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I Never Wanted This, Chapter 1

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I heard Mamae call me in from our little two room house. Actually, that wasn't fair. Our house was bigger than the apartments my cousins Shianni and Soris lived in, and I shouldn't complain. That's what Mamae tells me, anyhow.

I walked in smiling, but Mamae wasn't happy. Her face was hard, harder than I'd ever seen it before – except once, when my best friend Neria Surana was taken away by the Templars. When I got closer, she held me tight and whispered 'Listen'.

I heard Mr. Surana crying, and then a couple seconds later I really heard it – the clinking of iron armor, the rustling of chains, and the muted cussing of guards. They were coming closer, and I could hear them just outside the gates. They were coming into the Alienage, and that meant that they'd be coming by my house, which was why Mamae was holding me so close. She put her hands over my ears, but it didn't muffle the sounds that much.

The guards stopped in the community circle, and Valendrian, our Hahren, came out to see what was going on with Mr. Surana. I could hear Mrs. Surana and Neria's brothers and sisters running on the cobblestone street, and Mr. Surana was weeping. Why was my best friend's Daden weeping?

"I found this one," he shook Mr. Surana's chains,"trying to steal a goat from the marketplace. He got startled by the owners of the cart he tried to steal from, and the goat got away."

He turned to Mrs. Surana, who I could hear take a step back.

"Does the household have enough funds to replace the goat that escaped?"

Mrs. Surana said "No, we don't," before she ushered the kids back into their home. She closed the door and I heard Mr. Surana pleading with the guard, with his wife, with Valendrian and with anyone who would listen.

Then I heard the sound of a sword being unsheathed for the first time. I didn't even know what the sound was at the time, but a second later I had other things to worry about. The sound of the sword entering Mr. Surana, for one, and the strangled cry of Mr. Surana, for another. Mamae held me firmly in place so that I couldn't run out to see what happened, but Valendrian summed it up in a soft, sorrowful sentence.

"I agree that justice must be served equally between races, but did he have to die like a dog in the middle of his community?"

The sergeant dumped the corpse of Mr. Surana on the ground and left. The women of the community came out of their houses and comforted Mrs. Surana, and the will to answer Neria's latest letter left me. I didn't want to be the one to tell her that her Daden died, even if I was one of her only links to the outside world.

That night at dinner Mamae told Daden what happened. Daden paled, as he was friends with Mr. Surana, but he had news as well, news he wouldn't tell Mamae in front of me. He told me to take a shower, knowing that the sounds of the water would mute the soft tones my parents spoke in and that they'd be able to hear when the water stopped.

The shower was a new invention that had just been brought to the Alienage by a Highever elf. The Qun had invented it, and the Highever elf had installed it for us because my Daden helped him out. The water had to be collected for the invention to work, but last night it rained. All of the water was there already, and since there was a light cover over the tank, I didn't have to worry about spiders in my shower water. Holes in the floor took the water outside. I got out of my clothes and sighed. I wasn't going to hear anything that Daden and Mamae were going to say.

I opened the spout the water came out of, and stepped into the area where the water would be when it fell. The water was freezing, but I didn't say anything. I wanted to see if I had grown big enough to hear beyond the water. After a minute, I realized that you had to be bigger than seven to hear things over running water.

I took care of my shower quickly, and got out. Daden and Mamae weren't saying anything, but I still wanted to see if I could get anything out of them. I dried my brilliant red hair (which looked almost exactly like my Mamae's when it was pulled back) and myself before I got into my nightclothes – which were a pair of Soris' pants and an old shirt that I had torn too much to be wearable in public. I ran out of my room to see my parents, but neither of them looked at me.

Finally, after what seemed like hours my Daden sighed. "Train her if you must," he said, "but no one can know. That's something of a difficulty in here, I know, so please, go outside the walls to do it. Hide whatever you have to use. Your points were well made."

I looked up at my Mamae, but she shook her head. "I'll tell you in the morning, dear one. Kiss me and your Daden good night, and then it's off to bed, got it?"

After kissing them I went off to bed, not knowing just how much my life would change when I got up the next morning.

The normal morning activities still took place. Mamae and I made the breakfast meal, got the table ready, ate, and cleared everything away when we were done. Mamae put a soup on the hearth for supper, and then she got me from the chores I had been doing. I was only halfway through cleaning up my room.

"That can wait," she said, as she took me by the hand. "You must never tell anyone about what we do when we go outside of the Alienage, do you understand?"

I looked up and promised I wouldn't, mesmerized by my Mamae's tattoos. She normally covered them up, but today she hadn't bothered to apply her makeup. I noticed a leather pack on her back, but I didn't say anything. When Mamae wore it, I wasn't to ask many questions.

We went outside the city walls without too much trouble, as she knew a place where the walls were weak and falling apart. There was forest behind the hole in the wall, and Mamae took off her pack. She opened it, and I saw four wooden daggers – two for us each. She handed me a large one, and got one for herself.

"I am going to train you now. Too many human nobles think that the Alienage is their personal brothel, and you will learn how to protect yourself against them. The best training would be weaponless in our circumstances, but I don't know any hand to hand, so we'll have to make do with my days as a rogue to fall back on – understand?"

I nodded to show I was keeping up with the conversation, but my head was buzzing. Mamae had been a rogue?

"First, we'll work on your stance. Without a good stance your opponent can knock you flat on your back before you even get your weapons out. I'm about to attack you – how would you physically respond right now?"

I turned my body slightly and held my dagger out, and I hunched over slightly the way I had seen the guys do when they were wrestling. Mamae tisked, and then kneeled down so that she could see me. She looked into my eyes, and all the fun I had imagined training with my Mamae would be disappeared.

"The only thing you do right now is run. I know you can, Kallian, and I know you can run fast. If I tell you to run, that means that you run as fast as you can – away from me and away from whatever is causing me to tell you to run. If you don't understand that, I won't teach you a thing – understand?"

"I understand," I mumbled. This didn't sound like much fun.

My Mamae gripped my shoulder tightly, and shook me. "You need to understand this. If I tell you to, will you run?"

"Yes!" I nearly shouted, and I twisted away from her.

"Good," she said, and my training began.

The days and weeks after there was a different tone in my household. Every one of our neighbors could hear what went on inside our house, even though most didn't listen as a matter of principle. It was like eavesdropping inside the Alienage. Mamae and I would train in the day, and I would help my parents in the evening. Daden didn't smile for a long time after Mamae and I began our regimen outside the city walls.

Then we developed a code one day when the entire family was in the market, a place where no one, elven or otherwise, could hear us. 'Training' became 'housework' and 'daggers' became 'pots and pans'. For the first time Daden was able to ask me what I was learning and how I was doing in my training. He was able to get in on the big secret.

I got more athletic, and I told my friends that I wasn't available to play most days. My cousins, Soris and Shianni, were there to play with me on the days that Mamae did give me off, and as the lessons progressed, I slowly got more mature. The lessons continued on for years, and after I had daggers down, Mamae moved me onto other things – among which were how to act in certain circumstances. I asked her why, once.

"Because, my da'len, you'll go on to great things, and if you ever talk to the Queen, you'll need to know how to speak to her."

I didn't even want to know how she thought that I would ever see the Queen. King Cailan had just been put on the throne following the death of his father King Maric, and Anora mac Tir, daughter of the Hero of River Dane, was slotted to be the next Queen of Ferelden. I was an elf. Elves didn't meet the royal family.

The training had a profound effect on my strength. At nine, I could lift as much as Soris (who was two years older than me and helped the shopkeeper) and at twelve, I could lift as much as Mamae could. I never had big muscles, but they were sturdy and as soon as I got them, I was taught how to maintain them and how to keep up my abilities. Endurance became another part, and the next time that Mamae tested me, I was able to keep up with her the entire time.

I also learned bows and arrows. Mamae and I started bringing in food for us and our neighbors to eat, and though it wasn't much, we started donating stews to those who had come under hard times – which were families like Neria's. When a mage was born to your family, people don't buy from you anymore. I still wrote to her, but it was hard to write to her and not mention the training. I gave them to a man who always took my letters and gave me Neria's answers, but when he started coming less, I didn't mind.

I was twelve when I started my time of the month, and that was when our training started letting up. I wouldn't be getting married for another five or so years, but in those years I would have to learn what my friends had already spent a few years being taught. We still went out of bounds occasionally to keep physically fit, but I learned how to make many things with the kills we made during hunting. I found that I favored daggers and knifes to bows and arrows, and that backstabbing was an option that was very easy for me. Mamae also taught me how to take plants from the countryside and turn them into health potions and injury kits– which explained why I'd never gotten a broken bone that lasted more than thirty seconds.

Two years later on one of our hunting trips, we were followed by the king's men. I remember Mamae trying to shake off the king's men, but they had a mabari, and there weren't enough leaves on the trees at that point. Mamae and I were running, side by side, and it was getting harder to keep running with the branches whipping in my face. Mamae wasn't as young as she had been when we had started training, and I could see she wasn't holding pace very well.

Suddenly she was right close to my face, though, and Mamae was talking to me low enough that while I would hear her, the humans following us wouldn't.

"Go home, now."

She said it with such strength, such force, that I couldn't question her. I was losing speed and she was the adult. Everything in me told me to stay with her, but the first lesson came back to me. If I didn't run now, Mamae would stop all lessons in the future because she'd think I hadn't learned the first one. I would be a liability to her right now if I stayed. Maybe she didn't want me to see something. Fair enough, I thought. She'll get to that part of the training eventually.

I veered off path when we came to a fork. I heard the men stop and bicker over whether or not they should split up, since there was only one mabari, but they chose to stay on Mamae's tail instead of mine. I wanted to slow down, but Mamae had always demanded that when she told me to do something, I did it when she told me, not an hour later.

Daden wasn't there when I got home, so I took a shower, changed, and set food on the hearth fire that would soon be going almost continuously now that winter was approaching. Daden came home when dusk burned the horizon, but not fifteen minutes later two men came into the Alienage – two men with a mabari. I could smell blood… elven blood… oh, no… I recognized the scent of that blood.

They dumped Mamae in the town center. "This elf had a dagger, so she died on it. There was another, and while they got away, this message is for them: next time, this will be you."

They walked away, the mabari barking furiously. I ran out and Daden didn't even try to stop me. I cried like a little girl in that square, hugging the corpse of my mother, my Mamae, and cursing myself for doing what I was told. I even pointed it out myself before she told me to scram. She wasn't as young as she was when we started.

Before then, I had looked at training like it was a game of sorts. Now, it was so much more than a game. Mamae had died for it.

Soris, Shianni, and Daden convinced me to go back in the house while Valendrian took Mamae's body to clean and consecrate, to make holy for the Maker. I don't remember Shianni undressing me, but I do remember her forcing me to take another shower, draining the water in the reservoir. She dried my hair and braided it without thinking, because when I looked in old pot that served as a mirror, I saw she had given me the hairstyle of an adult elven woman.

I now had the hair of Mamae. My vibrant red had turned burnt orange with time, and the braids were almost like the ones Mamae wore every day. I burst out crying, and Shianni, realizing what she had done, pulled me into her arms while she undid my hair. I cursed myself for leaving Mamae, Shianni cursed her own insensitiveness, and the entire community heard the crying and cursing of two young women and cursed the humans.

The next day was the funeral, and while both Daden and I went, neither of us said anything. Valendrian gave the final words, and everyone else sang songs to lift her spirit up to the Maker, but we remained silent. Everyone in the community knew of how Mamae had been Dalish before she came to the city – her maiden name had been Varathorn – so they chalked it up to her feeling restless in the Alienage, surrounded by buildings and people instead of trees and animals. Daden and I both knew why, but when I looked at him, he looked away. That hurt.

I went to bed that night without having spoken to my day all day – first in our family. The next morning I assumed Mamae's role in our family – I got up before Daden, made breakfast, and cleaned some of the house while waiting for Daden to get up and breakfast to cook. We ate in silence, and I had to choke down every bite. That afternoon the families around us started to bring things that would help us get through the mourning period. There was a meal here, a piece of clothing there, a new blanket somewhere in the pile, and a hundred other assorted items.

The days blurred in the time I didn't speak with Daden. I did the housework and everything else I could do indoors, which meant that a lot of the little things got cleaned, repaired, and rearranged. Eventually, though, even the food that was given to us ran out, and I had to speak to Daden.

"We'll need to go to market soon." No terms of affection, just a statement.

"How soon?"

"Two days would be good, but we can go in four if needed," I replied. My father mulled the idea over a bit.

"Two days."

I cleared the table and Daden left for work. Being in the market meant that Daden and I might finally talk and get it all out in the open. The two days went by slowly, but during that time I collected my thoughts. I'd tell my father exactly what he wanted to know – about everything, including how Mamae died and not ending with the training I got with her. Daden had never really received any information about what we were doing, just the bare minimum. The unshared information was a poison between us now.
Fanfiction of Dragon Age: Origins with the Female City Elf as the Warden.
© 2011 - 2024 tokyomoonluvr485
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