Leliana has meant to venture out further—to check on the territories that live peacefully on the outskirts of Tephra, deep in the water—but her attention has been snagged on the business of regrowing her home. She has been busy watching over her healing daughter, on her newborn twins, on the return of her second borne daughter and newest granddaughter. Such things have been a continual magnet for her attention and, if she was honest, she would tell you that being a mother always became before her being Queen.

The latter was temporary and never felt like her own.

The first was her permanent identity.

Still, there is a twist of guilt in her belly when she recognizes that her tardiness had caused Ruinam to have to travel here. She feels him when he emerges from the water and she exhales her disappointment in herself in a quick breath. Within the next breath, she has shifted into a red sparrow and she darts across the sky, feeling the light body and learning how to maneuver it with the same grace as her own.

When she arrives on the beach, she shifts mid-air, leaping forward and then landing on the sand in her own form. Her red wings fold over her back and her hazel eyes warm as she greets him with a dip of her lovely head, sand clinging to the feathers on her graceful legs. “Ruinam,” she plucks his name from the same vast knowledge from which everything flows, knowing it in the same way she knows to breathe.

“I am so sorry that I have not had a chance to come visit you yet.”

She wants to tell him how important it was to her—wants to explain herself—but it feels like an excuse on her tongue and she dismisses it, instead just smiling gently. “My name is Leliana.”

it's only you and me there until the darkness calls
let's face the dawn together; we'll brave whatever comes