Hilda had adapted rather well to the keep and the strangeness of its ways - and, to no one's surprise, she was rather popular with the children. Hardly a night went by in Amaranthine since her arrival when she was not asked, no, begged by a boy or girl on the cusp of adulthood to relate a tale in her honey-smooth voice, and her inner library of prose, as well as her passion for it, seemed endless. There was something infectious and hypnotic about an Anderfeln giantess who told the stories of Fort Drakon or the Black Fox or the Elf-King with such ardor, as if she had been there when it had happened.
The children were scattered about the keep now, the traditional coming-of-age foreign and fascinating to Hilda Aelricsdottr, for in the Anderfels no such tradition existed; when a girl of barely thirteen explained it to her, and then promptly asked Hilda what her adulthood ceremony had been, Hilda smiled and crouched down to the child's height and said, "Vell, Melinda, ven I vos leetle bit yoonger don hyu, mein mentor, mein brother und I, ve all travel to Orlais on foot, chasing mein brother's dreams. It took whole year to vok dere, und whole year to vok back."
Melinda's eyes were as big as bell-wheels. "Wow! Um... we only have to walk to the Chantry and back. It.... it won't take that long, will it, Hilda?"
"Off course not, child." Hilda's smile widened further. "Now, hyu go find hyu seester, get ready for beeg day, ja?"
"I will!" beamed Melinda, and Hilda sent her off with ruffling of her hair, the skald coming to her feet to pace through the hall and emerge at the front of the keep. There were Conlan and Ordhan, two anchors in a sea of unfamiliar faces, and she moved toward them as subtly and quietly as a woman who sometimes had to duck through doorways could.
Spotting the newcomers, her eyes burned with that by-now familiar light, the hunger for knowledge, to grill the mages and their escort for all that they would reveal of who they were and where they had come from. For Conlan and Ordhan, however, there was also an odd chewing at her lower lip as she stared at the Templars, and perhaps the spectre of her brother looming over her from the Fade. Hilda knew that symbol, the flaming sword; it had been on some of Albrecht's letters, and Amaranthine had, as yet, provided little in the way of clues or direction, other than as a crash-course education in the ways of Ferelden. Perhaps these new arrivals would hold some piece of information that could aid her in her search for the truth Albrecht's fate.