What made Halla laugh until liquid came out of her nose?
This is something that happened when Halla was seventeen years old.
Her clan often traded with human settlements so Halla was fairly accustomed to being around humans, but didn’t often stray from her clan.Her closest friend at the time, another young hunter named Idrilla, tended to have more of a wild and adventurous streak.
So anyway, a small trading group of humans arrived from a nearby village and there were three young men with them, all around Halla and Idrilla’s age. They struck up a conversation with Idrilla and ultimately invited her to meet them for drinks at the village inn later that night.
Halla didn’t particularly want to go despite not getting any bad vibes - they seemed to be nice young men who were bored and excited to meet some new young women - but she didn’t want to let Idrilla go on her own either. They agreed to meet that night and then parted ways.
Despite their young ages, the clan was fairly trusting of humans and had faith in their youths’ ability to protect themselves, so they didn’t need to sneak away. They set out at dusk and headed off to the village.
They got a few strange looks when they arrived on the main road - it was very uncommon for the townspeople to see two young elves traipsing down the street wearing vallaslin and traditional Dalish garb - but they didn’t encounter any issues.
The young men were waiting for them at the tavern and they had a perfectly lovely night. The men were hunters as well and they spent most of the night drinking and trying to one-up each other with stories of their wildest hunts.
After a few hours and a lot too many drinks, their drunk teenage brains decided that it would be a good idea to compare their archery and riding skills. So they grabbed new mugs of beer and some lanterns and traipsed out to a nearby field, stopping at the boys’ house to saddle two horses.
Idrilla and Cormac, the youngest of the men, decided to go first, so they arranged some targets on a fence and mounted their horses. The goal was to ride as fast as they could towards the fence and see who could hit closer to the middle of the target.
They began riding hard towards the fence when a rabbit darted out in front of Idrilla’s horse, which careened sideways, throwing her from the saddle and directly into Cormac. Both teens flew off and landed in a pile, their bows and legs tangling.
Halla and the other two boys went running towards them, but fortunately neither were hurt. Cormac got to his feet first and helped Idrilla stand, then swept into an exaggerated bow. Idrilla dropped into an absolutely terrible imitation of a curtsy, then took her bow and knocked Cormac behind the ankles, landing him straight on his back.
Halla had just taken a sip of her beer, and snorted so hard that it came pouring out of her nose.
Thanks for this question! I have so many stories for Halla and her clan in my head but I never ever talk about them - it’s so nice to have the opportunity to do so for once!
