"Ah I hope you are right," Galadriel lamented but was in no state to resist Ellana's guiding hands. She had no qualms about holding the shorter elf close to her side, though, not as they walked through the Keep, toward the kitchens and, subsequently the courtyard where the healers' tents resided. Ellana was, at once, the warmest thing near to her and a comfort and, for all her distance and aloof nature, she had already begun to miss the sensation of touch.

It was ridiculous, of course, she was tens of thousands of years old. A few months in Thedas was hardly measurable against the whole of her life, but she had rarely gone so long without an embrace. She sighed, with the swell of melancholy, and lacked the restraint to catch the sound before it left her, wistful and sad as it was.

"It is hard to find rest in these lands, Ellana," Galadriel explained, still drowsy and half herself. "Stay with me, if you would? There are so few here that I truly trust, and fewer still who hold so much of my regard as you.

"I am running out of friends, it seems, and I have yet to make many more in Thedas."