I do not own Dragon Age.

this is an ongoing series of drabbles. They're being posted first on tumblr (onceuponakatie) and then here/Archive of Our Own (LiluyeAsala). If you like them, let me know! I'm going to post them in sets of 3 here.


i: Hair

Her hair is soft. Much softer than you expected. Not that you were expecting anything, because did humans do that? Expect things to be one way? You think they might, because humans and elvhen are not so different, but you have no way to be positive. You suppose you could ask her, but that would probably be looked upon as odd.

Besides, you would much rather play with it than analyze it anyways, which is a rare occurrence. It is short and dark and soft like a baby fern, while you expected it to be rough like pine. She never seems to mind when you play with her hair. You wonder if that is a human thing too, but eventually you decipher that it is just her, because the bard reacted quite strongly when you asked to see the braid in her hair.

Humans are strange creatures. You like them though.

ii: Burning

Her eyes are much warmer than they were when you first met. You remember that day - the lightning, the explosions, the demons, darkness and pain and then firelight and the Seeker of the Chantry, who looked at you with eyes like chips of hard amber and a barely repressed snarl.

She disliked you back then, because of what the Fade did to you. Also, because you were a mage. But mostly because of the demon hand, which you have to cover with a glove because secretly it burns and it looks awful and you would rather blend in a bit more. She disliked you, and you didn't realize it because you never understood elvhen behavior well, let alone human behavior. You always brought her along on the missions the sweet diplomat girl always brought up, because the Seeker was strong, and because you couldn't understand why she wouldn't look you in the eye or why she would argue so much about your remedies for solutions - remedies involving magic.

Now the chips of amber look at you more openly. You and she are friends now, you think, and she does not look to your demon hand as much as she once did. You don't either - you find it is much less difficult to ignore the inner burn of it.

(The burn of your cheeks distracts you sufficiently.)

iii: Cyphers

The human language is very strange to write and read. What manner of cyphers did they use? You were so embarrassed the first time someone asked you to look at a paper - how silly and dumb you must have looked, a grown woman not knowing how to read a simple paper!

You remember asking the diplomat for help, but she had no time in her busy schedule to tutor an inconsequential thing - surely someone could just read things for you. The bard was so good at hiding when she didn't want to be found, you didn't bother to look, and the others were under the impression that you were "pulling their leg" or "yanking their chain". (You have never tugged on any manner of chain in your life, much less one that someone owned, and pulling someone's leg sounds rather painful.)

She believed you, though, she of all people and offered to teach you. She was reluctant then, and even you - the socially inept elf - knew she asked only out of courtesy and would not have done so had you been just an apostate and not the Inquisitor everyone deferred to.

She was so patient, though, and taught you out of a thick book with a bare, broad chested man on the cover. You learned to read words like "love" and "strong" and "slick" and "thrust" and "wanton" and only after you grasped the basics of the human cyphers did you realize just what she had been teaching you out of. You remember stuttering your words with a cherry red face the day you pieced it together, and the next day she brought you a different book with words like "cat" and "bat" and "my name is".

You saw her smile that day. It was a guilty, self aware smile, but nevertheless a smile. You liked that day.


I hope you enjoyed this first set. If you want to see them more instantaneously, they are posted to Tumblr/Ao3 as well.