#delicatefade excerpts

To disappear together was as far as she dared express herself in public. When they were at camp Eilan preferred not to kiss or touch unnecessarily. Lex, she suspected, would have preferred to flaunt their relationship. He had sat close to her by the fire and rested his hand on her knee. The following day he swam out to where she bathed in the shallow sea just to hold her, the two of them weightless in the water. She reciprocated with a quick kiss, a small touch or a shy embrace, enough to make sure he never felt rejected, but invariably she would cut short his sweet affections, whispering to him that someone could see. He did not seem to mind. Or if he did, he never said. It helped that they often found time to be alone together. They each had daily duties, everyone in the clan did, but Eilan had found a way to pawn off some her chores onto a much younger cousin by baiting the girl with unfair bets. “I bet that when I drop this quill it will fall upwind,” Eilan said, knowing full well she could tip the quill with a sleight of hand. “Bet you can’t blow out all these candles in a single breath,” she said after having coated two wicks in essence of wyvern’s breath so that they would burn more stubbornly. The girl was only twelve, an apprentice healer of an agreeable and shy nature. By the fourth bet Eilan suspected that the girl had caught on, but was so thoroughly enjoying Eilan’s attention that she was willing to spend the day de-stemming spindleweed in Eilan’s stead. On those days Eilan would meet Lex in the forest where it was his duty to tend to wild gardens, thought admittedly when Eilan was there he tended to little but her. “Hold on. One second. I should check on the peppers,” Lex said as he disentangled himself from Eilan and stood up from the ground. They had just made love on a patch of summer squash. Fat bright leaves clung to Eilan’s bare back as she sat up to watch Lex move, his nude body gorgeous in the dappled sunlight. He pulled free a pepper from a nearby plant and screwed up his nose at it. It was a runty thing, curled in on itself like an angry cashew, bright red and gnarled. Lex raised a bewildered brow. “…the fuck?” Eilan repressed a laugh, her whole body shaking, tears in her eyes, lips twitching as she covered her mouth. “Oh yea?” Lex grinned, trying not to laugh. “You think it’s funny?” He tossed the sad pepper behind him and dove towards her, nipping at her neck as he guided her back into the cushy leaves. She shrieked with delight. “It’s all your fault,” he teased. “You’re the… what’s that word again? The title of your play? The Saboteur.” Eilan gasped. “You remembered the title of my play!” Lex wagged his brows cockily as if to say ‘duh.’

Outside the tent a young man whooped jubilantly. A woman cried out as an excited murmur swept through the camp. Eilan cocked her ear towards the exultations. Her heart raced against hope. Finally she heard Evelyn cry out, “Lex!” Eilan gasped and looked towards the tent’s exit. Her grandmother smiled knowingly. “Go.” Eilan leapt her feet and sprinted out of the tent. She followed the stream of clanmates, her eyes peeled as she searched for him. There he was, in a bear hug with his sisters, one arm around Evelyn and the other around Tali. The siblings swayed from side to side as they embraced. When they parted Evelyn inspected her brother for any signs of ailments, malnourishment, injuries, and general neglect. Lex let himself be fussed over as he ruffled Tali’s hair and said something to make her laugh. Cylen called out “Letha!”, the hip abbreviation of ‘lethallin’, the elven honorific for a friend. The men embraced, patting each other on the back. Elves lined up to greet Lex one by one. Those who belonged to the generation of parents who saw all teens and 20-somethings as their communal brood made sure to impart little observations with their greetings — “You got a tan!” “Survived the wilds, eh? Good lad.” “Look at you! Feeling all grown up?” Lex spotted Eilan at the back of the line and looked arrested as if by a vision. He worked his way through the crowd of well-wishers and greeters with polite impatience, often stealing glances at her. She was overcome, hands clasped over her nose and mouth, eyes wet with happiness. At last he reached her, his hands sliding along her waist as he pulled her close. He buried his face in her hair. They held each other tightly. She smoothed a hand over his back. He cradled her head close. They kissed several times. “I missed you,” they both said at the same time, in the same way. They laughed at the synchronicism. He wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. They kissed again. A sparse wisp of hair clung to his chin. “This is new,” she said as she rubbed it. “Yea,” he said. He couldn’t stop smiling. He cupped her face and looked at her like she hung the moon.

Eilan locked the library door and whispered an incantation that suspended the lock beyond the reach of ordinary lock picks. She placed the books of interest in a circle on the floor and sat in the center in a meditative pose. Time to put Solas’ teachings to the test.

Her hands closed in cryptic geometries over each knee, the fingers of the right hand pinched up like a flower bud, the left’s splayed downwards like roots. She recited an ancient Elvhen incantation, one that she now understood thanks to Solas’ tutelage. Her understanding grounded the magic under her control. Slowly, she folded the fade like a fabric onto itself, layer by layer, using the books as anchors for each pleat in a skirt of green that flared around her.

In the fade-bright fabric, she searched for imprints of recent memories tied to these books. One by one, the memories of Ditharel and Ewel, his partner, became known to her. In their memories she saw glimpses of Solas, but Solas himself was missing. Though she knew Solas must have been in this room at that time, his own memories were torn from the fade itself, leaving the skirt in tatters. It should not have surprised her that Fen’Harel moved like this, destroying his own tracks in the fade.

Her martyrdom did not last long. After a month of no letters, she began to grow suspicious of him. While it was true that the Dalish had no courier system as reliable as the shemlen mail, and while it was also true that it was difficult to forward a letter to an ever-moving target such as a nomadic elven clan, Eilan believed nonetheless that Lex could have forwarded a letter if he were so moved. Were she in his shoes her love for him would have been sufficient to overcome any logistics, no matter how daunting. Of that she was sure. She spent the third month adding each letter-less day to her growing list of evidence that Lex did not think of her at all. Come to think of it, did she really love him or was she just seduced by his good looks and dazzling charm? And really, how dazzling could any one man be, even one as handsome, athletic, talented, funny, bright and tender as him? She tried to rally herself out of her miserable heartache by hardening her heart against him. If her clanmates spoke of Lex, she said nothing; nor would she would get up and walk away for even that would be far too much reaction for a man who everyone knew had not written to her. On the 81st day without Lex, Clan Lavellan camped at its annual trade post outside Ostwick. That morning Eilan’s uncle Nerel made a trip to see Oscar, an old shem and trade partner who held mail for Dalish clans at no extra charge. When Nerel returned to camp he announced that he had letters from Lex. He handed out the letters one by one, taking his time as he called out each name. One for Lex’s older sister Evelyn. One for his younger sister Taliesen. Another for Keeper Deshanna. Eilan grew suspicious that her uncle was toying with her for his own amusement. And oh how she twisted in the wind, her weight shifting impatiently from one foot to the other. Nerel squinted at a name as if he could not make out the penmanship. “Ei— Oh, no. One for Cylen.” Nerel could barely contain his impish grin. Cylen, a hunter a year older than Lex who was Lex’s closest male friend, fist pumped as he took the letter from Nerel. “Oh!” Nerel said as if surprised to read to whom the final letter was addressed, “And one for Eilan.” Eilan snatched the letter from Nerel’s hand and sprinted giddily to the tent she shared with her mother. She could hear Nerel chuckling behind her. Her mother was inside, sitting on the right-side cot as she knit by lantern light. She looked up and grinned as she saw Eilan burst into the tent and swoon onto her own cot, clutching a letter to her chest. “From Lex?” her mother asked.