Ficlets

[mythalenaste]

 Pel opened her eyes and took a quick tally of what did and did not hurt.

More things hurt than not. At the moment her back did not hurt, but her ribs did. A throbbing pain in her side and sharp aches at her sternum. A slow, agonizing pulse in her head--concussion. Without moving her head, she looked at her arm, where the worst pain came from. Blood was everywhere. That had to be taken care of. Slowly, she sat up, removed her scarf, and shakily bound the ragged gash down the side of her forearm. It was cold. Of course it was cold, but the blood loss made everything colder. The wounded arm also seemed to be dislocated at the shoulder, a gift from Corypheus. Her eyes slid closed again, just to take a moment to gather herself.

Mythal, protect those who fled ahead of me. Protect me.

Elgar'nan, grant us vengeance.

Ghilan'nain, make swift my footsteps.

And if I die, Falon'din, guide my soul to the Beyond.

She opened her eyes and struggled to her feet. She almost collapsed again, for one of her knees had a sharp pain. Sprained, certainly from...any number of ways she could have sustained such an injury. One of her ankles was bleeding, but with everything else, the pain was sort of unimportant. She slowly bent to bind the wound with a scrap from the lining of her coat. She had to walk on that foot, after all. Now she had to move.

The first step was the worst. After that, it got easier. It hurt, but she was in motion. Her momentum helped carry her forward, through the tunnel, foot by foot. Even her knee bothered her less as she moved it, and as the cold began to penetrate. It would be stiff after a rest, but she could move. And she had to move, fast. The world swam and breathing hurt, but she had to move.

Her bad foot hit a rock and she cried out in pain. A hiss came from the darkness ahead. Pel stumbled back as the air grew even colder, and two demons appeared, hooded and cloaked. No backup, mana spent, she panicked. And as she raised her left hand as if to ward the demons off by gesture alone, the green slash of light across her palm flared to life. The air exploded, and a rift appeared before her. It seemed to suck everything toward itself except for her, pebbles rattling, demons struggling till they fell apart like crumbling embers in a roaring fire. Then they were gone, and the rift was gone, and the air was still and thick in her ears.

She lowered her trembling hand and sucked deep breaths of air to slow her pounding heart. Gone. They were gone, and there was no more reason to fear.

"Ma serannas, Mythal," she gasped. But even as she shook off one fear, a deeper one took its place. Harder to eradicate, the stone-cold knowledge that she was utterly alone. To continue forward was to potentially face threats she was used to facing with seasoned warriors at her side. But what choice was there?

She walked forward.

___

The tunnel wasn't long. Leaving it was a relief and a terror, because it had been her only shelter from the cruel wind and snow. However long she lay unconscious after the avalanche, it had been long enough for the weather to rise from a murmur to a rage. Stepping into it was like hitting a wall of rashvine nettles that kept pressing, pushing, biting. Far ahead, there was a dim glow, but she wasn't sure if it was the rising sun or distant torches. She went toward it anyway. It was the only way to keep from walking in circles; nothing else around her could be distinguished from the snow and the shadows. She raised her hand to shield her face from the wind, keeping watch on that spot of light between her fingers.

Soon, she stopped being able to bend her injured knee. The cold was freezing her joints even as it reduced the swelling of her hurts. Her toes were so cold, each step was agony. She pressed on, telling herself that soon they would be numb and she would care a lot less. She limped and waded and knew that if she stopped even for a short rest, she might not be able to start again. Sometimes the light was obscured. She kept walking anyway, and when she could see it again, she found had traveled some distance in the wrong direction. Didn't matter. She had to keep going.

There was no telling how long she had traveled when she deduced she must be following torchlight, not sunlight, for it never got bigger. Day never came.

She rubbed her eyes and came away with blood on her hands. The snow had scratched her face till she bled.

A dark smudge on the edge of her sight turned out to be a fire pit. It was as cold as the rest of the night, but she was going the right way.

The light grew more distant, or maybe it was just her vision darkening. She wasn't keeping up with the other survivors. She was going to stumble and fall and never get back up again.

She couldn't feel her feet.

She couldn't feel her hands.

She couldn't bend either knee. Everything that wasn't numb hurt.

She was thirsty. No place to melt snow.

The cold air hurt her throat and lungs.

Ice formed on her eyelashes. Had she been crying?

---

Another dark smudge. Another fire pit. Embers.

Coherent thought had long since passed. Pel's walk had turned into a sort of wide-gaited stagger because she couldn't feel where she was putting her feet anymore. Embers.

The wind had died down, but the snow still fell in curtains. She had stopped shivering some time ago and didn't even feel very cold anymore. She knew that was bad.

One more step.

One more step.

Good, just one more step.

Excellent, just one more step.

One more step and one more step brought her nearer to the edge of a bluff, where two great rocks made a saddle wide enough for a party of refugees to fly through. The snow here was trampled; hardly any fresh had fallen on the tracks.

Her knee buckled and she almost fell. Not yet.

Both knees buckled and it felt like they were breaking. Ghilan'nain, not yet!

Her hand slapped against the rock to catch herself. She didn't feel it. Elgar'nan, grant me vengeance!

Into the crack, where she could see the light of torches. She opened her mouth to cry out, to get their attention, but only a hoarse whisper passed her lips. She flagged against the rock.Not yet! Mythal, save me!

Just a little more. A little further and they could see her. Darkness was closing in, sleepy eyes heavy, head nodding, body surrendering to the false sense of warmth.

Not yet, please, not yet, Mythal, I beg you, not yet!

She pushed away from the rock. Her injured knee wouldn't cooperate. To her horror, she was falling, one foot stuck stubbornly in ice and snow because her knee would not move. Into the snow she fell, and the snow would be her burial ground, to close to her salvation that she could nearly touch it.

Footsteps crunched through the snow.

"There! It's her!"

"Thank the Maker!"

Pel could barely open her eyes. Through frozen blood and tears, she could make out a head of golden hair just as two strong arms lifted her. Her cheek rested against a broad shoulder and her cold forehead touched Cullen's warm throat.

Mythal, ma serannas.

She felt Cullen nearly trip as he ran back to the camp with her. A half-dozen people at least were surrounding her, thick and chaotic as the snowstorm had been. A low wail bubbled in her throat, but she had no more tears to cry.

They put her down in a bed. A mage was talking.

"Do not heal her feet. They must thaw first. Do not warm her with magic. We need blankets. Search the camp for spare blankets, now!"

Someone was unwrapping her bloodied arm, another her ankle. Then someone took off one of her shoes and she started screaming. She barely had any voice to scream with, but she couldn't stop. The searing pain of exposing her frozen feet to the air was unbearable. Then someone was giving her water, someone was giving her drugs, and she flopped back on a snow-dusted pillow and kept wailing. People were crowding around, murmuring, gawking, and she couldn't be quiet and stoic like a proper public figure.

The voices suddenly went quiet, the noise bowing down to the gentle reason of one.

"The Herald has suffered greatly in order to return to you," Mother Giselle was saying. "By the Will of the Maker her body has carried here, but the same Will guides the hands of her healers. Let us give her space now. Come with me, all of you, and we will pray for her swift recovery and the lessening of her terrible pain."

Cullen appeared at her side, pale face smiling wanly.

"You made it," he breathed softly. "You saved us all and you came back. You're on the mend now and you're going to be fine."

"Ella," bellowed the mage healer, "if you so much as touch her feet I will end you!"

Adan sat down hard at her other side and put a few rolled leaves between her teeth. "Chew three times and wad it in your cheek and suck on it," he instructed. Working her jaw was painful, but she managed. It silenced her wailing, at least. Gave her something to do.

The mage started healing the gash on her arm. "It'll scar," she muttered unhappily, "but not too badly."

"What about her ankle?" asked her helper.

"Heal it when it's thawed. It's cut almost to the bone. She's lucky she didn't lose her foot."

"She'd lose both feet if you weren't here," Adan admitted grudgingly.

"Is she going to live?" Cassandra's voice.

"Yes."

Voices started jumbling then, syllables of pure nonsense, flapping jaws and lips. The world became blurred and hazy and the pain lessened. Oh, Sylaise bless Adan, greatest of all apothecaries! She sucked her leaves even more eagerly, rolling them between her tongue and the roof of her mouth. Her eyelids grew terribly heavy, as heavy as the weight of blankets on top of her, sinking her into the cot.

"Andraste blp...blesses you, Adan," she mumbled. "I speak for Andraste, so I can say that. Andraste blesses you and all your kin and everyone related to you, too."

There was a stunned pause from the people around her.

"Good drugs?" said Adan.

"Good drugs."

I'm safe, she realized. I made it. I can rest.

Oh, it would be so lovely to rest. Her eyes slid shut. Her limbs sank into the cot.

She might have imagined a hand touching her face, the barest brush of fingertips, and a whiff of Cullen's scent as he whispered her to sleep.

---

When Pel woke, a different man sat beside her. He was wrapped in no less than two thick coats and had a woolly hat on, but his mustache was unmistakable. So was his smile.

"You really should stop doing this," Dorian said fondly. "I have an incredibly delicate digestive system. Once more near-death experience for you and I'll wind up with an ulcer."

Pel exhaled and smiled. "I woke up," she remarked without thinking. She fell asleep and woke up. That hadn't always been a possibility.

"Yes, yes, don't get a big head about it, you'll be insufferable." Dorian slid a hand behind her head and lifted her just a bit, bringing a cup to her lips. "Come on. Don't get too excited--it's only water."

Pel drank deeply and lay back, smiling at him. "Thank you."

"Thank the healers. They'd be doing this, of course, but they are obligated to let worried friends perform menial tasks to make themselves feel like they have some semblance of control."

Adan squatted down beside him. "He's not wrong. How's the pain?"

Pel moved her toes. She could move her toes. All of them. The mage healer must have healed them while she was asleep. She squirmed a little. "I feel stiff."

"Just stiff? Good. Andraste still blesses me, then."

"Always."

Dorian made her drink again. "Can she eat?"

"If she's hungry."

Hot broth was brought to her. Dorian fed her while Cullen approached, hovered like an uncertain yellow-jacket, and buzzed off.

"A lot of prayers were answered," Dorian said unexpectedly, "when I saw you come over that hill."

"I'm the Herald of Andraste. People were just...praying for themselves, really."

"I wasn't."

Pel blinked. "You...prayed?"

The corners of Dorian's eyes crinkled when he smiled. "You Southerners aren't the only devout folk in Thedas."

"I prayed," Pel said softly, then realized what it sounded like. "To my gods, I mean."

"Ah. Good. Between all our gods, we managed to bring you home." He set the empty bowl down and squeezed her hand. The tips of her fingers tingled as if the nerves couldn't quite wake themselves up, but she felt it. "Ten fingers and ten toes."

She squirmed close enough to him to rest her head on his knee before falling back to sleep.

***

[Note: This is a bit of self-indulgence, since my Dalish savage went to a ball in Orlais wearing a stuffy dress uniform and I never got to dress her up.]

"There's always lavender."

"We can't put her in lavender, Josie. She'll look like a little old lady."

"Lavender is a tried and true shade for silver hair."

"Yes, on old women. What about red?"

Josephine pursed her lips, eyeing the crimson fabric Leliana held up to Pel's body. Pel remained still and silent, deferring to the experts.

"No," Josephine announced. "Not red. Not with her hair and her complexion. A dark blue?"

"Ohh," Leliana breathed, rummaging immediately through the bolts of cloth laid out. "Good thinking. Oh, wait--no, the Empress is wearing dark blue."

"That matters?" Pel asked hesitantly.

"It would be considered a grave offense. What about green?"

"Green would remind the court that she is Dalish," Josephine said hesitantly.

Pel tensed. "Then it sounds like a good choice."

Josephine looked uncomfortable. "Begging your pardon, Inquisitor, but the court will have difficulty accepting you as it is. You should give yourself every chance you can get."

"What about this?" Leliana asked, holding a snowy white-and-silver brocade against Pel. "See how it makes her shine? And it's white enough to invoke a sense of divinity, but the silver instead of gold keeps it from being too...Chantry."

"But the leaf pattern..." Josephine trailed off.

"Too Dalish?" muttered Pel.

Josephine looked desperate. "We must present you in a way that is acceptable to them, Your Worship."

"Must we, dear Josephine?" said a familiar voice in the doorway. "How do you think that would look, to have the Inquisitor begin her court debut with an apology?"

Pel had to give Vivienne credit: she had truly astonished her. As many things as they disagreed on, vehemently, Pel had expected seething comments about her hopeless barbarism in the face of civilized fashion. For Vivienne, of all people, to speak her own thoughts aloud caught her completely off-guard.

The tall woman floated up to her, as was her way.

"My dear," she began, "never underestimate the ladies before you. Leliana is an expert in the great Game and Josephine has great talent for it, else neither could serve you in such capacity as they do. But if you truly want to make it through a night at the Winter Palace, you will need help not only from dear friends who care about you, but from someone rather less concerned about taking risks with you. Now. Instead of starting with colors, we should consider the obvious: your quaint tattoo of the tree on your face."

Ah, there it was. Pel braced herself to unleash verbal fire on Vivienne, but the enchanter held up a hand.

"Not to cover it, my dear. Don't be silly. To highlight it."

Leliana's eyebrows went up. Josephine looked intrigued. Pel continued staring Vivienne down with narrow eyes, still wary.

Vivienne seemed amused. "Don't look at me like that, my dear, it doesn't become you. Think of it: you have no mask, and you can't hide it or make them forget it is there, nor should you. It's an important part of your culture. A gem here and there, affixed to your skin like fruit hanging from the boughs of the tree, and suddenly you've created a fashion. Your tattoo becomes a mask, and shows all of Orlais that the Dalish can polish up their traditions and exist in the modern world, in civilization. And the court will respect such fashionable audacity."

"That is...brilliant," Josephine said with a soft laugh in her voice. "To use the vallaslin as a mask...!"

"One she cannot take off," Leliana bubbled.

"The symbolism!" gushed Josephine.

Pel was slowly coming to understand that Vivienne was not mocking her, mostly from the reactions Leliana and Josephine were having. She reached up to delicately touch the lines that dedicated her to Mythal.

"The mask of a protector," she murmured. "I...really like that idea, Vivienne."

"Of course you do," Vivienne quipped. "Now, as for color..." She went straight for a bolt of shimmering ice blue taffeta and touched it to her shoulder.

"It does bring out her eyes," Leliana mused. "And looks very pretty with her hair. What about little silver beads and crystals, like snow and ice?"

Josephine looked delighted. "Or a lace overgown!" She plucked a shawl from their selection and laid it over the taffeta. It was silvery-white lace with tiny silver beads. "We could incorporate something like this."

"A Winter Lady for the Winter Palace," Vivienne said approvingly. "Do the crystals and beads if there is time for it, I think. Or would that stretch the Inquisition's resources too far?"

"If there is a time to stretch for vanity's sake, it is now," Josephine said.

"We should put live flowers in her hair," Leliana suggested. "White ones. They will have to be freshened up now and again, but it would add a little more Dalish to her look, so it's clear she's not pretending to be Orlesian."

"What about silhouette?" Josephine wondered. "Sleek, to make her look taller?"

"It would only make her look shorter," Leliana interjected. "If we want to increase her presence, it must be billowing skirts."

The discussion continued. At one point, Pel's long silver hair was let down. She was quickly assured that letting her hair down made her look like a little girl, so it was determined that she would wear it up for the ball. Out came the little gems and the paints. Vivienne wanted to cover her freckles, just Josephine made the point that they could not do so without also covering her vallaslin. Braids were plaited, fabrics were draped, and Pel was left exhausted by the end of it.

By the end of the week, however, she had her first fitting. Josephine must have had everyone in Skyhold working on the gown. None of the beads or accents were on it, and it was unhemmed, but as far as Pel could tell, it fit. Her seamstresses, on the other hand, clucked and tucked and pinned things places and had her hold her arms up and stand up straight. There were so many ruffles and yards of fabric that Pel thought she was being swallowed up by a monster.

Her three guardians looked critically at her.

"You don't look very happy," Leliana said, looking a bit melancholy herself.

Pel saw the hopes and dreams of three fashion-conscious women crumble before her eyes.

"You look like you're being consumed by a glacier," Vivienne said point blank. "It was a mistake to make you such a large gown, I'm afraid. If we tame the ruffles, you should be fine. It's too late to start something new."

"Your pardon, Your Worship," one of the seamstresses said suddenly, "Jimmy might have something."

Jimmy, a seamster, went red to the ears. "Enna!"

Pel felt like a draft of fresh air had suddenly hit her face. She turned to Jimmy and pointed. "What do you have?"

He ducked his head, embarrassed. "Something I stitched up with a bit of silk that was too small to do anything with. I thought, in case of an emergency, maybe you'd have a use for it."

"Show it to me."

Jimmy bowed three times. Then half-bowed a fourth time and darted off. He returned with shimmering forest-green taffeta over one arm and presented it to her like a crown. Pel's heart skipped a beat at the sight.

"Let me try it on."

When she was ladled out of the giant blue dress, she slipped the green one on and stared into the mirror. It was simple, utterly simple, and positively tiny. Simple, unadorned green taffeta--shot with black, she could see as she turned about to see herself, but mostly it looked dark green, and darker in the folds. The skirt flared down to the tops of her calves and abruptly ended. The sleeves were purely ceremonial, off-the-shoulder things.

"I want this one," Pel breathed, turning in the gown once more.

"It's too simple," Vivienne said sternly. "The hemline is bold, I'll admit, but they'll think you a pauper in it."

"I..." Jimmy trailed off, blushing.

"Go on," Pel directed him. "Say what you're going to say as an adviser to the Inquisitor in matters of fashion."

Jimmy's eyes widened. His mouth opened, closed, and opened again. "I...thank you, Your Worship. But I...I thought since you're Dalish, the length...and you could still wear flowers in your hair, and I thought, flowers along your neck, and flowers--silk ones, I mean, white silk flowers down your arms with ribbons. Little white silk roses on ribbons, crisscrossing your arms, and a bunch at the side of your waist, and...maybe other colors, as well. A multitude of colors like wildflowers. Like you're...spring come to the Winter Palace. That is how I would dress you, Your Worship."

"Yes," Pel whispered, heart hammering at every word. "Perfect, Jimmy. That does it. You're my new fashion co-ordinator."

"You'll look like a little girl," scoffed Vivienne.

"Beggin' your pardon, Madame Vivienne," Jimmy said with a timid smile, "I'll make sure she doesn't. My word on it."