Named this time after 'the Last Man' by Clint Mansell, off 'the Fountain' OST.


"I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?"

- Chuang Tzu 389 - 286 BC.

The first days aren't too bad. The weather is relatively mild, and while occasionally a few drops make the empty threat of rain showers, all in all what the clouds mostly do is keep him sheltered from the direct heat of the sun.

He sits.

The hunger isn't too bad either, certainly not as much of a distraction as the bruises about his person. Compared to them, the hunger is a minor nuisance. His captors, strangely, seemed to not perceive that he was coming along willingly, and so proceeded as they would have, had he offered a fight. Because of this he deemed it unnecessary, when they caged him, to point out to them that provided their wish was to contain him even should he decide to leave, the frail structure of the cage is inadequate so as to be bordering on the ridiculous. Besides, what does it matter? He is not going to be leaving anyway.

Some of the local humans come by every so often for a while, a few of them carrying sticks. They are suffering from the delusion that he gives good sport. They leave him alone in the end, disappointed.

The hunger, likewise, disappears quickly the moment it realizes it is going to be ignored. After it comes the light, sharp state of mind which allows him to explore the world in detail. The cage is no big obstruction; all he has to do is, for instance, to close his eyes and listen hard, taking note of all the many different sound the village emits. It is truly amazing that the people who live here can go about their business, so oblivious to the sheer cacophony that is going on around them at all times.

The nights do not offer respite. The sounds just get a more vague quality, a sense of a whisper, underlying those sounds closer to the surface, such as the owl hooting from the barn across the road from him, the creaking of a privy doors' hinges or the muffled moans of lovers (the latter becomes more and more scarce as the days pass - this, he takes to mean that the darkspawn horde is approaching. Arguments and sobbing increasingly occupy the space where the moans used to be).

The listening keeps him occupied for a certain amount of time. By then, the loudness of the noise starts to be painful, and he withdraws. There are also the bruises, still, some of which have healed, but others of which remain, seemingly not intending to follow suit. He surmises that his body is running out of resources. Hardly surprising.

The remaining bruises are not painful in the strictest sense of the word, rather they advertise their presence as what he would normally term 'a dull ache'. However, the cage does not offer much by way of movement, and the nagging continuity of the sensation makes it steadily more necessary for him to spend some energy on focusing elsewhere.

Another reason he stops listening is the circumstance that somehow, the rattling of the chains in the well nearby is more and more in the forefront of his mind. They give him water every day, but only just enough. A pitcher full. He accepts it, even though he knows it is meant as a cruelty, and will prolong the process.

That is how it must be. In order to do this the proper way, he must have the time to consider properly all the ramifications of being. The way choice and action decides circumstance, the way wave rises and falls so he can once again attune himself to it. The way responsibility works. He knows it becomes lighter with acceptance. This process takes time. Without water, he would have none. Four or five days at the most. Once he is again properly attuned to the wave, he can stop drinking. Until then, the water shall wash him clean inside. However, he cannot claim more than what is needed of this, the most sacred of substances.

The pitcher will do.

The village is changing, he realises after a while. More humans come every day. Haggard, dirty and terrified, they drag themselves along the ground as beaten dogs. He observes them for a couple of days, even listens to their harsh, flittering whispers. The word that seems to be repeated most is 'Ostagar'. Some of the females howl it and tear at their hair. A battle lost, then.

He also realises that the weather must have changed, when sweat drips into his eyes, temporarily obscuring his view. He removes this obstruction of his vision with the back of a hand and realises that the skin in his face is burnt. He is stronger and more resistent to the suns ray than the humans, but there is no trace of shade in the cage and back home in Par Vollen, they have a saying: only mad dogs and Fereldans go out in the mid day sun.

What bothers him more, and this he has to admit to himself, is the way this weather makes it apparent to him that he has had no means of washing the dust off himself since he has been sat here. The dust of the carts going by settles on him. This is, by far, the most difficult of his trials until now, but he accepts it; there is no alternative.

He is also feeling a bit dizzy now, which is why the shrill voice of an angry chantry sister floating across the river annoys him quite a bit. She seems to be arguing with someone over the prices on food. To what end, he wonders. He has only been inside the chantry briefly, when the Holy Mother - that which they seem to have here in stead of the Ariqun - was to decide his fate. He distinctly remembers her disgusted expression as she looked him over. He also remembers the tithes she asked from the refugees coming to get her blessing. Thirty silver. He is not very proficient with the currency here, but compared to the amounts he has heard discussed by the stalls on the marketplace between the common villagers - back when the market of this place was still open - thirty silver coins should be more than adequate to buy the food off this merchant and give it to the fleeing humans, if these clerics are so concerned with this matter.

After the change of weather, the lack of clouds turns the night air crisp and cold. A few cycles of these wild fluctuations of temperature make his throat swell up. He surmises that it is laryngitis. He remembers that he does not have Asala now - he had managed to not think of it, but when a man is approaching the ninth wave, the grandest of waves, it is to be expected that he thinks about his soul. The thought of these things briefly awakes the feeling of terror and panic, but he gnashes his teeth against it. This cowardice is the reason why he is sitting here now. As if a group of human athlok bas could change what is real.

His sword is gone. His kadaani are gone, felled by darkspawn. Led there by his choices. This is real.

All of this, he regrets.

As the sun comes up once more, he is calm again.

He is starting to consider whether he's dreamt it all. Everything, up until now. After all, reality is a laughably frail concept, one that only man in his vanity believes to have any weight. Maaras Shokra, there is nothing to struggle against. He feels ready now, to give himself over to the wave. It is enough. He is at peace, even as he knows he is lost. The Wave, that is all there is.

This is why, when he hears a lilting hum approaching, and opens his eyes and sees the human woman there, he has difficulty determining whether he is surprised or not.

He decides that he is. A basra female wearing the garb of a warrior. He'd have forsworn that even his dreaming spirit could make something like that up.

Hissra, he thinks at first, and says the words to remind himself of this, but she remains, brows divided by a vertical cleft as she observes him back, seemingly deep in thought, her head slightly cocked to one side. Hissra would have dispersed by now, it would not have withstood those words.

Since this is the case, he takes to observing her back. His estimate is a month. Longer than this, she cannot have been wearing this garb on a daily basis. She is more used to singing than wielding weapons every day.

There are still traces of healing blisters on her hands. Wrapped in strips of cloth and leather, barely coherent remains of a pair of leather gloves. Blood spattered, from Ostagar, the place of the lost battle, the name that the females cry.

A month at the very longest, then.

Behind her stand two companions. A male, blonde, wearing heavier armor than she of the grey eyes, and a female, wearing not much of anything at all, a staff casually leaned upon.

A sareebas-bas, he thinks, and it puzzles him. Are they not all in the great towers, like the one he saw in the distance by the lake, just before he and his brothers were attacked? Such was the information, but it is clear to him by now, that much of what has been explained by the Fereldans he has met before coming here has very little to do with how things here are, and a lot more with what they imagine them to be.

Finally, there is the dog. A stately animal, calmly sat behind the left leg of the grey-eyed female. He knows his place, it seems, which is clearly more than could be said about the entirety of the human company which he keeps.

The other two seem fidgety, as if they, too, are puzzled by this stopping and staring of the female in the warriors garb. He is, in fact, starting to find it rude himself. He is surprised as she walks towards him, sticking her fingers between the bars of the cage, closing her palm around one. A small, white fist, and the vertical fold above her nose grows deeper still.

He asks her to leave him alone. Her grey eyes, intent and staring directly at him, blinking less than that of other humans he has come across, makes him aware of himself again. He would prefer to avoid this.

'What did you do to end up in there?'

'How long have you been locked up?'

'Why?'

She is full of questions, like an imekari, and he find himself answering them without being sure why he does so. He suspects, a brief pang of shame in his gut, that it is exactly because of the way she questions. In Par Vollen, it is the ariqun who the small ones question when they seek understanding. This kind of thinking is, of course, presumptious in the extreme, but he puts the thought aside for now. If she is not hissra, and she has arrived now, with the wave, all is in its order. He chooses to speak to her.

She, for her part, continues to listen, which in itself is impressive for a human. Barely once, since he landed on the shores of this Ferelden, has he experienced a listening human. They are all busy talking, polluting the air with meaningless noise.

He tells her why he is here. She suggests that he can find atonement otherwise. 'Atonement', that is the word she uses. He is not sure she quite understands exactly why he chose to remain here in the first place (and like everyone else, she seems oblivious to the fact that the cage is barely an obstruction - though this, he admits, may have changed by now, after the time he has spent here not eating).

Atonement, he has observed, is a human word which carries great popularity in their temples - their Chantry. He supposes that its meaning is close enough to why he is sitting here, if slightly more crude. A word speaking of the judgment of another rather than discipline of the self. Not so big a difference, however, that it is necessary to correct her.

Then she leaves, and he sits down again. She said she would get him out of there. That jest made him angry, though he took care not to show it.

Half an hour or so gets by (the sense of time has come back to him again. This, too, awakens his irritation. He will have to start over, now).

Then she comes back. He hears her from some way off, the same humming, as if she is singing to herself rather than her companions. It is not an uncomfortable sound.

She has the key. She opens the cage. This, he had not expected. Warden, she calls herself (she also mentions one of their many superfluous human-words for themselves, but Warden seems to be the more important of the two).

The wave has come and gone, then, and not taken him with it this time. He must search for it elsewhere.

No one can remain sitting in a cage, once the door has been opened. It would be ridiculous.

She has his armor with her too. He puts it back on, and tells her that he is Sten of the Beresaad, something which she seems to accept. Then she gives him a sword. A spirit, borrowed from a singing female who believes she is a Grey Warden.
It is not his spirit, his Asala, but it will have to do.

The cage has taught him enough to go further. A dream within a dream. This could prove to be one of the more instructive ones.

Then she smiles.

Bird, he thinks. Griffon.

They go.

Behind them, the barred door sings mournfully on its hinges. None of the villagers seem to care enough to go up and close it.