This story was inspired by a poem of the same name by the lovely Mary Oliver :) And if you care to add some melancholy atmosphere to your reading experience, I recommend the song "On the Nature of Daylight" by Max Richter - it's what I listened to on repeat while writing.

No one said anything when I rose from the fireside and disappeared into the wood, and I was grateful for it.

The air was thick with summer, and smelled of sweet earth damp with fresh rain. I inhaled greedily, filling my lungs with the scent, and exhaled each breath with a sigh lingering longer than the last.

We'd been on the road for more days than I cared to keep count of, and I was in no mood to partake in the ongoing squabbles of camp. I was in no mood for anything, really — or for anyone - so I left it all behind, seeking my own solace where no one would follow.

It was cold in the shadows under the towering oaks, but the steadily setting sun still made itself felt whenever I walked through the bright patches. I couldn't help but smile at the sensation, feeling my body warm and loosen as I made my way steadily uphill.

I did not know where I was going, or what I was doing, exactly, but it mattered not; all that mattered was that I was here, alone, climbing up out of the meadow and onto the mountainside, under the shade of a forest far older than any I'd known. I could sense it in the way the air shifted and swayed between the thick trunks of trees, and hear it in the trickle of a nearby spring; I could see it in the beady eyes of squirrels watching me from their nests, and feel it in the undergrowth threaded dense between my bare toes.

This place was old, and had seen much — and would see much more to come.

I thought of this for a time, wonderingly — but not for long. In the meditation of motion my mind began to slow, and I welcomed the hush as I climbed, and climbed, and climbed.

Soon the trees became sparse, and the ground grew hard.

My back was damp, and sweat trickled off of my brow; breathing heavy, I sighted a large boulder perched over the ravine and veered towards it at once, like a flock of birds following the magnetic pull home after a winter away.

The rock face was smooth, and damp, but I scaled it easily enough. When I reached a high point I found a groove in the stone and leaned back, stretching my aching legs with a groan.

A soft breeze tickled the bare skin of my neck, and cheeks, cooling the moisture of my effort.

I was high up on the mountain, and had earned a spectacular view: dense, verdant forests extended across the valley, all the way to the base of the snow-covered peaks to the west, while a narrow river carved a winding path through the trees like the slithering trail of a snake.

It all felt so alive, and out here in the midst of it all I did, too.

I let out a long, contented breath, and closed my eyes.

Later, I would return to camp, and write up reports bound for Skyhold (and, of course, a personal note for Cullen); then I would lie awake in my tent, tossing and turning as I thought about everything we'd done, and of everywhere I'd gone wrong in the doing (so, so much wrong); when that was all done I'd stare into the threads of my taut canvas ceiling and worry about everything we had yet to do, and wonder how I could ever possibly manage to do it all.

This is what always happened, and this is why I no longer slept.

But for now, I chided myself, I wouldn't think of any of that — or of anything else at all.

For now, I would only listen, and touch, and smell, and breathe.

So that is what did: I breathed in the crisp alpine air, eyes closed, and I breathed it out, and in and out again, and again, until my lungs were full with the sweet scent of a mountain summit; I breathed until my heartbeat began to slow, and my body started to settle.

I didn't open my eyes for quite some time.

It was there, high up the slope, where I began to feel myself again, solidly embodied in this physical plane of mountain and forest and flesh. The future was far away, nothing worth worrying about, and memory felt like a half-forgot dream; finally, thankfully, I slipped back into the present with a sigh.

I don't know how long I laid there, but when I was ready to open my eyes I found the sun had dipped behind the mountains to the west, leaving the valley a glare-drenched haze of yellows and purples and pinks. Thick puffy clouds glowed on the horizon like candles burning too close to the quick, their bulbous forms casting dark patches of shadow out over the forest canopy.

The air had gone still, heavy and humming with the sounds of swift-falling night; a symphony of crickets chirped their nocturne songs, while bullfrogs croaked a monotone melody in the distance; trees shifted in the dim, and wings swished across the sky; rocks tumbled down the slope, clacking their way to a new place of rest..

I breathed in the bliss of the evening, ignoring the voice that told me I was lingering too long, and moved to adjust my seat in the slope of the boulder.

When I turned to the right to stretch my neck something strange caught my eye.

I paused, peering closer, eyes narrowed — and then froze.

At the far end of my perch, partially hidden by an outcropping of rock, sat a little round ball of ginger-red fur.

I went very still, holding my breath, watching — but the pile of fur didn't move.

I waited.

I waited, and waited, and still it didn't move.

I looked closer.

There were four black paws, two long ears, and a blazing orange pelt -

My chest swelled, a smile tugging at my lips; it was a little fox that I saw, curled up on a patch of moss on the rock.

Its dainty chin rested atop two crossed paws, snout directed towards the valley below — as though it too were contemplating the crescendo of twilight unfolding before us.

Somehow I'd missed it before, intent on myself as I was, but now that I'd seen it I couldn't look away; I was entranced by its lithe little body, enchanted by the delicate blue daisies that encircled its head like a crown.

The sharp, sudden shriek of a hawk shattered the silence, and I started, heart thudding.

Yet still, the fox didn't move.

Tendrils of cold coiled tight in my spine, fingers clenching —

I hadn't seen the fox move at all, not one bit.

That was when I finally noticed: there was something… off about its shape.

Its position was far too rigid, too stiff, with red-orange fur that clumped in odd spots; its stomach was hollowed out, caved inwards, patchy layers of skin slunk through the ivory slats of its ribs.

I let out a long breath, and closed my eyes.

This is a dead fox.

Something dropped in my belly, my breath going with it; I inhaled, shaky, clipped, cold —

Varric had called me Little Fox, for a time, not long after we met; he said he was trying it on to see how it fit.

It didn't stick, but I missed it all the same.

So much had happened, since then — so much we couldn't take back.

I felt the weight of it all - of all that came before, and all that was yet to come - and I sat with it on my boulder, amongst the rocks and the trees and the sky.

It all felt… smaller out here, somehow.

Less scary.

This was where Solas found me, later: sitting in silence, one hand on the little fox that I loved, staring out over the valley, like there was only myself and the world laid before us.

I heard him before I saw him, and when he emerged from the tree line to stand at the base of my boulder I only nodded my acknowledgment, not trusting myself to speak.

He stared up at me, wordless, eyes soft, and I stared back — and in those stormy depths I felt the burden of whatever great sorrow it was that he held in his heart; I felt it like it was mine, and I wished I could know what it was.

He was the first to break our gaze, and when he did I realized I should probably say something.

"I found a dead fox," I said, conversationally, "and it has a crown."

He raised his eyes back to mine, sharply, before he nodded, as though this explained everything. There was a breath, and then he made to climb up the boulder with long lanky movements.

I watched his approach, and when he sat beside me I felt a void of something ancient and aching between us, like the memory of a long lost love, or a friend never found.

"It does indeed," he eventually said, looking down at the little blue flowers adorning the fox's head.

I waited for more, but nothing came.

So we sat like that, looking together at the fox, until the crickets and frogs went silent, and their absence summoned my words to the surface; I wondered aloud what I'd been wondering all evening, since I came to this place and saw what I saw:

"Do you think it knew, when it chose this spot?"

Solas looked at me curiously; I continued.

"I like to think it did," I said, with an appreciative hum, "I like to think it came here, to this boulder with the view of the valley, knowing that this was the place it would die."

Solas's eyes were still on the fox, dark like the Void; there was something so unfathomably sad in their depths that I felt the cracks in my heart shudder, and sigh —

But I knew better than to ask.

Instead I waited, and he was silent for a moment, the night growing darker, and darker, before he said, simply, "Why?"

At that I lifted my brow, thinking it obvious, then raised my chin towards the sky.

I thought of all the things I wished to say — that I believed the little fox came here not only to die, but to die well; that it chose this posture of looking, til the last possible moment, out into the wide open world and all of its wonders; that it chose to keep looking back at what it would leave behind, even as it waited to breathe its very last breath of its life — but the words felt wooden on my tongue, and heavy in my heart, so I simply reached out to lay hand on his — his skin was warm, so much warmer than the fox — and said:

"Because it's beautiful, here, is it not?"

He blinked down at our hands, then back up at me, a weighty wondering in his eyes.

I only smiled, leaving my hand where it was, and turned to look out over the valley — to wait.

I desperately hoped he would see it.

A breath, and two, and three, and then his hand curled around mine, long fingers looping through my smaller ones, fitting soft and snug like a glove made of flesh.

His eyes were on me still, but I didn't look back; I kept looking at the world, so wide open and wondrous as it was, and I waited.

A moment passed, and another, until finally, voice like honey, he said, "It is, lethallan — it is."

We stayed like that for quite some time, bodies bound by our braided hands, looking.

We looked until the stars blazed bright up above us, like lonely watchmen taking their appointed fires in the night, and we looked until the moon bloomed pale and luminous against a backdrop of black; we looked until the valley below rocked itself into a peaceful slumber, as though the forest were swaying in sync with the very breath of the world itself.

As we sat and looked, fireflies casting little pockets of light on our faces, I thought of what it meant to be here, and what it would mean to leave.

I didn't want to leave this boulder. I didn't want to go back, not to camp, not to this war, not to everything it meant.

Not to everything that was expected of me.

I didn't want to go back because I was so, so scared I would fail.

I knew what I had to do, and the cost that might be paid if I didn't, and yet…

I didn't want to go back because I didn't want die, not like how I imagined I would if I did: blinded by pain, battered and broken, face in the mud and choking on blood —

Creators, I didn't want to die listening to the screams of my friends, and I didn't want to die thinking of Cullen, and how I'd never wanted to leave him alone —

A shudder swept my body; I passed it off as a chill —

But still, the thoughts persisted.

I don't want to die like that, my body thrummed. I don't want to die like that. I want to die like this fox, peaceful and quiet, loving and loved til the very end.

It all hurt too much to think of, and soon I felt far away and foreign, as though floating in a dream; and as I floated I prayed and I prayed to whatever gods would listen to please, please grant me this secret, shameful gift I so desperately wished for.

It was many breaths later when I realized my fingers were clenched around a hand not my own; I blinked hard to find Solas was watching me intently, as though he could read the worries and woes written plain on my face.

I opened my mouth to speak, despite not knowing what I'd say — but he was already squeezing my hand, and slipping away.

He rose to his feet, wordless, and stepped towards the little fox. Long slim fingers plucked a single blue daisy from the base of the little creature's skull, and he held the flower out between us, a glint of mischief in his eye.

I watched with a question on my lips, not understanding — but then his fingertips began to glow a very deep blue, light pulsing like waves on a shore —

My eyes went wide, and then wider still as the presence of something greater tugged at the depths of my belly, like looking over an edge and finding no bottom; it was something I'd never felt before, something old, and it pulled harder and deeper as the light grew brighter, and warmer — and then, as through time were racing forward, the single blue flower became two, then three, then four, then more, growing and blooming and weaving like vines up a tree, until they looped back together to form a circlet of daisies that was fit for a queen.

The blue light faded, humming away into the dark — but the circlet remained, soft and solid and very much real.

I clapped my hands in unfettered delight, thoroughly enchanted by all of it. I very much wished to learn how to do that; I didn't know one could do that.

Solas observed my reaction with a slightly raised brow, lips turned up at the corners. I moved to speak my joy, and to ask how, but was stunned into silence when he bowed his head down low, holding the circlet of flowers up between us.

"You found a dead fox," he said, with more reverence than I knew what to do with, "and I give you its crown, lethallan."

Oh.

My breath was gone, along with my thoughts, and I blinked down at the blurry little blobs of blue, not bothering to contain my tears.

Solas was watching, serene and stoic as stone, but before I could possibly begin to find words he leaned forward, bearing the crown of daisies out like an offering, or a prayer.

"May I?"

I swallowed hard, and nodded.

"Ma serannas, lethallin."

And so he placed the little crown of flowers on my head, atop my plaited hair; his breath was on my cheek as he adjusted the flowers once, then twice, and I missed the warmth of him when he moved away.

Solas leaned back on his heels, eyes lingering on my face, before he nodded slowly, satisfied.

"You… wear it well," he said, so softly I could barely make out the words.

He meant more than I understood, of that I was quite sure, but I did not ask. Instead I looked up into the night, still reeling from the weightless weight of my daisy-chained crown, and in the shimmering shapes of a star speckled sky I saw everything that his words meant to me, and everything I wanted them to mean, too.

When our eyes met again my heart was light, and full, though I certainly didn't know what to say — so I didn't say anything at all.

He didn't seem to mind.

We stayed like that a little while longer, quietly together, looking out at the valley; we stayed until the chill of night spread like ice in our bones, and the promise of warmth back at camp could no longer be ignored.

Solas went first, dropping nimbly down from our perch and into the dark. I moved to follow, legs stiff from standing, but even as I went to reach for his outstretched hand something within me called for a pause — so I looked back, one last time, at the little dead fox and its view of the valley.

Thank you, I thought, words humming somewhere deep in my belly, eyes lingering on the flowers sprouting from the fox's skull; thank you for your crown — and for all that you taught me.

When I looked away I found Solas watching me, and I couldn't help but feel laid bare under his gentle gaze; it was a comfort, though, to believe he heard the words whispered only in my mind, and even more so to believe he might be thinking the very same words himself.

I smiled at him from beneath my crown of daisies, a swell of warmth rising in my chest.

"Ir tel'him," I said, gratefully.

He nodded, smiling as though he already knew, and said, "I'm glad."

I took his hand then, and we made our way down the slope together, descending back under the trees and into the welcome embrace of the valley.

Fin

Elvish Translations:

lethallan / lethallin - Casual reference used for someone with whom one is familiar

Ma serannas, lethallin -Thank you, my friend

Ir tel'him - I'm me again

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed, and I'd love to hear your thoughts - kudos/comments always brighten even the darkest of days 3