Vir Lath Sa'vunin: Chapters Fifteen and Sixteen

[twist_shimmy]

A Dalish-centric AU gen fic featuring two Mahariel Wardens, one bastard prince, and lingering ghosts.

Title: Vir Lath Sa'vunin (We Love One More Day)
Rating: T (Language and Violence)
Authors: twist_shimmy and lenna_nightrunner
Post Word Count: 2550
Summary: When their parents died, Tesni Mahariel was left to raise her brother Caerwyn with the help of the rest of their clan. True to their penchant for getting into trouble, Caerwyn and Tamlen went hunting one day and ran afoul of a mirror, of all things. The next thing Tesni knew, Caerwyn had been recruited by the Grey Wardens. As if she’d let some shemlen just take her brother away! Determined to keep Caerwyn safe, Tesni goes after them, and antics ensue. She’ll stop the Blight to protect her family, Caerwyn will help--grumbling all the while--and Alistair will do his best to bond with his tattooed and bristly new brethren. When all is said and done, the blurred lines between friendship and blood bonds will draw them down a path that will change all three of them forever.

In this installment, songs prove to be anything but harmless. As do cats. Really.

---

Fifteen: Hush, Pretty Bird. Don’t You Know You Can’t Sing? (Halou)

TESNI

Some days it felt like our traveling companions made more noise than the entire clan had on moving days. Usually I reminded them to keep it down, but we had gotten good at fighting together, and honestly, listening to Leliana try to teach Alistair to sing was... amusing.

It was nice to find things amusing. It was also a nice day, and sunny too, and no one, not even Sten, had said anything unpleasant or sullen all morning. The road was dry, and we were making good time.

Now if only our little dorf’len would stop making that horrible noise.

“Alistair.” I shook my head at him. “Are you singing through your nose on purpose?”

“I-I--why, are you not supposed to?”

“You sound like an injured squirrel.”

“Oh, I get it. ‘Let us teach you to sing, Alistair!’” He mocked Leliana’s heavy accent. “‘We’re bored and want to make fun of you!”

I shook my head. “Stop whining.”

“Right,” he agreed. “No whining, and no singing. I quit.”

Leliana looked at me and shrugged. “Your turn then, Tesni. Teach me something!”

She had a good ear for languages. She probably wouldn’t mangle elvish too badly, so I started singing the first tune that came to mind. When Caerwyn’s eyes widened, I realized that it was the song hahren Paivel had performed at Tamlen’s funeral, but once the words had been recalled, I found myself incapable of not singing them.

“Da’vhenan na melana sahlin, emma ir abelas,” I began, forcing my voice to remain high and rich and not quaver. “Souver’inan isala hamin, vhenan him dor’felas, in uthenara na revas.”

By the end of the verse, she was mouthing the words along with me, but not like I had with her Orlesian songs. There was something in her expression, maybe a tightness around the eyes, that made me believe she knew exactly what I was singing. Beloved, your time is come, and now I am filled with sorrow. Weary eyes need resting, your heart has become grey and slow. In waking sleep is freedom.

(Don’t you deserve a rest? The world will go on without you....)

“Vir sulahn'nehn,” the chorus began, and she sang the rest of it with me with her clear human voice. “Vir dirthera, vir samahl la numin, vir lath sa'vunin.”

We sing and rejoice, we tell the tales. We laugh and cry, and we love one more day.

One more day. Keep moving, Tesni. Keep singing. It’s too sunny to cry. Elgar’nan whined at my side and licked my palm, and I patted his head reassuringly.

Leliana and I were about to start again and sing it together when I realized that my brother was no longer walking. He stood a short distance behind, rubbing his forehead and refusing to look at either of us. When I moved to stand beside him, he shrugged off my hand and stared at Leliana.

“How? Why do you know that song?” he demanded, and I regretted my choice. Of all the ones to sing, about halla and cooking at fires and leaves on the wind, I chose the funeral dirge. Brilliant.

Leliana licked her lips and looked down at her hands. “My mother died when I was very young, and an elf taught it to me. I never forgot it, because it... it reminds me that there is even beauty to be found within death.”

“Beauty,” he spat. “Beauty.”

“Release. Would you rather a loved one suffer?”

“Emma halamⁱ,” Caerwyn snarled, but before I could intervene, I heard laughter from up the road.

I whirled, bow in hand, and saw an elf on a ridge ahead, watching us from his perch on a rock. “And you were singing so well, my little bird. Such friends you have, to fight so over music.” He shook his head and smiled widely at my brother. “Two elves among the Wardens? And Dalish, as well! May wonders never cease.”

“Uh, Tesni?” Alistair came to a stop beside me and looked up. “Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”

Trap set. Caerywn whistled softly, scratching the back of his head and doing his best to look bored. Ten hunters.

Eleven, I retorted.

“I wasn’t counting the flat-ear,” he muttered.

“Hey, are you both talking in whistles, now?” Alistair whispered. “How many languages do two people need?”

...Creators above. The man had the subtlety of a bear stuck in a bush. Leliana giggled and palmed her bow, dropping into a firing stance. “So much for the upper-hand.”

“Shall we fight?” the blond elf asked, taking his knives into his hands. “Though I should warn you that you are well outnumbered.”

“I am worth at least three of your people,” Sten growled.

“And present a much larger target!” the elf agreed. “Regardless, the Wardens shall die here, and you are welcome to join them.”

Elgar’nan had been quietly growling beside Wynne, but at these words he launched himself behind a nearby rock and dragged out a human archer, kicking and screaming, by his ankle. The old shem mage wasted no time turning the man to stone and shattering him, and I decided I would have a chat with my brother about never antagonizing her again.

Arrows were sailing through the air and landing in the dirt around my feet. I held still, and aimed, and fired, and ten enemies became nine. Then a mage appeared beside the blond elf, and I had to fling myself behind a tree to avoid a bolt of lightning. Caerwyn howled and launched himself at the girl, and the sound of boots on dirt told me the elf was coming after me.

He got a shield to his gut instead, and Alistair used the pause to haul me to my feet. Sten was hacking an archer in two, three arrows jutting from his leg, and then all I saw were the knives of the elf.

Fast. I didn’t think flat-ears could fight like that. I had to kick him in the throat to get enough distance to fire an arrow into his shoulder, weakening his main arm, but after that he didn’t let me get far enough away for another shot. I drew my knives, took first blood, and grinned at him as his armor began to stain a dark red at the shoulder and chest.

Around us, my companions took down the others, but though his lackeys were easy enough to kill, the elf proved more durable. Soon he was panting, and bleeding, and my breaths were coming in great, sobbing gasps, but no one could get close enough to intervene.

Ting. Tink-clang. Caerwyn hated these sounds.

I lived for them.

He fell for a feint; my hilt came down, and he crumpled to the ground at my feet in a blond, bloody, tattooed mess. Caerwyn stepped in, prepared to end it, but I stopped him and ordered Leliana to bring me some rope.

“You’re sparing a flat-ear?” my little brother hissed.

“No flat-ear uses knives like that.” But that tattoo wasn’t Dalish, either. What was he?

My brother snorted, and Alistair crossed his arms in silent agreement, but neither of them said a word. I rolled him onto his back with my boot and tied him wrist-to-elbow, locking his arms against his chest, then used a liberal amount of water to wake my attacker up while Wynne and Leliana saw to Sten and the small collection of arrows he had amassed during the fight.

He came to sputtering and grimacing at the taste of bloody water. I sat beside him on the ground, crossed my legs, and waited for him to start talking.

...Soon, it became clear that getting him to stop would be the real feat. Even worse, he was too useful to justify killing outright. Not only that, but he knew the faces of our enemies. Killing him now would be like choosing to hunt on the night of a new moon.

“We’re not keeping an assassin,” Alistair began, but I silenced him with a look.

“He’s right. I’ll kill him myself.” Caerwyn glowered down at our captive and reminded me very much of Elgar’nan, who was sitting beside me with a very similar expression on his face. I stifled a laugh.

“No, you won’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because I am too handsome to kill, and the two of you much too pretty to be cruel?” offered the assassin.

I shook my head. “Caerwyn, count the shems.”

He crossed his arms and looked over his shoulder at Leliana and Wynne. “...Fine.”

“Excellent! Now who wants to untie me?”

I hauled him to his feet, but made no move for the ropes. “That wasn’t part of the discussion.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Hmmm, perhaps you are just pretty enough to be cruel, yes? Will you at least sing while we walk? Your voice is... thrilling.”

...I’d never heard someone make that a dirty word. I shoved the flat-ear by the shoulders until he started moving, and we kept down the road in silence.

---

 

Sixteen: I Was Angry When I Met You. I Think I’m Angry Still. (Garbage)

CAERWYN

Tesni’d practically gutted the assassin, and when he finally began to limp a little we stopped and she looked at his wounds.

“Wynne,” she called to the mage.

“No,” I said to Tesni, and Wynne had a wary expression on her face. For once the old biddy seemed to agree with me. The assassin who’d tried to murder us didn’t deserve healing.

“Caerwyn, he’s going to bleed out on the road at this rate.”

“Good.”

“I’m not letting him die. We’ve been through this. He’s a good fighter, and we need all the help we can get.”

“You can’t heal him. He tried to kill us!”

“Come on, Caerwyn, you--” She stopped when I tossed some bandages into her hands. She sighed, gave me an annoyed look, and told the flat-ear to take off his chestplate.

He blatantly stared at Tesni’s chest while she wrapped bandages around his stomach. “Ah, it is already worth the pain to have the hands of a beautiful woman upon my ski--” He was cut off with a hiss of surprised pain when Tesni yanked the bandages roughly to tie them. When she turned around and ordered him to put his armor back on I could see a trace of a smirk on her lips.

A moment later he was strutting along like nothing was wrong at all. I stayed near the back of the group and glowered in his direction while we walked.

Flat-ears. Maker-loving, shemlen-serving, spineless, pitiful ‘elves’ who wouldn't know the point of a blade from its hilt.

The assassin wasn't any of those things, but that didn't stop me from hating him. I got angry every time I looked at his pathetic excuse for a tattoo. It didn't mean anything. It didn't show that he could handle pain or that he was an adult. It was just there because it was supposed to look pretty or manly or some other ridiculous thing. It was insulting to those of us who'd earned ours.

And like that wasn't bad enough, he talked. He talked a lot. People'd always told me I didn't say much, and after two hours around the assassin I'd decided that it must've been because he'd stolen all the words other people needed. I couldn't even distract myself by studying the strange language he slipped into sometimes because the words all melted into one big obnoxious string of sounds that made my brain try to shut down when I listened for too long.

I didn't know how Tesni'd convinced me that another 'elf' in the group would make up for the fact that everyone else was either a shem or a purp--Sten. I was convinced that the flat-ear was almost as bad as Morrigan.

As if he could read my mind, the assassin was suddenly right next to me. “Why so silent, my Warden?” I tried not to jump as he took me by surprise. I did not like being taken by surprise. “Your voice is nearly as lovely as our little bird’s. It would be a pleasure to hear more of it.”

I bristled. Someone needed to make him stop saying words like he was making love to them.

"Or perhaps you save your mouth for other things?" He smirked at me and raised an eyebrow suggestively.

I had my blade against his neck before Alistair could blush, but the flat-ear only smiled wider.

“Ah, I can see that you are good with your hands as well! I envy the one who enjoys your talents, cariñoⁱⁱ.” As if he didn't have a knife to his throat, he looked around at the rest of the group, who’d stopped and were standing around us. "No one? Then there is hope for me yet!"

I heard a strange noise and looked at Tesni, who was clearly trying not to laugh.

Again, like there was a knife at his neck every day, the assassin looked back at me. He cocked his head to one side with an expression I couldn’t read. Then he reached his hand up and I tried to grab his wrist to stop him--

--and missed!

"Shemⁱⁱⁱ," Tesni observed with amusement in her voice, meaning the actual word and not shemlen.

I was too busy trying to figure out what’d just happened to respond to Tesni. Then the flat-ear’s fingers were touching my cheek and I backed away quickly.

He shook his head at me with a little laugh. “Like day and night,” he said. “I suspect that you are much like your face, mi cielo negro^iv.”

And before I could say or do anything, he was back at the front of the group and leading us down the path. I looked at Tesni on my right, then Alistair on my left.

“Shut up.”

I pretended not to hear them laughing as I walked away.

*****

Tesni’d picked up a strange metal stick from some old shemlen man, so we were going to find the thing it was supposed to control. Alistair and Sten agreed with me that this might be a waste of time, especially since the archdemon probably wasn’t going to take a nap until we were ready to fight it. But as always, nobody could argue with Tesni. We hiked up into a creepy village and fought some creepy demons and a creepy cat. I’d never seen a cat before.

“So those things,” I asked Alistair after we’d killed it, “cats, are there a lot of them?”

His eyes narrowed. “Unfortunately.”

“What’s wrong with them?” I guessed that if they all got glowy-eyed and turned into demons sometimes that might be inconvenient.

“There was a cat in the Chantry when I was growing up,” he explained. “It was an evil, hateful thing. Might as well have been an actual demon, too. It would pretend to like you and cozy up to you until you’d pet it, and then it would grab your arm--” He made a violent gesture that was supposed to be a cat attacking his wrist, apparently. “--and you wouldn’t be able to hold your sword for a week.”

I shrugged. “They look soft.”

“They are soft,” he said bitterly. “Except for the teeth and the claws. That’s how they get you.”

I left him grumbling about cats to himself and went over to Tesni. She was pointing the metal stick at a big statue in the middle of the village square.

“I want a cat.”

She gave me an annoyed look and started fiddling with the stick.

I crossed my arms and stared at the statue, convinced that the stick was useless and that the old shem’d wasted our time on purpose. But suddenly there was a loud crunching noise of stone scraping against stone and the statue began to move. Everyone except Tesni and Sten took a step or two back.

And then the statue was talking, in a deep, booming voice. Tesni’d found a talking statue. A bored talking statue. I stood and stared as she chatted with it like statues spoke every day. It seemed to hate birds. And mages.

Smart statue.

Then its voice perked up. “Wait. It does have my control rod, does it not? I am awake, so it must.”

“Yes it does, right in its hand,” Tesni replied.

“Order me to do something.”

“Hug him,” Tesni commanded, pointing at Alistair.

“Wait, why do I have to be the one getting a hug from a giant stone golem?” Alistair protested, taking another step back.

The statue looked at Alistair, then back at Tesni. “No.”

I took the stick from Tesni and looked up at the statue. “Tell her to get me a cat.”

It thought for a moment. “Cats kill birds,” it said. “You should get it a cat.”

I smirked at Tesni. “I like it.”

“Oh, Creators’ sake--” she rolled her eyes at me and signaled for everyone to follow her out of the village.

As we passed through the gates, there was a squawking noise and a heavy thud from behind us. We turned around to find the statue standing in a little spot of blood and feathers. I looked at Tesni with a grin.

“I really like it.”

---

 

Emma halam. “I'm done.”

iicariño: darling

iiishem: quick

ivmi cielo negro: my dark heaven

 

We hiked up into a creepy village and fought some creepy demons and a creepy cat.