H E R E T I C.

                          It  is  time  for  spring.

                                                                 The  land  hears  them  and  obliges.  

          Buds,  dew-drenched  and  supple,  poke  through  the  lingering  snow  drifts.  Grass  overtakes  swaths  of  land,  green  paint  dripped  on  a  blank  canvas.  Dawn  stretches  her  rosy  fingers  across  the  horizon.  She  tickles  the  birds  awake.  They  answer  in  earnest.  

          Hopping  from  branch  to  branch  —  wings  fluttering,  talons  clicking,  heads  tilting  —  they  sing:        

                        I'M  HERE  !  I'M  HERE  !

           Others,  stirred  by  the  song,  peek  their  heads  from  their  nests  and  offer  rejoinder: 

                                                                        AS  AM  I  !  AS  AM  I  !

          This  is  as  it  always  is.  This  is  as  it  always  will  be.  Winter  bows  out  to  Spring;  the  birds,  as  birds  have  always  done,  announce  it  to  the  woods.  Scene  change!  Clear  the  set!  Bring  in  the  ensemble!  

          Bring  in  the  rabbits  with  their  twitching  noses.  Bring  in  the  deer  with  their  bright,  black  eyes.  Bring  in  the  bears,  honey  drunk  and  groggy.  Bring  in  the  foxes,  quick  and  sly.  Bring  in  the  bees!  The  butterflies!  The  spiders!  Bring  in  them  all!

                        I'M  HERE  !    I'M  HERE  !  

                                                                        AS  AM  I  !  AS  AM  I  !

          The  forest  speaks  in  the  way  that  all  things  speak.  In  repetition.  In  mimicry.  It  speaks  through  the  birds  and  the  rabbits  and  the  deer.  Through  the  bears  and  the  foxes  and  the  bumbling  bees.  It  speaks  in  the  leaves  rustled  by  a  puff  of  wayward  air.  In  the  drip  of  melting  snow.  In  the  sound  of  a  deer  feeding  on  supple  buds.  

          And  when  it  stops?  

          Not  all  warning  bells  ring.  

          The  forest  speaks,  and  then  it  doesn't.  Surana,  cautious,  but  curious,  keeps  her  eyes  on  the  deer  in  front  of  her.  She  watches  the  eyes  —  shiny,  black,  unblinking.  She  watches  the  mouth  —  frozen  mid-bite,  foliage  dangling  against  its  chin.  She  watches  its  body  —  the  way  its  heart  and  lungs  make  puppetry  of  its  hide.  Rise  and  fall.  Rise  and  fall.  Her  own  heart  aches  to  match  the  rhythm.  

                      Predator.  

                      Danger.

                                                                       ——————  RUN.

          And  yet,  somewhere  buried  beneath  the  fur  and  the  fangs  and  the  camouflage  she  has  bundled  around  her  elven  bones,  Surana  knows  this  is  a  threat  she  can  handle.  She  knows  the  kind  of  creatures  that  own  a  gait  like  this  gait.  She  knows  the  kind  of  lungs  that  breathe  these  breaths.  Lumbering  through  the  forest  like  a  guest  unannounced,  only  man  (or  dwarf  or  qunari)  can  quiet  the  spring  choir.

———— THE SOUTH IS A DREARY MISERABLE MESS OF COLD, WET, AND DOGSTINK. So the usual, really, and perhaps months down south should have acclimated him to the whole of it, but he’s always been partial to being as stubborn as feasibly possible for the sake of. Well. Being difficult. An immature tendency, to be certain, but a tendency all the same / and he thinks that it’s wholly warranted considering what he has to tolerate in this damned place.

Which is to say : he’s traveling. Of course he is. In the Inquisitor’s company, in fact, which arguably makes it both better and worse considering the sheer amount of killing that they’re doing and the blood on his clothes that’s hell to get out time and time and time again. But, he manages, through diligence and begrudging trial and error in the setting of how very few clothes that he brought with him when he fled his homeland.

Meandering thoughts ———— where are they traveling to, pray tell? Well, back to SKYHOLD, at this rate / a sprawling journey that takes them through mountains and hills and bogs. Quaint, really. Or it would be, if he weren’t quite so irate with the entire thing and the concept of NATURE, ITSELF. How does one hold a grudge against nature? Well, it’s easy : you just resent it wholeheartedly and pretend as though, if it were sentient ( all signs point to it is, considering the magic thrumming through earth and the veil and the sky, itself, half the time ) it would hate you in return.

It wouldn’t. He knows that much, at least.

Still their journey back to Skyhold is a long and arduous one and he’s just about ready for it to be OVER, if only to sleep on a halfway proper bed again. Certainly he doesn’t miss the frigidity of the mountain air / but there, at least, there’s a modicum of peace. Enough so that he can channel a moderate deal of his arcane energy into the warming of the air around him.

They’ve dispatched some demons or two or three dozen in the interim / really he’s lost count / not to mention the random little things that they’ve done, their dear Inquisitor so keen on doing the miscellaneous tasks that random passersby have for them for reasons that Dorian cannot possibly discern / yet he finds that he isn’t irritated by it, per say. Far more along the lines of : finding amusement in the most minor of tasks, whether it be watching the rest pull weeds from a farm or chasing after a missing animal or what have you. The sheer ridiculousness of it all doesn’t escape him but, again : this is what his life has become. Apparently.

❝ You know, Dorian, you could help us. ❞

❝ My apologies, Inquisitor, but I believe it best that I don’t. ❞

❝ What? You don’t like animals? ❞

❝ Quite the opposite, in fact. Animals don’t tend to like me. Strange, I know. ❞

❝ Something that doesn’t like you, Dorian? Impossible. ❞

❝ Yes, well, it’s something about the death spirits, or thereabouts. ❞

( they miss each other / just barely / paths not quite meant to intersect just yet. )

———— Their return to Skyhold is something of a RELIEF, the fact that his toes are numb and his feet are freezing from trudging through the snow aside. And naturally, naturally, there remains that song and dance of reports and reports and reports and MORE REPORTS, Maker help them all / detailing where it is that they had gone / and what they had done / and the progress that they had made in the name of the Inquisition and defeating that dastardly monster come back to life, and et cetera. Yes, the usual.

The usual, punctuated by haggling a bottle of alcohol from the tavern ( the barkeep truly doesn’t like him / and whether it’s the fact that he’s from tevinter or that he’s a mage or that he’s simply himself that fuels it he’s uncertain / but he manages something, at the very least ) and a return to the nook that he had commandeered and utilizes magical energy to upkeep between the warmth and the lack of dust and : a return to the books that he has begun to amass.

With a few new additions to the collection, of course. Which require plenty of restoration.

     Eventually, she extracts herself from the hold of Collin Fischer from Denerim. Though it wouldn’t have inconvenienced her to meet the guards of Skyhold — surely they’ve found worse at the doorstep of the Herald than a slightly damp elf — Surana decides in the end to get a bird’s eye view of the geography.

     If she hadn’t traded her lips for a beak, she might’ve smiled at her own joke.

     Think as a bird thinks. Do as a bird does.

    Her subconscious lets out a rejoinder:

        ·I eat like a bird!

     In which it means:

        I have eaten nothing but bugs and seeds for days!

     To the ferns and the evergreens silent in their observation, it appears as if Surana conjures a thunderstorm. Loud. Bright. Lightning rends day into night into day again. Thunder cuts fissures in the quiet. A storm envelopes a crouching elf and spits back out a bird. As if by the Maker’s will. As if by His hands, folding origami spines when it pleases him.

     To the ferns and the evergreens, she is a paper bird, a charade of a thing taking flight in the midday air. To the sky — to the breeze — to the Mage on the battlements, she is Real.

    To her, they are all a dream.

     Do as a bird does. So she does. Wings unfurled against the currents of the wind, a black arc cutting past a ruffling flag, a looming tree, a head too close to the horizon. Her claw skims the hair of a passerby, and she hears the echo of his surprise long after she’s moved on. Skyhold is much more populated than she imagined. Is it warm from magic or bodies filling its walls? Is it loud from the funnel of stone walls or from the number of voices speaking at once?

     Collin Fischer of Denerim told her people looked to the Inquisition for Purpose. She didn’t have the heart to tell him it lies elsewhere.

     Still, she observes. She notes. She hops along the higher ledges, cocks her head, and finds the pieces of humanity she remembers. Grey Wardens — the blue and silver catches on stray bits of sunlight, and she is nearly blinded by the reflection. She picks out Mages by their robes, and Templars by their shields. Both stir a level of unease with their appearance. If she were given time to sit with those emotions, Surana might have picked them over with some scrutiny. 

     Unfortunately ——

               “Hey birdy birdy birdy.”   It’s the tone, really, that catches her. It’s the crescendoing lilt of someone more cat than elf, more play than pleasantry that coaxes her from introspection. 

     That is, perhaps, why she doesn't notice her deviation from Gherlen’s Pass until her gaze slides over rising parapets. She expects mountaintops, jutting like crown tips from beneath the earth. She expects hawks circling the sun at midday, bears sticky with the juice of autumn fruits, wolves lazy at the mouths of caves. But a fortress, creature made and preserved against the growing chill?

     She's taken a wrong turn somewhere. But that's unlike her — Her feet are better than any compass. They find trails before recollection thinks to speak. Surana buries fists in the pockets of her tunic and commits to turning back, perhaps trying again, when footfalls catch her by the collar.

     She stiffens, breath held. Two legs. Steady gait. The weight behind them suggests Human. Perhaps Elven. Quiet, she tells her heart as it thrums in her ears. Blood obscures the count, but she guesses four people as five clear a small cluster of trees.

     “Oi!” One calls, hand waving, body folding into a jog to close the distance between them. “Headed to Skyhold, too, eh? My mates and I have been traveling a good long while to get here — But what a sight, am I right? —, ” he turns to flash a thumbs up to the closest of his companions. A dimple forms in his left cheek, and, for a second, it reminds Surana of someone. The breath caught in her throat loosens. “Ain't it a beaut, Halden?”

     “Ask me after I've eaten. Everything's looking a bit like food to me right now. About three hours back, I would've sworn George was a fine roast boar. ”

     “He certainly smells like a boar!” Someone pipes up from the back. If he had any further additions, they were silenced by a well placed elbow.

     “Ya don't see me complaining about the stench wafting from all y'all,” says the owner of the aforementioned elbow. George, probably.

     Useless information. Surana makes note to discard it all when they leave her presence.

     The man who spoke initially returns his attention to her, face still split by the smile, hands fixing back wayward strands of flaxen hair. “Seems like everyone's hoping to hook up with the Inquisition these days, huh? Nearly everyone we'd run into talked about it. ‘I want to be part of history’ ‘n all that. Can't say I've got such high aims. Just think it'd be nice to do something useful.”

     Idly, Surana wonders when he'll stop talking. He doesn't seem to notice her silence, at least, not until her gaze shifts from him and from Skyhold back toward the trail down. “Oh, shite. My bad. I've been running my mouth this whole time. I'm Collin. Collin Fischer. From Denerim. And these are my boys — ”

     Maybe he won't stop. Maybe he'll keep her drowned in conversation until the tide of his enthusiasm carries her to the front door of the Inquisition. And maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Something drew her to the frantic energy of a good cause.

     Gossip? Hardly. She keeps a finger on the pulse of the world, but only thinly. Enough to stay out of harm's way. Purpose, then? Uncertain. It's communication with her is vague at best. Which isn't a criticism she can consciously aim at another when her own lacks so thoroughly.

     It could've been a dream, she supposes, dismissed as useless information that managed to bury itself in the marrow of her bones anyway.

     “ — And, uh, your name? What brings you to Skyhold?”