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"So this is home, then, yeah? Ham-shiral?"
"Halamshiral," Nalwren corrects, even though she knows Sera is mostly trying to forget the scorched pile of bones they abandoned on the ramparts, all the magic necessary to finish the job. "And no, that's farther up north."
"Right, well." She kicks a rock, sends it flying into a fallen tree trunk, equally scorched. "All that talk about the Dales this, and the Dales that, and it's not even worth two pissing pots."
"Maybe one pissing pot," Nalwren says evenly. There's a lump burrowing its way up her throat, knotted and cool like the shackles she wore in Haven. She's cold everywhere, no matter that she hasn't needed to use a freezing spell all day.
"Ha!"
Sera kicks another rock. It fells a nearby stump—not that there is much of anything left to fell in the Path of Flame.
"Please do not agitate the environment today,” Cassandra says. “We must remain neutral in this war."
"Oh, psh. Do Dalish trees care about big people politics?" Something shadowed crosses her face. "Not really Dalish. Whatever."
The Dales. This is the Dales, a home she still needs a map to traverse, but precious nonetheless. Perhaps if she thinks it hard enough, she'll be able to forget the smoke-haze lingering in her nose and mouth. Forget the way her fingertips splinter along her staff every time they come across yet another plaque commemorating the regimented slaughter of her people. Forget Sera's spite. The dip of Cassandra's brow, how easily her hand can hold the whole curve of Nalwren's shoulder. How Nalwren wanted to turn her face away from the pit and press her forehead against Cassandra's breastplate.
Dirthara-ma, Nala. Desha's barking laugh—forget that too. You and your shemlen! We better get out the longest bedroll for the girl you try to bring home.
Some of the bodies were Elvhen.
She can't get their eye sockets in particular, wider than their counterparts, out of her mind. She personally invested gold in books for Skyhold about Elvhen anatomy, human books by human hands that mention their “attributes” as if they were each golden halla, to be felled like Sera's trees. But she had to know — more importantly, Skyhold's healers had to know. More elves survive in the dwelling of the Inquisition now than anywhere else in Thedas, at least according to Josephine's latest reports.
"Inquisitor," Cassandra says from behind, yanking her attentions back. By the Dread Wolf, she loves the way Cassandra lilts all the syllables of her real name. She wants to hear it now from her lips, ask for it as a boon. She never wants to see another human again. “The sun will be setting soon. If we want to make it back to camp beforehand, we must move with more haste."
Nalwren turns around to face her party of two. Dirt and sweat mingle across Cassandra's cheekbones, her jaw, more sweat presses strands of hair to her forehead. The sun is indeed setting—and it's doing very good things for the flecks of green-gold in her irises. She won't say a word, but Nalwren knows by the hard line of her shoulders that she is fighting exhaustion. Sera is still kicking rocks. She looks angrier every time she does it.
She does not know what she's going to say before the words stumble their way out of her mouth like toddling children. "The clan encampment is closer."
"No way!" Sera calls. She saunters over, face and hair covered in dust from the ramparts. "They looked at me funny, real funny. Like I have two big heads instead of just two big ears—and they're ones to friggin' talk."
They could be yours too. "We're too few now to secure the area. The Veil is still very thin here and I would prefer it if Dorian's pierced shoulder were the last injury today."
"Okay, Solas.”
"It would be marginally safer," Cassandra concedes. She always concedes, before she disagrees. The crease in her brow returns. "But the situation with the Dalish might be too...delicate as of now. We cannot assume they will help us."
The shackles turn to icy sludge. Turn hot as the day. "I am Dalish, Cassandra. We can assume.”
Silence paints the air between them with heavy strokes. Cassandra stares, that magnificent brow now taut and aimed for the skies. Nalwren plays back her words and finds them redundant. Unhelpful. Thedas may praise her diplomacy in so much loaded phrasing—oh, the Inquisitor is so curiously genteel!—but a knife is still a knife. Andraste's Herald, Defeater of Corypheus, the Hand Against Worse Hands, will never pray at her feet.
It's such a tired conversation. She is tired. Suddenly she wants to return to Camp, if only to curl up alone with Swords and Shields. Which Cassandra leant her. "I only mean to point out—"
"—That we have you to play the peace-keeper, right?" Sera grouses. Her face is screwed up like she smelled something bad, but that's not it at all. It's the Shadowed Thing again. She points at Nalwren with the arrow. “Make nice so they won't drive us out when the Seeker says one too many Maker's Breath and the knife-ear disrespects real elves."
"Sera, please," she snaps. She steadies her tongue. Feels shame burst regardless. "You know that’s not what I meant."
"It's what you were thinking, though. That's what—"
"I think," Cassandra interrupts, unwisely. "That perhaps we should turn our attention to that Shade cresting over the hill right now."
She's right. The Mark tingles a moment later, glows that bright, blinding green. Nalwren reaches for her staff at the same moment Cassandra unsheathes her sword, still bleeding from the last battle, and steels herself into an image fit for a love poem forged in war. After a heated stare in her direction, Sera nocks her arrow in one fluid moment. She really is such a skilled hunter. Nalwren must tell her again, if they ever talk again.
But now, of course: they are fighting. Blazing forward, burning away those beings of Rage and Deceit and yes, a Terror. That is what the Inquisition has come here to do in the Dales, after all. Burn all the bad away, no matter what direction it comes from. Raise the Mark up high and suture the world.
Ha. If only.