"Elves usually aren't very strong. I'm different. Humans are stronger than elves, dwarves are stronger than humans, qunari are stronger than dwarves. Usually. And golems are the strongest. I wonder where Quendi fit in that lineup..."

"I'm not a very strong Quendi."

"If you're not very strong and you can carry me, then probably somewhere between qunari and golems. I'd be very surprised if Quendi were usually stronger than golems."

"What are golems - they aren't - warm -"

"...uh? No, they're not warm. They're made of stone. I don't know how exactly. There was a dwarf a thousand years ago, his name was Caridin, he figured out how to turn dwarves into golems, and then something happened, I'm not too clear on the details, and he got turned into a golem himself and spent a thousand years hiding in a cave and then Stalas found him and brought him to Orzammar, the dwarf city. Hesta and Kador are Caridin's friends, they were in the cave with him."

"...huh. How do dwarves turn into golems?"

Tev shrugs. "Hesta and Kador probably know. Stalas might know. Caridin definitely knows. I don't."

Okay, she can wait to confirm her guess that dwarves have chips-or-something that can magically operate stone. "Why are you a different elf?"

"...oh, I have completely failed to explain mages," he realizes. "This is going to be fun, if you don't have anything like them... okay. Uh, the short version is, some people were trying to find out if they could make golems or things like golems out of people other than dwarves, and they tried something with me, and now I'm taller and stronger and sturdier than I used to be. ...Do you have lyrium where you're from? It's a kind of rock, it glows like Stalas and the golems glow. There's lyrium in golems and lyrium in Stalas and a little bit of lyrium in me."

"...we have glowing rocks but not in daytime -"

"Not in daytime...?"

"They only glow at - night -" Handwave handwave help her out.

"...in the dark?" he tries. "Earlier it was day so it was light, now it's night so it's dark, but I made a fire, and the fire makes light, so it's less dark - am I on the right track here?"

"Yes, we have rocks that glow in the dark."

"Lyrium glows most of the time. And usually that colour, lyrium-blue. And it's magic. But I'm not a mage or an enchanter and I don't know how magic works. Clare is a mage, you can ask her about magic, and Stalas knows Caridin, you can ask him about lyrium. I can try to explain in the meantime but it might not make much sense."

"What is magic?"

"Um... it does... things? Clare can turn into animals, or make animals do things, or make ice or fire. And it has something to do with the Fade, which... do Quendi sleep? Do you dream? Dreams are... you go to sleep at night and you think things are happening but then you wake up in the morning and they didn't happen. Dreams are that."

"Quendi sleep and dream, but not every night."

"Okay. Well, the Fade is where dreams happen. When a person dreams, their spirit - their mind, the part of them that thinks - goes to the Fade, and does things in the Fade, and then when they wake up their spirit comes back out of the Fade and into their body. Or maybe it was in their body all along but in the Fade at the same time. I don't know. I don't really understand it."

Skeptical Quendi is skeptical.

"And mages can go to the Fade when they're not asleep, and do things there. And there's lyrium there or something? And spirits, ones without any bodies of their own. And demons. Demons are - bad, dangerous. They're like Fade spirits, they don't have bodies outside the Fade, but they wait for mages to come into the Fade and then they convince the mage to bring them out into the mage's body and then the demon uses the mage's body to do things and they're usually bad dangerous things."

...skeptical Quendi is still skeptical but nods seriously at the warning.

"I'm really bad at explaining this, you can ask Clare later and hopefully she'll be better."

"Okay."

"I'm going to sleep now. Goodnight."

He sleeps for eight hours, and wakes up in the morning and has breakfast (offering Ambela some again) and cleans up the campsite and gets back on the road.