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It was curiosity that drove her to Morrigan night after night, her tent set apart from the half-circle of the other’s and beyond the glow of the campfire where Alistair cooked dinner with dogged determination (and not much else). Morrigan always regarded her approach with amusement dancing in her golden eyes. Sometimes there was an edge of derision in that amusement, at least at first, or perhaps Surana was imagining that. Perhaps it was only her own shame that put it there. “Full of questions, are you?” Morrigan would tease before Surana began to let the litany of questions fall from her lips.
The questions felt childish and simple, like the kinds of inquiries she made of the Senior Enchanters in those early days in the Circle Tower. When will I be allowed to leave? Why is the door kept closed and locked? Why do they watch me while I sleep? She was a fool for not already knowing the answers. She was a fool for wanting to know the answers.
Did you grow up in the Korcari Wilds? Did you have a father? Have you ever been hunted by the Chantry? Are you really Flemeth’s daughter? Is Flemeth really what she seems to be? How did you become a shapechanger?
Were you lonely in the Wilds?
But how could Surana not want to know? Morrigan’s life was an alien to her as Sten’s but, oh, so much more enticing. Morrigan had been free to practice her magic beneath the sunlight, not locked away in the fearful dark as Surana had been.
Morrigan answered her questions with variable patience, but eventually their nights together became the way of things. The Witch of the Wilds would build her own small fire, and they would sit together with the flames between them. The fire made Morrigan’s golden eyes dance and flicker, and it was impossible not to watch them with rapt attention.
“Can anyone learn to change their shape?” Surana asked.
“Anyone with sufficient will and the ability to work magic,” Morrigan said. “Indeed, you could learn the spells required. If I cared to teach you.”
“Do you? Could you?”
They did not begin with books, which Surana had known not to expect but which still left her feeling lost. In the Circle, she had learned to use her magic from teachers with dry tomes and slates with chalk, gaining mastery through repetitive study that could easily snatch away the wonder, the joy, of shaping the world with only her will.
No, they began with nothing. Well, not entirely nothing—Morrigan sat closer to her than she had ever gotten before, which made Surana’s heart kick in her chest. Their knees nearly touched, and when the breeze turned a certain way, she could smell her: the mixture of sweet and bitter herbs she carried, the sharp metallic tang of the magic that thrummed around her, and something tantalizingly wild—earthy and spicy, something reminiscent of the wolf form she often assumed in combat.
“To change one’s shape, one must study the creature, learn to move as it does, think as it does. In time, this allows one to become as it is. Tell me, what creature calls to you? No—do not tell me. Allow me a guess.”
Surana waited. Morrigan’s eyes roamed over her face: over her cheeks that were flushed from the fire, over the sharp taper of her ears that framed her face, her shy, dark eyes. Morrigan’s gaze was sharp, watchful and piercing, and Surana squirmed beneath it.
“A little bird, perhaps. A sparrow.”
Surana tried not to look visibly disappointed. Morrigan had the fierce beauty of the predators whose shapes she so favored: the wolf, the forest cat. Creatures who could pin their helpless prey in place with only their eyes before sinking their teeth deep. With just a few words, Morrigan could lay her heart as bare as a wolf could spread her blood across trampled snow.
And Surana was only a songbird, plain and common.
Morrigan laughed. “You seem disappointed. You may choose other shapes to master. I only find it easier to begin with a creature who you most understand. There is less to learn.”
“I don’t know anything about birds.”
“I believe you know more than you think,” Morrigan hummed. “Have you never seen a bird in a cage, a little songbird with no song to sing? Did you not feel as such in the Circle, caught within that dark tower? To know magic is to know the freedom of an open sky, to be limitless, to be weightless. A bird knows the sky in its blood and bones. It does not cease to know simply because it is trapped within a cage, when its wings are clipped… its song silenced.”
Something tickled Surana’s cheek, and she was startled—and embarrassed—to feel tears there. Morrigan ignored it, for which Surana was grateful.
“Let us begin.”
Eventually the night held no more terrors for Surana. In the Circle, nighttime had been the time for sleep—and the time for dreams. Dreams meant danger, for her sleeping mind could not be trusted. Over and over, the enchanters and the templars had told her that demons would prey upon her even then. There was no rest for a mage, no peace, and that was only another part of the curse they bore in their blood.
Now the nighttime hours held no terrors. Not for Surana. Not when she flew as the nightingale or the whip-poor-will or the tawny owl. Not now that she was the hunter in the dark, flying on silent wings through shadows she had never known existed.
Sometimes Morrigan flew beside her on black wings, and other times she preferred to run through the undergrowth as a wolf, little more than a streak of grey fur caught in the moonlight. When they returned to their two-legged forms, they laughed together with a shared joy no one else could hope to understand. How lucky Surana was, to have the opportunity to see Morrigan not only with one set of eyes, but with many! How lucky she was to be seen in return!
Breathless from their hunt, alive in their own skin in the way that a person could only be after living in a different set, their lips met over and over again. Surana knew that she no longer saw with the owl’s eyes when they moved together in the underbrush, bare-skinned and bare-hearted, but she could see Morrigan’s eyes anyway in the dappled moonlight: lidded with want, still gleaming like a wolf’s.
To change oneself was to know oneself. That was the gift Morrigan had intended to give her, but the second gift—that of knowing Morrigan, of loving the Witch of the Wilds as no one else ever had—had surprised them both.