Work Text:
“Man,” Orest sighed, looking up at the sprawling canopy above them. “Never thought I’d be back here so soon.” He looked over at Morrigan, who was walking by his side. She’d been oddly close to him ever since they first arrived at the Dalish camp. Not that he was complaining. Obviously. He reached his hand toward hers, smiling.
“And what exactly are you attempting to do, elf?”
He made a childish little huff of effort, spreading his fingers before grasping at empty air over and over again. “C’mon…”
She sighed. “Truly? Is this what we are to be doing now?” She glared at him. “I’ve half a mind to slap that wandering hand like a bothersome fly.”
“So… close…”
“Fine,” Morrigan huffed. She grabbed his hand and interlaced their fingers.
Orest’s ears twitched and flushed slightly darker with excited blush. Even if he’d slept with the beautiful shemlen witch several times, they’d yet to do something as simple as holding hands. “You’ve got such cold hands, Morri,” he chuckled. “Must be all that frost magic, huh?”
“I could always pull away…”
Orest squeezed his hand tighter and pressed his body against Morrigan’s side. “You’re gonna have to wrestle me off,” he grinned. She rolled her eyes. “Look, see? My hand is super warm, and yours is super cold.” He swung their hands between them. “Perfect match.” Behind him, Alistair gagged. Orest laughed and leaned his head back, just able to see Alistair’s grossed-out, upside-down face. “I have another hand…”
“And I,” Morrigan said, “could quite easily send a current of electricity straight through you. Rid myself of two fool Wardens in one moment.”
Orest sighed melodramatically. “Sorry. The Lady said no.” He stood up straight again, wobbling slightly from the sudden headrush. Morrigan rolled her yellow eyes and looked straight ahead. Creators, she’s pretty. Once again, it seemed, he found himself out in the Brecilian with someone he knew Ashalle wouldn’t approve of. Oh. The thought finally caught up to his conscious brain. Ashalle wouldn’t like her, would she? Marethari would have a halla if she found out. About… either of them. Ow.
Two songbirds rose up from the bushes and flew into the treetops as the group passed them by. Leliana, delighted by their chirping, mentioned that they were robins. She launched into a little story about a noble lady in Orlais that kept dozens of the birds as pets. Orest paid half attention to whatever she was saying.
If I was still with the Clan, if I met Morrigan with the Clan, if I liked her… He was six years old when Arianni was kicked out of Clan Sabrae. He remembered her face, her vallaslin twisted with agony as she sobbed and clung to Marethari’s robes. Her knees had dug into a small patch of little blue flowers with yellow centers. Broken petals had stained her dress blue-green. He wished he didn’t remember that. He’d never looked at those flowers the same way. She had Falon’Din’s vallaslin, too. He could feel the blood-ink buried in his forehead and his chin weighing down on him. He tried to ignore it. Arianni had been pregnant, really pregnant, with a baby that was apparently half-shemlen. And Clan Sabrae didn’t let her back. Tamlen was so… grossed out by it. By her, he remembered. No, no, don’t think about it. Please, Creators, don’t think about the look on his face.
He was sure his own face was betraying that he was having some… negative thoughts. But if Morrigan noticed, she didn’t say anything. He was grateful.
A few minutes passed, and he listened to the idle chatter of his companions. Wynne had asked Zevran something about being an assassin and not having a conscience, and Zevran seemed to make it his goal to annoy the white-haired shemlen into regretting she ever asked. Even if Orest didn’t exactly like the idea of killing people for a living, he could respect Zevran’s commitment to being a thorn in someone’s side for taking issue with it.
Thorn in her side… “I think there’s a patch of rose bushes a few miles from here,” Orest said. “That way, I think.” He pointed southward.
“Oh?” Leliana giggled a little at the sudden statement. “Is this a place your Clan spent much time, then?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, nodding. He turned to look at her, still holding onto Morrigan’s hand. “It was this, like, massive bush full of yellow roses.” He made a sweeping gesture with the hand not holding Morrigan’s. “I fell into it once.”
Alistair snorted out a laugh.
“Hey!” Orest laughed, too. “Gods, that hurt so badly…”
“I find it hard to believe that you were so clumsy, dear Warden,” Zevran chuckled.
“I’m pretty sure I was pushed,” Orest smiled. Tamlen and I were roughhousing, he remembered. I told him I was gonna run away from the Dalish if I didn’t get my vallaslin soon. “Yeah, I was definitely pushed.” Creators, he was so mad I even joked about that. He raised a hand up to tuck a loose lock of black hair behind his ear. Yep. Still not a flat-ear. “I was fine, though,” he chuckled, trying to brush away any trace of the bittersweet memories. Thank the Creators that they’re heading north, he thought. Going back to his Clan as a Warden to demand they sacrifice themselves to help end the Blight… He didn’t want to think of Merrill raising her staff up to do anything but reach a ball stuck in a tree. Would they even recognize me? Or am I too… different now? “Takes more than a few roses to strike me down!” He flexed his bicep, making a few of his companions laugh.
Morrigan looked over at him, her eyebrow raising. “Have you been to these ruins, then, elf?”
“Nah,” he said. “Never really dealt with any werewolves, either.” He frowned in thought. “We had stories of… stuff,” he said, “but never… werewolves.” There was a non-small part of him that was half convinced that Zathrian’s Clan was cursed. It didn’t make any sense that they were being tormented by these things when no other Dalish, as far as Orest had heard, had ever had to deal with such attacks. Zathrian’s Clan… He racked his brain for the proper name of the Clan. Gods, it has to be more than just “Clan Zathrian.” He’s been the Keeper for so long, but that doesn’t mean they change the name. Or does it…?
Leliana’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “What kind of stories?” She asked, sounding intrigued.
“Mmm…” He stopped himself before he could say the word mythallen. Don’t tell them shems about that one, he reminded himself. Speaking evil just invites it to prove itself. He’d heard that lecture from Marethari a million times. A beautiful red maple caught his eye. “Oh!” He smiled as he remembered a story. “Do you wanna know why the leaves turn red in the fall?” That’s a Dalish-y thing to do! He thought. I can tell stories! He knew he wasn’t the best at it. He was certainly no Hahren Paival. But maybe the non-Dalish wouldn’t notice. Creators, I miss Paival… Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zevran’s ears perk up just as obviously as Leliana’s eyes widened with interest.
Leliana clasped her hands together. “Oh, that sounds most interesting,” she cooed, already enthralled.
Orest smiled. He’d picked up very early on that Leliana loved any kind of story, but Zevran… Zevran was fascinated with the Dalish. It didn’t exactly surprise Orest. After all, he’d spent a good deal of time with Pol, the city elf that had fled Denerim to join the Sabrae clan. Right. We’ll let a “flat-ear” in but not a Dalish kid who just happens to be half shem. He tried to beat the bitter-tasting thoughts back by talking. “So, back, like… ages ago,” he started. He was under no impression that he was a good storyteller. But that wasn’t going to stop him. “There was this Dalish clan. And one of their hunters, when he was out looking for game, came across the tracks of what must’ve been, like, a massive wolf. So he came back and told the Clan, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it. I mean, he didn’t see the wolf, so he couldn’t kill it. And nobody else had seen it, either.” He shrugged. “And it isn’t like it’s good practice to go around killing wolves for no reason.” He idly swung Morrigan’s hand back and forth. “Anyway, uh… So, eventually everyone in the Clan started seeing these tracks. The whole camp was being surrounded, and their halla and the wild deer and the birds were starting to go missing. Not really hard to guess why,” he chuckled. “It didn’t take long for all of the elves to start, like, starving, though. We don’t have farms like the shemlen do, so once the game is gone…” He cringed a little.
“I never thought of that,” Leliana said, sounding a little like she was in awe of the new information. “The elves really do live such different lives, don’t they?”
Orest smiled at that. Leliana was a bit ignorant, but he wasn’t going to judge her for it. Clearly, her heart was in the right place. “I guess so,” he said, shrugging a little. “Don’t worry, us elves think you shemlen are just as weird as you think we are.”
“Oh, no! I did not mean to imply I thought you were strange, just-”
Orest’s laughter cut her off. “It’s fine, Leliana, I really don’t mind.” Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled, making Orest’s ears perk up. “Looks like someone doesn’t like me talking about him stalking a Clan, huh?” He chuckled, talking to the wind. “Too bad!”
“Do we truly wish to taunt the creatures of the forest?” Zevran asked, smiling a little.
“Scared, city boy?” Orest teased.
“All I know is that we’ve encountered far too many supernatural things in these woods for me to think taunting the wind is a good method of self-preservation,” Zevran chuckled. “But frightened? I would hesitate to say as much.”
“Then you, ser, clearly haven’t spent enough time out here,” Orest smiled. “We Dalish travel in groups for a reason. A bit of fear’ll keep you alive. Never trust a lone hunter,” he said. “That’s some free advice for ya.” Or just two, he thought. If someone else had been there, if Merrill or Marethari had been there, maybe he wouldn’t have…
“Consider it taken,” Zevran said, bowing slightly as he kept walking and temporarily stopping Orest’s brain from getting away from him. Again. “Now, do carry on with your tale, dear Warden.”
“Right, right, yeah,” he nodded. “Where- where was I, again?”
“The elves were starving,” Sten said, his voice flat but strong.
“Right! Yes. Thank you, Sten,” Orest said, looking over his shoulder to smile at the man. Sten gave him a small nod. “With the Clan starving, they sent out a proper hunting party to go find this wolf and kill it. There’s a prayer to Andruil that they said, but…” He furrowed his brows, trying to remember it. “Creators, what was it?” He racked his brain, but he came up empty. “Augh! I should know this!” He groaned.
Tamlen would know.
He looked away from the path, even if he knew it wouldn’t make a difference. Tamlen’s memory was burned into his mind. Looking away, closing his eyes, bashing his head against a wall—none of it would make a single shred of difference. Stop thinking about Tamlen, he told himself. Stop it. It’s not gonna bring him back.
Stop thinking that he’s dead.
His hand was still holding Morrigan’s.
No. He has to be dead. He has to be dead and gone or else I’m… Gods, what if he’s not dead? What if he’s still alive somewhere out there, and I’m with her? Creators, no, he has to be dead. He has to be. If he saw me with someone else, saw me with a shem, he’d-!
His eyes caught on a small oak tree in a clearing. It was clearly far younger than most of the trees surrounding it.
“Gods, Dad would know,” he muttered to himself. Silvhen’s tree would probably be around that size, he thought. Around twenty years of growth, and… It was an oak, right? I think Ashalle said it was an oak. I should’a paid more attention.
“Is your father particularly well-versed in religion, Orest, dear?” Wynne asked.
“Oh, uh, yeah, definitely,” he chuckled. “Kinda had to be. Keeper and all. Creators, I wish he was closer by,” he said, letting out a small sigh. “I’d love for you all to see his place.” The grove that old Keeper Mahariel was buried in was beautiful. Orest didn’t exactly feel anything for the man himself—how could I? I never even knew him—but he loved the grove. Every few years, Clan Sabrae would stop by the little place. It’d become a sort of landmark. It might’ve even been marked on the map that Marethari kept in her aravel. There was a pond nearby. That was a good pond.
“I did not know you were the child of the Keeper of your Clan,” Morrigan said. “‘Tis a strange fact to have never mentioned before.”
Orest looked over at her, head slightly tilted and ears flickering in confusion. Why is that so…? “Oh!” It hit him. “Oh, he’s dead.” He couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. “I, like, totally forget you guys don’t know that by, like, default.”
“Maker, Orest, I’m sorry,” Alistair said, cringing a little.
“It’s fine,” Orest said back, waving his non-Morrigan hand a little. “He died before I was born.” I should probably just mention everything, right? Yeah, that’s a good idea. “A group of bandits, y’know, shems and a few city elves, I think, attacked him and my mom. They killed Silvhen-” He stopped, cringing a little. Ashalle hated it when he did that. “Sorry, dad, and injured-” Myriani. “Mom. Mom, uh, I guess she kinda went crazy after that. I get it. She held out long enough to give birth to me, obviously, and then ran off into the woods.” The story didn’t hurt. But… They’re gonna look at me differently, now, aren’t they? He turned around a little. There was pity in his companions’ eyes. It made him wince. “Seriously, it’s no big deal.” I shouldn’t have said that, he thought. “I mean it.” Gods, they’re looking at me weird! It was one thing to be the center of attention when it was good attention. This was pity attention. Bad attention.
“Finish your story, Orest,” Morrigan said, squeezing his hand slightly. “Lest we be listening to you prattle on until nightfall.”
He looked at her and wished, desperately, that he could beam a thank you so much directly into her brain. “Right! Yeah, anyway,” he said, putting a cheerful tone back on. “Prayer to Andruil I couldn’t remember, right?” Morrigan nodded. “Right. So this party of hunters go out to try and kill this great wolf. They spend days out in the forest, tracking it-” He made a swaying gesture with the hand still holding Morrigan’s, making their arms look like two snakes slithering side by side. “But, eventually, they found it. It was huge! Just as big as the tracks made ‘em think!” He grinned and turned more to fully see his audience. Their faces didn’t have that previous look of pity. Thank the Creators! “So they notched their arrows, right?” He held up his and Morrigan’s hands again, and mimed firing a shot, making a little fh-oop sound. Morrigan rolled her eyes, making him chuckle a little to himself. “But even with the Keeper’s prayer to Andruil, none of the arrows could get past the wolf’s fur. The wolf was, like, obviously pissed off by this, and it turned on them and attacked, killing nearly everyone. A few managed to escape, though, and they ran back to the Clan.”
Leliana looked intrigued. “Did the great wolf chase them, or let them go?”
Orest’s brows furrowed. “Uh…” He tried to think. What are other wolf stories? Fen’Harel and the Tree, maybe? Go with that. “No, it didn’t,” he said, hoping he wasn’t doing anything sacreligious by adding a few maybe-made up details for his non-Dalish audience. “Wolves are patient. They wait and they stalk their prey,” he said. “Until they know they can win or that they can trick their way out of things.”
“I’ve heard tales like that,” Leliana said. “Of the Dalish’s… Oh, what was it called?”
Zevran spoke up before Orest could. “Aha, yes. Fen’Harel, is it?”
Orest’s eyebrows raised a little. “Yeah! How’d you know that?”
“The life of a Crow takes a man many, many places, my friend,” Zevran chuckled. “I have heard many stories in my time.” There was a quick, blink-and-he’d-miss-it flattening of Zevran’s ears before they returned to their usual, alert self.
You little liar, Orest thought, smiling. You’ve been around too many shemlen. No human would’ve caught that little flicker. He’d ask about it later. “Nice,” he chuckled. “But, yeah, Fen’Harel. This one isn’t a Fen’Harel-Fen’Harel story, though. Or, at least, I don’t think so.” He looked up at the sky a little as he talked. “Anyway, the hunters that survived ran back and told the Clan the story of what happened. But they still needed that wolf gone. So day after day, the Clan would send out more hunters, but every party failed.”
“And yet they kept sending their best men to a battle they knew was doomed?” Sten spoke up for the first time in a while. “A fool’s errand.”
“They had to,” Orest said, walking half-backwards to keep his eye on Sten as he talked to him. “Every night, the wolf would circle around the camp, not letting them leave. And they knew that if they tried to move, the wolf would just follow the aravels. Which, you know, were having their hallas snatched. Without the halla, the aravels aren’t nearly as good at moving.”
“I see,” Sten said, clearly digesting the new information. “Carry on.”
Orest nodded. “This went on for a while. Eventually, three brothers in the Clan all had a dream. In it, they saw themselves tracking and killing the wolf. When they woke up, they discussed their dream, prayed to Andruil, and left the camp to go find the wolf. They followed its tracks for ages, and passed by all of the landmarks they’d seen in the dream, until they eventually came to a sacred glen.” He lowered his voice a little, just like Hahren Paival would do when he wanted to sound more dramatic. “In it… they found the wolf. Just like the dream had told them. It was dark, lit up only by moonlight that reflected on the surface of the massive, dark blue lake behind the wolf. When the hunters approached, the wolf saw them and turned and ran. The hunters ran after it, even when the wolf jumped!” He used Morrigan’s interlaced hand as a prop again. “And vanished! Straight up into the sky through a tear in the Veil.” He pointed up with his and Morrigan’s hand toward the darkening sky. “And the hunters followed. At night, you can still see the hunters chasing after the wolf. And in the winter, as it gets closer and closer to the horizon, the hunters start to catch up. They manage to get a few hits in, and the blood from the wolf drips down onto the leaves, turning them all red. It manages to escape, though, and hide behind the horizon to lick its wounds, but the hunt starts again in the spring.” He smiled, swinging his and Morrigan’s hands between their bodies. “And that’s why the leaves turn red in the fall,” he smiled.
“A fair enough tale. To enthrall a child, perhaps,” Morrigan said, as if she hadn’t been paying attention.
“Thanks,” he chuckled. “I do my best.”
“You’re really gonna have to show me these hunters later,” Alistair said, sounding genuinely interested. “Are they stars?”
Orest nodded. “Yep! It’s that constellation that’s, like, four stars in a rectangle with the three trailing after it,” he said. “The big block’s the wolf, and the three other stars are the three brothers.”
“Ooh, alright,” Alistair said, nodding. “I was always taught that it was a big soup spoon.”
Orest burst out laughing. “Seriously?” He asked, mouth agape. “A soup spoon?”
Alistair smiled and shrugged. “What can I say? Us Fereldens really like our soup.”
“Oh, that’s incredible,” Orest breathed. I can’t wait until I tell- The thought stopped dead in its tracks. He kept the smile on his face, but he knew that it faded from his eyes. I can’t tell anyone. They’re gone. I left them. He really wished he could tell Merrill. She would have loved to know that the shemlen thought the Sky Wolf was really just a big ladle. Tamlen would’ve laughed his ass off. “If it’s clear enough, I’ll show you Andruil’s Vir Tanadhal constellation, too.” He looked over at Morrigan. “I’m sure you know some star stuff, right?”
“I… may,” she said, squinting at him.
“Awesome!”
“Do not expect me to entertain you with infinitely sprawling fairy tales, elf.”
He smiled at her and leaned against her side. “Fiiine,” he said, pretending to groan. “Let me guess, ‘tis a star. ‘Tis another star. It represents two stars. The end. ” He did a poor impression of Morrigan’s pretty shemlen accent.
She made a small, annoyed noise. Orest laughed. Her hand was still intertwined with his. Not sick of me yet. He held on tightly. Alright. Not letting this one get away. He may have been a Warden, but… I’m still a Dalish hunter. And I always will be. No matter what anyone thinks. If he had to chase her to the edge of the earth and beyond the Veil, so be it.