I was tagged by the remarkable @thedissonantverses!
This week I have a couple of things I'm sharing. I'm working on the Rue piece, beginning with her in Denerim after the darkspawn invasion, but sort of went down a rabbit hole yesterday because I wanted explore a bit of more of what Denerim looked like right after the Blight.
So two things!
The first is a letter from a wealthy citizen of Denerim who was writing someone who fled, and the second is from Ester, one of Goldanna's kids, who become a scholar or scribe of some sort when she's grown. In the first one I wanted to try the POV of someone with priviledge, and in the second, someone who'd been trained to write with a certain style but style managed to inject their own voice. Not sure what I'll do with either, but I needed to write them to get some stuff down and move on with the Rue piece. Anyhow, here are the first drafts of both:
Asshole Letter:
First and above all, please know that I, Father, and Ustan are all well. Most of the staff survive, including little Dottie, but have been regrettably absent from their stations in the aftermath of the battle. I trust all is well with you and though we’re separated by a great distance, I hope that you might feel the faint ghost of my hand on yours as I think of you. I also encourage you and your family to stay in Val Royeaux for the foreseeable future as Denerim is not fit to live in right now.
The Darkspawn invasion has reduced large sections of the city to rubble and char. The widest streets proved a funnel, driving the hordes deep into Denerim’s heart and stampeding over homes and businesses. In their wake is utter destruction. They did not make it to the waterfront, but fires started by the invaders and defenders both did so that the warehouses, workhouses, and wharves no longer stand and can no longer accept or store the goods the city now finds itself in need of to supply its citizens.
Fortunately, our districts have, for the most part, been spared. Most of our houses were quiet as so many, like you, sought refuge in our family homes in Orlais or the Free Marches, and that quiet seemed to prove uninteresting to the horde. It was also a great help to have the hired men guarding the gates as they harried the invaders and encouraged them to pass by the estates.
But the rubble and char! Nadia, it is not only cluttering the ground and making many streets impassable; It is in the air! Stone dust and ash clogs our noses and coats our clothes. Oh, the ash For days and days and days after the archdemon had been defeated, guards and soldiers hauled cartloads of bodies out of the city, Fereldans and darkspawn alike, to be burned in heaps in the fields beyond the gates. At night the sky was orange and from dusk to dusk the remnants of those who died floated in the air and settled onto us and everything we own. The city is a graveyard, and those of us who survived are the grave markers.
If there is any good to come of this, it’s perhaps that the precarious, ramshackle buildings of the alienage, all wood and ever their own blight upon the city, has been cleansed by fire. Its residents seem determined to stay and consume precious sparse resources and while your brother has argued that it might be best to escort them out of the city, others have insisted their labour will be needed to aid in rebuilding Denerim. It’s a moot point regardless, as the Dalish fighters have, as yet, refused to leave and guard the gates to the alienage as if the city’s guard might sweep in and dispatch them all at any moment. There is talk they may donate timber to our elves, bringing it in through the devastated streets and bypassing those of our people who have no roofs over their head and are reduced to sleeping in Chantry yards and under tents. It is a display of barbaric ingratitude for the favours Anora has granted them at the behest of the Warden Commander.
Ester's Writing:
I’ve spent several years collecting the memories of those who survived the Fifth Blight at the request of ____ University in Denerim. They mean to collect the stories and archive them for future study. Some bright scholar realized that while we have books and ballads and scrolls of tales of the heroes of past blights, there is precious little regarding ordinary people and simple matters of survival during and after one. Some think it would make a valuable resource in case of future blights, while others, myself amongst them, think it would help us better understand who we are as Fereldans when pressed and the millstone.
I have also thought that if I recorded my own memories, it might help me understand myself a little better. At first, I did not think that the daughter of a washer woman could really add much that was valuable to the record, but as I recorded what others recounted to me, and saw the value in what they shared, I realized that it is only in the sharing that the stories gain worth. It is only by the act of letting others examine what I share, that I myself can recognize their significance. So I write.
By my vow I record the experiences of an 11 year old child, as coloured and perhaps refined by some 15 years of distance, of the aftermath of the Battle of Denerim. Perhaps I will write more of the time before the battle, but that time haunts me most and requires an exorcism before I can proceed with the rest.
My mother hid my siblings and I in our cellar. She and my oldest sister had planned for this. Mother decided that our best chance was to stay in the city and prepare as we could for what the Blight might bring to Denerim, as travel had become dangerous on the roads leading north. Many of our neighbours had chosen to flee, but our sticking place was the house Mother rented because there at least, there was a roof, a cellar, and each other.
For months before, Mother had built a small supply of goods and food. It amounted to just a few barrels in the end, but enough that when the fires were lit on the city walls and she urged us down into the dark space beneath the house, there was enough to keep us reasonably ___ until the noises stopped above us.
