Days pass. Eldris wants to stay with the clan for as long as possible, and none of them can find it in them to protest. Besides, nobody really wants to get back on the road again. Despite Arya and Leliana both wishing they were back in Denerim, neither of them are eager to spend days walking. And Arya, at least, is not eager to spend her nights sleeping on the hard ground. Frequently, she reminds her friends that there's three empty beds in the aravel. None of them take her up on the offer, especially once the news comes out that she's pregnant. Reno's the one to make a joke about not wanting to witness a repeat of how it came about. Arya threw a stick at him for it and, unfortunately, missed.
Despite not wanting to leave, Eldris spends much of his time hunting alone. Theo and Eden were coming with them, after all, and they were the only two he was interested in spending time with. At least, that's what he told himself. He was good enough at lying that it made it easier to pretend that he was hunting alone because he couldn't hunt with Tamlen. The clan, at least, were thankful for his many kills. Most of them were small- several squirrels, a half a dozen rabbits. Occasionally, he'd manage to bring back an elk. None of it went to waste.
He always hunted in the mornings, when it was still dark and the sun hadn't breached the horizon. There were never many awake aside from the sentries posted to watch the camp- he'd manage to sneak out several times, but eventually he walked right past the yawning guards with a small wave. He got used to the feeling of a bow in his hands once more- he had spent too long relying on his daggers and nothing more- and there was something he liked about breathing in the crisp and cold air as light began to streak through the sky. Even on his longest hunting trips, he was always back in the camp well before noon.
So it came as a surprise when Eldris rose one morning when the sky was still dark, quietly pulling his boots on, foregoing the cloak that would drag the ground even though it was cool enough that he shivered, slinging his bow over his shoulder, and found Anaba waiting in the treeline, leaning against the trunk of a birch tree. If they had been anywhere else, anywhere he hadn't known with his entire being that they were safe, he might have put an arrow in her before he realized it. As it is, his hand twitches towards his daggers without touching them, and he recognizes her in the dim light as he relaxes.
"Creators, Anaba. What are you doing here?" he asks. He can feel all the sleepless nights pressing against his eyes, curling around the base of his spine. He was so tired, but even so he knew he could not sleep.
"I wanted to talk to you," she says, voice quiet in the pre-dawn morning. Eldris sighs.
"Hunting doesn't necessarily lend itself to conversations," he points out. Anaba flashes a smile at him.
"I know. I'm not going to go with you. I just wanted to catch you when nobody else was around," she tells him. He cocks his head to the side, sizing her up, trying to figure out what it is she wants before she tells him.
"What is it?" he asks, finally. She pushes herself off the birch, coming to stand in front of him.
"I don't want to leave," she tells him. He blinks at her.
"It'll probably be a few weeks before we do leave," he reminds her. She gives him a small, sad smile, and suddenly he realizes where this is going before it gets there.
"I don't want to leave at all. I want to stay with the Dalish. Mithra told me there's a place here if I want to stay and…I do," she says, a tiny shrug of her shoulders.
"This…is very sudden. Why are you springing it on me now? I mean, we're nowhere close to leaving," he says, one eyebrow raised.
"I wanted to tell everybody else tonight. I wanted your support when I did," she says. Eldris sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers.
"I'll be there with bells on," he says, letting out a sigh. Anaba grins, reaching out to ruffle his hair as she passes.
Eden finds that Zevran is good company. She knows well enough by now to know that there's some sort of entanglement with her brother, but Eden has never pried. If Eldris wanted her to know something, he always told her. She knew he had spoken to Theo, she knew something was between them, and as far as she was concerned that was all she needed to know.
Still, Zevran was quiet when he wanted to be. He was also playful, in a way none of the others were. Arya was preoccupied, and Eden didn't blame her. Eldris was blaming himself. Theo was busy with travel preparations and sending out letters to Merrill and Marethari. So Eden and Zevran were left alone, and Zevran didn't have any qualms about doing stupid things in the forest.
They started small. Games of hide-and-seek (or cat-and-mouse depending on how they looked at it, and there was often a predatory gait to their stride that let them explain it off as training) started them out. They were both silent- Zevran was better at it than Eden in cities, but Eden knew the forest like she knew the back of her own hand. She knew where and how to step to keep the leaves from rustling or branches snapping underfoot, she knew how to hide her trail, and she knew how to blend into her surroundings. After that, it turned into dares. Who could climb a tree the fastest, who could jump the highest, who could run the fastest.
Slowly, Eden began to remember what she felt like all those months ago, when she was still a child.
Leliana spends her time with the hahrens. She had started to learn that her point of view was limited, and the elders were gracious enough to pass on their stories to her. She was glad enough to listen. First it was the ones that the hahrens were most willing to share with her- stories about Arlathan, of the elves as they recovered from the Exalted Marches. Of elven heroes and Dalish gods and the things that Leliana had known nothing about before.
Carefully, quietly, she tucks them away. Her audience for these stories will be limited but she has noticed the hard set to Eldris' jaw that never really goes away. She hopes she can remind him of home and all the things he never truly loses.
Anaba's announcement was made around supper one night. Mithra had joined them for the night, Anaba tucked under her arm. The news was received with varying reactions- Arya felt bittersweet, Theo was happy for her, Eden welcomed her warmly. In the end, though, it was a quiet thing. Anaba told them, there was stunned silence, and quiet reactions, and then it was over and everybody was left to make peace with the fact that Anaba would not be returning with them.
Lysander is the only one who knew that Arya cried.
The morning after Anaba's reaction, Reno has stolen Morrigan's hand mirror and frowns at his own reflection. Morrigan, for her part, had made a token protest as he snatched it from her, but both of them knew she wasn't serious. Besides, Reno was the sort to be far more careful with her possessions than his own, so she knew her mirror wasn't truly in any danger.
"If you frown any harder, your face will freeze like that," Morrigan tells him, scooting up behind him to wrap her arms around his chest, her chin resting on his shoulder. He sighs, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair- in the months since he had arrived in Denerim, his hair had fallen to the wayside. It had grown out until the ends curled over his ears- just too short to pull back and just long enough to be frustrating.
"Do you think my hair makes me look younger like this?" he asks, after another second of frowning at his own face. Morrigan hides her grin in the kiss she presses to the back of his neck.
"You did look a little older when we first met, but you also looked quite haggard then from being on the run and all. But yes, you prematurely aged man, I think your longer hair suits you far better," she tells him, a playful edge curling up the corners of her voice like a smile.
"It's just…annoying, at this length. I do want it to be longer, but it'll be a pain to get it that way," he grouses. She presses another kiss to his cheek, leaving a plum lip print behind.
"I do know a spell that can help. Barring that, between myself, the bard, and Arya, we've got enough hairpins that I can pin it out of the way," she tells him, reaching out and gently pulling at his hair until he could see a weak approximation of the way she planned on pinning it back. He looked utterly ridiculous.
"I suppose I'll manage without. Especially if you say you like the hair," he decides, after a moment. Gently, he lays the mirror down before pulling Morrigan around to his lap, peppering her face with kisses while she laughs.
"You sentimental fool," she declares, draping her arms over his shoulders. Their faces hover inches apart- all she has to do to kiss him again is tilt her head just so.
"Your sentimental fool," he reminds her.
Neither could say which one closes the short distance between them until they're kissing again.
One night, Eldris slips out of the camp, pack on his back. He leaves Theo and Eden asleep in their aravel, a soft smile on his face at the way they curl closer together to chase away the chill his absence left behind. He ghosts through the camp until he reaches the forest, long accustomed to moving swiftly and silently. Then, he silently slips through the branches until he reaches the bank of a river. It is not a particularly remarkable riverbank but the grass along the edge is soft and there's a long strip of land between the edge of the forest and the edge of the water. He kneels down in what he thinks is the middle and begins to dig, first with a flat rock he'd picked up from the bottom of the shallow river, and then when the ground gets softer he uses his fingers, scraping through the red dirt.
Once the hole is dug, he rinses his arms off in the river, mud sloughing off into the water. He'd forgotten how cold the water was- by the time he is kneeling at the edge of the hole once more his fingers are stiff from it. Carefully, he takes twin daggers from his belt (months spent jostling shoulders as they worked, quiet exclamation that the other was going to ruin it, pride shining bright behind tired eyes weeks later as each presents the dagger to the other in the quiet of the morning) and lays them carefully in the hole he had dug. He gently scrapes dirt over top the knives, muttering an inaudible prayer under his breath. When the daggers are covered, he turns back to his pack, gently lifting a tiny sapling out. With another knife on his belt he gently scrapes Tamlen's name in the bark, careful not to damage the sapling. With that done, he lowers in into the hole before gently packing the dirt around the base of the sapling.
Eldris leaves as dawn rises over the forest. He turns back once to look at the lone sapling, Tamlen's stark-white name visible even from here. He thinks, for a moment, of what the tree will look like in the future. Of Tamlen's name, no longer stark-white, reaching for the sky.
When he returns to camp, nobody questions the smile on his face.
Three days after Anaba's announcement, and Arya receives a letter. Anaba tucks it into her pocket in the weak hours of the morning, when Arya is clutching a tree and desperately holding her hair back as she vomits her breakfast into the brush. It is hours before she reads it- when she finally stops vomiting she leans back against the tree that had been holding her upright. Her hand drifts down to the tiny swell beneath her shirt.
"Kid, you have got to quit making me sick like this. They told me it'd go away soon, and by the Gods, I am going to hold you to that," she murmurs, the tiniest smile on her face. There is, of course, no response from within. She isn't far enough along yet to feel movement, although she knows it won't be long until she can feel the heartbeat. She knows it won't be long, all things considered, until she is far enough along that all her stomach will do is get in her way.
She'd always thought she'd be able to wear those stupid maternity shirts when she got pregnant. Of course, she'd always thought she'd be back home, going to appointments with an obstetrician with a husband or a wife holding her hand, because this was the sort of thing she would have planned. She did not think she would be pregnant at eighteen, stuck in the middle of a forest that only existed in a video game. Stubbornly, she wipes away the tears pricking at her eyes, firmly deciding that it is far too early to cry over something she'd long since resigned herself to.
With a sigh, she peels herself off the tree and trudges back to the camp. Wynne is waiting at the campfire with a mug of tea she presses into her hand- Arya takes it gratefully, the last traces of nausea still lingering. She slips inside the aravel, curling up on the still-warm bed. Lysander must have just left for his own breakfast- she hopes he'll think enough to bring her some, since hers was now on the forest floor. As she shifts in the bed, she hears the crinkle of paper in her pocket and remembers the letter. It takes a moment to fish it out of her pocket, but popping the wax seal felt immensely satisfying as she slides it open. Unfolding the thick paper, she begins to read.
Dear Arya,
Though you know me, I am confident you will not be able to figure out who I am. For now, know that I am a friend that knows you. I know where you're from and how you got here, and much of what happened in between then and now. Just as you claimed to be a seer when you first arrived in Theads, so you should consider me. Although, neither of us are truly seers. (One day you'll look back on this with a smile. For now, I am sure you will be frustrated with how cryptically vague I'm being.) Going forward, you should know that everything I do, I do with the best of intents. I would never willingly hurt you, and any advice I give is from the knowledge I have from my 'status' as a seer. Please, trust me. You have nothing to lose, not from the advice that I offer.
If this letter reaches you when I intend for it to, you are camped in the Brecilian forest with Zathrian's clan. If memory serves me correctly, it should be Lanaya's clan now. If this is truly the timeline I think it is, you should have just found out you are pregnant and received your vallaslin. If you did not yet know you're pregnant, well…congratulations. If you did know, congratulations anyway. You'll be a good mother. Better than your own, I promise. There is so much I wish to tell you of the coming days, but much of that comes from a wish to reminiscence. And much of it is information I am not so certain you should have. Though I'm doing my own meddling with the timeline, there is much that I cannot change, if only for fear that it'll break time. So I'll leave you with a few pieces of advice that I hope you find helpful.
The first is this: get married with the clan. Anora will want to throw a large wedding ceremony, and she'll be disappointed to find that you married without her there, but I promise the noble backlash isn't worth appeasing her. There will be plenty of other lavish ceremonies for Anora to plan parties for. Besides, you always did want a hand-fasting ceremony. If you or Lysander are worried about making it official in the eyes of the Chantry, I'll gently remind you that you're traveling with a bard-turned-Chantry-sister who has the authority to perform such a ceremony. There is, of course, the possibility of a small and private ceremony when you return to Denerim, but I promise it'll be much harder to say no to Anora.
The second piece of advice is this: you're pregnant with twins. I tell you this only because that sort of surprise is not the best sort. It is better to be prepared. I know there will be an urge- from you or from Bellanaris- to return to the safehouse and collect Isala's crib. Don't. Leave it, and her, in the past. She'll be happier that way, and so will you. If I know you, and your husband-to-be, neither of you have even consider names. I'd wager a hundred dollars that you're sitting there with the uncomfortable realization that yes, you do have to begin thinking about names, and your laptop is all the way back in Denerim so you can't even search on those baby naming websites for something you want to name your children that Lysander likes and that doesn't sound horribly out of place and that your children won't hate. I'm telling you now to take a deep breath. You've got this. Or maybe I do, depending on your decision. With the aforementioned knowledge that I have…the twins will be identical at first. Pick different colors of clothing for them, and for the Maker's sake, stick with it. It'll make it easier not to worry about mixing the two of them up. That being said, you'll have a daughter. You started to suspect she was trans when she was ten, and began to research into alternatives for hormone therapy and surgeries. I'm here to tell you that you no longer have to do this- once I'm reasonably certain you're back in Denerim, I'll send you the information you'll need to help your daughter make any choices she might want to make. And with this in mind, your daughter is the one with Lysander's eyes. Your son will have yours. And you will be absolutely smitten with both of them. Going back to names- your daughter picked the name Lyra for herself. You and Lysander named your son Asher. Take this for what you will, but perhaps it'll help.
For now, I'll say goodbye. Drink your tea every morning, don't let your friends make you feel bad for having to piss every ten minutes on the journey back to Denerim, and don't forget to tell Ella when you get back.
Yours,
A Friend
