Cityelfweek - City Elf Appreciation Week

the return of the king..................

Original post here.

I did consider October, however as we don't know exactly when Dragon Age: The Veilguard will be released outside of "autumn", I thought it would be best to avoid those months just in case they coincide. I know September is an autumn month, but I think it's unlikely to come out then? But maybe not!

Please let me know your thoughts :)

i really love her design 😳

I keep drawing her in nice clothes even tho I think in some respects they would make her uncomfortable sometimes lmaoooo my musings do not reflect her actual fashion choices I’m sure

Dilwyn and Gethon’s Camp Supper

Adaia’s old friends knew her from her adventuring days, and often shared food and stories around the campfire. The menu is nothing exciting: whatever they caught, brought, or foraged, but for Dilwyn and Gethon, the memories lasted forever.

Menu:

“Rabbit” Stew with Dumplings

Roast Apples

Shopping List:

flour

apples

onion

parsley

sage leaves

8 ounces mushrooms

butter

3 pound rabbit or chicken

Gethon’s “Rabbit” Stew

It’s a little bland, but it keeps body and soul together. Rabbit can be purchased from larger markets or specialty provisioners, but substitution and improvisation form the backbone of this recipe, so chicken or Cornish hens will do just as well. Odds are good that Gethon himself made it with chicken plenty of times, or squirrel, or any other small game they had on hand. If you don’t have eggs to make the dumplings, add ¼ cup more water and accept that the dumplings will be very dense.

1 3-pound chicken or rabbit

1 large onion

2 whole sage leaves

handful parsley

8 ounces mushrooms

salt to taste

3 cups flour

1 tsp salt

3 Tbsp butter

2 eggs

½ cup water

Cut the meat apart at the joints, skinning the carcass, but leaving the bones in. Arrange in the bottom of a pot just large enough to hold the meat without stacking it. Cut the onion into a ½ inch dice and toss it and the remaining ingredients on top of the rabbit. If you have leeks or greens, toss them in, too. Add water to within half an inch of the top layer of vegetables. Cover the pot, put over the hottest part of the  fire and bring it to a boil, then move it off the fire slightly (or turn down the heat) and simmer until the meat is very tender and the vegetables are soft, at least 1 hour. The vegetables will sweat out their juices and contribute liquid to the stew, and the longer this cooks, the more flavor it has. Season to taste with salt and continue to simmer while you prepare the dumplings.

Combine the flour with the salt and rub in the butter until it resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in the eggs and the water and mix to form a dough. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto the surface of the simmering stew, cover, and cook until the dumplings are cooked through, about 10 minutes.

Dilwyn’s Roast Apples

Dilwyn was never as fond of cooking as her husband Gethon, so she leaves the bulk of the meal preparation to him and contents herself with making a little something to round things out. Quantities are rather pointless, as the procedure is the same whether you are roasting one apple or a dozen.

Core apples, wrap in kitchen foil, and roast in the embers or on the grill until the apples are soft, about 30 minutes. Serve with honey, if desired.

@cityelfweek has been going on all week. Seeing the new and old works on my dash has been absolutely fantastic!

I didn't think I would have time to participate, but all the love for city elves got me excited, so I whipped up a quick story with my OC Loran from his childhood in the Starkhaven alienage.

This story does include fishing and a brief mention of animal death.

--

When he finally came home out of the rain, knees muddy and hands scraped, Loran went to hide with the only quiet person in the room. His grandmother had spent the storm next to the stove, swaddled under their best blankets. She’d grown so old that she looked young again; she resembled her newest grandchild, born only a fortnight ago, more than she did any of her black-haired daughters. Still, she smiled when Loran kissed her waxy cheek, and her bony grip was strong when she took his hand.

"Oi, Fish Fingers."

Caught, Loran met his brother’s bright eyes. He hated the nickname even though Ru always sung it out like a compliment. 

"We're going to the river tonight," Ru told him then went back to poking the cook pot. “Eels are out.”

Only Talea, looking up from the table where she was rolling biscuits, found room to argue with Ru. With long brown curls and an upturned nose that was now dotted with flour, she was called one of the prettiest girls in Starkhaven before she married Ru. He’d heard his brother call her beautiful every day since their wedding, but Loran always thought her face was too small. Whenever she looked at him, her eyes and mouth shrank tighter.

“Can’t you wait til morn?” she asked, voice pinched. “They’re so slimy.”

"Nay, this storm will have them all riled up.” Ru spoke with an easy confidence that matched his broad shoulders. Any elf could nail two boards together, but if an elf in Starkhaven wanted their home to be standing for their grandchildren, they put the work in Ru’s hands.

Loran watched his brother reach out and wipe the flour from Talina’s nose. Ru went on.

"The guard took all the traps up, broke 'em to bits, and said no more nets either. It's the blasted slow poles now. But Fish Fingers will pick them out of the water - won't you?"

He mimed a fast pinching motion and grinned at Loran. 

Sometimes, when Ru smiled, Loran wondered if he looked like their father. His cheeks were marked by the pox that had taken their mother and a sister, but there was plain handsomeness to his face; no one had doubted Talea’s decision to marry him. Her family was happy with the match too. With his good sense and unbroken promises, many understood that Ru was building a reputation worthy of a Haren.

Loran could imagine his brother among the Elders. When they first came to ask Ru favors, he had served them weak tea, and Loran was allowed to linger if he sipped his cup in silence. These days, when the Elders came through the door without knocking, Ru brought out a bottle and sent him away.

"I don't want to go for eels," he spoke up.

Ru’s look of disappointment, Loran knew, came from their mother. “I’ve got these lines all mended, food in eight bellies, roofs patched all the way up the hill – what’ve your fast fingers been helping me with lately?”

“I helped fix Karsi’s place.” Loran slowly began to work his hand from his grandmother’s grip. With her deaf ears, she’d already dozed off.

“That take all day?” Ru raised his brow, and Loran knew his brother was calling him a liar. “Go fetch bait.”

Loran answered with sullen silence, looking at the hot, half-made supper that would be cold by the time he returned.

“Now.”

-

After night had set in, the brothers put baskets on their backs and set off down streets swollen with water and filth. The storm had sent all of Starkhaven’s dirt spilling onto the doorsteps of the alienage. Come morning, when the sun broke through the gray clouds, the smell would be worse than the bag of chum in Loran’s hand. He kept his other hand on the knife tucked into his belt. Ru, carrying their old poles tucked under his arm, moved through the mess unbothered. Loran was careful to step in his footprints.

Not many people knew the old path they took to the river. Ru said their father had shown him the way; he kept some secrets for family. Tonight the narrow trail was slick, with the cool mud coating Loran’s toes, and he slid to his knees twice before they reached the bank. They didn’t stop until they were knee-deep in the wide, flat water.

Ru moved upstream in the shallows, but never so far that Loran couldn’t catch the glow of his eyes. He was right that they venture out tonight; the eels were quick to bite, and the brothers dragged their long, whipping bodies from the stillness of the river. After a short move with their knives, the wriggling struggles of the fish ended. Even in the dark, Loran could see that after each eel Ru put in his basket, his brother made the sign of thanks across his forehead like their mother had taught them. Loran tried to copy him until his hands became thick with eel slime.

When Loran’s basket was beginning to grow heavy, Ru waded over to him.

"Your fingers aren't feeling fishy, eh?"

"I've caught more than you." Loran mumbled, trying to thread fresh chunk onto his hook.

Ru peered into his brother’s basket. "All the wee ones, looks like."

When Loran only scowled in reply, Ru stretched his arms tall.

"You used to catch the big ones - bigger than you! With your hands." 

Loran cast his line with a sharp flick of his wrist. "I'm not a kid anymore."

"Okay, okay, if you don't think you can do it.” Ru pressed his palms together in a show of exaggerated sympathy. “It's a shame you got slow in your old age." 

“I’m not slow,” Loran snapped, although he knew his brother’s game. "I can do it. It's not hard."

"If you say so."

Loran shoved his pole into Ru’s hand with a glare, grabbed a handful of bait from the bag, then knelt down in the river. He reached his arms out in the black water. Even though Ru kept his smile, he seemed to understand the seriousness of Loran taking his challenge, and he stayed still. They waited.

After a time, when all he felt against his hands was the black push of the river, Loran began to worry. He worried no eel would come. Or if one finally came, with Ru’s eyes on him, he would miss it. The cold river ran faster around his neck. Ru believed he could catch one; what if he was wrong?

Then he felt a sliver flash over the back of his left hand. He held his breath. When it came again, he struck. He pulled the eel out of the water and it began to thrash, but it was too late. Loran had his grandmother’s grip.

Ru whooped. “Gods! You’ve caught a water dragon.”

Loran giggled as he juggled the slimy beast. The eel wasn’t the largest catch that night, he knew, but when Ru grabbed his shoulders and laughed, it felt like it could be.

In Confidence

( Arianwen Tabris/Zevran Arainai | 2,392 Words | AO3 Link | CW: Fantasy racism, past parent death, emotional hurt/comfort)

“Where are you taking me?” Zevran asked, keeping pace with his Warden as they scaled the side of a building in the alienage. It was not a difficult task, though the state of the scaffolding they were climbing did give him pause. 

“You’ll see,” she told him, grunting slightly when she caught the board over her head and pulled herself up. 

Only fifteen feet separated them from the top—or so he hoped. Meeting her family had been trial enough on its own. He had not anticipated this sort of exertion afterward or he would have eaten far less at her father’s table. 

“Almost there,” she added, and there was the faintest note of an apology tucked beneath her usual impassive tone. If he had not known her so well, Zevran might not have heard it at all. 

“I am in no particular hurry,” he told her, and she stopped climbing to cast him a skeptical look. 

“Well,” Zevran amended, glancing below. “I must admit this is not how I thought we would be spending our evening.” 

Below, the vhenadahl swayed in the evening air off the Drakon River. People stood in clusters, their voices ringing off the stone, and food peddlers had staked out rival ends of the courtyard. It surprised him even now to see the condition of the alienage; he supposed that it explained something of his Arianwen that she had grown up in such a place. And yet—these people had built something here, among the ruins. He could see the bright hair of Tabris’s cousin bob through the crowd, pausing near one cluster of people and speaking for a time. They opened to her reluctantly, but even from this distance Zevran could see some of them begin to nod. Perhaps they would yet rebuild their community, even after what the slavers had done to them. 

“Are you coming?” Arianwen called down, and he realized that she’d made her way to the top while he’d looked below. Zevran climbed instead of answering, and reached for her hand at the top when she offered it. 

“We used to play here,” she told him, bracing to pull him over the edge and onto a wooden platform. “Shianni and I. Before and after it burned. It was our secret place, just the two of us. Poor Soris was never one for heights. He’d wait until he heard us climb down and then we’d all wander together. When his parents still lived, he’d grown up in the building next door. I used to hear his mother singing while she made dinner, back when I used to wander the streets looking for strays.”

“Ah—I see,” Zevran said, glancing around. 

The two of them stood in the burned shell of a house three stories from the ground. He had thought that they’d reached a platform at the top of the scaffolding, but he saw now that he’d been wrong. They stood on all that was left of a wooden floor, the edges blackened and crumbled away. Arianwen stood to the empty doorway, patting the wall beside it fondly. There was little else to see here—only the remnants of a bed, piles of fabric in the corners of the room that might once have been blankets or clothing, holes in the floor where the structure below had given way. He did not struggle to imagine two young girls finding this place out of curiosity, for he had done much the same when he’d been a boy. 

“Ready?” she asked while he was still considering this. She vanished through the darkness of the doorway before he could answer, so Zevran had little choice but to follow her into the hallway beyond. 

“How did this place burn?” Zevran asked, ducking a fallen beam and testing the floor before he went on down the hall. 

“Humans,” Wen said, and her face was shadowed when she glanced back at him. “It burned the night Soris’s parents died.”

There was a heavy silence then. She stopped long enough for him to catch up and caught his hand in hers. This was still new—Arianwen reaching for him, for comfort. Zevran did not know quite what to make of it yet. 

“She tried to escape the building after they set it aflame. One of them kicked her back inside. The man who—oh, nevermind. You don’t need the details,” she took a sharp breath, her hand squeezing Zevran’s, and went on down the dark hall. “A few days later, my ma was gone all night long. They found his body washed up on the river, cut to ribbons and bloodless. I didn’t realize until far later what that meant.”

“She was a fighter, your mother?” Zevran asked, for it seemed the safer topic of conversation. Tabris dropped his hand to climb under more debris. 

“She taught me everything I know,” she sighed, “I tried to forget it after she died. My body remembered for me. I’m grateful to it. But—here. Look.” 

They’d found the end of the hallway at last. Arianwen pushed the door open and revealed—

A closet. 

Zevran looked at her, brows arched high in question. To his surprise, she laughed. That was new, too—hearing her laugh when they weren’t in the heat of battle. It was a tired laugh, but that mattered very little in the run of things. 

“Watch,” she said, and turned the coat hook on the back wall. The wall fell away at the pressure of her hand, swinging open into the room beyond. 

“However did you find this?” Zevran asked, stepping into the room behind her. This room was lit by the lone window on the far wall, through which moonlight poured. In the cool light, he could see her clearly enough to read her face. Wistful—yes. She seemed wistful. 

“You know—I don’t remember,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know which one of us opened the door, or even when it happened. I only remember it being our place, Shianni’s and mine. Here.”

She lit a candle and held it up to the wall. Messy colors snaked up the crumbling plaster, handprints followed by rough drawings and holes in a familiar shape. 

“Throwing knives?” he asked, making his way to her side. Arianwen nodded silently, her lips parting and pressing tightly together again. 

Zevran knew that look. She was fighting some battle with herself, weighing what she ought to say to him. They would both be better served if he gave her space. 

“May I…?” he asked, gesturing to the room at large. Tabris nodded again, stepping closer to the marks on the wall, and Zevran slipped away. 

The corners held stacks of books here and there, all adventures set in distant lands or histories of Ferelden. He found only two that he supposed must have belonged to his Warden: a book about animal physiology and one about the care and keeping of various household pets. Zevran smiled at the sight of them, leaving a streak in the dust covering each volume, and moved on. 

Most of the wooden walls bore the marks of her blades. Many of the marks had been thrown wide from their fingerpainted targets. He could follow the progress of her skill by those holes, could trace the time spent in this room by the neatness of the circles they fell within. 

When he had met the Wardens on the road all those months ago, he had met a blade of a woman. She was hard and quick and sharp, flashing through the crowd of Crows like light through a fast-running river. There had been nothing of fear or weakness in her. She had seemed—impervious, somehow. As if nothing in the world could touch her, as if she had sprung into existence precisely as he saw her in that moment. 

Zevran knew better now, of course. He had seen her at her most vulnerable in the mornings when she slept, had watched her uncertainty upon seeing her father again. Two days ago, she had wept over Zevran’s body when she’d thought him dead by Taliesen’s hand. Today, standing in the dusty remnants of her childhood, he knew her better than he might have thought possible even a month ago.

Even so—it was surprising and endearing, somehow, to know that she had not leapt from her mother with blades in hand. Once, many years ago, she had learned her craft just as he had. Maker’s teeth, but sometimes Zevran wished they had known each other then, before the softness had been carved from them both. Who had she been? Who might he have been, in that other life that neither of them would ever live? 

“Here—this is what I actually meant to show you,” Arianwen said. 

Zevran blinked and found her beside him, though he had not heard her approach. She slipped her hand into his, lacing their fingers together, and pulled him with her to another door. When she opened it to the night beyond, cool air brushed over his cheeks. They had only been in the room for ten or fifteen minutes, hardly long enough to notice how still the air was. Even so, it was a relief to step into a fresher breeze.

“You can sit,” she told him, but leaned forward against a flimsy railing. 

They’d stepped out onto a narrow balcony of sorts. A broken pulley hung from the wall to their left and an alleyway stretched into the darkness of the alienage beneath them. It was wide enough for two chairs and little else, though the gleam of glass bottles beneath them suggested what this space had been used for most recently. 

“This was—” she sighed, and one fist thudded lightly against the wood of the railing. “I was last here on the night before my…before the wedding.”

Arianwen leaned forward until her shoulders hunched.  Her hands were joined into one fist, knuckles pale against the brown of her skin. Zevran breathed sweet night air and watched her. It was still difficult—to wait, to allow her to unspool whatever she’d been fighting. It would be easier to make some joke. Already, one stood waiting on his tongue. But—no. 

No, he found he rather wanted to know what she’d brought him here to say.

“Shianni was too drunk to climb down. I was too scared to try on my own. We dozed off here and dragged ourselves back home at dawn. I remember thinking that it would be the last time I ever came up here. I knew…I knew I would never want to share this place with a stranger. How could I?” 

Zevran nudged one of the chairs aside, wincing when he heard the bottles beneath tipping against each other. He found a spot beside her at the rail and rested his arms against it. Arianwen did not look at him.

“The night my mother died, I was here. I came home late because I’d argued with my father and I knew he would worry if I was out for too long. I was…punishing him. By the time I came back, she was already gone.”

A breeze brushed small, loose hairs over her forehead. Tabris reached up and pushed them back, frowning slightly. Zevran edged closer and leaned his shoulder against hers. After a moment, she bent to lean her head against his shoulder. 

“I don’t blame myself. It wasn’t my fault. This isn’t about that. This is—ugh.”

Zevran wrapped an arm around her waist, thinking hard, but there was little he could say. He had come to trust her slowly, had given himself over one careful piece at a time before he’d realized that he was doing so. It did not often pain him to tell her the hard things now. For her part, Arianwen had opened her arms to him readily enough once she’d begun to care, but it had taken longer to offer pieces of her heart to him in turn. Even now, he could feel her cutting them free for his perusal. 

“There is nothing that you must tell me. Yes?” he said, resting his shoulder against hers. “It can wait. A different night, some other place.” 

“No,” she said sharply. “I want to say—I’m glad you’re here. You should be here. I love this place and I hate this place and I miss it all the time. It was my secret, but now it’s yours, too. And that’s all.” 

Her eyes flicked up and away again, focusing on the dark alley below. 

“I’m glad you’re here, Zev,” she repeated quietly. “That’s all.” 

What could he say to this? Wen could be harsh and difficult and wore the intensity of her feelings like armor. Even so—she had brought him to this, the most vulnerable of places, the tenderest of wounds. She had brought him here and no other. 

Zevran swallowed around the thickness in his throat and nudged her hip with his. She looked up at him, the moonlight snared in her eyes, and what could he say? 

“Do you suppose any of these bottles still have wine in them? Some wine, a fine whiskey, perhaps?” 

Arianwen snorted, shoulders loosening slightly. 

“None that I’d chance drinking,” she said, but tugged a slim, dented flask from her pocket. “Here—I’ll share. But only because you asked.”

“You have my most sincere thanks, dearest Warden,” Zevran told her, voice smooth and dripping with charm. She snorted again, tapping his chest with the flask, and he took it. It was warm, held tight against her side all this time. He treasured the feeling of it as he unscrewed the cap. 

When they walked back to Eamon’s estate later, all but alone on the street, he sought better words. It was easier when she wasn’t watching him. It was easier when they were away from the place that had hurt and raised her. 

“I am glad I am here, too, mi vida,” he told her, watching the ragged road ahead. “Thank you.” 

Her hand slipped into his, palm warm and rough. Zevran wondered if she knew that the words were meant for more than just tonight. He wondered if she understood how far back the sentiment could stretch, that he was grateful for more than a secret shared and glad for his continued existence in a broader sense than glad could encompass. 

“Thank you,” she echoed quietly, and held on tight.

(For Zevwarden Week Day 2: Secrets, Kept and Told. Thanks @zevraholics for organizing this!)

City Elf Appreciation Week

~ 5th of August - 11th of August ~

Here are some optional prompts for next week! Please feel free to do whatever you like with them. Remember to tag @cityelfweek or use the tag #cityelfweek24!

Day 1 - Vhenadahl - A pillar of many alienage communities. Firewood in others.

Day 2 - Folklore - Show the folklore that city elves have created over time. Superstitions, stories, heroes, villains... anything!

Day 3 - Community - Close-knit family, or claustrophobic little box?

Day 4 - Custom and Tradition - Andrastian? Dalish? Somewhere in between, or something all new?

Day 5 - Alienage - The only home many city elves ever know.

Day 6 - OC - A day to celebrate original city elf characters!

Day 7 - Free Day - All things city elf!

[original post][divider credit]

City Elf Week - Day 4

Please remember to tag @cityelfweek or use the tag #cityelfweek24 so your works can be reblogged! Today's optional prompt is customs and traditions - but anything that's focused on city elves is welcome, new and old!

Day 1: Vhenadahl

Written for @cityelfweek day 1! One of my favourite parts of DA lore is how many of our Elvhen companions cannot be neatly categorised into one of two boxes human society designates for them. I wanted to start the week writing about that overlap with Merrill and the city elves she lives among for, at this point, most of her adult life.

“Ir abelas,” Merrill mutters as she makes the first cut. The sapling branch surrenders easilyl to her shears, falling to the earth with little more hurry than a feather from a bird’s wing. She pats the trunk fondly. “I promise we’re almost through.”

When the wind stirs, it’s almost like it’s answering. She smiles, satisfied, and moves onto the next branch. Though she had promised to be done soon, she does not rush the task before her. From the rare traveller that passes through, she has come to learn the vhenadahl is the beating heart of the Alienage, and unique as the community it represents. Some exist only as stumps, sitting places for elves to gather and chatter, others grow in impossible ways, defying the desert sun to offer shade to the People on hopelessly hot days. As she understands it, the one in Hossburg is just a cutting, the old tree felled in a mighty storm.

Merrill, for her part, has become quite proud of Kirkwall’s. Mighty it grows, and tall. The paint they had decorated it with on Summerday has begun to fade in the fierce sunshine of August, pigment clinging brightest where the boughs gather the darkest shadow. Soon, the elven new year will be upon them, and they will hang ribbons in her branches and paint patterns in her bark once again.

She reaches for the next branch, snipping deftly. The slice of the blades are so sharp, she doesn’t hear the quiet gasp behind her.

“Why are you hurting the tree, hahren?” A small voice asks. Merrill pauses her pruning to look down, met by the sweet face of Libi, Elara’s daughter. Her wild blonde hair is freshly tamed and combed into two thick plaits. She’d broken from a pack of nearby children to accost Merrill with her question, dolly held limply by her side.

“Oh.” Merrill’s teeth drive into her lower lip, impressing a faint line. The Alienage’s children don’t often address her, content to let her be an oddity. The strange, Dalish lady they could imagine all sorts of things about, as children are like to do with things they do not understand. It doesn’t trouble her, she had been no less strange to her clan, and no better with their children. “I’m not hurting it, da’len. I’m helping.”

She lifts her hand, rubbing the trunk of the tree like she strokes the side of some great, friendly beast. “You prune the branches to help it grow. Think of it like… if you had an arm-” Merrill sticks her thumb against her forehead, fingers splaying out like leaves on a branch- “growing out of your forehead! Or… a leg in your ear.” She tilts her head, like the imaginary appendage weighs it to one side.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Libi remarks, perhaps considering the extra toys she could tote around with her if she had an extra arm.

Merrill laughs. “You might be alright,” she says, “but trees will tip over.”

Libi nods with a stoic understanding. She steps over to the pile of sticks Merrill has gathered through her morning’s work. “What will these be for?”

The shoots are still green, flush with water, and will make for poor kindling. Among the Dalish, it had made them the ideal spit to roast their dinners on, but there is no shortage to their use. “They may dry clean laundry, or make for a little slingshot.” She strays in her task to pluck one that diverges like a fork in a river, separate ends just far apart enough to tie something between them. “Maybe a little loom?”

“A sword,” Libbi declares, leaving no room for argument. With her free hand, she reaches out, but thinks twice before snatching it. Merrill can almost hear mamae’s voice reprimanding her for her lack of manners. “May I have one?”

“Uh, of course! But choose wisely, da’len.”

Libi takes her words to heart, deliberating until she finds the narrowest stick in the pile. She brandishes it like a rapier, then, apparently satisfied with her decisions, bounds back to her friends as though no time has passed. A little ‘thank you’ follows her retreat, manners not entirely abandoned now that she had what she came for.

Merrill smiles, taking heart in the fact that they had parted as friends. The parents had taken to calling her hahren for her knowledge, but without children to teach, it often felt an empty title. It’s only when she hears the whip of a twig against bare flesh that she realises her mistake. That afternoon, the shade of the vhenadahl nurses many a skinned knee as a little war plays out beneath its boughs.