Brittle Eyes, Brittle Dreams

3

A tiny clink woke her, though her eyes didn't immediately snap open. Instead, she frowned as waking slowly spread through her limbs. Dishes? No. It was something more muffled and solid: a mortar and pestle. Her frown deepened as a few vague questions found weak spots in her haze, but the expression disintegrated by the time she opened her eyes.

She was stretched on the couch, though it took her a long moment for the fact to register despite staring at her limbs. She tried to swing her legs over the side and lift herself up into a sitting position, but her arms were too slack and dull for such an ambitious act. She pushed herself up on her elbows and tried to rotate her neck, but a crick stopped her. She hissed through gritted teeth.

Solas scurried into her line of sight but said nothing. "Better," he murmured approvingly with a nod after he spent a moment considering her.

She snorted and reached for her neck. "This is better?"

"You slept."

She swore as she rubbed the stiffness out of her muscles but hesitated when she noticed the afternoon daylight. "I slept all day?"

His mouth shifted carefully. "A day."

She blinked as she rushed to sit upright. "But how could –" A hunger spasm in her stomach confirmed his answer before she could finish her thought. "No one sleeps that long."

He smiled faintly.

She stood. "But I didn't –" Her knees buckled, further evidence that she had been immobile for a prolonged period. Solas moved for her, but she waved him away with a jab of her slender arm and a tiny, frustrated grunt. She sat down huffily and braced her head until the vertigo ebbed. "It felt different." She rubbed her forehead and temples.

"Your mind ceded to your body."

She paused. As if her head weighed an unfathomably great amount, she craned it up to him. She stared. "You did something."

"I did what anyone would do in the same situation."

"Which was?"

"Only enough to let you forget your worries for a time."

"By making me sleep for a day and a night?"

Solas resumed his methodical rummaging with several bowls on a table.

She frowned. "What are you doing?" Her neck was still too weak to twist around to look at him. She heard him stir several things into glass. He returned with a tumbler filled with a thick, whitish liquid and offered it to her. She sighed and reached for her forehead again. "I don't need a potion."

"This is a different sort of restorative."

She took it from him and sniffed. Her face abruptly pinched into unnatural angles.

"Those who pass so many hours without food need a special kind of sustenance."

She tasted it and shuddered, but she forced herself to swallow the entire portion. By the time she returned the tumbler to him, her face consisted purely of wrinkles opposing each other in a series of alien angles. "Goat's milk," she muttered. "And something else."

"Herbs from the garden and a raw egg."

Her face eased, but she threw a glare at him for an instant.

"Does your ankle still hurt?"

"Not much." Still flushed from the strong flavors of her drink, she chuckled weakly. "That's why you did it."

"Have you always neglected yourself so much?"

Her faced paled. She stood. "I don't need a lecture. I know what I need to do to finish what we started." She paced her quarters, tender-footed but determined. "It's taking too long."