That alter was sticky with blood, and there's blood coated all over me, but mostly on my back as it seems I was laying in it. Whose blood though, I don't know and I don't want to know. I can only imagine what a nightmare like this would have as it's source. I'd never seen so much blood on me before. It's pungent and disgusting, just like these lines beneath my skin. I feel sick to my stomach at it all. I have no idea what's going on. What happened. Even with explanations, I'm lost. Then again, how can anything possibly make sense when I'm in this state?
Leliana led me over to her tent after I finally got my feet beneath myself again. I couldn't listen to anything Morrigan had to say anymore, and she's got some choice things to say about it too. She knows more about blood magic and this kind of shit than Alistair, and she loves to rub it in. But she was also looking at me funny while jabbing at the Templar. I felt like I was under a microscope with the way she was looking at me with an unnatural gleam in her preternatural gaze.
I'm brought out of my thoughts jarringly when Leliana clucks her tongue while she rifles through her meager things, "I am not sure if I have anything that would fit you well. Perhaps we should ask Sloane?" She looks up at me from her crouched place on the ground holding her bag, "All I have are worn Chantry robes. Not the best choice to be wearing while avoiding a horde of darkspawn." She looks back at her bag briefly, "Perhaps I should have packed more. Hmm."
"I'm – I'm okay," I say in turn. "I just need some sleep." And then maybe I'll wake up from this hallucination and find myself back in my bed? Maybe I haven't completely lost my marbles? "I haven't slept since... since before what ever happened to me," I continue with a longing plain in my voice for some God-honest rest and the clarity I desire to gain from it. "I always blacked out from the pain, or they knocked me out with a touch. I feel... I'm exhausted," I confess.
"Oh mon," she shakes her head. "You must change and clean up some though. How ever will you rest properly covered in filth?"
I frown when she takes my mood silence for assent, and she bodily drags me from her tent. I'll go along with everything, this insanity, for now. What else can I do? Curl up in a ball and bawl my eyes out? I've already done that, and it got me no where fast.
Sloane gives me a set of his clothes, and apparently they're still unworn since he had just bought them from Bodahn hours ago. They're all a little low on supplies, he explains, because they've just narrowly escaped Ostagar with nothing more than their weapons and armor. Even Sten is still unarmored with nothing more than a spare short sword for his use. Sten in-person creeps me out, to be honest. I don't like the way he regards everything and he's just too quiet. Unnaturally quiet. He looks more qunari-like in person though, and he's a good two feet taller than me. I'm a bit afraid of him. He looks like he could kill me quite easily, even without that sword. His face is so stony too. I'm not even sure just how hostile he is either, or just how much I should really be afraid of him.
Leliana lets me use her tent to change, and says that it's probably best if we burn my old clothes. They're not salvageable, it seems. And I feel almost naked afterwards, even in the strange, slightly itchy, medieval men's tunic and trousers I'm wearing. We had to burn all my clothes. I don't think I need to explain that. So much blood. We even had to burn the cloth I used to clean up. While I was changing and cleaning myself I noticed something strange though. All my scars are gone, and my body has wasted away to where I'm little more than skin and bones. I'm emaciated, dehydrated, and yet I'm oddly not hungry or thirsty. And just why are my scars gone? Even the little one on my pinky finger from when it got cut from a broken glass. Does blood magic heal? I think I remember something like that... Reavers can do that too, maybe. Just what did those men do to me? Why would my mind create something so... so strange and make it all seem so real? For what purpose would it have me be tortured and healed by strangers that I've never seen before in my life...?
Later, after I'm changed because Leliana pushed me to, I'm quiet while we're sitting by the fire, my food untouched, and I'm just watching the flames dance and crackle. I'm trying to make sense of everything. It's not working very well. For instance, the food, even if I were hungry, I would not eat. I'm vegan by choice, and even in my dreams I don't eat animals, dairy, or eggs. The dried meat, cheese, and bread are unappetizing at best. The earthen mug of water is sitting by my feet, and every once in awhile I look at it knowing that I ought to at least drink, but unwilling to. Why would my hallucinations present me with something like this to eat?
"Mon ami?" I turn to see Leliana leaning towards me with a concerned look about her. She probably thinks of me as some kind of charity case. She was a Chantry sister, wasn't she? Wait. I'm being pitied by an imaginary person. That's ridiculous. "Your food is untouched! Are you not famished? You look bereft."
I scowl. "I don't like to eat animals, or animal products." I look away stubbornly and not willing to have a conversation, "I'm not hungry anyway."
"You do not eat meat and cheese?" She asks from beside me. "How unusual," she muses. "You can at least eat the bread, can you not? I will ask our Warden friends for another heel for you." She doesn't give me a chance to tell her no before she stands and wanders over towards Sloane and Alistair, where they're talking in hushed voices. She comes back a short while later with a hopeful smile on her face and a large chunk of bread in-hand, and I eat it so I don't look like I'm ungrateful. The water too. My stomach grumbles after I eat, and I feel queasy. I'm not doing too good, either mentally or physically it seems. And why do I care if I eat or look ungrateful or not? This isn't real. I shouldn't care. I have to remind myself of that.
Sten and Alistair have first watch and so, since Sten makes me uncomfortable, I take the blanket Sloane had given me when he had lent me his clothes earlier, and curl up in a ball beside a tree's trunk and near Leliana's tent. None of the others begrudge me over my sleeping choices, and I'm thankful for that. I need the silence. I need to get a way form those people - people who look so real, but can't possibly be... I need space. I need time to think. It probably takes me a few hours, but I eventually fall into a restless sleep. This time the darkness that overcomes me as I drift off is comfortable and safe, and so unlike anything I've felt in who-knows-how-long.
A/N: More internet cookies (vegan - haha) to you people that are enjoying this story! The chapter's still short, but the quality's better sine I took a little more time than I have before to look over things. It looks like twice weekly updates are staying folks. ;)