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i think ameridan would devour his young if sufficiently stressed. to keep them safe you see :)

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"Urthemiel? —ah, right. The Archdemon, isn't it?" Most people only ever called it that, or the blasted dragon, but Shianni had studied diligently so no one at court could accuse her of being uneducated, and some things had actually stuck. Urthemiel had been one of the Old Gods of Tevinter before it became the Archdemon. That must be why they were looking for relics.

She considered, head bent down in thought. The dragon had died on top of Fort Drakon, everyone knew that. The blasts of its purple magic had been visible throughout the whole city even with the smoke from a thousand burning houses. Flashes of green and red and white had been Circle mages and fire grenades and all sort of things thrown back at it. There'd been a pillar of light blazing into the sky that struck all the darkspawn dumb.

Then nothing. Just the crackle of fires and people screaming and weeping and dying.

"I don't know where we could plant it that would be believable. Not where it fell, obviously, they cleaned that up quickly." Fort Drakon was the city's main stronghold. It would be foolish to lead the Venatori there, and she didn't much like the thought of Inquisition spies getting in either. "And people were real keen on picking bits up wherever they fell to sell them. For alchemy, I think. Maybe that's the way to go? The black market, something they'll want to check out?"

She shrugged. "It was a long time ago. It is what it is and I probably took it way more personally than I should have." Even so, some little knot in her chest that she hadn't been aware of eased with the apology. "And I found somewhere that suits me far better, it turns out." She wouldn't trade her life with the Avvar - with her family - for all the gold in Thedas.

Ari stirred in his sling, and she adjusted how the babe lay across her chest. "Now, as for Denerim. We know that the Venatori agents are there; what we don't know is where, specifically, they are. We know what they want - they're looking for relics of Urthemiel." She paused; there was no point in being coy, but the blunt option she was about to propose still caught her by surprise. Even a few months ago, she never would have suggested something like it. "If we can bait a trap with those relics, or something that passes as those relics, and if you can help us get assassins into and back out of the city, then we can kill the bastards. It would be better if we could do it outside of the city, but they aren't complete idiots, so they know where the damned thing died, so if they're going to find bones or ten-year-old dried blood or whatever we plant for them, it has to be there."

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Then... may I choose you to be in my family? - casadh for ameridan

THE BEEKEEPER’S PICNIC | not accepting | @aestuum

The house takes shape one line at a time. Small, squat, with a thatched roof with drooping eaves like a deep frown. Orinna said the house was perpetually scowling at the amount of visitors it had to accommodate. She said it with love, though. It was a grumpy house, but it was their grumpy house. As Ameridan draws it's sour expression, Casadh lets their head come to rest on his shoulder. Their own journal lies beside them, opened to a fresh page with just a few lines added to it. There's grief in the way they keep their face half-turned from his, in the shine of their eyes as they look over Ameridan's shoulder at the home drawn from memory. He isn't sure if something has happened, or if it is just one of those days. It doesn't matter; he's there anyway.

The angle where the roof meets the far wall looks odd, so he extends a branch of the hydrangea bush at the corner to cover it. The house was always overgrown in the summer. They paid a neighbour to care for it when they were away, but she loved plants too much to cut them, so the first thing they had to do when they got back from long travels was always to cut the house out of the forest that had grown up around it. They still paid the neighbour. It was the thought that counted.

"This was our home", he says, lifting the journal up to blow graphite dust from the paper. "Telana's, Orinna's and mine. Though I traveled so much, home was always more people than a place to me. Family." He turns the page over, careful not to let it close completely for fear of smudging the drawing. Orinna looks thoughtful as she strings her bow. There are multiple studies of Telana's hands, lovingly done though he struggled with the anatomy of her fingers. His parents are drawn from a distance, sitting on a bench in their own garden. Haron has been drawn in profile, and Ameridan remembers the moment of drawing: he was trying to capture Haron smiling in spite of himself at one of Telana's not-Chantry-friendly jokes.

He turns to press a kiss to the top of Casadh's head, then rests his own head on theirs. "I lost my family in the Frostback basin", he says into their hair, listening as grief makes their breathing brittle. "Not just Telana and Orinna and Haron. I lost all the people that were still waiting for me, everyone who'd been home, every place that had been home. And I thought..." His voice catches, and he draws a steadying breath. "I thought that was it. I could not possibly replace the people I'd lost with someone else. I did not know why I survived, why I kept surviving. I had nothing. And then..."

He can't speak of it, so he shows it. Lifting his head again he turns a page in the journal, and another, going backwards through the months. Past sketches of Arlathan forest, Assan and the Ligthhouse spirits, there are the children of clan Lavellan, a few of its hunters, the carvings around the doors of their aravels. "I lost my old family", he says, pausing at a sketch of Dhavi, bare-faced and proud and smiling, "but I found a new one. Or I... choose a new one. It is... something you are allowed to do. It isn't wrong. You're not replacing the people you lost. There'll be room for new ones in your heart."

He doesn't know if Casadh struggles with any of this; he only knows he did, and that what troubles them today is their family, the loss of it. Another page is turned and there is Abelas, stretched out across a full spread of the journal (it wasn't intentional; he is just that tall) asleep in the shade of a tree. "My family... my old family, the one I lost, is still with me", Ameridan says. "This is what I chose for now. I hope you can do the same. I want you to do the same."

Casadh is quiet a long time. When they raise their head to look at him, Ameridan feels like they're staring into his soul. "Then... may I choose you to be in my family?"

It strikes him like lightning. For half a heartbeat he's frozen, staring. Something tugs the corners of his mouth down before he's even processed what they asked, as if his body knows before his mind, and maybe it does—maybe family isn't in the mind or even the heart but in the hands and the arms and the skin, in the way Casadh fits so perfectly against his chest and how there's a home in his lap for their head. "Oh", he says, "Casadh, I—" but of course there are still no words. So he does as before, and shows them. Closes the journal so he can put both arms around them, pull them into that perfect spot. Holds them as tight as home as his tears fall into their hair.

"Yes, Casadh", he manages to say, voice thick with a joy so great it is painful. His hand holds the back of their head like he would press them into his own body and keep them safe. Maybe he would, if he was able. There would be room in his heart. "You can choose me to be in your family. It would be my honour."

[skyheld]

"even among the dalish, keepers never work their magic in public" this is such an interesting tidbit merrill thank you

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if you were a skeleton with loot sparkles and a journal ominously foreshadowing the way you died, where would you be

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i queued three replies im treating myself to Game

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i dont think we give merrill enough credit for how horny on main she is. sure she's innocent in a way but she is so down to learn

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my dad got a cold so i will be going to their place on tuesday instead and am around for now

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Sometimes breaking down in tears was like ripping out a thorn that had sat in the lungs pinning them shut. It hurt, it hurt like there were barbs on the thorn tearing things open as it was pulled out, but the deep breath when it was gone filled his lungs with air like they hadn't been filled in months. Even as he bled, as his shoulders shook, he was relieved.

His eyes widened in surprise at the notion she hadn't thanked him. Of course she had. If not in words, then in actions. He didn't need her to spell her gratitude out. "You of all people do not need to thank me, Asharen. You took me in when I had nothing left to give. Even before, all these years..." That she is now crying didn't make it any easier for him to stop. Tears welled into his eyes again, and he used the heel of his palm to dry them. "I will not let you take the blame for it." The tears and the quaver in his voice didn't help him sound determined, but he did try, pinning her with a gaze lined with red. "I won't allow it. If you had been there, maybe you'd have been dead now. There is just no way to know."

What would he have done then, if Asharen had died? Anything and nothing. Nothing would have been too dangerous or desperate, and nothing would have been meaningful.

"Your father..." He looked down, remembering the eyes of the Keeper as he determined he did not want an abomination at camp. "Maybe I could speak to him. Not to ask him to take me back, but to make him see I didn't mean to betray his trust. That I would never have put the clan in danger if it hadn't already been under threat. That I understand his decision but—that I hope he can understand mine."

Maybe he was wrong to think it would help. He hadn't even considered returning to speak to the Keeper; it has hurt too much, and he'd felt too guilty, like he had no right to even explain himself, no right to any sort of closure with the clan. It still terrified him, but he had never been someone to run away from guilt and shame. And he was starting to think that he might have a right to something.

It didn't have to be forgiveness, he didn't have to be taken back. But to face her father again, to explain without the panic and grief he had felt just after the battle, to be able to sit down and speak to him calmly—even if the Keeper ended up still as angry as before, at least Ameridan would know he had done his best.

Asharen was right: he was still himself. That meant trying to make amends. It meant being honest. Her father might never see it, but that was not what mattered.

"Bitter and desperate, is it?" He sniffled, then laughed a little, looking at her with a small smile. "I suppose that's fair. And now we both look like a mess."

   "Raea telir'enaste eolasa. (It's just good to know.)" she says simply.

Maybe it would never come to be. Never come to be needed. But it was best to have the knowledge even if one ended up not using it than having to find out when it was truly needed.

The weight of their forehead against her shoulder is returned in kind, her hands resting against his shoulders and arms in a half hug. She holds him for how long he needs it, allowing him to pull away just as easily. The absence of the warmth is starkly felt on her, but she remains steady, allowing her hands to return to where they had been before until they are eventually held.

   "Thank you," the light eyes narrowing on Ameridan's; her sister had once commented that she could just have been told that he was one of their older cousins from a different clan and that she would have believed it without so much as blinking. And she had been right; though Asharen had always thought of Ameridan as an older sibling, someone that Ren himself would have looked up to as an example to the Keeper he would like to become. Ameridan and her father would have been wonderful examples. Her mouth is dry as she continues "truly. I don't... I don't know if I have thanked you, for what you did, for protecting them. I would have never—"

-arrived on time. The words almost stumble out of her mouth, tripping over the breaths that she tries to keep controlled. Breathing itches and she closes her mouth, inhaling slowly as to soothe the soft trembling of hands "I—"

Her eyes move from Ameridan and her mouth shuts. It was embarrassing. Truly. As Inquisitor she had felt the world threatening to crumble atop her shoulders; when she shed that mantle she felt that herself and the world had crumbled, even if it had continued spinning. And now, now she attempted to grab at each piece and keep it together to a state closer to what it was before. It was foolish and it was impossible and while she had always felt out of her depth as Inquisitor, now? Now she had to fight the feeling that she had failed those that were most important to her.

   "I keep thinking..." imagining . She looks to the resting quill, eyes burning and the space around them lit by candle light swimming "what would have happened if you had not chosen to do this, forced to do this, if you hadn't been there. I keep thinking about going to the Clan and just—"

She wouldn't have known for many days, likely weeks. Someone would likely have found the dead and would have reported it to Antiva City, it would then have to find its way through Varric's contacts up until her. Maybe Josephine would have recognised but this fate was not one uncommon for many a Dalish clan. It was often why they stayed further away from human settlements.

By the time she would have gotten there, it was likely that the wild animals would have taken over, more bandits coming to pick apart at the wreckage and all she can think is the lives that her nephews and nieces would never get to grow into. She feels her lips tremble, her heartbeat grow louder in her ears.

Hakkon was indeed quite talented at getting under one's skin. But it didn't mean that he was wrong, only that he was mean and cruel.

   "I've just been so busy, and distracted and I wasn't there." she hears her voice tremble and shuts her mouth, daring to glance up to Ameridan - clearing her nose with the back of her prosthetic and feeling the cold metal scrape against her skin.

The tears quickly cleaned up by those same brassy fingers, leaving a trail of red skin behind.

   "I will never be able to-" forgive myself "-be able to make up for that."

To him. To Hakkon. To the clan.

This had only cemented that her refusal to become First had been right. She would never be Ren. She would never be like her Father. She was not built for that and disappointment and regret was likely all that she could offer to both them and herself. And yet she still felt both, deeply and bitterly in the back of her throat and tongue. She was thankful, yes, so deeply thankful, but the shame was like a rope around her throat.

Her flesh hand holds Ameridan's tighter and her eyes fall; hoping that the shame will not burn into her eyes, that her teeth will not sink too deeply into her lips.

   "My father doesn't understand, but I do." he had always been too strong headed for his own good, but he had always looked out for the Clan in ways that she could never. He had always been good to all of them, or had tried his best. But he could not understand, even if he tried, how could one ask him to relate to something so outside of his experience?

He would no more be able to understand it than someone who has never experienced magic would be able to explain what it was to produce flames between from pure will alone. Words and language would be lacking and to share feelings in such a manner would not work.

Clearing her throat, sniffling the tears away, her chin raised she looks to Ameridan once more "Your sacrifice just tells me that you are still you, even at your most bitter and most desperate. You are still you - Hakkon could never change that."

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aight i have saved some drafts to my phone so i can potentially write when im off my laptop. tomorrow im going to my parents to snuggle the cat and monday is dnd so im not sure if i'll be on the dash until tuesday!

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it was ~23 or so degrees out today and im dying of heatstroke send help

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The forest is beautiful and... broken, and it's not the ruins that makes Ameridan feel that way. Something feels uneasy here. The air is restless with magic and there are people frozen in time, in wood and bark; the sight of them makes his mouth dry. Hakkon, in his mind, is restless too. Sometimes Ameridan feels his gaze begin to wander, or his head begin to turn, without him meaning to, and he doesn't think the god-spirit tries to take control on purpose. The Veil is so thin, his power waxes. The magic pulls at him.

Ameridan stiffens a little at Muirwen's question, relaxing only slightly when he catches her smile. "I have, yes." It is not something he would share with anyone, not even Irelin and Strife, unless he had to. But the sight of him in battle makes it obvious something is unusual, and Rook thought it best to inform them before any suspicions could arise. "He is Hakkon Wintersbreath, the Avvar god of war. I hunted him once, a long time ago."

He takes his eyes from a tree from which an arm is reaching out, the hand outstretched as if to grasp for something no longer there, to watch his footing down a slope where the path is crossed over with tree roots. So much of their past is like these trees, he thinks, the life gone and only their agony left on display.

He looks back at the wolf walking just behind them. There's an old familiar ache, but it has softened with the years. "I would not mind, though it is a long story if told from the beginning. What would you like to know about?"

» 𝐀 𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐒 . // no longer accepting!! @skyheld asked: [ MULBERRY ] sender and receiver take a long walk through nature together. /ameridan!

Muirwen and Ameridan walk the well trod paths of Arlathan Forest, past the ents frozen in time that had once been their ancestors; it is still a hard thing for her to wrap her mind around. Her wolf pads along at their heels, keeping an eye on their surroundings to make sure no threats present themselves — and if they do — can be easily dealt with. Between the two of them, they should be fine.

"So," the woman begins, glancing over in the older elf's direction. "I heard from Strife and Irelin that you have the spirit of an Avvar god inside of you? Rook told them, but I was close enough to catch that before the Witch of the Wilds arrived." She offers a small apologetic smile to him, but then glances forward.

Her silver eyes observe the tears in the Fade, the erratic magic that is making parts of the ruins levitate and suspend themselves in the air. "Would you be willing to share your story with me, Hahren Ameridan? It would be an honor to speak to one who has seen so much of our people's past, especially one that is carrying... something else inside of them, as you are."

What she leaves unsaid is that she is too, though Muirwen suspects that the other elvhen is likely aware of her own passenger already.

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May I offer you a lil cinnamon roll 🥺🥺

yes you can thank you so much 😭❤️ what a precious baby

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i had some bad news so i will be quiet on here. also send me pics of your pets if you want

one of my parent's cats has trouble with her kidneys and its not treatable. she's not in pain so the vet recommended to just let her be until she gets worse, which could be anywhere from days to weeks but probably not longer than that. she's a fourteen year old lady and im not surprised, just very sad

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He was glad to sit. He could still feel the climb up the stairs in his legs and even more so in his head, where his balance hadn't settled. The mess did not bother him; it was charming. He looked curiously at the books she had left there before she moved them away.

"Thank you", he said as she'd poured the cup, and took it into his hands. It was a little too hot to drink straight away, but he liked the warmth of the cup against his fingers. It kept them occupied, too, kept him from tapping a surface or fiddling with the hem of his sleeves. Ameridan was too tired to be restless, but there would always be some part of him that wanted to act.

"I did not mean to... when I said orlesian history will not be enjoyable to me, I did not mean I took offense", he said. He'd noted her embarrassment. "I asked for the book. It was thoughtless to suggest you should have known why."

Well, perhaps enjoy had not been the right word to use. Chloe felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment and scolded herself for being so awkward. She also felt rather stupid for asking him to stay for tea, after making a blunder like that.

She expected him to turn the offer down, but to her surprise, he didn't. "Oh! Oh, all right, um..." She went over to the table where the tea tray sat and pushed aside a pile of books. "Here, please sit. I'm sorry for the mess."

Thankfully, the tea was still hot. Chloe couldn't help but wonder if Niamh had used a little magic to keep it warm, but she wasn't going to complain. She poured Ameridan a cup and set it at the now clean spot on the table.

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the mage apprentices getting to go outside and exercise once a week until anders escaped and they didn't ("weren't forced to" in finn's words but he didn't want to, so how much do you want to bet they just straight up weren't allowed) is so brilliant. let's take a group of people known to attract malicious spirits when in a bad mental state and give them super depression

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im once again lamenting not having a screencap button because part of the dialogue is missing from the conversation history but

the statue in the circle tower basement specifically says the sorrow of the ancient elves when arlathan fell woke the stone. not just it made the dwarves sympathetic to their plight but the stone itself was. considering the writers must have alreeady known at this poitn about the elves' role in making the titans tranquil im sure this was intentional. when the veil was raised, the evanuris were locked away and the elves lost their immortality, it seems like at least one of the titans regained some of its connection to its spirit self and forgave them. maybe they only saw the evanuris as enemies and not all the elves, maybe we can't understand how they thought because their emotions aren't human. it was definitely intentional and i wonder if it was even meant to play into the endgame and be a part of how the world could be healed, assuming that was ever on the table.