Watching him feels so lonely.
He was standing, his face and arms crossed, next to the clan's craftsman, when a moment of weakness had struck her. Something about watching him while he was grounded from wandering elsewhere, was endearing - his tense motions expressed so much more emotion than he'd intended them to. There were the obvious ones, knitting his dark, thick eyebrows, narrowing the two circular forest swarms filling the valleys of his eye sockets and puckering his meaty lips into a strange semi-pout. But there was something else - a force gripping at his insides so intensely it affected her all the same.
Merrill couldn't understand what it was, but she knew it was strong.
Stronger than the keeper's poisonous glare, bitter voice scolding and telling a never-ending tale of how she is to stay away, for the good of everything. Even stronger than the word Merrill had given her, than the guilt she knew she'd feel for lying... Stronger, more untame, unpredictable, dangerous than the magic she had yet to master, could ever hope to be.
Strong enough as to allow herself to consider the belief he's feeling it, too.
As he happened to avert his eyes and sense a silhouette observing from the shadows of the camp's biggest pine-tree, he did something, and the way he did it pumped the blood through her crimson bodily branches as if her whole life energy was to flow into her heart.
Mahariel smiled the most beautiful smile, as beautiful as they both were. And she can feel it even now, although the sensation has over time become a twisted shadow of its former self.
The same heart it once coddled is nothing short of bleeding from the tight grasp of its thorny string at the sight staining her vision. She can hardly bear it, yet she cannot stop clinging onto it. It is a part of who she was - who he was - and every single part of him she could, she'd preserve.
Once again, she's looking at him, from the shadows of beings in front of her. Dressed in a smart, formal white and azure robes, hand in hand with his chosen one. An elf, not Dalish. Not Fereldan, either. Hair a lighter shade than Mahariel's dirty-blond one, skin few darker shades than Merrill's olive one. Shrunken, but kind eyes get even more narrow as he grins, pulling his beloved's arm entangled with his own, a tad closer. Mahariel is grinning, as well; so widely, contangeously, earnestly - too much like he is, himself, yet it doesn't fit him. It seems fake.
Perhaps what she is seeing is fake.
A fragment of her deeply astrayed mind. The fear, the longing to see her long-lost lethallin have led her to do things she shouldn't have done - and just maybe they have become so involved with her sense of reality she lost herself, to herself. And now she seems to be losing him as well.
The shem brings Mahariel's hand up to his chest. They are standing in front of the keeper. They only exist for one another, caged into one another's touch, their smiles not vanishing. The keeper is smiling all the same. Everyone is smiling as the keeper finishes her speech and the two are singled out.
She has to close her eyes; she knows what's coming, but she wants to pretend she doesn't.
Never before has she regretted having ears as now, as she hears it all. Cries, cheers, shouts echo throughout the camp, celebrating the special occasion.
Her throat stretches even wider, her stomach forms a hole even larger.
She opens her eyes when she thinks she's ready, but regrets it immediately.
Merrill sees a fair looking Dalish elf, an otherwise unknown person known merely as the Hero of Ferelden. To her, he is an elf like any other, who fell in love and just got married.
Then... Why does it hurt so much?
For a brief moment, Mahariel's irises slip over his husband's shoulders just to be met with hers. The same shade of light blue, almost grey, that's been engraved into her memories. The same airy feeling from his penetrating gaze.
And he smiles the same smile he'd smiled so many years ago.
He remembers, and she realises.
That elf is Thanien Mahariel, her best friend. Too curious, too adventurous, too much of a dreamer and too keen on getting in troubles for his own good. Both the selfish brat whose worries always came first, whose weapons always had to be the newest, and the most loyal friend one could have, who had always taken her side and been there for her, yet left, because that was what he'd always dreamed of.
The second she blinks and her eyes are opened again, his gaze had left her, and his expression had changed. Again, she suddenly doesn't exist. She is melting in the cluster of noticeably more vocal humans, elves, dwarves, dogs, and it doesn't bother her.
For she realises; she knows.
Even if his body and soul were given to another, there was no use denying - Thanien's smile will forever be meant for her.