( in the early, heady days of the inquisition, of skyhold—
she had imagined that opportunity there. it's a bitter disappointment, still, to find it not so. accordingly, a relief to find that they will not be without likeminded mages in riftwatch. settling for doing fewer war crimes is one thing. )
It will be harder, next time.
( she takes a drink, and only marcus can say whether he is or isn't surprised by how she finishes that thought, ) We aren't strangers, now. We aren't children frozen in memory's amber or imagined demons corralled behind the high walls of a tower. People who would never have known mages before have not merely fought next to them but lived alongside. Drinking, eating, sleeping, screwing.
( she isn't above cutting him a sidelong glance. hey baby. )
Oh, Dorian and I, maybe. He is too Tevene, myself too Mortalitasi, both of us too aristocratic to be rallied behind if I do not bring the dogs,
( wry, self-skewering humor, )
but we are no longer the only sort of mages a person might see. Before—perhaps Vivienne, if a gawker were lucky at the Winter Palace. Perhaps myself. We will, neither of us, engender much fellow feeling with the common man of Thedas. ( she knows what she is. ) And we did not.
It has been the better part of a decade, now. The intolerably lucky few are not representative of the mage who turned their healing arts to community work, or the mage who saved a village from a rift, and told bad jokes by the fire after.
no subject
she had imagined that opportunity there. it's a bitter disappointment, still, to find it not so. accordingly, a relief to find that they will not be without likeminded mages in riftwatch. settling for doing fewer war crimes is one thing. )
It will be harder, next time.
( she takes a drink, and only marcus can say whether he is or isn't surprised by how she finishes that thought, ) We aren't strangers, now. We aren't children frozen in memory's amber or imagined demons corralled behind the high walls of a tower. People who would never have known mages before have not merely fought next to them but lived alongside. Drinking, eating, sleeping, screwing.
( she isn't above cutting him a sidelong glance. hey baby. )
Oh, Dorian and I, maybe. He is too Tevene, myself too Mortalitasi, both of us too aristocratic to be rallied behind if I do not bring the dogs,
( wry, self-skewering humor, )
but we are no longer the only sort of mages a person might see. Before—perhaps Vivienne, if a gawker were lucky at the Winter Palace. Perhaps myself. We will, neither of us, engender much fellow feeling with the common man of Thedas. ( she knows what she is. ) And we did not.
It has been the better part of a decade, now. The intolerably lucky few are not representative of the mage who turned their healing arts to community work, or the mage who saved a village from a rift, and told bad jokes by the fire after.