#Dorian Emric | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dinoswrites · 6 years

Text

Black Coral Chapter 19: Grief

Solavellan, Mermaid AU. Ongoing.

Masterpost | Read from Chapter One | Read on A03

There are two elves sitting on a fence next to the road, looking out over Crestwood Bay.

This would not normally give either of the Grey Wardens pause; the spot would, under normal circumstances, offer a pretty view over the sparkling water of the bay and the sprawling floodwall at its mouth, with a gentle sea breeze to keep them from growing too warm under the summer sun.

It is, however, the middle of the Maker-forsaken night, with rain falling like buckets from the sky, and, perhaps most importantly, there are thrice-damned undead crawling out of the water.

Not, unfortunately, Darkspawn, or they’d be duty-bound to do something about it, orders be damned.

As they draw closer, however, Emric can make out scattered bones on the path, seaweed tangled in some of them. And then he sees the spear resting on the fence beside the young lady—dressed in some appallingly waterlogged but mundane clothing, and those funny footwraps that elves sometimes prefer to boots—and that the young man is trying to keep a broadsword dry under the heavy cloak he’s got the good sense to wear.

Emric waves to the pair as he and his partner draw near, though he can nearly feel the man beside him rolling his eyes in frustration as he does.

“Hello!” he calls, when he is certain they are close enough to be heard above the awful wind.

He is close enough now to see the dark tattoos on the young woman’s face—Dalish then, he thinks, with no more than a quick glance at the man beside her to confirm he has those markings, too. A light colour, but that’s not all that uncommon.

The woman smiles in greeting, but the man only scowls at them, so Emric directs his question to her.

“Miss,” he says, “I’m afraid it’s not safe out here for travellers. There’s a village up the hill, and they can provide you with shelter.”

“We can handle ourselves,” the man says, his accent curiously Tevene for a man with Dalish tattoos, “though I thank you for the warning. I wonder at the quality of such shelter if neither of you will take advantage of it for yourselves.”

Emric tries to smile, but his cheeks are so cold it’s little better than a grimace. “Orders, I’m afraid. We’re to book passage West, once our business is concluded here. No delays.”

The woman kicks something—and Emren looks down to see it’s a skull, the front smashed open.

When he looks back up at her, she’s tilting her head, as if asking him a question. Her pupils are eerily green in what little light his lantern offers him.

“Does your business perhaps include these things rising from the water?” the man asks. “We’ve fought off our fair share, but they keep coming.”

Emren’s partner—possibly exhausted from carrying the extra weight of the water in his clothes—interrupts then. “We are looking for a rogue Warden, goes by the name of Stroud. Orlesian. Ridiculous moustache, impossible to track down. Either of you seen him?”

The young woman shakes her head, and her friend’s brow rises. “Curious,” he says. “How, precisely, does a Grey Warden go rogue?”

“Can’t say,” Emren answers, with a scowl directed at his partner. “But Warden-Commander Clarel has ordered his capture. If you hear anything of him, it would be appreciated if you could send word to the Wardens at Adamant Fortress.”

“Certainly,” he replies. “Thank you for the warning—perhaps we will head to this village then, if there are only more undead on the road ahead.”

Emric and his partner leave the two to their travels, though the elves do not get up and leave when the Wardens do. Before the road curves away, Emric happens to turn and glance back.

They are still there—two pairs of eyes gleaming like wild animals in the dead of night.

Though there are enough elves in the Grey Wardens for it to be a familiar sight, it still makes him shudder as he turns away.

“Adamant, then?” Hawke wonders as she comes out of the bushes behind Fenris, swinging her legs over the fence to perch beside him.

Varric is close behind her, but he simply leans on the fence between the two elves, glancing up at Aevalle. She seems to be focused on the large body of water that spits out walking skeletons every twenty minutes or so, which Varric supposes is fair. “I’ve heard of it,” he says, “but I don’t have a clue where it is.”

Stroud appears shortly after, pulling wet leaves from his apparently infamous moustache. “It rests on an island that rises out of the Abyssal Sea,” he informs them, “formed from a battle on a peninsula during the first Blight. It is at least two weeks’ journey from any settlement worth speaking of, due to the constant storms that plague the region.”

Varric whistles. “Curly’s not going to like that.”

“We can cut that time at least in half with the Keeper,” Bull interrupts, standing up where he had been couching before. Half a bush is stuck to one of his horns, its roots and mud dangling in the air, but he either doesn’t notice or just pretends not to.

Dorian finally emerges from the bushes, not a trace of leaf or twig on his person, to lean on the fence at Aevalle’s other side. “And then we would have no backup from the Inquisition’s formidable navy in case something were to go horribly wrong.”

“I’m not saying we take the whole thing by force,” Bull amends. “Just a quick recon mission—sneak in, confirm that Corypheus is behind the weird Calling, sneak out. No one has to even know we’re there.”

“Oh, that’s a lovely plan.” Merrill climbs up onto the fence beside Varric, casting a spell over their heads to keep the rain off. “It sounds much better than barging our way in through the front door and almost dying, like we usually do.”

Hawke bristles. “Well we can’t all have weird sentient submersible boats, now can we?”

Stroud gives Hawke an alarmed look. “What?”

“And who even says they have a side door,” Hawke continues, “huh?”

Stroud doesn’t look much like he understands, but he says, “The fortress rests at the top of the island’s sheer cliffs, and there is only one approach leading up from the sea.”

“See?” Hawke crosses her arms over her chest. “Your plan stinks. I vote we break it down.”

Aevalle is still staring off into space, so Varric gives her a bit of a nudge.

She startles, then looks down at him.

“You still with us, Drifter?”

She attempts a smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She looks back out to the bay briefly, before turning back to Varric and signing, Something’s not right here.

“No shit,” he replies, deadpan. “And here I thought the skeletons were a tourist attraction.”

“Oh?” Merrill looks out to the water. “Is she talking about the bay?”

“Yeah, she’s had the brilliant idea that something fishy might be going on here.”

Someone groans. Hawke snorts.

She signs again, and Varric nearly rolls his eyes. “Sorry, I’ll clarify—she says the water feels wrong. Whatever that’s supposed to mean, I’m not entirely sure.”

Merrill only tilts her head curiously. “She’s right. I’ve been thinking the same thing ever since we got here—it feels sick, doesn’t it?”

“Merrill,” Hawke pipes up. “You are near and dear to my heart, and I will kill anyone who looks at you sideways—but it’s a giant lake. How can it be sick?”

“It’s not a lake,” Fenris interrupts, pointing to the long wall along the coastline that they can barely make out through the pouring rain. “I believe that is a floodwall, meant to protect this area from flooding during storm season.”

“And it’s doing a great job,” Hawke says. “Except for the giant saltwater lake it’s obviously let in.”

Aevalle shifts uncomfortably on the fence, still looking at the water with no small amount of concern on her features. I’ve felt this before, she signs, and Varric dutifully interprets.

“Where?”

Her lips twist, and she takes quite a while to respond. But she does, eventually, sign, This old ruin, where a piece of the sea was trapped, separated from the deep, and grew stagnant.

“Did skeletons pop out of it?” Bull wonders.

No. She looks very distant as she signs, But something very wrong lived there.

Dorian seems to know what she’s talking about, and reaches to touch her shoulder with a sympathetic wince. Varric glances behind him at Cole, who is still standing in the bushes, but the kid doesn’t give him a hint.

“I’ve felt this before, too,” Merrill says, a note of longing in her voice. “It’s very rare, but… sometimes bits of the sea get trapped by the land, and whatever else was stuck with it gets… well, strange.”

Dangerous, Aevalle corrects.

“Yes,” Merrill agrees. “So it’s odd, then, that they keep the flood gate closed, even though they could have drained it at any time…”

“It became damaged during the Blight,” Stroud informs them, back straight. “It flooded out the old town of Crestwood. Presumably, since the damage is constantly underwater, no one has had the ability to fix it.”

After a moment’s consideration, Aevalle hops off the fence, and starts stripping off her coat.

“Uh, Drifter,” Varric says, “little cold for a swim, maybe?”

She ignores him, throwing her rain-soaked jacket over the fence behind her. Then off comes her shirt—and, for once, she’s got some sort of breastband on underneath that looks like it’s made out of sealskin. Varric finds himself hoping that it’s lined with something soft.

“You are not swimming alone in undead-infested waters,” Dorian begins to argue.

Aevalle ignores him, undoing her belt and stepping out of her trousers. She’s wearing matching smalls as well, and she doesn’t bother taking off her footwraps.

“I hardly think she needs to go alone,” Merrill amends, resting her own spear on the fence so she can take her jacket off.

Varric stares up at her, aghast. “Daisy,” he says. “Don’t tell me…?”

She blinks down at him for a moment, curious. And then she seems to catch on, and laughs.

“Oh,” she says, “Oh Varric.”

“If you’ve been hiding fins on me all these years, I swear I will—”

“No!” she waves her hands in the air. “No! I just know a little air bubble spell! It’s one of the first spells I ever learned! In case someone ever needed help underwater. Really!”

As Varric squints suspiciously up at her, Fenris sighs.

“Stop shaking my arm, Hawke.”

The sound of wet leather creaking indicates that she has not, in fact, stopped shaking Fenris’s arm. “This is it,” she hisses.

Fenris only sighs again.

“In case no one has noticed,” Varric says, as loud as he can, “there’s currently a ridiculous storm blowing through.”

Merrill, stripped down to leathers a little similar to the ones Aevalle is wearing, ignores him, speaking to Aevalle instead. “Oh, before we go down—this,” she says, awkwardly signing, “is everything’s alright, yes? And this is up—and this is down?”

Aevalle impatiently nods to every gesture Merrill makes, walking backwards into the water.

“Look where you’re going for a change!” Dorian shouts, just as Aevalle finally turns and dives into the water.

Merrill follows a moment after—and as they all watch, a bolt of lightning bursts across the sky, catching the brilliant blue of Aevalle’s scales as she leaps once from the water, fully transformed, fins flaring in the air before she dives back under again.

“Subtle as always,” Dorian complains.

“Unbelievable,” Stroud says, his voice soft and full of wonder.

“Unbelievable,” Hawke grumbles, and Varric glances over just in time to see her slap a coin into Fenris’ waiting palm. Fenris has the good grace to only look a little smug about it.

“Did you make a bet with Fenris over whether or not I was just pulling your leg?”

“I absolutely made a bet with Fenris over whether or not you were pulling my leg.”

“You came out of hiding because you thought I was pulling your leg?!”

“And?” Hawke asks, looking genuinely baffled that he’s even asking.

“How is this achieved?” Stroud wonders. “Some—some great feat of magic?”

Varric catches Fenris send a wary glance Dorian’s way. For his part, Dorian doesn’t seem to notice.

“Apparently it runs in the family,” Varric says, making a placating gesture and giving Fenris a significant look. “Only your standard weird ocean shit here, apparently. No magic required.”

Fenris rolls his eyes, but seems to let it go for the moment.

When Varric looks back over at Stroud, he sees Bull leaning over from behind him and putting a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Also,” Bull adds, “something not to go around telling everyone about. Yeah?”

Bull gives the Warden’s shoulder a friendly squeeze.

Stroud is still staring out at the water—but Varric can see him nod, very slowly.

“You know,” Hawke says. “I always thought Merrill was being metaphorical when she talked about this shit. But I guess, in hindsight, that time she got really drunk and told us all a story about how what’s-his-face landed in a boat with fins sticking straight up in the air probably should’ve tipped us off.”

“I thought she was so drunk she forgot the word for feet,” Varric admits, which makes Hawke laugh.

“A moment,” Stroud says, loudly enough that everyone turns to look at him. “Earlier, you said, submersible vessel. Am I correct?”

“Glad to see you’re keeping up,” Varric says. “Yes, we have a ship that sinks. Filled with air so we don’t drown, which is reassuring. And then it goes wherever Drifter there tells it to, and we all pop out and give everyone on shore a pleasant, not at all freaky, surprise.”

“Which is not a secret considering the entire city of Val Royeaux saw us do exactly that,” Bull adds.

Hawke laughs. “Bet that was a hell of an entrance.”

“Adamant once housed the Grey Warden’s gryphons,” Stroud says, “or at least most of them. To this day, the fortress rests on either side of a sheer chasm, where the gryphons roosted in caves carved out of the cliffs, all connected to the fortress above by tunnels that have fallen into disrepair.”

“Fascinating,” Dorian drawls. “And this is relevant because…?”

“Because,” Stroud says, “at the bottom of that chasm, enclosed on all sides, there is a massive reservoir of ocean water.”

No one says anything for a moment, as the realisation dawns on them, one by one. Hawke’s eyes light up. Just as she opens her mouth to speak, Cole, still standing in the bushes, says very softly, “A side door.”

When the sun rises, it does not sparkle on an inland sea.

Instead it shines down on ruined homes, on old bones that no longer rise or take up arms. Years of dirt and silt compacting as it dries out, and the corrupted seawater filters out into the bay.

Aevalle watches it as Bull guides the Mayor of Crestwood out of his home, his hands bound behind his back. She doesn’t look at him, even when Bull begins to walk the man down to the little town’s harbour, where the Keeper waits. She has the piece of black coral Hawen gave her in one hand and her knife in the other as she stares down at Old Crestwood, at sea-soaked timber and belongings scattered on the ground. Some of them catch the sunlight and glitter, though she knows some of it is the bodies of fish, not yet begun to rot.

She keeps turning the coral over and over in her hands. It’s too small, she thinks. Too small a thing, for all the death she’s seen.

They were sick, the Mayor had said. The Blight. Every one of them.

It had not been in his defense. As he said it, he looked relieved more than anything.

She turns the coral again. Again. It’s not—it’s not—

She closes her eyes. Breathes in, and out.

The caves had just been full of skeletons. Full of them. They’re still down there—unburied. Unburned.

In the distance, the tide is receding. Pulling the tainted water with it, back to the deep.

She wonders what will happen to it out there. To all that pain and misery, trapped in one place until it rotted everything it touched, washed away by clear water, pulled past seafoam and wake and out to depths too vast for her to ever dream of swimming.

Deshanna used to say that the tide pulled heartache out to sea, and when it came in again brought hope in its place. Breathe in with the rush of the waves, to gather all your sorrow in your chest—and then breathe out, and let the ocean steal away your sorrows.

Where does it take it all, she wonders. And how much can it hold, before it too bursts.

Solas probably knows, wherever he is. Or, at least, he would have something comforting to say. A story that sounds like old words of wisdom, told a different way.

She wishes she could ask him.

“A word.”

She opens her eyes and turns her head. Fenris is standing off to her side, his arms crossed over his chest. Scowling slightly, but she thinks he always does that.

She raises a brow at him, tucking the coral back into her pocket and sheathing her knife. She gestures to the fence she’s sitting on, but he only approaches a few steps more, and does not sit down.

He seems to be studying her face.

“In his letter, Varric said you were a slave.”

A poor one, she thinks. And she had fought it and railed against it all the while—but he isn’t wrong. She was at the mercy of Felix and Dorian’s kindness long after they became her friends. So she nods, once, eyeing him warily.

He’s still looking at her very intently—his eyes narrow, and she thinks that he’s not finding what he’s looking for. So he holds out his arm, and rolls back his sleeve so she can see the markings there. White lines in his skin, raised slightly, that look almost like vallaslin. Maybe if they didn’t have that odd, almost-shining quality to them.

As she watches, they begin to glow. Blue, and pale, their light catching shadows across his face like reflections off the ocean’s surface.

“My master gave me these,” he says, “and I used them to kill him.”

She watches the pattern of light moving across his face as his markings fade, and he lowers his arm once again.

“If your master followed you here, under the guise of friend,” he says, “I can do the same for you.”

It honestly takes her a minute to realise what he’s saying—and he watches her very closely while she processes it, so he very likely sees the precise moment she realises it. She almost laughs, she’s so surprised—and more than a little touched, at the offer he’s making.

She shakes her head, unable to hide her smile.

Fenris frowns at her a little, shifting his weight. “It occurs to me that I should have brought Varric along,” he says.

She does laugh at that. Silently, a hand covering her mouth out of habit more than anything.

When she looks back at Fenris, he is smiling too. “Hawke wants a drink before we leave,” he says. “You are welcome to join us—she wants to know why Varric is so fond of you.”

She nods to Fenris, and then gestures until he seems to gather that she’ll join him in a moment. She does not follow immediately. Instead, she looks back out to the bay—towards the old town before it, and birds flying through the open food gate in the distance.

She takes out the piece of black coral again, and studies it closely. There’s a bump on the bottom half—one irregularity on the otherwise smooth surface. She turns it over, looking at it from a different angle…

It looks a little like a dorsal fin. Like a halla, or a dolphin, or…

She uses her knife to score the coral, and then neatly break it in half.

It feels like an eternity since Aevalle last set foot in Seahold.

It’s only been two weeks. The longest she’s gone without walking the ramparts in the morning, or lounging on Solas’s couch in his study, or helping with the orphanage.

The change to the underground docks made in that time has been significant, however.

Lights have been brought down and placed throughout; powered by electricity, it seems, because she cannot make out even a trace of burning oil in the air. It is bright enough now that she can see the mosaics and murals clearly, though she can tell even at a glance that they have been damaged by time and the things that have lived down here, and she has to struggle to make out most of the shapes. As she climbs the stairs she thinks there are soldiers in gleaming armour lining the walls, or perhaps just people in beautiful scales, though she can’t tell which. She spies a figure slipping by in the background, and though she can make out a mouth full of sharp, sharp teeth, the figure is depicted in such a way that she’s not certain if it’s meant to be a shark or a wolf.

Both, probably.

Almost all of the lichen has been cleared out, she realises as she steps onto the cliffs above the docks and her feet touch only uneven, worn stone. She finds instead worktables, cables for the lights, piles of equipment and tools that she thinks are magical or alchemical, but she isn’t certain, and Cullen carrying an extremely heavy looking box while a dwarven woman directs him where to set it down.

“Oh,” she’s saying, “not there, there’s a drip coming from above and if the ceiling has any Stormheart in it, we might all explode and die.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Cullen grumbles, his limbs shaking with the weight of the box. Then he spots Aevalle standing at the stairs, and he straightens a little. “Captain Lavellan,” he says, “you’ve returned.”

She tries not to make a face at the word Captain, but she’s not sure she succeeds.

“Good to see you’re well,” he continues, as he slowly toddles over to where the dwarf points next. “I trust your business in the Exalted Archipelago went smoothly?”

She can’t help but smile a little at the sight of him, essentially waddling because the box is so heavy. She nods, her hands behind her back, and manages to keep herself from laughing until his back is turned.

Behind her, the others are coming up the stairs. She hears Hawke whistle, high and long, and then the Champion of Kirkwall comes to stand beside her and sling an arm over her shoulders. “Damn,” she says, craning her neck to look up at the ceiling, which is still in shadow in spite of all the lights added on the ground. “I mean, I prefer things like windows and not underground, but for a place to park a boat it’s pretty nice.”

Cullen, half-bent over the box as he sets it on the ground, freezes in place.

“You dock a boat, Hawke,” Fenris corrects her, as Aevalle watches Cullen finish putting the box down, and then slowly stand up and turn around, “not park it.”

“Nuance. Oh, hey, look who it is. Cullen! Remember me?”

Cullen just stares at Hawke for a moment, looking more than a little shell-shocked. “Yes, Hawke,” he says, “I remember you.”

“Oh, the Knight-Captain,” Merrill says, coming to stand at Aevalle’s other side. “It’s been an awfully long time.”

“It’s Commander now,” he corrects, shifting his weight. “I’m no longer a Templar.”

“Oh, that explains why you look like you’ve seen sunshine in the past, like, year,” Hawke says.

Cullen only shakes his head at them before looking once more to Aevalle. “Captain,” he says, “this is Dagna. She’s an arcanist who’s volunteered her services—”

“Hello there!” the dwarf in question calls, immediately and eagerly approaching Aevalle, as if she has been holding back since the conversation began. “You’re her! The Captain! I’m Dagna, the—well, Commander Cullen just told you, I suppose. Is it here? Your ship, I mean. I heard about it in Val Royeaux and I just knew I had to come see it, but you’d already left by the time I got to the docks and—can I see it? The Commander told me you call it the Keeper, and someone else said that it speaks to you? Is it true? Am I rambling?”

“Yes,” Cole says, which makes Aevalle smile again. “But it doesn’t bother her.”

“You can go look for yourself,” Dorian says, drawing Dagna’s attention to him. “It’s not going anywhere. As for me, I am long overdue for a hot bath, and the most expensive bottle of wine I can find in this miserable pile of rocks. Are you coming?”

I have to report to Cassandra, she replies, watching as Bull leads the Mayor of Crestwood past them, his hands bound behind his back and his head sagging.

“Of course. You’ll know where to find me when you’re done,” he says, and saunters off towards the exit—which has had all the dirt cleared away, and a set of wooden stairs built up instead.

“If you’re to make your report,” Cullen says, “I last saw Cassandra in the training yard.”

Behind her, Varric coughs.

“I heard someone here wants to see our fancy boat,” he says, a little too loud, clasping his hands and rubbing them together. “I would love to show you every single thing I know about that boat. Right now.”

“Well hurry up then!” Dagna says, already barrelling right past him for the stairs.

Hawke briefly squeezes her arm around Aevalle’s neck before slipping away. “Well, I for one would kill for some fresh air. And sunshine.”

“You’re supposed to be in hiding, Hawke,” Fenris chides as he falls into step at her side.

“But it would be nice to hide somewhere sunny for a change,” Merrill pipes up, half a pace behind them.

All the way back by the stairs, Aevalle can finally hear Stroud’s voice drifting towards them. “I can’t believe this,” he is saying. “This is—truly—a hidden dock? Only accessible by a single vessel?”

Cullen looks to him, frowning—and then his eyebrows shoot up, and his hand goes to the place on his belt where his sword should be.

He glances once towards Aevalle, and she responds with the sign for friend. Hoping he understands that much, at least.

His shoulders relax a little. The next glance he sends Stroud’s way is assessing, but no longer alarmed. “Jim,” the Commander says, and the soldier next to him nearly drops the box to salute, before he remembers to put it down. “Have Cassandra, Leliana, and Josephine brought here immediately. I suspect we have much to discuss.”

Halfway through Aevalle giving her report, Dorian comes back down the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “this is—Aevalle, it’s…”

He’s holding a letter in his hand. Dorian’s standing next to one of the bright electric lights, and in its glow she can see the colour of the wax, and the shape of the seal.

House Alexius.

And just like that, she knows.

Dorian is taking her aside and he’s saying words, and telling her how and when, but she already knows. The Blight. Alone, without friends or family at his side.

Once they leave the undercroft, Dorian goes one way—to mourn as he knows best, and she won’t begrudge him for it. But she finds her steps leading her away from the tavern, this night. Down a path she and Solas once walked, down a long beach, to an empty stretch of shoreline where they had sat and she had confessed her failure.

I couldn’t protect them, she’d signed then.

Now, she stands, the waves lapping about her ankles, and she thinks, again, I could not protect him.

Is it irony, she wonders? Varric would know, if she asked him. That she was offered to Alexius as a cover to keep her close at hand until he could turn back time and fix their mistakes with their ritual. That, after failing so completely in keeping her clan safe, her next charge was a dead man?

And he saved her, in the end.

The months before finding Deshanna in that basement are a blur to her, still. A haze of pain and rage punctuated by single, bright moments of clarity. Of peace. Waking up, realising she had fallen asleep under a tree in the estate’s grounds—Felix reading, his back to the trunk. No beatings, when he discovered she’d woken. No anger. Only a smile as he looked up to find her glaring at him, marking his place in the book.

Sleep well?

A wave rushes past her, through her, up to her knees and she inhales with it. She’s crying, now—hot, angry tears spilling down her cheeks. As it recedes she can feel it pulling, hard, and she has to take a step forward to steady herself, so she doesn’t come crashing down into the undertow.

She digs her toes into the sand, and closes her eyes to steady herself. Even as the ocean pulls at that place inside her that always leaps to answer.

It’s not the first time she wonders what would happen, if she just let it pull her as far as it wants to take her. When she was with her clan still, she thought it would mean adventure—that the ocean pulled her to all the places it touched, the lands of the stories her father used to tell.

Now, she suspects that it would only drag her down to depths so deep, the pressure of the water would crush her bones.

As the tide rushes in, she stumbles up the shore, away from the water. Raking a hand through the mess of her wind-swept hair, she catches a glimmer of light on her wrist—and she glances over at it, frowning.

It’s the bracelet Solas bought for her. Moonlight catching in one of the blue, blue beads. The rope isn’t so stark white any longer—it’s been through everything she has since then. Through the flooded basement of Seahold, to fleeing a dragon in the storm-ravaged ocean, to battling a corrupted spirit in a circus tent as it collapsed around her.

The beads still shine, though. Clear, brilliant blue.

Find another clan, Deshanna had begged her. Protect them.

She closes her eyes, and just takes a moment to breathe.

She sits near the spot where Solas had held her, where she confessed her failures and he sang a eulogy for her clan in her stead. She reaches into her jacket and takes out the first piece of black coral, and her knife. There is more than enough moonlight for elven eyes to see, on a night like this, so she begins to carve. She works with the shape of the piece, making the body a little sleeker, carving out a long nose and making a hollow for horns off the back of its head. She carves into its body the whirls her mother used to etch into everything she crafted, as best as Aevalle can remember. As best she can imitate; she does not have her mother’s patience, nor her steady hand.

She has not carved like this in years. Not since she dragged her father’s body back to the clan, alone. It had been a smaller token—she’d nearly broken it in half a number of times. Cut her hands plenty, though she hadn’t felt it, numb with grief.

She finishes the halla before midnight, and she does not cut herself once. She holds it in her palm, and it seems… heavier, now that she is finished. Now that she looks down at it, at the moonlight in the lines she has carved, little flecks of coral dust lingering on the slope of its horns over its back.

It is too small, she thinks, for a whole clan and Felix Alexius. But there is not enough black coral in the world to contain her grief.

She washes the last dust from the carving in the ocean, lapping now at her toes. The tide will start to recede soon. She has no raft of driftwood to light aflame, no voice she can raise in mourning song, but she holds the carving in her hand and thinks, They were my clan. He was my friend.

Seawater drips from the little halla, and for now, that’s enough. So she tucks it into her pocket—and then, after a moment’s hesitation, takes the other half out.

She holds it up to the moon. Lets it illuminate the rough silhouette for a moment. She turns it over until the odd little bump is on the top, and tilts her head a little as she examines the natural curve of the coral. Almost twisting around her finger—a little like Wisdom had curled its great body in the air around her, as it sank slowly to the ground.

Her wrist is framed by the beads on her bracelet. The way they catch the moonlight, it almost looks like they’re glowing with a soft blue light.

She bends over, and begins carving black coral once again.

#black coral #solavellan #dragon age fanfiction #HEY TEAM #LOOK #IT'S AN UPDATE #:D

14 notes · View notes