If you don't yet speak fluent Elven (and what are you even doing with your life?), translations at the bottom.


Reversal

I woke from the dream as though surfacing from deep and improbably peaceful water. What an odd memory for me to dream of now - light, happy, from the time before Lisell's eyes ever watched me warily, before she ever flinched away from telling me her thoughts. I hadn't yet given her reason to doubt either of us.

There was a flutter of something behind it - behind my emotion upon waking. Not a demon, no, for demons never granted peace, but some other spirit had encouraged this specific memory to surface right now. Why?

It was perhaps among my happiest, and for that very reason one I rarely entertained, but I saw no obvious lesson to be learned from it. Outside, I saw when I glanced out the window, the sun had not yet broken above the horizon. There was as yet time. I lay back in bed, letting the dream and its emotions filter through my mind, to see if they took me anywhere useful. That night - I hadn't laughed like that since. Nor could I remember laughing so before, for that matter. At least not - not since childhood. And yet - none of it had been so humorous. I must have laughed simply for the joy of being there, with her.

Even then, when many things in my life were happier, moments like that were rare enough to treasure. Periods of time alone were infrequent - and those in which we weren't neglecting any immediate duties even less frequent. That was an irony. Now - now I might spend as much time alone with her as I chose, and yet it did me no good. The pain never entirely left her eyes, and she had asked me not to touch her.

None of those thoughts helped me understand the reason for my dream - and now it was time to rise, dress, put Lisell from my mind, and focus on the day. Today my tasks included redirecting a number of eluvians, a task only I had the power to do, chaining them together in a particular pattern, testing the pattern, breaking and reforming it, with the eluvians repositioned. Testing. Breaking. Shuffling. Testing. Breaking. This one there, that one in its place. Redirect. Test again. Tamorian took notes, finding the precise position for each eluvian with painstaking care.

I was weary by evening, weary as I had seldom been since regaining my power. My dream from the night before - in that time, all those years ago, nothing would have been more restful than an hour or two in Lisell's presence. Now? Now the complicated steps we danced around each other were almost too exhausting to consider.

I thought seriously about sending my regrets, about promising something better for tomorrow.

But - you always seem to be the one leaving.

It would take more of my resources, I realized, to pretend I could not possibly hurt her this way, than it would simply to go. So I went.

I paused when I reached her door, hearing her inside singing. Most Dalish Clans were not large enough to support dedicated bards or minstrels, though their historians sometimes also filled the role. Even in those that were large enough, however, everyone sang. Children were given a grounding in music along with lessons in weapons and language, and music was used as it had been for millennia - to while away a day's march, to give collaborators a rhythm to make the work go more smoothly, or make a tedious task less so.

Lisell had never shown much interest in performing without the rest of her Clan surrounding her, nor was her voice anything out of the ordinary. Still, she was more than capable of carrying a tune, as she was doing now. I listened for a moment, catching phrases here and there in Dalish - a courting song, I decided.

I knocked, and the song abruptly cut off. A moment later, the door opened, and Lisell smiled at me from the other side. Tonight she was dressed in practical garb - leather breeches, boots, linen shirt, a leather vest, and behind her, thrown across the foot of the bed, a canvas coat. Her hair was bound in a single plait falling straight down her back. The tang of woodland air seemed to color the room.

"You have been out," I observed.

She made a face, simultaneously ushering me to my usual chair, where our meal was already assembled. "Don't say it like that," she said. "Yes, Mihren invited me to help her forage today - and a good thing, too, or I would have stopped eating again just to give myself something to think about."

"Ir abelas," I murmured, taking my chair. I hadn't meant to sound critical, though I wasn't certain I entirely approved.

"You look tired," she said, bending over me, brushing her thumb along my cheekbone. I wanted to lean into the caress, but her touch was quick, almost furtive, and gone as quickly as it had begun.

"I am," I admitted.

"Then you just eat, and I'll tell you about my day. That way you won't have to say anything if you don't wish to."

I closed my eyes against the gratitude that threatened to knock me flat. "I am not certain I deserve your kindness, vhenan."

"Felasil," she muttered. "If you showed yourself a little more, you might not need mine." She went on without giving me a chance to find a response. "Dalish foragers usually work in pairs, you know, so we can keep an eye on what the other person is grabbing - always if we're in a new range for whatever reason. It keeps the accidental poisonings to a minimum. And probably the intentional ones, as well," she added thoughtfully, before dismissing the idea with a shake of her head. "Mihren hasn't had a partner, and has been restricting herself to hunting since the only other Dalish here are apparently working with you directly."

"That is so," I confirmed. The meal tonight was stew again, as it was about half the time - easy to simply keep a pot boiling low over the fire for several days on end, adding whatever bits of meat came in during that time, plus additional water and vegetables as needed. This one had clearly only just been started, and was mostly vegetables. I began eating methodically, without really tasting it.

"Since I'm here, and strong enough to walk through the forest now, we went foraging today," Lisell said, attending to her own meal with clear satisfaction. "It's been so wet there were plenty of mushrooms, new leaves on many of the plants, and we dug up plenty of roots - not as good now as they would have been during the winter, of course, but still a nice addition to your stores. Mihren even found me a crossbow light enough not to destroy any bird or rabbit I managed to hit, and we brought in several very stupid young rabbits, she got a squirrel, and I bagged a drake."

"She gave you a weapon?" I asked, slightly dubious regarding the wisdom of that step. Down an arm or not, it was clear no one here had seen Lisell on a battlefield.

Lisell stopped eating, glaring at me until her expression managed to call my attention through my haze of fatigue. "What would you expect me to do with it? Shoot one of my own people, who has been nothing but kind to me, and then run away with no gear or supplies to find my way through an unfamiliar wilderness?"

"Ir abelas, again," I said. "I am…"

"Yes, I know," she told me with crisp disapproval, "and I forgive you." But under her breath she added, "Felasil."

I snorted in amusement, acknowledging the current justice of the appellation. My thoughts felt slow, as though they were made of something much heavier and more resistant to my will than normal.

She went on, telling me about how she and Mihren had pooled their knowledge of plants and mushrooms from their own domains, each teaching the other. Mihren was from Clan Boranehn, whose range lay considerably further south than Clan Lavellan's. "I'm sure we overlooked many completely edible plants," she told me, "but we also found many things at least one of us recognized." She began listing some of the edibles they had found and collected, more to maintain her promise that I wouldn't need to contribute to the conversation than because she thought it would interest me. I did indeed disregard most of her words, but her voice made a soothing backdrop to my meal.

It was only when my spoon found the bottom of my bowl that I realized I had finished. Lisell collected our dishes and took them out to leave beside the door. When she returned, I had managed to get on my feet, though with my hunger alleviated I felt more dim-witted than ever. "On dhealam, ara sal'shiral. I shall endeavor to be better company tomorrow."

"Are you...serious?" she asked, laughing a little but looking genuinely uncertain.

"I would not be good company tonight," I pointed out - unnecessarily, I should have thought.

"I'm - that is really not what I'm worried about," she said.

"I don't - whatever it is, might we argue tomorrow instead?" I asked, wondering distantly what she could possibly disagree with me on at this moment. I had hardly spoken through dinner.

"No," she said, crossing her arms and stepping between me and my exit. "You look as though you will fall asleep on your feet at any moment. You are not entering the eluvian labyrinth like this."

"I could find my way through fully asleep," I reassured her. The possibility even existed that I wasn't exaggerating much.

She tilted her head. "Here is my problem, Solas: I don't know whether or not I can believe you, so I'm going to have to act as though I can't," she told me.

I watched her, too bemused and tired to feel the irritation with which I would usually greet such a statement. "Your belief, or lack of, is…" I shrugged, unable to immediately locate the word I wanted, and finding it too much trouble to go looking for it.

Lisell gave me a pitying look. The room was small enough that only two steps separated us. She covered the distance and put her hand on my arm. I instinctively bent toward her, finding pleasant the scent of green things that yet clung to her. She turned my body, and then tugged me - a direction. I took the first step without thinking, before remembering that I was resisting her interference in my plans to fall into my bed as soon as possible.

"Come with me, Solas," she urged. "Rest on my bed for a while, and once your mind is clearer I won't object to you leaving." She smiled, and it was - it made me feel - she continued before I could point my thoughts in the right direction: "Once your mind is clearer, I wouldn't be able to stop you even if I tried." She sighed. "A shame your obstinacy never appears to tire."

I would have replied, had my legs not run up against her bed then. Somehow she had turned our bodies again, and backed me up those last few steps. Now, with a practiced thrust of one hip, she shoved me off-balance so I fell back onto the mattress. Though I grabbed for her instinctively, it seemed my reflexes were as slow as my mind, because my hands closed on air.

Her throaty chuckle floated down after me, followed by a dip in the mattress near my knees. I opened my eyes - when had I closed them? - and gazed down the length of my body. Lisell was there, at the edge of the bed, one of her knees pressed into the mattress between mine. She leaned forward, her hand crumpling the bedclothes at my side. A stab of lust managed to penetrate the fog, but was lost just as quickly. "Give it up, Solas," she advised. "Even you truly need to sleep on occasion."

She retreated - or had been retreating as she spoke, I wasn't entirely certain. In either case, I found I was free to curl up on my side, did so, and immediately sank into darkness.


Elven translations, in the same order as always:

Ir abelas: I'm sorry

Felasil: Fool, lit. slow mind

On dhealam: Good evening

Ara sal'shiral: My life, lit. "my soul's journey"