What prompts Anders to seek after Hawke again? Ask him and he can't give a convincing answer. Resolve forms like a pearl, slowly, around an irritant grain; here, the grain is Xestsemon, the knowledge Senburu-Trati'salan is headed back that way, brought up in one of the station meetings (Anders never misses a meeting) and hardly a surprise when it comes, as the station moves among its allies cyclically.
It's been half a year since Hawke left, now. A year passed between the first visit to Geldeheim and the second; if anything, the station's a little hasty to take some sustenance from Xestsemon. Maker knows they've not collected enough allies to refrain from accepting (or, politely, trying to hide their desperation, requesting) any material support they can get, too needy to keep from tapping the same source twice.
But that name on the agenda is what starts him thinking. Subconsciously, first, Hawke laughing in dreams, sometimes fleeing (catch me if you can) other times in need of rescue, still other times simply appearing and smiling and refusing to speak. Then more consciously, and the breaking point's when Martin asks him, with the quiet serenity of a father confessor, Do you think Hawke's down there still? You could re-establish contact. It could be useful, he adds, cleverly, for the resistance, to have a contact gone native. The priest knows Anders far too well.
If Martin knows anything about the circumstances under which Hawke left, he isn't telling. Anders suspects he doesn't, which is the only reason Anders doesn't press him.
So, Xestsemon. Once Anders starts looking, the task gradually stops being about resistance. Rationalization wears away, forgotten. The search becomes an end in itself. The station has to leave, finally, and Anders tells them he's staying. Going native himself. It's a place not unlike Thedas in many ways, and he thinks he can make a good job of it. If anyone guesses why he's made this choice, they don't confront him with the guess.
If Hawke didn't want to be found, she shouldn't have started trading furs. Trappers and traders talk, the long silences between trading posts and villages make them hunger for conversation, and Anders is very good at forging shallow friendships with chance-met travelers. He's on the road himself, an itinerant healer, would be a snake-oil salesman if the stuff he makes didn't work. It does work, and he's welcome wherever he goes, especially since he charges hardly anything, and lives mostly off the hospitality of the people he helps.
It's months of time planetside before he finds her, even so. Over a year now since she left the station, by this time. He might have found her sooner if he'd gone into the mountains sooner; they're so much like the Anderfels, he's allowed himself an irrational avoidance of the region, preferring the easier lowlands. But because he isn't only here for Hawke, he does go to the mountains, so the resistance will gain familiarity with the terrain and people there; and because he isn't only here for the resistance, he has to go to the mountains, so he can make sure Hawke isn't there, as the lowlands offer no leads.
He's far too much at home in rat-spit villages. He knows how not to seem too friendly, how not to raise suspicions. The black coat is long gone, the feathers a luxury of the past; Anders looks like any mountain herdsman, which is like any Anders, crude undyed wool cloak lined with fur, tunic and trousers of coarse wadmal, leather boots held together by a system of elaborate ties meant as much to give the calves support as to hold the bootshape together.
He has a staff, its arcane finial long ago removed, so it's nothing more than a walking stick to anyone's scrutiny. He has a bag of medicines, and another bag of his own belongings, and a bedroll, all of which he carries slung over his shoulders or strapped to his back variously as efficiency dictates. He's been walking what seems like forever. He doesn't mind the walking, or the solitude, and he's thrilled when he comes across a traveler or an inn or a little village too small to have an inn. He tells stories that are clearly tall tales, meant for entertainment, legends of the Black Fox. He bandages and cleans wounds — there's never a shortage of those, and infection's always a serious danger for these people, living in remote places without much more skill than the occasional herbalist's lore might have preserved in part — he uses his healing magic surreptitiously when he feels he's got to use it, relies on mundane means whenever possible.
He asks the kinds of nosy questions that anyone in a little village asks, or any traveler might want to know. Anyone new in these parts? Anything interesting?
That's how he hears about a certain trapper. Eventually, that's how he finds out where she's based, more or less. Whereabouts he ought to look.
He circles in. He lets word percolate ahead of him, if it's going to, if she's got an ear out. Rather suspects she won't. Why would she think he'd ever come to a place like this? He hates the Anderfels. Too many unfortunate associations, too many memories. He whistles to the goats as he passes, to see if he's still got the knack.
In the end it comes down to this: a thin and wiry woman chopping wood, and a ragged man striding up the narrow track into the little clearing where she's chopping.
"Keeping busy, I see," Anders calls, over the sound of splitting wood.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-01-21 10:42 pm (UTC)It's been half a year since Hawke left, now. A year passed between the first visit to Geldeheim and the second; if anything, the station's a little hasty to take some sustenance from Xestsemon. Maker knows they've not collected enough allies to refrain from accepting (or, politely, trying to hide their desperation, requesting) any material support they can get, too needy to keep from tapping the same source twice.
But that name on the agenda is what starts him thinking. Subconsciously, first, Hawke laughing in dreams, sometimes fleeing (catch me if you can) other times in need of rescue, still other times simply appearing and smiling and refusing to speak. Then more consciously, and the breaking point's when Martin asks him, with the quiet serenity of a father confessor, Do you think Hawke's down there still? You could re-establish contact. It could be useful, he adds, cleverly, for the resistance, to have a contact gone native. The priest knows Anders far too well.
If Martin knows anything about the circumstances under which Hawke left, he isn't telling. Anders suspects he doesn't, which is the only reason Anders doesn't press him.
So, Xestsemon. Once Anders starts looking, the task gradually stops being about resistance. Rationalization wears away, forgotten. The search becomes an end in itself. The station has to leave, finally, and Anders tells them he's staying. Going native himself. It's a place not unlike Thedas in many ways, and he thinks he can make a good job of it. If anyone guesses why he's made this choice, they don't confront him with the guess.
If Hawke didn't want to be found, she shouldn't have started trading furs. Trappers and traders talk, the long silences between trading posts and villages make them hunger for conversation, and Anders is very good at forging shallow friendships with chance-met travelers. He's on the road himself, an itinerant healer, would be a snake-oil salesman if the stuff he makes didn't work. It does work, and he's welcome wherever he goes, especially since he charges hardly anything, and lives mostly off the hospitality of the people he helps.
It's months of time planetside before he finds her, even so. Over a year now since she left the station, by this time. He might have found her sooner if he'd gone into the mountains sooner; they're so much like the Anderfels, he's allowed himself an irrational avoidance of the region, preferring the easier lowlands. But because he isn't only here for Hawke, he does go to the mountains, so the resistance will gain familiarity with the terrain and people there; and because he isn't only here for the resistance, he has to go to the mountains, so he can make sure Hawke isn't there, as the lowlands offer no leads.
He's far too much at home in rat-spit villages. He knows how not to seem too friendly, how not to raise suspicions. The black coat is long gone, the feathers a luxury of the past; Anders looks like any mountain herdsman, which is like any Anders, crude undyed wool cloak lined with fur, tunic and trousers of coarse wadmal, leather boots held together by a system of elaborate ties meant as much to give the calves support as to hold the bootshape together.
He has a staff, its arcane finial long ago removed, so it's nothing more than a walking stick to anyone's scrutiny. He has a bag of medicines, and another bag of his own belongings, and a bedroll, all of which he carries slung over his shoulders or strapped to his back variously as efficiency dictates. He's been walking what seems like forever. He doesn't mind the walking, or the solitude, and he's thrilled when he comes across a traveler or an inn or a little village too small to have an inn. He tells stories that are clearly tall tales, meant for entertainment, legends of the Black Fox. He bandages and cleans wounds — there's never a shortage of those, and infection's always a serious danger for these people, living in remote places without much more skill than the occasional herbalist's lore might have preserved in part — he uses his healing magic surreptitiously when he feels he's got to use it, relies on mundane means whenever possible.
He asks the kinds of nosy questions that anyone in a little village asks, or any traveler might want to know. Anyone new in these parts? Anything interesting?
That's how he hears about a certain trapper. Eventually, that's how he finds out where she's based, more or less. Whereabouts he ought to look.
He circles in. He lets word percolate ahead of him, if it's going to, if she's got an ear out. Rather suspects she won't. Why would she think he'd ever come to a place like this? He hates the Anderfels. Too many unfortunate associations, too many memories. He whistles to the goats as he passes, to see if he's still got the knack.
In the end it comes down to this: a thin and wiry woman chopping wood, and a ragged man striding up the narrow track into the little clearing where she's chopping.
"Keeping busy, I see," Anders calls, over the sound of splitting wood.