Salt the Earth

[inagutterson]

WHO: Legolas, Yngvi
WHAT: Guess what Anders forces the boys are here to chase off your food and rip up all the plants, even the grass and definitely the elfroot. Enjoy.
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: Northern Orlais, Anders invasion forces location
NOTES: HERE is the assignment.

It feels like a dog's year since Yngvi was last out doing honest mercenary work, likely because it has been, because Inquistion work is not what he imagined it to be. Because the Inquisition doesn't know what face it's wearing most days. But he's out here, he was astride his magnficent horse all the way here pulling a chariot (a keg fashioned to fit a dwarf and belongings should the need arise) and the company was good.

Removing animals isn't so terrible as getting rid of unwanted people. Or ghasts. Or wyverns. It'd be one of them being fed to help get rid of the wyverns if it was wyvern removal and the beasts are fairly stupid. It's a good day.

He has rolled himself into a druffalo in the hopes of sending it barreling in the direction of the rest, it'd be handy if they just did the stampede thing, or Yngvi reckons they stampede. As he looks over to see what his companion and partner for this thrilling assignment is up to (unaware of course that this fun day is going to be interrupted by a pack of Anders peasants) he's grinning.

"Better than spiders and being down in a cave right mate?"

Comments

[tofindthesun]

Legolas is busy convincing the various odd things to get gone. It's unfortunate that he can't have them tell other animals the same thing, since none of them speak the same language. Which, is usually case, but not in his experience. The fact that the birds can't carry his messages and tell their land-lubbering friends to run is putting a metaphorical pebble in his boots.

But it is better than spiders and caves, and spiders in caves.

"A little bit." He pinches two fingers together until they're basically touching. "I have never cleared land before. Usually my people are the ones keeping it safe. But there is a first time for everything."

He's been gathering up anything that looks edible too, handing it over to either Yngvi or tying it to some of the larger creatures that he sends running towards the Orlesian front lines like a walking whole-roast. Or trying, anyway. Whether they actually head in the right direction is a toss-up, but better a wayward hunter find them than the invaders.

"Spiders, at least, a rather straight-forward. Hunting them is a simple task if mind-numbing in nature. But I would not say no to a bit of cave delving!"

He sounds more convincing than he looks, though.

[inagutterson]

"Are you half-dwarf or something?" Not that elves in Thedas are averse, exactly, to going places because some of them will go wherever anyone would take them and the Wardens will of course be made welcome in Orzammar since he's explained, bitterly and at length, about what a shit place Orzammar is, but there's the height and the hair and something about Legolas that has Yngvi thinking of other overly tall elves. Elves he can't picture enjoying in dark, damp, cramped places.

(Thranduil's robes would snag, a travesty. Yngvi can only picture him in those, he prefers not to imagine he has legs at all.)

That's the first concern, back to the what they're doing bit. "So you're, like, high up then? 'Your people'? I've done this for people who had folk on the payroll, me and the rest of the Boneflayers got paid by lords or ladies or whatever title they had to do something like this over land disputes. Not this scaled but s'not hard work. Boring. More fun if you're baiting things. Fighting someone."

At least his keg is going to smell beautiful, the nugs will be all over it when he trundles it back to the Gallows after. Even Saucisse might be into it, he's already fished the kitten out the garden more times than he thought he'd have to.

[tofindthesun]

"I do not think so!" But Legolas is laughing rather than offended, if most people.. usuall get offended at that kind of thing. He's a little surprised, but. Well. "At least, I never knew my mother to be a dwarrowdam. My father was never very fond of dwarves.... nor was I, for a time."

Humming.

"One of my companions is a dwarf, and I admit I have a growing interest in the things he spoke of."

It's a good thing Legolas isn't overly fond of wearing.. long snaggly robes. He likes tree climbing too much for that. Which, in fact, he has been doing occasionally to make sure the birds scram too. Anything can be food these days.

"High up? Well... I do not think so we are. My people are the Woodelves of Mirkwood. The trees are where we make our homes and our living, so we make sure it is safe. For us, in any case. To strip the land like this.... I would mourn for the lives we have displaced and driven out of their homes." He looks askance. "..But it is true that if we do not do anything, they would meet a similar fate at another's hands."

His hand lingers on the bark of a tree for a moment longer what is probably normal for an elf of any world. It really is quiet here.

..Aaand then he's back to hauling around a basket of. What is that. Some kind of plant. He has no idea, he's not from this area, it looks like he could eat it. "Do you enjoy fighting as well? He did, too. I am beginning to think all dwarf blood runs hot at the prospect of battle."

He could have worded that literally any other way. He really could have.

[inagutterson]

"A what?" That's just-- that word sounds completely fake in a way that few words have ever sounded fake even for someone who knows Orlesian where they just don't bother with half the word. "Why didn't your dad like dwarves? Merchant's Guild I'd understand completely, I avoid them like the plague, they're horrific, just a proper sea of nightmares and y'know even your own family sometimes you'd fend them off with whatever you've got to hand."

If you could get away with it.

And then Legolas says Mirkwood, Yngvi gasps loudly enough that the nearest druffalo gets the idea to lumber off sharpish before it's subjected to anything as he flaps an arm-- "I know an elf from Mirkwood that's here! He gave me boots one Satinalia! Incredible boots!

"Thing is though if we don't do this, it'll be bad for the soldiers on the Orlesian side since those're our allies - we did a lot to keep Celene on the throne, end that civil war that was there and things are still pretty dodgy. Probably folk I know are off fighting in this after they just thought it was done with the War of the Lions. D'you know the Anders lot showed up at the Markham tourney? Everyone having a jolly at last then these lads just rolled up? The cheek."

More than the cheek. Yngvi sighs, doesn't think about Emeric at all but he's here in Orlais so of course he'll be thinking about Emeric who's just a sad old man really, and wonders about the tree in Halamshiral that he'd hit. How it had felt different. Resonated up through his arm into his teeth in a way trees don't but magic does if you've lived in Kirkwall all your life and get used to it.

"Mate," mate, look at the grin spreading over his face, "course I enjoy it? I mean not every dwarf does there's all the castes and that but I got raised up to be good at traps and fighting same as how my brother got raised up to be good at alchemy and fighting. Put food in my belly and clothes on my back, meant someone was going to be happy with me at the end of the day plus if you're smaller, sort of helps. Knowing how to fight."

[tofindthesun]

"A dwarrowdam! I believe it is how they refer to dwarven women. I think so, anyway. I have not had a chance to ask, to be sure." Seeing as he's. Here a am not sure of the tale, for it was many years ago, and I was not yet born then."

And it's not exactly a commonly told bedtime story.

"Did he?" He goes from a little surprised to a little relieved. What's a satinalia. "I am glad to hear it! You speak of the Provost, yes? I have gotten many shoes from him as well. It is a little better than socks, I think."

The things Yngvi talks about seem to be the norm that happen here in the land of Thedas. It's so different from Middle-Earth, where they care little about other lands and kingdoms far away. The way they work with and interfere with each other. Legolas is inclined to think it just a normal Mannish, human thing, but.. Yngvi isn't exactly. Mannish. Human. Whatever.

It's all a bit odd. Maybe this is what Middle-Earth would be like if the three (four?) Races had put aside their differences earlier on.

"How awful of them! I take it they were not invited? Tsk. We had best work hard, then, to return that favour." He shakes his head, and is very nearly distracted by a particularly spotty patch of wildflowers. Almost. "I learned my weapons as a duty, so I know not if I enjoy it much the same.. though it has had its enjoyable moments. But what is-- alchemy? Is it akin to medicine-making? I recall some things called potions in the shops, I have never seen the like before."

[inagutterson]

"That's madness it's just woman. Or whatever it is in another language. Mum, auntie, oi you over there," said with great fondness for the last one because someone might have a hammer or a rolling pin or just straight-up punch you (they express any sort of physical love in a violent manner in the part of the Carta Yngvi grew up in.)

Nodding, Yngvi almost wishes he was wearing them but they're hardly right for being out in this terrain when good hardy steel-capped numbers fair better. "Yeah Thranduil. Between him, Wren and m'lady hardly have to go buying my own clothes but socks ain't to be sniffed at, you don't know what it's like until you've got no dry pairs or no pairs without holes in 'em." The mercenary life: you'd trade just about anything for one decent pair of socks when you're in the wilderness.

Strange though, the idea of Thranduil gifting socks. Or Thranduil and Legolas being from the same place when Yngvi sort of assumed they'd all have that same overly dignified and otherworldly way about them that alarmed and offended him at first. When it was like being the butt of a joke you didn't get until it dawned on him oh, he's just old but Legolas is different again. Younger. For some given value of younger. How does it even work with them, no elf has been ancient since before there were humans really.

"It's...well my brother made potions and salves because we didn't have a healer down in Darktown, or we did but you need to train up a new one every so often so nothing he's made has killed me. But what heals can hurt too so some of it might be poison. How d'you get by without potions is there magical healing how the mages do?"

[tofindthesun]

"Well, I am not sure if that is the Dwarven tongue, they are very secretive of it. But in Elvish we have ellon and elleth for elf-lads and elf-ladies. The Mannish folk have man and woman... I do not know what Hobbits use." Or wizards, for that matter. But wizards are funny nebulous things, so it probably doesn't matter.

Legolas misses his shoes. Nice, sturdy..... cloth shoes. Good toe-grips. The Inquisition-issued ones are tough and clunky, he feels and sounds like a oliphaunt. An oliphaunt on tippy toes and with cotton padded soles. "Really? I do not wear socks very often, so they gather up in my drawers..." Well, he knows where to send his extras if he has too many now.

Legolas supposes it's probably to do with Thranduil having been here three years, but knowing his father gave a gift to a dwarf is a bit surprising. Pleasantly so, but surprising nonetheless. It's even stranger hearing someone say his father's name without any titles attached. Legolas doesn't even do that.

"I do not think something meant to heal should hurt as well... But if it works...." That's a bit concerning there Yngvi. "We have healers as well! But they are not the same healers as there are here. Magic is not.. common, shall we say. Some of us know minor crafts, but none would call themselves mages or wizards. We use herbs, mainly, and we make tinctures, but I do not think they are ever sold like potions are."

[inagutterson]

"Not much dwarf tongue left 'cept the one in a mouth." What a weird place to hide their women when they're pretty obvious really or even to be secret about women: people would know else how did babies happen? But he's distracted, quietly echoing the new words in his thick Kirkwall accent. "What's a Hobbit sounds like some sort of biscuit."

With a strangled noise that has his oversized horse looking over ready to charge off. "You're free-footing it in there? Madman. What about blisters and damp and cold?"

Legolas he steals your dad's nug to teach it to gamble there's a great deal of chill going on these past two years.

"Well you get some herbs where just a little brings down a fever but a lot and it'll have you bleeding inside your own body stuff like that. Gunnar understands that, me I do traps I just helped try then or gathered the bits with him." Yngvi was a good incentive their elders said to be good at his craft: keep your brother alive why don't you Gunnar. "You're missing a trick in not selling them, you see how much they go for? You could be a wealthy elf. Or someone could make a tidy living."

As he tosses more in Gaspard's magnificent keg chariot before scanning the horizon for what the animals are you to, if anything might be afoot. There's a war going on. Never thought he'd be there for it.

[tofindthesun]

"Time does erase most things," Legolas concedes. It's not so much melancholic as it is a sort of resigned notion. Part of being an elf is living with that inevitability, even if Legolas has plans to stick as long as relevantly possible. "..At least, I think it is dwarvish. They are very secretive about their language, or so I hear."

Yngvi's accent isn't too bad. He's heard worse from some in Middle-Earth. Not that Legolas would laugh even if it was completely off-base.

"Not a biscuit, but they do enjoy eating them! They are, well, a different sort of creature from a Man or Elf, or a Dwarf. About so high," he places his hand a little low, around 4 feet from the ground as a generous guess, "with very large and hairy feet. They are a small folk, but brave and hardy. I am proud to name some of them as my friends, though a good few of them are enough to eat one out of house and home."

Hmmm. Legolas kicks his feet a bit. "I am wearing socks now, for these boots are unwieldy and uncomfortable otherwise. But the cold and damp do not bother me much, and blisters have not been an issue. Unfortunately I did not arrive with my walking shoes."

Hence the clunking about. Very un-elf like, he's afraid to admit.

"Perhaps the humans and dwarves sell them... elves where I am from do not easily fall ill; and if we do, rarely is it enough to threaten our lives. Our healers in Mirkwood work with injuries more than illnesses, and we have.. little reason to sell any medicines to others. Our relations with them is not as close as it is here."

He's not sure how that could be taken here, but it is what it is. It's not like he's unhappy with the changes, anyway. It's just.. kind of odd.

Legolas angles his head a few ways, searching for any sounds of movement, and heading in that direction once he hears something. It's quite a bit of land for two people to cover, but dull enough work that he can't really complain. As long as they're not burning anything down, anyway. Couldn't pay him enough to get him to do that