I don't own Dragon Age.
The early morning is her time.
It is when the nothing of the night is touched by tentative sun and painted with watercolor shades of sky, and Morrigan loves it more than any other time. She can walk through the camp, her footsteps slow and languid treading the worn paths as the dead campfire's smoke flutters up through the air, adding a heavy cedar musk to the clean beginnings of the day. All is quiet then, not even the crickets chirp, and Morrigan can revel in the quiet sound of the breeze caressing skin with the delicate touch of a gentle lover and the way a few lonely stars still shine desperately in the paled air.
She can hear her heartbeat pounding in her chest, feel the blood pumping through her veins, flex her fingers and curl her toes, and she is so very alive, so very human. Nobody stirs, nobody talks, nobody sings, nobody makes petty jabs. Morrigan can finally be free then, she can finally walk amongst her fellow man and woman and not feel out of place, not feel like an oddity.
She used to do this in Lothering sometimes, in the winter months when people slept late and one more set of footprints wouldn't be awry as long as nobody looked closely enough to see the outline of ten toes in the snow. She remembers the village, sleepy and silent and quaint, and she remembers with a slight twist in her chest just how badly she sometimes yearned to be a part of their world.
She remembers pretending that she was one of them, yes, mostly when she was slightly younger and Flemeth had told her once again how useless she was and what a waste of time and space of a child she had always been. The memory doesn't bother her now but it hurt like griffon claws then, digging into her flesh and blood and tearing and shredding and gouging, leaving scars that were tricky to heal completely. She remembers whispering stories to herself as she strode through the greyscale shade of the early morning, stories of a young girl named Morrigan who had a mother who loved her and braided her hair and a father who loved her and taught her to hunt. That young girl named Morrigan never did get to be her, despite her wishes and the tears shed at night as a child and every thwarted runaway attempt.
She would always be someone different to others. Morrigan the apostate daughter of the fabled Flemeth, Morrigan the cruel witch thief, Morrigan the barbaric Chasind woman, Morrigan the apostate, Morrigan, the wasted-space daughter, Morrigan the enemy, Morrigan the ally, Morrigan the sister, Morrigan the daughter, Morrigan the lover.
In the early mornings, though, when light kisses the cheeks of darkness, she can be Morrigan. Just Morrigan, because the wind requires nothing of her, the sky begs no alm from her, the quiet asks no words of her. She likes the early mornings, because then she doesn't have to do much more than simply be, just exist, be present in her own thoughts.
She is just Morrigan, wandering about the dawning light.
