Miriana frowned to herself as she opened the door to Ambassador Montilyet's office in Haven's Chantry Hall. She wasn't exactly sure why the ambassador had requested her presence but she had long since decided to prepare for the worst any time a human specifically called her to them.

She shook her head and opened the door, trying the shake the feeling of the walls closing in on her. Josephine was sitting placidly behind her desk, scribbling furiously away at that clipboard with the candle. After a moment, she noticed the Herald's presence and set her work aside. "Madame Lavellan, you're here. I needed to inquire… have you experienced any insults or ridicule during your time here at Haven?"

At that, Miriana snorted, unable to believe her ears. "Please tell me you did not call me in here to ask if I've been bullied." When Josephine merely raised an eyebrow, the elf shook her head and laughed. "If you want to know if anyone's called me a 'knife-ear', the answer's no."

"That is good. I had heard… rumors."

The elf's bemused expression fell away, knowing innately what rumors the ambassador spoke of. During her initial journey to Haven and among its citizens when she was still believed to have murdered the Divine, she had heard humans whisper – whisper, not knowing that elves tend to have a greater sensitivity of hearing – about the Dalish kidnapping newborns, raiding entire villages merely to spite humans, and a great deal of other things that not even many elves had the imagination to conjure. "I know," she conceded. "I would say that such rumors are dangerous but quashing them would likely compel them to spread more quickly. I hope to soon have enough friends here that such rumors would not be believed."

At that, Josephine nodded, a slight twitch around her lips indicating she may have wished to say something further. However, she then segued into a slightly different topic. "We also received a missive from the Lavellan Keeper as well as a brief note from the Clan's Storyteller." She frowned at that. "Is there some connection there?"

Miriana smiled broadly at the second scroll that was handed to her, her spirits buoyed by the sight of her father's special brand of grandiose and poetic praise. "Era Lavellan, our Storyteller, is my father. The Master Hunter, Mi, my mother." She turned her gaze to Josephine, her eyes glittering with humor. "They say, she is the blade, he is the story." Then she focused her attention of the parchment again. "The Keeper used as much Elven as possible."

"I noticed the fragmentation." Josephine smiled up at the Herald, attempting to match the elf's good humor. This was the first time she had seen the Lavellan smile, let alone grin as she was doing now. "I must admit, Leliana was sorely tempted to translate it."

Miriana glanced over the missives again. The note from her father was written almost entirely in the common tongue, praising her efforts and the turn of Fate as well as promising many more letters in the future. The Keeper's letter was more formal but written in a brighter note than she had expected. Truthfully, she had been bracing herself for a lashing, buffered as it would have been by the written word.

"There's no real need," the elf admitted, coming around the desk to stand by Josephine's side. "The Keeper's letter is half in Elven because that's how our leaders communicate. In order to keep our culture alive, we are encouraged to speak in the Elven tongue as often as possible. Every Dalish child can recite every known Elvish phrase by the age of six. It is not as… encompassing as we lead outsiders to believe."

"That's… actually disappointing." Josephine smiled up at the elf that now stood next to her. "Am I about to learn something?"

"One can hope," Miriana murmured with a wry smirk. She then began to point out the Elvish passages in the letter. "Here, the Keeper asks about Mahanon." Josephine's brow furrowed in confusion but she kept silent in the hope that the elf would explain the name. "She rightly assumes he perished in the blast at the Conclave. She mourns his loss and laments the need to fill his space." At that, Miriana sighed and the ambassador could now clearly note the sadness in her expression, a mourning twist to her face that now never seemed absent. "She then commends my choice on aligning myself in such a way with outsiders. For the glory of the Dalish, of course. She concludes by wishing me health and fortune in my future ventures."

Reflecting on the sections of the letter that she had been able to read, Josephine wondered at the Keeper's low level of curiosity or regard for Miriana herself. After a moment's thought, however, she had to concede that any questions the clan leader would have had could have been answered by the elven agent that had been sent. With a nod, she moved on to the next topic. "Have you decided between the Templars and the rebel mages?"

At that, the elf arched a questioning eyebrow. "I was not aware it was my decision to make."

Josephine smiled softly. "Miriana, you are the one out there closing rifts and increasing the name and influence of the Inquisition. You may not have instituted it but yours is the face that the people of Thedas recognize."

Miriana inclined her head slightly. "That much may be true. I have certainly tired of my… new title. However, having been involved in some of the skirmishes between the Templars and the mage, I have to say that I have no real love for either at this moment. For now, the decision is left to the advisors."

The ambassador nodded, though she secretly felt it would be much easier if the Herald would make the decision for them. They hadn't gotten far between the discussions among the three of them. "Right. Hopefully, that decision will soon be forthcoming."

Solas rolled over on the ground, silently cursing himself for his inability to sleep. They were, once again, camped out on rugged terrain and he was inexplicably incapable of falling into the Fade sleep that was so familiar to him. Was it because he was no longer alone? Did he somehow mistrust his new allies? He had thrown his lot in with the Inquisition. Unless he wanted to draw their curiosity, he couldn't risk such a thoughtless action as leaving without notice.

Suddenly, he could hear the soft sounds of someone singing. The volume and pitch was of someone who desperately did not want to wake her companions but could not bear to stop the flow of words erupting from her. Sitting up and turning his head to the right, to the edge of their camp, Solas saw Miriana just as she had been a few nights prior, her knees folded gracefully against her torso and her face turned up to the starlit sky.

The words of her song were Elvish and ancient. In fact, the only other time he had heard it was deep in the Fade when he had managed to stumble across a temple to the Elven Pantheon in an ancient Elven ruin. It was where he had first met the Spirit of Wisdom, one of the many spirits he called friend. This particular song was a benediction to Mythal, the Great Protector, the Elven goddess of motherhood and justice.

To be sure, the song was far more fractured and fragmented than the one he had heard in the Fade. But Miriana's song was filled with Elvish phrases that he had been sure were long lost to the Dalish elves. For the first time since he had promised himself he would no longer be a party to the surprising ignorance and arrogance of the Dalish, something he had realized when they refused to believe his information regard the Beyond, he wondered if he had judged them too soon. Of course, having no contact with the Lavellan clan itself, it was possible that they had more of the Elven culture than any of the other Dalish clans.

Rising to his feet, he meandered with soft steps to the side of his fellow elf. "That was beautiful," he murmured, resting a gentle hand on her shoulder.

The muscles of Miriana's shoulder jerked under his palm, informing him that she had thought herself alone. Finally, though, she looked up at him with a tremulous smile. "Solas, you startled me."

He rewarded her with the vague whisper of a smile. "I didn't think that was possible."

She lifted one shoulder, the one he was holding, in a half-shrug. "I've been distracted."

Slightly concerned at her dispirited replies, Solas removed his hand from her shoulder and took it upon himself to sit next to her. "My friend, what is wrong?"

At his proclamation of their friendship, Miriana's silver eyes lit up substantially. "Really? You think we're friends?"

Solas's smile broadened, though his internal sadness increased at such a response. "Of course." Inclining his head slightly, he asked a question that almost felt too bold, that felt as if it might cross some interminable line that the other elf had drawn for herself. "Who did you lose at the Conclave?"

"My friend, Mahonan Lavellan." She gazed at the glowing Mark on her left hand and added in a whisper, "He was the important one."

Thinking back to his knowledge of the Dalish, knowledge that had been painstakingly forged by his continuing visits to various clans wherever he could find them, he knew that there were only three members of a Dalish clan that were considered important: the Keeper, essentially the decision-maker of the clan; the Storyteller, the person that knew all lore and knowledge of the ancient elves available to them; and the First to the Keeper, the successor to leadership. All other members of the clan were considered integral to the function of the clan but ultimately replaceable. Even the Second to the Keeper could be replaced, should a more promising mage make himself known.

"He was the First, wasn't he?" Solas asked in a murmur.

"He was." Miriana smiled wistfully, the expression so happy and yet so sad at the same time. "He was younger than me, almost four years younger, but so important. He was convinced that he could bring us, the Lavellan, back to the heights of the ancient elves." At that, she abruptly brought a hand up to her mouth, her bright eyes wide in horror.

The elven mage merely cocked his head and smirked at her. "You're not supposed to speak of it?" he queried.

She shook her head vehemently, telling him that even her clan had its strict rules. The Lavellan clan seemed to be more open than any other he had visited, concerned enough with the affairs of the world to send a spy to the Conclave but lacking enough hatred of the humans to censure the Herald for her association with them now. But maybe that objective perspective could only be given because he had seen them at a distance.

However, if they were more like Miriana herself, he feared that he had greatly misjudged the Dalish clans as a whole.

"Your friend has been gone for some time but you are quite distracted recently. What happened?"

"Keeper Lavellan replied," she told him, her tone indicating some level of spite that he knew Dalish members were not supposed to feel toward their leader.

He looked at her, hoping his silence would engender a furthering of her response. However, as he waited, her countenance only darkened, her silver eyes focused on some point past his nose. "I'm not certain that this is a problem."

"It's not," she asserted through gritted teeth. For a moment, her eyes darted back and forth before finally losing a battle within herself. "Her greatest concern was the loss of Mahonan. I understand, losing the First is very problematic to our clan, but seeing him dead…" At that, her voice trailed away, the darkness in her face melting in the face of helpless grief. "And then she wished me luck!"

At the dismay in her voice, Solas chuckled softly. "And that is a bad thing?"

"Because I understood Mahonan, often when no one else did, I understand our Keeper now. She hopes that my newfound influence will further the cause of the Dalish. She did not extend her regards to my human keepers and she did not even seem to care about the hole in the sky."

"They're not your keepers, Miriana," Solas told her firmly. "I doubt they wish to hold you against your will."

"But I can't leave, can I? Not even if I wished to." She held up her glowing hand, sneering at the Mark. "Not when this is the best thing to a solution to the Breach that we have." After that, she seemed to deflate, cradling the green glow against her chest. "Ir abelas," she murmured in Elvish, professing the depth of her apology in a way the common language could never truly convey.

In a rare display of affection, though it was for a person that he already considered a friend, Solas reached an arm around to the shoulder opposite him and hugged her very slightly to his person. "Ir abelas," he replied, using the phrase not only to convey his sorrow to her loss but also to accept her apology in turn.

Val Royeaux had not turned out at all like they had expected.

That would be putting it mildly, Varric decided. Yes, the Chantry had lost much of their voice, though that had less to do with the Inquisition and more to do with the loss of Templar support. The dwarf had watched Lord Seeker Lucius pull his men from the side of the Chantry, had been appalled to the deep core of him that believed in Andraste when he had struck a member of the Chantry. He was also dismayed that a part of him had been relieved at the strike to the grand cleric, in that it had ended that righteous but error-filled speech.

Now, however, he watched Miriana thread herself endlessly around Haven, circling the boundaries of their walls and often even circling buildings themselves. Over the past few days, he had begun to realize why she would do this. On the journeys outside, to the Hinterlands or the Fallow Mire or the Storm Coast, she moved with a determination that told him that she knew where she was going and what she would need to do. This endless circling often only occurred when she was battling with herself or she wasn't sure what to do.

"Herald!" he called out when she passed near him. "Make a decision yet?"

Miriana stilled suddenly into the preternatural silence that gripped her just before an onslaught from the rifts. Then, she seemed to remember where she was and turned to give Varric a small smile. "Am I that transparent?"

Varric shrugged, entirely unsure if others could see what he saw or even if they were watchful enough to look for it. "So, which way are we going? Mages or Templars?"

"Mages," she told him with a sad sigh.

He arched a querulous eyebrow at her. "You've know this for a while, then?"

"Since Val Royeaux, yes." She sighed again and raised her fingers to fidget with the point ends of her ears, something he recognized as a nervous gesture. "Cullen will not be happy with me."

Varric grinned at that comment, his eyes alight with intrigue. "Oh, you like Curly?"

For a moment, her expression became angry and he wondered if he was about to receive the wrong end of the tongue that had given Chancellor Roderick a lashing. Then, the expression reverted to blandness. "I can't like him. That would be abominable."

"Abominable?" the dwarf echoed. "He's not that bad-looking, Miri." At the shortening of her name, the ghost of a smile whispered across her face and he filed it away, vowing to ask her about it when the situation was less fraught.

"No, I'll grant that." She looked away and if she wasn't so often every inch the consummate professional, he would think she had a dreamy look in her eye. "But I'm Dalish."

"Here, you're not." Pulling slightly on the sleeve on her armor, he led her to his campfire, urging her to sit down and listen to him. "I know you've been raised Dalish and that's been a big part of who you are for a very long time. Maybe you hated humans before the Conclave and the way they treated you after, I wouldn't blame you."

"I never did," she interjected softly.

"What?" he asked, not sure if he heard her correctly. As he'd told her before, he had spent time with a Dalish clan and he knew firsthand their level of spite for humans.

"I've never hated humans. The Dalish are no more the stories of ancient elves than humans are the ancient Tevinter that first enslaved them. I used to be curious but I learned to hide that." She looked down at her hands, twisting them together in her lap. "Solas is right. Elves and humans aren't so different."

Before he could fully discuss with himself the implications that Miriana actually cared for the humans around her rather than suffering their presence, Varric forced himself back to the topic at hand. "Anyway, most people in Haven don't see Dalish when they look at you. They see the Herald of Andraste. They see the savior. They see the woman that tried to help the Divine."

"I understand," she told him. "It's hard to swallow, though, being the Herald. Being something bigger than I am."

"So, whatever you choose, your advisors will support you. Even if it goes sideways, they will support you."

Miriana put her head in her hands and he could see the pulsing glow of the Mark reflect against her cheek. Finally, she took a deep breath. "Right, then. Get your stuff together and inform Solas and Cassandra. We're headed for Redcliffe."