Notes:

Last section of Inquisitor backstory here. The third chapter picks up the start of the game and moves into third person narration.

Prologue II:

It was at this juncture that I should've returned to my clan. Athenril had sold us out and my father was gone. I felt like I should've blamed myself. That it was because of me we were in Kirkwell at all. But I didn't feel that guilt, and the absence of the feeling brought more shame than anything else. I was confused. My father was gone.

I would have walked away from it all were it not for Caspen. He and Thrask were colleagues, almost friends, and maybe they saved my life that day. If I had lain in the streets, passed out and losing blood, maybe I wouldn't be here, be writing these words. It was Caspen, in his soothing way, who convinced me to put pen to paper when the sounds themselves didn't come. To write up to it, document what came first because that would make writing about the rest of it easier.

They told me what they did that day because I remembered none of it. Thrask took me to the Templar garrison. Apparently the collateral damage of a blood-mage's demon-summoning warrants extra medical attention. They set my disjointed arm in my socket, sewed up the jagged tears from the desire demon's claws. The scar puckers along my shoulder, just under my collarbone, onto the top of my right breast, and I can't bear to look at it. They asked me questions that I couldn't answer properly, and I gave them Athenril's name and my own path in garbled half-coherent sentences.

"She said she'll be back for me." I said it over and over; I heard the creature's voice in my mind when I closed my eyes. At first the Templars were worried, had me under guard. But as the days turned to weeks, they dismissed the threat as a malignant and unmeaning, dropped for the express purpose of prolonged torture and delight in my fear.

It was Caspen who pulled me away, eventually, arm around my shoulders as he insisted "she's had enough."

Caspen took me to his home by the docks, planted me at a window that looked out over the Waking Sea. Told me to write, told me that it would get easier. Gave me books to read.

If he hadn't been a scholar, I wouldn't have stayed. The books that lined his walls enticed me though, demanding nothing of me and offering up so much. Reminded me of the late night conversation with my father, when he told me he'd wanted something more for me. And the questions Caspen asked about the Dalish were both informed and respectful.

"So they're not a form of slave branding?" He looked dubious at my certainty as he eyed me over steaming tea. The morning light filtered through the window, over our faces, and the lull of the ocean tide outside made me feel at peace.

"No, no," I laughed at the notion.

He quirked an eyebrow, his hair falling over his forehead as he leaned back in the chair. "I read that the Tevinters branded their elven slaves to denote their own divine preferences."

"They are symbols of worship," I clarified, spreading my hands. "They demonstrate our dedication to particular gods."

His eyebrow arched higher, and I smiled at his exaggerated response. He put on his charm when I seemed withdrawn, humoured me with it and made me smile. It was thoughtful, and I was touched.

"So you're a godless elf then?" He knew he could push on the Dalish issues. I even liked it when he did; it was better than the outright disrespect of strangers, or the deliberately light-hearted treatment of those who tried too hard to be nice.

"I was too young, I suppose. My clan didn't deem me ready for vallaslin, and then we left."

And that was enough on that. The "we" was always my father and I. Caspen knew, and moved on.

"Well, I'm out for the day. Off to meet a merchant from Orzammar. Says he's got some books on lyrium I'm quite interested in."

He stood and slung his bag over his shoulder, gesturing at the modest space. His home boasted two storeys – more than I'd ever achieved in my years in Kirkwall. Two rooms upstairs, one his bedroom and the other, his study. He made the study accommodate me with a bedroll on the ground. The main floor had the cluttered nook where I often sat, a pretence of a kitchen, and walls lined with books.

"Keep yourself amused."

I smiled, said nothing, and watched him go.

Caspen studied demons, and at first I think that's why he kept me around. He would get to it eventually, in a sideways sort of way, asking what she had looked like, what words the mage intoned to bring her here. What she'd said to my father. It was impossible to talk about at first, so he asked if he could read my journal. It was written in his notebooks, with his ink and quills, in his home. I didn't think I could refuse.

After that it was easier to talk about. He explained what he thought had happened. That Quentin wanted something, someone brought back from the dead for him. Maybe. That blood magic was the easiest way bring a demon across the Fade and into our world. That if you had a big favour to ask, a little extra offering to the demon never hurt.

I dreamt of the encounter, but tried not to think on it in my waking moments. I read instead. Sometimes when he came home I was so enamoured with what I'd learned that we'd talk for hours. He'd start grumpy and dusty from the streets, but I knew that the right questions on the right subjects would draw him out. Tevinter history, the Old Gods and the start of the Blight. The connection between lyrium and magic. The question of why dwarves don't dream.

We often sat long into the night, talking and listening. And when the streets got noisy as the bars let out, Caspen would glance away from our locked eyes and make excuses. Stand and go up to bed. Leave me alone with my thoughts and feelings that were new to me. I didn't understand his hesitation.

Thrask came sometimes too. He brought news of Athenril, of the Templar investigation that ultimately turned up nothing.

"She said she had no idea." Thrask's tone is neutral; he isn't sure if he believed the smuggler. He puts his hand out on mine, and though he can't be much older than myself, it feels almost fatherly. "She says she's sorry."

My eyes rise at that point, scanning Thrask's for a sense of what he thinks. In all my years with Athenril, she had never apologized for anything.

"Quentin, the mage, asked for a man that could win the affections or interest of a lady." Thrask recounts Athenril's explanation. "Said he wanted to someone persuade the woman to pay good money for his concoction."

A part of me wanted to seek Athenril out myself. She was shrewd; if her story was true, how had the mage lied so convincingly? How had he fooled us all, the trained liars that we were? A part of me wanted to find Quentin and kill him myself. I'd killed for far less when working for Athenril. But then I heard the demon's words again, you'll get what you want, have her all to yourself, and I wondered if my father had perhaps been ready to die.

There was another hunter who went that way. Keeper Deshanna could have saved him with her magic. But he'd closed her eyes and asked her not to, said death from the hunt was the way of Andruil. Vir Assan. Strike true and do not waver. Do not let your prey suffer. I remember being a child, not understanding it. When I think back to my father and the small smiles he'd give me, I can't say that I could call him a happy man.

I'd killed for pragmatic purposes, but never for vengeance. I didn't know if I could, even if I found Quentin where the Templars had failed. Killing for purpose, for information, is like killing for the hunt. In the woods, we must eat so we slay the druffalo. In the city, the simple needs of food and shelter are complicated, mired in a system that demands coin exchanged at every nexus. Both Athenril and my father demonstrated that killing in the city was a means to an end, gold and secrets that bought comfort and security.

Caspen and Thrask did not object to my criminal past as strongly as I expected. Kirkwall was that sort of city; you couldn't cling to golden principles for very long and survive. It ate away at you, the stone wall's vociferous in the cynicism they fostered. Its people were survivors, strong by stepping on the shoulders of others.

The smallest part of me wanted to write to Elhan, but I wondered at what to say. How to even find him. How much to tell. What he would do in response. My brother, always the stronger of us two – would he let me be? Here with someone who was once a stranger, submerged beneath shemlen books and customs? If he asked me to leave, did I want to? Could I walk away from this knowledge, and from these feelings that I was only beginning to experience?

The touches are gentle at first. I am bolder than Caspen by far. But sometimes, he comes home to find my head on the desk over a book, sleep tickling at my consciousness, and I feel his fingers at my temple, brushing hair back from my eyes and lingered over my ears. The next day, he sits on the couch next to me, closer than he used to, and our thighs press together.

When he is gone, I feel an insistent nagging, an urgency that tells me I need to see him again. I think that I am finally learning of the kind of all-consuming interest Elhan bragged about.

We eat together, and when I look up Caspen's dark ocean eyes are on my face. He goes to say something, flushes, looks down, and the uncertainty is different in him. Less familiar than his assured descriptions of far-off lands and unknown pasts.

When we finally make love, it is not the slow and tentative dance that I imagined, but the snapping point of a string pulled taut, unable to bear more tension. Its fast and when it's over Caspen apologizes and I laugh.

"You've got nothing to be sorry for." My voice is lilting, thick, and I haven't heard it this way in a long time. Maybe never.

He laughs then and brushes my hair back from my face, kisses my forehead.

We continue on together, and I pick up work from notice boards and overheard conversations. I make the best of the contacts I'd gained under Athenril. I turn night-time forays into expensive houses into money for our coffers, and Caspen is able to have more than he has ever had before. The thoughts of my clan fade away, and it is good to be outside again, active and alive in these streets I've come to know so well.

"You're so strong," Caspen whispers to me one night, running a hand along the supple muscle of my arm. "I don't know how you do it."

"It's my dashing good lucks and irrepressible charm." I smile at him, eyes crinkling.

He laughs; it's breathy and low.

"Well, that's the truth. You have me charmed."

His kisses are warm and familiar, a well-read book where the ending doesn't change.

But the idyllic pall that fell over my life inevitably fades. We are going nowhere, and I have read everything. I am done with well-to-do nobles and their petty needs. Caspen brings us little money, sells what artefacts he unearths, but just as often is swindled by a merchant who's too good at doing what I do.

"Where is your ambition?"

He doesn't meet my gaze. Keeps writing. Thinks his publications on the lower left vein of a genlock will thrust him out of obscurity, make his a name worth saying. Never mind that his previous publications have passed largely unacknowledged.

"Caspen, there has to be more than this."

He never answers when I'm firm. It's not our first attempt at this conversation. I leave, grab a drink with friends at the tavern and come home drunk and just as angry. But when I come home, he tells me that he is so close, needs just a little more research before his ground-breaking treatise will be complete.

"Lord Bannen has a copy of the text I need. In his private collection. But I've appealed time and again and it hasn't worked out."

I don't even hesitate. "I'll get it for you. He lives in Hightown?"

Caspen tries to stop me, but the seed is planted and the next day he has a copy. When he realises how easy it was, how I can sink into shadow and go entirely unseen, he gets bolder in his requests. Blood of the shrike, preserved in a noble's curio case. A rare gem, brought up from the dark roads and seldom sold in our markets. A scrap of the metal that killed the archdemon of the Fifth Blight, or so the sign at the museum claimed. He was happier with these things, and I enjoyed the thrill of the clandestine, of working for myself and my love instead of someone with a heavy drawstring purse and trivial needs.

But one day I came home to smashed bookshelves, broken glass, and blood on the sheets. Caspen was gone.

I hit the streets in search and asked everyone I knew. When I returned home again, there was a letter waiting for me.

Starlight. He'd found Athenril's pet name adorable. At first I spat at its mention, told him I didn't want to be reminded of her. But the poetry of it had always made me feel pretty. My vanity won out, I suppose.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before our ways caught up with us. They want you to bring gold, and the following tomes to the Hightown Market at midnight tonight. Please do so. They will kill me if you don't.
C.

I grabbed the books he'd scrawled across the bottom of the page and pocketed what gold we had. There was no choice here. And because I wasn't sure how final this interaction would be, I packed my travel satchel too, carried this notebook, the moon carving of my father's that I'd saved, my old bedroll.

Trying to write about it now, it's hard piece together what transpired in the tucked away corner of the Hightown market square. I remember a smell of olives and sun, the kind of scent you learn from bazaar merchants who give names to novel flavours.

And then I was waking up, wrists tied behind my back somewhere dank and cold. My knives and pack were gone, but I seemed unhurt, only discomfited. As I tried to tuck my arms out of the knots, I sighed. Gas of some kind. Something I've never seen before. Knocked me flat and left my head filled with fog.

"Your boyfriend is gone." There's a voice on the other side of a wooden door I hadn't seen in the gloom. The door opens and there's a man, broad across the shoulders, clad in leather armour with a blade at his waist. Light pools in from the hallway behind him and from the dust and the stench I assume we are somewhere in the labyrinth that lies beneath Lowtown, the inner veins of the darkest part of the city.

"What did you do to him?" I spit, wresting myself onto my knees.

"Do to him?" He laughs. "He was all too happy to take off once you'd made the drop. Spindly pillow-biting bugger. I didn't even get a tickling to kill him."

"You're lying." My denial was immediate, but I blanched when he laughed even harder.

"Aren't you a precious thing?" His kneels in front of me, gloved hand reaching out to rub my cheek, and I made to bite at his fingers. He flinched back, and then backhanded me across the face, sending me sprawling.

"I wasn't going to keep you. People's always trouble. Feeding, moving, selling – too much trouble."

Hassle. That's what Athenril had said.

"But then I saw your ears and got thinking." His eyes are cold, shiny in the dark. "I got a friend who likes an elven girl, all trussed up and pretty like."
I snarled and leapt at him again, but he straightened and knocked me down with a boot.

"Buggered if I understand it. Wild animals, the lot of you. Couldn't pay me to stuff you with my cock." The door slammed and a bolt fell shut as he retreated. Then, that smell of olives again, and darkness.

All anyone needs to knows of what came after is that the thug who captured me spoke truly. There was a man, and he did like his elven girls trussed and bound. He paid for me, and all my possessions. He read my journal, mocked me with my past with acerbic words that contradicted his soft, untried hands. Venom and sin fell from his lips, working in tandem with gossamer fingers, touching softly, smoothly, making my body betray me as poison rage ran through my veins. He was rich, had a glorious house and an entourage of elven servants.

He ogled me as he ran my mother's dagger across my skin. He slid the moon token my father whittled across his lips and left it out in front of me, daring me to take comfort in it as I once had. When he left, I curled my fingers around the token, and tried to do just that to spite him. There was a word for this, for what he did to me over and over again, a specific, vile word in both human and elven because some depravity is so base that it's an insidious part of everything that lives. I turned inward, tried to be away when he was here, on me, near me, in me.

But one day he got careless, overconfident in his ability to control me. I had wondered once, after my father died, if I could kill for vengeance.
I learned that I could do more than kill. I eviscerated.

And then I packed up my belongings, my journal, my mother's dagger and my father's totem, and I slipped through a window, scaled the stone wall in the way I had a hundred times before on one fancy villa or another.

When my feet touched the ground, I realised I had no sense of time. Up there, in that room with heavy blue curtains and lush scents, I had no sense of when or where or how long. It was nighttime, and I was spattered in viscera knowing only one thing. I needed to leave Kirkwall.

*
The woods are lonely, dark and deep. But they felt like home.

I found a grove beneath a cliff where my clan had once camped for months. No evidence suggested that an entire band of elves had once stationed aravel and raised halla in and amongst the stone, but I remembered the looming oaks that Elhan and I had climbed.

It was up in one of those trees that I'd spend my nights at first. I'd been moving for days until then, desperate to make distance between Kirkwall and myself. But these were familiar trees, the ones for which I was named, and the memory of a younger version of myself, happy in the canopy with a brother and a father who cared persuaded me to stay a while and listen. I felt safer wedged between greenery and bark. I hoisted fallen tree limbs up into the space, bracing them against the existing network of ancient branches, cushioning myself with a bedroll. I lost myself in the sound of the forest around me, the chitter of squirrels and songs of birds that searched out mates and scared away rivals.
In the tree I began to write again as well. Caspen may have been gone. May have betrayed me to save his own skin. But he had taught me that there was a comfort it acknowledging my life, in this small way. That words unwritten would turn into festering thoughts. Putting something on a page purged them from my mind where they rattled around without resolution. Sometimes I'd poise my hand to write and nothing would come, and sometimes, I could only chart the words of old Dalish songs, archaic poetry and the promise of a future radically different from our present.

One morning, after I'd gathered nuts and berries for breakfast, I heard voices in the clearing below. They were human men, hunters by their garb, and I stayed perfectly still. They made camp in the shadow of the escarpment wall, recognizing, as my clan had, that the geography provided natural protection from the elements and the wildlife. I listened absently to their chatter from my tree, speculations on marriage prospects, careful inventory of their rations. I half-smiled at their protestations over the absence of game – how could they expect to catch anything when they traipsed around like Ferelden soldiers in full battle armour, the clank of their boots reverberating through the woods?

They were gone by the next day and I tentatively slipped out of my tree, padded over to the ashes they'd left in their wake. I knelt by the fire and thought on their simple words. Worries about the coming winter; one had lamented his arthritic bones and as I looked at the stormy sky, I echoed his fears of dropping temperatures.

"Are you missing human contact? Or does the solitude suit you?"

I spun, daggers out, dropping into a battle stance and backing up to keep the cliff at my back. A woman, elven, long dark hair in braids and a soft smile on her face. No vallaslin. A mage's staff on her back and forest green and brown robes, inlaid with scrolling stitched patterns I didn't recognize.

"Calm, child," her voice is music, low and flowing, and her tone tries to smooth away my fear. "I simply wish to speak. I been watching you for several days now."

"I saw no sign of you." I speak and my own voice surprises me. It's loud, nothing like the fluid melody of her own. It's raw with disuse and self-imposed silence.

She laughs, a sound like the susurration of water over rocks.

"I have been living this way for much longer than you, my dear. To lose myself in the woods is nothing."

My stance does not lighten. I try to back up further, but I cannot.

"I knew your father, lethallan." Her elvish sends memories jumbling through my veins; I had not heard the language of my people for years. "I often watched Clan Lavellan as you made your home in this very grove."

I soften slightly then, but still say nothing. Her gestures are disarming, hands out, palms up and away from her staff, but I am wary of the faults of trusting to soon.

"You have your father's eyes." Words that I knew were true. The dark hue like the colour of ivy as it wormed its way up city walls. A Kirkwall memory for such a simple thing as a shade of green. I shook my head, sent the thoughts scattering.

"Who are you?"

"I am Marethan. The humans call me a witch of the woods." She smiles, disarms my fears and I try desperately to hold to my slipping resolve, to keep my distrust in place. "I enjoyed your Clan's hospitality on more than one occasion. Keeper Deshanna and your father traded food and a place to rest for the information I could bring."
"Why are you here?"

"Where else should I be?" She gestures to the trees around us. "An elf without a clan, what more do I need? A mage without a keeper, what hope do I have in a city?"

At the darkening of my expression, she comes to understand that I too have had my full of cities.

"Come, lethallan. Let us find peace in the presence of another for a time."

I feel my commitment to suspicion flee. She has put me at ease, and I drop, but do not sheath, my daggers as I fall in step beside her. She is older, I observe from the lines that spiderweb around her eyes and mouth, but she is slight, only a fraction taller than I am and endowed with a willowy grace I could never hope to match.
Her eyes, blue and clear, are trained on me, bright with intelligence as she tells me of her past. Offering up her story as a goodwill gesture, an attempt to ease the tension that obviously haunts me.

Marethan was a child with magic, born into a clan with too many mages already. They tried to find a place for here. Never did. Cast her out and let her make her own way. She was captured by Templars, escaped, made a life for herself in the woods. Gathered herbs and made ointments and salves that she traded with small town shem who did not fear her. Met up with other clans when she saw them, traded stories and news for company.

She recounts her past without judgement. She does not condemn her clan as callous, understanding, I think, that it was simply part of their way. I think back on my own life, my experiences in Kirkwall too, and again am thankful I was not born with a mage's fizzling connection to the Fade.
Marethan takes me to her current home.

"A nook in the woods," she calls it with a smile, and I am enchanted by the dyed animal hide drapery that adorns the cave, creating a sense of walls and home, while concealing the interior from prying eyes. A solidly built fire pit warns off predators near the entrance, and within she has herbs hung out to dry, jars labelled in slanted script, even a few books with folded down corners pointing to favourite pages.

"Stay with me a while?" She turns to me, her intonation a slight question. "I hunger for company that can speak and share stories."

"Do you have any other kind of company?"

She laughs then. "Sharp girl. Indeed I do, though you must promise not to be alarmed."

We move deeper into the cave, and she gestures to a dark back corner of the cave. In the gloom, I make out movement, the steady in-out of breath through a furry frame.
"Faolan. Come here."

A shaggy head in the dark and golden eyes meet mine. I'm in my battle stance in an instant as the large wolf saunters over. But again Marethan is laughing and she rests slim fingers on my wrist, asking me to be at ease.

"Faolan will do you no harm. We have known many roads together, and he is my staunchest ally."

Suddenly, I did remember this woman. A source of wonder, even to my own people, with her large grey wolf and the ability to spin stories that we could almost see before our eyes.

"You're the storyteller. The one who serves Fen'harel."'

Her eyes meet mine and she smiles.

"I knew I made an impression. You were so young when last we met, but I'll never forget your eyes. Your father, your brother and you, all so serious when you listened."
"But Fen'harel…." The Dread Wolf, a trickster and a pair among our gods. The question was implicit in the apprehension on my face – how can you serve a betrayer god? One who sealed away his brothers and sisters, doomed our people to a godless world? I don't know that the thoughts were mine, unsure in my beliefs as I was. But they were the knee-jerk reaction to childhood stories, told in my Keeper's voice with the appropriate amount of fear and respect due to any god, fallen or not.

"When I escaped from the Templars," Marethan's voice was prompt now, and she swung her staff forward to lean on it, "they corned me near Lake Calenhad. They have weapons and tools that render magic useless; my normal defenses failed me, but I would have rather died than lived a life in Kinloch Hold."

"Kinloch Hold?" We are sitting now; she'd eased me down by her side at the mouth of the cave, and though I keep a wary eye on Faolan, he seemed to have lost interest in me. Sits next to Marethan, licks his paws and nuzzles into her hand as she rubs behind his ears.

"An empty place rife with corruption and sorrow. A mage Circle." Faolan growls softly at the words, golden eyes closed. It won't be the first time that I think to myself – it's like he understands what we're saying.

"They would have killed me. I would have let them." Marethan's brings her right palm up, and a small flame puffs into existence. "I was prepared to die because I had been born this way."

She meets my eyes then, pale blue on verdant green, like the place where the sky meets the rolling treetop canopy.

"Faolan saved me. He bounded out of the woods and killed the two Templars."

"He has a strong moral compass." I comment, eyes appraising the large animal.

Marethan smiles softly. "Indeed. I knew there could be no clearer sign. I was indebted to a servant of Fen'harel, had no choice but to become one myself. It has served us both well, I think."

"He Who Hunts Alone," I said wryly as I watched Marethan stroke the wolf's fur. "Not so lonely anymore?"

The older elf smiles.

"No indeed."

*
From Marethan, I learn how to cook. My life in Kirkwall was fed on stolen bread, leave-the-pot-on-all-day soup and purchased meals. At Caspen's, I'd mastered the basics only. Frying an egg, boiling potatoes - I'd made it pretty far with an impressive lack of culinary ability, really. But somehow, the uncivilized press of the Planesene Forest made for a better kitchen than any home I'd known.

Marethan made spices from ground elfroot and tree scrapings. She brewed tea with a collection of just the right petals and roots. She skinned a rabbit faster than any hunter I'd known, and let the meat sit deep in the cave, somewhere cool and dark, soaking in the flavours of a seasoning and broth she'd prepared.

It was all highly unconventional. I was used to foraging for nuts, smearing my fingers with berry juice and maybe a little pheasant on a stick for dinner. This flavouring and spicing resisted me at first.

"Oh… my." Ever the optimist, Marethan winced as she sipped at my 'soup'. "It's… flavourful."

I took a sip and then stood, spluttering it out and all over. Faolan, who had been contently curled up against my legs, sniffed at the mess and growled lowly.

"It's a lost cause." My tone was final, discouragement in my slumped shoulders and sense of defeat.

Marethan laughed and stood next to me.

"It will take some doing, I admit." The faint lines around her mouth deepened as she suppressed a smile at my dejection. "But we will get you there."

She raised a hand as if to pat my shoulder, but froze as I flinched away.

"Ah, my apologies." She knew, by now, that the prospect of contact put me on edge. She bustled on. "Nothing a little smoked spindleweed can't solve, isn't that right dear?"

As she puttered around the cave, I retreated into myself. I needed Marethan, I'd realized only hours after meeting her. That realization had prompted me to stay as days turned to weeks and weeks into seasons. She was slow, patient, undemanding as she taught me her ways and we wandered south for the winter.

She knew, from the very first day we met, that something plagued me. I woke suddenly that night, cold sweat and terror on my face as she pulled me into her arms.

"Hush now," she cooed, cradling me gently and then I was crying against her shoulder, into her silvery hair. "You were screaming." Her voice was warm, soft beside my ear.

All those nights alone after Kirkwall, I hadn't shed a tear. As I dreamed night after night of his face and his hands, I'd awoken petrified and still, alone in a tree, a gully, a cave, with rampant thoughts and dry, empty eyes. And yet now, at the first promise of a semblance of normalcy, of contact with the world, emotions I couldn't name clutched at my soul and crumbled my resolve.

"Hush," Marethan said again, hands stroking my hair. "There is no one here but us, darling. You are safe."

I tried to believe her. But as my sobbing gave way to ragged breaths the pressure of fingers on my skin, at my shoulder, in my hair was suddenly fire. I screamed and shoved at him, stumbling to my feet. As I ran from the camp, it was his voice melting in my ears.

"Ellana dear, don't run!"

Marethan found me in the morning, curled up in the root network of an ancient oak.

"Get him away," I whimpered, hands wrapped around my head, knees up against my chest.

"Oh child," she knelt, but kept her distance. Faolan sat at her side, head cocked. "He was never here. He cannot hurt you in this place, with us."

"I…I killed him." My voice cracked. My lips were so dry.

Her voice is certain when she answers. "Good."

"He can't be here."

"No, he cannot." She was so sure, and I wanted to believe.

Faolan approached, nuzzled softly against my hands.

"Come, child. It is a beautiful day. We will move on."

I looked up between my fingers. She was kneeling, but did not move towards me, steely blue eyes steady as they met my own. We will move on. So sure, and I wanted to believe her.

I uncurled, wincing at the twinge of my back against a knot in the roots.

"Let's go then." I try to smile, hand on Faolan's neck as he helps me to my feet.

*
The nightmares continue, but I've learned slow my heartbeat when I wake. Some nights, it's him, and he's soft and seductive, merciless in his torture. Other days, it's a haunting pink aura and a voice that's both smooth and jagged. The desire demon and my father's blood on my hands, my face.

Instead of consolation in a hug or whispered words, Marethan makes me tea and tells me stories. Her own versions on old Dalish legends. Snapshots of the Fifth Blight and the Hero of Ferelden. The story of Andraste and her revolution. It's easy to sit back and listen to words about far off versions of our world. She sings old melodies in a haunting full voice and invites me to sing along.

My cooking improves, I am happy to say, and soon it becomes something to lose myself in, addictive in the same the way that Kirkwall's taverns had presented a sweet release from attentiveness. I spend longer than is strictly necessary over our campfire, experimenting with seasoning, perfecting just how long to knead the dough before the perfect bannock emerges. Poultices and blends of tea also join my arsenal of skills, and there seems to be no limit to Marethan's knowledge. And slowly, my capacity for human contact returns, and I let Marethan braid my hair or rest a hand on my shoulder.

I tell stories of my own, at first sticking to words out of Caspen's collection. But when that fount runs dry, I fall into words about my own life, my family and clan. The death of my father.

"I didn't realise." Marethan said, in the stillness of the night, our eyes trained to the flames of our campfire. "She said she would be back for you?"

"She did, and at first that worried me. But Thrask said it was likely a ploy. Words to keep me up at night." I didn't mention that they did, sometimes, come back in the nighttime with a verve that unsettled me. I rubbed my arms against the chill, and leaned back into Faolan's warm side. He growled contentedly.

"Hmm." Marethan seemed unconvinced by Thrask's assessment. Once, that would have worried me. But I remembered our encounter a fortnight earlier. A group of Ferelden vagabonds mistook us for an easy target. I didn't even have time to unsheathe my daggers. Marethan's staff was out, her feet moving and fire flying. When we spoke of my father, I thought back to the charred remains of those bandits and decided that even a demon of desire could be burned.

It had been a while since I'd seen human death, I realised after the bandits. As she rifled through their pockets in the aftermath, I'd looked down at my hands and remembered the carnage they had caused in that room with the dark blue drapes.

I carved a man's heart out with these hands.

He was not a man though, Marethan said, in response to a scream that woke us both up in the night. One of my screams. She said, quite firmly, that he was not a man. Not really. He was the lowest form of life, below animal, elf, and human, a creature satisfied in ill-gotten power who pleasured in the oppression of others. Such life forms were not the product of intelligent design; no Maker or Creator would will such a thing into the world.

No, Marethan had said.

"Such beings are mistakes. Accidental consequences of poorly thought out actions, damaged beyond repair. The world is a better place without them."
I could never feel guilt for what I did to him. But neither could I speak of him.

"We are nearly at the Brecilian Forest." I say, one day as we walk and Marethan gently asks me about it all. My tone was overbright.

"Ellana," Marethan caught up to me, fingers on my elbow. "You must acknowledge your past. There will be other moments where you face questions. There will be a time when you need to be free of these memories."

"I am." I spread my hands, unsure what the gesture is supposed to convey. "I am fine."

"One day there will be others – a touch you want to feel."

"And that will be lovely. I'm sure he'll be strapping and tall, the perfect gentleman."

"Ellana," her tone insistent.

"Let's go," I insist in return. "We're losing light!"

She sighed, and quickened her pace to keep up with me.

*
I see the signs, clear as the blue of a cloudless sky, and wait for Marethan to say something. She looks at me, and there is sadness in her expression, but also acceptance.

"Marethan." I move towards her, the soft leather armour we had fashioned together shifting. I pull her into my arms, and she returns the hug tightly.

"You are certain that it is time? That you can go back to them?"

Araval treads in the mud and a curious absence of game. We are being watched, and we both know which clan is in the woods this time of year. Though we had never spoken of it, we both knew that our journey south to the Brecilian Forest was for my benefit. To find my clan.

"I am ready to do so because of you." I loved this woman, her patient ways and able hands. Her support and the way she tries not to smile when I burn our bread and let fly a string of curses that betray my varied upbringing.

"You would have been fine. On your own." She steps back and takes my hands. "You are strong, Ellana."

"Stronger for having known you." I smile and do not try to brush the tears from my eyes. "You will not stay with us? I am not certain they will even have me back."
She smiles and her blue eyes sparkle.

"Then we had best not push our luck." She releases my hand, and Faolan, sensing their departure, stands.

"Goodbye, Faolan." I rub the wolf behind the ears, and he nuzzles my palm with his nose.

"Ellana," Marethan's hands now grip her staff. "You must tell someone. Your Keeper. Your brother. Someone."

I do not look up from the wolf when I answer.

"I will try."

"Good." She sweeps by me, grace and wisdom her effortless companions. "Come Faolan. Let's go find dinner. These Lavellan's have sacred off all the game."

She leaves and I fall to my knees.

"Keeper Deshanna. I ask for your…"

My voice failed. What did I want? Forgiveness? Had I transgressed?

"For your blessing."

I dropped my gaze and listened as the stillness shifted. I knew they were conferring, pondering over the exchange between myself and Marethan. Though my clan had hosted Marethan before, a servant of Fen'harel could never truly be trusted. It was a belief I had been raised with, had cast away in the face of Marethan's palpable goodness.

"Our daughter, Ellana."

Keeper Deshanna was in front of me, hands open and face warm. "It has been too long." She brushed hair back from my forehead and put her fingers beneath my chin.
"We will have much to discuss."

*
For fifteen years of my life, these faces were the only ones I had truly known. Lorien with his cat-like poise and sharp eyes. Miriel, now my brother's partner and as golden-haired as I remembered. Elhan, Elhan who crushed me against him when he returned from his hunt, oblivious to my sudden stillness and hasty retreat. Elhan who didn't stop talking, whose energy was infectious, who kept me up with question after question.

The Clan collectively mourned my father. But amidst their appropriately solemn words, a part of me sensed a latent satisfied pride, the smirk of an I-told-you-said that no one voiced but everyone thought. The horrors I had endured were the inevitable consequence of straying too far from Dalish ways, and I had never even told them the worst of it. But I saw the judgement in their mannerisms and their guarded ways with me.

At first I wondered at how they'd changed. At why I felt a little sad, alone, when Elhan was out on the hunt. But slowly, I thought on Marethan's words, are you certain that it is time? A question about me, not about my Clan. They were the same as they had always been. I was the one who would never be truly Dalish again.

I had picked the locks on Hightown mansions. Knocked guards flat with tripwires or knives. Seduced a bartenders into parting with secrets. Stolen ancient tomes and killed slavers in the name of wiping out the competition. Had watched Templars shorten the leashes on their mages, while reading about distant kingdoms where mages ruled.

I knew how to swear in six different languages and could tell the difference between cheap Orlesian pilsner and a Fereldan lager. I could juggle knives for coins and do a backflip off a building. I watched a demon tear my father apart and had lived in even greater isolation than my clansmen. To do it all and then be here, in the Brecilian Forest, stationary for the moment… I felt as if time had stopped.

Elhan felt my restlessness.

"Ellana. You must stay." We sat side by side beneath a tree and watched his toddler crawl its way toward its mother. Her mother, I correct myself mentally. It was a girl, with her mother's blond locks and our dark eyes.

"Maybe soon the Keeper will ask about vallaslin." His tone is hopeful, but from the way he won't meet my eyes, I know that he is just as aware as I am. Just as certain that this, whatever I have now, will not last.

He looked down then, at the journal in my hand.

"What happened to Caspen?" His face, agile eyes and high cheekbones, raises to meet my eyes. "He certainly gave you enough notebooks to last you a lifetime of journaling."

"I took a few with me when I left him." I run my hand over the leather bound notebook, and look away from Elhan's intense gaze.

"I didn't know when I'd get a chance to buy my own. He had so many he wasn't using."

In my head a different story plays, my frantic packing as I went to meet his kidnappers in the Hightown market. My hands shaking at the prospect of losing him. The stupid concerns of a stupid girl.

"Caspen was a fool." My hands clench shut into fists. "A selfish fool."

And maybe a dead one, a part of my mind insists. How trustworthy was the information I had, after all? Perhaps he'd never even made it out of those Lowtown dungeons where I'd been briefly held.

"Did he hurt you?" Elhan's voice, usually effusive, is soft now. I meet his eyes and smile, recognize that he cares, is trying to help.

"No. He didn't."

We look over to Mariah, watch her play in the leaves as her mother stands off to the side, observing as her deft fingers thoughtlessly weave a basket out of reeds. The wind rustles Miriel's hair, and I look back to my brother.

"Mariah is very beautiful." I smile. "Father was right. You belong here, Elhan."

"So do you," his tone is pleading and he knows it is too late.

When Keeper Deshanna asks for a volunteer to spy at the Conclave, it's as if the whole clan knows that this is no question at all. I almost wonder if she is providing me an out, concocting a mission to have me leave and the Clan restored to balance. No one is surprised when I stand.

"It would be my honour, Keeper Deshanna"