"I don't have to do it," Cole sat in the tavern, looking across the table at his companions with alternating looks of defiance and helplessness. "Please don't make me."
Before him sat a bowl of stew and a roll. Varric chuckled, "Nobody's going to make you do anything, kid." He was leaning back in his chair, chest hair exposed to the warm air. Outside, night was already pulling at the colors of the autumn sky and orange leaves skittered away in a gust of wind. Varric cleared his throat and picked up the bread, sliced it open and started slathering butter on it. "But you don't know what you're missing out on."
Cole peered over the edge of the bowl and sniffed it, then scrunched up his face in disgust.
"It can't be all that bad!" Varric laughed, and placed the roll beside his bowl. The crumbs scattered across the worn wooden table, messy little specks against the forgotten lines of long-dead trees. "Here. Try dipping this in the stew. That's how we always ate it as kids."
Cole glared at the bread, skepticism stitched so deeply into his features that Varric would have sworn the boy was hamming it up. But, he reminded himself, Cole's fundamental way of interacting with something new was to let it absorb every bit of his spirit, mind…and, now, his body.
Blackwall returned from the bar with a mug of ale. "Here, Cole. Try a bit of this, first. The ale will help anything go down," he chuckled, then set his weight stiffly into a chair next to Varric and scratched it across the floor to pull himself up to the table.
Cole looked up into his eyes and hung onto the lilt at the end of his joke. The sorrow was wrapped up into the statement, twisted to amuse, to make the bitter truth more palpable. He gazed into Blackwall's heart and ran the fingers of his compassionate mind, wordlessly, over the edges of the warrior's secret…
Can't change who I am. Can't change what I've done. Can't sleep, or eat, or breathe. But the booze makes it hurt a little less. Numbing my mind until I forget everything about who I am, except for this stolen name. The booze helps cloud the mind until all that's left is this big lumbering body, leaning up against the stables to take a piss before I fall up the stairs and collapse into the hay in the dead of the night.
Cole spoke, "The ale…for what ails you…liquid amber, like melted memory…gone and come back again, every night, every morning, cannot stop consuming that which consumes you."
"Sounds like hunger to me," laughed Varric.
Cole looked at him, confused, for a moment. Then he remembered where they were and why they were here. Varric and Blackwall wanted him to eat.
"I don't see why I have to do it," Cole retorted. "I do not feel hunger. My body sustains itself."
"Not yet," conceded Varric. "But think of it this way: if you want to become human, to truly become human, you need to take a leap. To wean yourself off of this Spirit-Fade-Sustenance-Thing."
"You are what you eat," offered Blackwall. "If you want to be part of the Fade, you…do…whatever it is that keeps you alive without food. But, if you want to be a person?" He shrugged his shoulders, "You gotta eat like a person."
Cole sighed. He looked down at the buttered bread and the stew, then closed his eyes. "Tell me how it feels."
"Describe the food?" Blackwall chuckled, "it's warm and chunky and the bread is soft."
"No," Cole looked at him reproachfully, then turned to Varric and pleaded with him. "Tell me how it feels ."
Varric smiled. "All right kid. Give me a moment." Varric closed his eyes and thought back to his memories as a child.
Huddled with Bartrand around the kitchen table, the hustle and bustle around the hearth as his grandmother and mother prepped a meal. The warm embers from the fire glowed, and the crackle of new firewood filled the room with an aroma of smoke and salt despite the clear air. The rhythmic chopping of vegetables. The sizzle of onions dancing in the bottom of the pot. The seared meat. The boiling bones, melted into broth. And all of it melded together, rolling in and over itself, while his father entered the room, hooked his arm around mother's waist and buried his beard into her soft face for a tender embrace. Then they gathered around the table and regaled each other with stories while filling their bellies with the warm meal. Laughter. Family. A moment of togetherness in an otherwise tumultuous life.
Varric started, "It makes you feel…"
"…full," supplied Cole.
They both opened their eyes at the same time, and gave each other a knowing look.
"Alright then," Cole sighed, and, picking up the bread, he broke off a piece and dipped it into the warm bowl. "May the spirit become flesh."