True Grey
By KSCrusaders (Sable Rhapsody at BSN)
Imekari
There are no screams when it first happens. It's a curiosity to her and the other children more than anything, the ice rippling across her classmate's desk. It glitters like the ocean, and she giggles as they all take turns tracing patterns in it, occasionally shoving each other out of the way for a better look. He laughs, his eyes meeting hers, and the ice cracks into a shower of tiny crystals.
"Can you do it again?" she asks.
"Sure. It's easy." This time, there are snowflakes, something she's only ever heard of in the stories that Tama tells of the barbaric south. Shrieking with glee, she and her classmates race in circles around her friend's desk, trying to catch the drifting white flakes on their tongues.
Then there's a violent snap of cold, and her friend cries out as ice seals his fingers together. "Sorry," he says. "It's hard to control." The snowflakes disappear, and she spends the rest of their break time helping him dip his hand in a basin of warm water, easing the ice from his flesh.
The next day, he is gone. She asks her tamassran where he is, but the answer doesn't mean anything to her.
"He is saarebas," says Tama, her eyes sad but stern. "He is with the arvaarad now. Put him from your mind, child."
How is she supposed to put her friend from her mind? The same friend who played with her in the stream after lessons, who made crystals appear from thin air just to see her delight? She pesters one tamassran, then another, finally earning herself a sharp smack across the mouth for her impertinence.
Why? she asks them silently for months afterwords. What did he do? She watches her teachers, the ones she trusted, with fierce and sullen eyes. And they watch back, knowing they can never give her a decent answer, wondering if she'll break her silence someday.
Saarebas
The word is known to her now, but she wishes she could forget the people it describes. She sees them up close, on the day she and all her classmates walk to the civic building in their village, to receive their assignments and meet their new brothers and sisters.
Shuffling feet file past her in two columns, heading for the docks. The karataam never stop in the village, never look back at the staring eyes. An arvaarad leads the line of creatures and brings up the rear, the rod of his station always in his hand. Always ready to snap the whip. Even up close, they don't look like men. Their heads hang heavy, the collars and masks weighing them down like lead.
One of the mages stumbles over a crack in the road and falls to his knees. As one, the whole column stops, waiting, tense. Arvaarad approaches the mage and grabs the collar in both hands, slowly but relentlessly forcing the collared man to his feet.
"Poor creatures," whispers one of her sisters. "My tamassran always said it was noble, serving the Qun while under constant assault from demons."
She looks away and bites the inside of her cheek to hold her silence. Lying is for the Hissrad, and only in their mouths does it serve the Qun. When the saarebas stands, she catches a glimpse of the eyes behind the slatted holes in his mask. They are dull, lifeless. He would have been better off if the arvaarad had sewn them shut too.
The columns start to move again. Watching them go, she doesn't see any demons in their wake. Only men...and the faded shadows of men.
Tamassran
They aren't supposed to have favorites, but that doesn't stop anyone. All of the tamassrans have children who respond better to them. For her, it's a violet-eyed, sturdy little boy with boundless energy. He excels at physical exercises, especially team games, and she's already made note of him to the antaam. Someday, he might be a formidable captain.
He's a willful, mischievous creature, but she can always get him to behave even when all the other tamassrans are at their wits' end. He likes to spend outdoor lessons chasing animals instead of meditating. One day, he carefully walks up to her after the lesson, his hands cupped around something. He opens his palms, and a large yellow butterfly flutters out. She laughs, delighted, and ruffles his short hair.
"An early butterfly," she says. "How did you catch it?"
Fear seizes her heart when she sees green light crackle between the boy's fingers, forming a small web. She grabs his hand, hard enough to hurt, and quickly looks around to see if any of the others have noticed. By some miraculous mercy, they're occupied herding his classmates back down the path toward the schoolhouse.
The boy winces, but doesn't cry out. "Never do that again," she says fiercely. She takes him by the shoulder and forces him to meet her eyes. "Never. Do you understand?"
Now he looks frightened, an ill-fitting expression on a face that always smiles. But he nods quickly and runs down the hill to join the others as soon as she sets him free, occasionally shooting nervous looks over his shoulder at her.
She imagines those bright eyes hidden behind a cruel mask, the cheerful voice screaming in terror before being silenced forever. She pictures him in the iron grip of the arvaarad, his spirit broken, and the sheer wrongness of it all makes her so sick she almost retches. Her eyes fill with tears, blinding her to the world. The only world she's ever known, the world that would make a beast of another little boy.
"Are you coming?" she hears one of her colleagues shout back to her. "We'll be late for the afternoon lesson if you don't stop dithering."
Quickly, she drops her head, pretending to be searching the grass for something. "Sorry, I misplaced something. I'll be down in a moment."
She can just barely make out the little boy in the midst of his classmates. Classmates who will be bakers, carpenters, laborers, soldiers. He needs her more than all of them combined. She doesn't decide lightly, but it's the easiest choice she's ever made.
Tal-Vashoth
She calls the boy back into the classroom after the evening meal, her face stern and calm. He gives her a hesitant smile, thinking she's going to admonish him for what happened earlier. He has bits of food down his shirt again, probably from neglecting his manners and scarfing down his food too fast. If it were any other day, she'd talk to her superior about increasing his rations. He grows like a weed.
But this is no ordinary day. She takes one last room around her orderly classroom, with its rows of low tables and chairs for the children. The smell of chalk dust, the small set of instruction books...and the little boy. He looks from her to the heavy, lumpy satchel behind her, his eyes puzzled.
She feels the tears come up, but ruthlessly forces them back. This is no time for weakness. "Can you keep a secret, little one?"
The boy senses her fear regardless. He was always a sharp one. "Tama?" he asks. She kneels to embrace him, feeling his heartbeat against hers, how small he still is.
He starts to squirm impatiently after a few seconds, and she lets him go. He stands up as straight as he can, puffing out his chest. "I can keep a secret. I'm brave."
"I know you are." She reaches into her pocket for a handkerchief and ties it around his eyes. Should it come to violence, she doesn't want him to see. "We're going to play a little game, ok? Take hold of my hand. You're going to follow me as quietly as you can. Light steps, soft breaths, just like the ashaad demonstrated in class today."
She can see him perk up even under the blindfold, but he quickly remembers the rules of the game and holds a chubby finger to his lips. "That's right," she whispers back. Together, the two of them step out the back of the classroom and into the night.
She never looks back, and keeps the stolen dagger free in her other hand.
Adaar
Two weeks hiding in the hold of the supply ship to Kont-aar. Two weeks stealing from the crates bound to that city, trying to keep the restless boy out of sight. Again, she turns it into a game, one where they hide at the first sound of footsteps. He's too clever by half; he knows it's not a game anymore, and trembles whenever the crew come down to the cargo hold. All she can do is cradle him, turning her body so if they are discovered, the blows will strike her first.
The dreadnought arrives on the tenth day, within sight of the shoreline. She hears the angry voices of the laborers and sailors aboard, then the heavy footsteps of soldiers. She instinctively looks for the boy, who's standing by the exit from the cargo hold to the cannons. Even merchant vessels travel lightly armed.
He gestures up the hallway, and she nods. The voices above grow louder, then fall silent with the scrape of swords being drawn. They creep down the hall to the light guns, and she carefully extends one. She can just barely see sky and sea around the barrel - and the hull of the qunari dreadnought.
She looks for matches, but there are none in the room. Cursing to herself, she heads back toward the cargo hold to search, but the boy stops her. He holds his fingers up to the fire thrower and looks to her for permission.
There's no time to answer. The boy hears the footsteps coming down at the same time she does, and panic ignites a spark at his fingertips.
The cannon roars to life, splintering the hull around it, smashing them both against the far wall even as it belches fire. She can't hear, can barely see, but there's a big enough hole in the hull for her to seize the boy and leap for that narrow blue strip of water. She doesn't even look up, swimming for the pale green line of shore. The boy's heaving, crying, but his arms lock around her neck securely, holding on for his very life. Her lungs burn with the remnants of the black powder, but she can't afford to feel it. Not yet.
She doesn't feel anything until there's sand between her fingers instead of water. Then the boy slides off her back, and agony washes over her, a wave that brings up all the saltwater she swallowed. Retching and gasping for air, she struggles to her feet and grabs the boy, carrying them up the beach.
There's just enough strength left in her to reach what looks like an abandoned fisherman's hut. The reek of fish guts and seaweed has never been so welcome. She dumps the boy onto a large, worn hammock hanging in the corner, then exhaustion takes her.
Mother
It's a strange word, in a strange language, but she keeps hearing it over and over again as she claws her way to consciousness. The door to the hut is open, and there is a human man standing over her with a gutting knife in his hand. She begins to sit up, knowing she doesn't have the strength to stand, let alone fend off the human. Whatever she might look like to them, the boy is just a child. Maybe they'll show mercy.
An elderly woman approaches, and in her bright blue eyes she sees something familiar. The knowing gaze of the tamassran. The elderly woman screams at the man, loudly enough to make her head pound. She closes her eyes and waits for it all to end, only to feel withered hands touch her cheek. She reluctantly opens her eyes to see the old crone smiling down at her, then everything swirls away in dizzying blackness again.
When she comes to, she's in a small wooden hut with a thatched roof, lying on hay pallets. The boy lies beside her; someone has cleaned and bound their wounds, and she smells food bubbling away in a pot. The elderly woman says the same strange word to her, pointing at the boy.
"Mother." And she holds her arms out as though she's rocking an infant.
Other tamassrans cared for the very young children, and never for long. They rotated in shifts, to prevent them from getting attached to individuals...as she has done. She smiles and touches the boy's cheek. His pale eyelashes flutter, and something more than affection or protectiveness wells up inside her, fierce and bright. Something for which she knows no word.
She nods at the old woman and ventures a smile. "Mother," she repeats.
A/N: Thank you all for reading, and apologies if this collection of drabbles is a little rough around the edges. It popped into my head when I was playing a qunari mage in DA:I, and I wondered what might have driven his parents (or adoptive parent in this case) from the Qun. Credit as always to the wonderful folks at BioWare for this game, and to Jon Curry, whose VA talent brings my Adaar to life.
Translations:
adaar: a ship-mounted cannon, literally "fire-thrower"
antaam: the qunari army, literally "body"
arvaarad: "one who holds back evil," who keeps qunari mages under control and hunts Tal-Vashoth
ashaad: a qunari scout, literally "to seek a unit"
hissrad: liar, literally "keeper of illusions"
imekari: a child
karataam: a unit of qunari mages and their handlers
Kont-aar: a fortified qunari city in Rivain, their last holding on mainland Thedas
saarebas: a qunari mage, literally "dangerous thing"
Tal-Vashoth: former qunari who have actively turned against the Qun. Usually (but not always) denotes violence against the Qun and its people.
tamassran: a female priest charged with educating children and converts, literally "those who speak"