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He had known how to navigate by the stars, once, when they were familiar in a world that was familiar. Nothing about this world was familiar, especially here, in this barren desert that had once been a great forest which held secrets lost to time, and yet those secrets were far younger than his own. Though this was not entirely true, he thought, at least not anymore, as he watched her sit beside a slave wagon, curling to make herself smaller, safer, taking a sip from a waterskin and then offering it to a cowering, newly freed slave, who took it warily, and then drank in tentative small sips, before finally drinking in great gulps to slake his thirst. This small gesture of comfort, of safety; he had seen it offered many times, though he had rarely been able to offer it himself, had, instead removed the vallaslin from the face of slaves.
How odd, to see her face marked with the vallaslin, and yet for it to be a mark of her freedom, when once a bare face had been that symbol. At first, sitting beside her in that dark cell in Haven, her vallaslin had roused something of pity, and perhaps something, shamefully, of contempt, that the Dalish would have forgotten so much as to keep the vallaslin, had not even kept the symbols intact, wore only pieces of the designs. He had not noted them in some time. Too quickly, they had simply become part of a face that was becoming too dear to him.
She was familiar, he felt, in this world that was not; familiar in the way that the beat of his own heart was familiar. He felt that she would have been familiar to him in any time, in any place. That his heart would have been drawn to hers as a needle was drawn to a lodestone.
And, like a lodestone, his heart changed everything; through her eyes, he could see this broken world as something of worth. The great changes, the changes of the paths of the stars, of forests turned to sand, of magic slowed to the scrape of a bucket in a dry well, of civilizations dead and buried seemed as nothing compared to the sameness of the kindness of people passing a waterskin from one hand to another.
“You’re staring, Solas,” murmured Bull quietly, watching him watch her.
He was, though he had not intended to do so, and he turned away.
“I am glad, that we were able to free these people,” he said. “But I wonder what she will do with them now.”
Bull shrugged.
“The Boss will think of something,” he said, squinting at the moon looming huge on the horizon. “Don’t think we’re getting anywhere else tonight, though.”
Bull’s suspicions were confirmed when she walked over to them, motioned Dorian over from where he was standing at the edge of the Venatori camp.
“We won’t be able to get them back to an Inquisition camp before daybreak unless we march them too hard,” she said. “They could use at least a day of rest. We’d better make camp here. Solas, you and Dorian set wards, Bull, see if you can rummage around and see what the Venatori had in stores, and I’ll see what I can get to supplement that for dinner. They could use a hot meal, and there were some August Rams in those dunes.”
“Are you sure it’s wise, going hunting on your own?” ventured Dorian. “What if you get lost, or run into some Venatori?”
She smiled.
“I won’t be long,” she said, “and I won’t go far. And this isn’t my first desert. My clan primarily roamed the Free Marches, but we’ve been known to venture into the Silent Plains.”
He had set wards around the camp with Dorian, while Iron Bull jollied the newly freed slaves into helping him rummage around the camp. She had been wise, to do so. Though he was an elf, he was still a mage, and he suspected that magic would have the slaves on edge regardless, more so with Dorian, who was so obviously Tevene. And she was confident in the Iron Bull’s ability to put them at ease. He had experience in this area as well.
Dorian, however, was unnaturally subdued as they worked and gathered up any small pieces of wood and debris that they could find to maintain the campfire.
“You are not responsible for the faults of your countrymen,” said Solas.
Dorian huffed.
“It’s kind of you to say, Solas,” he said, “but I don’t know that it’s true. My family kept slaves, and I never thought anything about it. I passed slaves in the street, no more noticeable than any Soporati. Any places where it was brutally obvious, like here, I just never saw. Or perhaps, never wanted to see. I’ve been thinking about what you said. How sorry can I be, if I do nothing to change it? It’s just an empty platitude.”
He remembered the beginning of the rebellion. He had not seen what the Evanuris would become. He had been trying, through words, to provide restraint. It had only been when they had declared themselves gods that he had broken away. If he had stood against them sooner perhaps, if he had seen where the path was going, perhaps things might have been different. But hindsight was always clearer. How much more difficult would it have been for Dorian to see the wrongs of his people, when he had known nothing else?
“You have done something now, by helping the Inquisitor to free these people,” he offered.
“Yes,” said Dorian, “and hopefully that will make the lives of a few better. And I know that what we are doing now, fighting Corypheus and the Venatori, is important. Essential, even. But after? I love my country, Solas, even with all its flaws. But it could be better. We could be better. But I can’t change things from the South.”
Duty. He had forgotten (allowed himself to forget) his own. He had been guided by duty since he had taken a physical body. But now, for the first time, he felt himself waver, pulled between two paths. For a moment, he had felt everything strange, this new world no better than the old, and he had wished his own back, to navigate by ancient stars, from the currents of the Fade that flowed easily through the other, and in the next had aligned to her own view, a world of people caring for one another like iron filings drawn together by her own strength of character. He watched The Iron Bull, setting up tents with the freed slaves. And he could see her now, coming over a dune, dragging a August Ram behind her.
“Solas, Dorian,” she called. “Come help me with this.”
For the moment, his duty and hers aligned. He could allow his heart to guide him. He attempted to put thoughts of the future from his mind and bent to the simple task in front of him.
They had eaten well, in the early dawnlight that streaked the desert sky with glowing magenta and brilliant pink and apricot. The air was already beginning to warm from the chill of the desert nights. She and Bull had been the ones to try to put everyone at ease. Dorian and he were both subdued, and she had been watching them both, he noticed, sideways glances as they ate.
“Well, good night, everyone,” she said, “or rather good morning, I suppose.”
They had been traveling during the night here, sleeping during the day. It was far too hot to do otherwise. He and Dorian had both worked a hint of chill into the wards on the tents. Dorian preferred to take the first watch, Bull the second. He preferred the third, in the quiet hours of the too-early morning, and she the last, so she could ready breakfast for everyone as they awoke. He had enjoyed this arrangement in the field, even before they had begun to dream together. They had often shared a small moment at the change of watch, when she would put the kettle on the fire and make herself a cup of bitter elfroot tea, cupping it in both of her hands. He had noticed this, and made sure that the kettle was hot and ready when she awoke, so that she did not have to wait so long for the water to boil. (He had not thought, at the beginning, of how it gave them more time to speak quietly together, or to merely sit in quiet companionship.)
He had always bid her goodnight as well, before they had begun to dream together. After the kiss shared in the Fade, he had been sorely tempted to continue doing so, to share the Fade with her, to have some place, some time, where it could be only the two of them, where there would be no other concerns, but he had asked for time, and he did not trust himself, in the ease of the Fade. It was easier to maintain distance in the waking world.
It had not been easier to remain apart from her in the waking world after all, and he had kissed her on her balcony and left, and that evening she had bid him goodnight shyly, with a small flush to the tips of her ears. She was normally so poised, and he had, impulsively, told her to sleep well. He had excoriated himself afterwards, to meet in the Fade was still unwise. But he felt her reach for him, clumsily, as she slept, as someone would fumble for someone else in an unfamiliar dark, and he had been unable to resist reaching back.
And now, it had become a much anticipated moment for them both. They could not meet every night, at times he or she had other matters to attend to, but she or he would bid the group a good night, and then she or he would reply with a sly ‘sleep well’, if they were to meet in the Fade.
And tonight, he was feeling unmoored, untethered, and he sought the certainty of the Fade and the comfort of her presence within it.
“Sleep well, Inquisitor,” he said, and she answered with a bright smile, “Sleep well, Solas.”
He was in a maudlin mood; the old world was gone, and yet he was not part of the new, so he brought her to a dream of when there was a forest here, great trunks and branches shadowing the forest floor, lit with the blue glow of luminescent deep mushroom, the flicker of fireflies. They strolled together, in silence for a moment, hand in hand.
“You said there was a forest here,” she said. “It reminds me of the Tirashan. But everything is a little different. The plants and animals are almost the same, but not quite.”
“It was a very long time ago,” he said. “The world has changed a great deal, since then. It is sad to see what has been lost.”
She pulled him to sit by her on a fallen log, festooned with bright orange shelf fungus.
“Is it entirely gone, if it is remembered?” she asked.
He was torn.
“But what if it could be brought back?” he asked. “If where there were only barren sand, there could be a vibrant forest again? Would that not be better?”
She shook her head.
“And what of the things that live there now?” she asked. “Everyone can see the beauty in a forest, but there is a quiet beauty to the Hissing Wastes too. It’s not barren. The Vandal Aria and the Amrita Vein only really grow in the deserts. And they are home to fennecs and gurn and wyverns and lurkers. A forest isn’t necessarily superior to a desert, they’re just different.”
He could feel the truth of her conviction in the Fade, and her argument pulled at him, a lodestone to a needle. He looked up at the stars of the ancient sky. These were familiar. He had guided slaves to safety with them once. And she guided slaves to safety now with a different set of stars.
“You’re troubled,” she said.
“An old hurt,” he said, and she leaned her head against his shoulder in this ancient memory of a forgotten forest until it was time for him to wake for his watch.
She had woken up as he did, he felt it in the Fade. He was unsure if she was loathe to leave him when he was troubled, or if she had some other plan of her own.
She joined him, slipping silently out of her tent to begin working on something, in the bright afternoon sun, sitting his watch with him. The crates that the Venatori had piled up next to their tents had been cushioned with straw, and she was skillfully and swiftly plating it into a long continuous braid that began to coil at her feet. She rummaged in her satchel until she pulled out her sewing tools, both fine threads and needles for repairing clothing and heavier needles and thread for repairing gear and tents.
“What are you making?” he asked quietly, careful not to disturb the others asleep in their tents, though he expected that if The Iron Bull’s snoring did not wake the others, that nothing would.
“Hats,” she said. “For our new charges. We’re traveling at night, now, but when they get to the Western Approach, they’ll have to start moving during the day again. I don’t want them to get heatstroke. And they won’t be in combat, a wide brimmed hat won’t get in the way, and hats don’t seem to bother the humans’ ears. ”
He moved to sit beside her. Closer, probably, than he should have, his knee brushing lightly against hers as they both sat cross-legged in the sand, but the others slept, and there was little enough shade under the awning that they had erected to keep off the worst of the oppressive sun in the Hissing Wastes.
“If you will show me,” he said, “I will aid you. I am not a stranger to the use of needle and thread, though I am to the manufacture of straw hats.”
She coiled the length of straw deftly into a flat circle.
‘Like this,” she said, “and then we’ll sew it together with thread.”
Her own stitches were neater than his, and her coil more uniform, but together they were able to produce three adequate hats by the time the sun set, low crowned and rather conical, perhaps, that would need to be tied to the head, but enough to keep the sun off. He was cheered, to do this with her, the work of their hands creating something simple to aid others.
They set off, in the bright rise of the moon, shining bright over the shifting sands of the Hissing Wastes, which, as he looked was full of life, plants pushing up from beneath the sands, a herd of August Ram disappearing in a quick flash of blue over a dune, a small beetle moving across the sands. He could no longer navigate by the new stars, but she could, unerringly turning towards home. She changed everything, and he wondered, hoped, not for the first time, that he could continue to allow his heart to guide him now.