It was, indeed, a very tall tree.
Cyrus stood with his hands on his hips, head tilted back to survey the network of branches and vines above him. It was clearly more than strong enough to support his weight, probably even by the time he reached the top. It was a short distance outside the main settlement, which he took to be the only reason there wasn't already something built into it.
He sighed. The night was warm, as they almost always were in the north. The forest made it balmy, too, but he suspected it would be less so as soon as he got high enough to break the canopy line. Perhaps it wouldn't be so different from the view atop the towers in Minrathous. He sighed again, letting his arms slacken. He was in a right state, if thoughts of Minrathous were any consolation.
"Are you planning on climbing that?" Astraia asked, somewhat concerned, from behind him a short distance. She was barefoot still, as she had been pretty much since they were first shown to their rooms, and had approached quietly. Either she'd happened to see him wherever she herself had been walking, or she'd followed him. More likely the latter. She didn't carry anything with her other than her staff, her mass of dark hair left loose down her back.
She shrugged. "People don't usually contemplate trees unless they're planning to climb them. And maybe not sure about it."
Cyrus exhaled in a soft huff. “I was planning on it, yes." He could perhaps see where the concern was coming from: a fall from too high up would doubtless be rather unforgiving, even if branches broke it a bit on the way down, as they surely would. But that was part of the appeal. “I thought I'd pick a route first. Would you like to come? I suspect the view will be quite worth the effort."
Now it was Astraia contemplating the tree, not sure about it, and her mouth tugged sideways in thought, her foot softly tapping against the grass. "Alright," she said, smiling a little. "I'm game." She approached the tree, setting her staff up against it. It would only be a hindrance when trying to climb, after all. "Where do you think we should start?"
Cyrus dredged up a smile from somewhere, finding it a bit easier than his mood thus far would have suggested. He moved a few paces to the left, catching one of the thick vines in his hand. This one draped from one of the lower branches. He gave it a few sharp tugs to be sure that it would hold, then jumped, beginning to pull himself up with his arms. “This seems to work." The vine swung a little with the force of his movement, but climbing was a long-familiar activity, and he made his way up to the branch without much difficulty.
It was quite thick, like the ones the elves walked on in the city proper, but the top of it had not yet been smoothed down in the same way, meaning that it was covered still in bark. No doubt Astraia's feet could handle it regardless. “I think I can see a path upwards. Shouldn't be too difficult—the branches are dense." He glanced back down. “Would you prefer to climb or hang on and be pulled up?" Surely she'd climbed plenty of trees in her life, but it seemed polite to ask. The Tirashan was hardly tropical.
"I can climb," she answered, taking hold of the vine and beginning to pull herself up. She clearly wasn't the most adept at it, no scout or huntress here, but she had done this before if her technique was anything to go by, and at the least she had relatively little weight to pull up with her. It wasn't long before she was pulling herself up onto the branch next to him, and soon they were continuing up together.
"That was a lot to take in earlier," she said, watching him go first and following his path, grunting softly with the effort. "With—with everything about the gods. Your grandmother seems kind, though. I didn't know what to expect, but... not the first time I've been surprised by someone of importance turning out to be friendly."
He wondered about that. “I don't know if I'd call it kindness." Reaching for the next branch, he pulled himself up, satisfied with the feeling of exertion building in his muscles. It felt good to do something, to set some kind of goal, however trivial, and give himself the sense of working towards it. This one had a well-defined end, one he knew he could reach. “Politeness, yes, but..."
In another world.
Maybe he couldn't help but read too much into it, but it sounded like the part of him that was human bothered her. It wasn't an illogical conclusion to draw—she'd outright said that there was no way either he or Stellulam could belong to the family in the way they would have if they'd been elven. Born here. Maybe even not that. Perhaps they'd have been acceptable if they were half-Dalish, or city elf, or whatever. But as it was, their human appearances, their mother's identity, were just as flatly unacceptable to these people as their elf-blood had been to Tiberius. For all Cassius's many faults, at least he'd never cared about that.
A shame. Always a shame to someone.
For the moment, though, he kept those thoughts to himself. No doubt Astraia had plenty to think about already. He'd gone into this expecting no acceptance; on that score, his expectations had simply been met. But her... she'd just been told to her face that a large part of her worldview was straight-out false, that the marks on her skin designated her as lesser here.
He remained silent until they passed the canopy line, then pulled himself up another three branches and paused. Astraia might be able to go one higher, small as she was, but Cyrus wasn't going to chance it. Besides, they had a view here of open night sky, starlight bathing the tops of the trees until the leaves were gilded in silver. This far away from the magelights of the city, it was otherwise utterly dark, the sky perhaps as clear as it would ever get. Cyrus let out a long, slow breath.
“Don't suppose you have your telescope on you?"
"Of course," she answered, once she was caught up with him. She reached for her belt, where she had it stashed in place of where a knife or other sidearm might be. She was slightly out of breath; climbing obviously wasn't the most common physical activity for her. She ran one hand through her thick mass of hair, pushing some of it from her face and shaking out the rest, while she offered the telescope out to him. "Want to look first?"
“Thank you." Cyrus accepted the spyglass, extending it carefully before it clicked into place and he lifted it to his eye. Adjusting it took a few minutes to get exactly right, and then he lowered it, trying to figure out which part of the sky he wanted to examine first. It was just a little different than Minrathous's, after all.
Astraia sank down onto her belly on the branch, bending her legs at the knees and sticking her feet in the air. She seemed more interested in seeing the new sight at the moment rather than the familiar one, gazing out at the forest canopy from where they were above it, listening to the sounds of animals of the night that she'd never encountered before in her secluded part of the world.
"I always feel small," she said, after a time, "but I don't think anywhere has made me feel as small as this place. The trees, the magic, the people, just... everything."
Cyrus moved his eyes away from the sky and back down to where she lay, furrowing his brows and sinking into a sitting position on the branch he occupied, just to the right of hers. “Why's that?" He suspected he knew the answer already, or at least part of it, but if she was bringing it up, it seemed like the sort of thing he should let her explain on her own terms.
"It's like... some piece of the past is still alive here. And everywhere I've been, either with my clan or with Zethlasan was just dead, and we were only paying our respects. Only..." She took in a breath and exhaled, her back visibly rising and deflating with it. "I don't think I ever respected any of it. It was a long lost civilization, and the gods were just stories they told me when I was a girl so I'd behave. And now we're here, and the civilization is real, at least partly. And the gods were real, only they weren't gods at all. They were people, just like you and me."
She shook her head, trinkets clinking softly again in her hair. "Not like me, I guess. I never thought I could do anything great. Everyone led me to believe I could never do anything great. I let them. Just feels like I lost so much time before I found the Inquisition. Elves aren't even supposed to be worried about time." She tilted her head sideways, letting it rest against one of her palms. "I'm probably not making any sense."
Cyrus turned the telescope over in his hands, running the pad of his thumb along one of the engravings in the silverite. She'd taken excellent care of it, he noted distantly. It wasn't surprising at all. “No, you make plenty of sense." He tipped back enough that his shoulders came to rest against the tree behind him. A breeze stirred the air, rippling through the canopies with a raspy susurration.
“I was supposed to be great, once." He let his eyes unfocus a bit, pulling one of his legs up to plant his foot flat against the branch. The other hung off the side, but his balance was solid, so he didn't mind. “I thought so, anyway. Used to believe everyone else thought so, too, but now I'm not so sure anyone ever did. I wanted to be Archon of all Tevinter." He made a gesture wide enough to encompass what they could see and imply everything beyond as well, then scoffed. “Nothing in Thedas could make me feel small, because I was an idiot."
He turned his head to look at her, far enough that his temple rested against the bark behind him. “If any of this made greatness, I would have been right. But it doesn't. It doesn't make anything. It just is."
Carefully, Astraia rolled over, threading the fingers on both hands through her hair underneath her, resting her head on them. She bent one leg up at the knee, letting the other lay flat. She was quiet for a while, listening to just the sounds of the forest and their breathing. "So lineage doesn't matter. The great can be not as great as everyone tells them, and the small can do bigger things than anyone expects."
He tried not to flinch to hear the first part of that in such plain language from someone else, but it was the truth.
It didn't take her too long to come around to the idea, but she was hardly satisfied with it. "Parentage can help though." She almost laughed, in what was possibly a self-effacing kind of way. "Both of my parents were small, and now I'm really small. Everyone here is so big, and I'm this... twig. I can't make myself any taller, but..." She pushed her head up slightly, so she could more easily look at him. "I want to be done feeling like I'm wasting my time, trying to just find somewhere to fit in. I want to do things, important things, things that really help people I care about. And I care about a lot of people. So..."
Now she shifted onto her side, seemingly restless. She propped her head on an arm. "Can you help me train a little? When we get back, maybe? I'm never going to be a warrior, but I want to be able to protect myself, even without magic. I want to feel stronger. Be stronger."
“Me?" Cyrus found it peculiar that she'd ask him of all people, and he was fairly sure his expression indicated as much. He honestly thought she'd probably be better off asking someone else, but... it wasn't as though he had so many other things to do that he couldn't possibly find the time. Quite the opposite, in fact. “I—all right."
If he thought about it practically, he did have some knowledge he thought might be helpful to her. Before he'd ever swung a sword, he'd learned to use a staff as a weapon as well as a focus, and he figured that the reach would do a fair bit to help compensate for her size. She was quite diminutive in that sense.
Clearing his throat, Cyrus extended the telescope back in her direction. “Equin—the Halla is about thirty degrees to your left. As I'm sure you've noticed." He pursed his lips.
“And presence is more a matter of posture than height, anyway."
Cyrus stood with his hands on his hips, head tilted back to survey the network of branches and vines above him. It was clearly more than strong enough to support his weight, probably even by the time he reached the top. It was a short distance outside the main settlement, which he took to be the only reason there wasn't already something built into it.
He sighed. The night was warm, as they almost always were in the north. The forest made it balmy, too, but he suspected it would be less so as soon as he got high enough to break the canopy line. Perhaps it wouldn't be so different from the view atop the towers in Minrathous. He sighed again, letting his arms slacken. He was in a right state, if thoughts of Minrathous were any consolation.
"Are you planning on climbing that?" Astraia asked, somewhat concerned, from behind him a short distance. She was barefoot still, as she had been pretty much since they were first shown to their rooms, and had approached quietly. Either she'd happened to see him wherever she herself had been walking, or she'd followed him. More likely the latter. She didn't carry anything with her other than her staff, her mass of dark hair left loose down her back.
She shrugged. "People don't usually contemplate trees unless they're planning to climb them. And maybe not sure about it."
Cyrus exhaled in a soft huff. “I was planning on it, yes." He could perhaps see where the concern was coming from: a fall from too high up would doubtless be rather unforgiving, even if branches broke it a bit on the way down, as they surely would. But that was part of the appeal. “I thought I'd pick a route first. Would you like to come? I suspect the view will be quite worth the effort."
Now it was Astraia contemplating the tree, not sure about it, and her mouth tugged sideways in thought, her foot softly tapping against the grass. "Alright," she said, smiling a little. "I'm game." She approached the tree, setting her staff up against it. It would only be a hindrance when trying to climb, after all. "Where do you think we should start?"
Cyrus dredged up a smile from somewhere, finding it a bit easier than his mood thus far would have suggested. He moved a few paces to the left, catching one of the thick vines in his hand. This one draped from one of the lower branches. He gave it a few sharp tugs to be sure that it would hold, then jumped, beginning to pull himself up with his arms. “This seems to work." The vine swung a little with the force of his movement, but climbing was a long-familiar activity, and he made his way up to the branch without much difficulty.
It was quite thick, like the ones the elves walked on in the city proper, but the top of it had not yet been smoothed down in the same way, meaning that it was covered still in bark. No doubt Astraia's feet could handle it regardless. “I think I can see a path upwards. Shouldn't be too difficult—the branches are dense." He glanced back down. “Would you prefer to climb or hang on and be pulled up?" Surely she'd climbed plenty of trees in her life, but it seemed polite to ask. The Tirashan was hardly tropical.
"I can climb," she answered, taking hold of the vine and beginning to pull herself up. She clearly wasn't the most adept at it, no scout or huntress here, but she had done this before if her technique was anything to go by, and at the least she had relatively little weight to pull up with her. It wasn't long before she was pulling herself up onto the branch next to him, and soon they were continuing up together.
"That was a lot to take in earlier," she said, watching him go first and following his path, grunting softly with the effort. "With—with everything about the gods. Your grandmother seems kind, though. I didn't know what to expect, but... not the first time I've been surprised by someone of importance turning out to be friendly."
He wondered about that. “I don't know if I'd call it kindness." Reaching for the next branch, he pulled himself up, satisfied with the feeling of exertion building in his muscles. It felt good to do something, to set some kind of goal, however trivial, and give himself the sense of working towards it. This one had a well-defined end, one he knew he could reach. “Politeness, yes, but..."
In another world.
Maybe he couldn't help but read too much into it, but it sounded like the part of him that was human bothered her. It wasn't an illogical conclusion to draw—she'd outright said that there was no way either he or Stellulam could belong to the family in the way they would have if they'd been elven. Born here. Maybe even not that. Perhaps they'd have been acceptable if they were half-Dalish, or city elf, or whatever. But as it was, their human appearances, their mother's identity, were just as flatly unacceptable to these people as their elf-blood had been to Tiberius. For all Cassius's many faults, at least he'd never cared about that.
A shame. Always a shame to someone.
For the moment, though, he kept those thoughts to himself. No doubt Astraia had plenty to think about already. He'd gone into this expecting no acceptance; on that score, his expectations had simply been met. But her... she'd just been told to her face that a large part of her worldview was straight-out false, that the marks on her skin designated her as lesser here.
He remained silent until they passed the canopy line, then pulled himself up another three branches and paused. Astraia might be able to go one higher, small as she was, but Cyrus wasn't going to chance it. Besides, they had a view here of open night sky, starlight bathing the tops of the trees until the leaves were gilded in silver. This far away from the magelights of the city, it was otherwise utterly dark, the sky perhaps as clear as it would ever get. Cyrus let out a long, slow breath.
“Don't suppose you have your telescope on you?"
"Of course," she answered, once she was caught up with him. She reached for her belt, where she had it stashed in place of where a knife or other sidearm might be. She was slightly out of breath; climbing obviously wasn't the most common physical activity for her. She ran one hand through her thick mass of hair, pushing some of it from her face and shaking out the rest, while she offered the telescope out to him. "Want to look first?"
“Thank you." Cyrus accepted the spyglass, extending it carefully before it clicked into place and he lifted it to his eye. Adjusting it took a few minutes to get exactly right, and then he lowered it, trying to figure out which part of the sky he wanted to examine first. It was just a little different than Minrathous's, after all.
Astraia sank down onto her belly on the branch, bending her legs at the knees and sticking her feet in the air. She seemed more interested in seeing the new sight at the moment rather than the familiar one, gazing out at the forest canopy from where they were above it, listening to the sounds of animals of the night that she'd never encountered before in her secluded part of the world.
"I always feel small," she said, after a time, "but I don't think anywhere has made me feel as small as this place. The trees, the magic, the people, just... everything."
Cyrus moved his eyes away from the sky and back down to where she lay, furrowing his brows and sinking into a sitting position on the branch he occupied, just to the right of hers. “Why's that?" He suspected he knew the answer already, or at least part of it, but if she was bringing it up, it seemed like the sort of thing he should let her explain on her own terms.
"It's like... some piece of the past is still alive here. And everywhere I've been, either with my clan or with Zethlasan was just dead, and we were only paying our respects. Only..." She took in a breath and exhaled, her back visibly rising and deflating with it. "I don't think I ever respected any of it. It was a long lost civilization, and the gods were just stories they told me when I was a girl so I'd behave. And now we're here, and the civilization is real, at least partly. And the gods were real, only they weren't gods at all. They were people, just like you and me."
She shook her head, trinkets clinking softly again in her hair. "Not like me, I guess. I never thought I could do anything great. Everyone led me to believe I could never do anything great. I let them. Just feels like I lost so much time before I found the Inquisition. Elves aren't even supposed to be worried about time." She tilted her head sideways, letting it rest against one of her palms. "I'm probably not making any sense."
Cyrus turned the telescope over in his hands, running the pad of his thumb along one of the engravings in the silverite. She'd taken excellent care of it, he noted distantly. It wasn't surprising at all. “No, you make plenty of sense." He tipped back enough that his shoulders came to rest against the tree behind him. A breeze stirred the air, rippling through the canopies with a raspy susurration.
“I was supposed to be great, once." He let his eyes unfocus a bit, pulling one of his legs up to plant his foot flat against the branch. The other hung off the side, but his balance was solid, so he didn't mind. “I thought so, anyway. Used to believe everyone else thought so, too, but now I'm not so sure anyone ever did. I wanted to be Archon of all Tevinter." He made a gesture wide enough to encompass what they could see and imply everything beyond as well, then scoffed. “Nothing in Thedas could make me feel small, because I was an idiot."
He turned his head to look at her, far enough that his temple rested against the bark behind him. “If any of this made greatness, I would have been right. But it doesn't. It doesn't make anything. It just is."
Carefully, Astraia rolled over, threading the fingers on both hands through her hair underneath her, resting her head on them. She bent one leg up at the knee, letting the other lay flat. She was quiet for a while, listening to just the sounds of the forest and their breathing. "So lineage doesn't matter. The great can be not as great as everyone tells them, and the small can do bigger things than anyone expects."
He tried not to flinch to hear the first part of that in such plain language from someone else, but it was the truth.
It didn't take her too long to come around to the idea, but she was hardly satisfied with it. "Parentage can help though." She almost laughed, in what was possibly a self-effacing kind of way. "Both of my parents were small, and now I'm really small. Everyone here is so big, and I'm this... twig. I can't make myself any taller, but..." She pushed her head up slightly, so she could more easily look at him. "I want to be done feeling like I'm wasting my time, trying to just find somewhere to fit in. I want to do things, important things, things that really help people I care about. And I care about a lot of people. So..."
Now she shifted onto her side, seemingly restless. She propped her head on an arm. "Can you help me train a little? When we get back, maybe? I'm never going to be a warrior, but I want to be able to protect myself, even without magic. I want to feel stronger. Be stronger."
“Me?" Cyrus found it peculiar that she'd ask him of all people, and he was fairly sure his expression indicated as much. He honestly thought she'd probably be better off asking someone else, but... it wasn't as though he had so many other things to do that he couldn't possibly find the time. Quite the opposite, in fact. “I—all right."
If he thought about it practically, he did have some knowledge he thought might be helpful to her. Before he'd ever swung a sword, he'd learned to use a staff as a weapon as well as a focus, and he figured that the reach would do a fair bit to help compensate for her size. She was quite diminutive in that sense.
Clearing his throat, Cyrus extended the telescope back in her direction. “Equin—the Halla is about thirty degrees to your left. As I'm sure you've noticed." He pursed his lips.
“And presence is more a matter of posture than height, anyway."