audio;

[stubble]

[ It's late at night when Cullen makes the post, the time of night when people would probably text something like this. But typing on the phone is still too much of an unnatural struggle for him to default to it.

He sounds relatively normal. Maybe just a tiny bit tired. ]

What is it you do when you cannot sleep and there is no work to be done to better utilize the hours you spend awake?

[ There's a tiny pause. ]

I am no stranger to sleepless nights, yet in coming here, I've now naught to do with mine.

Comments

[stubble]

Oh yes. That suits me well. In Thedas, such training areas were the norm. There was more untamed land than tamed. Here... [ He sighs. ] Here there are buildings everywhere.

[barbarus]

[ Oh, but he knows that feeling too well. ]

Yes, I understand. The parks are better places, and big enough to think they have not completely forgotten what nature is.

Though sometimes I wonder.

[stubble]

I too should wonder the same. They pave everything here. Even the sides of the streets. Parks are peaceful, it's true, but they are hardly an example of nature. It is not the same as the open countryside. I question whether some of these people have ever seen that.

[barbarus]

Perhaps they have not.

[ Damen smiles suddenly. ]

When I was a boy, I remember the sounds of the sea not far from home. And we would run through forestland and countryside to play.

I wonder how children play here. Not as I did, that is certain.

[stubble]

I lived near the shore of a vast lake instead of the sea, but as it sounds, my childhood was not dissimilar to yours. I cannot imagine what the children must settle for here. Pavement and dodging cars? I've seen a number of them riding some sort of two-wheeled machine. We have nothing like that in Thedas either.

[barbarus]

No. We rode horses, or had them pull our wagons and carriages.

It is a very different world. I wonder what the children here would think were they brought to lands like ours. I do not think they would be ready for it.

[ This world is gentle. It makes them softer than Damen has ever been, and he wonders if that is a good thing. ]

Perhaps they will never have to know.