I actually did find the Hissing Wastes quite meditative.
Translations in their usual spot.
The Desert
I couldn't be breathless in the Fade, but I felt as though I should have been - as though my muscles should have burned, and I should have been dripping sweat. "Is this really far enough to make a difference?" I asked Latha. It had taken me the entire night to cover what appeared to be about two dozen paces. The last memory-monument I put down looked a literal stone's throw away. If I picked up one of the stones lying about, I could probably strike it with ease, in spite of feeling like I had just sprinted the distance from Haven to Skyhold.
"Every step makes a difference," the demon assured me.
"I'm not going to make it to him like this," I said, owning the knowledge before Latha could attempt to force it on me.
"I...fear not," it agreed. Was that glee in its voice? In its eyes? I could read its face now - Solas's face, the face it wore, though I didn't believe - hoped - I would never be tempted to mistake the one for the other. The sight of it made me furious, so I tried not to look at it.
"I need to start thinking about how I am going to find a physical way into the Fade," I said, again more for my own benefit than Latha's.
"There may be assistance I can offer," the demon told me.
Of course there was assistance it could offer. "And what is that?" I asked.
"Now that your physical approach to Cumberland and psychic approach to the stronghold," it never spoke Solas's name if it could help it, "draw the two places together, I can better assess certain developments around Cumberland. I believe I will have information you seek by the time you arrive."
That was quite a sentence to unpack. "What information?" I began, counting off questions on my fingers. "And...how is it I am drawing two places together, exactly?"
"If I already had the information, I would simply give it to you now," Latha said, and even though I wasn't looking at it, I could hear the stolen smile in its stolen voice. Solas's smile. Solas's voice. I clenched my jaw to avoid grinding my teeth. "As to the other question, places in the Fade do not always relate to each other or the physical world the same way. The Black City, for example, remains the same distance away no matter where one is either in the waking world or in the Fade - unless one has the will to seek it actively, of course. The stronghold has not quite achieved this independence, but it is more untethered to the physical world than most places. Your will has drawn it closer to you, and therefore closer to your physical position in the waking world."
"How fascinating," I said, striving to sound indifferent, even though it was exactly the sort of incomprehensible property of the Fade I would have asked Solas questions about for days on end in the other life we had shared. "If this is all the distance I am going to accomplish tonight, I had better get started placing my memory."
"By all means," Latha agreed, and I dived into my memories quickly, before I could act on the urge to punch it.
"It's nearly dawn," Solas tells me unnecessarily as he comes to a halt several paces behind me. "What are you looking at?"
"Nothing," I reply, and it's true - there isn't much to look at here in the Hissing Wastes. "Everything," I add, and that is true, too. I take a breath of the dry, cold air and let it out again. We will sleep through the day, as usual, when the temperature soars to deadly heights, and then bundle up to delve deeper into the Wastes come nightfall. Even with shade and plenty of water, there are days we might not survive without the mages casting protective domes over our camp. That is how hot it gets. Nights, on the other hand, are frigid, but not deadly for anyone sufficiently prepared.
I can feel Solas's eyes on me, but somehow it matters less in this place. "Of everywhere I have been since leaving my clan - barring Skyhold - I think this is my favorite."
"This?" Solas repeats, looking around, and it occurs to me that I wasn't actually speaking to him as much as to myself. "Why?"
"I don't know," I tell him, still too enthralled by the view in front of me to look at him. "It's - pure, somehow. Vast. Like the sea, only - less forgiving to life. The sea isn't very forgiving for air-breathing creatures like us, of course, but it's teeming with other kinds of life. This is - itself, without compromise for anyone or anything."
"And you admire that?" he says, his tone heavy with an irony I don't understand.
"I am absolutely in awe of it," I reply. "A place like this - almost makes me believe there could be a creator - or creators - somewhere. If I spent enough time here, I might even start to believe in the Maker."
"I advise you not to mention it to Cassandra," he says.
Though the joke is a bit weak, I finally turn to look at him so I can acknowledge the jab with a smile, but I find he takes my breath away almost as thoroughly as the landscape. There is something ageless - otherworldly - about him in the moonlight, at least now that we aren't digging through ruins or panting our way up endless dunes of sand.
"What?" he asks, and I realize my glance has become a stare.
I reach out and touch his jaw lightly, knowing he won't want me to be any more demonstrative so close to camp. "You're just...lovely," I tell him. He raises a skeptical eyebrow. "Not entirely unlike this place, I suppose." I let my hand drop and turn back to the view.
"Perhaps you are attracted to grim, harsh things," he says, the lightness in his voice forced. "There may be a flaw in your character after all, vhenan."
I have to laugh, even though I know he's at least half serious. "All the things I've done - all the difficult decisions I've made, some of which haven't turned out nearly as well as any of us had hoped - and you're picking my sense of aesthetics as the flaw in my character?" I turn to look at him again, ready to tease him more, but his expression is so desperately bleak that it brings me up short. "Perhaps I have the sense to temper my natural optimism and confidence with people and places that remind me the stakes are real - and also that no one can win all the time," I tell him instead of whatever I might have said otherwise.
"You are not giddy, flighty, or arrogant - certainly not so much of any of those that you need someone like me to teach you restraint," he argues.
I take his hand. "Maybe not, but I might want you to remind me when restraint is called for."
He lets me hold his hand, but he has a stubborn expression I know entirely too well, and I know I am going to have to ready myself to argue about this again.
Only - I find part of the desert seems to have infected me. I am so tired of this conversation, and suddenly, this morning, I simply refuse to have it. Not again. Solas keeps trying to warn me of - something - about himself, yet he won't state it clearly and he appears disinclined to allow it to actually come between us. Ha - "disinclined." "Wildly opposed" might be a better descriptor, considering how quickly we have moved forward together. We haven't even been acquainted a year, and I am already contemplating a lifetime with him. If my Keeper knew, she would almost certainly disapprove. In fact, if I want her to oversee the ceremony declaring him my bondmate, I may have to put it off a few more years. I am not at all certain she will agree to do it on such a rushed timeline.
Thankfully, I see a way of avoiding this round of debate that doesn't involve simply walking away from it - also an option, but likely one with some unpleasant consequences. Instead, I can use Solas's own choice of words against him, no matter how furiously it makes me blush: "You might also take the more direct route and restrain me yourself. I doubt I would object - at least not beyond what is necessary to make it...enjoyable." Perhaps the moonlight will hide how hot my cheeks are.
It seems to take a moment for him to understand what I'm implying. Then he goes utterly still, and when he speaks again his voice is choked. "That - " The word is almost a whisper. He clears his throat and tries again. "That is not playing fair, Silea."
"So what you're saying is...I do need to learn restraint," I retort, swallowing a laugh that might fairly be called "giddy." The hunger in his gaze - and my apparent success at avoiding the canvassing of this topic again - have almost entirely subdued my embarrassment.
He shakes his head, his expression one I know very well, and I half expect him to pull me further from camp for more privacy. Instead he releases my hand in order to hold my face in both of his, and then he kisses me. Gently. "Sathan - tel'tuas."
"Tel'jutuan - if you stop trying to convince me not to love you," I respond.
"I - that wasn't my intention," he says slowly, releasing me and stepping back, but then apologizes: "Ir abelas. I suppose it sounded...you do deserve better - "
I close some of the distance he has placed between us and silence him with my fingers on his lips. "And here I thought you wanted me to stop. So tell me, ma vhenan, do you want to start discussing specific restraints, or should I just start removing clothing?"
"The cold makes clothing removal...inadvisable," he points out reasonably, with a slightly apologetic smile. I'm not certain whether he's apologizing for provoking me into more retaliatory flirting, or for bringing up the ways in which reality isn't going to allow me to follow through on it. Perhaps both.
"Very well," I concede with a laugh. "Solas, I'm sorry if you got the impression I was comparing you to the desert, and if it bothered you for...whatever reason. I wasn't." I raise my chin, aware that my smile is going to destroy any hope of I have of making this sound serious, but willing to make the attempt anyway. "You're obviously much more like the sea, if I have to choose a terrain to compare you to."
He raises an eyebrow. "Vast and...teeming with life?"
"Exactly," I retort. "You wouldn't describe your intellect as vast?"
"Likely not," he replies. "My experience, perhaps."
"False modesty? From you?" I poke my finger at his chest.
"Not false," he responds. "I know my own limits - now more than ever. Experience can serve to make up some of the difference, though, so perhaps you have overestimated me."
I am fairly certain I haven't done anything of the sort. "All right, then - vast experience and sizable intellect." He laughs at my amendment. "As for teeming with life - I suppose I can't know your thoughts and feelings firsthand, but you certainly make me feel more alive. And - all those memories you hold…"
"I suppose there is that," he allows.
"Besides," I add, my voice taking on a teasing note once more, "like the sea, you don't get on particularly well with everyone."
"I make people sick?" he asks, trying to sound severe, but clearly amused by how far I'm managing to stretch this analogy.
"Your disinterest in fashion seems to make Dorian queasy," I remind him. "And your mere existence throws Vivienne off-balance."
That thought makes him smile. "Yes."
"Sera, too," I add.
"Sera is already off-balance," he replies, which is true - Sera thrives on keeping everyone, including herself, off-balance - but I think only Cole gets to her more than Solas does.
"But then…" I come another step closer, until the thick layers of clothing we are using to ward off the cold are brushing, "there are those of us who take to you immediately, like me."
"Immediately?" he repeats, his eyes searching my face and ending on my lips.
"I can't claim I understood," I admit, wishing he would kiss me again, but knowing he won't. "But it turned out using the Anchor with you holding my wrist was a very different experience than using it without. It's...considerably less enthralling without. Besides," I remind him more seriously, "I have spent my entire life wondering what is wrong with me and why I don't want the same things everyone else wants. Finding you was finding home." Solas is staring at me with the oddest expression of mingled adoration and heartbreak, so I smile at him and inject some humor into my tone: "It turns out I was a fish this entire time, and I wasn't supposed to be living on land at all."
Perhaps it helps - or perhaps not. He puts his hand on my hip and then bends down until his forehead rests against mine, effectively cutting off my ability to read his face, though the gesture is affectionate. "Vis isalas manlava, ame sha ea nar'manaan."
"Good, because I don't know if I could find another," I tell him. "I somehow doubt it. You are a singular sort of person."
He makes a small sound I interpret as a laugh - and then the first rays of the sun cresting the horizon find us, already warm despite the early hour and the coldness of air.
"Time to sleep," Solas whispers, not moving.
I wish I could stay here a great deal longer, but I can't. "Not for me, I have first watch," I confess somewhat reluctantly.
"Ah," he replies, releasing me.
"Eras son," I tell him, which makes him smile. He leans back in briefly to brush a kiss against my cheek.
"Amas son," he replies, and turns toward his tent.
It is already becoming too warm for all my layers in the sunlight, and so I shed the outermost as I walk to the fire Harding is in the process of banking. "Anything in particular we should look out for this morning?" I ask her. Sometimes an especially brave animal or pack of animals decides to stalk the camp, and though they are usually bolder at night, for some the lack of fire encourages them to make fresh attempts at us and our supplies during the day.
"Nothing beyond the usual," Harding replies, pulling a pot of hot water from a large, flat stone we have placed for that exact purpose and offering it to me. "A few scattered varterral, crazed templars, homicidal Venatori cultists…"
I accept the pot and turn toward the cups she has already prepared with tea leaves. "Well, I'm glad to hear we haven't made any new enemies over the course of the night," I joke.
"No new enemies before breakfast," Dorian mutters, emerging from his tent looking somehow both not awake and impeccably groomed. He was wise to nap while he had the chance - I may end up wishing I'd had the chance. He fixes Harding with a slightly bleary glare. "That's an order."
"I...don't actually take orders from you," she reminds him, amused.
"Well, you should," he retorts, accepting the cup I hold out to him. "They're very sensible orders."
"Sleep well, Harding," I tell her, giving her cover to return to her own tent so she doesn't have to stand around bantering with Dorian. "You could stand badger my scouts a little less," I admonish him lightly, pouring water into a second cup for myself.
"I could also stand to be less handsome - wait, no, that's not true, either," he responds, examining the color of his tea critically before whispering a spell to chill it. He doesn't appreciate hot drinks here in the desert, and I can't blame him. I'll be begging him to chill all the water I consume before our watch is over. For the moment, though, the warmth still feels good after the cold night.
I shed another layer of clothing, sit, and sip tea, admiring the vista. The desert looks different in the sunlight - hard and glittering, not so poignant and mysterious. The mood appeals to me less, perhaps, but I still appreciate the beauty - and also the Wastes' complete indifference to my preferences. All my concerns seem equally flimsy and slight in the face of such indifference, and for a few moments the burden of stitching the world back together slides from my shoulders. For a few moments, I am simply me, and it is enough.
Sathan - tel'tuas: Please - stop
Tel'jutuan: I will stop
Vis isalas manlava, ame sha ea nar'manaan: If you wish to swim, I am happy to be your sea
Eras son: Dream well
Amas son: Guard well