Chapter Two: Rasa, Daughter of the Shadow
She knew her mamae would not be around forever. Esha told her stories about the Blight, and about being the Hero of Ferelden, and the Warden-Commander. She told her stories about taking down Crows, and this confused her sometimes, because her papa laughed and said they weren't real crows, and that he had been a Crow once, himself. And now her mamae was sick, and her skin was patched with black, and her veins were turning darker shades of blue.
Her papa would look at her mamae with eyes that Rasa could not understand, and Esha would laugh and say that Falon'Din was not there yet.
Her mamae said that her papa was Fen'Harel, and they had made a Bargain. Rasa did not understand the Bargain; her papa would just laugh and hug her mamae, at those times, and would muss Rasa's hair. He used words that her mamae didn't, and her mamae used words that he didn't, but she knew they meant the same things: da'len and niña, amora and querida, and vhenen'ara and ma sa'lath, but they never used the words in the language everyone else around her spoke.
They told her that she had lived in Antiva, and now she lived in Ferelden, and one day she would live someplace else, perhaps with her mamae's Sabrae clan, if she wished. And her mamae got older, and her papa got older, and they both got sadder as her mamae got sicker.
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One day her mamae came to her and sat in front of her, on the floor. It was harder for her to get into the position she liked to sit, crouching with her elbows on her knees, lounging and comfortable. Her mamae said it was easy for her to spring up and use her bow, when she sat like that, when she was younger. But her mamae was not old, not like her papa was, and yet she looked so much older. Her mamae sat in front of her, and spoke to her seriously.
"Rasa, I am leaving. I am going with Alistair, and I will not be back." Rasa, all of ten years of age, wept, hearing such a thing from her mamae, and clung to her. Esha had always been so strong and unflappable, always ready with a laugh and a tickle, but Esha held her, and Rasa felt her mother's tears on her cheeks.
"I am sorry, da'len, but Falon'Din is calling. We made a bargain, and Fen'Harel changed that bargain, but the one with Falon'Din had to be paid eventually. I have to pay the price." Her papa sat nearby, not on the floor as her mamae did, but in a chair that was padded and soft and comfortable. His eyes, usually laughing and dancing, were sad, and sorrowful.
Alistair came, then, and he looked old like her mamae did. Esha and Alistair spoke, and laughed, and her papa laughed, too. Rasa felt shy around Alistair, suddenly; she had known him for a long time, knew him to be kindly, knew him to be The King. Sometimes the other children did not believe that her mamae was friends with The King, but Rasa knew she spoke truly, and her papa said it didn't matter what the other children thought. But now he was there to take her mamae away, and she was not sure she could ever forgive him that.
Her mamae did not pack her few things. She said she would not need them, and her papa set his jaw and looked away from her. Esha tucked the earring into a little box, where she kept such things, and told Rasa she could have it when she was old enough.
She heard her papa speak with Alistair one night, before her mamae left, and she heard her papa cry for the first time ever. Rasa hid behind the door, not even daring to breath. Her papa sat at the table with The King, and his head was in his hands, and his shoulders were shaking with his crying. Alistair had his hand on her papa's shoulder, and The King was crying, too. Her mamae refused to come out of their room.
Alistair took her into town the next day, and there were guardsmen there in the town. Rasa was scared of the guardsmen, until Alistair told her that, if he said, they would dance the Remigold in a pretty dress for him, and she laughed and held his hand shyly. They ate food in the market, and he bought her a doll that was a Knight, and she named her Ser Knight. They returned late, and when they did, she rushed into her parents' room. They were not wearing much clothing, and her papa was holding her mamae, his chin resting on the top of her head, the two of them lying together on the bed.
The King blushed, and laughed, and tried to get her to come back into the kitchen to play with Ser Knight, but she stood there and watched her parents for a moment. She knew that they knew that she was there, but Zevran and Esha did not let each other go, and they did not ask her to leave them. She had never doubted her place in their life, and suddenly she realized that they had never doubted their place in each other's lives, either, and that they mourned something stronger than she would ever know.
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Her mamae left the next day, with Alistair, and Rasa did not see her again. Weeks later, many weeks later, when Rasa's most immediate pain was just starting to dull, and Zevran's pain had not even had the edge taken off, a human woman came to their home.
Her papa said she was The Divine, and called her "lovely Leliana." She also had guards, and she wore her sorrow more openly than her papa did. He did not cry, this time; he claimed he had no more tears. Leliana spoke with her, and her accent sounded odd to Rasa's ears, but it was kind, as well. She told Rasa stories about her mamae, and about her papa, and about the Blight. The stories sounded grand, and she and Ser Knight would act them out with the other children, sometimes.
One night, while Leliana was still there, she heard her papa arguing with her in the kitchen. Leliana was angry that no one had told her sooner, that she arrived too late, and her papa said he could offer no excuses. "It was their time," he said, "and there was nothing I could do to stop it or slow it."
After a long moment of quiet, she spoke again. "Did she truly think you were Fen'Harel?" Leliana's voice was suddenly soft and gentle.
"Would it matter? She never asked me to be anything that I was not already, and I never asked anything else of her. What care I for Dalish gods?" He sounded angry, and her papa was rarely angry.
"You care more than you admit," Leliana admonished him. "At first I thought you were playing a game with her, and I was inclined to be cross with you. But then I realized that she was the one who started the game, and what did it matter?"
"Not a game. A bargain. She always offered or asked a price, for everything."
"What did she ask for Rasa?" Again, the tone was soft and gentle.
"She didn't, of me. Not that there was much of a choice," he said, laughing bitterly. "But when she found out, she said that there was no price needed for something she was so happy to do."
"You loved her." It was a question, and it was not.
"Yes," he said, simply. She had never heard him, or her mamae, ever say "I love you" to each other. Always to her, but never to each other. The idea that they might have loved each other had never occurred to her, and it made her feel odd and uncomfortable in a way that she did not know how to express. They had never said they loved each other in words she could understand, and Rasa went to bed that night wondering how much about her parents she had missed.
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And then Leliana was gone, and she was alone with her papa. He would speak of her mamae often, always smiling when he did so, and she grew, as girls did, over the years, until she was a woman grown.
One day she came home to papa and told him of a man who had caught her eye, spoke of how handsome he was. Her papa laughed then, and pulled her into a hug. "Did he try to kill you, da'len?" That confused her for a moment; that was her mother's word for her, not his.
"No! Why would I ever want to take up with a man who tried to kill me?" The question was absurd, and the echo of her mamae's name hurt more than she thought possible, after the years.
He sobered for a moment and then placed a kiss on the top of her head. "Good. Avoid men who try to kill you; they could be Fen'Harel in disguise." The smile he put on did not touch his eyes, however, and for a moment he reminded her of the days after mamae had gone with King Alistair to her Calling.
"But Fen'Harel is only a legend," she said, insistently, instead of calling attention to the change in her papa. Her mamae had called her papa that, Fen'Harel, sometimes, usually when she wanted something, but Fen'Harel was not truly real, no more than any other of the Dalish gods were real. She remembered the story of her mamae and papa finding the ashes of Andraste; surely the Maker and Andraste were real, so the Dalish gods could not be.
"There are many who say that about mamae," her papa countered.
"But mamae was real," Rasa argued. Of course she was real! Her mamae had held her, and kissed her skinned knees, and told her stories, and danced with her. Who could possibly doubt that mamae was real?
"Just so," Zevran said.