Open Starter
nyssatrevelyan:
Nyssa nodded. “Wycome…. that’s quite a bit further east and somewhat more northern than where I’m from in Ostwick. I imagine your winters are warmer than ours.” She tilted her head curiously. “I imagine trading with a human city like that is not the norm in other clans. Are you…. is it like the Marches, where we’re all loosely affiliated, but each individual has its own culture and customs?” Nyssa hoped her questions weren’t too annoying, but now that the pain was abating, the quiet scholar of the Ostwick Circle was raising her very curious head. It had been some time since she had let her curiosity roam, and tried to learn something for the simple joy of learning. She had had more moments of that before the Mage/Templar conflict had become a conflagration; since coming to Skyhold her only research and learning tended to be offensive spells and studying the doomed red templars for weaknesses.
“No,” Sen answered promptly, but then she stopped, thought about it for a second. “Well yes, actually. I never thought of it like that, but that’s not a bad comparison. We’re a little more connected than the Free Marches, in the sense that we’re all trying to preserve the same knowledge. Of what it once meant to be an elf.
“But Keepers have differing opinions of what’s important, of how stories are told and remembered, of Elvhen pronunciations even. Andaran atish’an. An Elvhen greeting, and that’s how I grew up saying it. But in my travels, I’ve heard it said four other ways, and I’ve encountered a clan in which it’s outright rude to say. They exclusively use the more informal, Aneth ara. Which was taught in my clan as something you only said to friends and family.”
She smiled faintly, shrugged one shoulder, and finished, “When it comes time to introduce you and the Inquisition to the Dalish, I’ll make sure either you or Lady Montilyet or both know which greeting to use for which clan.”
