A/N: This story is also posted over on AO3 if you prefer that website! However, I felt it wasn't getting any traction over there and thought maybe the Origins community might be a bit more active on this website so I posted here. I know most people have moved on to Inquisition or DAII, but honestly I miss Origins a lot and have always been hung on the fact that you couldn't be a Dalish mage. I love Lavellan, don't get me wrong, but the Warden was my first love and I want to give her a little face lift with this story.
What To Expect From This Story: A story of what a Dalish Mage Origin could have looked like, incorporating what we know of dragon age lore now. Will incorporate the elvehn lore from Inquisition (elvehn pantheon/ancient elves stuff for example) so WARNING for spoilers in that area!
Not sure how many chapters it will be since I haven't broken it up yet, but I can tell you the finished story is 60k pre edits.
Last note: THIS IS NOT A RETELLING!
This story will have at most two or three lines reused from the actual game origin, otherwise? Totally new content. ;) Merrill will be DAII Merrill, because I love her. Alistair will show up too, though it'll be more pre-romance than anything.
Disclaimer: Dragon Age games are not mine. Neither is the elvish used - that belongs to the wonderful FenxShiral and their Project Elvehn on AO3. Any mistakes in the linguistics are my own misunderstandings :)
Time...stretches like vellum. It starts solid and set in its shape and slowly, ever so slowly it gets thinner and more malleable as it's stretched. Little by little, stretching, stretching, stretching until it's paper-thin. Then it is just a single page, ready to become a part of a greater whole in the never-ending volume that is history.
And in between every page, between every breath, before the page is flipped, a thousand different stories wait to be written...and for every story that is spoken aloud a new book is made, with new chapters and new pages, and so on and so on…
It's enough to make anyone go mad with the endless possibilities of choice. A mage, called a goddess once by people long dead, was the last to manage it and even she could not hold on to all her sanity in the end. With each piece of her soul, each story left unspoken, she lost a bit more, became a bit...less.
But still, she looks and she listens to the whispers and she wonders which path will be written in ink when she flips the page.
In one such path she sees a forest of Dalish elves, in another, the home of a human noble, a dwarven thaig, an alienage...children born, but what of their fates? The page flips, the forest shines bright, and the witch of the wilds sees in her mind a little Dalish camp, and in it an elven girl of great potential kicks within the womb that carries her. She holds her breath, releases it, sees a thousand different ways her future could go.
Blight, sickness, death, failure, service, leadership...greatness.
Sometimes she is a warrior, sometimes a rogue, good with knives or bow, and sometimes...in the most unlikely and improbable of all future's, she is a mage.
It is that one, that single whispered future, that the witch of the wilds listens to with the most avid of ears. A story full of loss and sacrifice...but also hope, and knowledge, and the creation of something the elves have not had in far too long—a home.
The witch smiles grimly and opens her eyes, bright and golden, and the whispers reach a fever pitch. She turns to look at the man lying prone and naked atop the cot in her little hut, dark of hair and eyes and full of the spark of magic, magic that she knows will pass to the child that grows within her. She places a hand atop her womb, feeling the seed that quickens there even now, and knows that this child, this daughter, will have a part to play in the elven woman's story should she survive her trials.
A breath, a blink, a cry far off in the distance. In a thousand other stories a babe is born with no connection to the Beyond...but in this one, a mage, despite all the odds, and the little part of Mythal that still lives, that part of her that still looks upon the elves as her people...smiles.
—
Her name is Isera.
"A Dream of Fire'' the Keeper tells her it means. Keeper Marethari was the one who named her, though her guardian was in fact Ashalle. Her parents died before they could tell the creators and the people the name they'd intended for her, and so it fell upon the spiritual leader of their clan to give her one. It's a fitting name, almost too fitting, Isera thinks, as she wakes covered in sweat and gasping for breath for the fifth time that week.
Isera isn't sure if it's the knowledge of the meaning of her name that leads to it, or if perhaps the Keeper knew her dreams would one day be filled as they are with fire. She's a bit too afraid to ask the Keeper, despite the fact that by adoption she's technically her grandmother.
Ashalle was the keeper's daughter, making Isera, though not by blood, her granddaughter...but the duties of the Keepers role always took up too much time and focus for her to be anything but a distant figure of authority.
"Isalan, could you shave these branches down to arrow shafts? The head hunter says our supplies are running low." Ashalle says as she and Isera both leave their aravel for the day.
Isera grimaces at the nickname but hides it under a nod as she takes the branches from her guardian Ashalle, who promptly gives her a proud smile and pinches her cheek.
"On'lan," Ashalle croons, good child, then winks at her, "I'll make sure to save you an extra bowl of blackberries hmm? Your favorite!"
"I'm not really hungry right now—"
"Nonsense! My Isalan is never full." Ashalle laughs as she walks away towards their shared aravel, and Isera is left with an arm full of sticks and a heart full of barely hidden annoyance.
Isera hates it, but she's more well known amongst the clan as 'Isalan.'' It means 'hungry one' or 'hungry child,' in elvish, a name which, to Isera's endless embarrassment, stems from a rather unfortunate habit she'd had as a young child for stealing other people's snacks. Now, at nearly 8, she considered herself 'too old' for such childish nicknames, though she knows the adults of the clan would laugh their chins off if she said so out loud.
In truth, she can't even imagine asking them to stop, despite how much she dislikes the nickname. She knows they gave her the name with fondness, so it'd feel like an insult to do so, and an insult was not easily forgotten in a Dalish clan. As wonderful as the support of such a tight-knit clan can be, they can be as quick to judge as they are to forgive.
"Do you like being called Isalan?"
Isera stops, her hand still poised to strike at the branch of wood that is slowly shaping into the narrow smooth form of an arrow shaft. She looks up, shocked to see clan Sabrae's First standing before her, Merrill.
"You may call me what you wish." Isera settles on, hoping she's found a good balance between respectful and friendly. The girl, Merril, is rather new and quite awkward, having only been with the clan for two years now. The other children avoid her, some out of respect for her magic, some out of discomfort with her terrible social skills. Isera feels rather awkward herself around newcomers but has not outright avoided Merril like the other children. They've had a few friendly conversations here and there, even helped one another once or twice with setting up camp or tending to the chores all the children have. Though in general Merrill had less then they did, being older at ten years and always being called away by the Keeper for her studies. That certainly didn't help the others like her either, seeing her get out of the chores they dreaded.
"Oh! That's rather brave of you isn't it?" Merrill gives her a hesitant quirk of her lips. "I could call you something rather silly now, and if you complained I could say 'well, you said to call you what I wished!'"
Isera narrows her eyes at her. "Please don't."
Merril laughs, steps closer to look down at the arrow shaft she's crafting from a branch. "Isalan means hungry one, doesn't it? What a strange nickname...I feel as if I'd be hungry every time I heard it. I think Isera has a much more interesting meaning, 'a fiery tale'...and it doesn't remind me of food, so I think I'd rather call you that."
Isera feels a smile come to her lips. Merril returns her look with a brighter one, bouncing on the balls of her feet before coming to sit beside her.
"I thought Isera meant a 'dream of fire?'" Isera says after a moment, confused. "That's what Keeper Marethari told me anyways."
"Oh! It does, yes, but I'm finding in my lessons with the Keeper that elvish words often have multiple meanings, at least as far as we can understand. 'Era' can mean 'dream,' but it can also mean 'tale' or 'story.' Like it does in my name." Merril said, eyes bright. "My name is much more condensed than yours though. The Keeper says it's cut down into three words, Ma'era'il. Ma meaning 'your,' and 'il' mean sacrifice, and you already know what 'era' means. So all together my name can mean 'your story of sacrifice.' I think I was named that because my father died to protect my mother while she was pregnant with me."
Isera's eyes widen at both the very casual mention of such a heavy topic and the sudden onslaught of words from the older girls mouth, but Merril doesn't seem to notice and just continues speaking. "Anyways, 'ise' can mean fire as in 'a fire', or it can mean 'fiery.' So, 'fiery tale' or a 'dream of fire.' They're both technically correct translations of Isera."
"...Oh." Isera blinked rapidly, taking in the rapid babble of information, her stilled against her arrow shaft completely. She has so many questions in her mind for the First of their clan, but all that comes out is, "...you're really smart."
"Me? Oh, oh my, no I'm not really—" Merril sputters, face red and bashful as she stares down at the ground and makes little circles in the dirt with her heel.
Her words trail off into awkward silence and Isera makes no move to fill it with anything but the recontinued 'shink, shink, shink' of Isera's knife against the wooden branch.
"You are." Isera says simply, thinking on Merrill's words. "Most people don't bother to understand their names like that."
"I don't see why." Merrill says, pouting. "There's importance in a name. Meaning."
For a moment, a flash of fire blinds her, half-remembered nightmares that leave her sweating through blankets and gasping for air as she wakes. Her blade hovers in the air as she swallows heavily. Isera can feel Merril glancing at her hesitantly, can hear her clearing her throat every few moments. The girl seems to constantly be in a state of movement, even if it's just simple rocking back and forth on the log or the swirling of her foot drawing in the dirt.
"Is there...something you need?" Isera finally says hesitantly after the third time Merril stares at her for a bit too long to be comfortable. Isera startles when Merrill sits up quickly, energy buzzing around her.
"Yes! I mean...oh, no, I just...it's just that I—well, I—" Merril seems to struggle for some time with her words, her hands fidgeting in front of her nervously. Isera sets her knife and wooden branch down to put a hand on the girl's shoulder and Merril stills instantly. The girl looks down at the hand upon her arm with wide eyes, and Isera would've taken it away had the girl not placed her own hesitantly on it.
"Our names share a dream," Merrill says, hesitantly. "Don't you think that's interesting?"
Isera turns to her, watching her with confusion for a moment before she realizes she's talking about their names both containing the origin word for dream, 'era.' She feels suddenly amused with the idea that this could be the girl's hesitant way of making overtures of friendship, awkward and full of too much subtext for most of the clan to understand it. Isera thinks of telling the girl all she had to do is ask 'do you want to be my friend?' and Isera would've said yes, but before she can Merrill forges on.
"I saw you." Merril blurts out, not meeting her eyes, and Isera is once more at a loss of understanding until she continues. "Last night. In the eastern part of the forest, when you were practicing. You're quite good with fire, you know, better even than I was at your age! Although I've always liked the creation magics more than the primal ones."
Isera stiffens, breathing in sharply, looking at the Keeper's First with dawning horror. Merrill looks up at her with wide concerned eyes. "I won't tell anyone! I promise, I—I just, I thought it might be nice, perhaps if...if we could be friends? I mean...I could teach you! I could teach you so you can control it better and, oh, I'm rambling aren't I? Keeper Marethari always yells at me when I start rambling, but you haven't done that yet, which is nice, and I'm sorry, but I'm just so excited to meet someone else my age that has magic and—"
"Merril!" Isera slaps her hand quickly over Merrills' mouth, looking around carefully as she pulls her further into the woods away from camp. "Please, stop talking. If someone hears you…"
Merril calms, nodding slowly under Isera's hand, her eyes wide and apologetic. Isera takes her hand away and Merril immediately looks down at her lap.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—" Isera starts, feeling guilty for raising her voice. She does so hate to raise her voice.
"No! No, I was stupid, talking about it like that out here. I of all people know why you'd want to keep it a secret…" Merril says sadly, and Isera is sharply reminded that the girl has only been part of clan Sabrae for two years, that's she must still miss her old clan dearly. She wonders suddenly if she'd had a mother she'd left behind, or if she was dead just as her father clearly was.
"I'm...sure you already know. That I used to be part of clan Alerion," Merril says hesitantly, "But I was the third child born with a connection to the Beyond, and their Keeper already had a First and a Second..."
And so, at only eight years old, she'd been given to clan Sabrae at the most recent Arlathvhen, just two years past, so that she did not put their clan at risk of too many mages. Clan Sabrae itself had a First at the time, but only because there was no better option. Tamaris, who was a rather weak mage of middling age with a rather gentle and indecisive personality, was more than happy to give up his position to someone so obviously more talented and fit for leadership. Tamaris was much happier now as Second. He handled the more mundane aspects of magic for the clan, like healing smaller injuries, making poultices, setting up wards around the camp, digging latrines with earth magic, or even making runes to fill the sails of their aravels with mage given wind and lessen the burden on the halla.
"Did you...have a mother there? In your old clan?" Isera asks hesitantly, unsure if she should ask at all. Merrill made it clear she had no father and that it did not bother her, but a loss of an unknown is different than a loss of the woman who raised you. Her chest tightens in sympathy when Merril nods.
"...I miss her dreadfully." Merrill says with a shake in her voice that had Isera's own chest clenching in sympathy. "She had the most wonderful singing voice…she'd sing to us every night, as she combed out our hair before bed. I cut mine before I left. I didn't think anyone would comb it out for me here."
"Keeper Marethari sings often to the clan at dinner…" Isera offers half-heartedly.
"Yes. It's quite awful isn't it?" Merril says with a wrinkle of her nose. "She must be what my mother used to call 'tone-deaf."
"Ah, well…" Isera covered her smirking mouth with a hand, trying in vain to cover her laugh with a cough, "I can't say you're wrong."
They each share a look of long-suffering, one that every child in the clan knows. It's cast across fires at boring adult dinners and shared sidelong at important ceremonies where they're expected to stay still and silent and rather than be allowed to go off and play.
"There can only be three mages within a clan at one time...a Keeper, their First, and their Second. It is known." Isera says finally, turning away from Merril with a grimace. "I know...I know by not telling Keeper Marethari that I...that I'm putting all of us at risk. But...it only started happening two months ago, little things like the fire lighting easier and then...slowly they became big things, things that make me afraid, make me—"
Merril takes her hand in her own. Her grip is too tight, and it shakes slightly, making it clear she is uncertain about whether the action will be well received. Isera returns the hold swiftly to show her it very much is.
"I understand. I do. I...I've watched you, you know. You're so kind to everyone, all the adults like you, Keeper Marethari likes you...I'm sure...I'm sure if you told her, she'd take you as her First instead of—"
Isera turns sharply to Merril. "Stop that. You are Keeper Marethari's First she wouldn't—"
"I'm an outsider. One of the people, yes, but..." Merril says quietly, but surely. "I'm not from this clan. I didn't grow up alongside you or the other children, I am...not good with people, I never know the right things to say. I-I am not the one they would choose if given the choice. They would not ask you to be second either, not with Tamaris being so much older and married besides...I'm young and new and—it'd be easy to send me away."
For a long while, both are silent at her harshly spoken truths. Isera does not like to lie, and so her mouth stays firmly closed and her head bowed. At long last, when she speaks, she finds she has made a decision.
"Teach me then," Isera says and Merrill looks at her with confusion. "You offered, didn't you? If you...if you teach me, then perhaps I won't be such a risk to the clan. You can stay as First and learn from the Keeper and then teach me everything you learn and...and we can all stay exactly as we are. Neither of us should have to leave. We can be...friends."
Swiftly Merril's large doe-like eyes swell with tears. "You...you mean it?"
Isera smiles tentatively, unused to the feel of it, and she squeezes Merril's hand. "I mean it, Merril. Oh! I mean...hahren?"
"Hahren!? I'm not so much older than you, only two years!"
"That's true...perhaps ghi'lan then?" Isera says the word 'teacher' thoughtfully.
"Oh, my, ghi'lan Merril?" Merril giggles, bright and excited, blushing at the title of 'teacher.' "I like it! And I will call you ma'lansila? It means student you know! Keeper Marethari calls me that all the time in our lessons."
Isera smiles just as wide, and says, "Call me what you wish. So long as it isn't Isalan!" And for the first time in an age, Isera laughs with a girl nearly her own age and feels entirely young and hopeful.
—
On a different page, in a different book, clan Sabrae is distant to Merril, First to Keeper Marethari. In that book, Merril stays an outsider to all but the Keeper, and her views and unstoppable zest for knowledge are hampered by a people who keep her at arm's length. But on this page, in this book, Merril is welcomed in small steps through the shared friendship with a favored clan member. In this book, Merril has someone with which to share her most forbidden thoughts, one who will keep her secrets and listen to her theories on elvehn artifacts and magic, someone who listens and learns and equals her zest for risk-taking in the name of learning, someone who is not the Keeper, someone who does not shun her views as 'dangerous and foolhardy.'
Always Isera tries to keep the peace, would direct Merril's attention and focus elsewhere and distract the Keeper with kind words and helpfulness. She gathers and forages twice her share, she makes excess arrows for the hunters, she stockpiles the wood and kindling to give the younger children time to play, and even leaves little packets of Ashalle's special calming tea for the Keeper in her aravel without asking. Anything to make herself useful, to keep others from looking at her with distrust or thinking 'and where are she and Merril off to today?'
She feels a measure of guilt that she doesn't do it out of the goodness of her heart as they think. Their gratefulness, their favor, gives her an amount of freedom and, by proximity, gives Merril that freedom too. Their friendship makes it so that it is not strange that Merril would venture out into the woods with her to bathe or gather herbs, and they do do that...sometimes. But it is more often that they need the privacy to allow Merril to teach her magic far from eyes that would see another mage as a liability rather than a boon.
And Merrill, despite only being two years older than her, is quite a good teacher. She leads often by example, is very hands-on, and actually likes when Isera asks her questions, unlike hahren Paivel, the clan's storyteller and teacher who only hushes Isera. However, it is clear Merrill's only thought to teach Isera things that she thinks are important, and Isera sometimes wonders if it's truly everything she ought to know. Merrill can be quite focused to the point of obliviousness at times, or perhaps a better word would be single-minded.
"You're quite good with creation magic Isera...not as good as you are with the primal ones, but you're doing wonderfully!" Merril says, even though Isera knows it's undeserved.
She can see for herself just how unwilling the vines are to come to her call. But Merrill is ever one to motivate with kindness and encouragement, which Isera enjoys. Merrill often says 'it's how I prefer to learn, so why wouldn't I do the same when I'm teaching rather than being taught?'
"Please, that's a lie and we both know it...as soon as my intentions become anything but 'protect me' the roots just...stop listening. It's easier with fire but..."
"You aren't committed enough to the thought of attacking," Merril says, with a sigh of those who have had to say the same thing a thousand times. "You must want them to attack. Your intent is what is lacking, not your skill."
And Isera scowls and looks away and thinks to herself, I don't want to ask the earth to destroy itself to attack things. It feels...wrong.
"Aren't you training to be a hunter? It's no different than shooting an arrow with the intent to kill a hare or a deer." Merril tells her, having read the emotion on her face.
"That's different. That's...survival. This is...I don't know, it just feels like a waste."
"A waste?"
"Yes...with a bow and arrow, there's only one real use for it, isn't there? It's a weapon, meant to protect or hunt food…" Isera hesitates, looking down at the growing vines all around her in a circular barrier. She reaches out and touches one, full of pointy thorns. "But magic...it has so much potential, doesn't it? For creation, for...I don't know, everyday life. And it just seems...it just seems that all I've been learning to do with it is destroy things."
Merrill looks thoughtfully at her, mouth hanging open for so long that Isera scowls to see it.
"What?" She says with a furrowed brow, and Merrill laughs a little giggle.
"Nothing, nothing...it's just that I don't think I've ever heard you speak so much in one go before!" At Isera's rolled eyes Merrill turns more serious, taking on her 'teacher' persona once more in that too serious way that children often have when they are trying to act older than they are. "But, you know you're right ma'lansila. I suppose I've been lacking as a teacher haven't I? Here...let me show you something…"
After that, Merril begins showing Isera little quiet ways to use her magic. 'Domestic magic' Merril calls it and says that it was one of the first things Keeper Marethari had Tamaris teach her to use, to learn control. Merril had simply not thought to show Isera, because the practice of it was so common for Merril at almost eleven years old, that it slipped her mind to even think of it.
Of all the lessons, Isera loves those the most. She learns to heat her wooden cups of tea without setting them on fire, and she learns to draw a glyph upon the stones in the river to heat up her own natural bath, learns to use the air around her to wick her sweat or the rain from her skin, learns to ease the strain and burn of muscles with a little trickle of healing magic, or to use just the slightest push of magic when she releases her arrow to guide it straight and fast.
Once she begins experimenting on her own she finds a thousand new ways to use magic drawn from the Beyond to ease her life...and then becomes endlessly annoyed that she can only do so away from the prying eyes of the clan. It'd be rather embarrassing if what gave her away as a mage was a cup of tea that was perpetually hot, wouldn't it?
But there is one thing that she finds she can use magic for without most noticing—and that's gardening.
In her aravel she starts keeping little clay pots of dirt, each one taken from a different camp they'd left behind, and in each one she pushes a little seed and feeds it magic every day, along with water. Slowly, over months, she learns just how much is too little, how much is too much. She finds that if she feeds just the right bit of magic and intent into the pot, in half the time a normal plant would take, a sprig of elfroot or the bud of an embrium plant will be seen peeking out from the dirt.
"Oh, how fascinating!" Merrill says immediately when she shows her the fully grown plants, suddenly full of excited babble. "I never would have thought to—well, I mean, it's not often that a Dalish thinks of gardening is it? Gathering yes, hunting yes, but not gardening and—oh, I'm babbling again aren't I? Oh, I should've thought of this years ago! I wonder what other applications it could have? Do you think magic affects things besides the growth rate? Perhaps it'll make the effects more potent...and imagine if it were fruits or vegetables instead of herbs, oh the possibilities—!"
Isera only slightly regrets showing Merrill her experiment, if only because she ends up spending the entirety of their evening unable to get in more than a single word with Merrill so excited. Still, she listens attentively, as she always does, and she can tell Merrill appreciates it. Isera knows that it isn't often that anyone sticks around to listen to her talk when she gets like this. Most of the time they simply make their excuses and leave the First alone, talking to herself until she notices and trails off into silent embarrassment.
And so, just as her plants grow so too does her friendship with Merril. It grows, in fact, like nug grass, an unstoppable weed that even if plucked and shorn at the roots can be found sprouting just a foot away ready to grow and spread once more the next day. Over the next several years they spend nearly every possible moment with one another. Merrill trains her and Isera listen's to her and their friendship becomes so deep that the clan members begin speaking of them always in the same breath.
One younger member of the clan, who thought they are twice as funny as they actually are, often calls them jointly as 'Iserril' to their absolute hatred. Unfortunately, the nickname sticks and spreads like wildfire among the clan, as such things tend to do when the objects of the nickname display their dislike for it.
Isera doesn't mind so much though, not really. Names are important, and what better name is one shared with her best friend?
—
Isera goes to Merril for her bright smile, her positivity, her kindness even in the face of cruelty, all things that Isera herself finds difficult to keep hold of in her darker moments. Merrill on the other hand goes to Isera for her willing, interested, ear, for her calm measured words, her steadfastness in the face of issues where Merrill often falls to nerves and stutters. When Merrill interacts with others within the clan she likes for Isera to be at her side, to explain to her the jokes that she doesn't get, or to mediate for her when she sticks her foot in her mouth—which is often.
For all that Isera seems sure and calm and collected, though...under it all Merrill knows she isn't unflappable, and she feels privileged to be one of the few to see it. She knows that Isera is often prone to moods of melancholy and long periods of time where getting her to talk is like pulling a tooth that's gone rotten from a halla's mouth.
When it's raining, for example, Isera's absolutely impossible to live with, huffing and glaring at everyone and everything, and Merrill avoids her on those days like Fen'harel himself. Isera absolutely hates being wet, which Merrill understands. The halla do not have a pleasant smell when wet, and it tends to permeate the entire camp once the rains cease. If Merrill had to describe it she'd say it's like bog water mixed with overripe plums.
The worst though is when the clan moves. Merril quickly learns to make time in her schedule and her aravel for Isera when news spreads that they're moving camp for her friend grows sullen, snapping at all that ask for her help, and refusing to retire to the aravel at night. Instead, Merrill often finds her pacing the camp boundaries after dark, picking up odd things from the ground that most would consider junk.
A shell, a stone, a strangely shaped chunk of wood, or even just a bottle filled with water or dirt from their campsite. Merrill always thought it was strange, but she never teased Isera for on her actions like others did. Merrill knows better than to ask questions about it too, not after the first time when she'd gotten a simple shrug and a grunt in answer. She knows that it's simply not Isera's way to answer when she doesn't want to, and Merrill accepts that.
She often thinks, in her more fanciful moments, that Isera is like a wild halla, sensitive and guarded with her trust, and the best move is to let her come to you. Merrill assumes that it is simply a dislike for the work and chores that come with uncamping and moving their entire life in one night.
It's the summer of Isera's twelfth year when Merril finally discovers that it is not the hard work of the move itself that bothers Isera, but rather the leaving.
It's been nearly four years since they've become friends, four years of shared laughter and learning. It's the sixth time they've had to move camp this season, 'to avoid the encroaching shemlen,' the Keeper tells them, 'who seek to fell great trees on the outskirts of the forest and use them for their wooden villages.'
That night, after the aravels are stocked and the pens for the halla the only thing left standing in camp, Isera crawls into Merrils aravel and cries and cries and cries. And when it's over she...starts talking. It happens in starts and stops, one or two words at a time. Merril just pets her hair and listens to her speak of her favorite trees to sit in just outside camp, of the brook just an hours walk away, the one Isera thought had the smoothest stones she's ever seen in its bed, so perfect it looked like a shemlen road, and of the big boulder on the edge of it that reminds her of a bird. She likes to sit on it and pretend that she's flying, Isera tells her quietly and Merrill's heart aches at the despair in her voice even as she doesn't understand it.
"I hate it. I hate leaving ." Isera says as a final verdict, her tears dried and her voice scratchy. Merrill holds her hand tightly in hers and felt guilty for feeling so happy that her friend—her first and only real friend— has finally opened up to her.
"I suppose I've never thought to mind the moving…" Merril says thoughtfully, "It's been my whole life, our whole life. There's never been room in it to even think of stopping."
"But...won't you miss it here?" Isera murmurs.
"I...suppose a little. But we might come back someday. And the new place, wherever it is, will have new interesting shaped rocks and nice trees to sit in, and pretty brooks with smooth pebbles!"
"But they won't be the same." Isera hisses, "They won't be this brook, my brook."
"That's half the fun, isn't it? Always something new to see? Not like the shemlen live, in their little houses that never move. I couldn't imagine living in the city." Merril gives a deep shudder. "The Keeper told me she went to a shemlen city once...said it smelled like a privy mixed with cabbage. I can't imagine how they live with that smell. I hate cabbage. And all those streets and buildings that all look the same...I'd get lost for sure!"
"I don't mean a city, Merril, it could just be—just be here, in the forest, or in the valley below...just a place we don't leave."
"We never leave our aravels. Or our halla. Or our clan—oh, unless you're like me, I suppose, since I left my clan...but I got a new one, so it's alright!" Merril fidgets nervously, desperately trying to think of something to comfort Isera. "I just mean...our people are our homes, Isera. That's what I think of when I think of home. That and...you."
That brings a small smile from Isera, who reaches out and holds Merrill's hand in her own. "I wouldn't want a home without you, Merrill. Without the clan. But..."
"But nothing," Merrill says a little too quickly, a sudden clench of fear hitting her. A fear that Isera will leave her for some far away city with a house and a tree that she wouldn't have to leave. "The clan, the people, that's home. It's simpler that way."
"Simpler yes...but better?" Isera frowned, eyes distant. "...we had a home once. Where we could be born and live out our days without ever leaving. We had one."
"You mean—"
"Yes...the Dales." Isera says with a quiet reverence. "Don't you want that again? A place we can just...make our own?"
"Of course I do...we all do. But what choice do we have? It is this or an alienage, Isera."
Isera shakes her head. "We could just stay. Here. The shemlen don't enter this forest beyond its edges, they think it cursed. We could—"
"The forest is no place to farm, lethallan, and we must eat," Merril says quietly, for once the voice of reason. Isera looks away from Merril's wide sad eyes, unwilling to let her see the tears welling in her own. "And what would we do when the game ran out? When the bushes were all picked of their berries?"
Isera is quiet for a long while, which is in itself not unusual, as she is often quiet. What is unusual is the little shivers that quake her shoulders as she turns her back to Merrill, and she knows her friend must be holding back sounds of sorrow. She lays her forehead between her shoulder blades and thinks of anything she could say to make it better, and finds herself bereft.
"Do you remember the first time we spoke? Really spoke?" Merrill says finally, thinking back suddenly to that first day they'd discovered one another over sharpened arrow shafts and fearful confessions. "When I told you what your name meant, and what mine meant, and the parts both of them shared?"
"...yes. Of course." Isera murmured, her voice choked in a way Merrill had never heard it. So unsure, so tired. "Era. A dream, story, tale...it's in both of our names."
Merrill nods against her back, not entirely sure why she'd brought up that memory now of all times, even as her mouth answered for her. "This could be our dream. One we only share with one another. A dream of a home we don't have to leave. And in our dreams that place will stay, just the same, and we'll go back to it, again and again whenever we wish."
"A dream isn't real, though, Merrill." Isera says, but she sounds better than before and it makes Merrill continue on with more surety.
"It could be. In the Beyond it could be real, at least until you wake up." Merrill says, "We'll fill it with your favorite brook's and tree's and bird-shaped stones, and though we leave the places behind us while we're awake, we can always go home in our dreams."
Isera turns then to look at her, eyes and nose red but looking at Merrill with an intrigued soft hope. "...what would you name it?"
Merrill hummed thoughtfully at that, closed her eyes and let her mind wander as the Keeper was always saying she did too much. "I think...Las'anor. Place of Hope. What do you think?"
Isera's thin mouth twitches at the corner, cracking on a gentle smile. "...I like it." She whispers in the dark, and then they spend the night talking of it's every feature, of it's rivers and lakes and fields full of grain, of the city that would be nothing like a shemlen one, weaved in and out of the land like it's part of it rather than some separate entity. They speak and they dream late into the night until the sun begins to peek in through the curtained windows of the aravel and Ashalle's snores stop as she wakes. It's only then that they fall into sleep, grasping for a few precious hours in the Beyond, and in their dreams, Isera unknowingly creates Las'anor exactly as they'd imagined it.
It won't be until years later, that Isera will realize that the dream had been shared a bit more literally than it should've been.
—
They don't speak any more of it after that, but Merril is always there with open arms and aravel when they move once more, when she sees that look come into Isera's eyes. They lie together and whisper new things into Las'anor, things left behind but never forgotten, and in Isera's dreams they come alive.
She knows that her friend becomes attached to places in a way that the Dalish discourage, notes it in every longing look at the little shemlen villages they sometimes glimpse at a distance, or the near hoarding of little physical things from every camp they make. The wooden jars full of pebbles under her bed, and the simple journal she keeps full of pressed flowers and leaves whose importance and meaning is known only to Isera.
"Cease your crying, da'len." Ashalle often says when she catches Isera weeping with Merrill as they ready to leave. "It is just a place. You must learn to guard your heart against such things."
The words are meant to be a kindness, but as the years go by, Isera, despite it all, never seems to learn to guard her heart as Ashalle wishes. So, when the time comes time to move, as it always does, Isera goes to Merrill and Merrill does her best to guard it for her. In turn, Isera is there to guard Merrill's heart when it is hurt from a snub from a clan member or dismissive response from the Keeper, there to encourage her curiosity and kindness and to keep her confidence where no one else would.
They grow and learn beside one another, comforted in the knowledge that someone will be there to catch them if they falter. Their childhood is not as idyllic and without worry as the others in the clan perhaps—such a thing is impossible for the First to the Keeper and the girl hiding her magic from an entire clan—but it is still a good childhood.
But at the moment, as a young precocious and rebellious girl, Isera can not understand how good she has it, as most children can't. Later, when things grow darker than Isera could have ever imagined it could, she will look back on these times with fondness and nostalgia. She will wish, as all adults do, that she had appreciated the peace and simplicity of those hazy summer days she and Merrill spent swimming in cool springs, using magic to splash one another with waves of water, or the cold winter nights they'd spent huddled giggling and gossiping under the light of the moon, seeing who could keep the blanket warm the longest with fire magic before it singed.
It's inevitable that it will come to an end, that childhood simplicity, but the way it ends is what makes it all the more painful a loss.