#solavellen | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vespaer77 · 9 months ago

Text

The Memory of Her Scent

Inspired by this post

A drop of ink fell from the tip of his quill. It landed on the parchment below, leaving a blot separate from the whole. A form without intention.

Solas cursed a sharp, old word under his breath.

How long had his mind gone wandering? Aimless, like the lost foal of a mother halla? What was it that had stilled his hand, leaving it paused, poised with potential?

He studied the symbols he'd been scribing. They now seemed foreign, their meaning nebulous like the images that had skirted his periphery just a moment before. Little figments of his imagination they were, plucked and placed with purpose by the Fade. Little ghosts of memory come to haunt his tired eyes.

He replaced the quill to his inkwell and sat back in his chair, gently massaging his temples and the bridge of his nose. Perhaps he was working too hard. Perhaps he feared the noise in his mind that screamed at him when he didn't. If he was asleep, he could indulge his meandering thoughts, as dreamtime was a time for contemplation and self-reflection. Introspection. Processing and gathering facts, investigation. Understanding and compartmentalization.

But the waking world was for focus. For drawing conclusions, and watching possibilities coalesce into clarity. Yet it was clarity that proved so elusive, like the fickle scent of a hare on a rainy day.

He peered down the length of the corridor before him, his eyes straining in the grey, joyless, dismal dim, lit only by veilfire - the memory of fire. And probably not a very good one. It was a pale imitation, like everything else in the Lighthouse. It performed a utility, and no other characteristic beyond that.

It gave no care for what he wanted. It was simply what it needed to be.

Yet even now, as his gaze poured endlessly through the wan light flickering down the long line of plaster frescos and the shadows that lie between them…

He could smell her.

Read the rest here on AO3 or

And not the smell she carried when she was sweating beneath the pounding sun, stumbling through the shifting sands west of Val Royeaux. Neither was it the smell of her when she was combing the char of dragon fire out of her hair, after a bath with sweet herbs and lye soap. It wasn't even the smell of her as she stalked the Emerald Graves, all moss and loamy earth, when the visage of the Inquisitor peeled away from her like old paint to reveal what lie beneath, the graceful and cunning Dalish hunter who slipped silently between trees and stepped lightly over stones. Though that one was close.

It was instead the smell of her when her armor was hung and her staff was stowed, her business concluded and the Anchor forgotten, and all that was left to her was herself. Her truest self. The self that he knew best.

The self that knew him best.

And if he let his eyes unfocus, let the Fade around him win and let his edges blur and soften, he could almost see it.

The red flutter of a leaf as it tumbled in lazy somersaults, falling slowly to the ground.

The soft swirl of steam rising from the teapot he'd brought to share, which wasn't full of tea.

The light rustle of pages, the book in his hands teased by a playful mountain breeze.

And her just there in her garden, in her castle, humming an ancient lullaby that he was too old to know. She'd cast a spell over him with it, a bubble of quiet, banishing the murmurs of other voices off into nothingness somewhere far, far away.

His eyes swam as he relived the memory, and he watched it play all around him, a perfect pantomime of the past. It was the only time in his life that he could recall having ever truly known a moment of peace, though there was likely much of his existence he could no longer remember. It filled him with an ache so big it left no room for breath. Yet even as the air left him, sucking him dry as the vacuous void in his heart, he could smell her.

Because she smelled like him. Like them. When they were together.

A blend of ingredients, harkening from a precious pinpoint in time, each one carrying its individual note of significance. A thread in a tapestry, a tile in a mosaic.

There was the sugary scent of qunari spiced chocolate, still bubbling in its little teapot. It was a recipe he enjoyed, so she'd learned it. And she'd taught him. And then there was the musk of the leather binding the storybook he'd brought to read to her while he kept her company. His words had danced with her melody, carried aloft by the intoxicating aroma of rotting leaves, overturned soil, and blooming flowers.

From her garden. Its fragrant bouquet was as heavy as the late afternoon sun, lush with embrium, crystal grace, and dawn lotus. Amrita vein and arbor blessing, and even simple, useful things like spindleweed, felandaris, and elfroot.

And then there was the buttery smell of warm bread when she took off her gloves and sat down beside him, spreading tart wild berry jam across two slices of toast.

And the dewy puff of breath that kissed his cheek when she'd laughed at something he'd said. He couldn't possibly conjure the words now. He likely didn't even know what he'd said then either, as ceaselessly dumbfounded in her presence as he'd often found himself. She'd bewitched him, mind and body, and a part of him remained her thrall even now.

And it pained him. Nearly to the point of capitulation, once. Even then, as he'd sat on that bench beside her, in her garden, in her castle, filling her cup with chocolate and watching the wind tickle her nose with her hair, he'd considered giving it all up. Placing his principles aside.

For a time.

Time enough for her to rally her troops and march against her enemy. Time enough for her to restore hope and peace to a broken world. Time enough for her to shape the legend that elven clans would tell of her to their children, one thousand years from now. And time enough for them to celebrate their success, and savor the serenity of a life well-earned. Together. In love, in their harmony. In their quiet home nestled within a quiet garden, that smelled of flowers and the wind in the trees, and of leather-bound tomes and freshly baked bread and qunari spiced chocolate.

And then, time enough to watch the first sheen of silver streak through her long, dark hair. To watch the first lines of laughter linger too long at the corners of her mouth.

Until one day she would wonder why she grew old and he…

And he was always old to begin with.

How long could he live the lie?

And it wasn't that he was never truly the man she knew. Quite the opposite. She'd freed from within him a man he'd done his best to lock away. And his love for her was a truth so fierce and so monstrous it threatened to devour the rest of him entirely. The lie was the preposterous notion that he could ever have afforded himself the luxury of love at all. That the man she knew could ever, at all, be given the chance to flourish.

For as long as Fen'Harel ignored his duty and strayed from the lonely path he walked, their People would continue to die.

She would continue to die.

And then one day… she would leave him, anyway. She would sigh her last and close her eyes, drift off and away like a leaf on the sea to make her journey across the Fade, leaving ripples of memory behind her that spirits like him could cling to as if they were somehow more real than veilfire. And then she'd disappear, no longer to wake from dreaming, off into that great mystery that lie on the other side, beyond. Forever. To join the others that had gone before her, all of the others that had left him, long ago.

To go where he could never follow, and leave him behind.

Alone.

No matter what he did, he was always destined to lose her.

So it was best he let her go. He was glad he did it, even. It was cruelty for them both. And he was glad he did it years ago, so that nights like these came fewer to him. Nights when the memory of her scent swelled on the tides of dreams to crash against his shore, in the crossroads between the waking world and the Fade. He was glad for every night he summoned strength from solitude and resisted the urge to prowl the edges of her dreamscape, like a drug that masks a pain. Because what had begun as surrendering to succor had started to shift into something that seemed more like… surveillance. And it stained the context of their shared history. So he was glad he no longer needed this touchstone of her scent, and that he no longer needed to worry over how he'd feel should he watch the warm spice of her dewy breath one day kiss the cheek of someone else.

He watched a teardrop fall onto the parchment, to dilute his little ink blot. It swirled in diaphanous little spirals as grey as the cold and empty hall he called his ho… his living space. His lips twisted into a bitter smile against his will and he laughed a sharp, sad sob. Even after all of these many, long, long years, he was still such a terrible liar. So he crumpled the parchment in his fists, fell back in his chair in defeat, and used a sleeve to dry his eyes.

There was time enough to continue wrenching his plans into fruition tomorrow. There was time enough to let his slow yet inexorable walk of death delay for just one day. He would not risk intruding upon her dreams tonight, though. The time had come and gone for that. Time moved differently for her anyway, he was probably a stranger to her now. At the very least a memory.

He would, however, make a pot of qunari spiced chocolate. Perhaps he'd read a book, to clear his head before turning in for the night. Perhaps he'd try to recall a lullaby, to sing himself to sleep.

And perhaps tonight he would dream about a castle with a garden.

And the kiss of her breath on his cheek.

#dragon age #dai #dragon age inquisition #datv #dragon age the veilguard #solas #fen'harel #the dreadwolf #solas x lavellen #solasmance #solavellen #solavellen hell #my writing #dragon age fic #dragon age fanfic #dragon age fan fiction

43 notes · View notes