Chapter Text
You wake with the suddenness of something left undone. You don’t know what it is, have no idea its nature, only that further action is needed. It courses through you as frustration and leads to a void of memories that have taken your life. The 'who' and the 'what' and the 'why.' It’s gone. It’s all gone. Panic starts to set in, but then, of course it would. Logical, this fear of such an all-encompassing unknown.
Only it’s not. You know cartography, herbology, astronomy. You go through the history of the world, the stories of its creation and the peoples that inhabit it. There is a list of things you know, of conventions and social mores and you find it’s really only you that has been taken. The connection of thing and self.
Assuming you had a self. If you were someone before this. And if you weren’t, what are you now?
You rise from straw bed pondering the nature of such an existence, of what one could be if not a person. Spirit. Remnant. Demon. Dreamer. Hunted, because nothing that comes to mind would be acceptable. Shift focus. This is real. You are real.
It seems ridiculous that you even doubted such a thing.
You pace the dimensions; nine and twelve, and nine and twelve again. It is too small for you, this cell. A preference, then, for wider spaces. Something open. Sky, and it's a whisper, a thought, a yearning, you need the sky. You go through the plains of Thedas; of woods you must have walked, of rocky crags and expansive lēa, of rivers and lakes and ocean views. Lands untouched. They are easier and number higher than the cities. Cities where people would sneer and snicker, where they whisper and jeer or point and push and demand you know your place. Your place.
Oh.
You had not given much thought to what you were, when faced with the lost who. You look at your feet, bared to the stone beneath. You skim right ear with the fingertips of your right hand; pointed. Confirmation. Elf, comes the thought. Then: Dalish. Of course you’re Dalish. Why wouldn’t you be Dalish?
Association, it weaves a name into being. Lavellan. Clan Lavellan. With it comes sensory attachment, memory, fractured and fragmented, but yours:
Sweet. Sticky. A burst of color, of flavor. The smell of ripe fruit, the fuzz on tongue and juice on palm. Peach. Soft and warm and only very slightly bruised. It is you’re last summer-end’s celebration as a child, eating fruit, the very last of the harvest. There is a den-- no a bower. Lush and green and curving into night’s sky. The moons are high and this year’s beads peek through leaves.
They spark with life, with moonlight, with blue and red firelight; they sway in cooling breeze and chime.
Your arms are tired, your legs as well. You spent the day climbing trees and dancing between branches high above everyone. You placed the strands with the confidence of tradition and a whimsy that’s guided you year after year. You weave and drape them from the highest points.
You are known for it now, the climbing, but you were not always successful.
You have missed before. Spectacularly.
The incident of ’21, comes to mind, where luck alone caught you by the foot and--
--And you are very much a child. It is not the first time you tumbled with a misstep, but it is the first time you’ve broken something. Or nearly broken something. It would have been better if you broke something.
There is a hand is on your arm, on your shoulder, brushing hair back from your forehead. Melowen’s hand. Worry. Anger. Fear. It is in her tone, in the strength of her hold on you, keeping you still for healing. She threatens to keep you locked in a landship reciting verse. There’s a wibble somewhere deep within as the Keeper works. It’s strange and itchy and warm and you can’t focus on anything or anyone and you sleep.
When you wake Melowen is near glaring at your elder, but she huffs and turns away. Agreement.
“Such energy we can use,” Old Mother says to you, “and this lesson will be clearer come week’s end.”
You don’t know what that means, but between the both of them you can only agree and--
--And you are older and bored and sore and you stretch into a new position, ease into it, because your torso is wrapped tight and your leg braced in a splint. There’s sun ointment on your chin, a thick paste that steals from your nose anything nice. You’re not in pain, though, the Keeper saw to that.
You tie and knot and bow threads. There are strands and strands of beads. Carved, etched, polished. Metal, bone, glass, wood. Small and round and square and large and thick and hollow. Old Mother has given you to the crafting apprentices again.
So far, the only lesson learned is the surety you were not made to be an artisan. That you will not follow June’s path. Not ever. Not if you have any say.
They left you in the shade beside Gethrith. Gerthrith who's mark of June is still red and swollen with newness on his face. You had been ignoring him, or trying to as he worked malachite and iron into a garland.
“Don’t frown so,” he tells you, “you won’t be here long.” He twirls the garland, a quick snap and it catches in the middle making a circle of double strands.
He places it on your head.
“A crown of earth,” he tells you, because you seek the highest point as if longing for flight.
He says he doesn’t want you to get lost.
You don’t know how that makes you feel. Not really. Warm, maybe; warm and --
--And you are overly hot and it’s impossible to breathe and you are so very angry.
“What have we learned today?” He asks.
You throw the scroll at his leering grin and walk out. It goes against everything- everything you have ever learned and you don’t what to know it. You don’t. Because it changes everything.
Creators, you think, oh gods.
You don’t make it far. Oh gods- old gods- no gods. Hysterical laughter takes your legs, leaves you in an ornate hallway dotted with veilfire. It’s wrong, it’s all wrong and--
--And you are child small in the shadow of Keeper Deshanna. She has placed a hand on your brow and bade your tears dry. “This too will fade,” she says over-soft, over-kind, and stiffling.
You don’t believe it. Believe her.
Dead is dead.
Falon’Din is a greedy god and you hate him.
You hate him-
-There is a sound of metal boots on wet stone and it comes from somewhere beyond the bars keeping you in the dank and the dark. It breaks you from the trance and leaves you a disjointed mess.
These are things that happened but the emotions go no further than each jagged piece, beginning and ending and yet somehow not entirely separate from who you are now. There’s more, too. You remember a handful of care-free years, nearly in succession, but it is unmoored in the landscape of knowledge you have inherited, in the juxtaposition of emotion that do not lay quiet within.
But there is nothing you can do about it right now, so you count steps.
Forty-seven. A scrape of two hard surfaces, a curse - male. Ferelden; human. Ten more. Softer now, moving away from you. Sound echoes in the enclosed area, shifts to linger like a stain of pigment.
Thirteen. A door. Heavy, with a key.
You don’t know how to pick a lock; you would very much like to learn.