Ell strode purposefully back to the cabin. Though she did not have the same physical need for food or water here in the Fade as she did in the physical world (curiously, she did still need to sleep), she found it comforting to attend to her physical body in this way, to continue the mundane rituals of her life before the Fade. She gathered as many supplies as she could carry. Her staff, a utility knife, two daggers, a small cook pot, the rest of the loaf of bread, a pouch of dried fruit, a change of clothes, a bedroll, and her logbook. Her eyes lingered on the bar of soap she had carefully infused with Embrium resting atop her wash basin. She considered briefly before grabbing it too, and tucking it into the pack. As she exited the cabin, she eyed a wisp hovering just outside. She paused for a moment, waiting for it to follow. "Well come on then." The wisp bobbed, perhaps cheerfully, and drifted along in her wake as she stalked back across the clearing.
Another wisp joined as she arrived at the dragonthorn plant. She fell to one knee to examine it. There was nothing remarkable about it, other than that it did not belong in this forest. She knew the fruit to be poisonous, but the leaves could be used to make an anesthetizing salve. Aloud she told it, "I do hope I have no need to make use of you," as she carefully plucked the leaves from their stems. She continued in what she hoped, and had to assume, was a westerly direction. Without a map or compass, maintaining her bearing would be challenging, but she did her best to note distant landmarks as she clamored over sprawling, moss-grown tree trunks and cut through thick vegetation with her blade.
The air was crisp. Though she maintained a dependable skepticism, she could not stifle this new determination that propelled her forward. Her body felt electric, the way she felt after casting a particularly powerful lightning spell at close range. She almost felt like smiling, alone in this forest like a fool. The wisps still trailed her, though they would likely fall back as she made her way further into the forest. Around what she could only guess was midday, she reached a stream. She had been here once before, the time she had walked the furthest she ever had away from her cabin in the clearing, when she had found herself back in the clearing after two days. Curious. She paused to drink deeply of the cool, clear water. She was fairly certain that she would not fall ill from taking in tainted water, dissociated as her physical body was here in the Fade. Even in the physical world she would have felt quite confident drinking of this water, given the clarity, pace, and altitude of the stream. Well, whatever altitude means here. The wisps had yet to fall back, though she thought they had left her before arriving at the stream the last time. She continued on. And, perhaps because dreams and thoughts of Fen'harel had played a role in setting her on today's excursion, she allowed her mind to drift to him.
...
She had found the subtlety of his attentions to be irresistibly intriguing. A leveraging hand extended to her as they scaled steep hills and descended into dark caverns on the Storm Coast, and not to Lady Vivienne beside her, who, of all her companions, was the only one of them who could reasonably expect such a gesture. A lingering glance as she slid out of her effective but cumbersome adventuring gear and bent to lay it near the flickering fire, grey blue eyes fixed on freshly visible skin, as if exploring a newly unburied ruin in the Fade. As she turned to make her way back toward her tent, the fluttering of long lashes was the only indication of his indulgence, curious eyes already scanning the pages of some tome. If any semblance of interest had existed there before, his face was now expressionless, as it so often was. In order to be appreciated, such gestures had to be sought out and then measured carefully against the austere and restrained persona he maintained in front of her companions, and even then she could not be sure. Or, perhaps, it was that she could not admit how much she desired the attention she doubted.
Their closeness was reflected clearly in their synchrony in battle. She found herself executing increasingly risky spell combinations, as she was ever aware of Solas' keen perception and skilled improvisation. An attentive barrier spell, carefully timed and cast from a distance enclosed her just as she spent the last of her mana and reversed her staff nimbly to position its blade defensively. She swung the bladed end sharply and dispatched one, then another rage demon, arms outstretched to strike at her. As she whipped around to address the fear demon she had caught approaching her moments ago in her periphery, a loud BANG and an explosion of force—the enormous creature's singed and smoking form slumped to the ground inches from her feet, finished off by a fire mine. Ell's mouth fell open, her heart surged, and an incredulous laugh pushed its way out of her lungs as she marveled wide-eyed at the deadly and graceful precision with which she and her Elven friend had maneuvered together. Her eyes bounced from the smoldering remains of the demon at her feet to Solas, wearing a cool smirk as he closed in on Ell and the rest of their party.
"That," Ell panted, still grinning as Solas reached her position, "was incredible!" Cassandra and Varric had recommenced their trek along the trail and were several meters ahead.
"You are a force to be reckoned with, Herald," Solas replied with a proud grin that did not go unnoticed, eliciting an unwelcome heat in her cheeks.
Even if he had not told her he was self-taught, she would have been able to deduce as much by observing his style in the field. The magic of Circle mages, though graceful, always appeared quite…rehearsed. A circle mage might follow up on a spell with a complementary one in less than a second, but she had never seen such a mage seamlessly weave the two together as Solas did. "Your style is unique, Solas" Ell observed as her heart settled and the two fell into step behind the Seeker and the dwarf. She began attentively scraping the ichor off of her staff blade with a piece of cured leather as she continued, "It's...erratic. Unlike anything I have seen."
"Perhaps you are perceiving the effects of my unconventional training," Solas offered.
Ell, satisfied with her work, swung her staff into a leather sheath fastened to her back. "No, that's not it. Self-taught mages have a certain...heavy-handedness about their casting. Yet you casted that fire mine right under my nose and it was primed and lethal just in time for that fear demon to unwittingly detonate it. That is the sort of precision I've only ever seen from highly trained mages of the Circle. Decades and decades of disciplined practice..." she stopped herself as she noticed Solas' expression falter.
A familiar calm veneer quickly replaced it as he spoke, "You are quite impressive yourself, lethallin. Quick on your feet. Your spells are composed with a fortitude beyond your years."
Ell smiled at the compliment, but the exchange had felt odd. She gazed ahead blankly as they hiked along the path, lost in contemplation of the strange hedge mage and his many incongruencies.