Alternate title for this chapter: "Solas Has Thoughts on the Dalish"

If that fills you with a sense of vague dread? Congratulations, you know Solas well.

A Review

If Solas was surprised to see us, he had concealed it by the time we drew close enough for me to attempt to decipher his expression. "Enjoy your 'practice,' my dear," Dorian told me with an arch look, his hand lingering for just a moment on my back before he nodded to Solas and left.

"I'm sorry," I sighed, hoping I wasn't blushing as I realized how ridiculous my presence here was. "He's apparently inexorable as the seasons when he finds something to interest him," I gestured vaguely in the direction Dorian had departed. "I never intended to disturb you. If you would rather I practice somewhere else…"

Solas was silent for a moment, regarding me with what might have been a thoughtful expression - he was a little too far away for me to see clearly. "There is no need for you to go," he said at last, politely - so politely that I nearly flinched. "I confess myself surprised that you and a Tevinter have taken to each other so quickly and easily, given the history between your peoples," he commented, and I found myself squinting at him, trying to read his face. There was nothing in his voice that made it more than a casual observation - and yet something told me it was.

I attempted to make my tone just as casual: "Neither of us are our peoples or the history between them, and we spent several hours facing down the end of the world together. Whatever else Dorian is, he is a steadfast ally - and a good friend, too. If a little overbearing."

Solas stared at me for a long moment, until I finally sighed. "If that is supposed to be a pointed look, you do realize you're too far away for me to actually see it?"

"Ir abelas," he said, a touch of humor coloring his tone as he stepped closer, until he was close enough that he might have kissed me merely by leaning in. "I believe the look I was giving you was something like this." He tilted his head quizzically, eyes narrowing slightly, and I laughed. "I believe the question I was attempting to express was what Dorian has to be overbearing about."

"Ma serannas," I replied, still chuckling - at least until I remembered what I was about to tell him. Then my laughter died and I cleared my throat. "As it happens, Dorian knows about us. Well," I amended quickly, noting Solas's alarmed stillness, "he knows I...care for you more particularly than some of the others."

"How?" Solas asked, just a hint of suspicion in his tone. Whether it was for me or Dorian, I couldn't say.

"Well... ir abelas," I apologized. It tried to come out sarcastic, but I thought I managed to wrangle my voice into compliance. "But...the world was falling to pieces while I stood by watching you dying of red lyrium with no idea whether I would get back. I may not have been as circumspect as I ideally should have been."

He looked slightly stunned. "Ah, well - that is perhaps not - that is to say, the apology is unnecessary. I - failed to reflect. How is your training going?" he hurried on. "Did the techniques you have practiced aid you in your excursion to the future?"

We settled into a conversation about magic, mostly how my control wasn't progressing at all, though he was interested to hear about how easy it had all been as I traversed Redcliffe Castle. I mentioned my idea regarding personal enchantments, and he allowed it was a good one - anything that gave me the ability to act faster was a good idea - though expensive. "You still need to practice," he pointed out.

"Isn't there some alternate way - something that comes at the skill from a different direction?" I asked him.

"Patience and dedication will serve you better than attempting to forge new paths that lead to the same places," he told me.

"It isn't about patience or dedication," I replied, snuffing out a brief flare of anger. "It's about whether I can be of any real use in a fight. Whether I can save my - save lives. If the Breach were going to simply wait, if it spawned no new rifts, and demons just stopped pouring out of them, I would spend the rest of my life trying to master this any way you thought best. But I don't know that I have that luxury."

I saw him weighing my argument against his desire for precision. "I wonder if you would still have trouble finding me if my aura were dimmed," he mused. "Or would the familiarity, once learned, act like muscle memory?"

"Could we test that?" I asked.

"Allow me to give it more thought," he requested. "I could ask Cullen to smite me, and that would certainly achieve the desired effect, though it would be at considerable pain and some risk to myself - "

"I would rather you not do that," I interrupted.

"As would I," he allowed with a small smile. "Perhaps there might be a way to temporarily enhance Cassandra's aura, or Blackwall's, so we might test the hypothesis."

I chewed my lip as I considered it. "It would just require a transfer of mana, but Sera might be more suitable. Elves seem to have, um - "

"An innate affinity for magic," Solas finished for me. "True - but would Sera agree to such an undertaking?"

"Perhaps we should consider it after our attempt to close the Breach," I sighed, already feeling a headache at the thought of even trying to explain to Sera what I needed to do, let alone talking her into letting me do it. "That task is too important to indulge in potentially risky experiments beforehand."

"Agreed," he said quickly, and then leaned down a little. There was a pitiless edge to his smile. "Now, as you are here, perhaps you should try moving me about the clearing. Blindfolded."

He was a mage, and I knew I wasn't going to have any trouble at all, so I shrugged. "Why not?"

"No trouble" might even have been an understatement - Solas had far more trouble finding a single thing to critique than I did slinging him about the clearing. "Remarkable - and remarkably frustrating - how uneven your abilities are," he lamented as we sat together on a rocky outcropping. He had sunk a glyph for heat into it sometime in the midst of our practice, and it was pleasantly warm now.

I tried not to take the statement as a criticism. "I know," I said quietly.

"I better understand why you would seek an alternate path," he said. "You have a nimble mind and quick understanding, as well as a delicate touch with your magic. It must be difficult for all that to wait on something which comes so much less easily to you, and is, in part, beyond your control."

"Well, that and I'm terrified of someone dying because I'm too slow or inaccurate," I replied, trying to decide why his compliments - they were compliments, weren't they? - felt patronizing or back-handed. After a moment, I decided to change the subject. "With all you say you have seen in the Fade, do you know much about ancient elven culture - beyond disciplines like the one I'm learning, I mean?"

He glanced at me, a sharp amusement shaping his features. "One of the Dalish, asking a flat-ear about elven culture? Are you certain you wouldn't prefer to tell me about ancient elven culture?" he asked, his tone dry.

I was rather taken aback. "No? Why would I ask if I didn't want to know? Have the Dalish treated you so poorly, then?" My clan wasn't inclined to draw especially sharp distinctions between Dalish and non-Dalish elves, though the term "flat-ear" did get used occasionally. Any elf, Maela maintained, could be Dalish if they respected our ancient beliefs and were willing and able to live with the rigors of Dalish life.

"I am not offended by their treatment of me," he said bitingly. "I am offended by their treatment of history. They are children, acting out stories misheard and repeated wrongly a thousand times."

My eyes searched his face as I tried to understand his bitterness. "Repeating stories was the only way our ancestors were able to preserve anything when we were slaves in Tevinter," I told him, wondering that he didn't know it already. "We were forbidden literacy, especially in our own language. What would you have us do? Wipe it all away and remember nothing?"

"Elvish was reconstructed, in large part, by Dalish elves combing the Fade for memories of it," he replied, stiff now. "If your people sought true understanding, they would continue that tradition, finding the old memories and learning all they could from them."

"That would be wonderful," I agreed, "but for two problems: first, if we stay anywhere for too long, we are in danger of being hunted and killed. Pressing deep into the Fade requires familiarity with an area - time spent exploring. They had that luxury in the Dales. We don't." I took a breath. "Second, mages are tasked with helping the entire clan in practical matters. For any of our history to mean anything, we have to survive the present. Healing magic - midwifery - even battle-magics - these are simply more important day-to-day than accurate knowledge of the past."

"And yet," Solas bit off each word, "they reject such knowledge when offered by outsiders, free of clan responsibilities and therefore able to explore."

I frowned at him. It sounded to me like he was offended by his treatment at the hands of my people, even though he claimed it wasn't that. "I'm sorry," I said carefully, even though the words felt heavy and somehow wrong, "for the way you and your offerings of knowledge have apparently been handled. As far as I know, I have never treated you that way, and if I have it was entirely accidental. You need not doubt the intentions of the questions I ask."

He ran a hand over his face. "Ir abelas." His voice was rough. "Of course you are not like the rest of your people."

That hadn't been what I meant at all. He thought I wasn't like the rest of my people?

"If I can share any understanding, you have but to ask."

"Perhaps another time," I said quietly, still reeling. "I - I believe I'm getting cold."

"Of course," he said, standing and offering me his arm to return to Haven. I took it, because what else was I to do?

It was beginning to become clear that there was a great deal I didn't know about Solas - and some of it was...unpleasant.