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The question comes after one of the longer stretches of silence, so long that Selene had forgotten that Alistair was even still sitting across the campfire.
“Do you remember your parents?”
She blinks into the fire before lifting her eyes to his, glowing gold in the flames. “Not a lot. I was very young when I was taken into the Circle.”
He winces, reminded of the nightmare they’d just battled through… the very raw cuts etched in her soul. “I shouldn’t have said…”
“No, it’s alright.” She pokes a crackling log with her stick and it gives way to the pressure, sending a flurry of sparks skyward in a small poof. “My mother died before I could remember her, but my father was Dalish.” She traces her cheekbone with a gloved fingertip, trying to recall the green swirls etched into her father’s skin. “I have his eyes, but my mother’s hair. He wasn’t a mage, so he hunted. Before my magic manifested he used to take me with him, slung into a deerskin on his back so I could learn his trade.” She watches Alistair rise and skirt around the campfire, smiles briefly as he drops onto the log next to her. They’re close enough that she can feel heat radiating from his shoulder, but they don’t touch. Inappropriately, her stomach flutters. She breaks eye contact and frowns into the dirt.
“We got separated from the clan, but he needed to hunt as they traveled. I was too big for his sling and old enough to start learning how to track, so I was a few paces ahead when a rotted tree fell…” She hopes Alistair can deduce what happened next, that she doesn’t have to tell him that a tree crushed her father in front of her, and a small breath of relief escapes her body when she feels his shoulders sag.
“Maker, Sel.”
“I managed to lift it off him. Maybe it was magic, but he was coughing blood and it was too late. I stayed with him for two nights before we were found by traveling merchants.” She takes a deep breath, looks skyward and counts to ten. “When they approached me I begged them to leave me to die with him, but they picked me up anyway… only to be thrown ten feet from a mind blast.”
“Your magic manifested?” he asks quietly. She nods.
“The woman told her husband to leave me. ‘Leave the savage in the woods and let her gods take her,’ she said. But the husband scooped me up and sat me in the cart with his potatoes and cabbages and said that he’d take care of me.” She sighs.
“They took you in?”
“I thought they would. When we got to the nearest human settlement, they stopped in front of their Chantry and told them I was a mage and tossed me to the Templars.” She has nothing left to say, wonders why she’d said anything in the first place, and it takes Alistair a moment to come up with something appropriate.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Wasn’t your doing,” she says quickly, but he knocks her shoulder.
“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t horrible.”
“It was what it was. I supposed I would have let myself starve to death in the forest, so in a way those merchants saved my life. And if I weren’t taken to the Chantry, I’d never have been taken to the Circle. And I wouldn’t have met Duncan or joined the Wardens.” She shrugs.
“And here we are, being hunted down by Darkspawn and mercenaries, traitors to the crown…” he jokes, and this time she nudges him.
“Met you, didn’t I?”
He huffs a laugh. “Another con to being sent to the Circle.” She giggles and shakes her head, and they lapse into a more comfortable silence.
“Selene…” he begins, and she closes her eyes for a moment. It’s a serious tone, the one used when he’s about to ask a deeply personal question or confirm her suspicions of a looming attack.
“Yes, Alistair.”
“I… know it might be soon, but I need to ask about that Templar in the Circle.”
“Cullen?”
“I… yes.”
“You knew him too, didn’t you?”
“We trained together, but that’s not my question.”
“I know your question, Al.”
“I… sorry. I shouldn’t have…”
She sighs, stares into the fire until her the flames blur with unshed tears. “He was a friend.”
Alistair is smart enough to know she’s sugarcoating. “Only…”
“He’s a Templar,” she says simply. “And I’m a Mage. We can’t even be friends, let alone whatever feelings he may have held for me.”
“Did you… feel the same? About him.” He’s picking at the edge of his boot and refusing to meet her eyes, blushing all the way to his ears.
“For a while, I suppose. He was quite the noble sort. Snuck me biscuits in the library occasionally, even though they were cinnamon date and I hate dates.”
“Noted,” he jokes weakly.
“When I left he was quite cold to me and it was puzzling. And when I came back…”
“He said a lot of hurtful things,” he concedes, scooting closer until their arms are pressed together. Selene clenches her jaw so her lips won’t wobble and she swallows back a mournful sound.
“He was tortured. He thought I was a demon.”
“That doesn’t excuse—”
“Perhaps not, but it explains things. I know he didn’t mean anything by it. He wasn’t in his right mind.”
“Do you think he’ll be alright?”
Selene shrugs halfheartedly and swipes away a tear, doesn’t want to think about the twist of guilt in her stomach when she thinks of Cullen the way she remembers him, the sweet new Templar who would sneak her biscuits that she hated and who carried her to her bed when she fainted after her Harrowing. “I think it will take a very long time for him to trust again.”
“Mages?”
She shrugs once more. “Anyone.”
She can practically feel him search for something to say, but evidently he falls short and settles for wrapping a thick arm around her shoulder. The warm weight of his arm folds her into his side and they stay there, her head pillowed on his shoulder, the flutter in her chest fighting the guilty twist in her gut.