Ambela stays up. She sorts through her notes on the language in her newsreader, assembles them into hypotheses and inferences - she doesn't want to waste its charge. She sings, tentatively, when she thinks he's deeply enough asleep that it won't wake him. She picks a little at breakfast and observes the cleanup to become acquainted with the procedures.

Once they've been walking for ten minutes or so, Tev seems to wake up a little further; he resumes language lessons, and attempts to describe some geography. These are the Frostback Mountains, and that's Lake Calenhad; Orzammar is under the Frostbacks, and its front gate is north of here, in a place called Gherlen's Pass. This country is Ferelden, and on the other side of the Frostbacks is Orlais, and then he has to get out his map of the continent to continue - there's the Free Marches, there's Nevarra, there's Antiva, there's Rivain, there's Par Vollen where the qunari live, there's Tevinter, and over there are the Anderfels, which used to be a country but was mostly destroyed by darkspawn...

"What are darkspawn?"

"Darkspawn are... they look a little bit like people, and act a little bit like people, but they're not really people, I don't think they have minds. They came from somewhere underground, thousands of years ago or something, and started trying to kill everyone, and they've been trying to kill everyone ever since then. But most of the time they're not any good at it. Sometimes, a kind of... darkspawn-dragon... called an Archdemon shows up, and they have minds and they can make the darkspawn do what they want, so for a while the darkspawn are much better at trying to kill everyone, and when that happens it's called a Blight. There's a Blight in Ferelden right now. We're trying to stop it."

"Is that why they went to the dragon? Will they kill it?"

"The dragon on the mountain was just a regular dragon. If it was an Archdemon, there would've been a thousand darkspawn around it. No, they went up the mountain looking for the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Ambrose's friend Eamon, who lives in Redcliffe, is very sick - he was poisoned, he - ate or drank something dangerous? And he might die, and that would be bad, so we've been looking for a way to cure him, and we think there might be one in the Temple of Sacred Ashes, which is a - legendary place, a place there are stories about, that's been lost for a while, nobody knew where to find it. Except for that dragon apparently."

"Why was the dragon there?"

"I don't know. Regular dragons don't have minds, they're just... big animals. Big flying fire-breathing animals. So maybe it was nesting in the ruins or something."

"How long will they be behind us?"

"Depends how long they take getting up the mountain and looking for the ashes, and whether or not they hurry coming down. If they hurry a lot they might catch up to us before we reach Redcliffe."

"What will we do in Redcliffe?"

"We can stay in the town, it's safe there. Or in the castle. They were having problems there before - a mage child got possessed by a demon and it was very dangerous for a while - but we got rid of the demon and the kid is fine and things are okay there now, except for Eamon being sick."

Nod.

Geography! Vocabulary! Oh, literacy, would Ambela like to learn to read and write in Thedas Common?

Yes. This is funny for some reason.

"...why is that funny?"

"It - hm - who thought of writing first here?"

"...I have no idea, it was thousands and thousands of years ago."

"...no one remembers that?"

"...no? Everyone who was alive back then is dead?"

"- why, what happened -"

"Lots... of things...? People don't live for thousands of years unless they're golems or something. They live for about a hundred years and then they die. Do Quendi and so on not do that?"

"Wh- no! We live until - something happens - then Quendi or orcs Mandos or another Vala can make alive again - Dwarves don't have chips but they live until something happens -"

"Well. Lucky you. People here, if something doesn't happen - and something usually does happen before then - they live about a hundred years and then they get old and sick and they die and nobody makes them alive again, they just stay dead. Some people say that dead people's spirits pass into the Fade, but if they do, they go somewhere no mage can find them."

"That's stupid."