#lurx

Lurx sat at the edge of the camp, far enough out that her halting, unskilled, tune wouldn’t be overheard as she quietly swore over each misplayed note and chord. The moon was low in the sky, it was long past midnight. Lurx’s hands were clumsy and trembling despite the unseasonably warm night air.

In retrospect, it was a miracle Lurx had made it this long without having to take a life. Not that she hadn’t seen death, just that she hadn’t landed a kill herself until today. Even that had been no easy ordeal to cope with. But she had managed to sleep at night with applied denial and a generous supply of “Oregano.”. Tonight, however, self-medication just wasn’t cutting it.

Her glass pipe lay in the grass beside her, layers upon layers of white, spent ash nearly spilling over the brim. It had been the very last of her supply, and yet it did so little to quell the electricity that ricocheted around in her skull. If she sat still for too long, it burrowed into her spine and chewed her marrow until she scrambled to her feet and paced around. Still, Lurx stubbornly plucked at the lute, lest her hands fall still. Lest her thoughts drift to anything besides the here and now.

The apostate had been young. Older than her, but far too young to die when he did. Fine lines had only just begun to crease his face. There was a simple, crudely forged band around his left ring finger. He screamed in terror when she approached his broken body.

The c string snapped with a loud, ugly twang. Because fucking of course it did. She threw the instrument to the ground with a graceless clamor of notes and hollow percussion as it rolled down the hill. She didn’t watch it roll, she just snatched her pipe off the ground and frantically began striking one of the matches from her pocket. When she finally achieved a flame she pulled hard from her pipe, sucking the entirety of the spent ash directly into her lungs. The downy carbon wasn’t even substantial enough to hold heat but the taste was awful and the grit irritated her insides.

With a strangled cough and and frustrated scream, she pitched the pipe into the darkness too. And dropped herself onto the soft earth, defeated, with her elbows on her knees and the heels of her hands pressing into her eyes, trying to dig the apostate’s face out of her vision. She froze there for a moment; breathing deliberately, jaw clenched, coughing up ash with every third exhale.

A soft padding of feet on grass approached. When she released the pressure on her eyes, starbursts blinded her for a moment while her murky vision righted itself. Wordlessly, someone laid the lute and the pipe at her side and settled themselves into the grass beside her. She recognized the dry scent of dirt and parchment and something specific yet undefinable.

“Sorry,” Lurx croaked, “didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I was not asleep.” Solas answered quietly.

Lurx picked up the battered, but mostly unharmed, lute and set about un-threading the broken c-string. “Fukkin cheap-ass Antivan strings…” She muttered to herself.

“I didn’t know you played…”

“I don’t.”

Lurx successfully slid the thin, stiff wire from it’s threading and began bending and twisting it into a tiny loop at one end. She wriggled the loop into the vent hole of her pipe, scraping the black tar off the inside of her pipe and depositing it back in the bowl,

It was barely audible but Lurx took irritable note of the puff of air that Solas blew through his nose as he shook his head. Normally, she would shrug off his judgement, tease him about being so straight-edged and move on with their conversation. She didn’t have the energy for it right now. So, instead, she just continued her task in silence. If he wanted conversation, he could carry it himself for once. He didn’t say anything either, simply sat with her in the tense silence. Somewhere in the distance, a bird began the first notes of it’s morning song.

Lurx held the pipe in her teeth as she tried striking another match. After a few failed attempts, she gave it one final strike and the head broke off into the grass, leaving her with a completely useless splinter of wood. “Holy fucking shit...” Lurx breathed like a prayer, too exhausted for proper rage.

Solas gently began, “If I might-”

“Y’know what, Solas? No. You can’t.” Lurx snapped, refusing to look at the awful, pitying, condescending look she just knew he was already wearing. “If all you’ve got for me is a lecture, then you can go back to fuckin’ camp because it is great if you can deal with this shit sober but this… all this shit… is more than I can handle. Okay? And I just don’t have it in me to listen to how much better you are at being a fuckin’ adult-” An orange light silenced her with a soft fwoosh.

When she finally looked, a small, controlled flame flickered on the end of Solas’ index finger, which he used to light a long-stemmed pipe of his own clenched in his teeth. He took a long drag to get an ember started and held the pipe out to her, still watching the dark horizon.

It was so unexpected that Lurx forgot to take it until he flicked the flame out and finally turned his face toward her. “It will extinguish before long.” Solas reminded her, voice muffled by smoke. Lurx shook herself from her shock and took the pipe from him with a soft “oh, thanks.”

She took a shallow drag, mindful of her already irritated throat. In seconds, the frantic buzz in her head began to fade to a dull roar. Less like the squawking of birds and more like the rustling of leaves in a sustained breeze. She released the breath in a sigh of relief and passed the pipe back to Solas.

Solas blew the last of his drag through his nose and took the pipe again, “Think nothing of it,” he said dismissively.

They sat in silence for a few moments more, passing the elfroot back and forth, listening as the night prepared to turn to dawn.

“Hey, um,” Lurx began sheepishly, “sorry about snapping like that, you were just trying to help and I-... Sorry. I’m not mad at you ar anything. I know you really did try-”

“I understand…” Solas told the horizon, “I believe this qualifies as what you might call a ‘bad fuckin’ day.’” Hearing her own phrase spoken in his accent and cadence was bizarre. It pulled her mouth into a lopsided, half-hearted smile. “Yeah… I’d say it does.”

An image flashed across her mind; The apostate, his face quickly graying as the blood drained  out from around the javelin in his chest. Lurx’s javelin.

Bull had been right, it was the perfect weapon for her. Ranged, but with enough of a punch that it only took one to stop an advance. “Explosive power” he had described it as. One fast burst that didn’t need to be sustained like a whirling dagger dance, nor did it need to have enough brute force to wait for an enemy to be almost upon her before she could strike, like a warhammer, nor did it require the prescision of an archer to be deadly. Perfectly in the middle.

It was such awful irony that she had never once managed to hit something on purpose in training. It was only once she stopped thinking at all that her weapon found it’s target.

She had pressed her hands around the protruding weapon, a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. She screamed for Solas to help. And, for what it was worth, he did. Expending the last of his mana, but to no avail.

Lurx repeatedly promised the apostate he would be okay until he drew his last breath and went limp.

“I destroyed people’s lives today.” Lurx said absently to no one in particular.

“You ended one life today.” Solas said firmly, “You did it to save the lives of people you care about. You did not inflict excessive suffering. You took no joy in it. In fact, you did everything in your power to prevent it. You did more than most would have ever even bothered with. Ending is not the same as destr-”

“Isn’t it, though?” Lurx interjected, “Even if you could say he didn’t suffer at all, which I know you can’t, he didn’t just pop into existence and then pop right back out of it. He had family somewhere, a spouse, at least… someone who kissed him goodbye and was already planning the celebration for when he came home before he was even gone… Who is probably still planning for that day. How long d’ya figure they’re gonna wait? When the letters stop coming, how long before they stop running to the door when someone knocks? Or-or-or call his name across a crowd when they see someone who looks even remotely like him? How long are they gonna hold out hope, only to be devastated every single time it’s not him? Months? ...Years? The rest-... rest of their lives?” She had more to say, but her voice had become tight. She took an insistent  drag from the pipe to hide it and thrust the pipe back to Solas, refusing to make eye contact. He took it without comment.

“You do not need me to tell you that.” Solas said finally, after exhaling, “You know the truth as well as I do.”

“You think so?” Lurx barked a bitter laugh, “You tell me what I know, then, Solas.”

Solas continued at an even, calm tone.

“You know that the real pain only lasts a while. That the peak misery is the day you realize you have stopped looking. When you realize it’s not just been a day but it’s been weeks and you haven’t had so much as a passing thought about them. When someone else tells you they miss them too and you lie right to their face and say, ‘not a day goes by…’ when, in fact, you actually have trouble pairing the name to a face anymore. Because every day that passes they become less a person and more an immaterial concept. And from there on out… you just get numb.”

Lurx hugged her knees and glared steadfastly ahead; stubbornly refusing to cry.

If Solas noticed, he didn’t let on, “You know this for the same reason that you worry so for these hypothetical people: because you’ve lost. And you’ve grieved. And yet here you remain; undestroyed.” He handed the pipe back. Lurx contemplated the deep red embers for a long moment. She was about to ask how he knew that about her but, she figured, it was really just a numbers game. At 25, she didn’t know many people who hadn’t lost someone. She shook her head and took the pipe from him.

“Nah, man,” Lurx still disagreed, “I mean, I get it, this is the only me you’ve ever known. But… I really used to be a much better person, gentler, kinder, more patient… and that person is gone.” She took a deep drag, fully anticipating the coughing fit that took hold of her for a minute or two afterwards. When it subsided she added, “I even miss her every once in a while… Me, I’m just what they could cobble together with all the leftover pieces.”

“Still,” Solas insisted, “Reforged. Not destroyed.”

“Maybe.” Lurx ceded, though not convincingly. Solas accepted her forfeit for the time being. There wasn’t anything left for him to say this night. The best she could do now was simply give the wound enough time to form scar tissue. Try to ignore the burn and the itch of the healing process.

They sat in silence for a while longer, letting the elfroot massage the tension out of their minds.

Suddenly, without warning, Lurx let out a small giggle. “You fuckin’ holdout,” she chided, shaking her head as she handed the last of the bowl back to Solas, “acting like I’m some kind of delinquent this whole time-”

“I use elfroot to more easily enter the fade and further my study-”

“Yeah, yeah, I told my mom the same story...”

Solas pursed his lips in a wry smile and pulled the last bit of color from the ash left in the bowl. Lurx returned to scraping at her own pipe, “hang on, I think I can get enough for two out of here-” but Solas laid a hand over hers and waved them away “Please, no.”

Lurx rolled her eyes “First you’re too mature to self-medicate like the rest of us, and now you expect to believe me you’ve never once smoked the resin when your supply runs out?”

Solas pulled a pouch from his robes and set about packing tapping a fresh supply into the pipe, “Actually, I have a condition that prohibits me from such measures.”

“Really?” Lurx cocked her head, genuinely intrigued, “what kind of condition causes that?”

“Self-respect.”

“Oh, fuck you.” Lurx shoved his shoulder as a sly grin teased on the corners of his cheeks. He righted himself without ever taking his hands off his task.

When the pipe was properly lit again, Solas nodded to the battered lute in the grass.

“So,” he began, “why carry around an instrument you don’t play?”

“Just something to keep the hands busy…” Lurx shrugged.

“So I was hearing someone… else playing before you accosted me with it?”

“Hah! whoops, Sorry. wasn’t aiming for you…” Lurx assured him, “but no, it was me. I just don’t think you can quite claim to play a thing if you can’t get all the way through even one song.”

“If it’s just to keep your hands busy, why not bring parchment to sketch on? I’ve seen your work, you’re quite skilled.”

“Well, yeah, but then it’s too easy. I can draw something detailed as I like and still have brainpower leftover to contemplate the horrors of war and the burdens of leadership. And who needs that fukkin noise?”

Solas laughed a soft puff of air through his nose. He couldn’t argue her logic. “As sound a strategy as any, I suppose.”

“Besides,” Lurx continued, “everyone knows I draw. So when they see what I’m working on, they expect to be impressed. If I can say I only picked up the lute a month ago, nobody’s disappointed when I’m no good.”

“And here, I thought the latter would be more intimidating,” Solas pondered, “letting people see you do the things you know you are unskilled at.”

Lurx grinned and waggled the mouthpiece of the pipe at him pointedly, “Ah, now, see, that’s only if you expect people to think highly of you.”

“I see, perhaps that is where my folly lies.”

“Oh, it’s liberating as hell! See? Look-”

Lurx picked up the instrument and raked a few inharmonious chords in no discernible rhythm at all.

“And you don’t even get to judge me for it!” Lurx chirped smugly.

Solas thought for a moment then shook his head. “That’s not what you were playing before.”

“Well… No, but... that one’s not ready yet.” Lurx mumbled, looking away.

“But I thought that was the whole point,” Solas pressed, “That it didn’t have to be presentable. All that matters is that you’re doing it.”

“well , yeah, but…” Lurx scrambled and stuttered  for an excuse, but found none.

“Nobody will judge you for trying, true,” Solas pointed out, “but, not even being bold enough to offer so much as a real attempt? Pathetic.”

Lurx glared at him for a long moment then looked back at the instrument in her hands. Her expression softened.

“There’s… one song I kinda know…” Lurx said quietly, “From back home. It only needs the middle two strings so I could…”

“How does it go?”

Haltingly, Lurx pulled the instrument into her lap and put her fingers in position. Looked up at Solas waiting, patiently. Looked back at the remaining strings. She froze there.

“I’m really not good.” She prefaced again.

“I am not expecting you to be.”

“Okay… okay it’s like…”

But her fingers still wouldn’t move.

“Okay, hang on a sec-” Lurx spun herself around to face away from him. “I just can’t do it when you’re looking at me.”

“Fair enough.”

She heard Solas shift behind her as well so they sat, back-to-back in the gathering dew.

Lurx took a deep breath.

Her fingers began to shakily move.

She swore softly under her breath at every misplayed note and murmured the names of the harder notes as they came and passed.

The tune was slow, disjointed. But before too long, Solas picked up the melody and hummed along.