The stars were strung like a gem-studded net across the sky. Once the remnants of dinner had been cleared - nobody wanted another ovine invasion - and the fire built up, the party broke away to their separate tents. Morrigan, who had not assisted with either chore, had already retreated to the ragged cluster of trees to find a suitable nesting spot. The Qunari, after honing his improvised weapon to an even sharper point, rammed the pike into the red-stained earth before his tent and disappeared inside. Leliana lit a small lamp and took it within her own makeshift quarters, wafting a sweet, pungent scent in her wake. The inconstant light outlined her shape against the canvas, bent double in prayer.
Flora and Alistair had quickly grown used to the confined space of their tent. Her slightness countered his length, and the breadth of his shoulder; it was fortunate that she was no larger or there would not have been enough room for the both of them and their packs. As it was, each part of his body in motion seemed to come into contact with either canvas or a supporting strut at some point. Only a timely grab at a tent-pole stopped the entire structure from collapsing in on them.
"Sorry," he muttered, hunched over his sister-warden like an inept burglar hiding from the city watch. "Just doing up the door straps. In case any more killer sheep invade us in the night."
Flora was already bundled within her blanket, clad in the shirt and smalls that she usually slept in. Pulling the fabric up to her chin, she watched Alistair inch his way up the tent in a mass of shadow. He half-fell onto the bedroll alongside her; she felt the percussive thud of his body reverberate through the earth.
"Sorry," he said again, extracting the tail of her blanket from beneath him. "I'm not very graceful. Did I squash your head?"
"No," she reassured him sleepily, inching over to make room on the pillow. "Are you excited to see your… man friend tomorrow?"
Alistair almost laughed, then remembered that others rested a few yards away, separated only by swathes of canvas.
"Eamon? I don't know. If he's unwell, his wife might not let us see him. Lady Isolde has never been my greatest fan."
Flora shifted onto her side, curling up her toes within her socks.
"She'll let us see him if I say that I can mend him," she replied, yawning midway through the words. "Are you looking forward to going home?"
He hesitated before responding, gazing up at the vaulted canvas. A seam of moonlight marked where he had tied the entrance folds together. The notion of a thin sheath of fabric acting as their only protection while they slept was a disconcerting one; he thrust the thought from his mind.
"I don't know," he said eventually, feeling her pale eyes resting on him. "I suppose - no, not really. I didn't miss Redcliffe at all when I got sent to the monastery - I mean, I missed my freedom and I didn't want to be where I was, but… no. Redcliffe never felt like a home. I doubt anyone except the Guerrins will even remember me."
Flora could not relate to such disassociation. If she sank her mender's gaze beneath the oyster shell of her skin, she knew what she would find secreted within the salinated depths. The bones were lengths of dark granite; the blood saltwater; the organs coarsely lined with grit. Her tongue kept the cadence of the north; her mind returned to the sea each night in her dreams.
"It's not like you and Herring," Alistair said, reading her thoughts. "I've never had that - that sort of thing. That connection. I hoped that the..."
His sentence continued, unspoken: and I hoped that the Grey Wardens might have filled that bare hollow instead. That Duncan might - and now -
Impulsively, Flora set her chin on his shoulder, tilting her face into the hollow between the ear and the collarbone. He reached an arm over, settling his palm around the back of her neck. The languid throb of her pulse calmed him more than any Chantry prayer had even done; his thumb sliding over the convergence of hair and skin. The previous night it had been the result of an unconscious, instinctual motion of the hand. Now it was the product of a deliberate decision that neither of them chose to mention.
"I think Sten's tent is going to fall down before morning," Flora confided in a whisper. "Will he murder us both, do you think? We did put it up."
Alistair's grin was lost in the darkness. "Probably. With his new pointy stick."
He felt her smile and then yawn against his neck; in response, he grasped her a little more tightly, inhaling the clean, soapy scent of her hair. Outside, the fire gnawed its way through another log, sending a cavalry of sparks heavenwards. The moon lifted its clouded brim, looked down on Redcliffe and then hid its face in horror.
Alone on a vast and desolate shore, Flora paddled in the shallows, the water around her ankles a greyish green. She was content to do nothing but watch the waves tussle further out in the bay, their unnatural hue a reflection of the seething viridian sky. A ramshackle facsimile of Herring stood nearby, spread in rough approximation across the exposed granite. Half-recalled figures, their features blurred, stood frozen amongst the buildings; motionless until given the attention of their creator.
Flora spotted a shell the size of a closed fist half-buried in the sand near her toes. Retrieving it from the current's gentle tug, she let it rest on her palm. The next moment she almost dropped it in fright as a stern and familiar voice echoed from within its hollowed mouth.
Enough leisure. It is time.
Time for what? Oh no, thought Flora, horrified. The 'vision'?
Yes. We have shielded you long enough.
I don't want to see it. Whatever it is.
The shell dissolved to empty air in her palm. She looked around her; nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Her beach was as she had so painstakingly constructed it over the years: a bleak and endearingly ugly tribute to her northern home.
There is no choice.
She repeated the protest from the previous night: I don't want to be the sort of person who has visions.
Her spirits ignored her.
First, you must learn to look.
Look at what?
The air shifted; the wind shrivelling like the breath in a dying man's throat. Overhead, the sky darkened as a fleet of clouds drew in: a storm was coming. Flora looked up in alarm, the waves dormant around her ankles. A sudden, primal urge to hide flared with urgent luminescence within her brain. She felt like prey; shell broken, flesh exposed on the bare swath of beach. The skies were swallowed by a mirrored ocean, the green-hued heavens drowning in mist and fog.
From the corner of her eye she glimpsed a shadow that moved swiftly behind the cloud, the outline of something vast. The feeling of dread swelled like a tumour in her belly; she took an uneven step back, seawater clinging to her ankles. A beating wing parted the veil of mist; the serpentine twist of a torso was silhouetted for a split-second. One moment it was in the eastern part of the sky, then it was soaring westwards, then it appeared to the south. It was everywhere and yet it was nowhere: a corporeal spectre that stalked the skies, visible only for a moment in the corner of the eye. The only constant was that it was growing closer; flying in ever-smaller circles behind its veil of cloud.
I don't want to look at it, Flora flailed, her mind shrinking in fear. Whatever it is, I don't want to see it.
One day you will need to do more than look.
WHAA-
A new murmur then crept into Flora's ear, sly and intimate. The words it spoke made no sense and yet were strangely familiar; as though the tongue she knew was being uttered backwards. She could not move, struck dumb with horror; the seawater creeping up inch by purposeful inch around her shins. The shadowed shape winged it's way overhead and she tasted something burnt and sour beneath her tongue.
I don't want to look, she thought again, frantically. I don't want to see it.
You must.
Her beach began to collapse around her, the sand pouring in grainy waterfalls into a dozen expanding cracks. The sea parted, then folded in on itself like a wet handkerchief; defying all laws of reason and physics. Losing her balance as the world tilted, Flora dropped to her knees. The coarse sand beneath her palms fell away into a well of darkness.
Then, deep in the void that had torn open the ground before her, a pair of hooded, serpentine eyes opened very wide. They were a colour that did not exist on a mortal spectrum of light and so they appeared as fibrous wheels of aether, alien and unknowable. Flora opened her mouth but no sound came out, her lungs paralysed as though encased in ice. The eyes focused on her and she tried to run, but her beach had disintegrated into a dense soup of viridian fog. The backwards whisper stalked its way around her skull; pulling apart the leafs of her mind and testing the wicker cage of her memory.
Then, unexpectedly, Flora felt something sinewy against her palm. When she looked, she saw a thin strand of fishing line wrapping itself insistently around her fingers. The line pulled taut and she felt herself pulled upwards towards the sunlight.
"Flora, Flora!"
The raw fear in Alistair's voice could mean only one thing: that they were under attack. As Flora surfaced on the mortal side of the Veil she lifted her hands; turning her head to the side to see whether it was Loghain's men, or perhaps a group of Darkspawn hunting in a pack. Yet there was nothing around her save for their camp, which was mostly how they had left it some hours earlier. The fire was smaller, the tents leaning at a sharper angle; but there were no invaders - not even of the woollen variety.
Flora saw then Alistair's panic was not directed at some unseen enemy: he was crouched over her, his staring eyes fixed on her face. She realised that he must have dragged her out of the tent by her bare legs, thrusting her into the illuminating aura of the fire. From the dishevelment of her shirt and the earth smeared on her legs, it had not been a gentle journey.
"Flora," he said again, then put his thumb and finger to her eye, forcing it open so he could check the pupil. She could see the pulse throbbing urgently in his throat. As he saw her pupil dark and cognisant, focusing on him, he gave a sigh of relief that shuddered through his body.
"Maker's Breath. Maker."
So vast was Alistair's relief that it overwhelmed the embarrassment he would usually have felt from the length of his body pressing hers into the damp earth. He gave a grimace that was halfway between a laugh and tears, then heaved himself off her with a groan; as though the muscle-bound flesh had turned to lead beneath the skin. Turning away, he made a fist and pressed it swiftly over his eyes, the bone of his jaw clenched tight.
Flora sat up, her legs smeared with ruddy soil. Her thoughts, which had been scattered like a handful of flung pebbles on waking, had collected themselves into order.
What was THAT? she thought indignantly, pulling her shirt down over her thighs with an absentminded hand. In my dream.
The Archdemon.
I thought it was going to look like a flying lobster.
No. As we told you: it takes the form of a dragon.
I didn't know what a dragon looked like. It's horrible. Why did you have to show me? I'm all sweaty now.
Because, one day, you will need to kill it.
The likelihood of her - FLORA - killing that vast and knowing alien presence was so improbable that she almost laughed.
Well, that ain't happening. I'm just a mender. I don't fight.
Her general-spirit ignored her protest.
And if you are going to kill it, you must first learn to look at it.
Flora sighed, wafting smoke away from her face with a hand as the wind changed direction. Instead of arguing further, she turned her attention to her brother-warden. He was sitting a few feet away, facing the lake, his back to the fire. The broad shoulders were hunched, the head hung down. Shadow cloaked his face; hiding his expression.
She crawled over the soil to reach him, reasoning that her legs were muddied already. He did not immediately acknowledge her presence at his side; though his lips pressed together more tightly, fingers moving in restless, aimless patterns against his thighs. Flora watched his stiff-jawed profile for a moment, then reached out and placed a palm on top of his agitated fingers; arresting their nervy dance by flattening them against his thigh. He looked down at her hand spread over his; the slight digits and slender wrist in contrast to his own burly swordsman's grip. She curled her fingers down between his, bringing their knuckles into alignment as she waited patiently for him to speak.
He was quiet for several minutes, staring at Calenhad's inky expanse as though expecting something to break the smooth tension of the water. The lake remained as still as a held breath, a vast sky-in-sea that mirrored the star strung heavens above. The occasional pinprick of light marked the location of small shoreline settlements, though Redcliffe - the largest - was hidden behind a spur of rock. Flora followed his gaze, distracting herself from the monstrous figure in her dream by recalling fish that lived solely in bodies of freshwater.
Pike, she thought, running her thumb up and down the side of Alistair's smallest finger. Carp. Roach. Minnow.
"I thought you were possessed."
Stickleback.
Flora looked sideways at him, and Alistair was staring at her, the tawny richness of his skin made marble by moonlight. Fear aged him; it scored lines in his brow and pulled the corners of his mouth taut, yet it also tempered his gaze with the naked uncertainty of youth.
"I woke up, and you were talking to yourself in your sleep. You were tossing back and forth, and I thought - I panicked, I suppose. Overreacted."
His gaze glanced off her and returned to the lake, fingers clenching within her own. She realised that he had been badly frightened.
"The Templars always taught us that mages were more vulnerable to possession when they slept, and I thought that perhaps - perhaps you'd been… something had…. well. Taken you. While you were dreaming. And that I'd lost you, and I was on my own - "
It had been raw panic that had prompted him to drag her bodily from the tent, to thrust her into the firelight where he could see her face and check that her pupils were not the bone-white pinpricks of the possessed. Reason had temporarily fled; overwhelmed by a tide of dread that he was now the only Warden left in Ferelden, that Flora had been swept away to somewhere that he could not follow.
"My spirits wouldn't let that happen," she said, clutching Alistair's hand hard enough to disperse the fog in his mind. "They've always protected me. I had a bad dream- " she resisted calling it a vision, she was not the sort of person who received visions, "about the… I think it was the Archdemon."
"Oh." Relief crashed over Alistair's face, almost painful. "Right. Most of us - us Wardens - get that during our Joining, or just after. You didn't, did you?"
Flora shook her head gloomily.
"My spirits shielded me. I don't know why they stopped."
Her brother-warden let out a shuddering breath that he seemed to have been holding since dragging her from the tent.
"Did… did Duncan warn you about it?"
He looked closely at her face, curious to see how she reacted to the name. His sister-warden thought for a moment, and then her shoulders twitched in a shrug.
"Maybe. I don't remember. A lot was happening."
Her unexpected extraction from the Circle; the longest journey she had ever undertaken; Ostagar; the expedition into the Wilds; her Joining; the purging of the scout and the first of many purgings for Duncan: all had taken place within a handspan of days. Her experiences from that week were knotted together like old fishing line, though a few barbed memories stayed snagged on her mind.
The feel of saddle and horseflesh. The way that the Hurlock's blood curdled foully on the tongue. The vast, crumbling drawbridge at Ostagar; engineered six ages ago and still working.
Duncan's words, their cadence and inflection preserved exactly as though each one had been placed in vinegar: spirit healer. Specialised, not limited. My gifted girl.
Flora shook her head free of the past's melancholy cling; returning her attention to the present. Alistair was looking at her with an odd wistfulness.
"I'm sorry that I pulled you out of the tent by the legs," he said, suddenly. "It wasn't very gentlemanly of me. Or very gentle. Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," she replied, fascinated. "Did you pretend that you were pulling a crab out of its shell?"
"Ehem," Alistair said, eyeing her. "No, I can't say that I did."
He was calmer now but still not at peace; Flora could feel the hard throb of his blood beneath her thumb, the vein in his neck pulsing. The night air bit at exposed skin, but there were two bright spots of colour high on his cheeks.
"Let's go back in," she said, then clarified. "Into the tent. I've got a story for you."
She said it like it was a physical thing that she could place in his palms: a story for you.
Before he followed in her wake, Alistair glanced over his shoulder. The wind had changed direction and was now sailing in from the south, where Redcliffe lay nestled in its shoreline inlet. He thought for a moment that he could hear the sound of battle carried on the air, a soft and sibilant whisper of metal. It lasted a moment and then faded away; he dismissed it as a figment of his still-unsettled mind.
The tent was a haphazard tangle of bedding; testament to the hasty evacuation of its occupants. Flora, who was slender and more capable of manoeuvring within the cramped wedge of canvas, sorted out the bedrolls and blankets while Alistair waited outside. Once the tent's interior had been restored, they took up their previous positions on their pallets. This time he did not hesitate; sliding an arm beneath her shoulder to curl an elbow around the back of her neck. She took his other hand, clasping his fingers tight between her own.
The wind tested the strength of the pegs pinning the canvas to the earth; sighing as it found them sound. Some insignificant animal, too small to warrant intervention, investigated the stack of pots and pans left to dry beside the fire. Their neighbours made little noise in sleep; occasionally, the Qunari grunted as he tested the cramped confines of the canvas.
The interior of the tent was darker than the moonlit night surrounding it. Flora turned her face towards the ceiling, and exhaled. Golden filaments drifted upwards from her parted lips, elevated by the heat from their bodies. Alistair reached up a finger to touch one gossamer strand as it floated above his head; it clung to his skin like a cobweb. The airy particles gleamed as they hung in space; an improvised, fibrous sort of candlelight.
"My story," Flora whispered, her breath warm against his face as they settled back on the shared pillow. "Is about a brother and sister. Like us: brother-warden. They lived on the coast and they went out on the water each day with their fishing boat. They mostly caught cod. On good days they caught tuna."
The north came out stronger the more she spoke, each breathy word rimed with saltwater. Her sentences had an odd, compelling rhythm; disjointed as they were.
"One day," she continued in solemn tones. "They had just finished hauling in the nets when they saw a boat with strange sails heading towards them. When the boat got closer, they realised that it was filled with Qunari raiders!"
"Qunari raiders?"
"Mm," Flora confirmed, her expression grave. "A whole boatful of angry Stens . They tried to row back to shore, but a storm was blowing in from the east and the wind was against them. Everywhere they looked was waves. Then the raiders were on them, and they had no choice but to jump into the water or be captured."
"A dramatic tale," he murmured, the warmth of her neck creeping into his palm. "Is this what passes as a bedtime story in Herring?"
Flora smiled at him, the strands of gold weaving in sinuous patterns above them. No longer the subject of her concentration they were gradually dissolving; aureate particles melting away before they could reach the blanket.
"They did not want to be captured, so they jumped into the sea," she continued. "Into the storm-tossed waves. Now, they were fortunate because deep beneath them, inside a cave, lived an Old Man of the Sea, named… I don't remember. I always forget the names of people in these stories. But this Old Man felt sorry for the brother and sister, and so he turned them into fish so that they would not drown."
A fibre of golden light dropped lightly onto her cheek, like the first leaf of autumn. Flora brushed it away absentmindedly; remnants of magic clung to her fingernails.
"Even though they were now safe from the Qunari, the wild water threatened to part them. So brother and sister fish tied themselves together with rope, so that wherever the current and waves took them, they would go together and not be separated. And after some time the storm passed, and the raiders sailed away, and all was quiet again."
Alistair opened his mouth, with the expectation that something dry or droll would emerge. Instead, he heard himself saying: "Noone's ever told me a bedtime story before."
Even though this was not what he had expected to say, he had the feeling that there was something else that remained unsaid. She bit at a fingernail absentmindedly, tucking her feet beneath the blanket.
"Did they survive, then? The brother and sister."
Flora turned the exquisite architecture of her face back towards him; the imperious beauty diffusing into a smile.
"Of course," she breathed. "Like us. We too have jumped into stormy seas, but this- " she shook their clasped hands. "This is our fish-rope. We won't lose each other as long as it's tied tightly. No matter how rough it gets."
He squeezed her fingers hard and she gripped him back with the firm assurance of a girl who had grown up a fisherman's daughter.
AN: I wanted to put more emphasis on the fish rope story since it ends up being such an important analogy. I also wanted to cultivate more of the 'Herring mythology' (haha such a pretentious term!) that shapes Flora's character so much. The Old Men of the Sea are actually part of the Greek pantheon of gods - primordial deities who lived underwater!
Also, they don't realise it but the sounds of battle from Redcliffe are real: they're having their nightly invasion of corpses from the castle!
I hope everyone is staying safe! London is a shitshow at the moment haha. Hopefully this story can be a bit of a distraction. It's definitely distracted me writing this chapter :)
Thank you for reading!
