"You're a mage?"

"Why do you sound slightly less surprised at this than you were when I said Orlesians are born without makeup?"

"What? Don't avoid the topic, you can't do that now after cooking our dinner on magic fire you made with your hands," Kane, as I had instructed, was not speaking. Unfortunately, the red-headed brat didn't think the same rule applied to him and addressed me however he pleased.

I tore into my fox meat, rather not enjoying my meal for the odd taste and texture—not to mention the meat was tough and the company was irritating. Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen Kane gobble down his dinner, and my poor sister barely picked at hers. She eagerly offered what she hadn't touched to him and he accepted it with more grace than I could have imagined.

Hunter snapped his fingers in front of my eyes to get my attention again, so I swallowed, and sighed, "My sister and I are both mages, Monsieur… Tann, was it? Yes. I can summon fire at my finger tips or send lightning through your body with the wave of a hand, but my sister over here can freeze men solid and raise the dead—a trick she learned from an old hag in Orlais that I advised her not to see," Sabrina blushed and looked down when eyes fell upon her. It was true, an old necromancer sought to teach us both a dark magic, but I refused. I cannot say how angry I was with Sabrina when I found out that she had been allowing the hag to teach her to play with cadavers.

"Why didn't you tell us?" He asked.

Thankfully for him, my sister interjected, stopping me from causing perhaps another fight, "Are you kidding?" She asked him quietly, "The chantry spends every breath it has to spare for us that magic is a sin, and the Templars are ruthless when they find apostates old enough to know they should be in a circle."

The Ferelden in the corner snorted and flipped one of her braids behind her shoulder, "'Should be,' is a stretch. Nobody should be locked away in the circle, it's a prison. Magic is just something you are able to do, nothing more than being able to hit your target with an arrow or sing a tune."

"If that Grey Warden, Anders had stayed in his circle the Kirkwall chantry would never have been destroyed," Not one of us was left sitting when Hunter added this.

"Sure," Jasmine said, "Of course you take the actions of one mage and say the whole of them are sour, but when a man is murdered with a knife in the streets, not one of you suggests that all people who have knives are guilty. You try to find the one man responsible."

Again I checked on Sabrina, who looked up at our Free Marcher acquaintance that was doing all the arguing with tears in her eyes. I put my arms around her so she could hide her face from them in a hug if she wished, but I would not drop this argument. I was defending my family.

"Why is it that you are so concerned with Sabrina and I being mages, but you didn't so much as blink when our new friend here walked in with a staff?"

Hunter started to reel on me, but hesitated when he laid eyes on my sister, who was sniffling on my shoulder, "Because, she didn't hide it. She said she was a mage upfront and did her best to explain she didn't do blood magic."

"Yes, you do take mages at their word, don't you?"

"Hate to butt in, but I prefer to be called a witch. It separates me more from the chantry, I think. A chantry that teaches mages to hate themselves and to seek forgiveness for how they were born," I had to admit, I was starting to like the Ferelden, but only because she made some good arguments. She continued rather heatedly.

"It's like being born with a blemish that would normally be underneath your clothes, only as you get older the blemish gets uglier and uglier, only it's alright at first because the only person who would see it is yourself, your parents, and whoever you loved enough. Except one day, the blemish gets harder to hide and since you're not a young child anymore, nobody takes pity on you and fears you from a distance. They call you things, like dangerous, freak, abomination, and demon until men clad in heavy armor with big, heavy weapons march into your home and take you from the comfort of your parents. They'll being you far away and the whole way to your new 'home', there isn't anyone to comfort you—not one of the armored men will speak to you, and you don't even try to get them to, you're so terrified. Then when you arrive you're handed over to a stranger who either feels so sorry for you that they talk in the most soothing voice they can—which, oddly enough, scares you even more. Or this stranger has seen and heard too much to feel anything and they file you in and fill a vial with your blood like it happens every day, you're just part of the common crowd, and it seems impossible that something like this, all this terror, and confusion, and the sadness you're feeling that all of it could be so ordinary that you begin to wonder if you had done something or if you'd died and not gone to the Golden City they always talk about.

"Then the women in robes come in and every day for the rest of your life if they ever speak to you it's telling you that you have been born sinning and that you should seek forgiveness from their blasted Maker and his bitch-born bride. Well no. That's where I put my damned foot down. None of us asked for this. I didn't ask to be born any more than you did. And when my time comes, when it's time to decide whether I should take my place at the Maker's side or not, I'll ask that he beg for my forgiveness before I sit anywhere near him."

You could have heard a pin drop in that cave if the pouring rain had paused to listen along with us. Sabrina had forced herself to stop sniffing and crying to listen closely at our fellow mage's words, and the two without magic sat watching with their mouths agape. I found that my own eyes and mouth had remained unblinking and slack-jawed since the beginning of her speech. I remedied that immediately.

A silence, long and uncomfortable took us by the ears, leaving us to think on her words before the lumbering Marcher that had stayed silent since before he left to find dinner stood and cleared his throat.

"Hunter and me don't have nothing against mages," he said, not making eye contact with anyone he was really addressing, but staring down his step-brother, who I could feel was slightly intimidated, "You wouldn't blame every templar for the crimes of one, nor every guard in the city for having a corrupt captain. So why would you blame all mages for the bad things individual ones have done?"

Kane was a large young man, with thick arms and legs—actually, his entire body was thick, he was just that muscular. Long hours on the farm in his twenty-three years built him up. He had a strong, square jaw and stubble, but if he neglected to shave for longer, no doubt he would have a full black beard, mustache, and large sideburns. He was built like your stereotypical manly man. Many Free Marches lower-class were full-bearded muscle heads. It wasn't any surprise to find that Kane had once wielded a war hammer before he had neglected to bring it along with him on his journey here with us. Hunter had a lot to live up to. Kane could tan, and he could use the set of dark eyes he had under a fierce brow to intimidate if he so wished. He held this gaze with his brother for some time before Hunter finally nodded in agreement.

Some of us were more willing to relax and go to sleep, leaving ourselves vulnerable to one another as we did nights before. I had always been the one to stay up the latest, to watch over Sabrina and make sure the Marchers didn't accost us like bandits and run away with what little money we had. Between my sister and myself, we had about five Royals, twenty silver, and a handful of coppers—decent, but it wouldn't last us long. It was certainly an amount a thief wouldn't think twice about taking.

Kane was the first to fall asleep; his large body sprawled with his hands behind his head as he snored. I was almost jealous of him. I, for one, kept shifting around, moving to stay away. So as not to disturb my sister, I had moved away, and watched conflicted as she fell asleep on the red-headed Marcher's shoulder. I didn't want to wake her and tell her to get away from him, she might be cross with me that I disturbed her sleep—and the cave floor wasn't an appealing bed. If his shoulder was softer, perhaps let her sleep there for whatever comfort it could provide. He was sound asleep as well, and probably wouldn't know if I woke her early.

A chuckle came from across the cave, and I channeled the right amount of magic to light up the tip of my finger like a candle. It burned without fear of harming me, and I smirked at first when I saw the Ferelden's amused expression in the dim light. She had eyes better adjusted to the dark than myself, most likely, and had caught me spying.

"Oh, big brother, don't look so concerned," she spoke quietly, "If you coddle her forever she'll die an old maid."

I frowned and whispered back without really any hostility in my tone, "That isn't any of your business, Ferelden."

"Jasmine. And it's not, but it's something you need to hear. She's my age, but she's been as free as an apostate could be all her life-" I had remembered seeing them talk and hearing them giggle with one another for a while after dinner was done and shook my head. Sabrina is far too trusting for her own good, I think, "—yet she's about as closeted as a circle mage. I've met three seventy-year-old men and women that have never been kissed, you know."

"That's funny because I hear that in the Ferelden circle, they were having all sorts of fun."

"Before the abominations and before the Blight, maybe, but I never said I was ever in the Ferelden circle. I was born here, but went to Kirkwall, and then when the Blight was over and the Knight Commander went mad, I came back to hide."

I snorted, "Why is it that whenever you speak you're telling me a piece of your life story?"

She sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, watching the cold ashes of the fire we had put out earlier in the dim sliver of moonlight that fell through the cave, but now she stretched her legs, and leaned back, imitating Kane with her hands folded behind her head before she asked, "If you spent three years with only bears for company, don't you think you'd be glad to find someone else to talk to? One that believed you when you said you weren't possessed or a blood mage?"

"Maybe, but rumor has it that the mage that destroyed the Kirkwall Chantry was a rights activist and spoke a lot like the way you sound. Every word from your mouth is about the mage's suffering," I said this casually as I lay down at a respectful distance beside her, but meant it with the utmost contempt for her. Scorn the mages that brought attention to us. It's the opposite of what I want. I wish we would just be left alone.

"How could you think it's all bullshit? You're a mage!"

I shushed her when she began to raise her voice, "I don't think it's bullshit. I live it each day. The fact of the matter is that it's old news, and the Chantry will never accept us. We might as well all move to Tevinter, if only we were allowed to go anywhere. Moving would be seen as an act of war, and so the reasonable best I can expect for me and Sabrina is that we can be part of the few able to hide and be ignored. Bringing attention to the mages plight, shouting about our oppression, crying when we're beaten, raped, and murdered—it never brings any good. It brings more chains because one mage has to ruin it all for the rest of us, always. I must admit, I contradict myself by saying this because I do agree with many of the points you make. I just only wish you would pipe down about it. A long speech is enough to convince a couple of country bumpkins, not Grand Chancellors and Clerics, Revered Mothers, or the Divine— the handful that are on our side piss themselves in the face of true conflict, and so we truly have no one at our backs. The sooner you face the reality that we are completely and utterly alone, the longer a life you will live."

I heard her sniff a little, but I doubted that she was crying. She struck me as the type that was tough as nails, and confirmed this by adding rather sarcastically, "Wow. You must be great fun at parties."

"Actually, I once forged a set of invitations in the name of the young Lord my parents served and told those invited there would be a ball. He never found who it was that wrote the invitations, but I was told the ball I orchestrated was one of the best his guests had ever witnessed."

"Throwing a party and being fun at a party are two different things."

"I was an outgoing seven-year-old and easily kept the high-classed guests entertained as the Lord rushed in between unplanned events to find something more to please the party-goers so that his reputation would remain pure."

"Now I know that story's bullshit, you can't have been only seven and forged neat invitations for a party hosting nobility."

I chuckled, smiling for the first time that day as I stared up at the pitch black ceiling, reliving the entire party in my head, "I said the Lord was young. He had no children of his own, and was remarkably charitable for an Orlesian noble. He hired tutors for the children of his servants, which would have opened us up to better jobs in our adulthood."

"That was kind. Was it hard to leave him when you discovered your magic?"

"It was. It was his plan to hide me, and later my sister, but he was killed when I was thirteen, and then we had to run. A bard hired by some rival of his in the Orlesian court—likely some jealous little snit, charmed his way into the Lord's bed and castrated him. He was found dead in the morning, fully erect, blood all over the sheets, and his balls on the dresser. It was my first experience with The Game."

"You're lying."

"The worst part is that I'm not. The nobles of my country enjoy their Game, and castrating the man in the middle of a night of passion was one of the least creative ways to go about playing it."

"And I thought you didn't like me," I detected a playful tone, and could not help myself. I smiled, letting loose another chuckle, although I was rather confused at what she meant.

"What does that have to do with anything I just said?"

"You're sharing. I thought you didn't trust anyone."

"Ah," I nodded and furrowed my brow. I had shared quite a bit, and I wondered how I had neglected to notice. I was now double the hypocrite—telling her to shove the Rights Activist speech and telling her to keep her life story to herself. I quickly made a joke of it to ease my growing tensions, and perhaps shield myself from any fire I might receive, "I am Orlesian, after all. I grow weak at the sight of a beautiful woman, Ferelden or no."

"Ha! That's rich. And if I cut off your balls like that bard?"

"You won't."

"How do you know that?"

"You are Ferelden. You detest everything Orlesian, which would include me and The Game."

I heard a yawn, "Good point. Anyway, we should get some sleep. Tomorrow I'm planning on taking you all to the market. You and your sister need something to defend yourselves with, and so does the big Marcher. And you'll need food. I don't think it wise to keep eating the wildlife."

"Alright… Bonsoir, Ferelden."

"Hn. Goodnight, Orlesian Tit."