Well, this week was not the best. One of my friends was diagnosed with cancer, so...yeah. I'm still here, just...more slowly than before. Bit hard to concentrate at the moment, though yesterday I finally managed to scrape together some focus.
Old Friends and New Acquaintances
When Solas at last found me within my dreams, he wasn't alone.
I was left to my own devices for some indeterminate amount of time. I dreamed of the warm wetland my clan crossed every summer on our journey from Wycome to the foothills west of Ansburg. We did our fall trading in Wycome, which usually offered better prices for our wares since it was a port city, and then wintered nearby. In the spring - usually late, as the coast was a good place for fishing - we began the long trek to Ansburg, where they welcomed any winter furs we might have to sell. In between: days upon days of brackish wetlands as we crossed the Minanter's estuary.
In my dream, I sat on a narrow slice of solid ground wearing only breeches and my jul'duinelan - what the humans, at least in the Marches, called a Dalish kirtle, though the garments bore only the vaguest of similarities. The jul'duinelan was an undergarment rather than an outer, made of linen and often worn against the skin, and lacked skirts entirely. I had found I actually preferred light stays when I had to be active - they were more supportive, and my breasts were somewhat larger and more in need of support than those of most elves I had met - but for comfortable lounging, nothing could compare to the jul'duinelan. Especially, I imagined, in the heat - light stays were usually quilted, which was a horrifying thought in the sticky coastal summers I was accustomed to.
I dangled my feet in the deliciously warm water, only slightly cooler than my skin, my awareness of the dream as a dream sliding easily from my thoughts, and then just as easily making a reappearance. The scenery around me reflected, to a degree, my limited real-world sight, since the dream was taken directly from my memories. The tall grasses that crowded around, catching in my hair and tickling my skin whenever a breeze blew, slipped in and out of focus as easily as my recognition of my unconscious state.
Solas's entrance, when he arrived, was palpable - the Fade shaped itself eagerly to his every whim. I had the amusing thought that it was rather like an overly obsequious court toady, falling over itself in an effort to please. My awareness of the dream sharpened, and so did my perception of the grasses surrounding me. When I looked down, I found I had already summoned attire more appropriate for the exploration Solas and I had planned - the breeches remained, but I had a proper shift and stays, and my feet were wrapped in leather.
I stood.
It was only then that I realized the Fade sang out not only for Solas, but also for the woman - no, spirit - accompanying him. Unlike most spirits, she was distinctly feminine - almost exaggeratedly so - and so I had no qualms applying a gender to her. The two of them moved together in a natural rhythm, clearly part of a long-standing pair, and I felt, all at once, very small, very young, and very…isolated.
At least, I supposed, I was no longer in my undergarments.
Her face lit up as they approached, the full lips stretching into a smile that kindled a nearly incandescent radiance in her golden eyes. Solas, on the other hand, merely looked vaguely uncomfortable. "Inana," he said, stopping several paces away and clasping his hands behind his back, "this is my friend, Wisdom. Emma falon - "
She ignored him, coming forward to take my hands in hers. Her skin was almost the precise color of unrefined dawnstone. "Inana Lavellan," she breathed, and it took me a moment to recognize the syllables of my own name - her accent was like Solas's when he spoke Elvish, only…more so. "Nuva u'vun tarsul'le or'melath var'vhellash, lethallan."
I looked helplessly at Solas. She spoke swiftly and in an accent like a flowing stream - it took me several moments to translate the words, and between the dream and my surprise at meeting her, I lost half of them before I could do it.
"Your accent, my friend," Solas said, and though his face remained an impassive mask, I detected an undercurrent of amusement in his words. I also saw, as the Fade bent around his voice, that he had given me the words in Common and given them to her in Elvish. My mind reeled briefly at the control such a feat implied. Was it inherent in being a born Dreamer, I wondered, or the sort of thing Solas had mastered because he spent so much time in the Fade?
"Ir abelas," she chuckled, and then the Fade bent around her, too, as she directed her words into Common. "My excitement makes me forgetful." Her hands squeezed mine. "You are beautiful. Is it an accurate representation, Pride?"
He took a step closer, studying me critically. "In reality, her eyes possess a greater contrast between light and dark, but the rest is accurate enough. I'm sorry to interrupt our plans," he said to me, his tone brisk. "Wisdom found me when I entered the Fade, and it has been some months since we were last in the same place at the same time."
"He had only begun to know you, then, though your name came up often," Wisdom told me.
"If I remember correctly, you were the one who asked," Solas told her, affection and mild exasperation breaking his impassivity - but it was all directed at her. All of his focus appeared to be on her.
"And you were happy to expound upon the subject at length," she retorted before looking at me again. "Let us sit - I want to know all about you."
I glanced at Solas, but his eyes were still fixed on Wisdom, his face a mask of cool neutrality. Dimly, I thought I sensed unease beneath - but it might have been my own feelings making my gut churn, and not his at all.
Solas altered the memory surrounding us slightly to give us more dry land, but otherwise left it intact. We sat in the tall grass and Wisdom dangled her feet in the water beside me, unbinding her long, lazurite-colored hair and combing her fingers through it absently. It made her eyes look preternaturally bright. Solas sat a little apart, on my other side, but not near enough to touch - at least not easily. "Tell me of your clan," Wisdom said. "The Dalish have little voluntary contact with spirits, and are too few to leave much mark on the Fade. I know far less about them than I would like to."
"That is…a large question. Could you narrow it down a little?" I asked, trying to will the stiffness from my voice, but much too far adrift in relationships I suddenly didn't understand to have any idea where I ought to begin.
"According to Pride, you have little patience for those who romanticize the Dalish, but their way of life is unlike any other in Thedas. Is there truly nothing romantic in a people who answer only to themselves and their own needs, and who move through the world at their own will?" she wondered.
When she put it that way…and yet, were the Dalish truly any more free than anyone else? Maybe the forces that dictated our needs were more primal and immediate - the weather and land rather than societal constructs - but constraints were constraints, weren't they? If one set appeared more romantic than the other, that seemed to me more a matter of perception than reality. "Romance requires mystery and a sense that the place or circumstance in which you find yourself is…outside the ordinary, I think," I told her, hugging my knees to my chest and choosing my words with care. "The Dalish life is ordinary to me, and holds few mysteries. Anyway - perhaps the wilderness is freeing for those who can see well enough to navigate it. I…can't."
"Ah - I confess I often forget about your inability to see clearly outside the Fade," Wisdom said. "You accomplish so much - the Fade echoes with the consequences of your actions. It's easy to forget you are working against such a disadvantage." Her head tilted, her eyes regarding me with keen interest. "Do you think, then, that there can be nothing romantic about the familiar?"
I cast a glance at Solas, but he was still watching Wisdom. "Well…perhaps," I replied, hesitating. "Romance isn't the same as love, is it?" I gestured to the dream-landscape my memory had conjured. "I love this place, and my clan, and some of the time I spent with them. But I don't find them romantic ."
"I suppose one might argue, too, that is why mortals form romantic partnerships with others and not with themselves," she said thoughtfully. "Another mind and spirit are always, to some degree, unknown." She cast me a sudden, sly glance. "Do you find life with the Inquisition romantic, then?"
"No," I said automatically, and then paused to reflect on my reaction. "I think I found…adulthood romantic, at first," I told her more slowly. "It was a novelty, and there was suddenly so much I was allowed to do. But…not after Haven."
Her fingers were closing around mine almost before I recognized the pain that was still bound up in that memory, and even though it was a dream, her fingers felt warm. "Each spirit has only a single way of reaching toward what is right without losing an essential part of itself - but mortals have no such restrictions. Mortals can break a hundred times in a hundred different ways, and re-form each time in a way that is simultaneously unique, good, and true to their original identity. What happened to you made you, and you are beautiful, ma falon."
"Ma serannas," I said, surprised by how keenly I felt her words. They somehow cut through all my self-doubt, warming my spirit as surely as her fingers warmed mine as she continued holding my hand. It didn't even occur to me to glance at Solas this time. Wisdom had me utterly captivated.
She smiled at me. "This conversation hasn't gone as I intended, and that is entirely my own fault. Forgive me, Inana - it isn't wisdom's nature to be content with shallow and lighthearted subjects." Her smile broadened. "As compensation, I will do the speaking now, and I will tell you of things which I think cannot fail to amuse us both - in the name of furthering your understanding of our mutual friend, of course. Pride has told you too little of himself, I think."
Now I did shoot Solas a wide-eyed look, but, though the uneasiness was still there, he seemed more resigned than anything. "You're…going to tell me of Solas's past?" I asked, not quite believing it - not quite believing he would let her, if I admitted the truth.
"Enough for you to begin to understand his character when he was a young man, perhaps," she replied. "His amorous conquests - and failures - are worthy of legend, and are a matter of public record within the Fade, at least for those who know where to look."
I choked a little, wondering if this was really something I wanted to hear about.
Wisdom raised her eyes from my face, looking beyond me to Solas. "You have no objections?"
"I have a number of objections," he replied, his voice not quite testy but certainly tense, "none of which you are inclined to listen to."
"Wisdom often demands ignoring the promptings of Pride," she told him impishly, wrinkling her nose before returning her attention to me. "It's good for Pride to indulge in occasional humility - "
"Or in humiliation, as the case may be," he muttered.
" - but I will have mercy on him and recount only his failures. They paint him in a better light than his successes." Based on the sound Solas made, I was fairly certain he disagreed. "First you must picture him as he was, with his long chestnut braids adorned in crystal beads and golden bells - "
"Bells," I repeated faintly, trying dutifully to picture it and failing utterly.
"Or occasionally feathers," she told me, eyes alight with humor.
I covered my mouth to smother my laughter.
Solas sighed.
In spite of his misgivings, Wisdom's stories did paint him in a good light. He had been vain and brash on the surface in his youth, but as with Dorian it had been more bravado than reality, and underneath there had always been a man who cared so much it frequently caused him pain. Wisdom's youthful version of him actually reminded me a great deal of Dorian - I wondered if it was why Solas occasionally grew so scornful over matters where the two of them disagreed. Was he, in fact, reacting to his own past and the opinions that had altered as he gained more experience? Dorian didn't look like he was more than five or six years younger than Solas, but I didn't know how long ago Solas had removed his vallaslin and left his home - wherever that was. Perhaps he had left everything behind at a much younger age than Dorian had.
Wisdom's stories also made me laugh, and I found myself, by degrees, becoming more comfortable with her and with their friendship. She was obviously fond of him, and just as obviously delighted by me, though I didn't know whether he had told her enough for it to be personal, or whether she was just glad to see him with someone. Either way, I couldn't withstand her open approval, even if Solas did remain aloof and withdrawn. At least his attitude made a certain amount of sense once we started laughing at him.
It wasn't until Wisdom began to take her leave that he came to my side, one hand resting on the small of my back, though he didn't relax fully until she had exited my dream with a promise to find me again another night. I wasn't angry enough to shake him off, but I was angry enough that I didn't lean toward him or slip my arm around his waist. Instead I focused on my pleasure at getting to know Wisdom and on seeing her off.
Once we were alone, he finally tried to pull me against him with a long exhale, cut off abruptly when he registered my resistance. I glared up at him as he glanced down at me, taking in my posture and expression. "Vhenan?" he asked after a moment spent studying my face for clues regarding my displeasure.
"What in the Void was that?" I demanded.
He studied my face with a confused frown. "I must apologize for disrupting our plans, but you and Wisdom seemed - "
"She's lovely," I interrupted. "I'm not talking about her. I'm talking about you." Did he really not understand? He had just introduced me to someone who was clearly important to him with absolutely no warning, or support, or reassurance, or…anything.
"Ah." He breathed out the syllable sharply. "It has nothing to do with you," he reassured me, "and everything to do with her." For a moment he was silent, and I didn't know if he meant to go on - or if his problem having to do with her was actually better than him having one that had to do with me. When he spoke again, his voice was low and his words halting: "Wisdom is my oldest friend, and knows nearly everything there is to know about me. She…does not approve of the…aspects of my life I have chosen not to reveal to you."
"You thought she would tell me something?" I asked, piecing together what he was trying to say.
He shrugged, and sighed. "The possibility couldn't be ruled out, but she wanted to meet you so much that I couldn't deny her the pleasure." His face softened slightly, though his expression wasn't quite a smile. "Nor could I deny myself the pleasure." One of his hands found and cradled my cheek. "There are so many things - " He broke off without finishing the thought and took a breath. "At least I can share this."
I closed my eyes and shook my head. "Then why not trust your oldest friend and make an attempt to take pleasure in the two of us enjoying our acquaintance, ha'felasil?" I asked.
He snorted at the questionable endearment. "I fear life has largely robbed me of whatever capacity for blind faith I once possessed," he told me.
"It's not blind when she's your friend," I countered.
For a moment his expression - not to mention the shock of sadness that coursed through our bond - broke my heart. "No, I suppose it isn't," he murmured. "Even so…"
And that was when Wisdom's cry of despair rent the Fade around us, leaving my dream in tatters.
Solas and I stared at each other in mute horror for the space of a breath, and I watched the panic rising on his face. "Wake!" I urged him, and wrenched myself from sleep.
Emma falon: My friend
Nuva u'vun tarsul'le or'melath var'vhellash, lethallan: "May a star shine upon the hour of our meeting, cousin/kinswoman." Yes, I'm indirectly quoting Lord of the Rings. I've read it at least fifty times - I emshould/em have parts of it memorized by now.
Ma falon: My friend
Ha'felasil: Wise or respected idiot