A followup from Ire and Ice, masks slip a little more.

A story for lovers of dwarves and irascible older men.

Disclaimer: As usual, Adan and most characters are property of Bioware from their DA: Inquisition game. Zheevá is mine (pronounced zhee VA'). Some spoilers. Conversational spoilers. Some profanity. Romance.

Part 14

Zheevá bounced through the door of Adan's workshop, a huge, smug grin on her face and a flat bundle wrapped in layers of cloth and thin leather cradled in her arms. "Hey, rock licker, I'm back! And just wait until you see what we found!" Without waiting for an answer, she hopped onto the stool at the other bench, very gingerly setting down the bundle and cutting the cords tying it shut.

Adan carefully finished stoppering the bottle he held and racked it before washing his hands thoroughly and turning toward the dwarf who was busy slowly folding back the coverings on the bundle. "That's how you say hello, you bit of mischief, after being gone for two and a half weeks?"

"Sixteen and a half days, but who's counting?"

He crossed to stand next to her stool at the other work table, his arms crossed as he scowled at the yellow brittle papers she was gingerly spreading out, each resting protectively on a piece of cloth or leather. "Minx, what did you drag in now, some noble's pressed flower collection? That looks too old to be that dowager rag some of those Orlesian fops pass around."

Zheevá chortled. "Shows what you know, gossiping about some of the books from that rag with a couple of those muckety-mucks got us a sweet trade deal." She put the last piece of paper in place, then grabbed his arm to pull him closer, one hand tangling in his beard as she gently tugged him into reach to plant a brief if firm kiss on his mock scowl. "A down payment for later, you cranky bear. Now, just look and tell me whether I found what I think I did!"

Raising one eyebrow in response to her barely suppressed, possibly explosive enthusiasm, he glanced at the first of the sheets curiously, then swore, bending closer to examine it better. "Andraste's sodding arse, woman, where did you say you found this?"

"An old fort on the Exalted Plains. We found all sorts of stuff in an underground room…after we cleared out all the undead and other pleasant sorts who were occupying it." Her grin grew broader and smugger than before at his reaction. "So, do you think it's the real thing?"

"Maybe. It might be just a fancy recipe for pickled eggs."

The dwarf snorted, arms crossed. "You might have a point if I had found it on the Ferelden side of the border. You Fereldans and your pickled eggs."

"Pickled eggs are good for what ails you, you Marchers just don't know how to appreciate them." He returned her insult almost absent-mindedly, intent on the page in front of him. "It's a translation obviously, but if I can make this out correctly, she claimed to have translated it from an original."

"You're sure it's a translation?"

"I don't know about you, but my ancient Tevinter is a little rusty, you arse. The original was supposed to be written in Tevinter or Tevene or whatever they called the language." He still sounded a bit absent minded. "She throws in odd words here and there, I recognize some of them, old Tevinter alchemical terms that are still used in the older books. But there are also a few words that don't look Tevinter. Elvish, maybe?"

"Elvhen, I think it's called." The dwarf suddenly straightened from next to him, inhaling deeply and searching the room with a deep frown. "So that could really be a translation of Somniardirth?"

"Maybe." Adan moved to the second sheet, so intent on trying to decipher the tiny script that he didn't notice Zheevá getting down from the stool and crossing to the crate next to the other bench.

"Maker's balls, Adan, I thought I smelled raw lyrium? What are you doing with this in here?"

He straightened, scowling, but then paused before barking out a retort. "You can smell it?"

"In my sleep with a clove of garlic waving under my nose. Sod it, Adan, why in Andraste's name do you have raw lyrium in your workshop?" She glared at him fiercely, fists on her hips and obviously furious. "Don't you know how dangerous that is to humans? Sod it, it's dangerous to me, and I'm a dwarf."

"Some of our people came across a group of Carta smugglers, and they brought it to me to see if I knew how to process it for the mages and Templars." The normally crotchety alchemist regarded her in surprise. "I was going to ask Dagna if she could tell me."

"No!" He crossed his arms, glaring, as she began to take equipment from his shelves and arrange it on the work table, adding fuel to the charcoal burner and adjusting a pan over it.

"What do you mean, no? I'm an alchemist, sod it, it's my job to handle things like this."

"No. Adan, if you fool with this,… Maker's breath, you do know if you inhale the dust or it comes in contact with your skin, it can drive you mad or kill you." Her voice was softer now, and she pulled a piece of cloth out of a pouch, wrapping and tying it so it covered both her nose and mouth. "Or addict you. It's not safe even for me, and I'm a dwarf."

Adan leaned against the table, one hand cupping his chin through his beard as he watched her with narrow eyes. "In that case, what do you think you're doing risking yourself? The Inquisition needs you much more than it does me."

She snorted, using another piece of cloth to begin lifting out chunks of the raw blue mineral, placing them in the pan over the burner. "Arse, why do you think the Carta wanted me? They can't always bribe dwarves in Orzammar into parting with the processed lyrium, and the smith's caste in Orzammar holds onto the secrets of high quality processed lyrium tighter than a mabari does a bone."

"So how do you know?" Recognizing arguing with her as a helpless cause, he turned back to study the sheets of paper.

"My father. That's why I think he was smith caste before he was exiled, though I can't imagine why they assumed he wouldn't tell anyone on the surface. Maybe they just thought his brain was too pickled to remember how. He used to make a little money processing it for the Carta, always had me help him and taught me how to do it safely." She shrugged, using a stick to gingerly move the pieces of raw lyrium around the pan.

"How'd the Carta know that you could process it?" Adan pretended to be intent, but his attention was clearly on the woman cautiously working with his equipment as familiarly as if it had been made for her.

She shrugged, then began measuring and mixing chemicals into a bowl. "He didn't teach my brother or sister. As far as I can tell, he used the fact I could process it as collateral when he borrowed money from the Carta, probably why he taught me so much more alchemy than them all along. I was an asset to barter."

Adan was silent for a few moments while he digested the matter-of-fact way she talked about her father's mercenary attitude toward her. "Did your brother and sister know he told them?"

"Dunno. Maybe. They're older than I am, and he bought their way into a merchant guild family just before he died. Might even have used that money he borrowed to do it. Well, what he didn't drink away." She shrugged, continuing to work.

"Have they ever tried to find you?"

She snorted, gingerly mixing the contents of the bowl, then used a pair of tongs to add one of the heated chunks of the mineral to a mortar and began to grind it cautiously. "Them? Not likely." Zheevá was silent for a few moments before adding neutrally, "I did try to look them up once. Found out that as far as their new families were concerned, they were my father's only children, and my presence…wasn't welcome." She kept working, eyes intent on the ore in front of her as it powdered surprisingly easily. "Didn't matter, I'd already realized that being in the Carta was probably about as safe as I was going to be."

"Why do you say you were safe in the Carta?"

"If I'd left, what do you think would have happened to me when Orzammar got word that there was a surface dwarf who knew their secrets? Or the Chantry or the Tevinters? I was at least smart enough to make certain the Carta didn't learn how I did what I did, so I was valuable to them." Adan watched her out of the side of his eyes, but she remained intent on the ore, tilting the mortar to gently pour the sand-like contents into the bowl.

"Good point. Still, you don't seem like someone who'd enjoy being part of that."

"I didn't, but after the first couple of years, at least it was better than starving or being tortured or murdered." She laughed, briefly and without much humor as she stirred the heated raw lyrium into the chemicals before putting another chunk from the brazier into the mortar. "The better Carta leaders reward good work even if there's no easy way back out. I must have been inside half the better brothels in the Free Marches at one time or another."

Adan turned his head more overtly now, raising an eyebrow. "Were you now?"

Though he couldn't see her mouth, her eyes were clearly laughing at him. "Are you worried about what I might have learned there, salroka?"

He eyed her suspiciously. "Another insult to ask that storyteller about?"

"Of course, though that one's not an insult." Just as cautious as before, she focused on crushing the heated ore. "First time I was sent to one as a 'reward,' I was fifteen and way too embarrassed to take advantage of their obvious services. Figured I'd drink up my reward in their best perry and cider. About the time I started on my second mug, an extremely attractive elf sat down with me, and I was trying to work out the polite way to say I was just there for the drink when he very tactfully informed me that they offered less 'personal' services and the Carta's coin could just as well pay for a luxury bath and massage." She shrugged. "I was fifteen, so even that was more personal than I was used to, but I figured I was stuck with the Carta, I'd get everything out of it I could." He could tell from the way her cheeks moved that she was definitely smirking at him now over the brazier. "And that's how my addiction to long hot baths with scented oils and full massages got started. They had one oil I particularly liked that smelled like orange and cloves, and Maker, did that man have incredible hands."

"Hmm, and massage was all you got from him?" Now he was teasing back, and she snickered.

"Afraid so. Elves really aren't my type."

"And humans are?"

Her eyes met his, and there was something much stronger than humor in them now. "Give me about half an hour to finish this batch and wash up, and you can test that with a real welcome back kiss."

His lips twisted into a knowing smile while his eyes glinted with the suggestion he planned to take her up on that, then he scowled back at the papers. "Well, these are certainly old, and the woman translating them claims she worked from Tevinter originals of the Somniardirth. What the Maker they were doing in some fort in the Exalted Marches is beyond me, and whether she really found originals or someone sold her their grandmother's recipe for Feastday elfroot wine with a few foreign words thrown in, your guess is as good as mine. What are you going to do with it?"

"Leave it with you." Zheevá tensed up, focusing very closely on the contents of the bowl rather than looking up at him.

"Maker's breath, woman, you find a translation of one of the rarest alchemical recipes known, and you're just going to 'leave it' with me?"

"Adan, it's going to take time to make sense of that woman's handwriting, transcribe the whole thing on new paper, then try to make sense of the instructions. And that's before you consider that a few of the words are completely unreadable, plus the ancient Elvhen, and while Solas may have learned some, I don't know that I want to tell him we found this. Do you honestly think I have the time to work that out?"

He continued to stare at the dwarf, her head bent so all he could see was the top of her green headscarf, and his expressions softened for a moment. Then he grumbled, turning back to the worktable. "So, you bring it to me and expect me to do the work, I see what you're up to. Minx."

Zheevá's head popped up, green eyes glinting. "Rock licker. Now, you work on that while I finish this, you crotchety bear. You still owe me a real kiss." She could see his scowl slip as he bent back to the papers, a brief grin in its place.

Afterword

Somniar means "to dream" in Elvhen, and somniari is a Tevene word for a mage who can manipulate the Fade, so they probably have the same roots. I drew on Solas's assertion that a lot of early Tevinter culture drew on older Elvhen traditions to create a lost Tevinter alchemical recipe with a mostly elvhen name: Somniardirth or roughly "to dream of secrets."

For anyone who noticed the pattern of chapter titles, this one stumped me, without writing something into the chapter just for the sake of the title. Apparently "J" was not a popular letter with the writers, so I just threw in the towel…

Dear friends of mine are the inspiration for the flavor of Zheevá and Adan's relationship, a couple whose relationship took me years to begin to understand and appreciate.