Just one translation, I think.
Embers
I couldn't decide, after, what first troubled me. Was it the sense of loss? Though not cold, it was as though something like warmth had been stolen away from me. Or was it the words I felt shimmering in the stuff of the Fade? Ahnsul tel'eman na? Whatever it was, I woke dissatisfied, and immediately reached out to find ma vehnan and pull her nearer.
And I encountered - bedclothes. Cold bedclothes. An empty pillow, but for something that crunched under my hand.
I sat up. It was dark outside, and Lisell might merely have gone to bathe, or down to the kitchen to eat without disturbing me, but I knew as my hand closed on the paper left on her pillow, that it was nothing so mundane.
Swallowing, I lit all the lamps in the room with a thought, and saw, as expected, that the pack and weapons were gone. I opened the note - or letter, perhaps, as both sides of the paper were covered in her words.
Solas, if I don't leave now, I don't know that I ever will. Now I know a little better how you felt when you left, and though I still think you were wrong, I am so very sorry you had to feel this way. I'm also sorry you're reading this, feeling much the same way I did when you left me behind.
I love you. I wish I knew the runes to tell you everything properly, but even without them, I love you. I know you will put it from your mind as soon as you can, but if you feel inclined to do me one favor, let it be this: whenever you feel the need to do something dangerous, or when you have a choice about how much danger to put yourself in, remember. Remember I love you, and that without you - I don't even know what my motivation would be or what sense I would make of the world.
And stop making that face, the one where you think I'm asking something of you that I'm not doing myself. I'm Dalish, Solas. If I couldn't find my way through a wilderness of forest, even alone, I - well, I wouldn't be me.
A large ink blot followed, where she had apparently rested her pen for several moments, contemplating her next words.
I'm not at all convinced chiding you will do any good, but perhaps if you have my words to look back at on occasion they will make more impact. Are you certain this course you chart is the best possible one? Have you thought it through, done whatever tests you might, considered the future Dorian and I visited when Corypheus seemed to be attempting the same thing? I don't mean to doubt you, my love, but - but I doubt you, because "let a darkspawn magister have the orb" was apparently your primary back-up plan, when, in your place, I believe I would have put it somewhere between "absolute last resort in two or three decades after I have tried literally everything else" and "that is a terrible idea, why would I ever do that?"
You simply seem to have a history of rushing things without any thought for contingencies.
I shouldn't have wasted time and paper writing that, and likely made you angry in the bargain. I already know you won't listen.
Which does make me wonder: what do you really think would have been different had I been born several thousand years earlier? I'm here now and you don't listen, why would you have listened then, when you were younger, more desperate, and, by your own account, even more arrogant?
No, that came out wrong, and if I cross it - I don't have time. I wasn't trying to hurt you; the opposite, in fact. The thought that everything might somehow have been different if I had been there seems to bring you so much pain - I am not convinced anything would have changed the past, and I very much wish you would stop trying to re-fight those battles. You need that energy for how you intend to change the future.
Preferably to put into reflecting on how you intend to change the future.
All right, I'm done. You know none of it makes me love you any less. For good or ill, and perhaps as much because of as in spite of your obstinacy and unwillingness to ever seek help, except very occasionally as the sort of last resort that should really be saved for giving ancient magical artifacts to Blighted magisters, I love you. Be kind to yourself, for my sake if not for your own.
I -
Another ink blot.
I don't know how to say good-bye to you. So I suppose perhaps I won't.
She had filled the remainder of the page with I love you, again and again, and I thought her solution to the problem of needing to endlessly repeat the same sentiment was superior to mine.
I went back to the beginning. I'm sorry you're reading this, feeling much the same way I did when you left me behind. She hadn't added that at least she had left me an explanation, as I had not had the time or fortitude to do for her. Still - judging between the two experiences, now that I was in a position to judge, I could say that it clearly felt worse to be left.
The room still smelled of her. Though it felt empty without her physical presence, still, there were traces of her everywhere. With a thought, I doused the lights, hiding them. Then I laid myself back in bed, surrounded by cloth steeped in her scent, and allowed myself to spend a few hours pretending something, anything, had changed.
Translation:
Ahnsul tel'eman na?: Why can't I hold you?
