Dragon Age Inquisition: Their Wonderful Abnormality

Painted Hero

The wind bit. Sharp, laced with the strange smells of distant destruction and death that it whipped up like dust from over the mountains. Barely seeing anything, Elsa Trevelyan gazed at the jagged horizon, silhouetted against the sunrise; a strip of bright scarlet. Mountains. The stony kings of the land, silent rulers, reigning the landscape with their great stone spears piercing the sky's belly.

 They all knew, she thought as that wind tugged at her hair and ghosted her skin. They had seen it all; the bloodshed, the war, the destruction. Years upon years of it, layering and layering, hardening beneath our feet until we walk on it today, boots heavy with exhaustion. They knew but they said nothing. Not even to the wind that howls mournfully or whispers gently, or to the soundless snow that settles, softening the sharpness of the toothed rock. No. The secrets stay as silent as their hearts of stone. If they could, Elsa thought, would they simply scream it all out? Scream away years and years of inhumanities?

 Just beyond those mountains was where it had all happened. The Rift, the fighting, the pain and the realisation. Just beyond those mountains she had been spat out from the unknown and the impossible and she had lived. Lived. Just beyond those mountains she had befallen more fates than a single lifetime could ever imagine and it chilled her to the bone with fear. Just beyond those mountains she had lost everything and gained too much. She was a silent mess and her mind was in tatters.

 She almost started as a distant wolf howled from the thin woods surrounding Haven. She blinked, ripping away her eyes and biting down on shivers that had settled on her without her realising. On a quick glance over her shoulder, almost forgetting where she was, the sight of the wooden cabins surrounding the great stone building made her feel less comforted than she'd hoped. Being surrounded by beings, living, feeling and breathing, didn't always make her feel less lonely. Often, things that spoke not with words were more comforting and made much better friends.

 "Watching the sunrise?"

Came a deep voice, so unexpected from the icy quiet of the frozen lake before her she suppressed a gasp of surprise. There was a gentle crunching beneath leather boots as a tall man came and stood beside her, hand lazing on the hilt of his sheathed sword. Elsa forced her face back into its unreadable mask and forced a corner of her lip into a curl.

 "I'm not usually one to wake at this time," She replied, her breath misting before her face in a silver cloud. "I'm more of a midday-riser myself but... It seemed fitting to watch this morning."

The man looked down at her, face serious. Commander Cullen. He wasn't an excessively handsome man, Elsa thought as she took a second to study his face yet there was something unmistakably appealing about his thick curls and molten gold eyes that Elsa found tricky to ignore. He was fairly tall, in fact, around a head above her in height and he had a fairly kind face, rather soft features and bright eyes that unwittingly revealed so much. When he spoke, she found it difficult not to watch the silvery scar across his upper-lip.

 "Strangely... brighter this morning." He admitted in a sigh, following her gaze back to the sky now tinged with tangerine and gold. "After all that happened at the Conclave and—

 He cut himself off, shaking his head. A cold wind tousled his hair as he gave a breathy laugh.

 "You probably don't want to hear about that anymore."

She shook her head, shrugging, trying to show him it didn't matter. None of it mattered.

 "We're all trying to escape what happened, Commander," She said turning to him features stony, "one way or another."

 "There is no escaping some things, no matter how hard we try."

Elsa's stormy eyes flicked from the sunrise to his face and she tilted her head.