Sometimes, I think about the child you used to be, the child I never met.

I'm sure you were all knees and elbows and dreams and hopes that were so big they couldn't fit into your heart, but tiny parts of them fit into your mouth when you told everyone who wanted to listen how you were going to grow up to be a hero, a dragonslayer, a knight, a bard, the best Diamondback player Thedas has ever seen and a farmer just like your father, and maybe all at once, because when you're six years old, the world is yours to take.

I'm sure your eyes sparkled in the sunlight like the melting snow crunching under your feet as you walked to the barn to fetch fodder for the chickens, but instead of feeding them you chased them around the house and pretended they were bandits, because knowing you now told me that your mind can do incredible things, and it must have started sometime, somewhere, and why not right then, in front of your parents' cottage?

I'm sure there was nothing but pain in your heart when you pressed the pillow to your chest and tried not to stumble over your own feet as they dragged you away, because I know that there's no half measures with you. If you feel something, you feel everything, and maybe if you were ten feet tall you wouldn't burst from it.

I'm sure that I know the exact moment when your dreams and hopes that used to reach the sky were stomped on by armoured feet. I'm sure it was the moment when you heard the doors fall shut behind you, and knew that this wasn't like your parents' cottage, that it wasn't the wind that didn't want you to leave but people, people without faces, and even after ten years, after hearing their voices and seeing their eyes they were nothing but breathing bars.

I'm sure that I will never be able to imagine how hoarse your voice was when you were sitting in that cell, singing to yourself because your mother wasn't there to do it for you, and the pain you felt when you realised that you didn't remember the sound of her voice was overwhelming. I'm sure, and I'm sorry that I wasn't there to sing to you, to hear you knocking bloody knuckles against the door and knock right back, to hide notes under your bowl filled with cold stew, so that when they came, only to ignore you, you'd read I'm here, you'll get through this, I'm here, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…

I'm sure you were a different person once, a person I never met, a person who could make a room seem brighter just by walking in, and a person who knew that.

I'm sure you have forgotten your power, but it's there, even if the clean, bright light has turned into a cold, bitter storm, and Maker, you will never know how much it hurts that I will never get to see that six-year-old boy chasing chickens around a cottage.

I'm sure you were going to grow up to be a hero, a dragonslayer, a knight, a bard, the best Diamondback player Thedas has ever seen and a farmer just like your father, and maybe all at once…

But you grew up to be a war.