"Anything interesting?" This time, when Tali inquires, Morrigan doesn't snap Flemeth's grimoire shut immediately. Instead, when Talvinder stretches out on the ground next to her, the witch keeps the book open on her lap. This time, she answers Tali's question.
"That depends on what you would call interesting." It doesn't escape Tali's notice that the witch smiles ever so slightly. In fact, it makes Tali smile, too. In the days since they've left the Wilds, since they began travelling vaguely northward again and further to the east, the air has become lighter, tensions smoothed over. If it weren't for the Blight and the imminent risk of civil war and the death of the king, Tali might even think that things could pass for peaceful. She doesn't think that, but she might.
"I don't know a thing about magic," she says, settling her arms underneath her head and looking toward the sky. A last burst of summer heat fights against oncoming autumn, and the air is warm under the cloudless starry expanse of nighttime. "Everything about it is interesting to me." Morrigan snorts at that. She's in a fine mood not just because of Flemeth's…handling, as it were, but also because this is the second night they've dined on the remnants of real food, recovered from a safely sealed cellar in an abandoned house. This is, coincidentally, also the second night Alistair has not been in charge of cooking. It's enough to make a stone sentinel smile, having salt and bread again, meat and root vegetables stewed and spiced in the correct quantities, not burned, a color other than grey.
"'Tis intensely interesting, then." Tali fights back a yawn. "Or not, as the case may be."
"That wasn't for you, I swear."
"No, of course not. You are just as bad as he is." With a jerk of her head, Morrigan indicates Alistair, stretched out almost in a perfect mirror of Talvinder's posture across the fire—only he's leaning on a sleeping Abarie, and both are snoring.
"Oh, come on. He isn't that bad."
"When one has their ears and nose plugged."
"Maybe we can return to the grimoire?"
"What you see in him I shall never understand." Tali ignores that. She's gotten good at it; ignoring Morrigan's jibes. She knows now, ever since they've returned from Flemeth's hut, her grimoire unexpectedly in hand, that Morrigan doesn't mean them. She knows that Morrigan is trying her best to get used to the idea of being cared for.
"Is it helpful? The grimoire, that is." Sighing, Morrigan nevertheless doesn't push the issue of Alistair's suitability.
"'Tis…strange. I have learned more of Flemeth in the past week than I learned in over two decades living in her tutelage." Rather than speak, Tali just nods. When they had returned to their little campsite in the Wilds, limping and bloodied but very much alive, Morrigan's face had been as though made of stone. It was only when Savreen held out the grimoire, small and plain and bound in leather but very clearly something of ancient magic, that Morrigan seemed to really believe that Flemeth was gone, vanquished. That she was free. Or perhaps unmoored. Tali thinks that the expression on the witch's face was something like grief, but she still isn't certain. Whenever Morrigan talks about Flemeth, though, it feels like grief. It feels familiar.
"We never really know our parents." Again, Morrigan laughs.
"I think 'tis somewhat different not to know about your mother's rebellious years cavorting with stable boys than 'tis not to know about your mother's ancient rituals. Or the source of her continued existence."
"Well. Yes." Silence overtakes them. It seems that Morrigan struggles with something—the silence feels uneasy, at least to Tali. She doesn't speak, though, not wanting to derail whatever it is that Morrigan is preparing to say. Across the fire, Abarie grumbles in her sleep, legs twitching. Alistair snorts atop her. Finally, Morrigan figures out her words.
"I am…unused to thanking people. I have not had many experiences in which it is required."
"I don't know if it's ever required, exactly," Tali starts, but her words earn a withering expression from Morrigan, so she falls silent once more.
"'Twould appear that it is required in this moment." There is a grudging quality to Morrigan's voice, and as she speaks, she lets her fingers glide across the pages of the grimoire in her lap, skin ghosting over letters and words. "I was…perhaps…wrong to insist that you say nothing to our companions." Tali sits up. She wants Morrigan to know that she takes this seriously. "'Twas a reasonable act of defense on my part, but…I misjudged the others." Tali will not smile. She will not. That would only serve to irk Morrigan. She does not want that. "I misjudged you." Now, finally, the witch closes the grimoire, though she still refuses to meet Tali's gaze. "It is possible, probable, even, that you went through with it simply to keep me among your party. You are in grave need of allies, and I am far more than simply useful. But…"
It's as if her words run out. She seems almost at the end of her rope, clutching at fraying fibers and trying to tell where they will take her.
"But you have shown me more kindness than a judgement such as that would indicate. I…thank you, Talvinder." A smile bubbles up through Tali's chest, rising slowly to her lips. She doesn't try to hide this one.
"I didn't do anything alone," Tali says, and Morrigan looks just at a point over her shoulder, chewing the inside of her cheek.
"I am aware."
"Savreen was the one who thought about the grimoire, actually." Morrigan looks down at the book, too small for its importance, too ordinary. Too many pages which hold too few answers—that much Tali knows.
"It…I…'twas a kind thought."
"You? Saying 'kind' without disgust? Unbelievable!"
"I remain imminently capable of turning you into a frog at any moment." Talvinder chuckles. For what feels like the first time, the silence they drift into together is amiable, relaxed and even comfortable. The others, having gone to bed, have left them alone—alone with Alistair, who, Tali remembers with humored chagrin, insisted he was barely tired at all. They'll have to wake him for his watch before they retire.
"What was in the bundle?" Tali can't help but ask—the curiosity eats at her, too difficult to keep buried. Morrigan sighs in response.
"So full of questions, are we?"
"As always." She thinks, perhaps, that Morrigan might not answer the question. That's fine with her, really. It's a personal question, after all, and Morrigan so struggles with those. The witch gazes off, into the distance, as though she can find the place where the horizon and the night sky become one. But it is far too dark for that: they blur together just at the edge of the firelight.
"I would prefer to speak to that answer later." It is an answer that is not an answer, and yet it still brings a smile, slow and unbelieving, to Tali's face. This means that there will be a later. It is something she has not yet known Morrigan to do, to say, to indicate, not in all the time they have been travelling together.
"It is perfectly fine if you don't—"
"I shall do as I please." There it is. The sharpness, the prickle. Almost just for the sake of it, it would seem. It is familiar, even if it is not the openness Tali wishes for. It is better than the silence or the anger, though. It is enough.
"Indeed you shall. I don't think anyone has ever been able to convince you otherwise."
"'Tis not for lack of trying." Tali yawns again, choking the sound of her chuckles.
"I'll wake him and head to bed, if you don't mind. Are you still set for third watch?" Nodding her head, Morrigan, too, stands. She does a good job mostly of keeping the tiredness from her own face, but she's ever so slightly unsteady on her feet, and Tali notices that she clenches her jaw almost as though she's fighting against a yawn of her own. Soon we'll both be asleep, she thinks, longing more than a little for a real mattress. But they've traveled so far and so fast lately that the bedroll and the ground are a blessing and a comfort regardless, so Tali hurries to wake Alistair before she finds her own patch of soft ground and curls up, not bothering to pitch her tent in the warm night air. The stars are too pretty for that.
"Talvinder—" Morrigan's voice stops her, though. Tali turns back to her, not quite sure what to expect. "I am not—I am not practiced in relying on others." There is unease and awkwardness in her voice, but still she continues. "I am, perhaps, worse at it than giving thanks." Tali looks to her, waiting for any other words, but there are none.
Maybe there don't need to be.
"I'll see you in the morning," Tali says.
Morrigan, in response, smiles.
They are still a day or two from the Brecilian Forest when the shape of the trees, dark and bluish green, begins to loom on the horizon.
"It is enormous," Leliana says, her voice somewhat breathless—although, Savreen notes, that could simply be thanks to the speed of their movement, which has remained steadily just below a jog for the past several hours. Savreen feels a touch guilty about it: she's been pushing them, feeling the slight chill that comes on the night air more keenly, worried for the time left to them to stop the Blight, thinking endlessly about the situation in the capital. Thinking about Howe. She needn't have marched them so fast today, not really, but she wants to feel as though they are making some sort of progress. Wants to feel in control of one thing.
"'Tis a remnant of the great forests that covered the continent," Morrigan pipes up. She, too, is winded. Savreen slows her pace now. "Back from the days before the fall of Arlathan, before the Tevinter conquest."
"That is impressive, to be sure," responds Zevran, "but it begs the question: how are we to find a clan of Dalish elves within its borders? It seems to me to be an endeavor similar to seeking a needle from a bale of hay." The frown that rises to Savreen's face is a difficult one to conceal. It isn't that she hasn't thought about that, exactly, but that she doesn't have an answer, for all her thinking. She's been hoping an answer would simply present itself, but thus far, there's been nothing. Nothing at all.
"The veil is thin, even here, so far from the trees." She turns to Morrigan, taking in the witch's words as she speaks. "And 'tis thinner still within the forest itself." It isn't quite clear how that's meant to help them, not just yet, anyway, but Savreen holds her tongue, waiting for Morrigan to finish. "The paths within are said to twist and turn, and only those who know what it is they seek may find it."
"So, it's a magic forest, too, then?" Savreen notices that Morrigan does not even attempt to hide the heavy way her eyes roll at Alistair's voice.
"In the limited vocabulary of a child, one might say such."
"Hey—"
"Then what you're saying, Morrigan," Tali interrupts. Savreen can't help but notice the way her cousin places a hand gently on Alistair's elbow, the way he turns toward her, the way his irritation ebbs away and he falls silent immediately. "Is that if we know what it is we're looking for, the forest will help us find it?" Shrugging and smirking, Morrigan responds. She, too, sees Alistair's instant surrender at Tali's intervention.
"Something like that. 'Tis hard to say exactly: the stories of the forest are many in number and contradictory in nature." Their group lapses into near silence once again, so common a state, fended off only by the sound of armor in motion and the panting of Sher and Abarie. At the front of the group, Savreen lets her mind wander. Her feet move, carrying her along, but the shape of the forest seems as far as ever, even as the ground changes beneath her. It could almost be relaxing, were it not for the faint ache in the bones of her feet and the dread in her wandering mind.
It is maybe an hour before she notices that Sten has joined her at the front of their little column, on the side not occupied by Sher. He moves with an assured step, and though his face is tired, he gives none of it away in his long, confident stride.
"Are you well?" Savreen asks him. His eyes remain forward, trained ahead of them as he answers.
"I am." At that, Savreen can only nod. She likes walking next to Sten, just as she likes it when he sits next to her at the fire. She thinks, perhaps, that he understands her, in a way only her family have before. They say nothing for a while, simply walking, simply thinking. In Savreen's mind, she walks along a road of thoughts, moving through them as she moves across the grassland. She has left home, has left everything, has left herself, and it strikes her in that moment that it seems nothing will ever be the same, that she will only ever continue leaving moments, places, things, people. She is not sure what to make of it.
"Do you ever miss home?" she asks Sten. He, in turn, thinks about her query, and then answers slowly and deliberately. Above them, the sky has begun to tinge purple and orange, a sign of the oncoming sunset.
"I am here until my task is completed." Savreen frowns.
"Do you never wish it was finished already?" There is no delay this time.
"Qunandar is beautiful at this hour, just before sunset." He is here, next to her, but his eyes see something far away. "The great domes are roofed with tiles of blue and gold, strung with long banners of red silk, and as the sun begins to set over the sea, the waves and the city glisten as one. It is the busiest hour in the markets—work ends just before evening for all but the shopkeepers, so that one may visit the markets at the end of the day, and you can hear the sound of life down to the harbor, even out on the waves of the Boeric Ocean." He pauses, and it gives Savreen a moment to think, to imagine. Blue and gold and red, the sea and the sound of the market. "Much of my life has been spent stationed in Seheron, between both the capitol and the outpost at Qarinus." There is grief in the way he says it. It is not an answer to her question, and yet it is. It is.
"What of you?" Sten's own question startles Savreen, and she stares up at him—something she isn't used to doing, not at her height. She has only ever had to look up at Talvinder before. "Your home, as you said, is gone. What will you do when your task is complete?" She hasn't thought about that.
"It will depend on what the Wardens need from me," she says, diplomatic and uncertain. Sten raises a single eyebrow. Savreen would like to give him a real answer, and so she continues, voicing thoughts she has barely allowed herself to think. "But…all that is left of my family remains in Hasmal. My mother's sister, my father's uncle. I visited them once—it is a long crossing, over the Waking Sea and north through the Free Marches." As she says it, she can feel an ache inside of her. She remembers the sight of the sunrise, alighting on the golden temple walls, the river cutting through the city. She was only twelve, but she remembers the smell of the incense, the way it mixed with her aunt's perfume and the texture of her palm as it cupped Savreen's face. The sound of her voice as she called the little girl the perfect image of Chadda. She remembers that her aunt looked like her mother, too. "Perhaps I will return."
Sten does not ask her how she conceives of her duty, how it will continue, what it will look like. It is for the best, maybe, because she doesn't know. Ranjit's words creep into her mind, his reminder that duty and the self can coexist, that she is allowed to want things. She must be allowed to want for a home, such as it is, and Hasmal is as much a home as she can imagine, with Highever Keep destroyed. There is no guilt in that, is there?
But what will her duty be, when this is done? Sten hasn't asked, and though that may have been for the best, Savreen cannot escape the question, because it rattles inside her own mind. She finds herself speaking, as much to herself as to Sten.
"My duty—the nature of my duty will depend, of course, but I will be a Warden still. I will serve others still." She has thought about wanting, though, and now she cannot stop thinking about it. "But I can do that wherever I am, can't I?" Ranjit—will he go with her? Will he stay with her? She would stay with him, if she had her way. If she were to get what she wants. That word twists in her gut. Want. There is more that she wants. Her thoughts of Howe rise to the surface once more. She wants him to suffer, wants him to know the pain he has caused. She wants to hunt him. She wants him to fear her.
This is not a road she should continue down.
"You will return," she asks instead, abrupt, forcing herself back to her conversation with Sten, "you will go back, to Par Vollen or Seheron? When this is done?" Surprisingly, Sten presses his lips together, forming a thin line of emotion that Savreen cannot quite decipher.
"I cannot."
"You can't? Why not?" Sten lets out a sigh, melancholy and uncharacteristic.
"It is…complicated. It is possible you would not understand."
"I would make an effort to, regardless." She is surprised at how quickly Sten seems to take her at her word. He launches into his explanation softly.
"I was sent here, as I told you before, with seven of the Beresaad—my brothers. We were meant to seek answers about the Blight." Savreen nods. She recalls their meeting, recalls his words. "We sought the Tevinter fortress, deep in the South. Ostagar, you called it, I believe. We were told your king was there. For a time, we made our way across the Fereldan countryside without incident, without danger. Nowhere did we see the threat we were sent to observe." A pause here as he rolls his lower lip through his teeth, not quite biting the skin. His voice, when next he speaks, is faintly bitter.
"Perhaps we grew too complacent, too used to the ease. After a life spent in Seheron, fighting alongside her people, in constant battle against the invasions of Tevinter—the peace of travel through free lands lulled us. We camped by Lake Calenhad that night. They came in the darkness, from everywhere. The earth beneath our bodies gave way. They leapt from the air above us. Our own shadows harbored the Darkspawn, gave birth to them."
"What happened to the others of your group?" Savreen asks the question, but he was alone in Lothering. She knows the answer.
"I cut the creatures down before I, too, fell. When I awoke, I was far from the place. In the back of a cart." Sten looks at Savreen, and then away, toward the horizon, where the sun has begun to set. "I am told no others survived."
There is a pang, deep in Savreen's chest.
"I am sorry, Sten." He nods, acknowledging her sympathy, and then he continues.
"I do not know how long I lay among the dead, nor do I know how the farmers found me. I only know that when I woke, I was no longer among my brothers. I was on a road to a village named Lothering, without my sword." Frowning, Savreen recalls his empty scabbard. She tries to make her glance toward Sten's back surreptitious—he's had a new sword for some time, of course, but there, strapped to his back, are two scabbards: one of dull leather, harboring its charge, the other inscribed with Qunlat, embellished with red ribbons, still empty.
"Your sword?" Another nod.
"You…understand what it is to have a soul, do you not?" As he speaks, he gestures to her kirpan. Savreen runs a hand over the hilt of the blade.
"I think it is a little different, but I understand what you mean." There is a faint softening around Sten's eyes, and he continues.
"I am Sten of the Beresaad. My sword is my soul. It is my oath, my devotion, my duty, my purpose. It was made for my hand and my hand alone. I have carried it from the day I was set into the Beresaad. I was to die wielding it for my people, or to return to the streets of Qunandar with it raised aloft. It is—was my very being."
Savreen takes her turn to nod, but she does not interrupt.
"I cannot return to Par Vollen, or to Seheron, without it in my grasp. It would be like returning without my very self, without the blood in my veins. Even if I could cross Ferelden and Tevinter alone, without my brethren, to bring my report to the arishok, I would be cast out by the antaam. They would know me as soulless, a deserter. No soldier would cast aside his blade while still he drew breath. And so I may remember Qunandar at sunset. I may complete my duty. But I may never return. I cannot." His words leave Savreen unsure of what to say, how even to speak.
"Why did you remain in Lothering?" she asks at last.
"My fate was laid before me: the life of a true outsider, a true grey one, a Tal-Vashoth. They said the battle at the fortress had gone poorly. That the Blight would be upon the village soon enough. I intended to let it take me, perhaps to hold the road for any who sought to flee. It was foolish, perhaps." Shaking her head, Savreen smiles ever so slightly.
"To feel pain is never foolish. That would be like saying it's foolish to bleed when your skin is cut." Sten's mouth twitches.
"It matters not, now. I am travelling with you. I will learn of the Blight, regardless. I will fulfill my duty, even though there may be no completing my task, no return."
"Maybe we'll find a way—" There is almost a smile on Sten's lips when he looks down at Savreen, silencing her.
"You are a creature of hope."
"That's always been Tali's job more than mine," Savreen says.
"You do not think yourself hopeful?"
"Maybe I would call it a duty of optimism." The laughter that rumbles in Sten's chest is bittersweet, but it is laughter nevertheless.
"I did not think you would understand as you do. I thank you." When Savreen looks out to the horizon, the sun has mostly set. Twilight chases the last rays of light through the grasping leaves of the far-off Brecilian Forest.
"The outpost at Qarinus would begin to light up with lampfires at this hour," Sten adds.
"You do miss it, don't you."
"With everything that I am."