"Really?" Merrill asked, green eyes bright with interest as she leaned forward a little, ever curious. Even Kirkwall couldn't take that from her.

"What sort of philosophy? I met a philosopher once. Well, he said philosopher, but he really was a very odd man. We found him hanging upside down from a tree branch. Well...sort of. He'd been following us for a while very badly. It was the first we'd had to stop ignoring him." He'd been lucky at the time that he'd been allowed to get away with it and Tamlen hadn't just shot him out of the tree.