"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Leliana often finds herself near the River. There is something in the churning of the current, in the way that the winds slap up against the bank, that brings her back to a quiet place within her—a seed of something like normalcy that feels stabilizing. So much of her life is spent in the darkness of the unknown now that she can hardly ever find her feet beneath her. So much of her life is spent just trying to keep her head above water, trying to clutch onto the core of herself before the magic burns it all away.
It has already disintegrated her family. Drawing the battle line between herself and a man she had once considered her partner in all things. Leaving her children spread far and wide. It has left her isolated, even when surrounded by allies or those she considers wise council. And, perhaps, what is worse is the way that the isolation hardly reaches her. The sharp edge of loneliness can barely carve its way through the shield that she has erected around herself, that heavy cloak of justice and fury and the unknown.
It leaves the normally calm, steady woman vulnerable to a turbulent fire within her breast.
A chaos that leaves her ears ringing, her pulse racing, and it drives her, ultimately, to the river.
She stands before it now, the stars having long since hung themselves in the night sky, breathing in the smell of the passing storm and the water beneath. She can feel the moss and grass begin to grow toward her, and she closes her golden depthless eyes, the glow of them shuttered as she just focuses on breathing.
When she feels the grass begin to sway toward another, caught between the headwinds of two who channel their gifts through it, her eyes open again. Her lovely face comes down and angles toward the darkness, to where the mare of plants and magic comes. For a second, a shadow crosses her features, but it is washed away as a neutral expression instead. She considers extending an invitation, but instead she merely breathes forward a gust of wind, the warm air laced with honey and flowers as it moves to wrap around the coming magician. It is the only introduction she needs; the only language they know.
Later, of course, Isilya would like to think that she had drifted towards this river because her heart felt the tug of another plant magician, another whose soul sang the same sweet song as hers. That wasn’t the case, of course. She was only exploring, only attempting to re-learn the land of Beqanna and all the strange-yet-familiar places within it. Sometimes, she swears she sees a tree that calls to her memories.
It’s been twenty years since she was last here and Beqanna has gone through some harsh, radical changes. Isilya doesn’t feel the weight of those years, she spent many of them in a haze - lost and living as a tree for some of them, she spent an entire year rooted to a spot just so she could watch a den of fox kits grow and blossom before her eyes. The land doesn’t seem to feel the weight of those years either - it’s been refreshed sometime between now and then.
Does it remember the battles and the blood? Does it remember the sweet words whispered under starry skies not unlike this one?
Isilya still has hope that it does, still hopes that her Beqanna is still somewhere to be found here, and she’ll keep searching for it.
Well, not tonight though. Although Isilya’s heart and mind are easily lots in the trees and roots, plantlife will always come second to the company of her own kind. She’ll shift from a wistful dreamer to an excited puppy as soon as she realizes she's no longer alone.
Tonight something more important than trees has certainly stumbled across her path - a beautiful winged mare. Isilya was moving forward before she felt it, like a gentle tug on her heart. She never knew any of her siblings and she wonders now if this is what it would’ve felt like, an instant kinship with someone. She’s intoxicated by the sweet scents that the mare sends her way but the white and gold mare doesn’t really need any more of an invitation.
Her pale tail drags gently across the ground as she moves forward before stopping, just a little closer than what is probably polite. She’s just too excited! “You’re like me.” Isilya breathes into the night air, her green-and-gold hazel eyes absolutely dancing with excitement and love. She knew there were other magicians, of course - she had stumbled across a few in her youth - but this is so different in takes her breath away.
As if she needed to prove herself, the vines along Isilya’s spine shift and the soft snow-white flowers that bloomed there are replaced with rich purple wisteria that drape in thick bunches. The woody vines continue to twist and turn, forming a set of dragonfly wings with soft iridescent membranes connecting the vine framework. They flutter a few times before settling at Isilya’s sides, her expression shining and warm.
“It's so wonderful to meet someone else! I’m Isilya.”
Leliana was born just as the earth shifted beneath Beqanna.
Her first memory is curling around her sister on the Mountain and although the Chamber is where she would have been raised, it was instead under Magnus’ watchful eye in Tephra. In the aftermath, she grew up wild and free and kind. It did not matter the tragedies she experienced or the heartaches she felt because, in the end, Leliana remained steadfast in her calm, caring nature. She remained unchanged.
That is until Beqanna shifted again—until the world rended and magic flooded her veins.
This was enough to tilt her world on its axis, to leave her spinning into the abyss.
She is no longer the honey-eyed woman of her youth. She is not the healer walking amongst the masses and rooting out whatever hurts she can. Instead she is a Queen and a protector and a woman willing to wage war to serve what she calls justice. It is only now, standing next to the river and before the sweet smile of her fellow magician that she mellows at all. She does not greet the other woman she once would have—does not smile and pull her close, does not fall into the rivers of kinship—but she quiets.
“Isilya,” her tongue wraps around the name, testing the weight of it before she nods. Her own wings at her side begin to shift, independent of her magic, taking on a mirror image of the woman’s dragonfly wings. Her own are made of redwood with small clusters of moss at the edges, but they are similar enough that they could be a mirror image. “My name is Leliana,” she offers, feeling the flowers that bloom beneath.
“I have not yet met another,” a quiet pause. “At least not like us.”
Because for all the volcano rages behind her in her home and for the burning star that glows in her chest, her magic is a quiet one. It is the soft murmur of the brook and the unfurling of an opening bud.
It is a gentle, soft magic—and one day, maybe one day, Leliana will find her way back to the source of it.
Although the trick is similar to the one that Isilya had just done, the gold-pointed mare’s eyes widen and a soft, appreciative gasp escapes her as she watches Leliana’s wings shift before her eyes. They were beautiful before, but she’s just mesmerized by the redwood and moss appearance of them now. She feels a little jealous, though the vines and wisteria of her own suit her so well.
Calm Leliana has soothing effect on Isilya but it ebbs and flows as it wrestles with her enthusiasm about meeting another who can weave magic with plants, and just the pure ecstasy she’s feeling now that she’s talking to someone else of flesh and blood. She didn’t know how much she missed it, how much she needed it! But she’s trying not to go overboard, to not fidget and pace with the building excitement growing within her.
So she focuses all her might on the words that pass between them, nodding along to Leliana’s observation that she had not met another like them before. “Neither have I.” Isilya’s not sure whether it says something that she hasn’t - sure, she’s almost 24 years old but she spent so much of that time lost in the forest, losing herself as she spent time as a tree and whatever other shapes spoke to her in that hazy, forgotten time. She doesn’t feel any older than two, still feels the youthful enthusiasm that encouraged her to explore beyond the world she was born into.
So maybe it’s not really that impressive she hasn’t met another plant magician in all her years, since she has not spent any time looking for one.
“Magic seemed to be quite all over the place in Beqanna when I last left, in all shapes and forms, but I’m glad that we’re still unique.” Her green-and-gold eyes are shining, mind racing trying to come up with something good, something interesting, to keep this gorgeous Leliana here. Isilya isn’t ready to give up on company, especially not someone so like herself!
“What’s the most fun you’ve had with it?”
She assumes, not knowing any better, that Leliana has had this magic her whole life - that she’s experimented and played with it, tested the boundaries of her powers and of her imagination.
There is something that speaks to the excitement simmering just below the surface with the other magician; something that can be seen like small bubbles of air. She wonders at just what lives in the other’s chest. Does she live twisted into tight curls of excitement? Leliana can hardly imagine what it must be like to be so constantly stimulated. She can hardly imagine that level of energy and joy.
She has always been the quiet sister. She has been the still waters to her sister’s raging oceans, and even despite all of the changes that take root and blossom in her now, this remains the same.
Still, she appreciates the other’s enthusiasm and she responds with a slow spreading of lips into a warm smile. “Magic takes root all over now,” she agrees. “When I was born, it had been stripped away. The world had been bled of magic.” It had been such a different Beqanna then. The lands of old had been rearranged and swallowed and they had emerged as something new entirely.
“But it came back—slowly at first and then all at once.”
Her gifts had been returned to her quickly. They had been pressed into her chest and she had not needed to wait long to know what it was to have her gift of healing curling around her palm, ready to be used. The question catches her off guard though and she frowns slightly, looking into the horizon. “I don’t know that I’ve ever had fun with it.” She looks back. “But this gift—this magic—is new to me.”
She had only just begun to feel its weight and understand its power.
“Before this, I just had my wings and the gift of healing.” The first had been a means of transportation, and in their own way, and the latter had always been a power rooted in seriousness and need.
It’s good to see a smile, even if it’s just small to start, appear on the other mare’s face and it warms Isilya right down to her core to see it. She’s fascinated to hear about how magic left, and then returned, to this place - and even more fascinated to hear that Leliana had not always had the power that they share! “It must be a little overwhelming, isn’t it?” Isilya tilts her head, an understanding and sympathetic smile in her gold-and-green eyes. She cannot imagine what it would feel like to live your life without magic, even though Leliana had some magic, and then to suddenly feel it coursing through your veins. She wonders if that is why the pretty mare is so quiet, so reserved.
When the question is returned to her, the golden-skinned mare’s eyes brighten. “I have! I was born with mine, and both of my parents had their own version so I was able to learn how to practice from them. My mother could shape-shift into plants, if you can believe it! So transformations have always been a favourite of mine. We used to try to outdo each other by turning into more and more colourful and ridiculous flowers.” Isilya’s lost in the nostalgia, but there’s no sadness in her when she thinks of her mother and how long it’s been since she’s seen her. Only warmth and happiness at the time they were able to share together.
“Before I came back I spent a few years living as a tree, you know. Letting the sun and the soil nurture me, whispering to the birds and critters that lived within my canopy and watching them grow. It might sound boring, but I have never been more relaxed in my life!” She laughs a little, feeling just a bit embarrassed. But maybe Leliana is the only one who might understand the draw to just lose yourself in the wilderness - and have the power to literally do so.
Of course now, Isilya is playing catch-up with the world and she wonders if she should have spent so many years rooted to the ground.
Her laughter dies and the smile that is left is small but warm as she easily slips out of her own mind and focuses on something much more interesting - her company. “Much like your healing, I imagine, the magic will come easier and be less daunting the more you practice and the longer it’s living inside of you.” She pauses, thoughtful for a moment, before continuing in a softer voice - feeling shy for the first time in a very, very long time. “I had my mother to help me learn, and I don’t know if you have anyone else but even if you do - you now have me as well, if you’d like.”
So much of her old self remains trapped behind glass that it is difficult for Leliana to imagine reaching behind it. Difficult to imagine what it must be like to reconnect—although, surely, some day she must. It feels like she has been torn apart and the two halves of her live disconnected and yet together within her breast. Like she is to constantly feel them at war with themselves, magnets that can neither rest nor leave.
It leaves her feeling empty and swollen all at once, and she grows envious of the other mare’s joy. The way that she can look back to her past with such warmth in memory. “That sounds lovely,” is all she says, because to say anything other would threaten the walls she has erected around her heart. The hurt from her childhood—the way that her and her twin sister grew up as near orphans, save Magnus’ watchful eye.
“That doesn’t sound boring at all,” her voice is lower now, breathy and soft on her tongue as she thinks on what it must be like to let yourself grow wild. To become nothing but the soil and the air and the life that grows in the moments in between. To be truly free of the cages in her normal world. To be free.
Her smile grows slightly warmer as the other magician mentions her healing and she closes her golden eyes in thought, thinking about it. “My healing never felt daunting,” she says, although the correction is not unkind. “It was like breathing. As easy as anything I’ve ever done.” Her eyes open again and she focuses on Isilya. “This…this was different. I’ve felt like I’m drowning in it.” The power of it was completely overwhelming and she’s struggled to breathe, to keep her head above water.
But she rolls her shoulders, uncomfortable with the confession.
“I am grateful to have you. I,” she hesitates before continuing, “I have needed a friend.”
Isilya’s already absolutely completely won over by Leliana, but that she says the words ‘that doesn’t sound boring’ in regards to the golden-skinned mare’s time spent as a tree just solidifies the growing love that she has for this stranger-friend. She’s so eager to give her heart away, to find friends that aren’t the lovely trees and vines and flowers that have been her family for a few decades.
She’s lost herself already imaging a future where they become close, bonded by this magic they share. Isilya wants to show Leliana that it doesn’t have to be frightening, that it can be wonderful and beautiful and that when the roots of it grow among their hearts and minds it’s the most lovely feeling in the world.
We’ll just gloss over the fact that Isilya is so enraptured by their magic because it’s all she has had in her life for so long. Would she revere it so much if she knew what it felt like to be in love? To be trusted enough by a friend to hold a secret? To be a mother? Her magic is her lifeline, her safety blanket, and she’s not sure what she would be like if she tries to expand past it.
She’s all warmth and smiles still, nodding at the correction to her attempt to compare the magic to Leliana’s healing, and she’s quick with encouragements. “You’ll get the hang of it, I just know it.”
Leliana says “friend” and Isilya’s golden hooves dance a little because she wants to glide forward and wrap the younger mare in the biggest hug ever but she holds herself back still - uncharacteristically uncertain and afraid of going too far. She doesn’t want to scare off her first friend! “It would be a pleasure to be your friend, Leilana, and I’ll always be happy to help you in whatever way I possibly can. I’m so glad we’ve met!”
There’s a small pause, and bright eyes shift to look around them for a moment before they are pulled back - Isilya’s dream-like smile doesn’t fade a bit though. “Perhaps you can help me out too? I don’t know anything about this new Beqanna, about the kingdoms or where might be a safe place to call home.” She feels a little guilty asking for something when she's offered so little, but she's hoping this new friendship can grow and hopes she can grow with it.
The other mare’s warmth begins to creep through Leliana’s armor, and she can feel the ache in her bones respond to it. She can feel it begin to spread through her, leaving small fingerprints on her heart and throughout her veins. Enough that she can give the other a soft smile, a ripple effect of what she would usually be, an echo of the girl who once smiled so freely, who once gave her heart so openly.
Still, it is a start, and she drops her head slightly in acknowledgment.
When the other mare asks for her help, her ears tip forward, her expression turning more thoughtful. “I would love to help you out,” she offers, although she feels so new to politics. She has always known of them only in her peripheral; aware that they exist, but not fully embracing them.
It is strange that she must know them so intimately now.
Strange that she is to be so involved.
She can almost feel the weight of the crown settle onto her brow and she straightens slightly beneath it, her dragonfly wings pulling in closer to her sides. “Right now, Beqanna has four main quadrants where the kingdoms live. There is Nerine, led by Heartfire. Loess, led by Castile. Silver Cove, led by Dawn.” There is almost a frown on her face, but she washes it clean. “And Tephra, led by me.”
It feels odd to admit such a thing but she presses on. “We recently were touched by war,” her lips press together as she imagines her kingdom on fire, the volcano and the blood that had seeped into the ground. “You will always be welcome there, but I cannot promise that it will be the safest place.” She glances up again, finding the other magician’s gaze. “But if you ever wanted to visit, I could use help in rehabilitating the land. It is slow trying to heal the land after all the damage that she suffered.”
it's only you and me there until the darkness calls let's face the dawn together; we'll brave whatever comes
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