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Not far from the Valence cloister, past the thriving vegetable garden and the modest but lovingly-tended flower garden, is a cliff overlooking the sea, a well-trod little spot with a guard rail installed by the Chantry sisters to protect against any accidents. In the week that Leliana and her Warden have spent visiting Mother Dorothea there, Lyonesse has spent every night after supper there, excusing herself politely once she finishes her meal and leaving Leliana to join Mother Dorothea and the sisters in evening prayer without disturbance.
Tonight after prayer, as the seven nights before, Leliana makes her way through the back doors of the cloister and out towards the sea. The sun hasn't been set for long, the moons and stars still slowly blinking into brightness above their heads through wispy coastline clouds, but the wind is light and gentle through her hair.
Lyonesse stands at the rail, motionless in the coastal breeze, gazing out at the water. Her long hair is loose from its braids and tucked down the back of the thick shawl around her shoulders, the only armor she's been wearing since they arrived at the chilly coastal town. Her face, when Leliana is close enough to see her clearly, is unreadable -- even Leliana cannot tell whether she is melancholy or merely pensive, here at the edge of the sea.
Taking care to keep her steps solid and easy to hear so as not to sneak up on her lover, Leliana climbs the grassy path up to the flat sweeping lip of the cliff, and at Leliana's approach, Lyonesse shifts a half-step to her left so Leliana can stand beside her. Their hips and elbows brush together until Leliana slides an arm around Lyonesse's waist and leans her head against her shoulder. The wool of the shawl tickles her wrist where the sleeve of her gown comes to an end.
"The night is lovely here," she murmurs. "The stars will be very clear soon."
Lyonesse doesn't nod or speak, but she inhales, exhales deeply in the way that tells Leliana she heard and acknowledges her but doesn't wish to use her voice yet. Leliana squeezes her waist in her own silent affirmation.
Sometimes, like this, they are just quiet together. It reminds her of those early months, when the pair of them shared evening watch, and Leliana knew she could doze off and trust that the soft-spoken Warden girl would protect her. Like then, she lets her eyes slip closed, breathing in the scent of salty wet sand and jasmine from the garden.
After a few moments, Lyonesse shifts again to lean aside and press a closed-mouth kiss against the crown of Leliana's head, her shoes making soft sounds in the damp grass, her gaze never lifting from the reflection of the moons in the water.
"Have you ever heard the song, The Soldier and the Seawolf?" she asks, her quiet voice clear against the rolling waves at their feet. Leliana opens her eyes and lifts her head quizzically, brow furrowing in thought.
Part of the phrase does sound familiar — at least a few historians in Orlais had included the infamous raider queen in their accounts of the war with Ferelden — but certainly not as a song. Leliana thinks for a moment further, then shakes her head. "I've heard of the Seawolf, but Orlais has no songs for their crippling defeats."
Lyonesse quirks her lips up, pleased with Leliana's comment. "I should think not," she says. "The Seawolf was my mother. The song is about how she met my father."
"Are you serious? Your mother?" Leliana says, pulling her head back to look at her lover with open surprise, her brows flying heavenward. Lyonesse's smile grows wider, and Leliana presses, "Your mother was the terror of the Orlesian navy, the raider queen at least one of the admirals called 'a monster' in battle?"
A laugh bursts out of Lyonesse, and she turns to look Leliana full in the face. "Did they really call her a monster?" Far from offended, her eyes sparkle with delight. "I must tell Fergus, I had no idea they wrote of her at all."
"There are several accounts on the naval aspect of the war in the University library," Leliana assures her. "We'll go and you can have copies made. They're hardly complimentary, though."
"They'd best not be! She never lost a single ship she put in her sights, I can't imagine that endearing her to them." Still smiling, Lyonesse looks back out at the rolling waves, her gaze unfocused and enormously fond.
The Blight never stood a chance against this woman, Leliana thinks. The blood it tainted within her had belonged first to the wolf who might have brought the lion to its knees, if Orlesian historians had written even half of her victories with accuracy. What hope did a god have against jaws like that?
Leliana allows herself a momentary pang of selfish stranger-grief, mourning that she would never know the warrior who had borne her lovely girl. It's rare for Lyonesse to speak of her parents at such length. The words often curdle in her mouth like milk in vinegar, and Leliana never presses. She does wish she could have known them, that she could have told them how grateful she is that they put such a woman into the world, but if for the rest of their lives all Leliana knows is their names and how they died to save their daughter, it would be enough for her.
"She kept all that a secret from Fergus and I, you know," Lyonesse continues, her voice a little distant now. "Wanted us to think she was a fully proper lady, I expect, especially when I came along, but when I was a teenager I'd sneak out to the village tavern and the sailors there would recognize me as her daughter and sing the chantey like a drinking song. I asked Fergus about it and he told me what he'd learned from some old men down at the docks. About Mother's raider days, and meeting my father during the war."
Leliana studies her Warden's face again more closely, but the soft curve of Lyonesse's mouth is light and unwavering, and though her eyes are half-closed and lost to the past, they're dry and clear. The reminiscence is painless, as rare as that is, bringing her only joy.
"They met at a cliff like this one — that's what made me start thinking of it again. Father nearly fell off the cliff and she kept him from going over at the last moment, but her crew thought she ought let him fall because he'd called her a wench."
Surprise again sends Leliana's eyebrows soaring. That was not what she would have expected, given the source. "That sounds..." she hedges, casting for an appropriate word a little hopelessly.
"Horrible?" Lyonesse supplies, still smiling, utterly unruffled by Leliana's reaction. "That's why they wrote a song about it, I suppose."
"Would you sing it, my love?" Leliana asks. The wind from the sea has picked up slightly, the temperature sliding down accordingly, and she wriggles her cold fingers under Lyonesse's shawl.
Immediately Lyonesse uncrosses her arms in a welcome gesture, and Leliana slips forward to claim the pocket of warmth against her body, the pair of them back to front, still facing the sea. She closes her arms around Leliana's shoulders, carefully enfolding her within the shawl, and Leliana hums with appreciation and rests her head back against the slope where Lyonesse's neck meets her shoulder, close to melting into the easy contact.
Taking a deep breath, Lyonesse shifts her weight enough to rock them both gently from side to side. With the the smell of salt, the sound of the waves and the call of gulls, the rhythmic swaying reminds Leliana sweetly of being on the deck of the ship that brought here from Amaranthine, and she closes her eyes to picture it. Against the press of Leliana's head, Lyonesse's throat begins to vibrate with the rising of her low, clear voice.
The lion's ships were Den'rim bound —
Drop him, Lady, drop him!
Let the true king's call for aid resound —
Just drop him, Lady, drop him!
After a few lines, Leliana begins to chime in with the refrain and the chorus, their voices carrying through the wind.
With the end of the song, the evening goes back to its blanketed quiet, the pair of them leaning into one another, Leliana feeling secure with Lyonesse's arms around her, firm as rope around a mast.
Abruptly, Leliana bursts out, "That is a terrible song!"
Lyonesse laughs brightly into Leliana's hair. "I know!"
"I can't believe that was ten verses."
"And she still married him."
"Ten verses! Of his shame!"
"He proposed to her with it," Lyonesse nods, exaggeratedly grim. "At the king's coronation. She didn't let him get past three."
Leliana turns within the cradle of Lyonesse's arms to face her, loops her arms around Lyonesse's waist and presses a kiss to her jaw. "Terrible," she says again emphatically. "The one I write us will be much better."
"Oh!" Lyonesse giggles. "Is that how you'll propose?"
The wind is suddenly the only sound around them, other than the pulse in Leliana's ears and Lyonesse's indrawn breath.
After the Blight they had only had six months together before the Warden-Commander was called to Vigil's Keep by the Wardens, Leliana to Orlais by the Grand Cleric.
"Leliana," says Lyonesse softly, helplessly, "darling, I didn't mean — you don't have to — you know I don't need —"
Officially, the Warden-Commander was last seen in Amaranthine four months after the battle there. In truth, Lyonesse left behind the Warden-Commander when she left the Keep for the last time, the title falling away from her like so much ash in the wind.
"Yes," Leliana whispers. The wind whips the sound of her voice away from them.
They are neither of them foolish enough to truly believe they've left the world behind, but here in Valence, so far away from Warden-Constables and clerics with orders, it doesn't feel like pretending to think they could have a life together, for as many years as there may be between now and the next call to arms.
"What?" says Lyonesse, breathless. "What?"
When they arrived in Valence and Leliana had introduced her Warden to Mother Dorothea, she had called her the woman who made everything worth it. Dorothea had smiled, her lined face creasing with joy for both of them. She had laid one dry, age-worn hand against the soft curve of Lyonesse's cheek, had asked her what she planned to do now that she has laid the Warden-Commander to rest.
"Yes," Leliana repeats, "that's how I'll propose." Her heartbeat is so loud. She could use it as her metronome. "I'll write you a song, and I'll ask you to marry me."
With her fingers tangled with Leliana's, Lyonesse had told Dorothea she simply wanted to live. She had spent more than half of the Blight throwing herself into increasingly difficult battles with a nauseating recklessness Leliana had attributed to her youth and inexperience before coming to understand it was truly her desperate attempt to meet her family in death; there in the cloister, unarmed, unarmored, with her ungloved hands so bare and vulnerable and steady in Leliana's grip, she said she wanted to live.
Lyonesse pulls back far enough to look down at her, green eyes bright and wide in the moonslight, searching Leliana's own for some sign that Leliana might not mean it, that she might only have said it out of expectation. Leliana looks back at her, believing nothing in her heart so strongly as the fact that she wants to marry this woman and live with her, help her live. It's the rose in Lothering again, believing so strongly it becomes knowing. As sure as the Maker's words.
"Okay," Lyonesse says, her voice soft, her expressive face shifting from concern to undisguised elation. "Then I'll wait for your song."
Leliana pulls her face down to kiss her tenderly on the mouth, and Lyonesse squeezes the shawl around her more tightly, the warmth of her arms holding back the cold of the night.