Memories in the rain
The dog runs cross the wet-with-rain roads in the search for a dry hideout. It is a lean animal with out-standing ribs, torn skin and glassy eyes. A dog of the road, a stray. It runs over backyards and close lanes in this city which seems abandoned due to the late hours and the stormy weather . Only a single person is still on the way at this time , braving the rain and the sharp, biting wind. It's a blond elf with eyes in the color of amber. The dog sees the nightly rambler too late and touches him briefly, when it sprints towards a close curve and disappears in the darkness.
The man stops, when the smell of the wet dog hits his nose. A smell, which shifts him immediate into another country and into another time…
"Ferelden. This country really smells like wet dogs. Not to compare with my radiating homeland, where…"
"I know, I know..", the redheaded man, who lies naked beside the blond elf, laughs. "Not to compare with your homeland, where the flowers are blooming around the whole year and where you can find the most exciting courtesans all over Thedas."
The blond one turns to his bed companion and kisses him with a tenderness which usually is very atypical for him. His lips slide further downward his lover's body, over the neck to the chest, until he finds a nipple and licks it softly. The other man under him lolls with pleasure and lets out a quiet groaning.
"Wonderful whores... With shapely breasts... And inviting hips.." The blond elf lets his tongue still circle around the nipple of its companion, while his hand slides slowly over the belly of the red-haired man to between his thighs. Hot arousal awaits him there.
He looks the other elf in the face with a smirk smile around his eyes: "It seems as if the imagination of antivan has a very stimulating effect on you?!"
In this moment a pillow hits in his face and his companion lunges at him and the two men start a tussle in the sheets around them. The ‚fight' lasts not for long, soon the blond one prevails and pins the younger man down under his body.
The redheaded elf leers: "Not roughly so stimulating like my imaginations of antivan assassins indeed."
"So? Exciting", the blond man says with a bright smile.
„Oh, yes. The one, I was thinking about is from unusual beauty, he's strong and lissome. He has blond hair and honey colored eyes. And he is a fantastic lover. Or so I'm told ." A sensuous smile accompanies these words.
"An assassin, blond, beautiful, strong and lissome. Yes, that's me. And the other thing.. . That you could decide, as soon as I am finished with you." A passionate kiss terminates the discussion for an indefinite time…
The moment passes and the elf is back again in the rain. On his own. Trying to leave his memories behind. Memories in which lies a pain like a wild animal, still ready to maul him after so long time. The storm whips the rain in his face. He lowers the head, continues. There, only few steps away from him, in the kennel a blue silky shirt lies. The storm must have pulled it off a clothesline. Again the road before his eyes blurs and he is shifted back again into another place at another time…
He enters a luxurious guest room. In front of the fire-place the redheaded elf is sitting on the ground, dressed into blue silk and stares expressionless into the flames. The blond man goes toward him, sits down next to him, touches the other one easily at the shoulder.
"I saw the swamp witch leave this room just now . She looked furious and also a little disappointed."
"She is gone. We will have to fight the archdemon without her help."
The blond elf regards the other man for a long time. "That's why you're looking so discontented? It seems, if there is still something else that is oppressing you."
A long silence answers him first. Then the younger elf turns towards him: "Promise me one thing: Help our future king as far as possible. At the beginning it will not become easy for him to hold the throne."
"If he wants my assistance, I will help him, I promise. But you will be there too to support him." He smiles at his friend, doubts in his glances.
The other man does not answer, stares into the flames again. The blond elf cringes, the room seems to have become colder. He feels an approach of fear. Then the red-haired elf rises, goes to the bed, sinks down on it.
"Hold me tight tonight. Do not leave me alone. Hold me tight and make love to me, as if it would be our last night together."
And that's what the blond elf is doing. He holds his companion, his only love, in his arms, covers his body with kisses, slides finally gently into him and makes loves to him with such a passion and a devotion, as he never did before. And, how he knows somewhere inside, how he will probably never do it again…
A sobbing destroys the memory. The blond elf is back in the city of Antiva. The load of the memory threatens to overwhelm him, he has to lean against a wall, in order to be not thrown to the ground. His face is wet. Is it the rain or is it from tears? He does not know it, does not want to know it.
He continues tediously. Aimless. Lost. The time elapses unnoticed. Then he steps out the side lanes, stands on a paved square, in whose center a statue extends to the sky. The storm becomes more strongly, lightning sparkles around the monument of an elf. The stoned elf stands with dark views in front of a mighty dragon. Flames strike from the throat of the beast towards the head of the elf, which is holding a large sword in both hands, settled in the heart of the monster.
"Wrong, completely wrong. ", the blond murmurs. The memory haunts him merciless...
He stands on a high tower., together with the familiar redheaded one, a warrior in royal armor and an older mage, which brandishes her staff. Before them there is the archdemon. A fiercely battle is inflamed. Knights, elfs, dwarves, mages, all are trying this to stop this old spoiled God. Then, finally, the dragon is almost at its end. The red-haired elf nods his head towards his companions. Determination is in its glance, no doubt. In front of his blond lover he stops for a moment, looks him into the grey eyes, pulls the other man in his arms and kisses him. Abruptly the redheaded elf breaks away, pulls sword and dagger and runs towards the dying kite with a cry . A cut, an strike and the blade of the sword is settled in the head of the monster. Lightning twitch. The elf pulls the sword out of the head of the demon and blue light spreads like an explosion, throws all to ground.
The blond elf struggles to his feet first. He runs to his love, kneels down beside the dead body, embraces it . Trembling fingers stroke a peaceful face, as if only sleep and not death has locked that lovely eyes. With an expression of highest agony he throws his head back and one long cry escapes his throat…
That cry resounds again from the houses around the small antivan square. The lonely figure, which kneels on the ground in the rain and a presses a sopped blue shirt to his trembling chest , does not hear it. Hot tears run it over the face. Only as the first sunbeams affect the horizon, the elf rises again. He drops down the shirt, turns and disappears in the side lane, he had stepped out hours before.
Zevran Arainai, assassin and leader of the crows, does not look back. He prepares himself for a further day filled with pain and isolation. A further day in a world, which ended in the only moment, when a Grey Warden in Ferelden drove his sword in the head of a archdemon and stopped a blight, before it really had begun.