Dragon Age Inquisition: Their Wonderful Abnormality

Lost Again

The waves hissed at the sides of the ship and Elsa leaned over the decks to watch them. The Archer seemed to cut right through the water, like a pair of scissors through a rippling grey-blue fabric, the ends fraying into white foam in its leave. The sun caught the crest of every wave, glinting like a million shards of glass and Elsa could feel the depth beneath them, staring into the opaque darkness. She would have enjoyed the journey more if she had been headed to somewhere she liked. Instead, she sailed towards an evening of insufferable nobles and sneers in her direction.

The Winter Palace.

She had found it excessively hard to thank Josephine for managing to get her that invitation.

The ship itself had its very own variety of comforting sounds; the creak of rope on wood, the gentle groan of the sails changing direction, the scattered shouts from the crew, short barked words that echo from man to man.

It had taken a while to find the ship to take both Elsa and her men to Val Royeaux; she could have chosen any but Elsa only had only one in mind.

As soon as she was better, an identical message, written in her own hand had been sent to every dock marked on the map in request of this one captain. Many replies came back offering different ones, better ones but, in turn, each was politely turned down. Cullen was half-way through convincing her she was wasting time when a raven arrived from Kirkwall.

"Finding your sea legs?" Came a jaunty voice from behind her Elsa knew to be that of The Archer's captain. Elsa rose and eyebrow, not turning around.

"Looks to me like I already had them. I'm a natural."

"Some people are just born with it."

Elsa turned to smile at Isabela who joined her to lean on the starboard beam, sighing loudly as she squinted slightly onto the seemingly endless horizon. That was one thing Elsa was fairly apprehensive about first, the nothingness, for miles and miles around. But after a while, it becomes peaceful, the simple fact that you float across a sea who does not know your name and does not care. You, yourself become nothing too.

Isabela had been talking to Varric as soon as they stepped on deck, they had laughed and laughed and Elsa had found herself simply watching the two friends fondly, seeing Varric look as happy as he had once done in the days when they had been good friends, friends who laughed too. She had seen little of him ever since the Fade and losing Hawke and that brought her frequent waves of sadness and guilt. She had grown rather fond of the silver-tongued dwarf and his stories.

She hadn't forgotten about the very first person to ever have faith in her either...

"Come on then," Isabela prompted. "Why me?"

Elsa shrugged. Isabela quizzed her with a pair of remarkable amber eyes, set among features tanned darkly by foreign sun after foreign sun. Her hair was a luxurious, glossy raven and she had threaded the curls with golden beads and droplets of blue glass. Around her neck she wore an impressive amount of jewellery, thick golden collars studded with sapphires, chains and pendants, beads and lockets with paintings of strangers pressed within. She wore a decorative silken headscarf, embellished with blue, twisting patterns and from her ears hung a pair of lavish bronze medallions.

"Because you are a captain of remarkable skill?" Elsa attempted.

"True... but the real reason, please."

The piercing beneath her bottom lip glinted as Isabela spoke and a glass bottle of a liquid almost as amber as her eyes swung in her heavily ringed fingers. She smelt of rich, fragrant oils with undernotes of salt and sweat and it could not have suited her more.