Fingers drifted lazily across bare skin, languid and gentle. A soft sigh escaped gently parted lips which tugged into a smile. “That tickles,” Cassandra whispered.

Melodie raised herself up onto her elbow and breathed a laugh though her fingers did not cease. Along the curve of the hip, across an expanse of soft belly, along firmly muscled arms, anywhere they could go, they did. Lips pressed to a bare shoulder, mumbled against the skin there, “I cannot resist.” The fingers continued their ghosting path, leaving nothing untouched, and the lips began their own path up to the crook of the neck. “’Her skin glows with the light of flame, more precious and fuller than brilliant amber’” she whispered, eyes drifting along her lover’s body which did indeed seem to glow in the flickering warmth of the fire.

“A poem? Now?” Cassandra huffed a laugh, and Melodie could practically feel the eye roll.

Melodie smiled and kissed Cassandra’s neck again, savoring the moment. Her hand came to rest atop Cassandra’s hip, her thumb drawing small circles against the skin. “Hush,” she chastised. Cassandra laughed again but conceded with a wafting of her hand. “Merci, mon ange.” Melodie moved to rest her cheek atop Cassandra’s shoulder, her eyes trained on the movement of her hand. After a dramatic clearing of the throat, she continued:

It is nearly impossible to put into words the breadth of her allure from those hazel eyes which bid me bonjour to the voice as welcoming as songbirds

“Ugh,” Cassandra huffed. “That is so cheesy.”

Melodie huffed back and flicked her lover’s hip. “Fiche-moi la paix,” she grumbled.

“What does that even mean?” Cassandra laughed.

“Mon dieu, Cassandra.” Melodie could not help the giggle that bubbled from her chest which was echoed in Cassandra’s own laugh. Clearing her throat once more, she exasperated, “May I continue?” with a broad gesticulation.

Cassandra snorted and cast a look over her shoulder. “Who is the author?”

Another huffed “mon dieu” and Melodia swatted Cassandra’s bare ass playfully. “I did of course.”

“Oh.” Warm hazel eyes blinked wide with surprise, cheeks darkened with embarrassment. “I…” A shy, warm smile spread against her lips while she lifted her hand to tuck a curl behind Melodie’s ear. “Then, please continue,” she whispered.

Melodie pressed a kiss to Cassandra’s wrist. The warrior turned onto her back to give her lover her full attention, her thumb caressing her cheek with all the tender affection she could muster. Melodie leaned into it, her eyes flickering about her face as she studied it a moment longer, her own cheeks a dark pink by now. With a confident but quiet voice, she continued:

To be in her presence is like no other. It is the same magic to urge les fleurs to bloom, the captivation of the ocean draws to her lips, et la mystique of les forests exists in her eyes. Her strength rivals that of les montagnes, infallible and breathtaking for it is in her embrace that one may find home.

It is by la grâce des dieux that I am able to say je t’adore, doudou.

“What did you just call me?” Cassandra lifted up on her elbows, pulling away with mouth agape in a poorly concealed unreleased laugh.

Melodie blinked, not understanding her folly for a long moment before, “Oh—I—mon dieu, Cassandra,” she huffed with exasperation. A swat to the shoulder pushed Cassandra back to the mattress. Laughter filled the room as Melodie swung her legs over Cassandra’s hips, her hair falling about them in gentle curls. “It is a… Maker, how do you say… an affectionate—no, a term of dearing?” she explained haltingly, blanking on the word.

“Endearment?”

“Oh, oui, that!”

Cassandra laughed unabashedly, her hands coming to rest at Melodie’s hips. “Somehow, I do not believe you,” she teased.

Melodie stuck her tongue out and huffed. “Truly, it is. It is like… Soft. Like a child’s toy, a soft animal.”

“Are you implying that I am a teddy bear?”

Melodie sat up straight on Cassandra’s hips, her hand to her chin in a dramatic display of pensiveness. “You are certainly soft like one,” she mused.

Cassandra gripped Melodie’s hips and held her tight as she sat up, her mouth coming to the base of her neck. “I will show you soft,” she threatened, her grip lightening as her arms snaked about Melodie’s waist. “Many things I have been called in my life but never soft.”

Melodie giggled, her arms coming to rest lazily atop Cassandra’s strong shoulders. Lips moved against flesh slowly and deliberately, eliciting soft sighs and breaths from Melodie who let her head fall back with a lazy grin. The hands about her waist moved up, fingers trailing long lines to come to rest against the back of her shoulders, cradling her close as the mouth at her neck trailed up to the chin then at last to the lips, those lips which she had savored endlessly for nigh on a year now. She pressed Melodie closer to her, their bodies flush against one another as their lips moved together, her hands finding their way into the other’s tangled mess of waves.

They parted breathless moments later, each as pink as the other. They both took each other in for a long while, their fervor releasing with each soft brush, each stroke, as they looked into each other’s eyes. Melodie brought her hand to Cassandra’s cheek and, as she had done thousands of times before, drew her finger along the length of her scar, her eyes trained on it intently, and Cassandra leaned as she had done thousands of time before into the touch, her eyes drifting shut.

“Thank you,” she whispered, though whether to Melodie or someone else, she could not be sure.

“But of course, mon ange,” purred Melodie in her thick accent. “I will have you know I spent a full hour to write that poem.”

“Oh my, a whole hour?” teased Cassandra, leaning back to look upon the woman in her arms. “However will I return the favor?”

“I am sure we could come to some sort of… arrangement.”

Cassandra laughed at her waggling brows, free and comfortable here in this room. “Maker, but how I love you.”

Melodie stilled, her blush returning full force. Cassandra blinked, only realizing moments later that this admission was their first. This was a truth both had known for ages, even before their first embrace, but never said aloud. It laid unspoken between them like the thinnest of glass, fragile and precarious, as if it would shatter if it were acknowledged. It lay now at their feet in millions of tiny shards, the veil lost, and she was left standing truly naked and vulnerable.

Moments passed in silence. An eternity, it felt, each second longer than the last as they looked at one another. Did time always move so slowly?

“Do you mean it?” Melodie whispered at long last.

Cassandra swallowed hard. Of course she did. They both knew it. To ask was pointless. “I…” She sighed, relenting to the moment. Her soul had already been bared, to hide it now would do no good. “Yes. I… do.”

And then Melodie smiled. Softly at first, then wider, and then she began to laugh. Cassandra, startled, could only watch as Melodie threw her head back, her body shaking in her arms, her laughter filling the air around them. The fingers against her scar moved to the back of her head, and a grinning set of lips were on hers. Tears were left on her cheeks as Melodie leaned back to beam brilliantly at her, still laughing as she cried. “I have waited so long to hear you say these words, mon ange.” Another kiss, this one lighter, hands cupping her cheeks delicately as if she too were made of glass. “I love you, Cassandra. Maker help me, I love you so much,” she mumbled in between kisses.

Cassandra’s strength seemed to fail her in her relief. They fell back in a fit of giggles, Melodie still crying, Cassandra’s own grin pushing the limits of what her face could muster.

The next hour passed in a blur of teasing kisses, soft caresses, surprise tickles, shrieking laughter, quiet admissions, and long gazes until they lay beside each other, everything to be said already said. They looked into one another’s eyes, hands held loosely between them their only form of contact, both wearing the same lightly dazed smiles.

“Melodie?”

“Mm?”

Cassandra raised a brow, her smile turning into genuine curiosity. “That thing you said before. What did it mean?”

“What did I say?”

“That… Fish mwah in pay or whatever it was.”

“I…” Melodie stared at Cassandra for a long moment before sighing heavily. “We have been in each other’s company for three years, Cassandra, how do you not know this yet?”

“Well? What does it mean?” she huffed.

“Leave me alone.”

Cassandra narrowed her eyes. “You are not going to answer my question?”

Melodie’s stare only deepened. “That’s not…” She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, visibly trying not to lose herself as she bit back laughter. “That is what it means, mon ange,” she choked out, evidently pained with her efforts to keep her composure.

Cassandra’s cheeks darkened. “Oh,” she muttered lamely. “I see.”

Melodie giggled at her lover and stretched out to peck the tip of her nose. “Oh how I love you,” she teased.

Cassandra raised a brow at her and drew her hands away, folding her arms across her chest. “Fish mwah in pays, .”

Dripping. The chill in the air was worsened by the dampness of the room and the biting of cold metal about her wrists, but it was the dripping that woke her. The room was dim, the stone dark, the smell of mildew and stillness all around. If she had to guess, Melodie would say she was in a dungeon of sorts. A guard stood in the corner, watching her with arms folded across his chest. If she had to guess, she would say he was a Templar based on the Eye upon his chest plate.

Her arm felt strange, heavier and tingling as if it had been asleep. A sudden flash of light and a jolt shooting up her arm ripped a gasp from her throat, made her whole body shake. Maker, what was that?! Three more guards seemed to have materialized out of thin air, making four of them who all had swords caging her, ready for the kill. Melodie nodded once, slightly, and stilled her body in an attempt to assuage their paranoia.

The green light continued to flicker and crackle intermittently, casting an eerie glow about the room, and she observed it closely. Her hand looked the same. It was still clearly her arm, uninjured though her sleeve now hung loosely from her shoulder in tatters. A fog roiled in her mind, one that hung thick and unyielding over any memory of what brought her to this place, try as she might to cut her way through. Wherever this green light came from, she was sure that she did not remember.

A door across the room burst open, two women storming in behind it. The one who bore the armor of a Seeker of Truth walked deliberately about Melodie upon the floor, her hand resting casually but threateningly upon the pommel of her sword. The hooded one stepped into the light, a flurry of furious emotions upon her face and in her posture from her stiff shoulders to her clenched fists. Whatever had brought Melodie to this place had obviously caused quite a stir.

The Seeker leaned down, voice harsh as she demanded, “Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now.” She took a few steps, leaving no pause for Melodie to reply as she explained, “The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead. Except for you.” She stopped in front of Melodie, finger pointed as the two glowered down at her.

Conclave? thought Melodie. I do not even know what that is. The threat in the room stayed her tongue, and she chose to remain silent for fear of implicating herself in her ignorance.

The Seeker lunged, hand grasping tightly about Melodie’s hand, and lifted it to her face. “Explain this,” she hissed.

As if on cue, her hand lit up again, the green glow flickering brightly in the dim room before the Seeker threw her hand back down. Melodie looked down at her palm which had settled back to normal once more, brows furrowed as she tried once more to cut through the fog. “I… cannot,” she admitted lamely.

“What do you mean you can’t?” The two women were pacing about her now, circling her like lionesses circling prey.

“I do not know what that is or how it got there.”

“You’re lying!” cried the Seeker as she leaned down to grab Melodie’s shoulders.

The hooded woman thrust her hand onto the Seeker’s chest and pulled her back. “We need her, Cassandra,” she said in an accent not dissimilar to Melodie’s. After a moment’s silence, she turned back to Melodie, her voice softer than the Seeker Cassandra’s but still dripping with authority and threat. “Do you remember what happened? How this began?”

Melodie’s frown deepened as she fought against the fog. Bits and pieces shone through—traveling with Knight-Commander Marteau and his Templars on the long road from Montsimmard, slipping amidst the encampments to eavesdrop and gather what information she could, watching from the shadows as Marteau and the others first met with the Divine Justinia. She started to shake her head, to tell the hooded woman that she remembered nothing of extreme importance, but a few more bits came through—an explosion, screaming, and then she was running. “I remember… running. Things were chasing me. And then there was… a woman?”

“A woman?” repeated the hooded woman with interest.

“She…” Melodie shook her head. “She reached out to me… but then…” Her eyes closed as she fought to recall the face of the woman who had called out for her though not by name, but it was no use. Whatever had happened, the memory of the woman was overshadowed by the creatures that had been pursuing her.

The Seeker, seemingly quieted with this meager piece of information turned and guided the hooded woman towards the exit. “Go to the forward camp, Leliana,” she said with no small degree of exhaustion in her voice. “I will take her to the rift.”

The hooded woman Leliana nodded once and started out the door. Melodie watched as the Seeker came back to her side and braced for a hit which never came. Instead, the chains connecting her manacles to the floor were removed. Melodie watched the gloved hands work for a moment before she met the Seeker’s eyes. “What did happen?” she whispered.

Strong arms lifted her to her feet before Cassandra turned to lead the way out the door. “It… will be easier to show you.”

The cold air struck her like a brick, immediately removing any last remaining bits of grogginess Melodie held in her bones, and the glaring light of the sun reflecting off the snow blinded her for a good long moment. When her eyes finally adjusted, she looked about to find Cassandra had stepped several feet away and was talking, gesticulating towards something in the sky. Melodie looked towards Cassandra’s attention and went rigid with fear. “—into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour.”

Melodie swallowed hard as she stared into the raging maelstrom which turned the sky a sickly green just beyond the mountains. Though born from a mage, Melodie knew little to nothing about the world of magic. She did not even possess any understanding of the magic of potion making beyond which potions did what and to what extent. Standing here underneath this… what did Cassandra call it? A Breach? Melodie felt so small.

Cassandra, still talking, turned towards Melodie. “—caused by the explosion at the Conclave.”

“An explosion can do that?” Melodie breathed, incredulous. She had never heard of something so powerful.

“This one did.” She looked on Melodie with some sort of expectation, hinting at something to which she was unaware. “Unless we act, the Breach will continue to grow until it swallows the world.”

No time was afforded Melodie to process Cassandra’s meaning. A bolt of what looked like lightning shot from the Breach with such force she could feel it in her feet, and at the same moment pain wracked her body as her hand began to glow in such a way that it mirrored the maelstrom in the sky. Her knees gave out beneath her before the electricity in her hand settled, and she was left breathless, mind racing with questions.

The Seeker seemed to give no concern as she knelt before her, tone as cool as the chilly mountain air. “Each time the Breach expands, your mark spreads. And it is killing you. It may be the key to stopping this, but there isn’t much time.”

Thoughts blurred through Melodie’s mind so fast she wasn’t sure she was actually thinking at all. There was nothing coherent to pick out, no one strand to latch onto. She could only look at the Seeker kneeling before her, waiting for some sort of response with such a forceful air of expectation and requirement.

 “I…” Melodie swallowed and shook her head to try to clear out the buzzing bees of unspoken thoughts rattling about in her mindspace. “I do not… understand. But if…” Her eyes flicked up towards the sickly green torrent of evil that hovered overhead, then back to the soft brown eyes of the Seeker. Though she could not say why, she found a comfort in them, some sort of safety despite still being this woman’s prisoner. If Cassandra’s words were true and everybody who had attended the Conclave was dead, then she had no one now, no one left to have her back, no one to protect her. For the first time in her life, Melodie Poulin was alone.