And Poor Solas! - Blog Posts

Day 7: Free Day

Decided to spend the @cityelfweek free day sketching an idea I had forever ago. For context, this is about a year before Inquisition, juuust before the mage rebellion.

They all smell the smoke before they see it— an unassuming plume that rises from Jenna’s window, belying the danger within. Cries ring out through the Alienages, followed by orders, and soon a line forms through the streets and to the banks of the river. Buckets with water spilling out the sides lead a trail to the danger. The faces of their young are wet with a sheen of sweat and fierce with determination, knowing that if help will come at all, it will come too late.

The fire burns around the water heaped upon it, gathering smoke and rising higher within the walls of Jenna’s home. The work continues, quenching a patch of flame before another can alight. It eats at the roof, thatched straw collapsing to the horrified screams of onlookers.

Then, all at once, it is a memory.

Panicked cries turn to confusion, questions ringing out as harsh as commands while Jenna braves the ashes to salvage what she can of the ruins of her life.

Some swear their last bucketful of water had been the one to quench the flames. Others know what they had seen: it had not simply been put out, it had been suffocated. Erased. Only smoke remains, rising harmless into the midday sky.

It does not take long for rumours of magic to rampage through the Alienage, cooler than the fire, but no less deadly. In the commotion, no one sees the stranger slip from their midst.

No one but Nessa, at least.

She’s lived in the Amaranthine Alienage her whole life, and there are few places in it someone can hide from her like. She catches him in an alley, the smell of a storm clings to his tattered clothes despite the bright summer’s day blazing overhead. It had been decades since she’s last breathed that scent, but she’ll never forget how it raises the hairs in your nostrils. The stranger tenses at her approach, but tellingly doesn’t reach for a weapon.

At least, none wielded by traditional means.

“I have no coin,” he tells her in a weary voice, “and little else to my name but the clothes on my back.”

“I’d say you have more than that, ser. A gift I hear only the Maker can give you.” He flinches, ducking his head so his hood hides his face. She steps forward with her hands cupped around her elbows. “You stopped the fire, didn’t you?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” 

There it is again, she thinks: the sky, come to touch their little corner of the world.

“Neither do I, but I know some who would.” She smiles, despite the bitter taste that lies on her tongue just from speaking their memory. “You won’t be safe out here tonight, and I have a roof. Supper, too.”

The stranger regards her from a distance, as though trying to pry the truth from her words with a glance. Not an unfamiliar look. Those she’s helped before had been just as slow to trust. There are no words in the King’s tongue silver enough to undo that damage.

“You’ve been bit before. I understand, but we’re just two people, my husband and I. Out here, you put yourself in the whole city’s hand.” Nessa moves down the alley. One hand reaches out in welcome. “So come with me.”

The trip back home is less peaceful than usual. They take the back ways, skirting windows and doors before coming to Nessa’s. If she hadn’t lived her whole life, it’d be an easy place to miss. Little adorns the entrance save a potted plant and an awning painted faded yellow. “Here we are,” she says in a sing-song tone, like she were welcoming in any old neighbour.

She ushers him in first, the slide of the lock the sole indication that not all is as it seems.

Inside, the aroma of dinner rises first to meet them. Rosemary and onion overwhelm the senses, drowning out the dust and the dirt. “Looks like it’s pottage for tea,” she remarks. Looking to the stranger, she can’t help but smile at how stiffly he stands. “Well, go on then, make yourself at home. I’ll get you a little something to drink.”

“Bring home another stray?” her husband asks. He’s hunched over the pot like an old witch at her cauldron, flyaway grey hairs waving as if they had little minds of their own. They deflate when he looks over and sees who she came home with, cheeks fattening with a little puff of air as he tuts, “Oh, Nessa. We’ve talked about this!”

“What was I supposed to do, Tal? Edith’s probably got the Templars looking for him already.” It’s an argument that’s played out half a dozen times over the last half a decade. She can’t rightly say who had won the last one, though from the sigh that comes from the kitchen, she’ll say she can count this one hers. “Half the quarter’d be up in flames if it weren’t for him.”

Her tone softens for the stranger, rounding on him with a pleasant, “how do you take your tea?”

“Water would be preferable, please,”  he answers without a moment’s consideration.

“Coming right up, love.” Stepping into their little corner of a kitchen, she adds to her husband: “See? This one’s got manners, to boot!”

Tal’s response is reduced to a disgruntled huff, attention fixed upon the simmering pot. Like he’s watching the Queen’s dinner cook. Nessa grabs a mug from a peg and tilts it into the clean water, returning to find the stranger had taken her advice. Despite how he hunches in his seat, there is a proud set to his shoulders. His hood drapes around them, revealing a clean shaven head and a severe jaw. A man of some years, but still young to her old eyes.

“Sorry about Tal,” she says as she slides into the seat across from him. “He doesn’t mind, really, he has to protest only so he can be right if something ever goes wrong.”

“His concern is not unwarranted. They will not look kindly upon your aid, should they find me.” He palms the cup, a layer of frost forming under his fingertips.

“We’ve had some close calls, but we’ve managed alright in the end.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Once or twice. More since the Mages’ Collective have caught wind of my sympathies.”

“Dangerous sympathies.” Ice begins to form in a thin film upon the water’s surface, moved by currents invisible to the eye. He drinks deep from the cup, voice lighter in the wake of it. “It is a wonder you would trouble yourself at all.”

Nessa smiles, a little pained. “I could say the same of you.”

“Perhaps I speak from a place of regret.” He’s looking at her again, like he’s trying to read a book. A stubborn line creases his brow, and she suspects he’s come away wanting.

“Well, it’s a shame if you do, though I can’t say I’d blame you either way.” Her fingers find the familiar grooves in the table’s surface, and work into them, thumb stroking the seam of the wood like an old cat. Pockmarks dot the table where a little hand had driven the prongs of a fork into the surface. Tal had always meant to fix them, but he couldn’t bring himself to anymore than she could bring herself to throw out the old toys gathering dust in the closet.

She supposes he’d be about the stranger’s age, now. Taller than her, with his father’s dark hair. If it hasn’t already started to go white.

Her hand fists on the table. A sigh carves through her chest.

“It’s the way the world is. Nothing the likes of us can do to change it, eh?”

“I would not discount your courage,” he says. “The world may yet change in our lifetimes.”

“A young man’s hope,” Nessa laughs, “but I’ll pray for it the same.”