They were both invalids for the first few days afterwards; Fenris still weak, though as predicted regaining strength quickly, and Feynriel spending much of his time asleep, only rousing long enough to eat, drink, and eliminate before collapsing back to sleep again.

By the third day Fenris was able to sit on his own; he celebrated by, with Donnic's help, taking a real bath in a tub for the first time since shortly after his return to Kirkwall. They returned to the bedroom afterwards – Fenris walking very slowly, supported by Donnic, but actually walking again – to find Feynriel awake, sitting leaning up against the wall. He smiled when the two of them came in.

"You're looking much better," he said approvingly, voice raspy with disuse, and rubbed a hand over his chin, which was showing an uneven stubble of fine hairs. "How are you feeling?"

"Much better," Fenris said, as Donnic carefully helped him back into bed. "I feel stronger already, and the pain is gone."

Feynriel smiled. "Good. There's still work to do – fixing what can be corrected of the damage the lyrium caused – and after that you'll be even better. But first, I could use a bath myself. And a proper meal. By tomorrow, maybe, we might both be recovered enough for me to begin." Fenris nodded. Feynriel rose to his feet, only a little unsteadily, and after gathering together clean clothes to change into, left the room to find the bathing chamber and make use of it himself.

Fenris was tired from the effort it had taken to bathe and walk, but too awake to be able to nap. After Donnic and Feynriel had left he lay there, thinking further about his experience during the healing. The singing still haunted him, reappearing each night in dreams. Yet it was a haunting he welcomed; such dreams were invariably peaceful, restful, totally lacking in the dark imagery that had twisted most of his dreams into nightmares for as far back as he could remember.

It had begun to haunt his waking thoughts as well, as it did even now, recalled bits of the music drifting soundlessly through his head. He sighed and relaxed back against the pillows, closing his eyes and just enjoying the memory. Strange, that the music should be so compelling, when it lacked anything that could really be called a tune, or melody... yet it was. Once heard, he could not forget it. It stayed with him.

He remembered his desire to sing along, when he'd been held in the Fade. Smiled, remembering too the words of Sebastian's he'd remembered – 'you could always hum along'. Which he hadn't been able to do in the Fade, lacking real lips or lungs to make the sound, but could do here. So he did, humming quietly to himself, a tuneless drift of sound mimicking as best he could the remembered song.

It seemed somehow easier to remember the sounds, the music in his head clearer to him, though still just as random, when he did so. It was a soothing sound, his hum merging with the song, sometimes managing to follow it, sometimes drifting apart for a while. He drifted for a while on the edge of sleep, humming when he was awake enough to do so. Dreamed, briefly, of even humming along in his dreams, the deep clear thrum of his lyrium underlying the hum of the lips he didn't really have there.

"Maker... how did you do that!?" a voice exclaimed, startlingly near and loud in the silent room.

Fenris jerked fully awake again, opening his eyes to see Feynriel standing just inside the door, hair still wet from bathing, the drips soaking into the shoulders of the clean clothes he'd changed into. His mouth was gaping almost comically open as he stared at Fenris. No... not at Fenris – at something near him.

He turned his head, to see a wisp hovering just above his right shoulder, lazily spiralling up and down just a hand's-breadth from his ear. And yet somehow he didn't feel particularly surprised to see it there... he had time to realize that the sound the wisp made as it hovered nearby was like a faint version of one of the voices that made the music in the Fade, and then it vanished.

"I don't know," he whispered, awestruck.