A/N: This is a really some backstory for my witch!inquisitor.
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A quiet stillness settled over the clearing as she quietly crept out of hiding. This is how it always was. No matter who the players were, whenever paths crossed, there was a moment where the world would stop as it figured out whether or not there was a trespasser in its Wilds.
When there was one, things would fall apart. Templars would chase, native beasts would devour, frightened mages would leave swaths of destruction in their wake as they tried to make sure they were the victorious party in the unfortunate encounter.
That was what happened to trespassers here. They met fates full of blood and pain and fear.
However, the Wilds knew its own, and to those it embraced, they found so much more.
Donovan said she was foolish for this sort of thing, but she knew better. He was a grouchy old elf who'd long since given up having a welcoming place in the world. Instead, he rejected everything before it could reject him.
Well, he tried to, anyway. He chased off other mages who sought a friend, led templars on chases that ended with cliffs and wicked beasts, and frightened any Chasind who dared draw too close to his hovel.
Even so, whenever the storms got too heavy, the winds too cold, he'd find her and grumpily tell her she could stay the night—so long as she could manage not to be a pest.
They'd sit in silence until he would grudgingly draw from his food stocks and toss something at her, muttering that she was too scrawny, or he'd sit her down beside his fire and mend a cut she hadn't thought dire enough to waste her own magic on, all the while fussing that he didn't know why he bothered when she'd likely be dead before she was twelve, anyway. She'd told him once that she thought she was already older than twelve, but he'd just pointed out that she didn't know how old she was and could barely keep track of day and night, let alone years.
She'd had to give him that.
It was an odd sort of ritual when they were together. If he was content that she wasn't starving nor in need of medical assistance, he'd punctuate the quiet evenings with stories about back when he was a Circle mage or about how stupid the other 'witches' had been lately, drawing templar attention to their corner of the Wilds. Those stories usually ended with something along the lines of, "If they can't keep their antics to themselves, I'll give them a real witch."
On the occasions that she was there in the morning when he woke up, he'd always shoo her away, muttering that it was ill luck for too many mages to congregate. When she left, he'd tell her he expected she'd probably be eaten by a bear before their paths crossed again.
The other mages who stumbled through always spoke ill of him, of the way he foretold their horrid demises and refused them help, vowing that he wouldn't be brought down with them.
Really, though, he'd been hurt too many times, and the cuts were too deep. Those were stories he never told, though sometimes she could see them replaying in his eyes. After so long, they still stung too sharply to voice.
She could understand that. She had her own cuts that ran just as deep. Sometimes they were echoes of injuries made by swords, phantom pains that woke her up at night. Other times they were words slung with either hate or fear.
Blood mage, malificar, abomination, demon spawn.
Donovan had never uttered such a slur her way, though. Oaf, fool, moron maybe. But never the words that really hurt.
She wasn't sure he remembered the nicer names people called each other anymore. She'd mentioned it once after he'd called her an idiot, and he'd grumbled that the reason he was in the Wilds was so he didn't have to say nice things if he didn't mean them.
He hadn't called her an idiot since.
Indeed, there were hurts that ran deep in every one of the apostates who'd fled to the Wilds.
However, even though they brought their hurts with them, the Wilds took them in and in its own way, made them whole again. Even with the fear of templar incursions, there was more peace here than not.
Sometimes the templars pushed through, hunting for mages to drag back to their nightmarish world, but the Wilds took care of that, too. It looked after its own, and dealt with the trespassers, leading them to grisly fates or just getting them so lost that they were lucky to find their way home.
This place did so much for its own, and that was why she went out of her way to do this, even if Donovan tried to convince her she was a fool every chance he got.
Her Wilds had accepted her when any other place would have snuffed out her life, and she was compelled to give back, to be part of it.
That was why she'd decided that she would heal it the way it had healed her. She would tend to the scrapes and scabs, and even if they couldn't go away completely, she would help make them bearable.
That's why she sought out those who hurt, like her.
And that was why she was in that small clearing, thankfully unbeknownst to her elven guardian.
When the wyvern didn't immediately charge at her or off into the brush, she crept forward slowly, pausing whenever the beast's head would tilt one way or the other. After a few feet, it mirrored her caution, taking a few halting steps toward her.
It stopped.
Its leg was hurt, twisted at an awkward angle.
She'd tried talking to the creatures before, but her voice tended to just frighten them. It made them mistake her for something that didn't belong to their world and made them flee. However, she'd been listening to them at night, to the way their growls rose and fell, the way they punctuated their communication.
She spoke softly, letting her cadence follow the strange patterns, and was pleased when the beast only pranced nervously in place, not finding her oddness worrisome enough to try to run on its injured leg.
When she was close enough that it could easily lash out and sink its teeth into her, she dropped down to sit cross-legged, staring expectantly at the creature.
After a prolonged moment, it let out a huff and slumped down onto the side that didn't have the hurt leg, curling slightly around its injury and watching her with intelligent eyes.
They waited one another out for another short while before she finally reached into her magic and felt that familiar, warm curl of life. Drawing on it, she focused on the beast. Slowly, she held her hands out. It leaned forward and sniffed at her, before finally snorting and settling down, tension still strung through its body.
Moving closer, she settled down beside the wyvern and began to speak in that same, broken pattern that she always heard them growling in. The creature didn't seem to care, instead letting its gaze wander as she focused her magic on healing its leg.
She felt the wrongness smooth out of the creature's body—it was hard to describe how it felt when bodies responded to magic, but she'd decided a smooth feel was typically what happened when the magic was no longer really needed.
As soon as she cut off her spell, the wyvern let out a sharp, curious growl. Before she could turn her head toward it, its nose was in her hair, snuffling dutifully, no doubt trying to figure out just what she was and why she'd healed it so.
When it was done, it settled back, head cocked as it appraised her.
And then, it simply rolled over, stretching out in the sunlight to let its stomach get some much needed warmth.
As it closed its eyes, she tossed herself backwards into the grass too, staring up at the sky and enjoying the simply peace that washed over her.
The Wilds was a place of healing, and despite what Donovan fretted over, it had accepted her as a part of that.
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A/N: Thank you for reading! If you'd like to see more of her adventures, please feel free to head over to Andraste's Witch.