Very short one, but it was all that would come out for this. I think my brain has imploded a little.
There's More Than One WayThe official count would always be seven. That was the number of times he'd gotten off the island and into civilisation. But Anders knew that he had escaped many, many more times than that.
First, he'd escaped from their
expectations. He was older, more educated, less traumatised,
more talented. He answered questions with knowledge that came from
experience rather than from books, He challenged Senior Enchanters who thought they knew better.
They didn't like it.
He escaped their indoctrination.
Magic is meant to serve man and never to rule over him. He knew the real meaning of that phrase, even though the Chantry sisters who preached to him every week tried to make him think it made him
less. It didn't make him any better or worse than any other person. What it did give him was a duty - a duty he couldn't fulfill if he was locked in a tower away from people he could be helping.
He escaped their control. With Mirabel, when he was sixteen - he'd disoriented three Templars to give them more privacy than she'd ever thought was possible in the Tower and with the cushions and blankets he'd managed to smuggle down there over the past week and the thick walls to muffle their mingled cries they
took a slice of freedom that the Templars would
never be able to take back.
That particular way out of the Tower was one he made sure to take as often as was physically possible.
He escaped their melancholy. Humour had always been his answer to most problems. Calling a Templar a bucket head, flirting with Chantry sisters until they blushed, setting off ice traps on his fellow apprentices,
these things made him feel alive, no matter the punishments, the stints locked away from the other apprentices, the removal of what few privileges he had.
He would tally up his little escapes every time they took him back. They wondered why he smiled, some of them. Some of them tried to wipe the smile away with kicks and blows, and mostly they succeeded, but the act of tallying was another little escape, one of thousands he would remember when the day he escaped for good finally came.
His optimism also knew no bounds.
Modifié par Miri1984, 20 octobre 2010 - 04:00 .