Poring over the contents of the cracked and yellowed tome lying open on his desk, Solas found his mind wandering instead of focusing on reading. The noise level in the Great Hall was higher than usual as the staff scurried everywhere, preparing for the Feastday celebrations tomorrow. Hissing whispers carried through the air; hushed arguments over colours, frantic orders searches for missing items, the pattering of feet on stone floors from the messengers rushing all over Skyhold. Sighing, Solas let out a curse under his breath, resinging himself to start from the top of the page for the third time in a row.
The door to the Great Hall swung open with a long, drawn-out creak, admitting the noise from outside. Looking up from the aged tome on his desk, Solas regarded his visitor with a quirked eyebrow.
Standing in the doorway to his rotunda, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and flecks of ink staining his fingers, was none other than Varric. His lip curled in mild amusement. "Hey Chuckles, have you seen Twinkle around?"
Solas cleared his throat, realising it was a bit dry and more time had passed than he'd noticed. "She was with me in the morning for a brief period, but we have not spoken since. Is something the matter?"
Varric snorted. "Something's the matter, all right. Apparently she forgot to handle some bit of paperwork and Ruffles is getting all … well, ruffled because it needs to be sent to Orlais tomorrow or something. Poor girl is beside herself, she even dripped candle wax on my new manuscript!"
"I see," said Solas. "I am sorry that I was not of any help."
Waving a dismissive hand through the air, Varric turned to leave. "It's fine, I'm sure Ruffles was just being Ruffles. She should relax a bit more, works too much."
Upon hearing the door creak shut after the dwarf—he would have to see to it being oiled again—Solas rose from his seat, closing the time-worn leather cover with a light hand, a secret smile curling his lip.
He would need to have Master Dennet prepare a mount.
"Vhenan?"
The red hart trotted through the thicket of pine trees, bearing Solas through the frozen forest. Snow crunched under its hooves, and Solas let it pick its way in the direction he guided it. The evening sun was still in the sky when he'd left, but the golds and pinks of twilight now swept the endlessness above in streaks of colour, painting the Frostbacks in their reflective light. Looking around, Solas surveyed the wintry landscape for a flash of stormy black hair or rich green cloak. He'd looked in all her favourite spots, and this was the last one. She couldn't have wandered this much further from the fortress, could she?
"Vhenan?" he tried again, "Are you here? The night is coming, and it is not wise to remain outside while—"
Spotting something in the snow, he reined in the hart, dismounting as he approached. Settled within the hollow of a broken tree trunk was a familiar-looking pack. One with a Dalish charm made of knotted leather dangling from it.
She was here, then.
"Solas!"
Turning, he was greeted with the sight of her darting out from behind a tree, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. She shot him a beaming smile, cheeks flushed from the cold and breath puffing out in mists over her face as she trudged towards him. His heart thrummed a break in its rhythm, and not for the first time he wondered how such a beautiful creature would call herself his.
"Solas Solas Solas," she repeated in a rush, voice shrill as she skipped right into him, enveloping him in a hug and burying her face in his clothes, pushing against his chest. "What a surprise! What are you doing heeere?" she said, enunciating each word with unusual deliberation and drawing out the last one like it was raw, stretchy dough.
He raised an eyebrow at her, returning her too-wide grin with an upward quirk of his lips. "I have been looking for you, of course. Who else would know to find you here?"
"Oh, right, of course you were! What else could you be doing?" she trilled, reaching around him to snatch her pack from the hollowed tree trunk. Releasing a quavering string of laughter, she shoved against him again. "Come on, come on, let's go back. I'm hungry, what's for dinner?"
Digging in his heels, Solas stood firm. "Why the rush, ma sa lath? In a hurry, are we?"
"No. I mean, yes! Hungry, very hungry. Starving, actually. Come on, I want dinner and I want it now. Please, vhenan."
His smirk widening, he peered over her shoulder from where she had revealed herself, trying to see beyond the thicket of trees. "Oh? Are you not hiding anything over there?"
Her wavering laugh came again and she renewed her efforts to bulldoze him toward the lazily grazing hart, but he stood his ground. "Hide? Haha, why would I hide anything? I would never hide anything!"
"Is that so?" he said, pressing his open palms to her pink cheeks, his hands obscuring the lines of vallaslin there as she gasped. Her skin chilled his own, but the cold quickly dissipated at his lingering touch. "Then what have you been doing all afternoon that you have been outside long enough to get this cold?"
Releasing her hold on him, she clapped her own—freezing—hands over his, keeping them on her face as she closed her eyes and allowed her posture to relax. "Mmm, nothing important," she murmured, leaning into his warming touch.
"I see. In that case—" Dropping his hands to her waist he spun her around, switching their positions as she squawked, marching through the ankle-deep snow towards the thicket. "Surely you would not mind if I looked?"
"Wait! You can't go there!"
He'd barely taken three paces before he was met with her objections. While he had been expecting a barrage of verbal admonishments or a yank on his arm, the shock of freezing cold colliding with the back of his cranium took him completely unawares.
He started, whirling around, but before he could do much more than say, "What—" another snowball hit him square on the nose.
Gasping and spluttering, he swiped blindly at his face with the hem of his sleeve, but only made it worse as the snow melted and the icy droplets ran down his chin and seeped into his collar.
He heard her laughter again, unbridled and genuine this time and right in front of him. Her chilled fingers swept over his face, brushing the snow off of him and clearing his vision. Seeing her violet eyes alight with mirth filled his chest with a warm glow despite the frigid air stinging his skin and her chilled finger on his brow.
"M-ma serannas, vhenan'an," she said, forcing the words past a giggle. "I didn't think you'd turn around. Are you all right?"
"Do not fret, I am perfectly fine. In fact …." Without warning, he lifted an armload worth of snow from the ground with a wave of his hand, sending it flying into Niernen's back. She squeaked at the unexpected assault, dropping her pack. "I think it is yourself you should be worried about!"
"Solas!" she shouted, dodging sidestepping a snowball the size of a grapefruit as it whizzed at her with a flick of his fingers. "Using magic is cheating!"
"But I do not remember anyone ever laying down that rule," he said, unable to keep the smugness out of his tone as one of his snowballs caught her on the ear. Grunting with indignation and shaking her head, she stumbled behind a tree, the next barrage of his snowballs exploding against the trunk in a shower of white powder.
"You're going to regret this!" she called from behind her cover, her mock-angry voice carrying through the wintry air. "I'm going to make you regret this!"
"And how will you accomplish that? It seems to me that it is I who has the upper hand here." He readied another round of snowballs, hovering them in midair as he waited for the slightest hint of movement.
"Like this!"
Her voice was now directly behind him and he turned, cursing himself for not taking her stealthiness into account, before another handful of snow was mushed against his face. Blinded again, he stumbled back, another, more solid impact around his middle bowling him over. A huff escaped his lips as his breath left him in a whoosh, falling onto his back in the snow with a wriggling weight on top of him. Reaching out with both arms, he was rewarded with a gasp as he found a familiar, slender frame and grasped her firmly. Rolling over, he pinned her to the ground, gasping for breath as she squirmed.
"A sneak attack? Really?" he asked, blinking his eyes clear as the snow slid off his face and onto hers, earning another gasp and breathy giggle.
Her answering breath tickled his nose, mere inches away from his own. "You're … the one … who cheated first," she gasped out. Dislodging the last of the snow from her face with a toss of her head, she made to get up, but he didn't budge. She looked up in askance at him, wide eyes like amethysts staring into his own. Flecks of snow clung to her lashes as she blinked at him, a powdering of it covering her black hair and contrasting against the snow like brushed ink over paper. Cream-coloured skin, made pale by the cold, flushed pink at her cheeks and ears.
So beautiful.
"I did not cheat," he said, voice barely above a whisper as he recovered enough to slip her a small smile. "I merely used my natural abilities to my advantage."
"I can say the same thing then, can't I?" she huffed, the warm air of her breath washing over her numb face. "So fine, no one cheated. It's a draw."
His smile grew wider. "Ah, I am afraid you are mistaken once again, vhenan."
Lifting her brows at him and cocking her head to the side, she asked, "What do you mean?"
Detaching himself from her and rising up on his knees, he flicked his wrist. "This," he said.
The remaining group of snowballs dropped down on her simultaneously, muffling her shout of protest.
"Hey!" she called out, as he rose to his feet and slipped away, toward the thicket she had been trying to steer him away from. "Hey! I thought you said it was late and we had to go—"
He snorted, his step not wavering. "Nice try, Niernen. What are you hiding?"
"No, wait! Don't go that—"
With a snap of his fingers, snow slid off the laden branches of a fir tree and dropped onto her, earning him an undignified yelp. He surged forward, weaving through the trees and finding himself in a tiny clearing within a few paces. His eyes caught sight of something right in its centre and he stopped dead in his tracks.
"… way," Niernen finished lamely, popping up beside him with a defeated huff and brushing snow off her hair.
His eyes didn't leave the little fir tree, standing barely four feet tall and surrounded by a blanket of snow, separate from its larger fellows. It grew slightly slanted in one direction, giving it a lopsided appearance. But it was not the tree itself that held his attention. The tree's sparse branches had been cleared of snow, replaced by dangling trinkets of made of pinecones, pine needles, and even ice. Sprigs of holly clung to several branches, the tufts of bright red berries and spiny leaves attached to the tree with twine. If it were not for the diminutive size, he would have said it looked a lot like a ….
"A Feastday tree?" Solas asked out loud, taking a step toward it. "What are you doing decorating one out here?"
He'd seen them before, of course. In visions offered by the Fade and in person. Just this morning, the cleaning staff were putting the finishing touches to the Inquisition's own, giant Feastday tree in the Great Hall. But where this tree barely came up to his sternum and bore crudely made decorations, the one back in Skyhold was huge and extravagant. Towering over the guests, it was at least three times Bull's height and needed five men to haul it through the front door. Golden ornaments of varying shapes and sizes wore down its branches, interspersed by brilliant red poinsettias and gleaming silver bells. Candles stood proudly at the tips of branches by the dozens, kept alight by tiny white flames that did not burn—another of Dagna's wondrous inventions.
If Niernen wanted to decorate a Feastday tree, why this one?
Behind him, he heard her indignant huff then the crunch of snow as she trailed after him. "It's a tradition thing. The clan used to decorate a few trees around camp during Feastday season."
He turned back to her, raising his eyebrows. "Is Feastday not an Andrastian holiday?
Nodding, she reached up to pull her green cloak tighter around herself. "It is, but we learned of the custom from some human traders and tried it out. The Keeper encouraged it as long as we didn't harm the trees and the decorations were easy enough to come by in nature. It was fun, so it kind of stuck and we wound up doing the same thing every year." Gaze dropping to her feet, she kicked at the snow.
"You miss them," he said, more a statement than a question.
She nodded again, keeping her eyes on her toes.
"And so you thought to continue the tradition, in your own little way," he continued, taking his eyes off the tree to rest on her.
A laugh bubbled from her lips. "It's a bit silly, isn't it?"
"Not at all." He smiled, reaching forward to trace the shape of one of the ice trinkets—a clear, frozen disc containing a cluster of small snowdrops and coloured red like stained glass by crushed berries. "You cherish your clan like your family, and have been apart from them for a long time. It is only natural."
An answering smile touched her lips and she prodded at another makeshift ice bauble; this one holding a series of pine needles arranged in a fan. "It just looked so lonely, the tree. Standing here all by itself. I remembered how the hunters would choose trees close to the camp, then the younger ones would gather materials to make the decorations. And at night, the Keeper would gather us all around and light them up with enchanted pebbles, so they glowed like candles." Her eyes had taken a distant quality, a faraway look that suggested she was among chattering Dalish elves, bonfires, and aravels instead of the little clearing and her little tree. Then she blinked, and she was back.
"So," she said, "So, I just thought … well …."
"You wished for the tree to not be as lonely as you, and decided to add some cheer to it?"
Looking up at him from the corner of her eye, she grinned sheepishly. "I told you, I'm just being silly."
"And I told you, it is not silly at all," he said, fixing her with a look. "In fact, I find it a shame that you would keep such a pretty thing to yourself. You must have worked hard on embellishing on your own."
"I was planning on showing it to you, some time," she said. "But someone showed up when I least expected him to and ruined his own surprise."
"Oh, so it was to be a surprise, then?" he said, giving her a secret smile.
"Not much of one now, is it?" she shot back at him with a mocking glare. "I didn't even get to finish it, yet."
"Oh?"
"Its missing its star, I haven't been able to find anything suitable so I've been leaving it off for last."
Glancing at the top of the tree, Solas saw that the top was bare. His eyes rose to Niernen, standing by his side with her arms crossed and wistful eyes staring at the same spot. Drawing inspiration from the violet eyes of his heart, he took her still-cold hand in his, pulling it to him. She uncrossed her arms for him, tilting her head quizzically.
He smiled. "Come with me, vhenan."
"You know," she said, trailing after him. "For someone who came tramping through the wintry woodland to drag me back to Skyhold, you do seem to be horrible at his job."
Castling a look over his shoulder, he shot her a conniving smile. "Is that a complaint I hear?"
"Of course not, but if Josephine or Cassandra come badgering me for incomplete Inquisitor-ing, I'm pinning the blame on you for monopolising my time."
"Shall I endeavour to spend less of your time, Inquisitor? That still sounds remarkably like a complaint to me."
"Well, it's not!" she exclaimed, stifling a giddy laugh. "You know full well I'd rather wade through knee-deep snow with you in the middle of nowhere than sit down in front of the fireplace with another of Cullen's hour-long reports."
Keeping his eyes fixed in front of him, he didn't let her see the smile that stretched across his face. Continuing to lead the way uphill, Solas channeled more mana through the staff he held in front of him, increasing the intensity of the heating spell to melt more snow and create a clearer path for them to move through. His other hand still held onto to hers, even though her fingers no longer felt like frozen icicles. The dusk had long since given way to night, the royal blue sky clear of clouds and leaving the stars to illuminate the world below in accompaniment of the full, round moon. Starlight transformed the wintry landscape into something almost mythical, the pure white snow taking on a cool blue hue.
"It really is late, though," she said. "Just where are we going?"
"Patience, vhenan," he replied.
Not too long after, the trees thinned and the terrain levelled, eventually giving way to a ledge hanging over one side of the mountain. Standing on the peak and surrounded by the Frostback mountains dwarfing their craggy summit, Solas finally came a stop.
The slight shift in the air washed over his face as Niernen stepped up beside him, looking up at the glittering sky high above them. A beautiful view, but one they'd seen almost every night from the balconies of her quarters.
"Solas?" she said, glancing over at him when he said nothing. But he only smiled.
"Patience," he repeated, pointing up at the sky. She looked back up, confusion flitting across her features.
Nothing happened, but they waited.
The seconds stretched into minutes, then minutes into complete silence where it was only their soft breathing and stillness of the mountain forest to accompany them. He felt her shift beside him, about to question him again when she grew still, breath caught on her lips and eyes still fixed on the sky.
He smiled. He'd seen it too.
It appeared again, a wavering twist of green light swirling against the midnight blue backdrop of the sky. A yellow one joined it, the two colours growing in size and brilliance as more wisps of colours appeared. Chromas manifested and melded together, forming a river of flowing hues that lit up the sky like a rainbow sun, spilling its light over the world below. It touched the pure white of the snow, painting the landscape in the full spectrum of colours.
But it could not compare to the wonder in his heart's eyes as she stared up at the dancing rays, chapped lips slightly parted and her grip on his hand tightening.
"Wow," she whispered, as if speaking any louder would scare the lights away. "That's …."
Wordlessly, Solas reached an up to the heavens, drawing upon his magic once more.
Hesitantly, like a shy fennec, a tiny tendril of multi-coloured light left the main body and trickled down from the sky to touch his palm. It stayed there for a moment, uncertain, before breaking off from the sky to coil in his hand. Bringing his arm back down but keeping his palm level, his gaze switched from the glowing orb of light to Niernen, watching her breathless fixation on it. The warm glow from the coloured lights danced on her skin, her transfixed gaze unblinking as she stared.
Slowly, he closed his other hand over it, its light still shining stubbornly through the gaps in his fingers. He focused, exhaled, and when he lifted his hand away, the light had been shaped into a six-pointed star that glowed like a multi-coloured star of its own.
"Solas," she whispered again, softer. "How did you—"
"Something I observed from the Fade," he said, anticipating her question.
She huffed, the familiar pout returning to her face. "Riiight."
"Would you like to hold it?" he said, holding it out to her in offering. She looked as it as if it were a priceless glass heirloom, eye flitting back up to meet his in nervousness before dropping back down to the aurora star.
"C-can I?" she said, still whispering. "But I don't know if I can—"
"It is quite all right," he said, nudging it closer to her. "Come, take it."
Hesitantly, she extended her arms and he allowed the glowing star to hop from his palm to hers, basking in the warmth of another living being. She held it with both hands, the light hovering an inch or two above her skin as it flared and spun, making her giggle in delight. "This is the brightest, most beautiful star I've ever seen in my whole life."
"Now you can finish that tree of yours."
Looking up at him, she smiled excitedly. "You mean, you meant this to be a Feastday tree topper?"
"Think of it as my contribution to the decorations," he said, returning the smile. "Shall we return? We can finish the tree and then head back to the fortress."
"Perhaps just a bit longer?" she said with a pleading note to her voice, indicating the changing sky with a nod of her head. "I'd like to watch just a bit longer."
He nodded stepping up so his side was pressed against hers again, the warmth of her seeping through their clothes to touch him. "Of course, vhenan."
Folding his hands over her own, they held the star together as they looked up at the dancing lights in the sky. Solas soon dropped his gaze back down to her face, ignoring the natural splendor before him in favour of gazing into her eyes. For in her eyes, he had seen the brightest star of them all.