the secret garden

And she did. The Halla served and learned and was enmeshed in the history she had once sworn to uphold. Keeper's First, child of genocides once left but scraps of identity gifted the awful beautiful whole of her people's lost empire. Never had her heart been so full and so broken.

The Wolf had been haunting her dreams before she was called to serve. Now, he haunted her waking steps. Two servants in the same household. Unavoidable. Undeniable. The Halla tried to keep him at arms’ length, but they were lodestones, drawn towards each other in spite of themselves, caught in each other's orbits.

Necessary tasks became unnecessary dawdling. Hours lost in conversation, camaraderie. Excuses made, schedules altered, buying them more time in each other's company. Fleeting touches growing more bold. And finally, there is a moment, clear as crystal, calm as freefall, a point of no return when the Wolf leans in to claim her.

It would be almost justice, to let him fall, to taste, without knowing who she is, without sharing the history between them yet to come. A skewed reflection of her first foray down this path.

But no. The Halla places a hand on his chest, bidding him stop without pushing him away. There is a truth you must know she tells him. A secret I need to share before we fall further, but one you cannot know, cannot keep, lest we unmake the world with our folly.

The Wolf, the clever Wolf, hears and considers and bids her find a loophole. To tell him what she must, to omit what she must, and be assured he will push for no more than she offers.

A moment of choosing, a moment when the Halla should flee. But the heart wants what it wants and in distant Arlathan where spirits weave in and out of the everyday, emotions can suffocate sense.

So she tells him. She is from the future, called here by magic and obligation. That she grew up in a world where Arlathan is a distant fractured memory, where their people live mortal lives, where the spirits and the power infused all around them are locked away, the stuff of dreams and nightmares. She tells him in her time, they find each other, find love, and then find themselves on opposite sides of an ideological war.

She tells him she fears the him of her time is drowning in regret, alone and adrift, but that he chose to walk away. She tells him there are still truths she does not dare share. And that when her time here is done, when she is returned to her proper place, that he will need to bind away all memory of whatever they are to be in the here and now, less they change the future and destroy everything.

The Wolf listens. Considers. And kisses her, soft as a promise. Tells her how lucky he is, to get to fall in love with her twice.

The heart wants. Wisdom submits to desire. The Wolf and the Halla join, spirit and body, and for a time all is joy and belonging and love.

For a time.

Once upon a time in ancient Arlathan, a beloved Halla was summoned before the gods. It is the King who addresses her, for the Queen and the Wolf are both absent from the gathering. Lovesick Child, he said, you have done so well. We know, about you and the Wolf. You have bound yourselves to each other and in your binding called forth a new spirit soon to be made flesh. Did you not wonder why we pulled you here? You are nothing to us, but everything to him. We see glimpses of the shifting currents of what is to come, hear whispers of the Wolf's treachery, of your hold upon him, and we so hoped you would give us the leash with which to keep him under control.

The King continued with a knife sharp smile and poison sweet words. Do not worry. When your tenure is spent we shall still return you to the future’s distant shore. Your child shall remain here, in our service, to ensure the Wolf’s continued loyalty. While we wait, you shall enjoy our hospitality. The King bid the Halla be taken to his household, under lock and guard.

And she was. The Halla raged and plotted, feeling foolish and bereft. Growing with child, rashly made but desperately wanted. Awful, beautiful - never had her heart been so full and so broken.

She called out to the spirits, who weave in and out of the everyday, who care not for locks and guards and less for the King's cruelty. The Halla begged for their help.

The spirits tell her the Wolf is also imprisoned. The Queen is trying to intervene. The immortal court moves slowly by mortal reckoning and her time is running short.

They tell her she is bound in powerful magic, has been since she was brought to Arlathan.

A trigger, that once her child is born the Halla will be quickly pulled back to her time.

A block, holding all her memories of this time. She will return alone and she will not remember.

The Halla begs, can they be removed?

The spirits tell her no. The magic has been woven with the mark of the Well, willingly accepted in her past, their future.

The Halla weeps. Can it extend to her child? Can she take them away with her?

The spirits tell her no. Partially spirit born, partially flesh. The child would not be likely to survive, not without time to settle. And there might not be time before the spells are realized.

The Halla thinks. Can the spells be modified?

Yes.

The memory block is expanded, extended, twisted to make not just the Halla but all she encountered in Arlathan forget. The Wolf, the gods, time will march on ignorant of any deviance and those who do not remember her child cannot use them against their father. It is made manifest, a foci of faceted crystal and veilfire.

They delay the trigger, as much as possible. To give the Halla what time they can.

They promise to hide her child. To keep them safe in one of the many unknowable folds of reality, a place they know where death and life create a Well of energy that can mask any entity to those who know its ways.

And then they wait.

Once upon a time in ancient Arlathan, an angry King felt a surge of magic tear through his halls and his mind. He knows something has been taken from him, riding magic of his own making, but cannot counter fast enough to recover that which was lost. He tracks the source of the magic to a locked chamber, under guard, and none in his household can remember who or what it contained.

Inside there is blood, a foci of faceted crystal and veil fire, and the quickly fading remains of ritual made manifest. The King acts quickly, drawing in power, calling on the blood and its ties to whoever shed it.

He sees a glimpse, two great spirits bending over a woman who cradles a newly born child in her arms. He knows not who she is, who they are, or why they were imprisoned in his home.

We have one last gift the spirits in the recalling say. One more modification. A key to unlock the memories. Tell us your daughter's name. We will try to get her to you. If she tells you her name, it will free the blocked memories.

And the woman speaks, fervently, with hope and love and sorrow, the magic around them and around the King already unraveling, fading, swept away.

Her name is -

“Amara? What are you reading?”

Amara Ingellvar, apprentice of the Mourn Watch, looked up at her friend, startled. She had read though the papers clutched in her hands twice and still wasn't completely sure what they were describing. “I don't know. Some kind of tragic love story, I think, but it's not finished. One of the spirits gave it to me.”

Sybil frowned, circling around her friend and classmate to better look at the tattered parchment. “Once upon a time in ancient Arlathan” she read aloud. “Huh. Is it an elf story? Why's an old elf story written in Trade?”

Amara shrugged, angeling the fragile papers away from Sybil. She wasn't sure what the story was about, but she felt inexplicably shy about sharing it. “I don't know. Just because I'm an elf doesn't make me an expert.”

“Yeah, I know. It's just weird. Why are the spirits always giving you weird stuff?”

“I don't know. They said it was mine. It's not, I've never seen it before.”

“Well, you should bring it down to the archives. There's time before class.”

“I will,” Amara said. “I just think I need to read through it one more time.”

(In a related note, here's a bad screenshot of Amara "Rook" Ingellvar and Inquisitor Keara Lavellan. I was pretty proud of how much Rook looked like a younger version of her Mom 💕)

Sometimes, there are murmurs that the Grey Wardens acquired their name not by their armor proudly glinting dull silver as they stood proud in their line of duty, but rather, it came from the abysmal rations they're served to this day.

During moments like this, Davrin is inclined to believe them.

Long gone are the days of trays filled with colorful arrays of vegetables. Whatever roots and berries might be in season. Mushrooms expertly foraged. That special sauce his mother would whip up, mashing the ingredients together with a pestle. Mint and onion grass and a type of nut of which he can't quite recall the variety. Maybe it varied. He can't even remember. Just that it tasted like springtime and made any dish, no matter how inedible it might be, a delicacy. 

In the tin bowl before him, he pushes around the thick porridge. An amorphous blob of sustenance (allegedly) sloshes against the metal. Sloughs off the curve of his spoon. It reminds him of the pulp that sat in a pool of cold river water, settling against the stiff netting below. Over and over again it would be smoothed and worked until it no longer was wood pulp but rather pages that would find themselves pressed into books. Bound together and made useful, unlike this fucking slop.

"It ain't getting any prettier staring at it." He blinks, one moment sitting on the riverside beside a girl whose vallaslin was still healing, scabbing against her cheeks, as she smoothed wood pulp into paper. The next, he is back here in the High Anderfels, snowed into this fortress before heading out on his next assignment. The Wandering Hills. Landforms that seem to move about and take cattle and limbs in their wake. Their most recent casualties were followed by a thin vein of Blight, singing, twisting its way into the locals' thoughts and fears. As the pink and oddly chipper Beren—now urging him to eat—explained to him, the hills are said to whisper in the night. A slithering unreal sort of sound. A thing of nightmares. Now, it's potentially tinged with Blight, so it only makes sense the Wardens would be called upon to investigate.

As a boy, he might have shivered at the sentiment, but at this point, he might as well live out his time before his ever ticking expiration date comes to fruition. No better way to spend that than fighting a moving hill, he supposes.

With a sigh, he lifts a chunk of porridge and immediately wonders if too much time has elapsed to go home, at least for a good meal. He dare not close his eyes, nor even blink, for fear that he might see the disappointment in his mother's eyes. The last he saw her was when he said he was leaving. His face still bandaged, he didn't anticipate just how impossible it would be to bandage his heart. Or at the very least, his fingertips as he desperately tried to pick up all the pieces when he departed without even a passing glance from her.