TO BURN, TO WORSHIP, TO MISLEAD

highly selective, private, low activity Solas from the dragon age franchine / follows from #MERCYSOUGHT with focus on themes of love in the shape of one's absence. extremely self-indulgent blog - it's a treat, for me

some meme lost to time // not accepting // @k1tch3n

There was hardly a mission that is worth dedicating one’s life despite how thin it might be, which doesn’t involve some level of both love and blame wrapped into its very fiber.

A long life could hardly be called lived if one’s hand had hardly been pressed into the fabric of existence. That fabric had once been as soothe as water and as easy to weave around himself as it was to breathe. When things were simpler and touch felt closer to the sharp ringing of the highest note of a pipe than it did to the coarse fibers that would be woven from the wool of life and to cover their own skin.

I see you still.

Held in both hands, one in the shape of a red rope and another painted in the shape of a sleeping eye. There is no colour to it, for there are feelings still that could not quite take the physical shape that would weave such colours. There, perhaps, was where Mythal had found the limit of her powers: it was impossible to weave things that could be felt but were not manifested into shape, not to the visible eye, not one made out of flesh.

Teeth that do no find purchase other than their own cheek do sink still.

It was not a war to be fought, there was no battle to be won. Solas had loved the People and the weight of the blame was impossible not to see in himself. Not with the flesh within his skull when the light traveled from still waters or roar seas: but from within. Like a nameless colour that stuck to a spirit, its weight indescribable but world bending all the same.

   “Perhaps the depth of the fade is twisting your senses.” the words are spoken flatly though not lacking in their sharpness.

It was foolishness, perhaps, of youth and hope that such wants to see something could lead into the actual change of the self. The age of dreamers had come to a stark end and the remaining shattered pieces of the world was what Tamara called home. It had come to an end but it could be healed still.

Perhaps one day hopes would be enough to change one's heart in such a clear cut way again. For now all they held was reality. Solas looked at the other, knowing from brief glimpses that they still moved in his distant footsteps, attempting to reach him.

Solas expression soothes, if nothing else because he wished so dearly that she would pay attention to his requests. No good would come from this. And since the Inquisitor had made it clear that she would not have any direct communication except from letters, and the surprising approach at the use of more dwarves amongst the inner circle - an ingenious approach, it should not have come as a surprise and yet it was surprising how often those still came given the distance he now had from the Inquisition.

Having been awake and further from the Inquisition now longer than the time he had spent with them.

It was familiar, this, the stalking and rustling of leaves. The soft wind and waiting for specific passages so that one’s movement is hidden by both nature and the light that is only so barely offered to those that walk the fade in their dreams. There had been a time when to be surrounded by such statues knowing that their connection to the waking world would reflect this present existence so perfectly would have given him pause. There would have been a time where both of them would have stalked these same planes together - both in making them and in the certainty in knowing that they wished to keep them safe. A wolf only a predator to make sure that the pack was kept safe and the golden halla to light the way for those that wished to follow.

But there is no golden light to guide a pack that is gone. And no other shadows that follow that of the man in simple clothing. There is no armour for there is no posturing needed.

The desolation that is around them and the silence of the wind is proof enough that enough pain has been dealt. Most would not be able to see it for what it is, the way that this place that Solas had so dearly called home had turned and twisted into not a single scar but more. The greater fade beyond was a mountain of scars upon scars and multiple attempts to heal - and failing to do so. They are the brightest markings of his failure than even that of the living.

He could pain them, he could make the wind whisper softer songs but it was not softness that was required now. Solas needed to see it, as did everyone else, even if they tried so very hard to see anything but.

   “For all that you have sacrificed” the statues loom over them both, their expressions frozen in the same affect as when they had first realised who he was - and what it meant to have his shadow loom over them “you were, perhaps, one of the last that I though would go through such lenghts to conceal themselves from me,”

A mistake, then. To assume that everyone that had accompanied them had turned to ash - there had simply been those that had survived the ordeal of his mistake and instead of joining him had decided that this - this world - was better. There is no armour but the same clothes that he had worn when he had wished to be anything else but Solas, simple and light and yet in the shadows of those statues, even as he stepped into the dim and dull light that now covered the fade like a translucent veil he felt heavy.

Light feet that left no markings and weightless and yet with the wrong word spoken might leave an indent. It is perhaps the tension at his temples that speaks of anger, but truthfully, it is in his eyes that the disappointment is felt sharpest. Hurt.

   “Elleana.” he finally speaks, both hands coming to rest in the small of his back. Head bowed as one hand holds onto the same staff that he had been using during Inquisition, a simple, weathered, most uninteresting. It had been a similar staff he had worn before dread had fully sunken into the shape of his shadow. The simplicity and longing for a time where hope had even been able to reach it and soothe such fears.

Mythal had said that the world had started with a heartbeat. A single heartbeat followed by a breath.

But Solas had been there too, and Solas - for all the Wisdom that he had offered, and how thin he felt in that thread that connected them - had known it to be different.

The world had started, begun, with a scream.

What Mythal had said had been the beginning, Solas could now see, instead, of its end.

So the brief echo of Wisdom cloaked in the defined shapes of Dread is the one that stalks down the halls. Teeth cut into knives with experience, or so they say. The larger shadow that the All-Mother’s failure casts upon them all. There were days where Solas would have been joyful if he was indeed to be washed away from the History’s pages if not for the single frayed thought: this had been Wisdom hard won. It was a wound that had existed before himself, the rawness still hummed in his most quiet moments.

That is what he is, what he is fully embodying now in these halls of bleeding notes. Both knife and wound, ready to sever limb if it means fixing the body whole.

   “I know you are listening.” everything did, though they had forgotten that they themselves emitted sound. The misshapen forms torn asunder by Sun and world alike. When the Crafter tossed aside a study, not good enough for a finished piece, a Huntress done with picking at bone, flesh and pelt. When the Judge thinks that being blind is all it is needed to assess fair judgement in a world where the sun would bleach all.

And now they. Solas equal part pitied these arrays souls and wished to help them. It was an ache that held no way of being expressed with no words strong enough to shape it. So instead it took the shape of a tension at the jaw, this innate and intent unwillingness to have it be named and known to anyone but him.

It should be no surprise that even they dreamed, dreamed in shapes and in colours and in hopes that they should take this flesh that burns. It should not be a surprise either, that when Solas looks down to his feet the floor that would have reflected high ceilings instead reflects the dark mass of fur and darkness, that his hands are clammy from chalk - or stone. That the fingertips twitch still from the rawness of lyrium.

Rubbing his feelings he cleans out the texture until he can only feel the familiarity of skin. The many eyes that reflect back on the floor are red - red for what else could unheeded wisdom turn into except frustration. The mass that he is, a bundle of Dread and Pride unravels softly, shoulders straightening to look upon the figure - the figure of remembrance who held no body except here “Anaris did not send you.”

It was not a question. Despite thoughts of grandieur, the once voice of Elgar’nan rarely did seek him out in this way. There was a danger that even Anaris wouldn’t have wanted to run - especially not with the dourness that seemed to carry in Solas’ footsteps. So the elvhen man straightens shoulders and squarely looks at the other, keeping sharpened teeth behind a tense jaw. Pity, for them and for himself, and anger both kept to a minimum despite these halls feeding it so.

disco elysium // selectively accepting // @weptlore

The city of Montsimmard was not so different than the rest in Orlais that had their own version of alienages. The now empty decaying mage tower taken still by a fading and weakening influence of the Chantry, overlooking the small and neglected alienage. The disparate houses of inconceivable poverty that circled around the elven partition, like vultures.

There is a particular desperate feeling, that of feeling the heavy summer air upon your skin and knowing that the work was unending. When the fading sun did not mean peace of mind and body.

   “There are few things that have remained the same, but this is one. A mirror that refused to chatter and instead holds as strong as blood.” he says simply and it feels bitter. The words, spoken in common, lack the depth makes the words and feel paltry.

The desperation brewing in an Empire’s bowls; a distant light that they mistake for hope, but it is instead the slow burning of its heart, flickering in the distance.

There was little reason to explain, little reason to show beyond a passing fatigue in his eyes that is overtaken by the goal and reason that had brought them down these narrow streets. The facade on the walls change, the whispering and the rasping of one’s tongue against dried throat and warm bellies remains the same. Familiar and yet completely unknown.

It had shocked him, at one point, how familiar they were. How much of it was not the same but it rhymed. The same underlying tones and themes playing on repeat when he had hoped that they had come to a silence. At their rawest. Where bone meat sinew. There was far that was deeply familiar to him than he had initially thought, anticipated.

The wind blows the side of his hood against his face, there is a chill that comes down his body but is stilled. From a time that he had felt weightless until the world crumbled around him to waking up in this shattered world only to be given reprieve…

And then to remember, ultimately, of what must have been done. This was more punishment than any of the Evanuris could have designed.

The city soaks in it, cold and dripping. The city is a maw, a hunger without a stomach to fill. Humanity as it had been drawn, as it had been woven - dancing to the tune of what he had done was a beast predisposed to collapsing into themselves. To hear the clattering of cups, the unscrewing of bottles and allowing themselves to stay. Have a drink. Linger in moments of self indulgence and in the belief that, perhaps, the moment you are in is enough.

There was no forever. Not anymore.