AUTHOR'S NOTE:
This chapter is rated Mature for Romantic content.
^_^ You're welcome.
Many thanks to Valkyrie Shepherd, kwiksilvr & Hawkeing for the reviews. I'm a total sucker for reviews. It feels so good to hear how you guys react to the story. And WELCOME to all the new followers! I loooove sharing this little space with you guys!
I actually had written this chapter a couple weeks ago, but it felt wrong, so I sat on it, waiting for the characters to speak to me. I reworked it and tweaked it over and over until it felt right. I hope you enjoy it!
Every time I complete a new chapter, I'm amazed that I even started this story in the first place. It's so exhilarating and addicting and fun! And sharing it with you guys is a HUGE part of that.
- songs for clem
PS: If you're on tumblr, you can now follow me there. I'm songsforclem there as well.
- The Spirit of Joy -
Avalon came-to on the floor of a whitewashed room, hair pulled into dreadlocks and body wrapped into soft leathers. She felt like she'd hit her head. Her vision was blurry, and she reached up to touch her crown. It ached in response, and a pain shot through her brain, her vision igniting like white lightening. Pressing her palms to her temple, she steadied her breathing until the throbbing subsided.
The air was thick and humid. The pitter patter of rainfall thrummed against the forest canopy outside her window. She stood up to take in her surroundings.
The room was completely white: whitewashed walls, with a white floor of uniform square tiles under her bare feet. The masonry was excellent, but showed signs of age: yellowing grout, a missing tile here, a crack in the wall there. Outside the open window, the waxy leaves of lush trees grew thick and clustered high beyond her line of sight. In the corner of the ceiling, a few cobwebs were netted. A line of dust was caked into the crack between the floor and the wall.
Instead of a door, the room had an opening that led to a hallway. It had whitewashed walls and a white tiled floor, just like the room she awoke in. The hallway stretched out to the right and to the left, eventually disappearing around unmarked corners.
She chose a direction, arbitrarily, and made her way tentatively down the hallway, turning into one corridor, then another. There were rooms here and there, and some were connected sporadically to rooms further in, but all of the rooms were empty. As she made her way deeper and deeper into the maze of corridors and chambers, the rain became muffled. Windows were placed at unpredictable yet astute intervals to let in a diffused light. But there were no signs of life. There was just the feeling of discovering a lost, empty secret.
"White is the color of death," she muttered to herself, voicing the realization as it entered her mind. She ran her hand along the whitewashed wall. "I wonder if this is a tomb." A bit of the plaster came off in her hand, and she rubbed it between her fingers as it smeared on her skin, like chalk. She absentmindedly wiped it on her side, and it smudged her leather tunic.
Were the walls blank because they had been cleaned? Or because they had never been marked, in the first place? There was an eerie quality to the starkness of these labyrinthine passageways. They seemed both ancient and familiar, sterile yet aching to be filled with life.
She started to make out the sounds of birds chirping in the distance.
Eventually, the halls led to a courtyard, roof open to the cloudy sky above. Thick vines and vegetation were spilling over the eaves, invading the bleak architecture with heady and relentless life. A thin fog settled down from the tree line, hovering just within sight, like the promise of a dream within a dream. Off of the chamber there were spacious enclosures, each branching out with rooms and hallways of their own.
Avalon stood in the center of the room, filled her lungs with the humid air, closed her eyes, and lifted her chin, listening for the birds. She couldn't place the direction of their persistent chatter. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
When she opened her eyes, she saw a small yellow bird perched a few yards in front of her on a low hanging vine. A canary. Her heart leapt, delighted. Almost as if it in response to her gaze, the bird took flight and disappeared down a passageway.
Immediately, she followed after it.
Vines grew through windows in these new passageways, or sprawled along the floor or walls, breaking through the stillness of blank space with bursts of life. As she pursued the canary, the vines and leaves twisted into impossible nooks and crannies, growing in the stillness of forgotten rooms. Ferns sprung out of corners, erupting through upturned tiles like verdant explosions. Morning glories peeked out of the shade, petals like cones, turned upward toward the gentle light.
All the while, as she chased the canary through corridor after corridor, the soles of her feet slapped against the cold floors, as the sound of the chirping intensified. Through a series of small rooms, down a hallway, the singing and chatter continually mounted. Her heart was beating like a drum. She was giddy with anticipation. Up three stairs, a right angle, and then another short hallway, and then she stopped. What she saw took her breath away.
Before her lay a courtyard with dozens upon dozens of birds: yellow and white canaries. The courtyard was divided into two colors: the left half was painted white, like the rest of the maze (or tomb or mausoleum or whatever-this-place-was); the right half was painted yellow, to match the yellow of the canaries. Vines grew down from the open ceiling, dozens of verdant ropes weaving back and forth, concentrated in this open chamber, providing perches for the birds as they flew back and forth between the white and yellow sides of the room.
She couldn't stop smiling. The sight filled her with happiness. It was like a dance, or a living work of art, or the start of a new beginning for the empty canvas of this space.
The yellow paint piqued her curiosity. It was the first sign of a presence, of someone leaving a mark in these vacant rooms. And it was here, of all places, where she found the birds. This must be the epicenter. This place was important.
More and more birds took flight, as if they were coming right out of the plaster on the walls. How many birds were there? Hundreds? Thousands? Their song rose, a giddy and delighted chatter. As they filled the air, Avalon felt her heart soar with them. It felt magical…utterly surreal. The white and yellow birds blurred from one side of the room to the other.
Then, all of a sudden, every single one of them flocked together and flew off through the open roof of the courtyard. The force of their departure left goosebumps on her arms. Lavellan stood in place, staring up at the open sky, listening to their dying song until it was so faint that it was drowned out by the raindrops on the leaves in the canopy beyond. She sighed, content. Witnessing such a beautiful sign of life inside such a barren and lifeless place, it comforted her in a way that she could not put into words.
As she was meditating on these things, she noticed: one yellow canary was left in the room. Was he the same on that led her here? He was sitting in the middle of the floor, one foot on a white tile, and one foot on a yellow tile. When he saw that she noticed him, he chirped in acknowledgement.
"Hello, little fellah," she replied.
The canary flew over to her. Intuitively, she stretched out her hand. He alighted on her finger and chirped again. He cocked his little yellow head and gazed into her eyes.
Somehow, instinctively, she knew this was a Spirit of Joy, and he nestled in his flock like the warm reassurance of true contentment under a thousand absentminded smiles. Perhaps each bird in the flock was the spirit of one of those smiles.
Lavellan didn't know how to react, so she waited, mesmerized.
The canary flew up into the room, through the vines, and, instead of perching, he disappeared into a dark doorway in the corner at the other side of the chamber.
Lavellan walked past the white side of the room, proceeding over the yellow tiles, ducking under vegetation. A strange hope lifted within her heart with each step she took over the bright and cheerful tiles. She made it quickly across the room, then she stood, peering through a short doorway into a hall that was covered in shadow. There were no vines growing here, as there was no light to nourish them. How odd, to find the only dark hideaway in the entire place, tucked away as an offshoot of the vibrant epicenter.
She held her breath, and ducked inside.
She could tell that the hallway was small, but it wasn't until she stepped inside that she realized how narrow it truly was. At the end was a short archway, barely taller than a child. She crouched down on all fours, and crawled through.
Everything was pitch black. The tile was cool against her palms. The air was chilly, and goosebumps prickled at the back of her neck. She shuffled forward on her knees, using one hand to steady herself, and the other to feel for a wall. Her mind was open, reaching. Her senses were open and raw.
She turned to rest her back against the wall and settled in, crouching there, waiting for her eyes to adjust.
Everything was nothingness.
Silence filled the room. She could feel the darkness press against her skin, as if it was tangible, taking up the shape of the space around her. It pushed against her, as if it was attempting to take up the shape of the space inside of her.
Then, as her eyes adjusted to the void, faint lines and shapes started to glow on the wall and form into murals. The pictures glowed just enough to be perceptible to her sharp elven eyes, but the scenes faded in and out of reality, as if screens were being pulled across her vision. Through the haze, the scenes were difficult to recognize, but the style of the frescoes seemed…familiar.
A pain shot through her head, as if it would cleave her skull apart, and she pressed her fingers to her temples, willing the ache to subside. She remained as still as possible, exerting pressure on her head, waiting until the pain subsided.
"Little bird," she spoke, anxiously. "Are you in here?"
She heard a sigh. The whispered words: "Thank you, old friend. I am in your debt." The beating of tiny wings, and the bird must have taken flight. But that voice. That voice! She knew that voice! It couldn't be!
As her heart skipped up into her throat, the bird started to glow, a dim flicker of hope lit up within a tomb of fears. It flew circles within the room, a flickering illumination falling over her. And him. There he was.
"Ma Vhenan, I have searched the reaches of the Fade for you, and now you are here."
Solas stood across from her. The light from the canary cast a faint glow over his features, strobing streams of light into the darkness. She slumped against the wall of the chamber, falling back against her haunches.
He moved to her through the shadows, his steps deliberate and composed, like a dance. She could see the throbbing fire of joy swell from the canary and light up his silhouette. He knelt before her, reached out to take her hands, and leaned down to kiss her open palms. When his lips connected with her anchor, it sparked up, casting its glow upon the two of them, scattering eerie illumination out into the room. And a piece of his essence was stitched into her life force.
She couldn't catch her breath. How many times had she ached for him? How often had she hoped against hope that she would be able to be with him once again, if only for the briefest of moments, (if only to be able to finally say goodbye). She reached up and touched his face, and he nuzzled his cheek into her hand. "Solas, is it really you?"
"I have been a fool," he sighed, pressing his thumbs into her palms, squeezing her hands. He couldn't tear his eyes away from her tender cheeks, her elegant and unmarked features. He ran his fingers over her forehead and down her brow, where her vallaslin had once been. He'd forgotten how beautiful she was. He'd forgotten how happy he was for her whenever he saw her freed from her markings.
The way he was looking at her was stirring up old feelings. She felt the echo of the aches that had reverberated throughout her heart. "You left," she said, feeling the full weight of their separation anew, as the words stumbled out of her mouth. It wasn't an accusation. There wasn't even bitterness in her words. It was just a statement, a wound inside of her heart formed into words.
"I am so sorry."
And, yet, here he was. Solas. He was clothed in the same outfit he wore when they first met: crisscross weaves, an olive vest with soft feathers against his bare throat, the wolf bone necklace resting against his chest. Her heart-rate reacted to him: excited. The rhythm they shared came back to her: like casting a familiar spell. Her gaze flickered over his face as the light from the anchor throbbed and grew stronger.
"I missed you, Solas. Without you, things were...difficult."
"Ma Vhenan…" he whispered, rising up on his knees, cupping her face in his hands and holding her head up towards him. His expression grew soft as he saw a single tear leak out of the corner of her eye and slide down her face. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, catching the tear in its path.
Another canary flew into the room, glowing, casting its flickering light against the walls. And another piece of his being was stitched to hers.
He licked the saltiness off his lips. Then he smoothed the hair back from her face, his eyes a confession of all the apologies he would never have time enough to say. "I have missed you terribly."
She placed a hand on his shoulder, steadying herself. Her chin fell to her chest, and she wept, her composure melting like rain in the tumultuous gravity of his presence.
He shifted to sit on the floor beside her and pulled her into his arms, cradling her in his lap. She melted into the obscurity of his embrace, resting her head against his chest.
He held her against him as her crying intensified. He knelt over her, wordlessly, kissing away the tears that wet her face. He kissed her cheeks. He kissed the bridge of her nose. He kissed her closed eyelids, her temples, her jawline, her chin. His lips were soft, kind, attentive. His kisses soothed her even as they let loose the sadness she had been carrying around, caged, within her heart for so long.
With each tear that he kissed away, the canaries filtered into the room, one by one, flying in tight circles above them, lighting up the room like flickering lanterns. And with each kiss, he tethered himself to her. The sorrow lifted from her heart. Her tears abated.
His alabaster skin was warm with the glow of the birds whirling around the room. She searched his face, looking for neither answers nor questions, but just the reassurance of his presence.
Solas stood, pulling her up into his arms, gazing into her wondrous brown eyes. Her hair fell over her shoulders in long tight spools. Flowers and beads were woven into her hair like a mystical crown. Her cheeks here flushed and her mouth was soft and red. In his rhythmic, lilting voice, he soliloquied:
"O sweet spontaneous Avalon
how often have the doting fingers of
Mages and Templars
pinched and poked thee,
has the naughty thumb of the Dalish
marred thy beauty.
How often has the Chantry taken thee
upon its scraggy knees, squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightiest conceive
gods;
(but true to the incomparable couch of
death,
thy rhythmic lover,
thou answerest them only with
spring)."
Her heart turned over on itself, as his words ignited a fire in her belly.
"Oh, Solas…"
How could she resist him if was going to speak to her with such allure?! Oh, how she had missed the sound of his voice…how she had craved his words, the way his mind cut through the clutter of reality to pull out the extraordinary beauty of an ordinary moment. It was intoxicating.
The moment was bittersweet. She was trying to move on, but here he was, compassionate and connected and meeting her every longing. She reached out and touched his face, rubbing her thumb over his freckled cheek, then running her fingers down his neck and resting her hand at last on his chest, over his heart. "I wish you had stayed."
He sighed. "I wish I had stayed, too. Now I wish I had stayed. I wish I had done a lot of things." The birds were pouring into the room now, filing the space with energy and light. He reached up and placed his hand on his chest, over hers. "I wish I had..." he paused, fumbling for the right words. "I wish I had stayed. I do."
She searched Solas' face. "But why? Why did you go?"
"I don't know. I felt like a scared little child, whenever I was around you. I was afraid I would lose myself... I was in above my head, I don't know."
"You were scared?"
Solas bowed his head, "Yes. I was terrified. I thought you knew that about me. I thought that, if I stayed with you a moment longer, I would betray myself." He looked back up into her eyes. "I wanted to tell you…things…that I would never tell anyone else. But I could not. So I ran away, trying to outrun my humiliation, I think." There was so much to be ashamed of.
She cocked her head and touched his face, gingerly. "Oh, I'm sorry."
He cradled her head, running his fingers up her soft neck. "It's okay." He looked into her eyes. Her expression was melancholy, but kind. "…I suppose…now it doesn't make a difference." He had forgotten how comforting she was. He wanted to tell her everything. He drew her nearer.
She wrapped her hands around his waist like the memory of their last embrace. His clothing was textured and rough under her fingers.
Then he slid his arm around her, behind her waist, running his hand from the small of her back down to her tailbone and slid his grip to the side to press her up against him.
Even though she felt a warning tickling her mind, she ignored it, surrendering to his hold on her; this was her chance for closure.
He paused, searching her countenance. Perhaps she would allow him a moment of pleasure. He leaned his mouth down, slowly, waiting for her to push him away. When she did not, he placed his lips against her own in a light kiss, like two soft flowers brushing up against each other.
They were knit together, their spirits swelling up and igniting in response to each other. The yellow and white canaries blurred faster and faster around the room, and the shadows of the wall transformed into blackbirds that took flight and joined the gyroscopic flurry. Chink by chink the wall was absorbed by the flock until there were no walls left, and the two dreamers stood in a room made entirely of birds.
Her heart was beating in her throat.
He kissed her, and she kissed back. Her mouth was like a song, warm and light and quick to turn over the rhythm of his soul. As their lips parted, she pulled his head down and kissed him again, urgently, willing all the hauntings of her pain to be expunged from her memory. He pulled her up and into him. She wrapped her hand behind his neck and held him there, opening herself up to him. Then she smiled against his mouth and brushed the tip of her nose back and forth against his own.
He felt like he could crawl inside her embrace and spend the rest of his days living in the memory of this moment.
The birds were flying, spinning, faster and faster, until they slowly started widening their circuit and spreading further and further out.
He returned her tenderness. He trailed kisses from her cheek, down the line of her jaw, and, at last, he placed his mouth against her neck, feeling the quick thrum of her heartbeat underneath the nervous cluster of his lips. Clenching her against his ethereal body, he felt more solid; he felt that, as long as he was bound to her, as long as he was cemented into her memory, he would not drift away from existence.
He felt a hunger growing inside of him, but, as he returned to her mouth in search of the muscle of her warm desire, he realized his most vital need was something deeper. It was born of words, things that had gone unsaid for far too long. He pulled himself away, her face flushed, pain and fate in her eyes. She was preparing herself for a goodbye.
"My heart, my dear sweet Avalon, you deserve to know the truth."
What was he talking about? The kissing. The feel of his skin. His body so close to hers that she felt entirely riled up. Her mind was too clouded to concentrate. "What? What truth? What are you talking about?"
Now that her focus was disrupted, she had a chance to look around, and realized that reality had shifted around them. They were now standing in the ruins of the Valley of Sacred Ashes. This is what it had looked like right after they had defeated Corypheus. The sky was grey and ominous. Blackbirds nested here and there, scattered across the rubble. Over there is where Solas had knelt over the broken orb. And that is where the stairs had led down to their companions. This was the last place she had seen him before he left.
The canaries were nowhere to be seen.
He furrowed his brow, uncertain how to begin. "History becomes story, and story becomes legend, and legend, sometimes, becomes a religion, a way of life. The Dalish really are nothing more than children passing down stories they've heard repeated…"
"…repeated incorrectly a thousand times," she grinned, humoring him. "You've told me before about the things you learned while traveling the Fade." She looked longingly at him, foreboding in her mind. She tried to muster her guile, flirting, biting her lip and grinning, "I can think of better uses for your mouth than repeating old conspiracies." She hated herself even as she coveted the carelessness with which they had just been embracing.
He chuckled, trying to focus. It was getting harder and harder. "This is important," he said, and she smiled patiently. He paused before speaking this time, choosing his words carefully. "The elven pantheon is nothing more than a collection of extremely old, extremely powerful ancient elves. This is the truth. It is a fact. And this is not something I learned from the Fade."
"What do you mean?"
"That is just it, Ma Vhenan. The reason I know all of this is because it is my story, too."
She looked flummoxed. "That can't be possible. That would make you…" she laughed. It was utterly impossible.
"…very old. Ancient, in fact."
The meaning of his words settled in on her, and she looked at him with a mixture of fear and surprise in her eyes. She touched her fingers to her lips. Whose mouth had she just been kissing? "Solas. Who are you?"
He smiled, sadly, brushing his hand past her cheek, running his fingers along her ear. He could feel himself slipping away. It was now or never.
"Who are you, Solas?" She clenched him around his waist, pressing her body maddeningly up against his own.
He leaned in, cradling her precious head, and kissed her softly. Then he whispered in her ear, "My name, my true name, is…"
But just as the words left his lips, he vanished, suddenly and completely.
Jolted out of his embrace, she caught her balance. Then she stood in the rubble, looking around herself, feeling the weight of his absence like a fresh wound gouging out her heart.
No. Not again.
He was gone. And the grief felt magnified. Fresh. Intolerable. Incomprehensibly woven into her being.
The blackbirds were the only ones left in this waste, and they stared at her, ogling her grief as she fell on her knees, tears streaming down her face.
The birds took flight and started flying in circles around her, an ever tightening cloud of feathers and beaks. Her body was shaking.
Again.
It happened again.
Under the roar of their beating black wings, she cried out, wordlessly, releasing her grief into the night in a series of aching moans.
The darkness swallowed her, holding her, until she stopped shaking, stopped feeling, stopped breathing altogether. She hovered like a waif of consciousness in the stillness of pure being.
Her name echoed into the void. "Avalon…Avalon…Avalon…"
"Wake up."
She sat up. Sera and Dorian were hovering above her, and Dorian was saying her name.
"What?! Huh? Whaaat…is going on?"
Sera looked perturbed. "You were having some bugger of nightmare. Your anchor was lighting up and everything. You should have heard yerself! Crying out in your sleep. I'm surprised you din' wake yerself up!"
Avalon rubbed her eyes. The room was still dark. She sat up, confused at her sudden arousal, trying to get a grip on reality.
Then scenes from her dream started rising up in her mind. Her heart felt like lead. Her face turned grim. Her mouth felt like ash. "Well, shit."
AFTERWORD:
Have you ever dreamt about someone who broke up with you, only to wake up and feel like your heart is being trampled on by a herd of wild elephants?
Yeah.
That.
...oh and also...
;) BONUS POINTS: if you can guess what scene/movie I'm echoing with the Solas x Lavellan dialogue.