No translations. Now to go completely rewrite the chapter about philosophy. It's is the one I've been dreading. I just have way too many thoughts about the Qun, and trying to pare them back to something a character in-world would think of is really, really hard.

A Blessing

My days and nights were beginning to fall into a kind of rhythm. During the day, I rode with Harding. Sometimes we discussed trivialities, exchanged bits of news, and traded jabs that referenced our many adventures together. Other times, her scouts surrounded us as she passed me notes that came from Leliana and Fiona - usually in cipher, which meant she had to decode the ones from Leliana while I tackled those from Fiona. When necessary, I dictated responses to be sent via one of the few ravens we had brought along with us, but mostly these weren't necessary. Our progress was easy to track, and the notes were largely updates on situations we already knew about - politics, mostly, though Fiona did let us know her people had gone in and done a sweep of the warehouse the Jenny had directed us to, and had come away with traces of red lyrium.

So that was...better than having no leads, even if it couldn't be called good.

"It's been almost a week since we first got that tip," Harding told me after I had passed the message along. "Want to place bets on whether they're even still moving goods through Cumberland?"

"Depends on what odds you're giving," I told her. "But generally - I would bet on it shifting elsewhere, and I would start with whatever outposts the Carta or the Blind Men use away from civilization. Neither may not be involved directly, but I wouldn't put it past them to look the other way while someone else uses their infrastructure - especially if that someone else is paying well enough for the privilege."

"It's a good thought - I'll pass it on to the Viscount, see what he thinks," Harding replied. "We still have to search Cumberland, though."

"Cumberland is a big city - it wouldn't be impossible to disappear into the chaos," I agreed.

In the evenings, Dorian usually reached out to me via crystal, just to make sure I hadn't bored a hole into the Fade through sheer determination. These conversations rarely lasted more than a few minutes, but hearing his voice helped bolster my courage before I went to sleep and entered the Fade to meet Latha, which I usually did immediately after. My mornings were earlier, now, because I wasn't willing to wait for dawn in the Fade and listen to Latha's comments on my memories, so I went to sleep a little earlier, as well.

Latha assured me I was still making progress, though it had slowed. The Fade no longer zipped by in entire scenes as it once had. Now it felt as though I walked into a headwind every night - Solas's will, keeping dreamers like me at bay.

There were more spirits in this part of the Fade. They were interested in me, but avoided Latha - which was another indication it had become a demon. Sometimes, if I ordered it away firmly enough, the spirits would approach me to converse. They were cautious, yet courteous - some of them almost reverential - and they knew me. They called me fenes'saota: wolf's mate. "Will you tell Solas I am here?" I asked a spirit of devotion.

"He will not hear it," the spirit responded sadly.

So I continued onward.

I placed memory after memory. There was the first dragon we killed, when I, still inexperienced with fighting them, let myself get caught by the tail and was thrown into a wall of rock. I broke a couple of ribs, though thankfully no worse. Solas yelled at me the entire time he was wrapping my torso and placing healing spells, but then took my face in his hands when he had finished and kissed me desperately, not caring that Bull and Cassandra were nearby. Not that they were watching - not while I was half-dressed, having my ribs tended. But they probably noticed when the yelling stopped, and might have noticed why.

That one reminded me of the day darkspawn attacked our camp on the Storm Coast. Dorian and Solas got separated from the rest of us, and with all the fighting it took a while for us to do a headcount and notice. By the time we picked up their trail, Bull and I were both nearly frantic. They had been pushed inland, and we worried the darkspawn had been herding them toward more of their exits to the surface.

But, no. Where did we find them? On top of a hill, sitting under an apple tree, eating apples they shook down from the top with magic, blockaded by the pile of dead darkspawn they had slaughtered as the creatures attempted to scale the only feasible path to the top. And what had distracted them so much they couldn't even remember to send up a flare? Half a book, composed of loose pages that had fallen from their binding. They had stumbled upon it while running, and were arguing over the pages in their possession, trying to place them in the correct order. I yelled at Solas over that one, until he finally pulled me into a convenient copse of trees so I could fully verify his continued existence with my hands and lips.

He got off easier than Dorian, come to that - Bull didn't say anything, but I heard stories from those who frequented the tavern the next time we were at Skyhold. Sera was particularly eager to give me a play-by-play of what she couldn't manage not to overhear. I'm not certain I saw Dorian sitting down the entire three days we were there, but he also couldn't quite keep the grin off his face, so maybe it came out even after all.

The night after I placed that memory, Harding and I received a report from Leliana on the continued disappearance of the Dalish and I found a memory that began in the rather confusing period in between the first kiss Solas and I shared in the Fade, and the day he admitted he loved me. It hurt more than many of the others, but it hurt with a longing that I knew would call me back with ease.

Enansal. Solas found the boy in Old Crestwood, while trying to calm spirits there after we closed the rift. Enansal's parents had died during the undead attacks, and the trauma seemingly awakened his mage-gift early. His parents had been in service to a human family, who were sympathetic enough to keep the boy with them and train him as a servant right up until he demonstrated he was a mage. With no templars or Circle to contact, they turned him out with little more than his clothing, a cloak, and a small packet of food to his name.

His parents' former employers had given the boy a terror of magic. He wouldn't even speak to Solas at first, and so Solas came to find me on the theory that I was an elf, not a mage, and I likely had experience with children - Dalish clans being too small for anyone to get out of occasional child-minding duties.

It was my luck that Enansal's father had told him all sorts of wild and romantic adventure tales of the Dalish. He recognized my vallaslin immediately, and it only took a little coaxing for him to agree to come back to camp with me. I managed to ease some of his fear of mages, too, by telling him about our Keepers and how Dalish treated magic: dangerous, yes, but also priceless - a gift that enriched the entire clan. We took him back to Skyhold with us, and when given the choice to join the other former Circle apprentices in Val Royeaux, or to join a Dalish clan in need of a mage, he chose to become Dalish.

Enansal was some months at Skyhold as I wrote to Keeper Deshanna to find a clan who would take him, and as she wrote her own letters to see which clans had space available. Somehow, between the days he initially spent on the road with us, and the occasional short periods we spent at Skyhold while he remained there, he managed to charm Solas. His parents had died and he had been turned out of the only home he had ever known, he was dazed with trauma and grief, especially at first, and he didn't trust mages - but Solas treated him with an uncharacteristic patience, willingly shielding the boy from Dorian, who overwhelmed him, and Vivienne, who frankly terrified him. Solas began giving him the education he needed immediately, the day after we found him, showing Enansal how to control his entry into the Fade and keep watch for demons. He told me he had also asked some of his spirit-friends to safeguard the boy until he could learn more and grow into his power. I watched as Enansal's fear of magic became acceptance, then interest, and then observed with satisfaction as it grew into a slow-burning excitement that might eventually become passion as he got older and gained mastery.

I also watched Solas surprise himself with his own tolerance for childish mistakes. He confessed readily that children had never much interested him: "I have always considered having to repeatedly revisit basics tedious, and yet - Enansal approaches them with such wonder, I cannot remain unmoved. He reminds me how much more is possible in magic when we don't limit ourselves by what we know to be impossible."

"I've always thought you would be a good teacher if you gave yourself half a chance," I told him. "You have been remarkably patient with me at times."

"I haven't," he replied. "You might be right about me, if all students required as little patience as you do. You are eager to learn - and...I suppose it is apathy I cannot countenance, rather than repetition. The two seemed so closely tied to me that I must have united them in my own mind without giving it enough thought. How pleasant, to learn something new about myself and find it reflects well on me, rather than laying bare more of my flaws."

Truthfully, Enansal charmed me, as well. In the evenings I taught him archery after acquiring a shortbow he could draw, and I volunteered to do most of the hunting while he traveled with us as it meant I could take him into the fields and forests with me, where he seemed more at ease. Once I had made sufficient kills, I let him shoot at anything else we came across, and also took the opportunity to show him edible plants.

He wouldn't need to know how to shoot a bow, of course, not with magic at his disposal, but it gave him something to focus on - something physical and constructive - when grief began to overwhelm him. We talked while we were out hunting, too - not in great depth, not in the handful of days it took to return to Skyhold, but enough that he began to open up a little. Enough, too, that he trusted me when I introduced him to other people there, and reassured him that they would treat him well.

By all accounts I received, including the evidence of my own eyes, Enansal soon thrived at Skyhold, even if he remained too wise for a child of his age. He was fed, clothed, educated, given space to grieve, and offered comfort when he sought it. I was almost sorry when the time came to introduce him to his new clan. At the least, I took the time to go myself, along with Solas, Cassandra, and Blackwall, all of whom had become fond of him. Cole, too, though he told me he wouldn't let Enansal remember him: "Love lingers in little shards, poking, pricking perpetually. But - if he sacrifices the sting, that is a separate suffering. No. He needs what I can give him, but he doesn't need me."

I didn't know how much of Enansal's quick habituation in Skyhold might have been Cole's doing, but I feared a great deal of it. "Will he learn to be as happy in his new clan as he was with us?" I asked the spirit.

"Resilience resides within, a lesson not lightly lost," Cole replied. "The Keeper is kind; the clan content. He will have what he needs."

I hoped Cole was right. Any other time, I would have trusted his assessment implicitly, but - what I truly wished was that Skyhold could be safe enough to keep children who had other places to go. After Haven, I doubted I would ever believe it, but I wished I could.

"I will write," I promised Enansal as I hugged him goodbye. "All of us will. And if you change your mind for any reason, all you need do is say so."

His only answer was a nod, but we did write - for years - before the letters stopped coming. Enansal's clan swore themselves to the Dread Wolf when the old Keeper died and his First took over.

I just hoped Enansal was well and safe, wherever he had been taken - that, perhaps, Solas remembered and cared enough to keep watch over him.

"He doesn't," Latha told me, picking up on the thought as he viewed my memory. "He allows himself none of that sort of weakness." Though the spirit's tone was sad, underneath I heard triumph.

I didn't even have to choose not to believe it - it reflected Solas's love for me, a narrow slice of who he was, all things considered. Why would it know how he dealt with Enansal? No - it wanted to give me every reason to doubt him, and so it would manufacture reasons if it couldn't offer real ones.

Hope was the best defiance I could offer against this demon I still needed, and so I let myself hope.