Going to combine this with armythus’ prompt.

For his limited access to the world beyond the crumbling walls he knew, Abelas had seen much. These Dalish were no surprise to him, not when they had pawed at the seams of the Arbor Wilds since the fall of their vaunted homeland. It was a word worth spitting at. Abelas had been content to let them hunt the outskirts, flitting like ghosts through the dense vegetation, the lush, fragrant jungle. They could never pierce the forest here, to its heart, to the temple that was not, and would never be, their birthright. They where not the People.  They were not his People.

For true ages, he had never once wavered in his faith. His belief defined him, delineated the grey spaces of the world, parsing them into compartments, into named things that could be referred to once and filed neatly away. And with the fall of the temple — the Well — he no longer had that luxury.

{ they had welcomed him, the dalish. in his travels, it was little more than weary feet and a wearier soul that had brought him to this place. he might have sneered, for it was his vallaslin that named him kin; vallaslin they wore in pride and ignorance. and yet they had asked no questions. demanded no answers. their scouts had cast their quivers aside, singing bowstrings cut. they welcomed him without any reservation, and greeted him in a tongue that, to his surprise, he still recognized. }

The outline of the rolling knolls of the plains was visible only by grace of moonlight’s kiss, limning the fields in starlight. Abelas chose to sit by the fire, saying nothing as Dalish tales, Dalish fictions were related to the little ones. He would not mark himself an outsider by shouting out and sloughing aside the centuries’ worth of lies and corrupted realities. That was not his place, his purpose.

                                               { what was his purpose, he could not say— }

He lost himself, for a time, to the susurrations of the storyteller’s voice, the dipping intonation and the grain of her timbre far more than to the words that fell from her lips. He wondered where he might go — what might call to him next, and found himself lacking in insight or direction.

Perhaps something in his posture revealed his thoughts, his doubts, more than he had anticipated. The back of his cowl was tugged just gently enough to fall backwards upon his shoulders, his long, single braid lunar white under the stars. He twisted, more bemused than upset, and espied an elven child, hair tucked behind ears narrow as his, one perfect flower in their youthful fist.

And then they offered it forward, the embarrassed flush over soft, yielding flesh of their cheeks and ears cast in an amber glow, the fire’s sparks reflected in their wide, dewy eyes. They were perfect. Sexless. As Elvhen in their red hearts as they were Dalish and they saw him, knew him, claimed him as their own.

He knelt, wordless, and the stoniness of his heart was broken by one sure strike of the hammer. He smiled, at last, transforming the hard angles of his face to something that was, somehow, indescribably softer. At such an urging, the child released a peal of laughter and pinned the flower into his braid, the small hands a truly alien touch, but not an unpleasant one.

The story ended. Or perhaps their interest in old legends had waned, and the children looked to the present — to the future — for suddenly they were all about him, lightly weaving wildflowers into his hair as their elders looked on, amused to see one of their kin kneeling so patiently as the little ones chattered about him. He had named himself Suledin to them, and this they had accepted without comment. 

For the first time since he had left behind his once sacred duties, he felt a weight lift from him.  Age old perceptions and belief would not leave him — neither would his biases, his hurts, his fears.  Such were things that only time itself could chip away — and even then, he had proven remarkably obstinate. But this was truly a moment of liberation, of connection to what he had thought lost. 

They were not the last hope for Elvhenan, he knew.  Not even that moment’s sense of the past overlaying the present did he ever once forget.  But that was not to say they did not carry the light of Arlathan in their spirits.  That was what made them Elvhen.  Perhaps this one clan would be the last.  Their stories were no more accurate than any other’s.  But their intentions were good, and they had met him with kindness, taken him in as though he had always belonged.

He still had no purpose, no goal to which he could anchor himself for the next thousand years.  But, as he lived in the moment, his face broken in a wide grin, he wondered, perhaps, if it was not so bad a thing to embrace the People of today.