19. Omnium enim rerum principia parva sunt. The beginnings of all things are small.
There is a moment when Merrill's heart skips a beat and she thinks, Oh. And she thinks, I love him. And, when did that happen?
It's not that she falls in love all at once, certainly. Looking back now it all makes sense, clouds parting to let the sun shine on what her heart has become. Now she can see how it's been coming on slowly, growing over the years since she first met Carver, when his sister came with Asha'bellanar's amulet to Sundermount, but only now blossoming into this rich, unspeakable, undeniable thing as they travel together from Kirkwall, gathering refugees under their wings.
How funny that she hadn't noticed it sooner! Carver has been a good friend for years, of course, who always treated her kindly (more gentle with her than he often was with the others, she realizes now) even if he did say the oddest things (and then get so mad at himself for saying them). But then as a templar he'd become an old friend, she thought, no longer a part of her daily life, and she'd put him out of her mind for years. Until the war. Mages fighting templars, templars hunting mages, Merrill trying to stay out of the middle of it all which was difficult as the alienage was so centrally located in Kirkwall, and Carver trying to stay away from the red lyrium. Was that when it began, she wonders? He'd come back into her life asking for her help when his commanders wanted him to take the stuff. Friends to begin with, naturally that trial had brought them closer together. She'd started to find her little house too quiet when he wasn't there, complaining about the templars or the price of black-market lyrium, or clumsily breaking a beaker in his efforts to be helpful by washing up her alchemy kit after she'd mixed the not-really-red lyrium for him, or telling her stories of Lothering in his childhood as he became more at ease with her. Was she in love with him even then?
Or had it been going on even longer? She'd admired his fighting skills once, but wasn't that just to be friendly and polite? He'd responded...oddly to it, anyway. As she recalls the conversation, Merrill remembers other conversations, moments when she probably should have realized...Carver's been falling for her at least as long as she has for him. Probably longer. She doesn't think it goes that far back, for her.
Perhaps it's very recent? They've traveled together from Kirkwall to the Hinterlands, gathering and leading a flock of elven refugees that grows the farther they go. Carver has made himself indispensable to the group, their protector, the hardest worker, in councils a voice of reason, wielded usually to talk Merrill down from some of her wilder schemes. The voice I'd soonest listen to, Merrill thinks. From him she will take caution. Because he knows her best? Or because of love slowly flowering in her heart? Having him here to back her up, to share the burden, is that the seed of this new thing?
This is the moment she sees what has grown: a refugee speaks of Carver, something something she can't remember what they were even talking about now, and calls him "your man." And Merrill starts to correct this, to say that Carver is not her man, when she realizes. What else is he? He's never left her side since they fled Kirkwall. A shemlen alone among all these elves, yet they respect him because…
They see the way he looks at me, Merrill thinks. She knows puppy eyes when she sees them, yet she's failed to see this. And the times he's kept her from peril on this journey. And the nights he's lingered at her tent flap just to talk to her, hours under the stars, still getting all tongue-tied and saying odd things until he grows angry with himself and storms away to his own tent. But never so angry he wouldn't come back the next night and try again. She would miss those nights, if he stopped. When did he become so dear?
Does it matter? she chides herself. Somewhere, somewhen, the seed of it was planted, friendship watered it, adversity drew it forth as the sun coaxes the flower from the earth. Beginnings are such small things, easily overlooked.
Do I need to see the seed a flower grew from to treasure its beauty?
So when he says one more odd thing, and her response is not what he hoped, and he sighs and says, "Never mind, Merrill. Years of trying have not made me any better at this. I'm a mess when I talk to you," she abandons the search for the seed of affection and opens her arms to the love that has grown between them and says, "You could kiss me, then."