It was quite impressive how fast the Inquisition had expanded after finding a new home. The repairs to the fortress were proceeding quickly, but Ellana doubted they would ever be truly completed. But at least now people didn't have to live in tents anymore, and it did wonders to the morale. Their influence was spilling over to Orlais, though Ellana felt she had little to do with that. She was still out and about most of the time, closing rifts and fatally disappointing Corypheus's cronies wherever they could be found, but the Inquisition was growing much bigger than that. Increasingly her share of the work was to make political decisions and read the reports afterwards. Often she'd have to take them up to her chambers and keep reading until she fell asleep before riding out in the morning.

Presently she was reading up on the current political struggle in Orlais. In the morning she was taking a small detachment to the Dales where said political struggle broke out into a full-scale civil war. Her advisors believed that helping to stabilise the situation would bring them closer to the Empress. Ellana insisted she had to go in person for this one. She sighed, watching candlelight dance in the draft. She was not looking forward to coming back to the place where her people once made their home, it invoked too many ghosts. But she needed to go.

Candlelight danced, and Ellana felt herself drifting away. She shook her head and tried to go back to her reading, but soon she realised she couldn't. She always had trouble reading in dreams. Most Dreamers could, but it required a lot of concentration and, more often than not, there was simply no point. Instead, she stood up and walked through Skyhold in the Fade. It was just as she left it in the waking world, her memories shaping the empty corridors she'd expect to see when walking through them during the night. Her legs brought her to the rotunda almost of their own accord.

Once it was restored in the waking world, Solas took to it for some reason. The place didn't offer much privacy as it opened to the library above, and even higher were the hauntings of Leliana and her spies, so it seemed like the worst place for someone as private as him. But somehow the elven apostate who grew up in a village picked up a liking for painting frescoes, and when he wasn't busy with decorating the walls of the rotunda, it was apparently convenient for him to take books from the library to read at a desk he had installed there or lounge on a small couch. She had no idea where his sleeping quarters were, but by all accounts he didn't seem to spend much time there.

He was here now, studying an unfinished fresco, hands on his hips. On the one occasion she managed to catch him in the act of actually painting one, he was never that still. Instead, he was completely focused on work to the point of being downright unapproachable, giving curt answers that made it quite clear he had no time for anyone but the wall.

"Waiting for inspiration?" she asked. Was that really Solas, or was it a spirit adapting to her expectations of the room? A demon that snuck into her dream? Those were always tedious to deal with, but with time she's learned to sense them and this didn't feel like one.

He whirled around, surprised. Probably real Solas, then, a spirit would play along with the conversation.

"Sorry, wasn't trying to intrude," Ellana raised her hands.

"I should get used to having another Dreamer around," he smiled and turned back to the fresco. "Yes, it's not coming quite right."

She walked over to him and examined the work in progress. The style Solas worked in was extremely symbolic, full of details you had to study before the full picture clicked into place in your mind. It took her a while.

"Haven?"

"Yes," he was frowning at the fresco, obviously unhappy with the design.

"That should catch you up to now." She really tried, but couldn't see what was so wrong with it. But then she had zero talent for painting anything more complicated than stick figures. She wasn't going to ask where he learned to paint like that. He had the same frustrating answer for almost every question like that. She didn't ask why he was doing the frescoes either, though she had a vague idea it was some kind of gift to her, perhaps to reconcile her somehow with the idea of being the Inquisitor. "Why are you doing this in a dream?"

"This type of work suffers no mistakes or indecision. Once you begin, you have mere hours to complete it, or you will have to remove the plaster and start over."

"No wonder you get so irritable when someone tries to distract you, then."

"I don't get irritable," Solas objected, looking back at her with mild indignation. "I am simply focused."

"How focused are you now?"

"I don't seem to be making any progress tonight," he sighed. "Perhaps distraction is what I need."

"Good, because I have the perfect idea for it," Ellana grinned. "We're in a fortress with a long and bloody history. That's your perfect spot, isn't it? Take me to see a memory."

"What do you hope to find?" he asked, agreeably enough, but it was difficult to completely hide one's emotions in the Fade. He was uncomfortable with the idea. Why? Was he jealously guarding his skill at finding old memories? That seemed uncharacteristic of him.

"Tarasyl'an Te'las," she said simply. "There is nothing elven left here. This place had been built over time and again until all traces of them were gone. Take me to the oldest memory of this place, when it still belonged to the People."

"There are so many layers here, it may be impossible to separate. But focus on that wish. Perhaps we will find a trace of something," he held out a hand and she took it, dutifully trying to picture what little she knew of the ancient history of this area.

Solas started walking, and she followed.

And just like that, the rotunda was gone. The fortress was gone and so were the snows surrounding it. They were walking on a hill drenched in moonlight. Two full moons hung low in the sky, almost close enough to touch. Ellana could feel the soft grass under her bare feet. All around them, tall figures of elves in wispy clothes were dancing in complete silence, seemingly unaware of the intruders.

"What is happening?" Ellana asked Solas quietly, fearful that her voice would make the spirits take flight.

"Some kind of celebration, connected to the moon phases perhaps?" he proposed. "Finding a memory this ancient is extremely rare."

"What do we do now?"

"We join in. To them we are part of the memory, and they will treat us as such, unless we cause a discordance," he explained calmly, all traces of his previous discomfort gone.

"You do know that I was being sarcastic when I talked about dancing naked under the moon, right?" she clarified just in case.

"A shame, as that would make you fit in the dream better," he grinned almost mischievously. This was quite a different side of Solas than what people were normally allowed to see. "But it is not required. They do not really perceive us as we do ourselves. To them we would appear as if we belong here."

"Alright," she looked at the dancers with more than a little doubt. Her life was normally spent ensuring the survival of her people and gathering knowledge. Among her many talents, dancing did not feature. Not recently, anyway. "Let's go then."

It was awkward at first. There seemed to be no structure to the dance and no logic to the changing partners. It felt like she was being swept up by a whirlpool and the only thing she could do was try to swim with the current as she was passed from partner to partner, serene beautiful faces blurring into one. There was no sound but the wind and the pounding of her own heart. Gradually, she felt she was starting to understand the rhythm they were dancing to. Not the music, but something deeper, more primal than that, coming through the soles of her feet and in the moonlight above. A memory of magic from the times before the Veil. It was beautiful.

Eventually the strange course of the dance led her back to Solas. He felt different, himself and something more at the same time. They danced, and he really seemed like one of them, even though if she really focused, she could notice he was still wearing the same clothes he did in the waking world. She couldn't decide which "one of them" she meant - one of the spirits? Or one of the ancient elves they imitated? Whichever it was, he belonged here more than he ever did in the waking world. She knew he was old, at least as old as her, and she vaguely remembered she needed to talk to him about that eventually and figure out what else he was hiding, but the dream was enforcing its own laws on her mind, making those concerns remote and unimportant.

She couldn't quite remember afterwards which one of them initiated the kiss. It seemed to just have happened, and then deepened as his hands roamed down her back, pressing her against him… until he abruptly pulled away.

They stood alone on the hilltop.

"We shouldn't," he breathed out, keeping her at arm's length with his hands on her shoulders. "It isn't right. Not even here."

She didn't know what to say to that. The Fade had a way of coaxing out repressed emotions, and she couldn't deny her attraction to him, - or pretend she didn't see that he felt the same. But it really wasn't right. She wasn't a blushing maiden from one of Varric's books, falling in love with a mysterious stranger. First there had to be trust, and that couldn't exist until she knew what he was hiding. And she had to give the same for him. And even then, assuming they found that their purposes aligned… with all that she carried, was she even capable of falling in love anymore? It has been too long to remember what that felt like. But she did remember the crushing despair it led to.

"It's alright," she ventured. "It's just a dream."

"That is a matter of debate," he smiled at her sadly. "Probably best discussed after you wake up."

Ellana came awake with a start. She was sitting at her table strewn with precarious piles of paper. The candle had barely burnt down since she last looked at it. Time could be funny in dreams.

She sighed and went back to her studies on the current state of what the Orlesians glibly called the Great Game.