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Spirit of the water, soothe away my anger.
For I am soon to leave here in great fear and pain.
Surround me with thy beauty, if it please thee that I might lose my fear of the flames.

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When I was very young, water was at the center of my world. Not a day went by when I did not gaze out over the bay that stretched into the Amaranthine Ocean, at the fishing boats bobbing gently on her sparkling surface, or the waves perpetually breaking against the rocks that lined the shore. That was the view that greeted me each morning when I stepped outside the little house where I lived with my mother in a dusty outpost of the Tevinter Imperium.

It was water - the vast ocean that started at our doorstep - that sustained us, from which we harvested much of our food. It was the ocean that allowed my mother to make her livelihood weaving fishing nets. I spent countless hours watching her weave the strands of hemp together, her fingers grasping a long needle made of bone, thin and flat, flying back and forth and in and out almost faster than my eyes could track. Her hands were rough and calloused, the skin damaged and dry in places where it had been rubbed and rubbed by the rough fibers of rope.

It was just the two of us: Mother and I. Mother never spoke of my father, and I don't remember him at all, if, indeed, I ever met him. But I never cared about that. She and I were happy.

Or if we weren't happy, I was too young to know the difference.

Now, I can no longer picture my mother's face. In truth, it has been a great many years since I held her face clearly in my mind. The only thing about her I remember distinctly, other than her rough hands, was her eyes. They were golden brown, just a shade darker than honey, and had wrinkles that formed at their corners when she smiled. And I suppose I also remember her hair, as it was the same color as my own, the color of unharvested wheat. Hers was short, though, while mine has always been long, falling nearly to my waist. Until tonight, that is.

Certain scents remind me of her, too: lavender, honeysuckle, and the subtle perfume of bleeding ladies. Mother loved flowers. She always had a vase in the center of the table, filled with whatever was currently in bloom, or with stems of dried grasses and cattails during the winter. Bleeding ladies were her favorite, their delicate petals stretching outward, white at the ends, but turning deep red, nearly the color of blood, near the stem.

Together she and I often wandered the hills, collecting wild flowers. We did this most often in the late afternoons, when she needed to stretch her legs and the muscles in her back and neck after weaving all day, and before weaving throughout the evening as well, by candlelight that strained her eyes. We picked flowers, and plucked ripe berries from their vines, and apples from the trees. I loved these hours with my mother, hours which felt stolen and precious, welcome time away from the dimly lit cottage which never seemed to be the right temperature: stuffy and warm in summer, and so cold in winter I could see the plumes formed by my own breath.

Always we were together, and only rarely was I allowed out of her sight. Gradually, I came to understand that she was fearful for me, afraid I would come to some harm. One night, when I was feverish and unable to sleep and she sat up with me ladling warm soup between my parched lips, she'd admitted to me the reason: that she'd had bad dreams while carrying me in her womb, dreams of harm that would come to me. So she did her best to be ever vigilant, so whatever horror the dreams had possessed would not come to pass.

But her vigilance was for naught, and when the horrors came, they, like most everything else in my childhood, arrived by water.

I was stolen from my mother. Carried away while she screamed from the doorway of our home, which was burning in spite of the gentle rain that fell from the overcast winter sky. She fell to her knees, a dark stain on the front of her shirt that appeared to be growing, even as she diminished in size as I was carried away from her and hauled up the gangway onto a ship. A ship bound for Tevinter.

For all the weeks of that voyage, I saw nothing but water during the minutes each day I was allowed above deck. Standing on the hard wooden planks, my feet bare and my shoulders shivering in the gusting wind that filled the sails, pushing me far too quickly away from the life I had known, I strained my eyes for any glimpse of land. But only water stretched out in every direction. Water, and sunlight that grew brighter as we traveled north. Light that became warmer, more brilliant, whiter and so harsh it made me shield my eyes with a flat hand. My vision blurred from the brightness of it, and brought tears to my eyes that I was afraid to shed. Tears that left dampness on my cheeks when I was unable to stop them.

I tried to reach out to the Spirit of the water, as my mother had taught me.

"What need have we for the Imperium's uncaring gods," she had said, "when we can draw on the powers that live alongside us every minute of our lives?"

Reaching out to the water was comforting, even though the water never answered back. Or, perhaps she did, her voice like waves that lapped against the hull of the boat, never ceasing, whispering, whispering, whispering in the background until they became so familiar I didn't recognize them as something apart from myself.

At any rate, I was soothed by the sounds, by the scent, by the way the water rocked the ship. By the knowledge of her cool depths stretching down beneath me. I suppose there lies the proof that I wasn't wholly miserable with this fate: I could have ended it at any time, leapt from the ship into the welcoming arms of the sea. She would have taken me, embraced me, given me release if that was what I had truly wanted.

But I wanted life more than I wanted escape.

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