"Are you not going bask in your rightfully earned praise?" Morrigan called sarcastically, stepping out from the shadows of the outer rampart to grin at her impishly.
Kyrn shook her head slowly as the headache that remained of her second encounter with Alistair's adoptive family pounded again. "Alistair and Leliana carry the ashes, not me. They can simper over the Shem' nobles. Alistair needs to grow a backbone. It's his damn family."
Morrigan tipped her head to glance at her bird-like a moment, before tsking and stepping up to lean over the ramparts beside her, overlooking the brown sullen view of the town of Redcliffe, dwarfed by the imposing castle of red sandstone. "I only meant that you-"
"Abelas," Kyrn caught the word mid-way, remembering too late how it vexed all of them when she spoke in her native tongue, "I'm sorry, truly."
"Sorry?" Morrigan baffled, "For what, pray tell?"
"For snapping at you, those weeks ago. It was unkind of me. I should not have-"
Morrigan held up a hand, waving it as if dismissing a spell, "Tis nothing. I detested the errand. You were right to send me back. Besides, it gave me more time to study Mother's grimoire. The past fortnight has been… fascinating." She looked away, her gaze distant a moment, perhaps going over an occult phrase in her mind, far from Kyrn's sight.
She hadn't the heart nor the courage to tell Morrigan that she hadn't killed her mother at all. To slay the Asha'bellanar was sacrilege, and suicidal to boot. She had gone alone to the Marsh witch's lair, knowing that Alistair and the others would never approve of the complexity of the situation. As far as Alistair and the rest knew, she had simply spent time sulking in the woods alone, as she was want to do anytime they had to deal with human politics.
"Tell me now," Morrigan pondered, fixing her with a knowing gaze as if she could read Kyrn's guilt as clearly as the mark of Andruil on her face. "You have never questioned my methods, only my attitude. You even defended those mages at the tower, pitiful cowering things that they were. You even let that maleficar in the tower go, despite Wynn's judgemental frowns."
She smirked at the thought of all the little frumps that Wynn had thrown her in the past few weeks, always stuck in the role of nanny for their unruly group. "Magic simply is. Denying magic is like denying," Kyrn traced a spiral in the air, searching for a better metaphor, but finally coughed out, "-dirt."
"Dirt?" Morrigan squinted, obviously taking personal offense from the comparison.
Sputtering, she continued, "You need it, it's messy. People can do terrible things with it, or wonderful things can grow from it, and it seems to be everywhere. and like magic, I may think I understand it, but I really don't. I never will. No one can."
Morrigan nodded, nudging a little closer to peer down in the same direction she did, fixing her gaze on the waterfront, where a handful of longshoremen were trying to manage a large shipment of raw ore Bann Teagan had seized for armaments. "Tis a surprisingly adept comparison. And like dirt, trying to wipe out every spec of it will cause you no end of headache, and will never destroy the real source."
Smiling, Kyrn turned back to the castle, and gave a long sigh. "That man, Jowan-"
"is an imbecile," Morrigan scoffed dismisively.
"He spoke with me last night," Kyrn continued. "He was pleading for an appeal to his sentence. He told me they're going to execute him in the morning. When I thought about his situation, I realized that he hadn't actually killed anyone until the Chantry decided to hunt him down."
"That is often the way of things," Morrigan whispered.
"But they hunted him just because he could do blood magic. Just for the possibility that he might harm someone."
"Are you changing your mind now?" Morrigan asked.
She paused, searching the sky for some kind of answer, but couldn't find one amidst the gray flat clouds that obscured the sun from horizon to horizon. "It does not matter. I don't decide his fate. But… I do wonder about… circumstance," Kyrn whispered, glancing over her shoulder to Morrigan. "Our keeper in training, Merrill, uses blood magic."
Morrigan raised an eyebrow appraisingly, "Is that so?"
Kyrn nodded, "Keeper Marethari told me she watched over me for two days while I slept like death, while the blight ate at me. Her blood magic probably saved me life."
"At whose cost?" Morrigan asked flatly.
"No one's. Or perhaps... Merrill's?" Kyrn responded uncertainly. "She's the sweetest thing. Small, frail looking, quiet spoken. The kind of girl who might weep if she trod on an unsuspecting flower. She only worked magic with her own blood."
Morrigan looked back at her with disbelief, "As intriguing as she sounds, why are you telling me all this?"
She shrugged, rubbing her arms against the cold she suddenly felt. "She was never well liked, even amongst my clan. We were never… friends… I prefer the wilds to my own people, to be completely honest. But aside from Tamlen, she was the only one I felt an urge to… protect…"
Morrigan watched her quietly as she continued, "Until recently. I guess what I mean is… I don't really know how… to have... friends…"
The witch looked back at her with a small smirk, and then looked back to the harbor with a frown. "Nor I. You must know this camaraderie is short-lived? I will die, or you will die, or we will finally vanquish this Archdemon, and the world will not let all of us stay together. Tis' never that simple."
Kyrn breathed out heavily, "I know."
Morrigan pressed a fingertip to her own lips, and traced along with her fingernail, eyes fluttering like she was remembering something pleasant, "It's difficult enough to hold onto one person who is dear to you."
"I love you too, you big softy," Kyrn sneered, and was rewarded with punch to her arm, made worse by the woman's incredibly boney knuckles. As she winced in pain and snapped a few quick curses beneath her breath, Morrigan glared a smile back at her.
"You should learn a lesson from your blood mage friend, though," Morrigan drolled.
"What's that?"
"You cannot live your whole life giving yourself over to people's needs. You have to learn to TAKE what you need."
"A-hmm," Kyrn said absently.
"Maybe from that lovely assassin of yours?"
"Mine?" Kyrn coughed, her neck igniting with an embarrassed flush.
"Do you realize you've been smiling for HOURS now?"
Kyrn looked away, desperate to hide the flush behind her hand, but the heat from her cheeks burned like embers.
"He has his charms," Morrigan continued in the same explanatory drawl she used to despite potion ingredients. "I'll give him that. Certainly he must be quite something in bed for you to risk so much in order to be close to him."
Her heart plunged into her stomach at the last three words, "Close to him."
"Tis a bit sickening to watch you two, but I imagine it at least takes your mind from out… situation."
The long pause after Morrigan's words seemed to suggest she expected some kind of response, but Kyrn's mind was in too deep a state of turmoil to reply.
Morrigan's cackling laugh echoing across all of Redcliffe castle as she walked away.