The need to run after him was overwhelming. It spiraled like a gale within her, collecting other needs as it went. The need to scream, to grab him by his infuriatingly broad shoulders and shake him, to spin him around sharply and slap across his high cheekbones, to pound her fists against his lean and well muscled chest, to demand an explanation from his full lips, and to see surprise and apology in his pewter eyes as she gave him a piece of her mind. This and more raged in her as she stood her clenching her jaw and her fists, a weave of frost just barely held in check by her indomitable focus.
He continued to walk away, head hung low and without the usual confident swagger that was so uniquely him. At the mouth of the cave, he paused, and she held her breath, digging her nails deeper into the flesh of her palms. If anything, he seemed to shrink in on himself more, shoulders heaving and hunch before he disappeared into a darkness that even her acute elvhen sight could not pierce.
That was when her knees buckled and she collapsed into the fine gravelly sand at the edge of the pool. She leaned back on her calves and wrapped her arms around herself, clutching at her sides as she began to shake like a leaf in a tempest.
It wasn’t rage that shook her, or grief. It was something between the two, and yet it was so much more. She yet her head fall back, a silent mockery of some primal scream. Even as her eyes brimmed with tears, her throat seemed to have swallowed all her sound. And so the tears rolled, thick and quiet, down her cheeks, the trail of her neck, pooling in her collarbone, and leaving wet spots in her shemlen garments. She was never sure how long she kneeled there, shaking as her emotions stormed through her.
When the shaking finally stopped, when tears seemed to have dried, she stood gingerly, her legs stiff and prickling with needley pain. The moon was hanging low, peaking just above the back of one of hart statues that stood as silent sentinels on either side of the pool. Without thought, she shed the skin of the Inquisition and tossed aside the wrap of her people as she had let go of her vallaslin, and waded into the pool.
The water made her gasp, a thick hoarse sound, that startled her with its depth of pain. It was a sound so foreign to her that she almost didn’t believe it had come from her mouth. She had not reacted like this when Cullen had brought her the news of her clan’s demise after all.
Forcing herself forward, she used her magic to keep herself from freezing, but not enough to dull much of the chill edge the water held. She walked to the back of the pool, plunging herself under the roar of the waterfall. Her finger went to her head and undid the elaborate braids that keep the unruly mass of auburn waves out of her face. It sheeted around her, pulled down by the pounding hands of the water that drummed over her body. She let the falls batter her, not caring if the strength of the water left her bruised, at least then her skin would reflect the damage that had been done to her heart.
Clutching her left hand against her chest, she steadied herself against the slight wall that backed the falls. There was a story, she did not remember where she heard it or if it was Dalish or shemlen in origin, but it came to her as she stood, hoping the falls would drive away her pain, her anger, and her grief. In the story, a beautiful young maiden falls in love with an equally dashing young man, and as is the way of such tragic tale, the young man dies, leaving his love alone. The maiden, as the tale goes, locks herself away in a tower for a year and a day, speaking a word to no one, not even her closest retainers. When she emerges, it as if winter walks in her wake. Her skin sparkles as if frosted, her once raven black hair has blanched to the white of freshly fallen snow, and her eyes are the cold, hollow, azure of the heart of a glacier. From then on the maiden is known as the Woman without Mercy, for joy no longer burns in her heart. Her people flee as an unnatural winter overtakes the land. And though it is said her kingdom can no longer be found, some say you can hear her passionless laughter echoing off the frozen wastelands far to the south.
It wasn’t until now that she finally understood the full extent of the tragedy and caution in the tale. She could not afford to lose herself in this storm. She had to weather it and find a way to move on. As a mage, it was not lost on her at the danger she was putting herself in by indulging in the tempest of her emotions. The Veil was thin here after all.
Slowly she walked back to the shore, using a stronger weave of fire to steam the water droplets from her skin and warm her slightly numb from. She donned her clothing again, hesitating a moment as she weighed her small dagger in her right hand. Thin and sharp, she usually kept it tucked in her boot, a last line of her defenses should her magic ever fail her. Her left hand ghosted over her now empty cheek bones and brow before carding through her still damp hair.
An image of Solas holding her back against his chest, his nose buried in her hair flashed briefly in her mind, as she tightened her grip on her dagger. She could not let go of her love for him. He would always be her vhenan, there would be no other, but she could let go of this and perhaps gird herself against any more storms to come. With a shift movement that left no room for doubt or regret, she began to hack away at her almost waist-length hair.
Before Solas happened, my biggest art collection was of Anders, now Solas is way ahead of him..lol.
The Mass Effect team have an unfair advantage of seniority.
Retour en haut
I have no words.
