Who: Galen Elerron, Dolain, Caia Elerron (NPC) Where: Denerim Alienage When: Solis, 9:44 Dragon. Early morning. Summary: Galen finally intends to leave for the Dalish, but is caught before he can sneak away without notice. Rating: K/T
Everything in this drab, shoddy apartment was a shade of grey in the early hours just before dawn. Galen was not an artist by any means and aside from using it as a way to assess the freshness of fish (and at what point he could no longer pass off the day's catch as viable for sale or consumption), color was never a very important detail for him to note. But on this particular morning, he found himself studying the way that the faint amount of light slipping through the slats on the windows caught the minimal furniture in the room and cast shadows over the worn wooden floor. It was not something he wanted to memorize, but he felt that he ought to -- this was the last time he was going to see this room, he was certain of it. Maker, or whatever true deity reigned supreme over the world, help him if he came back here ever again.
He tried to be a silent as was physically possible, careful not to step on the boards he knew would creak, or to drop items into the pack so that they would rattle against one another. Ultimately, there wasn't even enough inside the bag to be concerned about making noise. Traveling lightly wasn't just a choice; it was the only thing he could do, given how little he actually owned. Not that he would need most of the objects that city dwellers relied upon for much longer. It didn't even occur to him that he might later miss those items in retrospect, though even had he known, he still wouldn't have changed a single thing about the action he was taking.
In fact, inaction had been the standard for far too long now. One month was extended to two, then stretched its way into six, and finally, it ended at thirteen days after an entire year of excuses and delays. It wasn't a lack of funds that kept them tied down to this community; between both of their jobs and the money they brought with them, they had more than enough to afford a ride to the Forest's edge and several weeks worth of supplies. No, it was that she could settle for this life, for living out of rundown tenements, evenings of being groped by rough hands, afternoons of snatching coin purses, of hanging on the arm of some local thug until the day that she would find herself anchored by a child she couldn't afford to feed -- but he would not. It was wrong to think of his sister with such malice, especially when she had been the one to practically raise him. But Caia gave up on the dream, gave up on him, and now he had to walk away.
Or sneak away, as the case was. Courage was never a trait that Galen claimed to possess and he certainly did not characterize himself as chivalrous, either. It was the coward's way out to take off while she slept soundly in the other room, but he had little desire to see her either fly into a rage or break into tears at the thought of his desertion. And if not such a dramatic reaction, not a plea for him to change his mind, then the chill of indifference and a harsh encouragement to go. He knew her better than anyone else ever could, and he knew that it would be one extreme or the other, neither option ending the way he wished it would, with both of them leaving this foul city together, just like they'd originally planned. A half-piece of parchment, evidently ripped out of an old shipping manifest from the dockhouse he had been working at, laid blank on the table. Within the last twenty minutes, he had paced back and forth between packing and attempting to ink a message onto its clean side. Eventually, he had given up. His gift with the written word was nonexistent, and nothing he wrote would have made his sudden absence any easier to accept. It was best just to take his things, his portion of the coins, and leave.
A bar of golden light burst through one of the gaps in the shutters, the shift in spectrum indicating that he didn't have much more time to waste if he wanted to make this exit clean and silent. Galen slung the heavy satchel over his back, adjusting the straps so that it would hold to his body. He paused at the piece of paper once more, and reached for the quill that had been resting idly. Galen felt like a fool for writing it, but he couldn't do to her what their mother had done to her children. He couldn't just take off without leaving anything behind. In his scratchy, unrefined scrawl (it was difficult to call the cobbled together letters penmanship), were the words 'I'm sorry. Be safe. Love, G', ugly and harried, but legible enough.
It had to be enough. Galen turned to leave, glancing back at the door that separated the single bedroom from the main room, where his cot was set up across from their makeshift kitchen and dining space, then resuming his motion to open the front door. But he heard the creak of a hinge before his long fingers even managed to brush the knob in front of him, and the rest of his body froze while his head whipped around to stare at the note on the table, and then to the partition between spaces. But it was not his sister who emerged bleary eyed from beyond the threshold.