*Waves* I'm back, with a long short (oxymoron?). Hello again! Vacation over.
Some fight-scene practice for me here. Don't hate me - there will be emotional depth later. Once the zombies are dealt with. Maybe at the same time.
I write healing as the mage knowing where injuries are by feeling a little sympathetic pain (only a tiny bit). Healing feels altruistic to me - it makes sense that they'd go through pain to heal others, even if it's just a fraction of the others'.
Jowan will not be skipped, but for now, the focus is on the whole "bastard prince" announcement.
Prince
Morgana
She barely has time to think about what he has just told her as they wade through the dead walking - Leliana impales one through the back with both daggers, kicking it off them and giving her a bright smile, her pretty blue eyes lighting up, like she is used to - enjoys? - this. Like it is a game. Morgana wonders why she finds that so disturbing.
Morrigan is leaving a trail of chaos, "life" - unlife? - drained and fireballed corpses in her wake.
Alistair? He is at her back, somehow seeming to keep half an eye on her and prevent any of her frequent missteps with her own dagger, taking the head off one corpse and knocking her out of the way of another's mace. She'd thought that Grey Wardens were the best of the best - she feels small and stupid beside her comrades, and, for the first time since Ostagar, she looks at him and imagines him as the senior ranking Warden, as he still is, the memory of him leading them confidently through the Wilds re-surfacing. It isn't hard.
Why does he let her lead?
She sees a glimpse of the answer when she hears his cry of pain.
She searches. The mana is there, comforting her. Flowing through her, alongside, in, her own blood, the warmth circulating. She tries to back out of the fighting a little, and ducks the clumsy swing of a sword-wielding corpse - Murdock skewers it; she gives him a nod of thanks - and she feels around a little, spreading the warmth of the magic outwards. Just like Anders taught her. She smiles. She feels the sympathetic ache around her hand almost instantly, and the smile fades. Ah. A broken wrist. Well, that's not good. She casts the healing spell, feeling the simultaneous warmth and coolness flowing out from her fingers, watching the glow fade and just managing to get out of the way of the corpse that swings a decaying fist at her. She has got to get better at this.
The ache in her ankle tugs her in a different direction - Morrigan. Sprained. Another spell.
Back to stabbing things - or trying to, at least...
Wait. There's something else. This isn't pain - she knows it instinctively - and her mana shies away from it, the warmth ebbing. Not magical? A regular thrumming sound, almost tuneful, each one sounding like a fraction of a second of a song, in time with her heartbeat but not her heartbeat. And a feeling flowing through her, beside her own emotions, that she knows is not hers. Gratitude? What is this?
She is frightened, truly frightened, for the first time in days, so she does what she always does - turns to those she is with, who seem to have taken the brunt of the dead away from her.
Leliana takes the corpse that runs at her down, and she tries to return to the fighting, relying on fireballs and arcane bolts to get her through.
He sits by his tent, flexing his nearly-healed wrist, catching her as she walks by. "I... forgot to thank you."
She shakes her head. "I'm a mage - healing is like breathing to me. There's no need."
He smiles at her, cautiously, as though she might attack him, or as if he is trying a smile out for the first time. "All the same - thank you."
Just as cautiously, slightly unsure of herself in this smile-y new realm, she returns it, quickly becoming brisk so that her awkwardness won't take over. "It's not healed properly, anyway. It'll take days. Healing works better with touch - I can only give quick fixes when fighting." She sits beside him, taking his arm and ignoring his surprised intake of breath, slipping off one of his gauntlets and peering at it. "Do you ever wash these?" She looks it over, noting the dried blood and... "Alistair?" she asks, in serious tones.
"Morgana?" He can't help mimicking her.
"Is that stew? Maker's breath, you eat in these things?" All awkwardness, how little she knows him, is forgotten in the wake of her shock.
"Er... Maybe. Sometimes. Well, yes - "
She shakes her head. He jumps a little as her fingers encircle - well, nearly encircle - his wrist, and she can feel the warmth flowing from them. A moment later, she removes her hand, and he looks at his in slight shock, trying to explain: "I mean, they taught us what it is - manipulation of bone and skin through mana, natural healing sped up, all that, but... I've never actually been healed before. Huh."
It is her turn to look shocked, but she soon clamps down on it, turning awkward when she realises her informality, how much she has said to him. "Well, that's... odd." She stands up, and begins walking to her tent to rest. It is a long walk to the Circle of Magi. At the entrance, remembering his nervousness in their earlier conversation, his voice makes her turn back.
"Look... I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. About my father. I know I should have - "
She stops him. "I get the feeling we've had this conversation before. Possibly at the village gates?"
"I know, but..."
"You're still 'just Alistair'. I... well, I can't say it changes my view of you at all, to be honest." She ducks into her tent to end the conversation, which has turned uncomfortable.
As she settles down on her bedroll, ready for a night full of nightmares and dragons and best-friends-turned-maleficarum, praying that her tent will - as it seems to mysteriously do at regular intervals - "fall" on top of her again, she wonders...
What exactly is that view?