I've been severely limiting my caffeine intake, but fuck do I need coffee this morning.

Rifts and Regrets

We were about two hours from camp when we found our first rift - luckily on the road and not out in the bog somewhere. The road had been broad so far, with enough dry land - or sometimes rock formations - on either side that we weren't walking right next to the water. We hadn't had to fight any undead, just a couple of wraiths. Even so, the entire place felt wrong, somehow, and I had the feeling that we were going to hear more from Widris, the mage whose journal we had found.

That, unfortunately, was a separate task that would need to be pursued after I found our soldiers. I only hoped we wouldn't be too late to stop whatever the mage was attempting. The journal had not been at all reassuring, and I feared it might have consequences for the entire region, not just for Widris. Even so, I couldn't turn aside to hunt down a rogue mage, leaving my people at the mercy of hostile forces.

I watched my hand sparking as we approached the rift. It appeared to be closed, for the moment, with nothing leaking through, but that could change at any time, and I would have to open it in order to close it properly.

Belatedly, I noticed the aura of a mage, half hidden in the strange Veil permutations caused by the rift, and paused a little distance away. "Looks Avvar," Bull tossed back to me helpfully over his shoulder.

The Avvar continued to stand, watching us, and so after a moment of sizing him up - from the little I could see, he looked big - I approached more slowly. "Enansalen," I greeted him. "Blessings," I translated immediately, realizing I had slipped into Elvish. "Are you studying the rift?"

I was close enough to see him as he answered - and close enough to see he was huge. Not quite built on Bull's scale, but not far off of it, either. "Rift is what you call this hole in the world? Never seen anything like its like, but it spits out angry spirits. Endless. What the sky's trying to tell us, I don't know."

"The rifts were caused by the Breach in the sky," I told him, gesturing to where I knew the scar hid behind the clouds.

He scoffed. "I know that, Lowlander. I'm talking about the message of the Lady of the Skies." His head tilted and I felt him studying me. "You're a mage. Do you not know her? Can't you see the warnings she writes in the march of the clouds and bird flocks in the air?"

"How interesting," Dorian said, "you use the patterns of flocking birds and clouds as an augury, then?"

"We don't 'use' them," the giant replied. "They're sent. You see it, or you don't - but most of our mages do."

"Fascinating," Dorian said. "In that case - " I shot a glare in his general direction, cutting him off. This was hardly the time to be attempting to write ethnographies. "Ah, my apologies. Carry on."

"So," the Avvar said, reclaiming my attention, "you're Herald of Andraste, then. My kin want you dead, but it's not my job. No fears from me."

"Oh? I thought the Avvar wanted to fight with me," I said.

"Our chieftain's son wants to fight you," he corrected me. "I'm called in when the dead pile up. Rites to the gods, mending for the bleeding, a dagger for the dying. That's what I do. Sky Watcher - that's what they call me, and I don't pick up a blade for a whelp's trophy hunt."

"I'm called Inana, when I'm not being given unasked-for religious titles," I replied. "Do you know of the people who were kidnapped? My people? Are they all right?"

"A few were injured in the skirmish, but they were alive," he assured me. "Last I saw them, anyhow. Someone's trained them well. They killed more of us than I thought they would."

"Ma serannas - thank you for the information. I'm going to open this rift now, so that it can be closed properly," I warned him. "It will spawn demons."

"This, I think I'd like to see," he said, stepping back a pace and swinging the heavy hammer from his shoulder, holding it in a position to guard.

I nodded and took a few steps away, closer to the rift, studying the way small dissonances in the oscillation of the Veil held it closed without actually allowing anything to be repaired. I could see the Veil warping further even as I watched - there was a buildup of energy on the other side that would soon rip it open and send demons careening into the world.

Sighing, I opened it before it could tear.

We had gotten good at closing rifts, and so the fight didn't take long, though it was the first time terror demons had numbered among those pouring out of a rift. I wondered if it was something about this area that drew them. In any case, we had already had practice against them, and within short order, all the demons had been reduced to Fade energy, and I was closing the rift.

"Lady of the Skies!" Sky Watcher exclaimed as the rift folded in on itself. He came closer, to inspect the place where it had been. "You really can mend the gaps in the air."

"Great, isn't it?" Bull sounded immensely satisfied.

"Maybe you do have a god's favor," the Avvar said thoughtfully, and then snorted something that was almost a laugh. "Though I don't know that it extends to everyone walking at your side. That one looks like he spent too much time rooting about in the water." He nodded and I turned, even knowing I wouldn't see much - but at the same moment, a pulse of nausea hit me through the bond I shared with Solas.

Before I knew what I was doing, I had left the Avvar behind and was stumbling to Solas's side, drawn by his discomfort. I arrived in time to offer a little meager support as his body heaved, though nothing much came up. It was brief, and then he spat a few times as I soothed him with a wave of healing, fishing a cloth out of my pack for him to wipe his mouth. "Solas," I said flatly, "you're sick."

"That is...impossible," he muttered, straightening and taking the cloth, but still resting a considerable portion of his weight on his staff. "I'm never ill."

I put my hand on his forehead to evaluate how warm he was - using magic rather than my chilled skin, of course. "I think it's very possible, considering you have a fever."

"The plague?" Dorian asked from somewhere off to the side.

"No, that was in the lungs - began with coughing. This is stomach-related." I couldn't cure disease with magic, but I sent another wave of healing through him to soothe his stomach.

"Do we have to worry about you?" Cassandra asked. "You have been sharing a tent."

"Probably not," I answered, not terribly concerned. "Sleeping hot is a good preventive measure, but it's not perfect. Still, it usually mitigates any illness that manages to occur, so I doubt he'll be very - "

"Wait, wait, wait," Dorian interrupted. "What is sleeping hot?"

I turned to look at him, surprised, and then realized humans might not have the same name for it. "You know, when you - as a mage - give yourself a low-grade fever at night as you're sleeping, as a preemptive measure to prevent disease from taking hold."

"That - " Dorian began, and then paused. "That is very clever, actually."

"You don't do it?" I asked, somewhat appalled. "I have been ever since we learned about the plague!" I turned my attention to Solas. "Ma'sa'lath?"

"No," he gritted out. "I - don't become ill. The possibility never entered my thoughts."

"I should have asked," I realized, feeling terrible.

"Is it something you could do for the rest of us?" Cassandra asked.

"No," Dorian answered for me. "Too dangerous, I'm afraid. You don't make changes like that in other people's bodies, only your own, where you can...keep an eye on things, figuratively speaking."

"Ir abelas," I told Solas. "I - I should have asked."

"I should have asked," he replied in a rasp. "I could tell you were altering something, but I assumed you were arranging your cycle to be more convenient."

"How many nights, consecutively, can you continue to use the technique without detrimental effects?" Dorian wondered.

"Hold up," Sera interrupted. "Your cycle? Is he saying - can you change when you're on the bloody rag?"

"A week, perhaps," I told Dorian and then glanced back toward Sera, "and, well, yes," I answered, not quite certain I wanted to be talking about this with everyone else present, not to mention Solas standing in front of me burning up with fever, but recognizing the answer was short enough, "or just avoid it altogether, which is what I did five or six years ago. Easier than managing things every month."

"Huh. Mages aren't as shite as I thought," Sera mused.

"What're we gonna do, Boss?" Bull asked, cutting through the rest of the chatter.

"We have to go back to camp," I sighed. "Solas can't go on like this." I paused thinking it through. "We'll...have to stay another night. I want someone to stay behind to take care of him. Not that I don't trust Harding's people, just - "

"I'll do it," Cole volunteered.

"That's ideal. Thank you, Cole," I sighed in relief. No one could take better care of Solas than Compassion.

"You cannot share his tent," Cassandra said.

I scrubbed a hand over my face unhappily. "Yes, that's fair. Cole can stay - I'll sleep wherever he was." I tried to remember. "With Dorian?"

"We'll have a lovely little sleepover," Dorian assured me. "Tell secrets. Braid hair. It will be delightful."

"As if you would let me touch your hair," I scoffed, amused in spite of myself.

"I'll help him back to camp, since I can use Inana's little fever trick," Dorian volunteered rather than answering my jab.

Solas groaned softly, and I wasn't certain whether he was reacting to Dorian's company specifically, or just how bad he felt generally. It occurred to me now that some of the wrongness I felt was from my bond with him and not from the mire at all. I hadn't recognized it since this level of connectedness was still so new for us.

I put my hand on his cheek again briefly to draw his attention. "Tell me if you start feeling like you might be sick again. I can do something about that , anyway."

"Ma melava halani, ma vhenan," he replied, and then Dorian led him away.

When we thought to look around, Sky Watcher had disappeared.

It was hard letting Dorian help Solas back to camp. I wanted to be with him - but of course my footing wasn't sure enough that I could support him, even if my continued health weren't of paramount importance just now. Instead I spent the walk back planning something else I could do - something I could leave with him - at least if we had sufficient supplies.

Once we returned to camp, I waited for Dorian and Cole to get Solas settled, and then snagged Dorian to help me. "I can probably identify the herbs I want by smell and taste," I told him as we stopped in front of the folding alchemy bench that Bull had carried here, "but they're labeled in Common and I, uh, don't know all the names in Common. I really don't want to make a mistake."

"Yes, I would rather the Herald not poison herself tasting herbs to identify them," Dorian agreed dryly. "How do you not know the names in Common?" he demanded. "Your people still primarily speak Common, don't they?"

I shot him a glare. "You can't assume that - not every clan does. Mine does, yes, but we prefer our own words for some things. I know the most common ones, because we treat them as trade goods - feladara is elfroot, dalavaria is spindleweed, blaronodhe is chamomile - but some of the more uncommon we keep exclusively for ourselves, or only trade with other clans." I began pulling out pouches of herbs as I spoke, separating out the ones I knew and wanted from the ones I knew and didn't want, and from the ones I didn't know. "Like - what do you call the kind of elfroot with the iridescent purple sheen?"

"Royal elfroot," Dorian answered. "What do you call it?"

"Feladarala. It basically means 'very calm healing' instead of just 'calm healing.' Do we have any? Royal elfroot, I mean?"

"We have exactly two leaves," he told me, plucking a nearly-empty pouch from among those I had pulled out. "But we have a reasonable amount of royal elfroot decoction, so you can use the leaves if you want to."

I smiled at him, placing the pouch among the ones I knew I wanted. "Ma serannas. All right, what about felanenaste? It's, um, a vine with arrowhead-shaped leaves and flowers that cascade down - a bit like wisteria, but green. And about three times larger."

"Arbor blessing," Dorian told me, chuckling, "and you think very well of our finances if you think we have bought any of that . You know we haven't been anywhere that it grows."

"Just checking," I sighed. "It's even better than chamomile for soothing a rebellious stomach. We have to have some manadhea - it loves places like this. It's a type of lotus?"

"That's likely dawn lotus," he agreed, picking up a particularly plump purse and handing it to me, "since the other varieties I'm aware of have no healing properties to speak of."

I looked over my collection of herbs. "Just one more - avisefelan. It's a type of...fenedhis, I can't remember the Common word for it. It has dark leaves, glossy, sometimes with streaks of red or gold, and very bright red berries. The berries are just the right side of edible, though they'll give you cramps if you eat too many, and they're bitter - "

"Prophet's laurel?" he offered uncertainly.

"That's probably it - laurel was the word I was looking for," I replied.

"Your group brought a fair amount back from the Storm Coast," Dorian told me, handing me the correct pouch. "I take it you're making a tea?"

I nodded and began clearing the bench of everything I didn't need. "Not all the decoctions would work well together, but the individual elements should be fine in their less concentrated - and, in some cases, unactivated - states. He can drink it along with a meal and have a chance at keeping down whatever he eats."

"Yes, yes, there's a reason potions against nausea are famously ineffective," Dorian agreed, watching me. "My potions master when I was a boy theorized it had to do with all the alcohol involved in making most decoctions. Then again, he tried to convince my father not to let me drink even watered wine by telling wild stories of severe organ damage resulting from alcohol consumption, so his opinions in general were somewhat suspect."

I hummed a vague agreement, turning my attention to the proportions I wanted. Dorian stayed to watch as I got out a mortar and pestle and began measuring out and grinding up ingredients, stepping in to smell my blend once I had completed it. "The chamomile is somewhat overwhelming," he commented, "but so long as one likes chamomile, it should be palatable enough."

"Do you not like chamomile?" I asked, interested by the qualifier.

"When you have a steward who believes it an essential piece of his hangover cure - no, I have tasted it entirely too many times coming back up," Dorian replied.

I chuckled and began portioning my tea into sachets.

Ma'sa'lath: My only love

Ma melava halani: Idiom meaning "you have spent your time to help me," also a particularly intimate form of "thank you"