As the group made their conspicuous entrance into the Alienage, Davin tried to remain somewhat hidden towards the center. He wasn’t sure, exactly, what he wanted to hide from but it seemed somehow important that he remained unnoticed by the residents of the Alienage.
It had been years since he had last stepped foot in the Alienage, but it looked much the same as he remembered it. Maybe a little worse, a little shabbier, the smells stronger and more pungent. Davin kept his head down as they walked along, and he waited for some warm feeling-- relief, homecoming, nostalgia -- but there was nothing. Nothing but irritation at the urchins that were underfoot and disgust at the filth that his memory seemed to have somehow erased.
Was he really a stranger here? Was he really so different than the downtrodden, degraded souls that still inhabited those ramshackle huts? His clothes were of a finer make, his bearing more refined, his language more precise… but this was still his home, wasn’t it? Davin forced himself to look up and around him, fully taking in the sorry sights. He was no better than any of them, he realized, no matter how far he had come since he last ran along the muddy streets as a muddier boy.
Lalin pulled several of the men aside to speak with them privately, and Davin used this time to get closer to the edge of the group. This was not the time for personal errands, but if there were any familiar faces in the brown-and-grey backdrop of the Alienage, he wanted to be sure to see them. He needed to prove he was still one of them. More than anything, perhaps he needed to prove to himself that he was happy to be back.