Following a brief but free jaunt into the mountainous regions that surrounded Haven, Miriana had to admit that she felt much better. With the help of two very sturdy but not particular sharp daggers, she had captured five nugs, fully intending to take them to the kitchens before skinning them. She wasn't sure about the stability of human stomachs but she knew that many of the Dalish children and mages could barely stand to be near when she skinned her kills.
Harritt, the blacksmith, had apologized profusely, far more than she thought necessary, when she picked her daggers that had yet to be sharpened. It had taken a little more time than she had liked to convince him that small game kills did not necessarily require a sharp blade. It would take more agility than skill to kill much of the game that wandered outside of Haven. At the end of it, he had only let her take them if she promised to return them for the proper metalwork that they needed.
It was when she turned away from the blacksmith that she once again found herself faced with the large presence of the Inquisition's military commander. For a moment, she found herself taken aback. With his plate mail and ostentatiously feathered cloak, it transferred a man that was merely large to becoming almost giant in comparison to herself. In all her years, Miriana had only seen elves, somewhat smaller and always more slender than their human counterparts. To be suddenly faced with a man of such musculature and bearing was somewhat… off-putting.
"You've been busy," he noted idly, gesturing vaguely to her waist.
Looking down, she remembered the nugs that hung there. On her hunt, she had realized very quickly that she had no belt from which to hang the game that she would catch and had spent some extra time fashioning one from thick yet pliable tree bark. "I'm not proficient at idleness," she admitted.
"I freely admit I am the same," he replied with a light chuckle. She frowned at him a little, wondering at how he could be so easy in the presence of an elf. Did not humans hate their kind? Is that not why so many elves had been enslaved and subjugated for so long? Hurriedly, she smoothed her expression, fearing the worst from her human companions. "Is something the matter, Lady Lavellan?"
She stilled immediately, her body claiming that preternatural immobility that signaled her fight-or-flight response. "Nothing of importance, Commander Rutherford." She did her best to keep her words from seeming stiff and bitter but she was not quite sure she succeeded.
At her reply, he exhaled roughly, his eyes rolling upward for a moment. "I must insist that you call me Cullen."
Miriana relaxed at the realization that he merely wanted them to be comfortable with one another, not that he could somehow read her dismay. In retrospect, she thought that Cullen may not even realize her discomfort around humans. After all, the humans were great in number and she had done her utter best to keep her alarmed emotions tightly under wraps. "If that is the case, then you must call me Miriana. I am no lady."
"You hold yourself like one." He offered her a wry grin. "You seem so much the lady that I was quite surprised to find that you are a warrior."
Miriana laughed outright at that. "Nor am I that. The warriors of our clan are all men. Waging war is a game largely played by males. Most women have little stomach for it."
"Cassandra seems to find it suitable." Cullen's grin broadened, almost as if he was daring her to argue.
The small elf had to admit that it was true, the Seeker was nothing if not rough around the edges. But still… "The Seeker is no more a warrior than I am. We wage war out of necessity, not out of choice. The Templar dispute with the mages…" At that, Miriana trailed off and lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. "That is something else altogether."
Cullen opened his mouth, prepared to argue the point, being a former Templar himself. However, his teeth clicked a mere moment following at the force of closing his mouth. "I suppose I must agree with you. Despite my opinion of mages, I still feel as if the Mage Rebellion could have been less consuming than it has become."
"It was why we came," Miriana admitted in a soft voice, her voice low enough that she hoped he did not hear her.
However, it seemed that such hopes would be more burdensome than true. "We?" he echoed uncertainly. "I was under the impression that you had journeyed to the Conclave on your own."
Miriana smirked self-depreciatingly. "Earlier, when I remarked on being of little import, I was not trying to disparage anything about myself. It is merely true." She glanced down at her hand, clenching it into a fist when the Mark flashed at her in dull green. "I believe that whatever bestowed this on me meant it for Mahanon."
"Who was Mahanon?" Though she paid little attention, a part of her realized that Cullen's voice had softened immensely, likely because he felt great concern for her.
"He was the First to the Keeper. Essentially, he was being trained as a successor to our clan's leader." She chuckled lightly, though her face still darkened in grief. "He was the most ambitious mage I have ever seen in my life."
At mentioning Mahanon being a mage, Miriana was surprised to see him flinch sharply, as she had been under the impression that he was one of the most open-minded people she had ever met. But then again, everyone had their prejudices. Sometimes, it took time to rise above it. Even now, the elf herself was doing her best to overcome over fifty years of strict human prejudice.
Finally, Cullen replied. "Yes, but who was he to you?"
"My best friend," she answered, her voice a low croak. Then she laughed, the sound cruel against her sadness. "My only friend, really. And with the Mage Rebellion infecting even the Dalish, I was the only hunter that he trusted implicitly."
"The Mage Rebellion affected the nomad elves?" Cullen seemed particularly surprised by this and Miriana couldn't help but notice that he didn't refer to them as Dalish.
"Oh, yes." She grinned, remembering some of the other elves around her age that had yet to return to the clan. "Elves are particularly suited to magic. It is rare to find elves that must be… um, what does the Chantry call it?"
"Made Tranquil?" Cullen offered.
"Yes, that." Her lips twisted into sour disgust. "As I said, we're particularly suited to magic. Even the hunters have some little ability but not enough to be considered a proper mage. Often, younger mages will go out into the world to further train themselves in magic. In fact, it's encouraged."
Cullen frowned deeply. "That sounds dangerous."
"It is," she admitted. "But you must realize, we are nomads, as you said. We wander through the wilds of Thedas and my clan in particular wanders frequently through the Free Marches. We have lost a significant number to the frigid cold." Miriana shrugged, remembering that her own initiation as a hunter had occurred in the Free Marches. "Danger comes with living. All Dalish must accept that fact."
"Yes, well…" The military commander seemed at a loss, unable to form words at her speech. Then, his dark eyes flicked into the distance just beyond her left shoulder. "Oh. Cassandra beckons."
Turning to face the Seeker, Miriana immediately noted that she was gesturing to the Chantry hall that seemed to be the center of Haven. "Right. Another meeting. I'll be in there shortly." She smiled up at the commander, her manner again making a joke at her expense. "I wouldn't want to further mar my reputation with Josephine and Leliana by showing up with a handful of dead nugs."
Cullen watched the Herald leave Haven with Cassandra, Solas, and Varric, idly wondering if this particular journey would turn out to be as fruitful as their ambassador seemed to hope. The main purpose for the group's journey to the Hinterlands was to meet with Mother Giselle and to garner whether the rumors of her disagreements with the Chantry over the Herald of Andraste were true. Additionally, the Herald herself stated that it would be a good idea to make her presence known, to increase her influence in the Hinterlands.
While Cullen was certain that this was a sound plan, he still worried for them. They were heading into the wilderness to face Fade rifts and the demons that tended to spew from them while he was forced to remain behind, training the citizens of Haven into some semblance of soldiers. After a moment, he was forced to remind himself that these jaunts into the wilds were necessary for the growth of the Inquisition.
It was necessary if they were ever to learn anything about what really happened at the Conclave.
In the quiet of his own heart, he worried most for Lady Lavellan. Miriana, he chided himself uselessly, trying desperately to get used to the sound of her given name. The first element of his worry was that she was an elf. Despite the fact that their current group was comprised of another elf and a dwarf, the entire procession seemed to sway with Cassandra's whims, rather than the Herald's. It seemed unjust that she should bear the weight of healing their world while bowing to the preferences of people not of her own race.
Despite his own actions to the contrary, Cullen had some sense about what it must be like to be a Dalish elf among humans. While it was true that his previous interactions with elves had been that of city elves, those individuals that mocked themselves with the term "flat-ear", he was certain that being surrounded by humans from every direction could be somewhat claustrophobic. Given the humans ostensibly ruled over all of Thedas, he was quite sure that he would never be able to properly commiserate with her on this topic.
However, he did wish with some fervor that there was a way in which her attitude toward herself could be mitigated. It was obvious that her own position within her Dalish clan had left her with a horrid perception of her own worth. Cullen was of the personal belief that the Maker – and Andraste, by extension – did not make mistakes. Even though Miriana had clearly stated that she felt that the Mark had been meant for her friend, the former Templar Knight-Captain knew to the depths of his soul that it was Miriana that they needed. She wasn't so conceited that she would feel that helping Thedas was below her position but she was also truthful enough – so much as to be considered brutally truthful – that she realized the harsh certainty of this situation.
Finally, a slightly disdainful frown marring his normally placid expression, Cullen turned his focus back to his trainees. Ruminating in this way was winning him no favors with the Haven trainees. He knew in a way that he could not properly explain that things would likely get far worse before they got better.
The citizens of Haven needed to be as ready as he could make them.
In the darkness of that night, Miriana took the first watch and stared into the night, looking at shapes among the scattered stars. She had offered to take the first watch because despite the fact that they had all fought hard throughout the day to quell and close the Fade rifts spread throughout the Hinterlands, the effect of the Mark was still with her.
Unlike her perception from earlier days, the Mark was no longer thoroughly unnerving but still thrummed a disturbing tingle throughout her arm that often keep her awake through much of the night. Sometimes she wondered if she was receiving messages from the Fade, some vague residue left behind when she would close a rift, but knew that Mahanon was far better suited to such vagaries of thought than she.
"What's the Fade like?" she asked softly, knowing that Solas lay nearby. There was a slight stirring but no other indication that the pale elf had heard her words. At that, she smirked, finding it somewhat humorous that he pretended sleep. She knew what the breath of a sleeper sounded like and his was not it. "I know you're awake, Solas."
With a small frown of disappointment on his face, the older elf sat up and looked at her. "Am I so transparent?"
Miriana offered her fellow elf a gentle smile, knowing that he was jesting with her. "I am a hunter, Solas." She knew that she didn't need to offer another explanation. Like Mahanon, Solas could often read the undertones in her words.
"True," he conceded. "You asked… about the Fade?"
Miriana nodded, glancing sideways at him before returned her gaze to the stars. "Cassandra is of the mind that the Fade only consists of demons, considering that's what the rifts spit out. But she is a Templar… of a sort, so I can't expect her to overly circumspect of things beyond her ken."
Solas grinned sardonically, his eyes twinkling with playfulness. "You seem to have a low opinion of Templars," he remarked.
"Only exacerbated by our time here in the Hinterlands, I assure you," she replied in a flat tone. At that, Miriana fought the urge to rub her left side under her ribcage where a particular forceful shield bash from a Templar's tower shield had left a deep and ugly bruise.
It was too bad that healing was not one of the low-level magicks of which she had mastery.
"Even so," she continued after what felt like a long moment, "just as Thedas is not merely a realm of humans, I am quite certain that the Fade cannot only consist of demons."
"It doesn't," Solas conceded. He paused there, turning his face to finally look at the stars with her. Idly, she wondered what he saw, with his peculiar ability to step into the Fade in his dreams and always to be able to see beyond the surface of things. "With my particular skill, which I mentioned to you in Haven, I have spent as much time in the Fade as out of it."
Miriana nodded, pulling her knees to her chest. Curled tightly into a small space, she no longer saw the stars, though she still faced the sky. Instead, she focused solely on Solas's words, hoping to draw imagery from that instead.
"I told you before that I would often visit ruins and long abandoned landscapes, places where the Veil was thin. There, with my barriers and wards in place, I would allow myself to dream, to view the memories held within the Fade." He sighed, his mind obviously turned to one of the many memories he had witnessed. "You are right, the Fade is not a realm of demons, no more than Thedas is a realm of humans. It is, more accurately, a realm of spirits."
"Spirits?" Miriana echoed softly. Her eyes darted from left to right and back quickly, searching her mind for where she had heard the term before. "Ma – My friend mentioned something like that once. He would often study the Fade, trying to find answers in the things that we couldn't see."
Though she didn't see his reaction to her slip, Solas's face gentled considerably, his lips almost turning down into a frown at the almost-mention of the person that it was obvious she had lost. "Yes, I believe that even those entities that we recognize as demons are merely spirits, merely of a more forceful and less attractive sort."
"How so?"
"I've seen spirits of compassion, of kindness, of humility. Though they are often less corporeal than the demons we seem to fight almost hourly, their forms are as pleasant as that of a dear friend. But the spirits we battle are those of vengeance, of envy, of pride. Like the emotions they represent, demons not only demand our attention but their forms are often mangled and warped reflections of things we might otherwise consider pleasant."
Miriana nodded yet again, trying desperately to convey her understanding. Though Solas was very nearly a city elf, close enough to be considered a flat-ear by most of her less imaginative brethren, he knew far more about the Beyond than anyone she had ever met. While it was certain the Mahanon had studied it, no study could even approach that which Solas boasted. However, as a hunter, she knew that most would not expect her intelligence to be particularly brilliant. In fact, most other hunters of Clan Lavellan were as dull as bricks and about as useful.
She reminded herself of the way her father had always described her: the heart of a hunter, the mind of a mage.
"No realm is split evenly between the good and the bad," she remarked. Her lips curved upward sardonically. "One can only hope that we can tell the difference."