The Names We're Given

Chapter 2: Chance Encounters

by Dreamer In Silico

The Wilds

She had known, when Flemeth had returned with the two bloodied bodies in her great talons, that her mother's plan would proceed. She had known that she would be cast away, sent off with these two wet-behind-the-ears Grey Wardens to a fate that, if she was perfectly honest with herself, was nothing short of daunting. She had seen it all in the satisfied gleam in Flemeth's eye when the crone had announced that both the man and the elf would survive their injuries…

…yet for all that foresight, the taste on her tongue was no less bitter when the moment finally came, and she had to leave the Wilds with them as a companion.

It was not that Morrigan would miss the old hag who raised her – far from it – but subjecting herself to the company of the Grey Wardens was a constant rasp against senses far more attuned to solitude. She found the elf mage interesting, which made the situation slightly more tolerable than it might have otherwise been, but for the most part any appreciation of Mei was far outweighed by the unalloyed irritation posed by the ex-templar. And he was the one she eventually had to…

Better not to think of that. She would worry about it when and if the inexperienced pair had amassed enough support to even begin to stand a chance against the Archdemon. Of course, the fact that their chances seemed low was little comfort either, since if they failed she would trade being a pawn for likely being dead.

The Blighted world was a chipper, happy place, to be sure.

Such thoughts were unsettling company as the trio cleared away brush from the forest floor to dig a firepit for the night.

"I don't like this, Mei. I can feel the horde... snickering... against the edges of my senses everywhere in these wilds – I'd almost rather press on; surely we must be close to the edge by now?" The templar's petulant voice shattered the leaf-muffled quiet.

Morrigan sighed inwardly. Fortunately, though, it seemed the elf was inclined toward practicality.

"I understand, and I don't like it either," she began blandly, "but no, if I understand our direction aright, we are not close at all. We won't be anywhere near Lothering for at least another half day's travel, and all things considered if we're going to run into darkspawn, I'd rather do it rested."

Alistair ran a hand through his short-cropped hair and muttered something unintelligible, then saying aloud, "I know that makes sense. I just… I don't know if I could rest if I tried. I feel like I've got to be doing something, anything, or it's… dishonoring Duncan, somehow."

Morrigan watched curiously as Mei looked up and considered the templar for a long moment. She'd expected the woman to shrug it away and tell him to stop being silly, but something curiously hollow had crept into her eyes, and instead, she addressed him sharply. "I know that feeling, and it's a trap. You'll run yourself into the ground, and then you'll get picked off. Some little mistake because your mind is too hazy to focus, and then it's all over and you haven't done anyone any good – least of all his memory." A distant note of wry humor entered her voice and the bitter twist of her lips. "And it seems we have a world to save, so martyrdom isn't a luxury we can afford at the moment."

"If you are in need of a task, there are vegetables in the bags you could prepare so that we may eat tonight," Morrigan suggested. Alistair glared at her, and she fought down a wave of irritation – so much for being helpful.

Morrigan arose well before dawn, as was her habit. The boy-warrior was keeping second watch, but he barely spared her a glance when she slipped off into the trees, and that was perfectly agreeable to her. She wanted to gauge the area before the noise and commotion of breaking camp disrupted the rhythm of the forest.

And to just get some much-needed quiet before she had to spend another entire day in the company of the two fledgling Wardens.

Just beyond the edge of the camp, she shrugged into the body of a wolf as easily as breathing. The small creatures would scurry away from her, but not before she smelled their presence, and in this form she could cover ample ground without wearing herself down before the day's journey. It was a good form.

The shift to wolf had been the first shape she had mastered, and it was her favorite of all the ground-dwelling forms she could take. The sky had always called more strongly, but the morning was grey and damp, and she was leery of flying over any darkspawn encampments – as a crow, she had had to dodge arrows more than once when they had seen her, before the recent battle. For all their dull wits, the creatures were too clever by half around animals that may or may not be human witches.

Small game was scarce and the undergrowth thin – they were near human lands again, though still leagues from the town. Morrigan huffed a wolfish sigh through her sensitive nose, resigning herself to being in the lice-ridden, Chantry-besotted cesspool that called itself 'civilization' before the day was out.

The warm scent of rabbit tickled her nostrils, and minutes later she had a lean hare in her jaws, its head lolling on a broken neck. They would eat well this morning, at least.

Briefly, she considered returning to camp as a human, but bared her bloodied teeth in a grin to herself and decided that the shock of seeing her like this might do Alistair some good. Her paws were quiet on the soft ground, and so her approach went unnoticed.

"The dreams threw me for a loop at first," the templar was saying. "I don't think I got a full night's sleep for nearly the first month after my Joining."

"I'm used to nightmares." Morrigan could hear the dull shrug in the elven Warden's voice. "These… were startling, but not so bad."

"The dragon? I wish I could say that was 'not so bad.'"

Had she been a human, the witch would have laughed at his incredulity. She supposed it was a mercy that he had been unconscious when Flemeth had lifted him off the signal tower at Ostagar.

"At any rate – " Alistair's words were choked off in a yelp as Morrigan padded into the clearing. "Oh, wonderful! A wolf wants to cook its kill at our fire. The whole world has gone mad."

Mei turned distant eyes to hers slowly, as if she had to return from some far-off place to speak again. "I think that might be our absent companion, actually; don't wet your smalls yet."

"A normal wolf would be less disturbing," he muttered. "You don't look surprised; do they teach skinwalking in that Tower of yours?"

Mei's near-reverie snapped all at once, and she actually hissed at him. "The Tower is not 'mine,' and you were a templar – you should know they'd never allow a kept mage to practice something so disturbing."

Morrigan watched with interest as Alistair pinched the bridge of his nose. "Oh Maker. First, I was a recruit who never took final vows, not a full knight. Second, I've never been near the Tower, so will you quit assuming I mean any harm by asking questions?"

The elf's glare did not soften, but some of the acid had leeched out of her voice as she answered. "There are a few among the Dalish who know how to take on animal forms. I knew one such Keeper."

Morrigan deposited the hare onto the ground – she had made the mistake of shifting to human with a catch still in her jaws more than once in the past – and reared up, bipedal once more by the time her torso was vertical. "If the two of you are quite finished discussing the origins of my dire and terrifying abilities – " she favored Alistair with a disdainful glance " – I have brought food, for I do not fancy eating only oat mash for breakfast if we do not have to. We are nearing the edge of the forest, and if I judge correctly, we will make Lothering by midday."

The elf nodded and collected the rabbit carcass. "I'll get this going, if you two want to start breaking camp. When it's done, we can eat it on the road."

Morrigan watched, moderately surprised, as Mei skinned and dressed the rabbit quickly and without seeming to give it a second thought. She had not expected either Warden to have any experience with such matters. Mei was an elf, and she lacked the servile timidity of the few city elves Morrigan had seen, but the witch had also met enough Dalish to know that this slight mage was not one of them – the delicately inked tattoo that framed one eye was not a clan design, and she had never heard the word shemlen cross her lips. Even still, she had alluded to spending time with them – perhaps she had learned woodscraft then.

The witch shrugged and set to rolling up her tent. Perhaps she would not need to babysit as much as she had feared.

The remainder of the journey to Lothering was uneventful, save for the exuberant appearance of a very large, very odorous mabari hound that had apparently managed to imprint on Mei while still in the Ostagar war camp. Morrigan was amused to note that Mei was less than entirely enthusiastic about the creature's soggy-tongued greeting, but once he had calmed, the elf had fed him a leftover shred of rabbit and scratched his ears… and they had a dog.

Wonderful. Morrigan sighed. The wild creatures knew and rightly respected her, and she them – they were glorious and free, their feathers, talons, claws and teeth all singing the keen refrain of survival. That kinship did not, however, extend to domesticated animals. Much like domesticated mages, they offended the very fibre of her being by their lack of self-preservation and respect.

The cage willingly accepted was all the more repulsive for it. The mabari wisely kept its distance from her as they traveled.

…

Lothering, when they reached it, was a dismal sight. Little more than, as Alistair had so blithely put it a few hours before, 'a hamlet putting on airs,' the town had nowhere near the size or wealth to even begin to absorb the refugees who had already fled there. The common land and the once-grassy outskirts were churned to dank mud and speckled with ramshackle tents, or simply families resting on horse blankets, and the cries of children rang out in a steady cacophony of hunger and loss. To Mei's eyes, it could almost compete with the Circle tower for its sheer aura of hopelessness.

She suppressed a violent shiver at the unbidden memory that arose, of smooth stone walls and glinting armor that bore the flame-and-sword emblem she hated more than any other symbol in existence. Lothering was a place of desperation, yes, but they would collect supplies and any readily-available information, and then they would be gone from it quickly.

She hoped.

Seeking distraction from her own morbid thoughts, she watched her companions, only just catching the shifts in their bearings as they entered the town. Alistair, who had been hunched in upon himself since they had awoken in Flemeth's hut in the Wilds, stood up straighter and lengthened his stride, casting his eyes about rapidly to take in the faces of the people who milled about. Morrigan, by contrast, dropped her unnerving yellow gaze to the ground, and her presence, though Mei rather doubted it could ever be called 'meek,' lost some of the blazing, forceful self-assurance that had marked the witch's mien in her home. The latter was something of a relief to see, given that Morrigan's very movements seemed to challenge all who watched her, at times – she was a shouted declaration in a world where a mage who got noticed often ended up shackled. Or dead.

NO. This is NOT the time. Mei savagely wrenched her mind away from that thread – the anger it brought could only serve to harm them in this place.

The town square boasted a small but well-appointed Chantry, and she noted sourly that the building was in an entirely different league from the shabby houses that lined the muddy streets. It commanded the square, and it seemed to Mei that the building cast a watchful eye around it, as a templar who wades among recently-collected mage children. Clustered around the Chantry were the stalls and carts of a half-hearted attempt at a marketplace where, from the looks of it, more people were trying to sell items to the hawkers than the other way around.

"Looks like another three villages' worth of people here," Alistair noted. "There's a few hamlets and freeholds even closer to the fighting that must have already fled. But I don't understand why the refugees are stopping here, of all places – this mud pit's going to be crawling with darkspawn in a few days."

"At least some are probably just trying to resupply, much as we are. But you're right; some of the tents and shacks look like they've been here a while," Mei murmured, pausing near, but not yet inside the circle of pitiful booths. "Alistair, I'm more than a bit leery of drawing attention here. You… are definitely more respectable than Morrigan and I. See what you can find out about the state of things, and maybe look into collecting a bounty on those brigands we disposed of on the highway, hmm?"

Alistair gave a nervous chuckle. "…Respectable. Erm, sure. This'll be new! You ladies… take care of yourselves, then – I'll rejoin you in the market."

"As if we would not be doing that anyway," Morrigan muttered with a glare to his retreating back. Mei's mouth twitched into a half-remembered dream of a smile at the other woman's expression, but her humor quickly faded as they entered the market proper. There was almost no food in evidence, and the ragged blankets and tents at a few of the stalls were clearly exorbitantly expensive, by the dismayed looks of the refugees who crowded around.

"We might have to see if Alistair can squeeze some coin out of the Chantry for our work with the bandits," Mei murmured. "What little we took off them won't go far, I'd wager. Might be best spent on whetstones and oil and the like, now, and we can pick up food and blankets further north."

Morrigan nodded her assent – Mei suspected the witch could manage perfectly well in cold weather as a wolf, so her lack of concern was not surprising. They were able to pick up supplies to maintain their weapons and armor quite easily, but it did not go unnoticed that they did not bother approaching the meager food stands. Hollow eyes narrowed as they passed. No one spoke to them other than the shopkeepers they did business with, but Mei's hackles were up all the same, and her back ached where her shoulder blades drew together in tension. Attention was a danger they could ill afford, but she knew a certain amount wasn't going to be helped.

They had begun to retreat outside the circle of stalls to wait for Alistair when a ragged-looking man who had been muttering to a small knot of listeners peeled off and accosted them, dirty, coarse hands crossed over scarred forearms. "The darkspawn come from the south to tear us all limb from limb, and you walk with one of their heralds, elf!"

Mei blinked. "She looks perfectly human to me," she returned mildly.

"A witch!" he exclaimed, nearly shouting, now. "Though she dresses as a woman of my people, she walks without a chaperone. Her kind will see every settlement leveled, every man slaughtered under the claws of the darkspawn! Beware!"

The townspeople in the marketplace were giving them sidelong glances, and Mei shifted uncomfortably. Morrigan's glare at the barbarian was nothing short of murderous, and Mei felt she needed to get them separated as quickly as possible, despite her own quashed desire to lay him out with a fireball. "We're here to take shelter and buy supplies, same as most," she said flatly. "I suggest you take your dire predictions to anyone who doesn't already know about the darkspawn. Far away from here. It might be more useful."

"You're no refugees, that's for sure," someone opined gruffly as Mei turned to get away from the Chasind man. The speaker was a fruit-seller. "Only people in the damn market who didn't come askin' at my cart. You just watch yourselves."

"Doran, I know you're sore that they're not interested in your prize apples, but these ladies have enough trouble with yon doomsayer harassing them without you piling on, don't you think?" A human woman stepped in between the mages and the Chasind man, her striking blue eyes fixed in a glare upon the shopkeeper.

"Maker, Catrin, can we stay out of this?" a stocky man with similar coloring addressed her with the long-suffering air of one who does not actually expect to be heard.

Doran, meanwhile, had the grace to look at least mildly abashed. "Yer right, Mistress Hawke. Everybody's on edge with all these strangers passin' through; you know how it is," he said by way of apology.

"She's a witch, I tell you!" The Chasind rabble-rouser was not pleased to have been forgotten. Mei sighed, but she needn't have worried.

The woman Hawke shook black hair out of her eyes as she wheeled to the barbarian. "Watch your accusations, fool. She's no more witch than I; she's traded fairly with my family in the past. Choose something – and someone – else to waste your breath on, will you?" Her companion stared down the man, and that was what finally seemed to convince him that he'd best take himself elsewhere.

"Catrin – " the young man began.

"Thanks for backing me up, little brother. If you want to finish your shopping, I'll just be a moment."

"…Right. Fine. Mother would flay you for getting into the middle of things, you know."

"I know!" she returned cheerfully before turning back to Mei and Morrigan. Her eyes flicked between the two of them coolly, but with a hint of good-natured amusement. "It's been a while, my friend. I'd be quick about your business here, were I you – as you've seen, things are getting a touch unpleasant."

Mei glanced to Morrigan in surprise. The witch was giving their benefactor a profoundly complex look of irritation and… fondness? Well, she did say she'd traded here before.

"So I see," Morrigan replied at length. "I would suggest leaving with all haste, yourself. We have come from the south, and the horde is close at hand. Lothering will fall squarely in its path."

Hawke's expression soured. "Mother is… reluctant. I'll have to redouble my efforts to convince her, since I hear the darkspawn have positively ghastly manners when they take up residence."

Mei was incredulous. Was the woman trying to win some kind of medal for egregious understatement?

"Her sentiment will get you all killed," Morrigan spat.

"I've no intention of letting it come to that. I'll make Carver carry her out if I have to. But I thank you."

"We're grateful for your help in the market," Mei added, still nonplussed that the woman could joke about the darkspawn invasion, but focusing on what made sense in the situation. "I'd known we'd need to walk softly, but…"

Hawke shook her head. "It's nothing. Use the respite well; get out of here. The last thing you need is that idiot going and whining to the templars; they're on a hair trigger."

Mei's eyes widened. "How did you –? "

"Oh, you too? I'd just meant for Morrigan." Hawke grinned. "I didn't think those were Dalish markings you had; I guess it makes sense. Double the reason for the both of you to hurry, then. Be well, my friends. I'd best go before someone else decides to get nosy." She gave a brisk nod and turned to leave.

"…Be well," Morrigan echoed quietly after her.

"Friend of yours, apparently?" Mei asked.

Morrigan glared at her. "Why is it that people toss that word around so much, so casually? I merely have… encountered her a handful of times while passing through the village."

"Not a friend, but she knows what you are, eh?" Mei prodded, faintly amused.

"She is one of us. She would not expose me, even if she wanted to, for 'twould be a simple matter for me to cast suspicion on her as well," Morrigan sniffed.

"I don't doubt it. I hope she makes it, then. It is… good to see that someone can live in the open like she does." Someone who never was chained to a phylactery, to a Tower… I wonder if she knows how lucky she is.