"Almost done. Just a bit more, my lady." A second later, the new bandage was tied firmly to her ribcage. "There we go." The elven girl drew back with a smile of accomplishment and Ahnnie let her shirt down.
"Observations of the wound?" Adan the healer asked; he sat at the desk with his back to the girls, scribbling away at a piece of parchment.
"Clean, Master Adan," the elven girl reported. "The elfroot poultice is working wonderfully. I shouldn't give this wound any more than another week."
Adan nodded. "And you, lady Herald? How are you feeling?"
"Perfectly fine," Ahnnie replied. "A little sore in the back, but I'm okay. No fevers, sore throats, fatigue...nothing."
The healer nodded again. "That sounds very promising." When he finished writing, he rose his head and turned to look at Ahnnie. "I was almost afraid you wouldn't make it, my lady. You were clammy to the touch and thrashing constantly in your sleep...Blessed be the Maker for your swift recovery."
She smiled. "It's because I had a competent healer like you at my side. So, thank you, for all that you've done."
"Ah, but it is the Maker's will that I should have succeeded. More people have expired under lesser circumstances."
"...I suppose."
Adan turned back to write some more, and when he finished, he rose to his feet and indicated for the elven girl to follow him. "That should be all for today, my lady. I would advise you to stay off your feet to aid in the healing process of your toe, as well as to avoid catching unwanted chills. The weather is particularly harsh this morning."
Ahnnie had been aware of a snowstorm blowing through the town in the early hours of the morning; a while after she'd fallen asleep, she was awakened again by the fierce howling wind and an even fiercer chill that whistled through the wood. It had already stopped by the time Adan and his assistant came, though, so she saw no harm in venturing out. Besides, she wanted to talk to Cassandra about something.
"I will be out for just a bit," she assured the healer. "I only have a few questions I need to ask Lady Cassandra."
Almost immediately, Adan's face soured. "Oh, but my lady..."
"I'm really sorry. It's just for a few minutes," she assured him.
The man sighed, shaking his head. "I cannot stop you if that is what you wish..." And then he muttered something under his breath about patients who didn't listen. Ahnnie could only smile sheepishly in return because she had no intentions of conforming to bed rest, not when she felt so restless.
She supposed, however, that she shouldn't overdo it and give him more ails to cure. "Just this once. I'll stay here for the rest of the day, after that."
Adan nodded and opened the door, stepping outside. Before his elven assistant could leave, though, Ahnnie rose from her seat on the edge of the bed and tapped the girl's shoulder.
"O-oh!" She whirled around skittishly, staring frightfully at Ahnnie. "Yes, my lady?"
"Please, just call me by my name," Ahnnie sighed. The elven girl already knew it by now; she had it given to her when she and Adan first stepped into the cabin, but refused to use it. "And, if I may ask; what's yours?"
"M-my lady wishes to know my name?"
"Yes."
"Well, hurry it up," Adan scolded.
The elven girl spluttered a few more times before blurting, "Nala. 'Tis my name: Nala."
Ahnnie smiled. "Nice to meet you, Nala. And thank you, too, for all that you've done."
Nala was taken aback, staring frozenly at Ahnnie. Then she slowly warmed to life and gave an incredulous smile. "I-it was nothing, my lady! I'm only glad that you're feeling better!" She held the door open for Ahnnie, who quickly protested, but would not have it and only released the door when the human girl stepped through. And then Nala quickly sped after Adan, though not without an enthusiastic look back at the 'Herald of Andraste'.
So much for trying to be familiar, Ahnnie sighed. She ensured the door was completely closed before making her way up to the Chantry, thinking of how to broach the subject with Cassandra. Or maybe I should ask Leliana? She looks like she can handle longer explanations. I'm still so confused...
She perked up a second later upon seeing a crowd gathered in front of the church. They were huddled around the door, murmuring avidly about something. Ahnnie slowly hobbled forward but as soon as she reached the fringe of the crowd, Chancellor Roderick burst through, an uneasy look on his face.
He froze upon seeing her, and she did the same. Before his expression could have the chance to harden, she stammered, "Ah, g-good morning, Chancellor..."
It was as if she had insulted him rather than greeted him. His brows furrowed disapprovingly and he whipped his head in another direction. "Hmph!" He stormed off, sparing not even a single word. The way he did it, she might as well have been an actual demon come to plague them all.
Ahnnie shook her head, trying not to let that bother her, and pushed through all the people to see what the fuss was about. She was glad they were too engrossed in something else to recognize her; she was growing sick of the special treatment by now. To be extra careful, she rolled up her hair and tucked it all under her cap. Yes, she was Asian, and no one here had seen an Asian before, but surely under regular conditions without any clear identifiers, she was not that noticeable? When she reached the Chantry doors, she saw nothing different other than a crookedly nailed notice with a strange eye symbol and red ribbons pinned on it. It was an official-looking notice, but she couldn't read what it said. She fidgeted uncomfortably from side to side, not only desiring to know what it meant, but also to reach out and adjust it. A little more to the right, and it'd be perfect.
"The Inquisition has been reinstated," someone murmured to her left.
"What does that mean for the Chantry?"
"I wonder..."
Ahnnie almost turned to them to ask them what they knew of the matter. She stopped, however, when she considered that they might recognize her face. Instead, she ducked out of the crowd and made for the camp, where she happened to spot Cassandra. "Oh, hey, Cassand – er, Lady Cassandra!"
The Seeker paused in what she was doing and turned to her. "Herald of Andraste," she greeted formally.
Ahnnie mentally groaned as she reminded someone to call her by her name for the hundredth time. "Do you have a moment?" she then asked. "I was wondering if you could tell me more about Thedas."
Cassandra shook her head. "I am sorry. I have much to attend to this day. Unless you've noticed, we have been putting up official announcements of the Inquisition over Haven this morning."
"Oh...yeah, I saw one on the Chantry."
"Perhaps you can ask the hedge mage, Solas. He is down on that side." She pointed out the direction and turned back to her business, which was supervising a group of soldiers in their training.
Hedge mage? Ahnnie suddenly imagined the bald elf using his magic to trim hedges, whistling happily under the sun as he waved his staff over unkempt bushes. But she bothered Cassandra no longer and walked down to the second tier of Haven where the Seeker indicated, letting down her hair as she went. There were few people where she was going, so there wasn't much fear of recognition. Sure enough, Solas stood alone by a cabin, watching the sky with his staff at his side. Some people were nearby but they avoided him, occasionally casting suspicious glances his way. She wondered why until she remembered that mages outside of Circles were considered suspicious by most.
"The Chosen of Andraste," he murmured as she approached, and turned to look at her. "A blessed hero sent to save us all."
"Not you too," she groaned.
Solas chuckled. "I take it you're not pleased with your new epithets?"
"No."
He nodded thoughtfully. "I see. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
Ahnnie twiddled her thumbs, wondering if this was the right thing to talk about with Solas. He seemed patient, though, and even studious. At least, that was the impression he gave to her. "I want to know more about Thedas."
"Oh?"
"Yeah...Cassandra gave me a summary of the war that's going on and the circumstances of the Conclave, but I still don't know anything about this world."
"And that bothers you," Solas inferred.
"Exactly! I find myself thinking, 'What country am I in?', and 'What customs am I breaking?' I thought worrying about what I was getting into was bad enough; now I'm sweating the details. Of course, I'm still worried about what I'm supposed to do," she added, "but I thought I should at least know something of this place I've fallen into."
With a small smile, he beckoned her over to a set of flat boulders situated behind a low stone wall. Using his staff to control the snow, he flicked off enough of the powdery white substance to clear a seating area for two. After claiming his spot, he pat the stone beside him gently, and Ahnnie took it up.
"Do you find yourself worrying often?" he asked her once she settled down.
"Kind of." Then she frowned. "Okay, a lot."
"Why?"
"I just...I don't know. I just worry."
"Interesting." Solas let his staff rest against the rock and watched the clouds overhead; they were whitish-gray, blanketing the entire sky. "Another storm, perhaps?" he murmured, and then turned to look at her. "Never mind. I suppose, then, that I should explain Thedas to you as if you knew nothing of it, excluding what you know of the war and Chantry?"
Ahnnie nodded.
"Very well." And so, with an intake of breath, Solas began the task of explaining his world to someone who was a complete stranger.
Ahnnie listened, enraptured, as the elf told her about the many kingdoms that composed Thedas.
First of all, Thedas was not just the name of the world – it was also the name of a single continent upon which all these kingdoms resided. No other continents seemed to exist, at least to the best of Thedosian knowledge, although there were islands and some faraway places at the fringe of the map. He promised her a look at an actual map later; for now, she only had to listen.
The country they were currently in was Ferelden, and Haven sat on its very edge along the tip of the Frostback Mountains. The more Solas explained it to her, the more Ferelden sounded like a uniqe mix of frontier America and twelfth-century England. The best part about Fereldan culture to Ahnnie was the importance of dogs; while canines were used from herding to guarding and hunting, Fereldans also held an appreciation of the animal as a staunch companion. Lying directly east of Ferelden, The Orlesian Empire was known as a nation of great wealth and opulence. If France was given leave to become an empire with a heavy emphasis on fashion, then it would certainly sound like Orlais. Orlesian nobility and royalty were often involved in a series of infighting, plotting, and political machinations called 'The Grand Game' that took courtly intrigue to a whole new level. And to the north, the Tevinter Imperium was yet another great nation, known for its expansive empire in the past. Unlike the rest of Thedas, mages were held in high esteem in Tevinter. As magisters, they were the rulers of the Imperium, led by the Imperial Archon. The names as well as some of the history brought the Roman Empire to mind.
In fact, the more Solas spoke of the other nations, the more she could seem to identify some similarity or counterpart from her world. Antiva's spicy and flowery culture seemed like the Italian city-states; the artistic and death-obsessed Nevarra a strange, indefinite mix between Romance European countries and, interestingly enough, the death culture of Ancient Egypt; and the exotic Rivain sounded similar to Moorish Spain, but she was not too sure. The Free Marches had their own distinct flavor, being a collection of city-states with no clear parallel, and the Anderfels were a mystery to her, although it was from there that Solas explained the Blights that had plagued Thedas and the Grey Wardens.
But that was just the human side of things; when she pressed Solas for the elves and the dwarves, she was shocked to hear that elves were considered inferior and often relegated to alienages within the cities or scattered across the Dales in clans. It went against the fantasy tropes where elves were often the superior and haughty race. He proceeded to tell her the story of Elvhenan and the fall of the elven pantheon, in which the trickster god Fen'Harel was often the culprit for the elves' fall from power. She could hardly believe it was solely the work of the gods, however, and he agreed that there was more history behind it than the myth let on.
As for dwarves, they were separated between surface dwarves and underground Orzammar dwarves. Surface dwarves tended to live as the humans around them did, but Orzammar dwarves lived under a strict regimen of castes. Varric was an example of a casteless dwarf, hailing from the Free Marches city of Kirkwall. And to the far reaches of the north, beyond the Tevinter Imperium, were the islands Par Vollen and Seheron where a race of horned giants called the Qunari lived. That was all he could tell her for now, and he suggested that if she wished to know more on anything he had presented, she should read books on history and cultures.
"The problem is I can't read the words here," she lamented.
"You have a different writing system?" he asked her curiously.
"Yes, and I was surprised it wasn't the same for here, as the language seems to be." Ahnnie shrugged. "I guess that's just how it is. I should learn how to read it, though. I don't want to be handicapped forever."
"I'll make a note of it to Cassandra," Solas remarked. "Perhaps she can get ahold of one of the Chantry sisters to help you."
Ahnnie nodded. But at the mention of Cassandra, she remembered something – "She said you were a hedge mage. What is that, exactly?"
Solas gave her a wry smile. "It is a term for mages whose magic is...different, from that of typical mages. Both in development and expression. As it happens outside the Circle of Magi, many are wary of it, the Chantry especially. But enough on me; tell me of your world."
She blinked in surprise. "Do you believe that I come from another world, though?" she asked curiously. "Now that I think about it...Cassandra and Varric talk as if I come from another place, but they never really say where specifically, or show that they believe." She didn't blame them. She wouldn't have believed, if it were not for what she'd seen.
Solas shrugged. "It is possible. My travels have allowed me to learn much of the Fade, far beyond the experience of any Circle mage...while I'm not aware of any previous instances of interworldly travel, I wouldn't deem it impossible."
Now Ahnnie was even more curious about Solas and his experiences; if he was an apostate, and a hedge mage at that, how did he convince Cassandra to let him help? In fact, why did people call Cassandra 'Seeker'? Did it have anything to do with templars? But she realized that asking so many questions at once might seem imposing, so she began to uphold her end of the bargain.
She started with the fact that her world was more commonly known as 'Earth', at least in the English language; the equivalent to the Thedosian Common tongue. Earth had not one continent but seven, and many, many countries within its vast reach. She only told him of what was more widely known, sharing with him especially her observations on the similarities to the Thedosian cultures and vice versa. When she told Solas of the major religions, he was delighted to be able to draw parallels between the Andrastian and Christian beliefs.
She reiterated that there were no other races besides the humans. What humans did consider as a 'race', however, were characteristics of skin color and facial features. These primarily differed across the continents, although there were as many different people as there were different countries. Unlike the divide between nobles and commoners in Thedas, the social direction of Earth seemed to gravitate more towards equality. While there were still unequal power balances, a lot of people had more opportunities than before.
Ahnnie could tell that gears were turning in Solas' head as he took it all in. His face brightened in wonderment as it grew evident that her world was a world more technologically advanced than he'd previously imagined; going from technology as Thedas had to the great mechanic wonders of factories, cars, airplanes, computers, phones, the Internet! Everything from food to clothes was mass-produced, and communication could take place within the blink of an eye no matter what the distance between the communicators. Travel was also made faster and easier, making it even more possible to connect people from faraway places.
This world had no magic, demons, Veil, or Fade, but science at its helm. Bladed weapons had long ago been cast aside in favor of firearms, bombs, missiles, rockets; many of them projectiles of some sort, Ahnnie realized, but more capable of damage than their bladed ancestors had been. To reference some of their prowess, she told Solas of the famous World Wars. Medicine was at an all-time breakthrough, with men able to see organisms smaller than a speck of dust through microscopes and identify which ones caused diseases, doctors able to operate on a live person as they lay under anesthesia, and multiple vaccinations that could guard a person against any number of viral ills – some of which pushed whole diseases to the brink of extinction.
Solas nodded thoughtfully as he considered the greatness of such a world, and yet at the same time its pitfalls; the sacrifice of the environment in favor of industrialization, the immense power placed in nations' militaries, and the laziness that everyday inventions might incur, to name a few.
Ahnnie found herself practically breathless by the time she finished (and yet, one could not simply 'finish' explaining worlds as diverse as Earth and Thedas, could they?), but the talk had been enjoyable; more so than she thought it'd be. She opened her mouth again in eager anticipation of continuing some of the debates that Solas brought up, but was silenced when he noticed an ominous rush of weather headed Haven's way.
"We will continue this later," he promised her, and she reluctantly made her way back to her cabin.
The snowstorm lasted for the rest of the day, much to Ahnnie's dismay. There were rations in her cabin to sustain her but she still hungered for more talk with Solas. Of course, her interest was probably better invested in books, as Solas must have busted his mouth explaining all that he did to her, but she was as equally curious to learn of him as she was of Thedas.
His knowledge of the Fade, especially...what was it exactly that he knew? Could he possibly shed any light on how she came here? Did he know a way back?
She was out and about the next morning, disobeying Adan and searching for Solas. The healer had not come by today, so he didn't weigh too heavily on her conscience. She found Solas more or less in the same area as before, and when he greeted her, it was not she who quickly got down to business but the elf himself.
"Tell me, what is your culture like?" he asked. "You mentioned that you were born in America, but you must surely know a few things about Vietnam."
She hadn't expected him to ask that. Still, she was delighted to hear that he was interested. "I do, actually," she said. They sat back down on the same rock as before and Ahnnie tried to think of where she would start. "Well, most of Vietnamese culture is in line with the filial duty and ancestral worship that originated in China..."
The people were either Buddhists or Catholics, but even then, parents and elders were extremely important. Unlike its big neighbor to the north, Vietnam was a small country that was no stranger to multiple invasions. China, the Mongols, Japan, France – and there was probably more, but she didn't know of them. The only time it ever managed to invade another country was long, long ago, when it claimed land from the Cambodian Champa kingdom in the south. The most recent conflict she knew of, the Vietnam War, was what brought her family to America as refugees against the Communist regime. Therefore, a mix of resilience and submission to foreigners was present in the culture.
Vietnamese people were categorized in three different ways according to the main dialects: Northern, Middle, and Southern. To explain this to Solas, Ahnnie needed to demonstrate the four different tones in the Vietnamese language, in her own words: the up tone, the down tone, the roller coaster, and the deep down tone. All three dialects maintained the use of tones, but pronounced things different ways; The Northerners often sounded as though they were speaking with constricted throats. Southerners, on the other hand, had a more bouncing flow to their words. And then the Middle dialect had been a bafflement to her all her life; almost every other word seemed punctuated with a deep down tone, and it didn't help that they had their own extensive vocabulary. When asked which dialect she used, she replied, "Southern."
And onto stereotypes: Northerners were considered cold and classy; Southerners, naive and hospitable. Ahnnie tried to remember what the people of the Middle had been known for, but couldn't find it in any of her memories. If I'd been home, I could just ask someone or use the Internet...Indeed, a lot of her knowledge was fragmented in many areas. Gathered as a whole, it probably didn't matter, but where she would have used a Google search to help fill in the blanks she could only shrug helplessly and admit defeat. That bothered her more than a little.
But moving on. Due to the prestige of the Northern dialect, it was the norm for songs to be sung in it regardless of the composer or singer's origins, unless it was specifically a song meant for that region. Curious, Solas encouraged her to give him an example. "One can learn a lot about cultures through song alone," he had remarked.
Ahnnie nodded and took in a few deep breaths as she tried to remember some noteworthy Northern song to start off with. Her mind filtered through the countless melodies imprinted on her mind from years of listening at parties, functions, home...
"Waking up alone in the morning, I look around –
Light slants through window. The birds are startled,
Knowing their songs of love have been heard..."
Her voice faltered and then she realized that that was all she knew of the song. She tried futilely to summon the next verse, but quickly realized she couldn't. It had, at the very least, captured most of the Northern dialect. To cover up her embarrassment, she moved onto a Southern song. Its melody was noticeably more buoyant in tone and structure, to reflect the dialect and countryside origins:
"Out in the fields, the rice has dried out
A starling flies alone in the skies
Calling, 'Oh friend of my heart, oh'
We are separated by a few rivers
And yet why can't you return?
So that this suffering heart must grow sadder
And thirst after the rain."
She paused, almost afraid that she'd forgotten the rest, and was pleasantly surprised to find that she had not.
"Now the rice is green again
The starling returns to the river
Flying alone, crying, 'Oh friend of my heart, oh'
What is there to miss?
For the call, the call never made it
Let the silence assuage
These aching sorrows.
Every evening, the starling flies across the river, searching
Only to be lost, lost and regretful
Starlings separated from their flock still hope to come together
So why do you cross the bridge, and never return?"
Her voice choked on the last word and she coughed. With a sheepish smile, she dismissed the stumble as nothing more than a throat irritation and carried on to the next refrain.
"...With a heavy heart, I sing the old folk song out of love for he who crossed the bridge
With a heavy heart, I sing the old folk song to assuage my sorrow
Those who crossed the bridge and returned, have done so
Those who crossed the bridge want to return, and can do so."
It's almost over, she thought. I hope I still remember it.
"Tomorrow, I am going far. To whom shall I send this song?
Tomorrow, I am going far. To whom shall I send this song?
Tomorrow I am going far. This song...I wish to return...to–"
Her voice was unable to take the high notes. It had been straining the moment she entered the very last line. She coughed again, tears rimming the edges of her eyes as her throat stung. Solas pat her on the back and asked if she was all right; when she looked up, she found more tears welling into her eyes, and not simply from her throat, either.
"I need a moment," she quietly rasped, and Solas nodded.
"Are Vietnamese songs always so sad?"
Ahnnie thought carefully before she could deny or affirm the fact. "I think they are," she realized – as she perused the titles of famous songs she knew, they didn't exactly reflect smiles and sunshine. Thành Phố Buồn, "Sad City"; Riêng Một Góc Trời, "Lonely Corner of the Sky"; Mưa Rừng, "Forest Rain"; and then the songs she sang from, Ṃột Mình, "Alone" and Nỗi Buồn Chim Sáo, "Sorrow of the Starling". There were happy songs out there, but sad ones seemed to outweigh them. Perhaps that said something about the culture, but she wasn't too sure of what.
"Sorry about earlier," she apologized. "I guess I chose the wrong song to, well, sing...it was about going across a bridge and returning."
"You have nothing to be sorry for," Solas assured her. "It is expected that you would become homesick."
He sounded sad, almost regretful. Ahnnie immediately felt guilty for tearing up as she did and berated herself for being so inconsiderate. She could not deny the yawning hole that had opened within her, though...that empty abyss that cried out for completion...for home.
Is that how I feel? Incomplete? It was a curious thought. It was true, however, that she would've been happy going on in her daily routine. Wake up, have some breakfast, walk the dogs, study...it was safe and snug, as long as her parents were pleased with her.
As long as.
Ahnnie's lips twisted broodily as the concepts clashed in her mind. Everything was fine, as long as her parents were happy. She was pleased with her life as long as nothing serious happened. She was okay with continuing that sort of life at the expense of her freedom. Horror crept into her heart as it had many times before when she envisioned herself as an older adult, still chained in that cycle that was at once safe and sickening.
It was only now, however, that a strange series of events forced her to look at the implications in their full glory. She put a hand to her mouth, feeling an uncomfortable churning in her stomach as the realizations sank in.
"Can I trust you, Solas?" she whispered a moment later, her hand lowering to her side.
The elf turned to her, slightly surprised, but nodded anyway.
This is crazy. But she wasn't stopping. "You know how I said that eighteen-year-olds are legally considered adults in America?" When he nodded, she continued, "So I know not all of them leave home once they come of age. With the economy as it is, sometimes they stay for longer. But I...I'm different. As in, the bad sort of different. I'm no better than those freeloaders who live in their mothers' basements playing video games all day."
The comparison stung, but she wanted to be truthful. "I have no spine. I tell myself I won't let others push me around, but when it comes to my parents, I let them do whatever they want. Even now, it seems like I can't do anything on my own. I..."
I'm being confusing. She sighed. "I call them 'parents' but they're my mom and my stepdad. See, when I was six, my actual parents got a divorce. I don't know how divorces work in Thedas, but on Earth...they can get pretty messy. Then she moved out, and we ended up being split between them. She would blame it all on our dad, and convinced us do the same.
"Everything went downhill when she met our stepdad. I mean, he was nice at first; really funny, and everything. But the moment she officially got together with him, it was like a bomb went off. Suddenly, we had to define where our loyalties lay. Everyone on the maternal side – our aunts, our grandmother, even distant cousins we didn't know about. They just suddenly came out of the woodwork and forced us to have an opinion in favor of our dad. Then she was doing the same thing, and it became a daily struggle for us to please everybody. When my little brother was born a year later, my grandparents disowned her and she cut off all contact with everybody else, convinced that she was the victim.
"Then when I was twelve...our dad fought for full custody. My mom and stepdad went full rabid on us, threatening to never see us again if we weren't fully committed to staying with them, or if we let out anything that would've complicate her custody." Ahnnie's throat caught, and she gulped. "I loved her at the same time I was afraid of her, so I just did as she said. My little sister wasn't so sure, though, and went through the worst of their rage...she agreed just to make them shut up, and when Mom won the case, she...she's never been the same again...
"Then my stepdad convinced Mom to move to another state. That was when our finances became tight. And I don't know how it happened, but Mom was suddenly 'hearing' all these spirits talk to her and she became convinced that she was a god of some sort. I think the stress got to her...Stepdad took advantage of it and moved the statues on the altar to make it look like they were communicating with her...I was confused until I realized that these 'messages' were...were telling her to trick people for profit. Innocent, naive Vietnamese people who didn't know what to do when the American economy gave way."
She shuddered and hugged her knees to her body. "It stopped when I was, what, fourteen? After that, it seemed like she didn't need gods to give her messages to tell her what to do. It became natural. Still, whenever she wanted something, it was always 'the gods' who decreed it, and she would get really loud if she thought she was being defied. Like when she pulled me and my sister from school into homeschooling; my sister protested, and she yelled so loudly the neighbors called the cops. Or that one time she roared in 'heavenly wrath' when she thought my little brother was playing too many video games. He was only ten and played just one game, an hour a day." Ahnnie hid her face in her knees, cringing in embarrassment. "God. That sounds so stupid."
Solas shifted in his seat, and Ahnnie felt a warm hand placed on her back. "No, it sounds horrible. No matter how outlandish it might seem, it doesn't detract from what you and your siblings faced. To think that it would, would be a grave mistake."
"And yet, so many people made that mistake," Ahnnie ground out. "I tried telling people about what she did to my brother but they laughed and said it was his fault for not listening to his mother, and that I was making shit up about her because I was upset." She sighed. "I'm pretty sure CPS let that one go down the drain. The cops weren't any help, either; they just bought her story about an argument between her and Stepdad, and left.
"She never knew I did that, so we were all safe for a time. Money came in, she was happy, Stepdad was happy...they got us a dog, and we were happy. Then another dog, and shit hit the fan for a while when they refused to spay or neuter either one and puppies came...but if nothing really happens, then living with them is tolerable. Well, if you didn't think too much about the made-up identities and lies you have to tell so she could pull off her scams."
The elf watched her pensively, brows furrowed in thought. "I see..."
"Nothing major; just things like we're her sister's kids, or her piano students, or we're this-and-that age." She paused a moment, thinking. "If I had to compare my mom and stepdad to anything, I would say that they're like the Thernadiers from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Selfish, lying, cheating scum who treat their children well when things are good, but horribly when things go bad. And who are attracted to anybody with the bigger purse," she added for good measure. "But that's why I'm no hero, no Herald of An-what's-her-name. They tell me to be a good girl, stay in the house, and don't think about being anything on my own because that's what the gods want, then I do it. I only fought demons because I was afraid I would die. And suddenly, I don't know whether I want to be home or not. I miss my dogs, I'm worried for my siblings, and yet I'm so undecided."
That answer seemed to confound Solas, but it was not completely unwarranted. He had been reading the gist from her monologue as patiently and observantly as he had when she told him about Earth. "I know you think yourself hopeless because of what happened to you," he said at last. "You are not, however, defined by those times. Contrary to what you believe, you do have the power to shape your life differently – more so now than before. Perhaps you will find that your time here will change you, and that if you return, you can carve out a life for the better."
"Perhaps," she murmured. If a way home could be found in the first place. And it seemed like a nice goal to work towards. "But man, I said all that...to you..." She shook her head. "I've never told anyone else before...it's just...for something like this to happen to me, it's almost..." Coincidence? Fate? "...absurd."
"Then it makes me happy that you chose me to confide in. Know that if you should need anything, I am here to help," Solas added, smiling gently at her. "You don't have to go about this alone, after all."
"Thanks." She managed a small smile, even though she still felt torn on the inside. "But what do you think is going to happen?" she asked a moment later.
"Many things. Great and wondrous, terrible and dreadful...but your undoing will not be one of them; not unless you will it to."
And for one thrilling, empowered moment, she was able to believe that.
A/N: To listen to the songs described above, please click on my profile and find them under the 'Links' section. I recommend you do so to get a feel of what they're like. You don't have to listen to the entire songs, just a few lines...*shameless promotion of culture, haha*
Also, there are officially 6 tones in the Vietnamese language. However Ahnnie notes 4 because she is not counting the neutral tone, in which nothing really changes, and there are two variations of the roller coaster tone in the Northern dialect that are not present/audible in the Southern one.