#body of knowledge

“Vhenan, please,” he said at once. “Stop before you hurt yourself.”

The looked she leveled at him probably would have cowed a lesser man. The flash in those big grey eyes of hers, so pale against the darkness of her skin. Before she could protest, he let magic flare in his blood and dissipated the water on the floor, then scooped up the broken pieces with another wave of force and deposited them neatly on the end table the vase had fallen from. The flowers followed shortly after. Ellana watched with her lips pursed. He was confident that if she’d been able to, her arms crossed. Every part of her radiated annoyance.

“I had it,” she said. Her tone was flat.

Solas looked down at her. Her hair - so much longer now - was hastily pulled back, and despite the cold Drakonis air the finer curls framing her face stuck to her temples with sweat. Her eyes looked puffy with lack of sleep. And, of course, there was the great round curve of her belly, so impossibly huge on her small frame, resting now against her legs where she crouched like a predator ready to pounce.

Although, the thought of her actually pouncing on anything in her state was a bit laughable.

But he had to be cautious. Ellana was an independent woman, and one who always wanted to take care of others before herself, and being both heavily pregnant and having only one good arm had taken a toll on her lately. He did not want to upset her further.

“I apologize for my fear, then,” he said gently. “I was quite startled.” He held out his hand to her - a wordless offer. She sighed, and then accepted it. He had to brace himself well against her weight, but he was close to her, and that made him happy.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I was trying to put that stupid tunic on. I swear it fit last week. And I couldn’t get it on and I got frustrated and I didn’t look where I was throwing it and -” She gestured sharply at the shards on the end table.

Solas’s heart ached to see her so upset. (His heart ached for many things, lately - for her, for the child in her belly, for the world that child would be born into, a world rife with his mistakes - for the lies he held in his chest even now, his new plan.) He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her against him, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“I am sorry, emma lath. Shall I try to help you dress?”

She sighed again, an even more irritated sound, and pulled away from him.

“I don’t even want to put it on. My stomach is so fucking itchy today that I can’t stand it. But I want to go to the market to see if I can find the ingredients for the salve the women in my clan used to make, and it’s too cold to go like this, and half of the city would probably be talking about how they saw Ellana Lavellan parading her pregnant belly around the market if I did it anyway. And I doubt they’d have everything to do it exactly right. The Dalish way.”

“If you give me a list, I can go to the market for you.”

“Really? I could have sworn that you were meeting with Misyl today. You’ve been so busy lately.”

His heart beat faster. Of course she had noticed that, and would remember. And of course he could not tell her that Misyl was on his way to Oruvun in search of a new orb. An orb that could give the child she carried the world they deserved.

“No, I am not. And even if I was, it would not be as important as your comfort.” He cupped her cheek with one hand, and then when she leaned into his touch, cupped the other as well. He did not deserve her. No - he did. He would make sure that he did. He would take care of her. “Give me the list, and try to rest while I am gone.”

It was a simple enough list, Solas thought as he set out. He needed both royal and gossamer elfroot, which the good herbalist on the outskirts of the market would have. He’d also need prophet’s laurel to strengthen its effectiveness. He’d suggested checking the booth manned by elves from Seheron for a plant called aloe, which might make it even more soothing, but Ellana had sighed in frustration once more.

“I know you mean well, vhenan, but - I just want it to be like I remember. Like what the other women in the clan used.”

That was why Solas was also going to acquire a healthy amount of bear fat, instead of butter-soft Orlesian lotions that cost a sovereign an ounce, which he would gladly have lavished on her. She wanted it to remind her of home, and though her vallaslin was gone, and she had not once gone back to see her clan (she was so tangled up in all the ways she had changed, so afraid of how they would see her), his heart was still Dalish down to the marrow of her bones. So he would make a Dalish salve for her, and see her smile before the sun went down.

He had to go to two separate herbalists to get the ingredients (his preferred shop was out of royal elfroot), but it was a simple enough errand. Ellana was puttering around their kitchen, rearranging the contents of the cupboards, when he returned.

“I thought you were resting,” he chided as he entered, setting down his purchases.

“Your child had other ideas,” she snorted. But moments later her hand drifted to the huge roundness of her stomach. “Come here and feel.”

Solas never had to be asked twice to feel his child stretching and turning and kicking inside Ellana. It was a miracle every time. There was a person there, an unquantifiable and unknowable mixture of Ellana and himself, a person he never dared to dream might exist someday, a person he already loved with all his heart - and that person was kicking away at his palm.

Of course, he didn’t have to feel that from the inside several hours a day, and sometimes at night.

“Please, at least try and rest a while. As much as our little one lets you. I will prepare the salve for you.”

“Very well.”

Ellana had moved their mortar and pestle to the cupboard where they kept their simple earthenware dishes, for some unaccountable reason, but Solas didn’t comment on that. He took it down and began crushing the herbs, and adding the bear fat in increments, until it was time to abandon the pestle altogether and work it with his hands. He could feel the cool tingle spreading across his skin as he did so. It was more - greasy than he might prefer. But he hoped the smell and the texture and the soothing coolness made Ellana happy, and made her think of the place and people she had once called home.

She was sitting on their couch, still absently rubbing her stomach in circles, when he was done. She moved to take the mortar from him, but he pulled it away.

“Let me do it for you. I insist. It is the least I can do.”

Ellana sighed yet again (he briefly wondered if he could ask Mithra, their midwife, if sighing was a side effect of pregnancy, and then decided against it), and then dropped her arm.

“Relax, vhenan,” he said.

“I don’t think I have actually relaxed since I came tumbling out of that forsaken rift at the Temple of Sacred Ashes.”

Solas bit back a sigh of his own.

“Well, then I must ask you to try.”

Ellana huffed, leaned further against the pillows of their couch, and closed her eyes.

She inhaled at the first cold touch of the salve against her skin, and for a moment her body was more tense than before. Solas watched her carefully. The arch of her eyebrows and the way she bit her lip. The rise and fall of her chest. She sighed, and relaxed into his touch, and he began rubbing the ointment into her skin in earnest, spreading it evenly over her stomach, marveling all over again at how firm it was, how large, how full of life. It had been months since that day that she told him, wide-eyed, that she was carrying his child, and as transcendental as that moment had been, it was nothing compared to this moment. Seeing the coils of tension unwind and unwind like ribbons, feeling her warmth, seeing the light falling on her cheekbones, waiting with hope for another movement from their child.

“Is that good?” he asked.

“Better than sex,” she said, without pause, her eyes still closed.

He had to laugh at that. “Noted.”

The salve was half gone when her stomach was fully coated, and Ellana’s eyes were grey slits. Her lips were full and bowed again, no longer pursed with frustration. Solas smiled when their eyes met.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“Of course. I would do anything for the two of you.”

Those words restored the tiniest hint of tension to Ellana’s body. He saw it in her shoulders and the way she shifted. He’d said the wrong thing. But she would understand someday, wouldn’t she? What he really meant by that?

“You seem to have calmed both of us,” she said. She was right. He had not felt the child kick in some time. He summoned the tiniest well of magic, and used it to feel for that perfect staccato rhythm. The sound of his child’s heart, still beating inside of their mother’s body. He did this at least once a day, just for the thrill and wonder of it, for the sense of connection it forged.

He loved them both so.

“The women in my clan used to say that a child knows the sound of their mother’s voice before they are ever born,” Ellana said. Her tone was softer now. “I hope that’s true. And I hope - I hope our child recognizes the touch of your magic just the same way, when they are born.”