The Names We're Given

Chapter 4: Scattered Leaves

by Dreamer In Silico

The road to Redcliff

The next night, Leliana offered to cook, conscripting Alistair to help, and Mei gratefully slipped into the forest alone to look for herbs, glad for the excuse to be away for a while.

Growing up in the Circle, she'd never had much real privacy, but the more reclusive of the young mages tended to form tacit pacts of quiet in the spaces they were forced to share, for lack of other options. Her months living in the Brecilian Forest had given rein to her more solitary preferences, even though, for a short, wondrous time…

Giselle.

Mei bit her lip as she knelt to dig at an elfroot plant, eyes blurring. It couldn't have lasted. They'd known it wouldn't, known they would have to run eventually. And still, they hadn't been ready.

With now long-accustomed practice, she gathered up the memories like leaves, stacking their fragile colors upon one another in her mind to make them blur into cohesion. To chase them when they scattered was to lose focus, and to lose focus was to die – or worse, as she'd warned Alistair only days before. The hoard of thoughts was bright enough to burn, and sharp enough to cut.

Alone, the memories could break her. Annealed, they became the keen edge of her anger, more dangerous than either sword she carried.

The astringent scent of bruised elfroot brought her back to the present as she crumpled the leaves in her hand and began to walk again.

It was well past dusk when she returned, feeling marginally better, with fragrant herbs filling a makeshift sling of rough linen that she had tied over her shoulder. Leliana was speaking to Alistair by the cookfire with Sten a healthy distance away, though the qunari seemed to be listening intently, if a bit perplexedly, to whatever yarn she was spinning. Morrigan had pitched her own tent at the edge of the clearing and built a second, smaller fire away from the others, and it was there that Mei turned after silently collecting a bowl of stew from the bubbling pot.

The other apostate was grinding some sort of paste in a pestle, and Mei could smell enough of it to recognize it as medicinal. Well and good – they would probably need poultices on hand in the near future, as the darkspawn encroachment grew.

"Can you use any of these?" Mei offered, showing the contents of her sling.

"I am nearly out of betony, as it happens," Morrigan replied reservedly.

Mei nodded and silently sifted through her stash for the violet blossoms. The human woman accepted them just as silently. Then her golden eyes flicked to the larger campfire, and back to Mei, apparently making some sort of decision.

"You may… join me here, if you do not wish to take part in the… chatter." Her thoughts on the relevance of the others' conversation were quite clear.

The offer was unexpected, but much to her own surprise, Mei did not find it unwelcome. Sleep was not likely to come easily that night, and it would be better to at least somewhat prepare the herbs she had gathered. Placing the sling on the hard ground by the fire, she gave what felt like an approximation of a smile. "I'll just go get my satchel so I can work on these, too, then."

They worked for a while in silence, Mei stripping stalks and folding some leaves into linen sheets for drying, setting others aside to make into simples that night. At length, Morrigan looked up and spoke again, curiosity tempering her usual severity. "I've a question, if I may."

Mei wiped her stone herbalist's knife on a scrap of cloth and met the other woman's unnerving eyes. "You may."

"Why do you do this?" she asked, bluntly.

" 'This?' "

"The templar is the dutiful sort; I've seen enough of his kind from a distance 'tis no surprise. But you… are not. This… civilization – " on her lips, the word sounded like an epithet " – does not care for your kind, certainly."

Later, Mei would be privately astonished at the impulse, and even more so that she'd followed it. "The Maker's children are threatened, and even the least of them must stand to push this evil back," she deadpanned.

Morrigan blinked and her for a long moment, eyes wide in astonishment before they narrowed. "You… jest."

The elf's answering smile had teeth. "Of course. You'll forgive me practicing my piety for the trumped-up nobles we have to woo; it might be useful."

She was rewarded with a short, sharp laugh, Morrigan's head tilting back in mirth. "Oh, I do like you."

Morrigan didn't press her for a real answer, which made her strangely grateful, though at length, she gave it anyway. The other mage was the closest thing she had to an ally of temperament as well as convenience, after all. "When we were back in the Wilds… Flemeth had this… secretive, almost smug way about her as she spoke of coming change."

"She has that way about her most of the time, I assure you," Morrigan corrected dryly.

Mei inclined her head and continued. "The Keeper of the clan w- … I camped near said… much the same thing. She didn't seem half so pleased about it, but she said… how did she put it? It was something vague and poetic. 'The patterns are converging.' I think that was it. It was when Duncan came looking for Warden recruits. I… " Her mouth went dry, as if the words were trying to crawl back into her throat and taking all the moisture with them. Morrigan only listened, predator's eyes fixed in solemn attentiveness.

Finish what you start.

"I was angry… aimless and drowning in it. She made me believe I could do something with it, that I could be a part of that change. I half-hated her for it at the time because it seemed more like an excuse to get me away from her clan than anything, and it probably was. But now… what do I stand to lose?" Mei had forced the truth into bland, blunted generalities, but the words had come. That was something.

"Your life, presumably."

Glancing down at a mangled elfroot stalk that had fallen from her inattentive fingers, she picked it back up with a sigh. "Perhaps. But I knew I couldn't live like… like I was. Wasn't much of a choice, when it came down to it."

"You lived in that gilded cage the Chantry calls the Circle once." It wasn't a question, but Mei nodded. "You left it for the same reason, I gather?"

Mei's lips twitched, just slightly, though the brief flare of humor was as black as the night sky. "Very much the same." She began pounding a new set of herbs into a paste with a vengeance. "Why come, yourself?"

The question had been half out of genuine interest and half simply to steer the focus away from topics she did not want to delve into tonight – or ever, perhaps. (Could one go a lifetime without talking about such things? Mayhap she would try; it wasn't like a lifetime was apt to be very long, in her case.) Morrigan's eyes sharpened to bright knives, surprising Mei before the woman's expression eased a moment later.

Hiding something, then… but aren't we all?

" 'Tis as you say," Morrigan answered. "The tides are shifting, and as much as I do not care for being thrust into it on another's sense of timing, I would have a part in their shaping."

Mei nodded, accepting the evasion as the surface of truth. There was something in the witch's vehemence that she recognized, a note that set her own mind to ringing in harmony. For all Morrigan claimed a cool, dispassionate devotion to power, she was angry, too.

Chuffing inquisitively, Llorc trotted over from the main campfire to the two women. Morrigan waved him away impatiently, and he rounded the fire to butt his head against Mei's shoulder before settling down at her side.

Mei scratched his ears, absently glad for the short break in the conversation. She would move into safer waters, now. "What of Lothering? Was that the main place you traded, living in the Wilds?"

"Lothering and the Chasind." Morrigan made a flicking gesture as if to discount the second. "But the Chasind are a suspicious folk, and have foolish notions of how women should live; dealing with them was something always undertaken with caution and as seldom as possible."

Mei recalled the woman, Hawke, with the laughing eyes that had never seen the inside of the Tower. "How did you and Hawke find out about each other?" she asked, wondering how such things could happen under the close eyes of the templars. Since she'd made her own escape, she had been resigned to keeping her abilities well under wraps when dealing with Fereldans other than the scattered Dalish clans.

Morrigan made an irritated noise through her teeth. " 'Tis… embarrassing. When I was very young and very foolish, and had just learned to give myself wings, I took to spying on the town from within. But a crow who is not easily startled away attracts notice, and I had not yet learned to feign the behavior. I was… very fortunate that Catrin was the first to act on that notice."

It was faintly amusing to think of Morrigan as being that brazenly careless, for the notion seemed quite incompatible with what Mei had seen of her at present. The witch was still brazen, perhaps, but never careless. Mei found herself smiling slightly, remembering the prickly familiarity Morrigan had shown the other mage with a touch of wistful envy. "She seemed like a good sort to know… and probably quite a bit of fun, besides."

The human quirked a brief, answering half-smile that was almost, but not quite lost in the shadows of the dancing flames. "Insufferably cheerful, but yes… she is... effective." It was a strange enough compliment, but coming from Morrigan, a lavish one. "She was one of my primary sources of information about the world beyond the Wilds. My mother had many such lines of information, of course, but she was not free with them, and so I acquired my own resources."

Mei nodded; she understood this well. "In the Tower, we had to rely on visiting mages for news, and what little made its way down to the lower ranks was rarely useful. I've a story not so unlike yours, actually," she said wryly. "Just out of my Harrowing, I tailed one such visitor in hopes of eavesdropping for bits of gossip or news to feed back to my friends. The woman had caused enough stir among the Seniors when she arrived that I knew anything about her was bound to be interesting. Long story short, she had just begun a meeting with a handful of other mages, and one of them saw me. Instead of throwing me out, she laughed and told me I could come in and actually listen from a chair, if I wanted. I admit I almost wanted to bolt, at that point, but I stayed, and that… well, that changed just about everything."

Morrigan cocked her head and added another small limb to the fire, having set aside her herbals for the night. "How do you mean?"

"The visiting mage was Adrian, from the Orlesian Circle. I'd only just begun to hear about the different mage fraternities – political factions, really – and the bland, useless Aequitarians were the dominant group there, so I hadn't paid much attention. Adrian was already fairly important within the Libertarians at that point, and she's since become the Speaker." At Morrigan's blank look – it was no surprise that internal Circle politics weren't among her areas of expertise – Mei hastened to elaborate. "The Libertarians are the Circle mages you'd actually get along with, after a fashion. They seek to separate us from the Chantry."

"It seems some of them do have some sense, then," Morrigan approved. "Although if that is their wish, why have they not done so?"

A gauntleted hand around her throat, and the harsh shock as the mana is ripped from her pattern.

Mei shuddered, forcing her hitched breathing to smooth out once more. Here she was, again. The memories seemed intent on taunting her tonight. Beside her, Llorc whined in almost uncannily perceptive concern.

She knew Morrigan had noticed the reaction, even though it had been slight, but for a mercy, she didn't prod further. Mei drew breath to speak, halted, and tried again. "It's… very difficult to explain, since you haven't been there. But… I'll try. You… you've known freedom. Andraste's staff, you've ridden the skies. From the sounds of it, you were raised with that in your blood, in everything you did."

"Power," Morrigan corrected her, quietly. " 'Tis not the same thing as freedom. But the one can grant the other, betimes."

"As you say." The finer points were certainly interesting, but not terribly important at the moment. It was almost a relief to let her mind worry at the problem of explaining, rather than dwelling on the experiences themselves. "What I'm getting at, though, is that you can't imagine wanting or expecting anything else. It's obvious that is the way the world works. Am I right about that?" she asked.

"You are."

"Alright. Well, instead of – " Mei waved her hands around her, her tension lending the movement more violence than she intended. " – all that, most of us spend our entire lives, from the time we are taken away from our parents until the day we die, being told that we are dangerous. We are a problem. The best the world can do is make the most of this 'curse' of magic… but of course it's too sodding scared to do much of even that. The templars are always there, and always watching. Always. Unless you're a Senior, you won't even be granted a door that locks. You could be naked and in the arms of a lover, and if a templar decides he wants to come in and drag you off to be questioned for some imagined offense, he can do it."

"Surely two mages can overpower one templar!" Morrigan said, her tone derisive and disbelieving.

Mei closed her eyes. Oh, yes. They can, can't they?

"And what then?" she asked bitterly. "When he goes down, and the two of you are still four levels up in a heavily-guarded tower on an island in the middle of a lake, and haven't been outside the Tower grounds since you were five? Do you fight all the others who come? No. They tear your mana out of you, drag you before a farce of a tribunal, and then they kill you or make you Tranquil, and then what of all your supposed power?" She paused, shuddering and slowly dragging her anger back into line. She had to continue this; it was suddenly terribly, direly important that she be able to make this point and have the other woman understand.

"Most mages buy into the system because if they are good, they'll be given a pittance of autonomy, and be grateful for it. Yes, it is pathetic. But when that's all you know, the only way to make your life a little better? It's what you do. Most never see a real chance at anything different. That's what the constant pressure from the templars is for. And that's why even the most quiet, careful voice saying that this isn't right aloud is such an act of rebellion. The Libertarians are that voice, and they've managed to become it in spite of everything I just said. Learning that they existed was… was like the first time you sneak up to the Observatory – it's restricted to the upper ranks, officially – and see the stars that you almost forgot even existed, since you haven't seen them since you were taken."

"And this Adrian taught you to seek freedom?" Morrigan asked.

"She taught me, and many others, to… see. She gave us a glimpse of an idea of what could be. The movement's much older than she is, but few others have articulated its goals so well."

The witch gave her a shrewd look. "And yet, you are different from even that faction, are you not?"

"I wasn't, for a long time. But yes, I suppose I am."

Morrigan watched the flames for a long moment, considering something. "It does please me to know that not all of those in the Circles are sheep. I've always been safe enough in the Wilds, but to hear Catrin speak of it, the world is quite mad."

Mei let out a short, humorless laugh. "It is. But given the choice between docilely going along with it, dying fighting, or just dying…"

"I see what Flemeth meant, now, about you," the witch mused.

"What's that?"

"She said that you were a peculiarly dangerous sort... she seemed to find it funny… the sort who decides to do something, and then dedicates every resource available to that task without heed to cost."

Mei shrugged. "Sometimes the options really are that simple. Stay or go, die or live. If I live, I can count the costs when I'm done." And there are always plenty to count.

"And which choice was joining the Grey Wardens?" Morrigan asked, arching a dark eyebrow.

Isn't that the interesting question? You thought you knew, but what is this quest, if not a fool's errand with a quick, bloody end?

"I guess we'll both find that one out eventually, won't we?" This time, her laugh held humor, though it was the color of the spark-laden soot that curled toward the open sky.