BSN Prompt: Relief

Andra gazed at the large stone carving, thoughtfully noting the rich detail and delicate, loving craftsmanship, all the hours that the poor carver must have slaved away to capture the image perfectly, before deciding, just as thoughtfully, that there was so much about it that was all wrong.

Oh, the basics were fine. Everyone knew how they had melted away the old words and inscribed the tenets for the new Chant on its forbearer. Everyone knew that they had left behind their symbol of mage freedom; of the raven and the hawk in flight, which was eventually adopted by the Chantry, using the matched pair to form the circle to the Maker's sunburst.

Everyone knew that.

But no Champion would have waded into battle against armored men with hair that long and flowing, which was a combat hazard, (and a swift death sentence) if she ever saw one, and the limestone relief depicted the Reformation at Cumberland in broad daylight, a single shaft of sunlight descending from the heavens to rest on the Man of the Anderfels, his great love and supporter at his arm.

"Tell me, child. What do you think of it?" The Curator (or so Andra supposed) drawled warmly, drawing up beside her, and obviously appreciative that not everyone from their class trip had buggered off outside to have snowball fights in the afternoon Solace heat.

Andra shoved her hands into her pockets, and shrugged. "It's awfully... romantic," she said, in the same way someone might suggest 'silly,' but at the same time, not wishing to outright offend what was another person's passion. "I mean, there's no way they could have pulled it off during the day. There would have been guards, or something, that would have caught them. Would make a rather short end to a revolution. And the Champion's hair is impossibly and impractically long."

"How true. The style, I'm afraid, in Tevinter at the time. " She agreed with a short laugh, tossing her equally long, silvered hair over her shoulder. "But if you think it dramatic now, you should imagine it as it was. Terribly gaudy when freshly painted, and hanging before the altar. See, how it still has color in places?"

Andra squinted at the prophet's tiny face, where time and the elements had weathered the stone, and worn away much of the light paint. "Yellow... He had light hair, then?"

She nodded approvingly. "You have a good eye, my dear. Blondes were common enough, in the Anderfels."

"What about his eyes?"

"'The golden eye of justice sees, and requites the unjust man,' hm?" The Curator smiled, knife-shape, her own golden eyes glimmering with private humor. "Most scholars believe that axiom to be part of his early writings, during his tenure in Kirkwall, and - of course - strictly metaphorical." She tapped her chin with one long finger, her expression shifting into something inscrutable. "Popular opinion can never decide as to whether they were brown or blue..." A flash of that secretive smile, again. "And if you ask me, neither could he."

Andra frowned slightly, a bit confused as to what that's supposed to mean, and reconsidered the stone relief again, focused this time on the prophet's wife. The carver was skilled, probably one of the best of his generation, and, even now, there was steel and spine to the woman's bearing, a bold angle of the tilt to the Champion's chin as smiled at her husband. "And her?"

"Ahh. Her. A woman who always kept her end of a bargain... Child, you might as well split wheat from chaff or metal from dross. 'Twould be far simpler to apply yourself to those arduous tasks than to separate the fact from fiction about her... Believe not the storyteller, for the storyteller always lies. Dwarven ones moreso." The Curator glanced at Andra's increasingly baffled expression, tutted a sigh, and seemed to take pity on her. "It's in my experience, my dear, that the perceived is far more enduring, and accepted, than what may actually be true."

Andra nodded slowly at that. Truly, it was hard to say what either of them really looked like. So much about that violent time in their history has been lost over the years. The Reforms, the Qunari Invasion, then the Return... It wasn't all that different than Andraste, their forerunner, and while change may occur, revolutions, however, always ate their heroes. What happened to the prophet and his Champion was inevitable. Everyone knew that. Except -

"I don't believe it, you know." Andra blurted her thoughts out loud, staring at the limestone relief; at how the prophet seemed to smile back at his lady with equal love and admiration. Their doomed happiness, and their supposed unfortunate end, hurt her heart. "After everything they did. After all of it, after they had won, and no one ever actually saw them die..."

"You are required to believe nothing, child. One of many blessings afforded to you." She chided dryly. "History has it's shepherds, as well as it's butchers."

"Who says the two can't overlap?"

"Not I, my dear." Another smirk. "Not I. But nothing comes free. Not life. Not justice. And certainly not change. There's a price for everything. Perhaps their existence as Champion and Prophet was the only fitting payment."

Andra raised an eyebrow. She still didn't believe a bit of it, and was now more than a little put off by this old woman who talked too damn much. The Curator straightened to her full height, taller than she initially appeared, and companionably steered Andra towards the great glass windows.

"Regardless how they might have died or lived, would you not agree in their more lasting legacy?" The Curator whispered somewhere near her ear. "Was this not worth fighting, and perhaps dying, for?"

Outside, her classmates of humans, elvhen, and dwarves hid and fought behind hastily crafted snow forts. The elder apprentices supplied fresh snowfall, and shot playful jets of frost at one another, while their Enchanter chaperone for this day trip was trying much too hard to look serious, and not like he wanted to join in the fun himself. Around them all, the air felt rich and alive with laughter and magic.

Tears stung at Andra's eyes, and she smiled softly.

"Yes, I suppose it is," she whispered, turning back at look at the Curator, and instead, found herself alone with the relics and reliefs of history.