Her Wilds held a comfort that could not be replaced. It was where she had grown up and where she had learned that so often, the creatures accused of being monsters were anything but. Perhaps it was because so many had looked at her with such fear that she'd so readily learned that lesson, and perhaps that was why the other denizens of the Wilds had so readily accepted her.

While, yes, there were templars to flee from time to time, every other aspect of the Wilds had been wonderful.

Donovan always called her lonely, but she wasn't. There were entire clutches of wyvern, long since spread out in the Wilds, who had known her since they were little. They would see her and suddenly rather than stalking an intruder, they would be ready to play—sometimes knocking over small trees in the process.

There were other animals she'd be friended, some predators, some prey. She would wander through their territory, and they would wander with her, keeping pace, listening to her rambling tales.

They couldn't understand her, not truly, but the way their heads would cock at the tone of her voice, and…they knew the word templar. There was one wyvern who, whenever she said the word, would let out an angry growl and then look at her expectantly, as though making sure it had interpreted her sounds correctly.

She always nodded, brow furrowing, and patted it on the head.

It was a little comical that such a large lizard would be so vocal about mage hunters, she loved it.

That was not to say that she could control them, by any means. On the rare occasion that she was traveling with someone else, she normally saw her beast friends peering out through the trees or underbrush, sniff the air and then wander off.

Once, she'd had to convince one not to eat Marcus.

She wasn't really sure why. He was an ass, after all, but even as she'd watched the wyvern corner him, she'd felt a trill of guilt run through her. It had taken some cajoling, but she'd managed to save him, with minimal teeth marks on his arm.

That was before she'd decided to play healer to show how docile she was, and both she and her wyvern had simply left Marcus bleeding, with her calling over her shoulder that he should be nicer to other creatures, and he wouldn't get hurt so much.

She'd heard him swearing behind her as they'd left, and felt his own magic curling around him to stave off any chance of infection.

She was friends with giant spiders, too, to an extent. There were a few who knew her from the Blight—she'd saved their hatchery, and she'd been the first thing they'd seen when they hatched, making a few of them think of her as somewhat of a mother.

Again, they were their own creatures, but they would get excited when she passed through. Sometimes, they defended her from younger spiders who mistook her for a meal. Then, again, she would have a partner to wander the woods with for a little while.

There was one, she called him Ser Barnebus, who had actually webbed her when she tried to leave his territory. She'd woken up in a cave, with the spider crawling all around the room and making distressed noises because it thought it had killed her.

When she'd sat up—a task somewhat difficult because of all the webbing—he'd tackled her and she'd banged her head on the floor.

After that, he'd been more careful with her.

And then of course there were the song birds. She liked all birds, really, but song birds held a special place in her heart. The ones who knew her would chirp when they found her passing by, flitting around her head, coming down to land on lower branches to twitter at her and tell her all the things she'd missed during her wanderings.

They were the first friends she'd made out there. There had been a bad storm, and she'd found one of the poor things injured and hiding in the dirt and brush. Its terrified chirps had brought her back to when she was a little girl, and she had realized that if she could heal a templar, she could surely mend a bird.

She had and it had stayed with her for over a year, always flitting through the tree branches overhead, or even perching on her head or shoulder.

Finley had been completely in love, and that was one of the main reasons she'd pursued healing magics at all—aside from being able to heal herself, of course. One couldn't outrun templars on a broken leg or while bleeding profusely, after all.

However, before the Conclave most of her efforts had been in mending and manipulating trees. She picked up a few other spells here and there, wards and counters to curses and the like, but for the most part, she hadn't healed people.

Donovan said she was crazy, but she thought didn't worry about it. For the creatures she hadn't met before, she could usually buy tolerance if not affection with a few healing spells, or presenting them with a decent meal.

Truly, she was very rarely lonely in the Wilds, and more often than not, when she was it was because she'd spent a few months around people and hadn't been able to see her non-bipedal friends as much.

She'd never been the best at working with other people—something she'd quickly had to overcome after being appointed the Herald of Andraste.

While she liked the people she worked with and come to know over the last months, she still missed her home. She missed curling up under an outcrop with foxes, or basking in the afternoon sun with wyvern. She missed singing with song birds.

She missed her Wilds.

And as much as she cared for Cullen, and adored Sera's pranks and Bull's jokes and…

She cared for these people, but…

But she couldn't have them and the Wilds.

Some nights, she'd wake up beside Cullen, feeling so lost. Her feet would itch to just go, to leave everything behind and search to make sure that her home was safe, that the rifts near and in the Wilds hadn't brought harm to the creatures she loved so.

Once, she'd gotten up to go, the restless concern in her too great.

Then Cullen had murmured her name, his brow pinching together in pain, and she'd realized that she couldn't go back.

Couldn't leave him.

That had been a scary night, where she'd sat on the edge of his bed, watching him sleep, and wondering when he'd become so important to her. That he could whisper a name that wasn't even really hers, and she would forget everything to make sure that he was okay was…

She wasn't sure what it was. Donovan would laugh if she called it love.

Her Wilds held a comfort for her that couldn't be replaced, and always would.

But here in Skyhold, she'd found another comfort, and some nights she stayed up, wrestling with the notion that someday she would have to choose.