The first request would remain unheeded, it seems;
she has never heard of a Stark, nor of the Keep which had presumably been the core of his own claim. But the hauntress aligns herself at the messenger's burnished ribs; momentarily captivated by the melding of autumnal and frostkept hides; speaks a tad somberlike throughout: "Elysium was a haven, as much as I have known — and I fear to say that I know very little of its beginnings, or as to how it came to its end." Pressed him into an absent, almost aimless promenade; argents resting into the lampglint gaze. "I had ze privilege of attending only one of their festivals, last springtide. It was there that I met one named Olive — one of ze leading druids, you ken — who would go on to become my ... ah, midwife," halfsights flit from the serpah's own, then; the same flush felt when the boy Seámus had listened to her first failure of motherhood. "It has felt an age since I have been here. Even longer since I have seen ze faces of those I once knew."
Chords dwindling into some manner of silence;
and she is wearied for it; rests the shorn cheek but for a moment against bittersweet shoulder. "What were ze willows like, for you?" Perhaps he has told her two times, already, and four times more; yet Andraste cannot recollect as clearly as she would like to. Not at the moment. "There is a grove, in my Court. It is not your birthing place, yet ..."
Quieted;
for now, Andraste simply rests against the graceful figure of the seraph; listening with lashes heavy to marred cheek the voice that thrums throughout the vessel of him and catches betwixt her spry ribs. Listens still as he tells her of how the very tranquility of this trendiled place had once been some manner of cage; waxes plain of a mother who had been exceptionally unkind amongst all others; does not yet heed his prior enquiries, and only hums in prolonged quiet as he then enquires of her own invitation. "I like to think that a mind such as yours would be a welcome addition to those within ze Vale." The leveled fairness; the cooled intellect; the independence of reason; "I cannot blame you, rather you would wander, of course."
His choice, yes;
and in time, perhaps she would tell him the many truths that she had felled upon the clouded yearling with; if not here, in this place of dead and desolate things.