This will be the third time he’ll watch her grow old and die, while he remains the same. Dying is easy, she thinks. She gets to go on, ignorant of the pain and loss, reborn into the world with no knowledge of the hardships of the life before.

But Felasel lives with it. He carries those memories with him like stones, heavy with the weight, building up over the years and soon he’ll be crushed beneath them, with no one there to lighten the load.

He must have been so lonely.

That’s all she thinks about, for the first year, as he holds her, and she listens to the sound of his even breaths in the darkness. He must have been so lonely, and when she dies this time around, he’ll be lonely again. So so lonely, until she comes back—but what if she doesn’t? What if she’s nowhere near him? What if she doesn’t find him again?

Dirthamen understands.

Dirthamen, who is Felasel’s father but also isn’t.

They discuss it sometimes. Sometimes he’ll come by the museum, when she’s working late, and they’ll sit in her office, and she signs to him, and he nods.

They’ll be so lonely, when we die.

Dirthamen holds his teacup, and the silence seems to stretch. “Yes,” He says finally, voice fading to a strained whisper.

I don’t want them to be lonely, she finishes, fingers trembling, just a little.

He meets her gaze, “I do not want it either.”

---

It gets easier, over the next two years, to not look at Felasel and wonder how her death will break him this time. They move out of the city after they get married, to a house Felasel owns in the countryside, surrounded by old vineyards and trees.

Safer, he says. From those who might wish to hurt them.

She doesn’t understand why anyone would want to hurt Felasel and Selene. They’re the kindest people she knows. But then again, she doesn’t understand why anyone would want to put cleaning detergent in a child’s fruit punch, but that is something she remembers very well.

Cruel people do cruel things to good people more often than not.

She doesn’t mind the hour drive into the city for work every morning, not if it helps Felasel sleep a little easier at night.

“Serah Elvhen?”

Cirimeni smiles at the assistant curator and holds up a notecard: Doing some late night research for a new exhibit. You can go home if you’d like.

The assistant curator nods with a smile, “Have a good evening, Serah. Don’t forget that Kelos locks everything up tight after ten, so if you have to go outside you’ll need him to unlock everything to come back inside.”

Cirimeni nods again, and waves. She watches him walk down the hall and disappear, before she heads toward the stairwell to the old Tevinter Imperium record room.

She’s got an hour or two, before Felasel comes to pick her up to head home for the evening. It isn’t much time, but it’s something.

There have been cases of spirits and demons possessing non-mages, Cirimeni is certain she’s come across it before in some of the older readings.

Now…now she just needs to find it in the records.

---

Selene and Dirthamen are coming over for dinner.

Cirimeni’s the only one working late this evening, and since she’s in town she offers to grab a few last minute items while the others begin cooking.

The supermarket is packed, as Cirimeni maneuvers past shopping carts and busy mothers calling for their children to keep up. She takes a step back into a less crowded aisle to avoid being run over by a particularly gruff looking woman.

She moves the hand she’d placed unconsciously over her stomach, before she tightens her grip on her grocery basket and continues down the aisle.

They don’t need much, just some eggs, and some particularly sharp cheddar cheese that Cirimeni’s become quite fond of lately, and a few ingredients for tomorrow night’s dinner as well. She pauses in the wine aisle and pulls out her phone with a smile.

Do you have any requests for wine?

She doesn’t get a text back right away, which is rather odd.

When two minutes go by and Felasel still hasn’t replied she grabs an old favorite of his and heads toward the checkout line. Likely he’s busy helping his mother in the kitchen, but somehow it just doesn’t…sit well. Something tightens in her chest, a feeling she can’t quite shake.

The checkout line seems to take forever, and the drive home even longer. She finds herself glancing over at her phone, even when she knows she should keep her eyes on the road, just to see if he’s replied.

Nothing.

Not one response, in the hour long drive through the darkening countryside. The classical music filtering through the radio seems too loud, violin strings echoing in a haunting melody that suddenly sounds too sharp and shrill on her ears.

An orange glow flits over the trees, and Cirimeni’s heart seems to stop, and she steps harder on the gas, tires shrieking on asphalt, until her car pulls out of the trees and the house looms in front of her.

The house is burning.

She barely remembers to turn off the car before she stumbles out and up the driveway, coughing as smoke filled air assaults her lungs. The garage is nothing but a pile of charred brick, and scorch marks score the front door.

She can’t hear anything from inside over the roar of flames and the crackling of burning timber. That is, until an unholy shriek pierces the night air. At first she thinks it’s the whistling of the wood, until it hits her.

The rabbit hutch, attached to the back of the house.

She needs to get inside, needs to find Felasel and Selene and Dirthamen and…and…she can’t breathe. Her throat locks up, as she lets out a strangled cough that ends in a strained wheeze, and her chest tightens and her vision goes blurry, just for a moment.

They’re dead. They’re all dead. Where are they? She needs to get inside. The rabbits, the rabbits, the screams are so loud what if that’s really Felasel? What if he’s screaming and she can’t get to him!?

She digs into her purse for her inhaler, as tears stream down her face, a product of fear and smoke alike, and manages to suck in one strangled, choppy breath. The next is easier, as the medicine begins to kick in. 

The rabbits have gone quiet, by the time she can breathe enough to move.

She tears the hem of her dress, and ties the strip of fabric around her mouth and nose, and pushes her way inside. The stairs leading up from the foyer have collapsed completely, and the smoke is too thick to see much. So she crouches down, coughing again, throat tightening dangerously, and scans the floor.

There’s a figure near the door leading to the kitchen, lying atop the two half of their coffee table.

Dirthamen!

It’s the adrenaline, she knows, that allows her to drag him out onto the front lawn, but even then she’s gasping for breath, and has to reach for her inhaler again. Dirthamen lets out a small groan, and she pulls him into a sitting position as he opens his eyes.

He stiffens for a moment, and then sits up more fully, and looks back at the house and then to her.

Cirimeni lifts trembling hands and signs, angry that she can’t scream, can’t voice the desperation she’s feeling, as she keeps herself from grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking as hard as she can to demand an answer.