VI. CLOSED.

[glandival]

WHO: Pel Ashara and Sabine
WHAT: A visit and learning experience.
WHEN: Mid-Solace.
WHERE: The Val Royeaux alienage.

[ It isn't like Halamshiral. In fact, it isn't quite like anywhere, not even other alienages.

Ten thousand elves are packed into a space the size of a marketplace. The first time Sabine had seen it, she'd been-- shocked is probably the word, but it hadn't felt like a sudden jolt. More like a tidal wave flooding in, sinking her senses, absorbing this place that made the elven slums of Halamshiral look sprawling, an idyllic example of metropolitan existence. You know, before they were burned to black.

But this isn't her first time, or even her second and third. She is more aware of Pel, as they slip through the gates in the gentle morning hours. Sabine leads the way, not in a rush, but with a destination in mind. It's early, and so the sun is low in the sky, and thus entirely unseen in the dark, shadowed space of the alienage, where impossible walls block off view of the outside world, stained in woodfire smoke run off.

The streets are narrow and dirty and the buildings ugly and pragmatic, but one can sense a life boarded up inside of them.

Sabine doesn't blink as a pack of small, skinny-limbed elven children rush between she and Pel, flowing around them like water breaking, the dirt-black soles of their feet flashing in loping leaps. Sabine swats a hand after one, a natural kind of gesture, a flash of a smile on her face even when that hand wanders back to her hip to check nothing's been stolen from her. ]

Notice anything odd about this place?

[ A little wry in delivery. There's a lot of things to notice about this place. ]