fandomhigh | Cultural Understanding, Monday

She had to do this again with the Warden? Really? Morrigan was, quite possibly, Not Best Pleased with Flemeth at the moment, but as she was a mostly-decent daughter she hadn't complained.

Too much.

"Greetings. This is your class on Cultural Understanding, and if you are here, 'tis probably because you need it," she said bluntly, surveying the young faces. "If at any point someone starts a fight over cultural understanding - or a lack of it - I will turn you in to a frog."

"She will," Alistair said, sounding less than impressed. He'd whined and whined and whined to Duncan in his letters, but no luck so far. Something about 'bonding with apostates' and 'realising that the Wardens stood for everyone, including those whose company we would not normally enjoy.' "Maker, look the wrong way and she'll probably do that." Beat. "My name is Alistair, I am a Grey Warden of Ferelden. It is my duty to stand against the Blight, which is what we're warding against, before anyone asks." Another beat. "A word to the wise: don't try to match her magic with magic when she gets cross. I can put an end to it if you try, and you won't enjoy it."

"I was not aware that students were supposed to enjoy their lessons at all," Morrigan quipped. "Learning is educational, not entertaining.

"But you. Give us your name, where you are from, and what it is like, and one thing from the opening banquet that was new to you."

"I'll go first," Alistair announced, "Just so you know how it's done. I am Alistair, I'm from Ferelden. It's a temperate country that was freed from its oppressors several decades ago. We have lush forests and great mountains. Our capital is the city of Denerim, which is crowded and a bit smelly, and then there's Ostagar to the south, which is less of a capital, and much more smelly. We don't have cars, and we really don't have as many buttons as you do. We are more tolerant of mages than some countries, and less so than others. One thing from the opening banquet that was new to me was all the skimpy clothes everyone seems to be wearing. Or not wearing." A beat. "Oh, and I noticed some really nice cheeses I'd never seen before." He grinned.

"And I am Morrigan of the Kokari Wilds, near Ostagar," Morrigan supplied. "We have lots of trees, barbarians, and witches that eat children." Yes, she thought she was funny. "I have found that Fandom is much more tolerant of magecraft than Ferelden -" Alistair "-and the first item that was new to me at the banquet was your fizzy drink, with the sugar."

Someone had developed a fondness for soda.

"But that's us," Alistair said, with a look that implied... something about Ferelden's mage-friendliness. There was a reason he hadn't said it was simply tolerant, after all. "Now it's your turn."

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"Blysse Norwood," she introduced herself. "And Blind Seer," she added, for the one of the pair who couldn't. "We is from the Iron Mountains. Closest human kingdom would be Hawk Haven, to the east." As she tried to gather the words to describe the place she'd grown up, she realized just how long it had been since they'd been back there. "There is trees, and rivers, and it is the realm of the Royal Beasts. Humans try to build there cities there, but find the land is not theirs to take. Something new from the first picnic we go to was so many fruits, even when it was not the right season for such."

Woooooah, wolf. Alistair opened his mouth to offer her an intelligent and insightful reply, and...

Fell to one knee. "Awwww who's an adorable puppy--"

So dignified, our Alistair.

Morrigan gave him a scathing glance. "That is not one of your filthy mabari beasts," she informed him. "I understand it might he hard for you to know the difference, being raised by Chantry Sisters, but that is a wolf."

Not that she had any problems with wolves in the class, as she often found them more tolerable companions than humans, but honestly, Alistair. IT WAS NOT A PUPPY.

"But it's so cute and vicious!" Alistair protested.

IT WAS TOTALLY A PUPPY.

"You know, like half the opposite of you."

"Wolves are not 'cute,'" she said, looking at him as if he'd grown a second head. "They are wolves, not pets."

But if he was going to be that way about it...Morrigan took five steps forward, she shape blurring as she did so, until a second wolf looked up at Alistair with a distinctly wolf-ish grin.

Morrigan could be incredibly literal-minded at times.

Blind Seer weighed the possibility of getting in trouble with the school versus showing this human that he was not an adorable puppy (although he was quite a handsome specimen of a wolf, if you asked him) and came out rather firmly on the side of the former. Lips curling back, he flashed his fangs before moving forward to nip at Alistair's fingers. Not all that hard ~~if said fingers weren't moved in time~~, but enough to dispel any notions that he might be harmless.

Firekeeper, meanwhile, was just going to sit here and try not to snicker too obviously.

"Owww," Alistair, who had not exactly moved his fingers away in time, whined. "Your wolf bit me!"

He sounded much maligned. And not at all like a whiny teen.

~~Also clearly I meant 'latter' up there, MY BRAIN ON JUST-AWAKENING, LET ME SHOW YOU IT~~

"He is no one's but his own," Firekeeper explained with a roll of her eyes. "And he bite because you call him puppy. He has not been such for many years." If it occured to her that chastising a teacher was generally not something one was supposed to do, she didn't show it.

"That doesn't mean he needs to bite me," Alistair said, pouting.

It was possible that pouting at a student was also not technically good student-teacher relationships. "I was going to bring you a leg of something, you know."

At least he was talking to Blind Seer?

"He is wolf," duh. "But he accept your apology. And food." Blind Seer flashed his fangs once more, briefly, before settling down casually on the floor once more.

Eventually Morrigan shook off the annoyance that is Alistair and turned her attention to girl and wolf. "Where is the rest of your pack?" she asked bluntly. "I have heard little wolfsong in my woods these past moons, and miss it sorely."

"Not here," Firekeeper replied with a shrug. Not strictly true; there were those she considered pack here in Fandom, but not all of them were wolves. "We come because we find humans interesting."

Cultural Understanding, Monday

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