AN: Only weekly updates from now. Warning: Swearing included. Enjoy!

I Choose You

Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not. -ROBERT M. PIRSIG, Lila

Arlathvhen was disappointing.

I had imagined an organized meet, a festival or at least a party to commemorate meeting after ten years. But it was just a group of Dalish coming together around a fire. Food was hunted and distributed like it was just another day. From the numbers, it looked like we were part of one big clan. As boring as this was, it was safer; outsiders wouldn't know that something important was going on.

The Keepers had sequestered themselves into a private cave while Hahrens met up and did some idle chit chat. I sat with the 'extra' mages, looking awkwardly from one face to another. There weren't many, just five other mages. There weren't that many Keepers either, around twenty from the rough estimate I'd gathered before they rushed into the cave.

Suddenly, the implications of that number had me freezing in horror. The Fifth Blight hadn't even started, and the Dalish numbers were already severely diminished. If I calculated the number of people in each clan and extrapolated, even if I used an optimistic average, the number of Dalish left were only a few thousand, if even that.

My stomach curdled at the conclusions that formed; for there to be such less of the People left, and if the tales told by the Keeper about shems attacking were true, then there was an ethnic cleansing of elves underway.

Really, there was no 'if' about it. Humans were known in my previous world for performing race cleansings using some macabre or racist reasons, and this was Thedas. The elves were considered sub-human, at worst, only useful as slaves, or at best, treated as second class citizens. When considering all the abuse elves had faced from humans, the Keepers had been extremely smart in avoiding human civilization as they had.

I couldn't use my world ethics or tactics. Non-violent protesting would just result in a massacre. Rebelling would result in a massacre. An outright war would result in massacre. We were so outnumbered that a big enough conflict with humans would result in extinction.

We needed to keep the humans away. If the Chantry propaganda that had run rampant in the game was even slightly true, then the Dalish had always been right in staying away from human conflicts.

But the Dalish nomadic lifestyle wasn't conducive to large populations either.

A nudge brought me out of my depressing thoughts and I looked up to see five other faces peering expectantly at me.

"Huh?"

"What's your name?" A redheaded girl asked, raising her hands in exasperation.

Fuck. Not over that yet. Deep breath. "Erelani," I returned slowly, "What's yours?"

"Ellana. Weren't you paying attention at all?"

"What?" Her name was Ellana? What the fuck. Wasn't that the default name for the Lavellan clan?

"Ugh." She turned away from me and began chattering with a small white-haired child whose gender I couldn't tell.

"Right, um, sorry. I'm Erelani, what's your name?" I asked a brown-haired boy next to me but tried to include the others too by smiling at them.

"I'm Selon," Selon pointed at a black-haired boy, "that's Alashi," he pointed to the blonde girl, "that's Silana and whitey doesn't have a name."

With a sudden jolt, I realized that the others were much older than me, in their preteens. The thought discomfited me because standing out was never a good thing, especially among a group of children.

"Why are you here?" Ellana suddenly asked, turning back to look at me. She was the most gregarious one in the group, actively engaging the one in conversation while the others watched.

"I'm a mage." I stated quietly.

Her face scrunched up, forest green eyes twinkling in annoyance, "Well, don't think that they'll pick you just because you're a baby. I am the best at control in my clan and I can speak Elvish and Trade really well," She stuck her tongue at me, and it suddenly struck me that despite her annoying behaviour, she was a cute kid, "They're going to pick me first."

If this was going to be popularity contest, then I'd failed before I even entered Arlathvhen. I didn't care about seeming likeable.

"Is it really a popularity thing?" I asked Selon, since he seemed the oldest.

He ran a hand through his hair in nervousness, "I don't know. But my Keeper did say that being well behaved mattered." That was just adult talk for behave properly and stop annoying me.

Whitey spoke up in small quiet voice, "I heard that if no one takes you, they set you out into the wild. Clanless."

I froze in fear. I remembered such tales being told in the game, but I'd dismissed it as misinformation that the Dalish spread to prevent human intervention.

But I was okay, wasn't I? Keeper Zathrian wanted me. I was safe.

But still, having such a sentence hanging over your head was horrible, "I don't think that's true. There aren't that many of the People left, they wouldn't just set a child off like that."

"But we're mages!" Alashi cried out.

"Most clans only allow for a maximum of three mages," Whitey confirmed in a small voice.

"Keeper Zathrian isn't like that. He has a lot of mages in his clan. And not just him, even Keeper Nelfran does. Each clan is different." I insisted.

"I guess." Alashi quieted down with tentative hope on his face.

Silana finally spoke up, addressing Whitey, "Sooooo, why don't you have a name?"

"They don't think I have much time left." Whitey's tone was cautious and I couldn't help what I blurted out.

"Dreamer, huh?"

Whitey jumped in alarm and gave me fearful look, "I-that is-No! I'm not!"

I stared at him in confusion before it dawned on me; he was a Dreamer. He didn't have foreknowledge of how this world worked. He didn't know that the Fade wasn't what everyone said it was. He thought he was a guaranteed future abomination. Everyone probably feared him for what he was.

Like me.

Empathy rose in me, "It's fine. My name is Erelani and I'm a five-year old mage." When he stared at me without comprehension, I explained, "I'm a Dreamer too."

"What?" Whitey looked at me with a mix of emotions, "How is that possible? You're way too young to have acquired the gift."

I just shrugged, it was what it was. "Your clan didn't name you yet? My mom only named me recently and only after I yelled a lot."

He returned the shrug, looking uncomfortable.

Not naming someone like that, it just…it made my blood boil. "It isn't right."

Ellana spoke up to break the tension, "Well it's not too late now! I know a lot of Elvish so I can help!"

"You wanna do that?" I asked, poking him for a response.

He looked around and rubbed his neck in discomfort, "I'm not supposed to."

Surprisingly, Selon, Alashi and Silana rose and sat close to him. Ellana placed her arm over his shoulder and gave me a look.

Right. I sat in the only available spot, on Whitey's lap, and took his hands in mine, "You can choose whatever you like."

Selon interrupted, "It'll just be between us. And when the others ask you later, you can tell them you chose this name."

Whitey looked a little overwhelmed, "I…I don't know."

I got excited and clapped his hands together, "Do you like Legolas? Or Elrond? Thranduil?"

"Such strange names," Silana stated, "Do you like Mahanon? Mahariel?"

We all got into it and spewed random names, eventually stating increasingly ridiculous names. I stated all the names I knew, including Fenris, Solas, Isabella, which got a few laughs.

Whitey listened patiently to all the names and laughed at ones he didn't like. Eventually he interrupted our suggestions, "I think I like Thranduil."

I squealed and pointed a finger at Ellana in victory, "Yes, I win! I give the best names!"

"You mean like Erelani, for a Dreamer?" Ellana rolled her eyes but patted my head gently.

"So, what does it mean, Thranduil?" Silana asked, a curious tilt to her head.

"Uhhh," I really didn't know, "I just thought it was a really cool name. All royal and king-like. What I'd imagine Arlathan elves to be named."

"Yeah, that's what I imagined too," Whitey agreed with a small smile, "Hi, I'm Thranduil."

"Awww." The girls squealed before all of us gave him a group hug. Thranduil let out a sheepish smile.

The six of us were lead in front of five Keepers. The logical math there made me uncomfortable, but I dismissed it. All my arguments before had been logical. With a dwindling population, it would be stupid to send even one of us away.

One by one, the line depleted, Keepers leading their chosen ones away until only Thranduil and I remained. Only one Keeper hadn't picked yet, a bald middle-aged man with a severe expression on his face. A vague sense of deja-vu confirmed his identity, but the trend of picking only one mage made me extremely nervous, dismissing everything else.

"You, boy, come here."

Thranduil passed me a sorrowful glance before moving towards the Keeper. The other Keepers circled tighter around us, as if preparing for something.

I knew I was being intensely obtuse when asking but, "So, where do I go?"

"Child, there are no other clans that have a spot open." Keeper Zathrian was armed, but his tone was sympathetic.

Shock. Disbelief.

"Ok, what am I supposed to do now?" My mind wasn't really processing this situation. I just couldn't understand. The Dalish had a depleting population, why would they send me away?

"Perhaps you'd like to make your way into the world? Your Keeper tells me you didn't like the Dalish way of life. You might like living with sh-city elves. You can find either an alienage or a Circle of Magi and tell them what happened." Zathrian explained.

I am five years old! How am I going to survive such a journey?!

They want to get rid of you. You're nothing but a burden to them. A walking time bomb. You think you're a godly being they can't control? You're nothing but an emotional child too dangerous to keep around.

Laughter echoed in my head. Desire.

Let me in, and we can show them the consequences of messing with us! Aren't they monsters? Throwing children out into the wild where bears, wild sylvan and darkspawn linger, isn't that the Dalish way?

Let's teach them a lesson. The consequences of messing with a god.

A white light broke me out of my trance. Someone had erected a barrier over the camp, excluding me from its reach.

I was the threat. I was proving them right.

No one controlled me.

The whispers faded away.

Desire held too much sway over me. Despite my grudging admiration for it, Desire was an opportunist. Until I could show it the benefit in keeping me, me, Desire wouldn't stop its harassment.

But once Desire was convinced, what about the other spirits? I was always going to be under threat from them and consequently a threat to others around me.

A prod with a stick made me open my eyes. Zathrian receded his staff and tilted his head in curiosity.

I didn't want to die in the wild. There was no way a five-year-old could survive alone in the forest, not even me.

The little innocence that I had retained from being a child faded away. To survive, I needed to be beneficial to Zathrian and to his clan. While the morals in my previous life were useless, the knowledge wasn't.

"I know I'm a danger to you as a somniari. You are right in picking Thranduil because he can control his emotions better. But you should keep us together."

"Sorry, child but it isn't safe for the clan. We are already under attack, but watching for threats within the clan will become difficult." Zathrian explained gently.

"I'm not a regular somniari," I lifted my left hand and showed him the veilfire glyph, "This was done when I was just a child. I was hoping to relive the incident in my dreams and find a way to recreate these glyphs. If we succeed, we will have more ways to retain knowledge than just drawings and oral stories."

Zathrian gestured to the other Keepers to stand down and crouched in front of me, "Nelfran mentioned seeing memories of things he'd never seen before when he activated the veilfire," he mumbled, "if I take you in, you will respect the Dalish way of life. You will not hurt your brethren or behave in an unbecoming way."

That had been surprisingly quick. I had been about to tell him about being a reincarnation, but he'd given in so easily. But then again, no one really wanted to sentence a young child to exile.

"I promise. I am Dalish. The best remnants of the Elvhen."

Zathrian nodded and placed a gentle hand on top of my head. My facade cracked, relieved tears running down my face. Thranduil enveloped me in a bear hug as I started sobbing.

I knew what this was. Peer pressure to conform. Join or leave. Knowing didn't change anything, because it was effective. And conforming to be respectful of my peers wasn't bad. I had been lashing out at others due to my pain and delusions, but that didn't have to continue.

I could do a whole lot worse. Humans would have made me tranquil by now. At least Zathrian had agreed while asking almost nothing in return. He was right to be worried that he had two Dreamers in his clan and despite his better judgement, he'd taken me in. Whatever he was to outsiders, he was a kind leader to the Dalish.

There was a lesson that my Keeper had been trying to teach me that finally took.

Respect and tolerance.

I had forgotten the motto that I had adopted when I had first come into the world. I just had to adapt. I needed to let the other world and its morals go.

But it was easier said than done.

Years passed.

I was proud to be Dalish. I was particularly happy that I had joined clan Arwen.

Thranduil and I learned with a zeal that Keeper Zathrian took great pride in.

We learned everything they could teach us; archery, daggers, basic magic. These were compulsory fundamentals that were taught to all mages so that they were never caught off guard against shems, templars or even werewolves.

There were more than a dozen Hahren mages in the clan and they used little tricks to make tasks more efficient just like I imagined mages could. Temperature spells, glyphs, nature spells and other charms that could be varied in intensity depending on the application.

Learning to do these spells outside of the Fade was an experience. For me, doing spells in the Fade was as easy as intent and visualization. Across the Veil, it was like trying get a thread through a needle. You pushed, missed, adjusted then pushed until you got a tiny trickle of power. Then try again until you got a steady trickle of mana from the Fade. The mana that hahrens talked about was just the essence of Fade permeating their being. When they used up the essence, it took time for it to replenish across the Veil. I didn't understand why the other mages had such a hard time realizing this, but perhaps it was easy for me to comprehend since I was a somniari. Thranduil agreed with me.

I learned to use mana better so that 'threading the needle' became effortless. At one point in my training, it became more about using the available mana efficiently, using spell strategies and combinations than accessing raw Fade power.

I couldn't reconcile this concept. While it was prudent to use mana efficiently, I couldn't help but begrudge the necessity across the Veil. From the analysis and study carried out by Keepers over the years, I theorized that if I could maintain enough connections across the Veil, I could enjoy a significantly larger pool of mana. But any such executions thinned the veil around my person which frightened the Keeper. Therefore, any new ideas for spells or applications had to be restricted to the Fade and the only person I could show was Thranduil. Unfortunately, Thranduil didn't share my enthusiasm and always tattled to the Keeper.

Eventually, worried about my activities, the Keeper tried to redirect my scholarly fervour towards the veilfire glyph on my hand. I remembered the analogy that had worked, but I was reluctant to have another glyph burned on my person, so I attempted to guide Thranduil through the process.

It was extremely difficult. I had to create a new school of thought.

How was I to explain electromagnetic waves and their functions to Thranduil? I wasn't even sure that that was what had provoked the veilfire. Truth be told, I wasn't even sure that this world operated within the same laws of physics. This, in turn, lead to me running a series of experiments to confirm the basics forces of the world. Having magic as a tool helped.

My experiments lead to the following conclusions: the fundamental forces existed, but the Fade component of the world introduced a modification factor that made them different. Essentially, the Fade factor allowed magic to manipulate the fundamental forces without destroying them, but the more matter needed to be altered, the greater the expense of magic. The threshold magic requirement for overcoming the different fundamental forces was drastically different.

Gravity was surprisingly malleable, but when taken constant, it had a very different value from Before. This provided a very puzzling mystery for Thedas had two moons and if gravity was really so random, those moons should have crashed onto this planet a long time ago. The answer, in retrospect, was obvious. It was Fade magic.

This discovery poked a hole through my People Are Robots Because Of No Fade theory, because Fade essence did exist across the Veil, just in much smaller amounts, flowing through the Veil membrane and compensating for the moods of gravity.

This behaviour was bizarre. Alien. Gravity was supposed to be constant for a mass not change arbitrarily.

Maybe the only consolation, the only normal, was that we were all carbon-based lifeforms. At least, elves, were carbon-based lifeforms. We were extremely compatible with the Fade, and it took very little to form a connection with it. More often than not, the ability to wield magic was a decision for elves, one that very few, understandably, made.

Surprisingly, a lot of my brethren enjoyed partaking in these experiments. They helped me conduct these experiments, affirmed values, repeated experiments for accuracy. They thought science was fun. They enjoyed learning about the behaviour of nature and loved expounding on the virtues of our race.

When I explained the basic design of a telescope to the blacksmith, Leras, and the nature of optics and foci, he created the first rudimentary telescope. My Keeper was really proud of me for that one. There were times I created things just to get Keeper Zathrian to claim how proud he was of me in front of the clan. I think he knew.

My clan loved me, I loved them; it was a welcome change.

I didn't mind the constant state of war we had against the werewolves. The way I saw it, it was the least they deserved for tormenting our clan. And what was a few human lives worth when compared with the Dalish? By the law of demand, Dalish lives were more valuable because we were dying out.

I was glad when I found that I could help my fellow mages when they dreamed. I kept the demons away by pulling them to me, then had Desire banish them away.

I reached a tentative truce with Desire. It wouldn't torment me and in exchange, I shared my knowledge and desires of the waking world. Desire still retained its malevolence though. I didn't know what to do about it. Willing it away didn't work. Calling it a spirit and seeing the good in it didn't work. You couldn't just ignore the malice directed at you, pretend it didn't exist. I thought about ways to redirect its purpose, but Desire would just scoff condescendingly at me.

I was aware it changed because of me. I knew why; I had directed my darkest desires at it as a child, and Desire had enjoyed it. Reversing the process was a mystery that I hadn't yet solved.

I was as happy as I could be.

Then the Hero of Ferelden came into our lives.