there was freedom and familiarity in the open, traveling alone with her mabari hound, scraping off of the land and eating whatever she'd brought or what she could hunt. She reached the mountains on the third day and took her time trying to delve over the stones, mindful of the dog she traveled with. But it didn't take her long to spot the ruins of some sort of structure which she gladly made her way towards, if only to have some kind of shelter before it became too dark.

It was an old castle by the looks of it, long since abandoned and allowed to decay. The doors hardly stayed where they were on their hinges and the great hall opened up to the sky, shedding light on the dilapidated pieces of old stone and the moss that grew over the old statues. It was a beautiful sight...and also very sad. She'd grown up in a castle not unlike the one she stepped into and she was disappointed to see that it had been allowed to fall apart. But then, with the war and the world itself being so far in the future, she should not have been surprised.

With care, she closed the front doors (though she needn't have bothered, considering the state of the structure) and stepped further inside, Atticus sniffing around at whatever he could find. "Stay close, boy," she murmured, pulling down the hood of her cloak. She brushed her hair back and cast her eyes around. "Let's see if we can find one of the inner rooms so we can settle for the evening." The dog barked, pleased with this arrangement. But first thing's first: she needed some light.

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