He felt a stab of pride for her sake, though perhaps it was not his place to, being so newly-acquainted. Ordhan was a man slow to make friends; so slow, that to be merely comfortable in another's presence gave him the illusion that he had known them for far longer. If he stopped to make himself think, he would realize that only three short days had passed since he first saw the young dwarf trotting beside Cormac at the gates of the Keep. With her at his side, now, burrowing into his cloak and talking with him about things both terrible and wondrous, it was difficult to remember.
"You know about the humming? Did Cormac tell you?" asked Ordhan, worry mingling with curiosity as he glanced down again. He hoped that she knew only from a story, or perhaps the dream itself; he had assumed that Falina had yet to see the monsters in person, but that was a foolish assumption to make about any dwarf. Though the knight was a veteran of many battles, even the very thought of the humming made his stomach tense. It was a sound as twisted and disturbing as the Darkspawn themselves. To a being that thrived on the beauty of melody and drank in music like water, it was like being smothered in a mud-pit. Seeing the Darkspawn scarred the mind, but hearing them scarred the soul.
Falina smiled at his wonder, salving his sheepishness somewhat, and he hung on every word. If the Warden-Commander said there were walking trees, there were walking trees. "Perhaps they only wanted to watch instead of fight," he mused. "I wonder if any are friendly." A slew of other wonderings almost spilled forth: whether they had legs of wood or walked upon their roots, whether they strode upon the ground or through it, whether there were eyes and mouths upon the bark that could see or speak...but Falina would not know, and he did not want to seem foolish in her eyes, or any more childish than his wonderings betrayed him to be. The hope to see one for himself remained, and he squirreled it away to lie with the rest of his latent but insatiable curiosity.
The bears, however...they were a different matter. His brows rose, eyes widening a fraction, the only indication of his alarm. It did not occur to him to take something Cormac said as anything but truth--and bears the size of houses was not something he wanted to be truth. "I hope there are none in our path. They would be very difficult to fight."
His mouth tipped in a knowing smile at her disgust. "We should be glad we are not going towards the Wilds. I travelled there far too many times; it saw many Darkspawn raids in the years after the last Blight. It seemed as likely to be eaten by insects as by Darkspawn." A morbid jest, perhaps, though it did not occur to him to be improper at the moment. A moment's pause, and he added, "There are salves that can keep them from biting. I ought to check if we will be bringing any before we leave."