Bull hadn't seemed to notice my hallucination when I finally came to as he had continued talking and cleaning and laughing about what it would be like if he was in charge. I was thankful in a way. I didn't feel ready to try and explain these things happening in my head but they were getting wildly out of hand. They were my memories, they had to have been. I could no longer blame them on The Breach or rifts or anything like that... The woman called me Nevalla, for goodness sake!
Here's what I had gathered so far: I was held captive when I was a child. I was freed many years later when I had the vallaslin removed. I was brought somewhere important, the Silver haired elf was very important and my father was some sort of angry, vengeful, warmonger. After my most recent hallucination I have discovered that I was also being trained to become some sort of Queen. As if that is in any way plausible!

Before I knew it I was wrapped in my bed roll, staring at the ceiling of the grand hall. I'd spent the whole day more or less in silence, brooding over what was happening in my mind. Now I didn't even have Bull for company, only his obnoxious snores, which by now I was used to anyway. We'd all agreed to sleep in the Main Hall as we still hadn't had a chance to explore the fortress in full and Creators know what sort of things were lurking in the darker places. Spiders. I'd put gold on it. I shivered at the thought and turned on my side away from Bull's snoring. Still these memories perplexed me. Where had they come from and when did they happen, that part worried me the most. I remembered growing up in the alienage, I remembered the friends I had and the people I'd known... didn't I? I shut my eyes and tried hard to remember the name of my first friend... and it wouldn't come. Frustrated and frightened tears burned in my eyes and I had to fight to hold in the sob. No, no i had to remember. The girl in the house next to me with the blonde hair... or was it brown?

I turned over on my back again and let a shuddering breath escape my lungs. Tears rolled down the sides of my face and dampened my hair and pillow but it seemed trivial. My whole life was a lie... Growing up in an alienage, speaking Orlesian? It was all one huge farce!

No. I told myself. Not all of it. My mother loved me, and whether I lived in an alienage or not, she loved me and she was taken from me. It suddenly struck me in that moment why everything had been such blur before that night with the slavers. Why I couldn't recall the names of neighbours and friends. I had always pinned it on me being too young to remember but I should have, I wasn't a baby. Something or someone had made me forget and I'd be damned if I couldn't remember. I shut my eyes against the world, once, twice and then I was gone. I felt myself slipping into a dream, flurries of sound and images began to appear.

"No." I said sternly. I would not be dragged through the unknown again tonight. "Tell me what is going on." I demanded. There was a grey fog and a silence for a very long time. Then a luscious echoing chuckled rang out in the abyss.

"Spoken like a true Goddess." Said the voice. It sounded like cracked porcelain. I looked around because I recognised the tone. My head turned from left to right to left and there stood a figure, swaggering towards me through a shallow pool of grey water. I recognised the gait of that walk too. It took her a while to come into my focus but when she did, I knew who it was immediately. She cocked a hip and folded her arms and smirked at me like she knew the answer to all my questions. She probably did too. Her hair was still silver and grey, done up into two horns on her head. Her face was different however, older, more fiendish and with an anger that hadn't been so visible before. And her ears were flat... but those eyes, no there was no mistaking it.

"You..." I whispered.

She chuckled, "Ah yes, and who am I?"

"Y-you're the elf from my dreams, you-"

"Memories girl, not dreams, do try and keep up. Now, who am I?" She snapped.

I shook my head, "You're... My flesh and blood, that's what you told me..."

Her smile softened and suddenly the human figure melted away and her elvhen self stood before me like a ghost. "I am." she said.

"And... you were teaching me magic and... to lead, you were teaching me to lead."

"So the enchantment is finally breaking. Old Flemmeth was more talented than she realised." she chuckled.

"Flemmeth? Asha Bellanar? You knew her?" I stepped forward and the human returned.

"I am her, dear girl." she shifted again back to the elf, "And I am her as well."

I watched her as she watched me, suspicion in my chest rising by the second.

"Ask me once more, and if I feel you truly wish to know, I'll tell you." she said.

"You'd deliberately keep secrets from me?"

"For your own good, girl, sometimes we are not ready for hard truths."

I hesitated, a clarity coming into my mind and a vague recognition. I knew who she was. "Who are you?"

She smiled at me and paused and in a flourish of her hand we were in the glade with the golden vines and silver arches. I gasped as I felt the cool metal of the vines twirl around my left wrist, small intricate bracelets, like they had done before in my dreams.

"This was your favourite garden." she said, "Mine too, it was something we shared." Looking around it now it seemed so familiar. The tall swaying trees almost seemed blue, not green and the pink and purple flowers draped themselves carelessly from their stems around the edge of the garden. The golden vines shone splendidly in the sunlight and the smell of the grass wafted in my nose. The woman sat down on an intricate silver chair, another formed and I sat down next to her.

"You're mother preferred the livelier gardens." She spoke again, "With water fountains and candlelight, they attracted spirits easily and she enjoyed their company." her smile was sad and remorseful then. "You may not have known this, but your mother was a wild thing when she was young. The parties she used to attend, the dresses and the dancing! Oh she loved dancing..." She looked around the small garden and sucked in her lips, I'd recognised the movement as one of my own. I did it to stop myself from crying. "Your mother... she was my daughter." she finally said and the words punched me in the gut.

"W-what?" i gasped.

"You are my grandchild, Valla. You know this." she said, her sternness returning in a flash of her yellow eyes.

I was speechless, utterly and completely without words. This woman... this ancient being... witch of the wilds... she was telling me that she was my grandmother?! That my whole life was a lie? I stood up from the chair and paced back and forth. My grandmother- whoever she was clicked her tongue and crossed her legs.

"The sooner you accept this, the easier it will be. Come now, dear girl you know I speak the truth." She leaned forward and I stopped my pacing. I shook my head and fumbled for words. Anything I tried to say made no sense.

"But... You can't just... I'm not..." I stopped and started, working myself up into a panic. She stood and watched, made no effort to comfort me. Her eyes were like a challenge.

"My father, who was he?" I demanded and she flippantly laughed.

"A mere servant of my unfortunate other half. A vengeful little sprite who was power hungry and foolish. What happened between him and your mother was entirely an accident."

"Oh, thanks, nan." I scoffed.

She chuckled at that, "It's sweet of you to call me that, but you called me by my name when you were young."

"So what, nanny flemeth? Stop dancing around things and be honest with me, I am owed that much."

She studied me carefully, weighing the decision in her mind before finally nodding.

"When I tell you who I am and what that means, you must promise never to speak of it with anyone lest you put yourself and countless others in great danger. No one, girl and I mean it. Not the Shemlin mage, not the spy, not the dwarf and most certainly not Solas. Do I have your word?"

I nodded slowly, regretting even asking in the first place. She stood slowly and elegantly, brushed off the wrinkles in her dress and walked towards me. Stroking a strand of my hair away from my eyes she tucked a finger under my chin.

"My name is Mythal and you are my last kin."

In a pulse, I could remember everything. Who I was, who I was meant to be and how I came to be here. I remembered towers in twinkling mists, cities that stretched into the sky and more. Forests and woods that glowed with magic and the freedom of it. It was like living in a deep pool, bound by nothing and no one. If the world was something I could change it to another. It was beautiful and it was magical and it was... home. Then flashes of war. explosions so bright and booming they'd turn you deaf and blind. Armies upon armies clashing into dust for eternities. And sombre faces of elves whose vallaslin had not yet healed. Slaves... Their tears entwined with their blood in dark lines down their scarred cheeks.

Slowly it all filtered away, the clarity was lost and I looked at the memories now as though through the dark. There and not there, shifting shadows. Like the hollow tricks of the mind you had when your were a child after hearing a scary story. One thing was certain to me though. They were true.

I found myself sitting and drawing my knees up to my chest, the heavy weight of what I'd learnt settling about me uncomfortably. So many questions ran through my head. What happened that I came to still be here? How old was I and were there any others like me? I was... elvhen... ancient and terrifying. I felt like I should stand against the wall, still as one of the many statues I'd seen representing them. They were me, I suppose weren't they? The people I had revered all my life, I was one of them. I had resented the elvhen and the Dalish absolute belief that we'd never be as good as they were. And Mythal... If she was indeed Mythal, she was a real. Hence, all the other Creators, probably real too... The Creators... June, Sylaise all of them! Real people!

"What in the void does that make me!" I gasped aloud, my voice echoing over the hall and causing Bull to grunt and grumble in his sleep. I covered my mouth, the echo falling onto the dust of the hall. Everything seemed... trivial. Life seemed to just be a great nothing. A meaningless jumble of events that could easily be erased and changed and forgotten. Everything around me was false, the very fabric of my being was a lie. I was not the person I had cultivated over the last twenty-eight years. I was a fraud... An actor, a character in a story. Everything about me was unreal. I looked at my hands. The bitten and bruised fingernails, the skinned knuckles and my slightly crooked little finger. I'd broken it in a sparring match with a friend from my clan, it had never healed properly. The scars and and callouses on my palms, years of working and fighting and living. Was this not evidence enough of my life? These tangible pains, these memories and feelings that sat on my skin could they not be enough? I flexed my fingers and felt the dry skin of my palms stretch. Yes, it was enough. I could still be Nevalla Lavellan.