She found it, the gift she intended to give him, the means to their futures ends - the ring; her leash,her chain to her mother. It was small, made of a base metal, perhaps an indication of her mother's true regard of her: something to be used, molded as needed to accomplish its ends and cheaply discarded. It had been imbedded in her flesh at birth by her mother; an enchanted means to bind them, so she could always find her, like a tiny magic beacon; and Morrigan would never be lost to her (or free of her), it's location on her body had never been known. Her mother had assured her she would remove it herself... one day. She was no longer willing to wait for 'one day'; for her, it had come.

She was now ready to cut from herself this symbol of the cord that her mother had roped around her life when she made certain that she was the only other person in her life she felt she could truly trust; her only teacher, her only source of protection from the cruelty of the world, the only one to keep her safe from the Templars, from being made tranquil. All of that was a lifetime ago... the lifetime of its soon to be new bearer - her Aeden.

She would give it to him, the one TRUE comfort from the storms, the Templars, the loneliness of her existence, and something more... the thing she had been told by Flemeth was a source of weakness, and the panacea of fools. So for HIM, she would cut it out of herself, and give him the means for her to find him... anywhere.

She smiled as she thought of how she would use it to find him if... no... WHEN she found a way for them to be together after (the old one? no, not the 'old one') their child - was delivered. There was a danger, Flemeth told her, if the sire was present - Flemeth told her many things as if her word was truth and faultless ( so why did they live in the Wildes? in hiding? and not in palaces?) It was just another way of control, letting her believe in her alone. Well now she had him.

It was so fitting using the mirror HE had given her to locate the ring. It glowed in the presence of the Lyrium in the walls of the Deep Roads, a faint blue glow, only just visible through her skin. It was inside her lower back, just to the right of her spine. His gift had set her free, but If he knew the price she paid to get the one she gave him, the obvious value he held to her, and from where she had taken physical possession of it - Aeden Cousland may well have not hesitated when she later request he kill the one who put it there; nor stopped to express to the old woman his intentions before doing so.

The knife was treated with a special salve that would prevent infection, and would in fact keep the wound from scaring, and prevent it from bleeding freely till the flesh was joined again after she had removed the ring from its 'setting', where Flemeth had placed it on the day she was born. Flemeth had cut into her newborn infant daughter before she had even nursed her, healing her without a scar... but not without pain. For Flemeth, love was pain, best her daughter learn it quickly.

She finally wrenched it free, her agony not as great as the joy of her freedom from this bondage to her mother; she now had a new soul to be bonded with; her Aeden, her mate, her equal, her... She couldn't find the word to describe how she felt that was adequate, at least not one she felt as intensely as this felt. perhaps if she described it a definition would come. She had discussed 'love' with him in the past, how it was a waste of time, a fools delusion (as Flemeth had drilled into her till she felt it her own truth), and he had assured her he felt the same. So by their own definition, neither of them felt that word was adequate, since it was a word used by fools and poets to convey the unreal and self delusional quality that no one ever truly reached (... till, that is, they confessed it.)

("And to confess to it was to admit to being a fool! a slave!" - so says Flemeth)

Now she felt herself a fool for ever having believed her; felt herself a fresh sprig off the withered tree of her mother's jaded philosophy - a cynic, brainwashed by a bigger fool. She felt she was little more than an arrogant self-deluded toy in the hands of her mother; now to be set free by this 'delusional' emotion,using the ring in her anxious hand that she had dug from her own flesh to bond herself to him, her Aeden, her friend, her... what?

Say it - fool.

She closed her eyes from the pain in her back as her salves and magic began their work at hiding her self-inflicted wound (How eloquent a way to summarize 'IT' this GLORIOUS feeling you suffer from the inability to admit to.)

He called out for her as she pulled the ring from her body, "Find me now old woman," she thought to herself as she held it in her hand. She staggered to her feet as the wound to her back closed, scar free, and stepped toward his voice.

He took hold of her arm gently.

She clutched his forearm and pulled him to her. Her mouth found his and moaned a sigh of gratitude for his rescue of her into her kiss... not from the imagined threat she had just 'escaped', but from her fate - into a life worth living.

He kissed her softly with the lips she dreamed of breathing her last breath into, and guided her to the camp. She took him into their tent, ('their tent'? yes, that is what she felt it was now.) and took him as she had never before, her body giving to him of an almost mystical level of pleasure that she felt as much as he did, their bodies writhed on the bearskins as never before; her body held his manhood within it's warm, wet, grateful embrace, and stoked the fires of his passion from hers to his very essence, till he screamed her name as she almost passed out from her own experience of their unbridled expression of... 'so be it... Aeden, here now I give myself over to you in all I am. Now I am reborn in you my Aeden; a self-confessed fool; a willing slave to the panacea of the human soul and the fire that gives light to your eyes - my one... hear me Aeden, I surrender to us, to it, to you: my friend, my countryman, my comfort, my glorious heat...'

He lay sleeping peacefully as she stared longingly at his sleeping eyes, the ring in her hand as it had been when they coupled till the act between them became something more, something deeper, something pure; and through that alteration, bonded the ring to them both. She would give it to him soon, once she was certain this glorious ritual had worked. Perhaps more would be needed.

She gazed at his sleeping face...

(FOOLS deny their hearts till they stop beating.)

Her tears welled up in her eyes as she once more traced her fingertips along his lips...

(FOOLS chase to the comforting cold of the shadows for fear of the warmth of a fire they cannot control, cannot extinguish without pain, and will never truly be free from the pain of its burning when they stand within its flames, until they admit it into the depths of their hearts to light their souls... through simply speaking its name, its truth.)

She smiled as she surrendered to the pain, and sighed softly as she caressed his cheek, "...My love."