#inspired by my favorite skyrim weapon uwu

[inquisimer]

Dalish Week: Craft

Day two!! Jumping back to pre-Inquisition, a bit of Neria learning when she first joined Clan Lavellan and a snippet of her early relationship with Mahanon and Rosha🥰

@dalish-appreciation-week

~~~

Neria drank in Master Souren’s lesson with rapt attention. His aged, calloused hands shaped and cut and bent and twisted wood with ease; the ironbark seemed to bend to his very will.

The students formed a semi-circle around the makeshift workbench he’d laid between two stumps. Though she sat barely a head above the tallest, Neria felt odd and out-of-place among the children. In her mind, she was an interloper, the duckling destined never to fit with the geese. She supposed the Dalish would always cast her as a child, long as her face remained bare and free of ink.

Some time had passed since she sat for lessons, but this differed pointedly from her Circle classes in many ways. Mainly, that she was the oldest playing catch-up rather than the budding prodigy. She’d climbed those ranks with rapid ease, thanks mostly to the advantage of living and absorbing Circle teachings practically since birth.

She wondered if these children felt the same pride in their skill as she had, when she was no taller than a dwarf, but still wove a better paralysis rune than an apprentice five years her senior.

Demonstration completed, Souren passed chunks of ironbark to each student, along with a warning not to waste the precious resource. They spread across the grass to try their hand at the trade. Neria took a moment to admire the dark knots and smooth grain of the wood, and to watch how her peers took up their task with gusto.

She could only liken it to the Tranquil enchanters at Kinloch and to draw such a comparison did a disservice to the energy around her now. The methodical process of the Tranquil prioritized function and service. The mages used the runes at the Circle and the Templars profited off basic items—daggers, buckets, cloaks—with enchantments woven into their very fibers.

But that work product lacked the spark of imagination, creativity, the personality of the creator. Neria could practically feel the buzz of that excitement across her skin now. It was a pleasant sensation and she let it guide her hands as she bent her head over her work and shaved fine scraps from the wood.

They spent several days just like that. Each morning Souren circled with small critiques and they adjusted their work accordingly. At the end, each student walked away with a simple shortbow of their own making, carved to their liking, and strung with a composite of linen and elfroot fibers Master Souren spun while they crafted.

Though proud of her work and happy to trace the endless spirals of leaves and feathers that wove around the weapon, Neria had no real use for a bow. She wandered away from the children toward where Rosha sat by a fire, following the edge of her blade with a whetstone.

“Care to trade?”

Rosha grinned without looking up. “Don’t you want to keep your masterpiece?”

The long grass fanned out where Neria settled herself alongside her friend. She laid the bow across her legs and raised an eyebrow over steepled fingers.

“I don’t fight with a bow.” She shrugged and rolled her wrists, leaning slightly back. “And if I ever need to…”

She snapped her fingers without any sound and the Fade coalesced at her summons. The air in front of her turned opaque and shaped itself into a bow not unlike the one on her lap.

Surprise widened Rosha’s eyes, then her grin returned full force and she leaned forward to inspect the spell.

“Incredible,” she breathed. Her fingertips hovered on the edges where the spell blurred against the Veil. “It works like a proper bow and everything? And they taught you something like this in a Circle?”

“It is a proper bow,” Neria said, somewhat petulantly. “And—not exactly. I’m not sure how the tome ended up in our library, but I doubt the Templars meant to leave it there. It had so much dust on it, they likely assumed it was an old reference for something that had simply become common knowledge—like restoration potions or arcane bolt theory.”

She unwrapped her fingers from the summoned bow’s grip and it dissipated back into the Fade. “It came in handy, though, when I couldn’t carry a staff. Unchanneled casting only gets you so far.”

“Anyway” —she gestured down to the tangible bow still lying across her thighs— “I don’t need it, but it was a good lesson. So, are you in the market?”

“Not in the slightest.” Rosha turned one of her daggers so it caught the light of the fire on one side and reflected her shrewd smile on the other. The freshly sharpened edge gleamed like silverite at sunset. “I’m rather partial to my blades. But you know who is fond of his bows—“

“Not this again—“

“In fact, I’m pretty sure Mahanon was asking just a few days back when Souren would have new pieces ready.”

Neria’s glare soured against the side of Rosha’s face, but the hunter only hummed an innocent tune and set to work on her second dagger.

“I would make a peace offering, but I think he’s as liable to shoot me with it as a passing rabbit.”

“Please, the way to the man’s heart is through his armory.”

“Well I’m not trying to get to his heart, now am I?”

Vindictive satisfaction flooded Neria like the blood flooded Rosha’s face, until her skin matched her hair. “Maybe you do need it after all, eh falon?”

“I might.” Rosha narrowed her eyes and tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I suppose it would serve as a club to beat away that smug smile just as well as anything else.”

“Wow, rude.” Neria jabbed her elbow and a spike of mana caught Rosha’s side, making her drop the whetstone. Her daggers joined it in short order and she tackled Neria before the other elf could blink.

“Oof—“

They rolled away from the fire, wrestling for dominance in a tangled knot of limbs and joints and unbound hair until a shadow fell over their childish antics.

“It’s come to blows already, has it?”

“Mahanon!” Rosha returned to her feet with ease, landing upright on a patch of moss. Most of her color had given way to blotchy exertion, but patches returned as she grinned at the somber, unimpressed hunter. “We were just talking about you.”

He raised an eyebrow at her; his gaze cut to Neria’s still-prone form and his lips thinned to a nonexistent line. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Oh, lighten up.” Rosha nudged Neria with a leather-wrapped toe and she reluctantly dragged herself up off the ground. “Weren’t you telling Ilvin the other day that you’re due for a new bow?”

Mahanon crossed his arms firmly over his chest. “And if I was?”

“Well then you’re in luck!” An expectant look passed from Rosha to Neria and the latter reluctantly paced over to where her crafted bow fell during their scuffle.

“Rosha—“ Weariness lined his voice and he pinched the bridge of his nose. Instinct told Neria to disengage and hide away until his ire burned out; as if sensing her thoughts, one of Rosha’s hands looped like steel around her wrist and tugged her back into the conversation.

“Just look at it, ‘hanon,” she coaxed. “It’s a fine piece and Neria doesn’t need it.”

“Hmph.”

Despite his reluctance and her own reticence, Neria offered the weapon for his inspection. He traced the curve of the limbs and the carvings that worked seamlessly around the riser. Neria was nothing if not partial to symmetry; she’d painstakingly balanced the design.

It did look good, she realized, studying it with fresh eyes alongside Mahanon’s scrutiny. A hint of pride budded in her chest. Even if he spurned this olive branch as well, she felt confident another, less bull-headed clan member would gratefully accept.

One by one, Mahanon’s fingers closed around the grip. He tugged gently and Neria let it slip from her grasp so he could feel the balance and test the weight in his hand. His face betrayed nothing and despite her confidence of only a moment before, Neria felt that familiar evaluation anxiety.

“It is a decent piece,” he finally said, though each word came slowly, as if at a great cost. “If you truly do not have other plans for it…”

“Keep it.” He still hadn’t looked at her. “As Rosha said, I do not need it.”

The air teemed with awkward tension and silence for a few beats, until Rosha sighed loudly and rolled her eyes. She jabbed a finger into Mahanon’s shoulder.

“This is the part where you say ‘thank you’, lethallan. I know you remember the words. And they’ll come off better if you actually look at her while you speak.”

Mahanon’s ears flattened against his head for just a second, then flicked back out. For a moment, Neria thought he might just take the bow and walk away.

Instead, his eyes finally found her face. She’d seen them suspicious and crestfallen, and she’d seen them angry most of all. So to see them totally calm and neutral jolted her—she wasn’t sure what it meant, or if she should be nervous about it.

“Ma serannas,” he said lowly, jaw tense and chin jutted out. As if she needed another reminder that this was not an invitation for further conversation.

She simply bowed her head. When she looked back up, Mahanon had vanished.

“Well,” Rosha clapped her hands together, a wide, genuine grin stretching her freckled cheeks. “That went well, don’t you think?”

“If you say so,” Neria shrugged. “I’ll hold my judgment until he goes…say a week, without shooting me.”

“That’s the spirit, falon.”