Chapter Text
Arravir starts to feel a chill as she makes her way down the tower. Not the regular cold that sits inside of her through the winter months; it is one that makes her fingers shake as she presses her hand against the grey stone to stay upright as her world sways ever so slightly. The voices are so loud that it takes every shred of her willpower to keep walking, one step at a time, face carefully poised in neutrality. Her knees buckle but she stares ahead with practiced diligence once again.
She slowly walks outside where the sky seems to be wrestling with itself today; half the world above is suppressed by those dark clouds that have fallen over them like an avalanche these past weeks, and the other half is a tentative blue. Arravir stands for a moment enraptured at the color again, at the neverending war of nature and of change.
Then, still dizzy, still feverish, she seems to glide across the hardened snow. She does not know where she is going, and she watches the people crossing the courtyards in their paths around and around her, interweaving their lives together. Some give her curious glances where she stands, others give quick bows, and others look over her from head to toe, a cruel calculation in their eyes. It is nothing she is not accustomed to -- existing on the edge of disdain in society has not made her invisible, it has made her seen, down to every twitch of her eyebrows. Her being is weighed for judgment on tipped scales that can never be made even.
She exhales slowly, still feeling like her movements are coming from somewhere just outside of her. She is Arravir, she has promised to be Arravir, she knows this, but she does not know what to do next.
As she almost always does when in need of solitude, she finds herself walking to the stables. She pauses, catching her breath because she is suddenly winded. Standing by the barn, she turns to see Chance, once again perched on the workbench and chatting away with Thom Rainier.
Arravir pushes her hair behind her ear and approaches them slowly. Chance sees her from the corner of her eye and then waves her over. Thom looks over his shoulder and then straightens from the chair he is still intently shaping.
“Hello Thom,” Arravir says cautiously. “I hope you are well.” She is almost surprised with herself that she means it.
“Inquisitor,” he says, wiping his hands with a dirty rag and giving her a polite nod. “I am...better than I deserve.”
“It’s not about what we deserve, is it?” Chance interrupts. “Or, maybe it is. But you’ve been given another Chance, Thom, so don’t you think you should be livin’ it instead of groveling in it?”
“I hate it when she talks sense,” Thom says with a sigh, pulling at his beard, but it is clear he is smiling.
Chance whispers something lightning fast in the throaty Orlesian tongue and then, to Arravir’s surprise, Thom replies in what seems to be a deadpan. It sends Chance into a burst of hysterics. Arravir has never heard Thom actually speak Orlesian before, and the quality of his voice changes. It is...higher, somehow, more clipped of its rugged edge.
Wiping at her eyes, rocking slightly, Chance sighs. “Sorry, Inquisitor, it’s that…Oh, nevermind. How are ya doing? Did you get your letter from the Spymaster?”
“Yes, I -- I did,” Arravir stutters. Her head is so cramped with every voice that she had forgotten she had just spoken with her. “Sorry I…” She puts out a hand and leans against the bench, feeling close to fainting.
Both Chance and Thom reach voice concern but she waves them off. “It’s…” One deep breath. Two. She repeats the motion, and the conversations come back to her. “Chance, can I ask you something?”
“‘Course!”
“You said before that you are the only half dwarven person you know…” Arravir looks at Chance’s curious, bright hazel eyes. “I’m sorry, this is rude.”
“No, go ahead,” Chance urges, leaning closer to her.
“I can’t imagine the world has been kind to you,” Arravir whispers. “How do you...cope being the only person in the world like you? I have been...struggling with that question myself lately.” Her voice nearly extinguishes itself it grows so quiet.
“Oh!” Chance’s voice sounds like something popping. She stares at her feet. “Hmm, I mean, I’m not a religious icon? So that’s different but… My mom’s family did cut her off. Orlesian blood purity and all of that.” She shrugs. “Fuck ‘em.”
And then, she is grinning again. “I guess that’s my answer? Fuck ‘em. I don’t need anyone to tell me how to be. I just...am. I always have been. Never felt weird about it until people told me I should, you know?”
“I...I think I do,” Arravir says slowly. “Fuck 'em,” she echoes, and Chance gives a whoop, patting her on the back. Thom is sanding the chair again, obviously trying to look occupied while they are having this personal discussion.
She smiles. “Thank you. That’s something close to what I have been thinking. My People have this saying, ‘ We are the Dalish. Keepers of the lost lore, walkers of the lonely path. We are the last of the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit.’ ”
A pause settles over them from the strength of the ancient phrase.
“Chance, I think… Just because it is a lonely path, it can still be the right one. I am me.” She laughs, and her head spins again. The voices of the Well seem to have found that harmony inside of her once more; it feels like it is echoing against her ribs. “Ir tel’him. I am me again.” She laughs again, and she feels her face may split from grinning.
With another cheer, Chance wraps her in a hug, squeezing so tight it is hard to breathe. Arravir stiffens until the other woman practically leaps away. “Sorry! Just got excited.”
“It’s alright,” she replies, weakly leaning back to return to gesture.
Then, she stands unsteadily, once again leaning against the workbench. “I need sleep, I think, though. I should be...going.”
“You sure you can go on your own? You’re lookin’ a bit…”
“I’ll be fine,” she says quickly, forcing herself forward. Black spots appear in her vision as she climbs the stairs to the main hall and past the throne that she has sat and passed judgment from so many times, occupying so strange a place in this history. But she is making peace with it.
After stumbling up the stairs to her quarters, pausing to sit on several steps and catch her breath, she barely manages to take her boots off before falling into a deep sleep the moment her head hit the pillows.
In her dream, she is falling, twisting through the currents of air that whip her hair and her purple dress around her. The world fades to black like the sun has been dropped behind the mountains -- but they are not mountains, they are the edge of existence -- like color does not exist here. In an instant, she shatters upon the ground like glass, scattering to the furthest corners of this undefined landscape.
And then, she is standing. Standing on bare feet like it is a cold balcony. Or maybe the dusty square in a cramped city. Or at the muddy bank of a stream with her staff in her hands and a mentor’s words at her ears.
Or like she is none of those places. Like those are all cut into shards too, skittering against the nothingness but growing louder with each second.
She runs after some triangular shard bouncing away from her, and then she cries out as a sharp pain cuts across the thick soles of her feet. Reaching down in the blackness, she feels the warm blood, smells the rust of it -- and ash, too, like the field she had burned down. The blood is between her toes, and then it is lapping at the top of her foot. It is at her ankles, sloshing dangerously, pulling back and forth like some angry tide, like Andruil has gone mad again in her sport and is quaking the oceans for it and --
And she is drowning. The water swirls, whispering and opaque, like that of the vir’abelasan, but miles deeper. Plunging lower, the glass cuts her as she falls, slicing her into ribbons, and she imagines herself turning into streams of light instead of the blood that pours gracelessly from her small body.
She splinters again and again and again. Each time she is running after them, and these foreign voices grow louder, mocking her. One of the voices is her, she thinks. All of the voices are her. None of them are her.
Again and again and again. Until finally, palms bloody, she places two shards of the glass together and they seem to spark like flint and stone, singing with those overwhelming voies, and then they are some larger whole. She sees some corner of her face in the glass.
She laughs and runs through the valleys of this Beyond that reinvent themselves with each tumultuous second. The glass continues with each joining to smash together as if they had never fallen apart...but, no, that’s not quite right. Maybe they are better for being apart. The image is clearer. As more and more of her comes into view in its reflection, the image of herself flickers like candlelight, and shifts to some new portrait.
She is Lyra, round cheeked and smiling in her purple dress. Casting up lights in the shadows of her words to invent new colors with the power she hardly understands.
The flame in the glass shifts, and she is Arravir. Strong, scarred features and a gaze heavy with ghosts that whisper in the spaces between her bones.
Suddenly, the image pops into life again, and it is someone else entirely. It is not Arravir, it is not Lyra. It is someone that looks like her, like the Orlesians have decided to wear her face now. This woman is more round-cheeked than she, and though they share so much in their appearance, there is a kind of innocence that perches on her brow. There is no scar across her cheek. But there is no vallaslin, either. Her clothes are simple in make, with no indication of dalish styles.
She understands.
This version of her never left Denerim, was never beaten and chased from Denerim
Arravir hates her, hates this not-her, hates the illusion of gentleness that must have been her life. This version of her never learned of her fire.
As if on cue, there is the warming glow of her familiar flames traveling up the length of her shaking arms. With a yell that feels like more than a yell, like the sound has gotten inside of her and is ripping the whole Beyond apart, she shatters the glass, once and for all.
Finally, she shatters, too, just as the sun seems to unfurl its wings again, and the pieces of her twinkle in the new day. Somewhere, a bird begins its old songs with renewed vigor before the sound soars away and away.
And then, Arravir wakes up, her hands reaching out through the bedsheets for something to hold onto as she gasps desperately in the hollow space of her chambers.
As she sits up, her eyes grow wide taking in the early morning light stretching through the latticed windows across the floor. Her head is heavy, but the screaming has stopped, and sitting in its place is knowledge. A location. A weapon. An altar not yet worn down by the years amid canopies of yellow-green leaves that she must commune with.
Finally, finally, after all these days of empty, searching fury, she knows the answer. The vir'abelasan at last whispers tenderly one voice at a time, like an old friend, rather than the furious crowds of a mob. She does not have to strain to focus on one voice. It is already there.
Dorian had been right. Chance had been right. She had been right. After all of Abelas' dismissals that she was not "his" people...the Well has demanded that she have respect for herself.
To Arravir, the answer is this: she has been fighting two lifetimes over every conflicting identity inside of her. She could not confront all that she was and is, and so she could not even begin to accept everything that she could be. So it held back on her, and would only start to unravel its own secrets when she was able to bare her own and stand proud with every shattered part of herself.
She is not grateful for the bloody trail behind her, not grateful for the tragedy that has been her unquiet companion from the earth. She does not thank the Templars or the drunk human with his bottle of drink or Corypheus for the explosion at the Conclave. But these things happened. And so she is Arravir. And so she is every weight that has been placed on her ever-rigid shoulders over countries and through decades.
And there is...one other thing she has suppressed still, one other she has not accepted. Da'ghilana's anxious pawing of the ground scrapes against her mind, and she realizes she must confront that today, too. Soon.
She breathes, loosening her grip on the sheets. Glancing around the room, expecting the environment to reflect this change that has boiled over within her, she finds only a quietly simmering morning. Dawn has only just graced the valleys where Skyhold is perched. Rubbing her eyes, she realizes that she must have slept the whole day away.
Everything is as she has left it. Her staff is leaning against the headboard. Deshanna’s letter is on the bedside table. There are crooked piles of books all over the floor from both her and Dorian carrying them in by the armful.
So, Arravir reasons that the only thing that must enact this change is her. She slowly swings her legs out of bed, having a quiet moment of reverie for the way her feet touch the wood. It is solid and real and it does not slice her into oblivion as the dream had done.
There is so much that she can do, so much that she must and will do. Hesitating for a moment, she grins, feeling sure of the power of the Well that is only secondary to the power that has always been inside of her.
Arravir pushes herself into a standing position and moves with an urgency, darting to get dressed, to get food, to go to the gardens and pray -- and to hastily grab a messenger and tell them to order all of the advisors to the War Room as soon as possible.
They all arrive quickly, Josephine bustling in first, a messenger trailing behind her catching various scrolls and folded bits of parchment that slip from the pile loaded into her arms. Cullen arrives shortly after, walking with great purpose, stilling for a moment to hold a silent conversation with her. He seems to be asking her something; she inclines her head imperceptibly as if to say I've been waiting for you.
Leliana and Morrigan push through the door simultaneously, deep in conversation. Arravir’s gaze lingers on them curiously, knowing the two travelled and fought together during the Fifth Blight, but they have hardly publicly engaged each other while working for the Inquisition. There is an ease about them, however, like spark in Leliana’s face that Arravir had seen yesterday. Morrigan even has a small smile on her face -- and not her usual smirk, not the gloating face of a cat who has trapped a mouse between its paws. It is the unguarded ease, the gentle lilting surprise that one feels at remembering the comfort of a friend.
Arravir even thinks she hears Reegan’s name spoken in their now-lowered voices, and she realizes that she is staring. There is something in the air as she steps up to the table, across from the four humans who she has spent countless hours worrying and debating and forging new paths with in this very room. Each of them hush and straighten their postures, looking at her attentively, eagerly.
Each of them have a quality to their eyes, to their faces now, that had not been there three years ago -- or maybe even three days ago. Morrigan and Leliana have a lightness to them, Josephine a confidence in the way she spreads papers across the stretch of table in front of her, as if poised with a sword at the start of a duel, ready to leap into action. Cullen’s arms are crossed over his chest, but there is something soft to his face. He looks at her with a strange expression, like he now understands something he never has before.
They have all emerged from this winter that threatened to bury them, she thinks. On the other side of the table, silhouetted by the still tentatively rising sun, the four of them seem to exchange a knowing look. Arravir wonders how much they have talked these past days while she has searched and raged and debated and collapsed in on herself before finding her feet again.
They all say nothing, the silence thick in the cold air around them. But there is a warmth inside of her.
“I understand our next steps,” Arravir says boldly, bracing her arms in front of her on the table, rooting herself.
“Then...the Well…?” Morrigan begins.
“Don’t be surprised that I had the ability within me to decipher it, Morrigan,” Arravir warns, fixing her gaze on the golden eyes of her Arcane Advisor.
Morrigan purses her lips together for a moment before smirking that familiar, knowing smile again and tilting her head in curiosity, as if only finally really noticing Arravir. “Of course, Inquisitor.” She parts her dark, heart shaped lips a moment, perched on the edge of speech. “It was not so much your competence I doubted as much as the speed with which you could accomplish this.” With a slight shrug, she adds, “Time is our most valuable ally, and we waste it in these discussions. Explain what you have learned.”
Arravir narrows her eyes, keeping Morrigan in suspense a moment longer, as if to demonstrate her control. And then, she leans over the War Table and, after a moment of deliberation, points to a location near the southwest of Orlais, from where they had all just journeyed. It is in the outskirts of the Wilds, hopefully beyond the fight that still rages there, but she knows the delay that venturing out there again -- even if it is with a small party -- will cause.
She explains the visions dappled with words and instructions that have filled her mind. She is sure of nothing more than she is of the truth in this direction. It must be her that goes.
To her surprise, none of them question her perception; they all slowly acknowledge that it is the best lead they have. And more than that.
Josephine places a marker where Arravir’s finger has been on the map. “Our allies will be reinvigorated to know that the Inquisitor is in pursuit of a weapon to rival Coypheus’ might,” she says shrewdly.
“Do you have any clues as to what this weapon may be? Shall your party have reinforcements? Our strongest horses?” Cullen asks.
“I don’t know what it will be yet, but…” Arravir trails off. “I don’t believe those will be necessary, Commander. Though I do think that there is something else, someone else I need to speak to still.” She turns. “Morrigan, I will meet with you in the gardens tomorrow morning to discuss this further.”
“Tomorrow?” Morrigan asks, taken aback. “This day is yet young. ‘Twould be best that we not delay any longer than we have already if we are to venture back towards the Wilds we emerged from.”
Arravir bites her lip, resisting her urge to pick some unnecessary fight. She swallows her irritation and reminds herself that it is not an irrational question. “I understand your concern. We will beat Corypheus in the current time table, I promise.” At that, she looks from face to face across from her, making sure all of them understand the depth of her conviction that she will force victory no matter the obstacles, no matter the cost. “But I have other things to discuss. Other things I gathered you all here for today.”
That earns her a scattering of curious looks. Josephine clears her throat quietly in surprise, shuffling papers on her board and smoothing them out, preparing some new set of notes. Leliana and Cullen shift almost imperceptibly. Morrigan’s eyebrows are raised though nothing else about her posturing changes.
Arravir pushes herself back from the War Table and takes a deep breath. She watches a pair of snow white birds flutter past the large windows beyond them all and she wonders, briefly, of all the other gentle lives that scurry throughout this valley, untroubled by this stronghold of the human Chantry.
But her world will always be wrought by the Chantry, as the Spymaster had whispered with a heart breaking in her throat the day before. So Arravir turns to her.
“Leliana, I am officially supporting your campaign for Divine,” Arravir states proudly, and she watches the shock burst across Leliana’s shadowed face. Her arms fidget and her smile is bordering euphoria before she seems to wrangle it into a wry, detached one. These glimpses of another woman, a happier one, have become to Arravir at once both strange and distressing. She wonders if the Spymaster ever forgets herself who she is beneath her carefully constructed mask and armored heart.
With an incline of her hooded head, Leliana speaks at last. “You honor me, Inquisitor.”
“Don’t forget what we spoke of yesterday,” Arravir says seriously.
“I never forget,” Leliana assures her.
With another nod between the pair of them, Arravir feels again the indescribable weight she has wrestled with all these weeks and years pressing down on her chest. It is larger than her, larger even than this whole room, and bears the constant scrutiny, hatred and yet idolatry that has been thrown at her feet. “With that in mind…” she begins, and she places one hand against the War Table again, taking a shaking breath.
Feeling their gazes sharp as broken glass against her, she looks up. Stare down the world that would rather have you bow, Deshanna’s voice urges in her mind. A sound close to a sob escaped her chest before she can strangle the fear again.
“I’m...tired.” Each of them seem to stiffen in some way, like a line is pulled taut within them and has rendered them speechless, hanging off of what she will say next. So Arravir remembers the promises she has made.
She is alone in who she is and what her destiny will be, but that does not mean that this mission, this Inquisition, will profit from that solitude of her existence. Holding each of their eyes meaningfully, trying to convey years’ worth of respect and bonds that transcends words, she collects herself.
“I am so tired being this symbol, being the only person here who knows what it is like to live in this world and not be a human. This room is…” she thinks to say that it is painful to her, but that is not quite true, so she swallows and closes her eyes briefly. “You all know what you mean to me, and what your work means to the Inquisition and to the world that we have been rebuilding. With everything we have done, I don’t -- I can’t imagine our will be done the second Corypheus falls, can you?”
Without waiting for a response, she continues. “We are changing the lives of everyone. This is more than a Chantry operation -- Creators, it is more than the dalish, too. Dwarves and qunari and the Avaar and Chasind and...It’s selfish of us to think that we can speak for them all about what kind of world they need. And I cannot keep doing this if I am the only non-human or non-Andrastian in this room, or in other places where important decisions are being made every day by the Inquisition.”
Her voice is getting stronger, she realizes. More bold, more sure, revitalized with the rightness of what she is doing. “I know the power my word has. I know that because I have placed my support with you, you will be Divine, Leliana. And when that happens...I request that your replacement represents someone else in Thedas who has not been represented in this room before then. I just...cannot keep being this,” she reiterates.
Josephine speaks up, somewhat timidly, and Arravir thinks that her eyes look red and bothered in the light of this shy morning. “That request is beyond reasonable, Inquisitor, and we will see to it. The world looks to the Inquisition, so we should see that the Inquisition looks like the world.”
Arravir feels herself relax as she smiles across the table at her friend. And then, Cullen speaks up. He is staring fixedly at the table, eyes narrowed as if entrenched in disgust at some unforeseen thing. “We should have done something sooner. This feels obvious in hindsight.”
Arravir looks between them, waiting for someone to argue, ready to fight back if necessary, as she always has been. “I...I appreciate you both saying that.”
Cullen looks up then, face softened in the space of a single second, and the strength of his gaze makes her breath hitch in her throat. “I have been thinking hard on such issues since...a game of chess I had the other day,” he says quietly.
Her mouth parts slightly, and she wonders if she has any words left to say at all. The moment seems to sing between them, as the voices now do in her mind. They are so vulnerable for those few seconds before she clears her throat and looks over the others.
“Tis a noble request,” Morrigan chimes in. “I admit I had my doubts about my place here, since I have little care for the Maker or Andraste. It is ambitious, certainly, and...crucial that we do not become too set in our blunderings.”
“I agree with the others,” Leliana says at last. “The Commander is right. This oversight should have been avoided, but now is our chance to change things. I already have a replacement in mind -- They are elven, though I will seek your approval, of course, Inquisitor, before confirming anything.” Stepping forward, Leliana pushes back her hood, letting her bright red hair free. Arravir realizes the only other time she had seen her head uncovered was at the Winter Palace, but though bare faced then, the Spymaster had still been wearing some kind of mask -- one forged to survive the Game. Now, she looks free. “And as for when I am Divine...I am going to change everything.”
“I know,” Arravir says, leaning forward and extending a hand across the table and its map of these countries they have spent years determining the fates of. Leliana takes it, her hand surprisingly warm. They hold on tight, just a moment longer than Josephine had instructed so long ago was polite to do so.
When they break apart, Arravir once again takes in the faces of these four humans, their strength and endurance written across every line of their faces. She had never expected three years ago to ever care for a single human, let alone so many of them. They have all had so much to learn, but they have all proved to be willing to.
“Thank you all,” she says, voice commanding again. “You are dismissed.”
As they slowly come down from this time they spent enraptured in revelation after revelation, Arravir suddenly addresses them again. “Morrigan, I will see you in the morning as discussed.” She pauses, heart beating so heavy in her chest that it hurts. “Commander...Do you have time to talk now?”
Cullen freezes where he stands, half moved around the table. When he finds her pleading gaze, the tension from earlier returns, so thick in the air that everything seems to move slower. The moment brushes against ancient music.
“Of-- of course,” he says, seeming to remember his feet again and walking to stand in front of her. The door opens and closes and opens again behind her as she stares up at him.
There is so much still for them to talk about, so much discomfort and yet so much she wants to confide as well. But there is only one way to explain this secret that has been clawing its way free recently.
“Will you...accompany me to the stables?” Arravir asks, pushing a strand of unruly hair behind her ear.
Cullen appears confused, of course, but he simply walks to the door and pulls it open, gesturing politely, but wordlessly, to her.
SEVENTEEN YEARS EARLIER
It was deep in the summer months in the Free Marches, where the coastal climate pulled in great swaths of humid air that made her lungs struggle with each breath. Despite this, she was freezing, tiny body shivering violently, half buried in the reeds at the muddy bank of a creek. Their dry stalks rustled as she thrashed about. She had so little energy, but her body rebelled against its crumbling flesh anyway.
It was 9:26 Dragon, though she could not have guessed the year with trying. It had felt an entire age had passed and maybe the Maker himself had, too, since there had been singing and dancing and drumming in a far-off alienage. Had that really been her? In that dress the color of flowers she had not seen in so long now? The winter had evaporated into summer with nothing moderate left to settle in-between.
Everything was stale in her dry mouth edged by her cracked lips that had stopped bleeding to scab over. She opened her eyes, a tiny groan escaping from the back of her throat at how bright the sun was blazing behind the reeds. Her head tilted though she could not muster the will to lower her head enough to drink.
She could just see the line of her side becoming waist and then her hip, and the way that each bone protruded unnaturally, like the most disturbing of mountain ranges. Her dark skin -- tinged a sickly grey -- reached over the peaks of her bones with a stretched-thin desperation. She blinked a few times, trying to adjust her swimming vision. Her head pounded like something was in her skull trying to break free.
There was nothing. She was nothing. Death was so close but she could not even fathom what that meant.
As her eyes begged her for sleep, for release, for the nothing that dragged at her every day, she found that there was no longer a voice telling her to fight. Or if there was, it was not louder than the pain. To sleep and not wake up...it was difficult to understand what was wrong with that.
So she closed her eyes in that cruel heat and let the Beyond take her away and away.
At first, there was no thought. Just feeling. Something damp pressing repeatedly on her forehead, beads of cool water slipping down the plains of her face. Something soft beneath her. It had been so long since she had felt something soft.
And then, her consciousness came at her in lurches, like a tidal wave that dragged her into the undertow of memory.
Her eyes were closed, still too heavy to open. But beneath her was not reeds or mud or grass at all. It was soft like nothing she could remember. There were voices but they slipped across her mind without the meaning sticking.
Slowly, the tide shifted. Her world felt less like drowning. She opened her eyes. Figures seemed to shift in the light, arms reaching across her, voices suddenly raising too. Everything, everything. She closed her eyes again.
This happened a few more times. One voice, solid as the oldest trees, was constant beside her, never raising in volume but still carrying. Like the hahren on his stage looking out over the dancing masses.
Time slipped on, and when she opened her eyes again and held them open, she panicked. Multiple different hands were touching her -- one pressing a rag to her feverish forehead, another running a hand through her hair, catching and tugging on her scalp. Yet another hand was touching her arm and a sharp pain shot through her from a deep cut inflicted weeks ago. A hand on the back of her neck, tangling in the brittle hair there and propping her head up. A bowl in front of her mouth and she was drinking something warm, an unconscious groan begging for more falling out of her lips. More and more and more hands touching and pressing and tearing and feeding and the pain continued and --
Suddenly she was on her feet, throwing out fistfuls of the fire at random as she charged forward with no direction but away. Her spindly legs trembled frantically with each failing step before she tripped over a tree root and her world spun in shades of green and brown. She was in the woods somewhere at midday-- had there been a forest near the river she had been laying beside? She could not remember.
Panting on the ground, trying to get away, there were more bodies looking on at her, reaching out. Then, she froze with a realization.
They were elves. Every single one. With designs on their faces -- that sparked a memory. Giggling conversations in the alienage about the elves leaping around in the woods with tattoos on their faces to scare off the shemlens. She felt sick at the thought, like she had stolen those memories from someone else.
Slowly, she turned over and sat up, taking them all in with wide eyes. They were wearing armor and clothing with designs she had never dreamed of before, like the warriors of an ancient story. The air smelled of leather and spices and ash. Her stomach groaned for more of the broth they had fed her, but her hands bunched around the grass tightly as she looked frantically from curious face to curious face.
“Andaran atish’an, da’len,” the steady, warm voice from before said. She turned and saw a tall and muscular woman with dark skin and eyes step forward. When she crawled backwards to keep the distance between them, the woman tilted her head in curiosity. There was a crown of tight black curls on her head that shifted slightly with the movement. Her face was long with prominent cheekbones and eyes that were surprisingly gentle. “It’s good to see you awake. You have been sleeping many days now.”
She said nothing. This did not deter the woman, who pushed forward. “My name is Deshanna. What is yours?”
Again, she said nothing. After a pause, she shook her head.
“Do you not have a name, or do you not want to share it with me?”
She said nothing. She was not sure how to answer.
That did confuse the woman, who narrowed her eyes before eyeing the space between them. Then, she said, “I am going to sit down, okay?” And she did, slowly lowering herself a few feet away from her and crossing her legs. Some of the others hovered nearby.
“Do you have somewhere or someone we can help you find? A home to get back to?” Deshanna asked.
She looked at the ground, hands still clutching at the grass and the undergrowth nervously. That feeling of nausea returned -- that any life she had had before was burnt to ash and that it had never belonged to her at all. She shook her head.
“That’s alright,” Deshanna said quietly.
“Keeper, can’t she talk?” a young boy’s voice called out from the circle forming around the two of them. Her head jolted to the side and she saw a boy of thirteen or fourteen with light brown skin and wavy black hair that skirted his shoulders. He did not have tattoos yet, but his face was pulled between confusion and humor.
Deshanna held up a hand to silence him without looking away from her. “I am the Keeper of this group. We are called Clan Lavellan. We can take care of you, if you want to stay with us.”
She backed up, dragging herself across the grass and dirt, until she realized that she was only drawing closer to the boy who had spoken.
“Hey there,” the boy said. “You shouldn’t be scared of us. Unlike what the shemlens say, we don’t actually do blood magic rituals naked under the full moon every ---”
“Samahl!” Deshanna said, low and clipped. “You are not helping.”
The boy shrugged. “Just trying to ease the tension, Keeper.” He turned sharply to look at her and gesture. “Looks like she can do magic, though. For the rituals.” He winked at her, and an older woman beside him grabbed his arm and began whispering something in that elven tongue that she knew none of.
The girl was staring at him, wide-eyed in horrified confusion. She pulled one arm in front of her protectively and balled a hand into a fist to summon her familiar fire. As the warmth stirred in her chest, she exhaled smoke and felt the sparks between her fingers building and rushing to --
She froze when Deshanna was suddenly right in front of her, holding a small flame in the palm of her own hand. Looking from the Keeper to the others, who did not react in alarm, she slowly stirred the flames again and held a matching fire in her own trembling hand.
Deshanna smiled broadly. Swiftly moving her hand upward, she began tracing some unseen, complex symbol and the air just above their heads seemed to warp and turn grey as snowflakes began to drift down. She held out her other hand to catch them, shocked when she felt them, real as a mid-winter storm, grace her skin.
“You have a gift, da’len,” Deshanna urged, still smiling. “I have it too. I can teach you everything I know. Do you want to learn?”
She looked from Deshanna’s soft grin to the teasing boy to every other face gathered around them now -- so different in shape and skin tone and age, but somehow none of them felt out of place -- and felt something she had not felt in a year, maybe two years.
It was the urge to stay, rather than to run.
Deshanna reached out her hand and laid her palm out to her. An invitation.
It had been so long since she had been wanted. Since she had been shown a hand outstretched rather than one wielding a weapon or a tightly closed fist. Part of her was still waiting, as though backed up to a cliff, for the rocks beneath her to fall. She was waiting for the illusion to drop, as it always did when demons mocked her in dreams.
But she slowly reached out her hand and took the woman’s anyway.
And when Deshanna clasped hers tightly, it suddenly wasn’t enough. She practically lunged the distance between them and fell ungracefully half into Deshanna’s lap and slumped against her. The Keeper stiffened for a moment before her strong arms wrapped her in a tight embrace.
“You’re safe now, da’len,” the Keeper whispered into her hair. “You’re safe.”
PRESENT DAY
Arravir and Cullen walk in silence out of the main hall, though they keep in step with each other. She can feel him glancing at her occasionally, but she says nothing and tries to keep staring ahead. There is a nervous energy clashing with the sense of elated purpose clashing inside her gut.
Outside, the sky is at last clear. There are some clouds still hanging over the mountains, like a reminder or some ill omen yet to come. But above them is a blue so vibrant she has not seen it since looking up between the massive leaves of those colossal, whispering trees of the Arbor Wilds. There are eyes on her again as there always are, but she thinks let them look. Let them see that this is how I walk into the future I am shaping.
“I--” She begins when they reach the stables, but finds she does not know how to start unpacking all the grief and anger inside of her. She never has known, really, how to open up without letting the fire eat them all whole. “Will you...help me brush Ghi?”
Cullen hesitates, as if he is trying to determine if she is serious. The hart is attempting to scratch his head against the thick wooden post at his stall door, though he has met no success as his antlers crash and bump against it instead. He lets out a low braying noise as his hands overturn a metal bucket hanging just within the stall and various brushes plummet to the ground. “I’m not sure that he would like that.”
“He’s going to have to,” Arravir replies, slipping through the stall door and shoving her gloves into a pocket in her coat. She places her hands around the hart’s bony face to still him. “It’s me,” she says, and Da’ghilana calms immediately, head drooping and ears twitching delightedly.
Arravir trails a hand down his neck and then turns to pick up the contents of the overturned bucket. As she reaches for a square brush, she notices Cullen hesitating at the stall door. Standing straight and looking at him curiously, she says “Come in. Hang your mantle by the door, though, he may try to eat it.”
Cullen sighs exasperatedly. “He certainly tried during our trip back from the Arbor Wilds. Maker, I can’t imagine it actually tastes good.”
“He will eat anything available to him,” Arravir says more to Da’ghilana than to him, rubbing the hart’s shaggy white fur across his chest contentedly.
The hinges creak and Cullen steps through, armor looking bare without the added fluff of his usual mantle. As she almost always is, she is surprised at how lean his unarmored form is. It is as though, when armored, he is trying to convince not only others but himself of his own imagined stature. It is another layer of protection, she knows.
Arravir is pulled from her thoughts when Da’ghilana huffs loudly beside her and begins scraping the ground with his front right hoof in indignation.
“Hey,” she says lowly, a warning, placing a hand on the side of the hart’s head. He yanks his head from her grasp and takes a step back, nearly bumping into the back of the stall.
Rolling her eyes, Arravir reaches into another deep pocket of her coat and pulls out a small green apple. It is imperfect, with a few brown spots, but Da’ghilana will not care. “Feed this to him.” Holding it out to Cullen, he takes it slowly and places it flat on his now ungloved palm. Tucking his thumb close to the rest of his hand, he raises it and catches the hart’s attention. Da’ghilana sucks the apple in with one breath and then snaps it in half with a large crunch. A few small pieces slip from his mouth as his jaw starts to move sideways, slowly grinding the apple to mush. There is something close to foam on his lips as his short fluffy burst of a tail swishes happily.
“Stroke the fur just on the tip of his nose, or the patch between his antlers,” Arravir says. “It is the softest fur on his body.”
Cullen obeys again, reaching tentatively up to the top of the hart’s thin head where the wide antlers fan out. He strokes the sensitive skin and fur there and Da’ghilana tilts his head sideways to allow better access. Arravir sees a small, appreciative smile on his lips.
Ducking beneath the antlers on the opposite side of him, she raises the square brush and begins near his shoulders. His winter coat is remarkably thick, making him look double the size that he is in summer months. The stall seems much too cramped now between the three of them and the hart’s seasonal coat and perpetual overlarge personality. A horse in a neighboring stall extends their neck and lets out a high-pitched whinny, as if simply reminding the whole fortress that they are there. Da’ghilana shrieks in kind, nearly knocking Cullen’s head with his antlers as he brays his reply.
They take to brushing in silence. As he works, there are shifting bars of light that cross his face from where the sun presses through the gaps in the wooden roof above them. There is something endearing about the dedication that stiffens his face, working out the tangles and dirt in her hart’s fur.
Arravir looks then to the ground between Da’ghilana’s shifting feet as she thinks. There is no dirty snow here as there is around so much of Skyhold’s courtyards. Instead, the loose dirt is strewn with wet, flattened straw. There are bits of that straw she pulls free from his fur with a huffed out laugh. It is as though he has spent the last several days doing nothing but rolling in it.
As she thinks over how much trouble, how much silly mischief he gets into, and why she wanted to bring Cullen here in the first place, her heart grows heavier until it is a physical pain pushing against her ribcage. She exhales slowly, counting in her head to exert some form of control.
Switching the brush to her non-dominant hand, she looks down at the Anchor that glows in its perpetual wound across her flesh. Swallowing, Arravir closes the hand into a fist.
“I wasn’t the only person from Clan Lavellan at the Conclave.”
It lands without preamble, as so much of her declarations often do. Her bottom lip twitches, though she tries to remain impartial in expression.
“What?” Cullen asks softly on the other side of Da’ghilana. He has frozen in place, looking at her.
She meets his eyes, and does not know what to do with the concern she sees there. So she deflects with logic. “Why would a Keeper send only their First without any sort of protection? Think of how vulnerable that leaves the future of the Clan.”
Cullen’s lips are parted, and he nods, understanding the explanation, though still clearly unsure of what to say. “Who went with you?” he asks, seeming to find it the safe question to voice.
“His name was...Samahl,” Arravir says stiffly. It is the first time she has said his name aloud since that day when the mountainside turned into a crater, when a supposed peace summit became a war zone. “He was a hunter with the Clan. Close to my own age. And...he was my friend.” Standing straighter, speaking almost with accusation, she adds, “I do not need to tell you what happened to him that day. We all lived through it.”
“That we did,” he replies quietly. “The confusion of that day...I do not dare to think of all the awful thoughts that crossed my mind that day, the anger. Everyone was grieving someone.” His voice is edged with something close to anger and disbelief. And then, his shoulders slump. “What was Samahl like?”
Arravir can’t help the smile that tugs at her lips at the memory of his fierce laughter and biting words. “He was...bold and brash and funny , but sometimes he could be so annoying . Everything was his business. When I first joined the Clan, he would constantly antagonize me, as if waiting to see when I would snap and call lightning to strike him.”
Shaking her head, she clenched her jaw at a memory that drew slight sparks of anger forth. “When we receive our vallaslin, we must remain perfectly still. We cannot cry out in pain or be deterred in any way. It is a test of maturity and of strength, because receiving them is an honor and a promise.” Even just speaking of their traditions so freely again calms something inside of her. She pulls another piece of straw from Da’ghilana’s fur and pauses. “Samahl...he kept telling jokes the day i was receiving mine. I didn’t react to his poor attempts at humor, but then he...started saying stupid, teasing things to get a rise out of me. Do not get me wrong, he was not overly cruel with his words, but...it still worked.”
Arravir hangs her head a moment in shame. “I snapped and turned to talk back to him. And in that moment the ritual was finished. I had to walk around for a month, going about my duties, living , with half a face of vallaslin.”
“That must have been mortifying,” Cullen replies sympathetically. “Though I must admit that I am surprised your Keeper allowed him to behave in such a way.”
“Oh, Deshanna was very upset with him, but she and the hahren still wanted to use it as a learning experience for me. I was already Dehsanna’s top choice for First at the time, and so she wanted me to prove that I would not let ‘childish insults pull me from my course.’” Arravir resumes her brushing, but glances over the hart’s back to look at Cullen. “Though Samahl was not allowed the day I received the other half of my vallaslin. I completed the ritual in peace.”
Clearing her throat, she wipes a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. She is sniffling in the slight chill in the air. “I confronted him one day about why he was so harsh with me, when I considered us close. I asked him why I was not good enough for him.”
“And he looked at me like I was speaking a different tongue. He just said that some people among the Clan questioned the Keeper’s judgment for a while in naming me First. There were very few of them, as Clan Lavellan has always been so welcoming to me, but …” She trails off, gut twisting. “Some thought I was and would always be an outsider because I was from the cities. I was not born among the Clan -- or any Clan. So Samahl said he wanted to help me toughen up to people like them, who actually meant it. I remember telling him I did not need him to see cruelty as a key to my ‘development.’”
There are a few more tears then, stinging in her eyes. “He apologized and said to me that he looked forward to the day when he could call me Keeper. He was crying. I had never seen him cry before. And he said that he hoped that until that day he could call me his best friend. He was so much kinder after that, though he still teased me relentlessly.”
“You’ve said before that you never had siblings.” Cullen looks thoughtful. “But it sounds almost like you had a brother.”
“I...I have never thought of it that way. I don’t know. Maybe.” She buries her face in her sleeve for a moment and takes a few staggered deep breaths, gulping in the mountain air.
Then, before Cullen can think to respond, she leans against Da’ghilana and speaks. “Samahl loved the Clan’s halla, though he was not one of their caretakers. They loved him, too. One day, a hunt went wrong, and several of our hunters were lost, nearly mauled by bears. Samahl was one of them. But then, a miracle happened. A halla escaped from our enclosure and began racing through the woods. No one could keep up with it, and we were not sure we wanted to, since most of the hunting party had not returned.”
Rubbing a hand lovingly down the hart’s neck she continues. “That halla found Samahl alone and injured in the woods and led him back to the Clan. He named that halla ‘Da’ghilana’ that day. It was his ‘little guide .’”
Cullen looks curiously at the hart between them who seems to only tolerate his company. He places his free hand on Da’ghilana’s back appreciatively. “I’ve only ever heard campfire stories about small miracles like that. I didn’t actually believe any of them were true.”
“I remember that day vividly,” Arravir says, nodding to confirm its truth. And then, she laughs lightly. “The halla Da’ghilana and Samahl were practically inseparable. Once, when we were trading with a small group of humans -- which we did sometimes -- one of them started making comments about the halla, calling them ‘deer.’ Samahl just roared with laughter and said, ‘Stupid shemlen, haven’t you ever seen a griffon before?’” Both of them pause before breaking into timid laughter, and Arravir realizes how happy she is to hear the sound of his. “He was so insistent and persuasive...I truly think those humans left half-wondering if griffons really were extinct.”
“He must have been quite the speaker, considering the halla have an obvious lack of wings,” Cullen replies good-naturedly.
Arravir nods, her laughter winding down. She can feel the yawning chasm of her grief again, the way it threatens her with a labyrinth she is designed to fail. Grief demands so loudly that one should lose themself in it. She has tried to cope by denying its existence. “The Keeper said that the halla Da’ghilana died around the same time Samahl did.”
Again, she knows that she is cutting a moment in half, ripping out its goodness. She knows she has no finesse. “I suppose I named him --” she gestures to her stubborn hart with her head “--with the same name was...to keep some part of him alive. And I…” She trails off for a moment, looking out into the courtyard and the throngs of people crossing in every direction. “I keep waiting for someone to call him the wrong animal and I can say ‘ Stupid shemlen, haven’t you ever seen a griffon before ?’”Her laugh is nervous this time, and she hiccups as she wipes her face with her sleeve again with annoyance.
“He sounds like quite a character,” Cullen says softly, and she looks back to him. “I’m sorry, Arravir.”
“He was an ass ,” she practically spits out, surprised suddenly at her own vitriol. “But...I miss him.”
There is a dull thump as Cullen drops the brush he is holding and then both of his bare hands are resting on Da’ghilana’s back. As he has so many times lately, he looks like he wants to do more, but restrains himself. “You’ve...never spoken of him before.”
“I haven’t,” She admits, relieved he understands some of what she has set out to do today. “Well, you know I’m not good at...accepting the things I’ve lost.” She wonders if both of them are thinking of her awkwardly dropping the story of her birth name and city origin a year ago. How she had said that less than five other people in all of Thedas knew, because she had buried it so deep.
“Neither am I,” he says instead of dragging more of her own grief out into the open air. Her mind switches instead to the time he paced his office in the blaze of the late afternoon sun, confessing of the demons that haunted him still. Her breathing comes more rapidly.
Across from her, he glances away, as if trying to summon the courage for something. He nods almost imperceptibly, seeming to have decided on it. “I am -- What I need to know is if you are one of those things that I have lost, Arra.”
Oh.
It strikes her as such a simple statement, and yet her chest shudders to life. She blinks a few times as the shock slowly reaches every part of her. It has, all of it, been from fear. Both of them have just been choking on their fear for more than a week now since she had run out of the War Room, forcing the wooden door to slam just to feel the reverberations in her chest.
There has been so much love in her life that was mistranslated in its action. Her father had been scared of losing her, until so much of her childhood had been four crumbling walls pressing in on her. Samahl had been scared of her not being recognized for her worth, so he had prodded her insecurities to encourage her to be more bold in proving herself.
And Cullen...had been scared of losing her, and of Arravir losing herself. It is a fear she can recognize, even if she is unhappy with it. It does not make it all justified in her eyes, any of the three of them, but it does show Cullen’s words as being rooted in love, and not the distrust and condescension that she had felt.
“No,” Arravir chokes out somewhat desperately, standing taller, pushing her hair behind her ear and searching out his eyes. Her voice gets stronger. “No. I’m sO sorry I made you believe that, vhenan --”
Cullen shakes his head, eyes pressed tightly closed in annoyance. “You have still never told me what that mea--”
“It means ‘my heart,’” Arravir blurts out, and something between a laugh and a sob escapes her as she gestures as the impatiently shifting Da’ghilana between them and adds “Not this one.” Slowly, she walks around Ghi’s backside, one hand trailing across him to tell him where she is, and she stops less than a foot in front of Cullen.
Taking one of his hands in both of hers, both of their eyes wide, she pulls it to her chest and lets his palm rest there. They breathe together in the silence for a moment, his hand moving with the swell of her life -- of her ever-beating heart . “This one, vhenan.”
“Vhenan,” Cullen repeats in a voice so quiet, so reverent that it makes her knees buckle. His other hand reaches out as if in disbelief and cups her cheek.
Taking another step closer, she lets go of his hand and leans forward to rest her forehead on his bare chest plate. His hand trails instead to the back of her head and the thick stream of her hair. They stand there, comfortable in the silence for a long pause. Even the sound of Da’ghilana scraping deep grooves into the earth is muffled because she is in his arms again.
It is not that she is seeing him truly for the first time in so many days now -- of course in the midst of the argument that had been him, and she had been herself. It is just that...somehow, right now, she knows it will be okay. This love will be enough.
Placing her palm flat against the cool metal of his armor, she clears her throat and tilts her head back to look up at him. “What I need is for you to respect my ability to choose for myself. And that my history, and my people’s history is one of loss.” Closing her eyes, she feels his hand cover hers again, thumb brushing along her fingers. “So while I often cannot talk about it, I will fight for my people. I am elvhen, and I need you to accept everything that means.”
“I can do that,” Cullen says, voice rough. He clears his throat as well. “Of course I trust your decisions, that you work endlessly for good. But I often worry that you will forget that you are a person , too.”
Arravir opens her eyes and looks at the shadowy warped reflection of her face in his chest plate. She thinks of all the titles -- from slurs to formalities -- that have shaped her world. “Have I ever been just a person? I feel as though I am either more or less than that. I’m knife ear, mage, savage, prophet, martyr, heretic…”
Her voice trails off, and his hand in her hair stills. She meets the tired golden brown of his eyes and speaks with a kind of urgency. “I chose Arravir. I choose elvhen. And I choose you.”
Cullen smiles warmly. “I choose you as well.”
“Good,” Arravir whispers, smiling in return. So much of the heaviness have ebbed away. The tide has grown lower.
Cullen hesitates, trying to find the words. “I am sorry, Arravir, that I let my fear take control when I should have been supporting your decision.”
Da’ghilana huffs loudly beside them, as if sighing his agreement and frustration. Both of them jump slightly, and Arravir’s face transitions from shock to glee to a sudden melancholy again as she remembers how deeply his words Could you not resist? had cut. “It’s...alright. Thank you.” Her voice is shaky. “I am sorry, too. I am sorry for how I reacted. I should have been trusting you, too."
He shakes his head slightly, as if to say that she should not be. But she is anyway. His face has a streak of sunlight cutting through from above that splits it diagonally, and it highlights the dark circles beneath his eyes. Cullen seems to not just have the fatigue of these past weeks, but of multiple lifetimes sitting on her shoulders.
Arravir reaches up to him and lightly runs her thumb over his cheekbone and down to his stubbled jaw. “You look like you have not slept in weeks. Let’s go to bed, vhenan.”
He lets out a disbelieving laugh. “It’s midday!”
“Yes,” she says sternly. “And it’s still unbearably cold, so we are going to my quarters where the ceiling is fully intact.”
Cullen looks as though he is going to argue until he concedes with another laugh. Da’ghilana is not pleased at being left half-brushed, but she fishes another apple from the kitchens out of her pocket that she had kept there for the sole purpose of appeasing him. Together, she and Cullen collect the scattered brushes and hang the bucket by the stall door again. They pull their gloves back on and, when Cullen reaches for his deep red mantle, he pauses, something close to mischief brewing on his face.
“I said that night in the Arbor Wilds that you could wear this on our return journey, didn’t I?” He asks. Without waiting for a reply, he drapes it around her shoulders, making her look remarkably bulky in both her coat and his mantle. The fur fluffs up around her face and tickles part of her exposed neck. Arravir simply pulls it tighter around her.
As they walk back to the main hall, she does not care about all the eyes on her -- and on them -- when she reaches out and takes his arm. He pulls her closer to him, still staring forward, but smiling again -- broadly, almost uncharacteristic in its unbridled glee.
The sun shines clearer and brighter across the blue canvas of the sky, and she feels, too, that she is made of light. Not just fire intent on destruction. The shadows must quake and shrink back or be burnt away entirely. The ground will be richer to grow because the sun was high and because she had walked there.
They sit on the edge of her bed side by side and angled towards each other. Slowly, lovingly, they pull each bulky layer, each clanking piece of armor, off the other. It is a silent ritual, with hands trailing along every exposed piece of skin with a touch that is feather light.
For now, the pieces of Cullen’s armor and her clothing are scattered across the floor, his mantle half hanging off one of the numerous piles of books. She struggles for a moment with some of the buckles on one of the vambraces on his arm, and she is nearly on top of him as she tries to see it from the proper angle.
“You know…” Arravir pauses, finally undoing the clasp and freeing his forearm. “I have been thinking a lot lately about what to do once Corypheus is defeated. I spoke about some of that in the meeting today, but...I have a personal goal as well.”
The mattress shifts upward as Cullen moves to the floor and undoes the laces on one of her boots. Looking up at her earnestly, he asks, “What is it?”
Arravir takes a deep breath, holding the leg out straight for him to pull the boot off then. “I am going to find my father.”
There is a small tap as Cullen sets the boot down gently, as if trying not to make any noise. He stares at her imploringly. “Do you think…?”
“Do I think he is even still alive?” she asks, and leans back on her forearms, staring at the ceiling for a long moment. “I am fully prepared to find nothing but a grave. But I owe him -- and myself -- as much to find even that.”
Looking back down, Cullen nods solemnly.
As he begins unlacing the other boot, she adds, “Denerim will be the most obvious place to start. It has been so long since I...” She takes a deep breath. "It's something I will need to face."
“I’ll go with you,” Cullen says. There is a comforting steadiness to his voice.
“Thank you.” Arravir reaches out briefly to stroke his hair that has fallen out of his neat styling, loose curls falling onto his forehead. She holds out her other leg then and lets him remove the boot and place it delicately beside the other. “We could always make a stop in South Reach. See your family.”
Cullen swiftly moves to sit beside her once again, the mattress sinking softly as he pulls her close. “I think Mia would have my head if we didn’t,” he says with a laugh.
And then, with a joyous hint of nervousness, they are kissing. Half dressed and angled awkwardly with her legs pulled beneath her, they are nothing if not hands and mouth meant only to discover the other again and again and again. And they are laughing, too, for no real reason except the sweet elation of the moment that colors the air around them.
Arravir shifts so she is sitting on his lap, legs wrapped around his back and chest pressed to chest. She is so glad she had managed to remove his chest piece already so that she can feel the heat of him and the strength of his core.
Cullen slows and lightly traces her jaw before placing two fingers beneath her chin and tilting her head up. And then, his mouth is on her neck, just where he knows she likes, travelling lower. He glances up at her as if asking permission and she moans as her way of assent. As his kisses reach her collarbone, she lets out another low moan that, somehow, embarrassingly, morphs into a yawn.
“Maker,” Cullen says. “Perhaps we should sleep?”
Arravir stifles another yawn, suddenly feeling drained. She presses her forehead to his. “Can we continue this later?”
They kiss again, sweet and chaste. “If I am a lucky man,” he says hand trailing up to the coin still hanging from her neck. “And I am beginning to think that I might be.”
They finish undressing then, with much less ceremony, and slip under the covers of her bed that, for once, does not feel too large.
When they are tangled up under the layers of blankets that are at last dragged up from the floor, he stares at her for a long moment, seeming to contemplate something. Then, he quickly leans forward and presses a kiss to the tip of her pointed ear.
As a way of replying, she shifts closer to him, tucking her head under his chin, and she falls asleep watching the rise and fall of his chest with a small, lazy smile on her face.
The voices from the Vir’Abelasan sing softly in the back of her mind of a long lost dream: one of a love that impossibly, blissfully endures.