On a Wing and a Prayer

She'd become rather adept at traveling and living light, she believed. After they'd finished their expedition in the jungles north of Laysh, return to Orlais was not a possibility even if she'd wanted to go. The blight that plagued Orlais had made the country nigh impassable for anyone who valued their life. And Jaya very much valued hers. She'd gone instead to Hossberg at the suggestion of Professor Verax. She could not yet travel directly with the professor to the newly established headquarters of the Highwing Restoration Initiative in the valley southwest of the capitol of the Anderfels. Those who'd bonded on their mission, and those who'd found eggs on another, had been given the first priority so as to settle their griffons or eggs as quickly as possible. And so she'd waited.

She'd had enough time to write home to her family, and for them to respond. An aunt had come, part of a traveling troupe, to deliver her some clothing, money, and even a few books from home along with letters. Jaya had opened and gone through the things, holding the clothing tight to her chest and breathing in the old but always familiar spice and incense scents of home. But then she'd packed it all away again, wanting to be ready at a moments notice.

When the letter finally came, Jaya felt as if she might have burst from her own skin in her excitement. From Hossberg, she traveled with a caravan that kept mostly with the Lattenfluss river to Nordbotten. To earn her keep, Jaya taught letters and numbers to the children of the caravan, and even some of the adults. The Anders were a rough people, with few having received a proper education, and so they seemed to greatly value what she was able to impart along their way.

Nordbotten was not a large city, but if was as fortified as one. In this land where darkspawn did not wait for a Blight to ravage the countryside, she supposed it was why the city still stood at all. After thanking and bidding farewell to her caravan companions, Jaya wandered into the city. There was little here in the way of decoration or amusement. The buildings were simple structures, easy to rebuild if razed. The shops were utilitarian, catering to the necessities of life rather than luxuries, but she spied out their artwork all the same. Bold, if simple, imagery covered the walls near shops, hinting at what wares might be sold inside. Blacksmiths distinguished themselves with subtle, but telling marks or adornments added to the weapons they displayed. And when she arrived at a tavern called The Dusty Sty, she heard their music as well.

Here, she was to present herself to the barkeep who would be waiting for a number of others traveling to the Highwing headquarters. After doing just that, he said he'd send whoever else arrived her way. So she found herself a table near the bar and ordered a drink and a light meal as she listened to the somber marches, melancholic odes, and fearsome chants of the Anderfells.

Nordbotten was, by the Icarius family’s definition, not a city. The structures were rudimentary, the people simple and uncouth, the cold mountain weather harsh and uninhabitable, the terrors roaming the slopes and wilds inexcusable, the organizations and institutions laughable, the leadership informal, the food simple, and so on, and so forth.

Iggy loved it, truly.

It was the sounds that he’d decided that he loved best. Even sitting at the bar of the Dusty Sty, the faster whips of wind could be heard blowing across the mountain slopes around the town, a constant reminder that man was second to the elements. He’d yet to see a person about that hadn’t worked in some fashion, the tavernkeeper simultaneously a brewer and homemaker and cook, the smiths carving their own handles and stoking their own fires and smelting their own metals and hawking their own wares. Even the elderly, those few he’d seen, weren’t people of idle hands, knitting clothing, mending homes and stores, watching little ones below and the terrains above like hawks.

It made him stick out like a sore thumb, of course, with his book open at the bar, a treatise on the different kinds of flora and fungi one could find on the Antivan coast hardly a common topic around here. But his gold had kept coming, and so the tavernkeeper had regarded him with befuddlement, the locals eyeing him as only one of a number of interlopers recently.

Adjusting his posture as he heard the tavern door open and shut behind him, Iggy would lean more squarely on an elbow as he hung his gaze down to read, a mug in his free hand to provide sips of ale. He’d eye the tavernkeeper as she passed, then returned from another woman clearly from out of town as well, then went out with some food and drink. As she returned, he’d flag her over, pointing at her hand, coins clutched within.

”How much?”

The tavernkeeper, brow raised, would answer skeptically. ”Five coppers.” Her skepticism would double as Iggy reached into his pocket for a silver and motioned at the coppers, offering an unspoken trade. Accepting with suspicion, Iggy would reassure her with a polite smile, shoulder his book, grab his ale and an unfinished plate of bread, and meander to his fellow foreigner, offering the plate. ”Pardon me, but might you finish this? Seems a waste to let spoil, and I’ve already had my fill.”