Yes, this is in present-tense - I like it for memories. It's 20 pages I have to fix with these memory portions subtracted.
A few translations at the bottom.
A Game
I take another breath, staring at the sky so I can ignore the tears standing in my eyes. Tonight heavy clouds blot out the stars, and if either moon has risen, I can't find it. It's cold, and I know I should go in and get a cloak. But I don't. I would either have to go through the great hall and up to my chamber, or I would have to speak to someone to bring me one. Neither option is to be endured.
Sudden warmth envelops me, and for a moment Solas's hands linger on my arms. Then he draws away slightly to lean against the parapet beside me - but he is studying my face as I study the sky. I look away, not wanting him to see - well, any of it.
"Shall I remind you that it is too cold for you to come out dressed like that, or would you rather skip straight to the real problem?" he asks, his tone light.
"That was a disaster," I sigh at the clouds, willing my voice to at least hold steady. It does, barely.
"No," he contradicts, his tone that of a scholar who has just encountered a subtle but important inaccuracy in a text, "that was a failure. Bann Deaglan is only one man, and hardly indispensable. Josephine will work around your mistake, and likely all will be well."
I turn to look at him in spite of the shame burning my cheeks. Thankfully, he is now staring out at the mountains that ring our fortress. "Is that optimism? From you?"
He chuckles. "Hardly. Merely a dose of reality - few single nobles of either Orlais or Ferelden are so important that winning their support is an imperative. Nor do I think Josephine so foolish that she would send to you one who is without extensive preparation. You failed, fenorain, because anyone learning new lessons becomes inclined to apply them too broadly. The politics of Orlais are utterly foreign to you, and you are spending a good deal of your attention learning them. Now you have also learned not to apply Orlesian politics to Fereldan nobles." He glances at me and offers a reassuring smile. "You failed. I trust it will not be the last time. I trust, too, that you will learn what you need from the failure to avoid a similar mistake in the future."
I feel my shoulders beginning to relax and give a slow nod. He is right - especially the part about Josephine and preparation. Though she reminded me Fereldan nobles were different from Orlesian, it was only in passing, with no specifics on the alterations I must make to my behavior. If this meeting were truly vital, she would have walked me through every step. I might be personally embarrassed, but I hadn't doomed the Inquisition - and by extension, the world.
I spare a glance for the man next to me, grateful, as usual, to have him at my side. "Ma melava halani, Solas."
He straightens, his smile now almost rueful, and comes close enough to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear. "It was time well spent, arasha." He pauses so briefly that I can't even be certain it was a pause. "Though if you wish to do me a similar favor in the future, remind me of these words the next time I make a significant mistake. As a general matter, I am far less inclined than you are to view my own failures as necessary steps to understanding or mastery. Indeed, I believe that what I just told you, I may have learned from you."
I feel myself blush under his gaze as he stops even pretending to fix my hair, and instead begins stroking the edge of my ear. "Come. I have a task your aid will speed completion of, and being of use will leave you less raw."
He doesn't take my hand as we return to the keep and the room I have already come to think of as his. As private as the tops of the walls feel in the darkness, there are guards everywhere, and anyone might look up from the yard below to see us. He does walk close, though, his body inclined toward mine, almost protective in its posture.
In the doorway, he pauses, glancing up. Paper rustles and books thump on the gallery above, which houses the library, and above that - the rookery, which is never entirely silent. But I worry less about Leliana's people seeing us. In the first place, it wouldn't be new information for any of them. In the second, of all the people in Skyhold, they are the least likely to gossip about anything. "I had hoped-" Solas murmurs with a resigned sigh. "But the delegation doesn't seem important enough to draw everyone to the hall. Let me gather my supplies, and I will meet you in your chamber."
This means, of course, that I have to brave the great hall myself, but the promise of time alone with ma vhenan at the end of it motivates me. In the cloak Solas put around my shoulders, I think only the guards really notice my passage. Without obvious markers of status, I am still just an elf, easily overlooked by most humans.
I force myself not to pace as I wait for Solas to join me, instead opening one of the doors to my side balcony and leaning against the frame as I stare out over the mountains. It is a view I am coming to love, even though I initially found them grim and inhospitable.
A soft sound of glass clinking behind me makes me turn. Solas climbed the stairs silently, of course, seeing as his boots have no soles. I know why the Dalish wear boots that way - easier to climb and move through the trees - but Solas has shown no interest in joining me in trees for ambushes and the like. I wonder, not for the first time, what drew him to that design.
His arms and hands are full with two books held to his chest, several pens clutched in his left hand, and two inkwells carried carefully - and precariously - in his right. They made the clinking that alerted me. "I would have helped," I tell him.
"I judged it better not to pique anyone's interest," he explains as I take the pens and books from him so that he can see to the inkwells. "The desk," he directs me.
"Are we...doing something more than what it appears?" I ask, looking over what he has brought. "Writing scandalous poetry, perhaps?"
The look he gives me isn't quite a smile, but I can see the amusement in his eyes. "We are doing what I spend most of my time here doing - reading and making notes," he explains. "But we are doing it together. It would be best if no one notices we have come to your room to do it together. They might wonder what I am studying that requires such privacy."
"What...are you studying?" I ask.
This time a smile does curl his lips, and he doesn't answer my question. "Come here," he says instead, taking my hand and drawing me a few steps closer, around the edge of the desk so we are on the same side. Then he sits on the chair and tugs me down to sit on his leg. "Taking notes will be far more efficient if you read the book to me, allowing me to focus on what I am writing," he explains, the gravity of his tone entirely at odds with his playful smile and the wicked slant to his brows as I crane my neck to see him.
"Is this the part requiring privacy?" I ask.
"This, yes," he agrees. "This and the game I thought we might play, since I doubt you have much interest in theories of primal weave manipulation."
I try to turn so I can see him more clearly, but he tightens his left arm around me, holding me in place. "What game did you have in mind?" With his right hand, he opens one of the books to a blank page, and then the other to the beginning of a chapter.
"It is essential that I hear every word clearly," he says as he unstoppers a bottle of ink, and now there is an undercurrent of laughter in his voice, "so, provided you make it through a page without stumbling, I will kiss you." He demonstrates brushing his lips against my neck.
I shiver, and then laugh. "And what if I do stumble?" I ask. "Shouldn't there be a forfeit of some sort?"
"A fair point," he agrees, and then bites my ear just hard enough to make me gasp. "Will that suffice?"
"I feel like I win either way," I confess.
"And so do I," he responds. "But you will try your best regardless. You become too invested in competition not to."
"All right, just one more thing," I say, watching as he reaches around me again to dip his pen in the ink, "what if you blot your page? After all, this research is indispensable for the Inquisition." I pause briefly. "I assume." He laughs. "It is essential that you write every word clearly."
"I will not blot my page," he tells me - a challenge if ever one has been issued.
I writhe, shifting my hips and causing him to suck in a hiss of air. A drop of ink falls from the pen to land on my desk. "You were saying?"
"That is hardly fair," he replies.
"I won't be able to sit still indefinitely," I point out reasonably. "So what is your forfeit?"
"What do you want?" he asks.
I think about it for a moment. "I don't know," I confess. "Time with you, most of all, but neither of us can truly promise the other that."
He sighs, leaning forward to press his face to my hair. "Save any you collect," he advises, and then the playfulness is back: "Perhaps one day I can offer you something for them."
We play, and he was right - I make very few mistakes, even when he starts intentionally distracting me during passages that don't interest him, even though I find the nips he gives me more thrilling than even the kisses. But, then, he only blots his page once, and so I only earn a single forfeit.
Just as well, perhaps, since I never do find anything to trade it for.
I found I had closed my eyes while remembering, and opened them. The Fade around me didn't look any different, but Latha was making satisfied sounds. "Well done," the spirit said.
"It looks the same," I pointed out, hoping the question was implied.
"Think of the memory and the emotion behind it as a seed planted here in the stuff of the Fade. Spirits and the Fade itself will be drawn to those emotions, and will cause the beacon to grow. Look," the spirit said, bending nearer the ground, "these pieces of the Fade, floating - they are new. Already other spirits take notice."
I honestly couldn't see the difference - rock-like bits of the Fade floated all over the place, without any direction or purpose I could understand. I would have to take Latha's word for it. "Can you access my memory?" I asked, feeling suddenly exposed.
"Anyone paying sufficient attention can, even other dreamers, if any were likely to come to this particular piece of the Fade, and were able to take control of the dream," Latha answered.
"Mmm," I said in reply, finding the situation far inferior to the ideal, but aware I had few choices in the matter. Besides, of how much consequence could Latha accessing my memories really be? It had Solas's already, and his perspective was the problem, not mine.
"This may be my favorite memory," the spirit went on, ignoring or not noticing my lack of enthusiasm. "You were so beautiful that night…"
"Is it near morning?" I asked quickly, changing to the first subject I could think of, before Latha could lose itself further in Solas's impressions of the evening.
"Yes," Latha replied, and I felt its thoughtful regard - again far too much like Solas for comfort.
"Then I may as well wake and begin packing. Perhaps my company can get an earlier start today." We wouldn't, but I was ready to be rid of this spirit, at least for a considerable span of hours.
"Vis nuvenas, ma vhenan," Latha replied.
"On dhea," I responded carefully, hoping it couldn't feel how its endearments made my skin crawl. "Sule'nydha." With a twist of my mind that was becoming more and more familiar, I wrenched myself from the Fade and back into the real world.
Fenorain: Diminutive form of fenor, which literally means "wolfish" but is used as "precious" or "adorable."
Ma melava halani: Idiom meaning "you have spent your time to help me." An informal and intimate way of saying "thank you."
Arasha: My joy
Vis nuvenas: If you want
On dhea: Good day
Sule'nydha: Until the night