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[ morrigan sounding worried gives more weight to her words. ]

Shall I come to you, my lady?

[ yes, he is very interested in theories. ]

If you are able, this is a matter I would prefer to speak of in person. That way I know who might be listening.

[A sending crystal doesn't let her do that, and--

She'd rather see him. Show him.]

There are things that cannot leave here. Not to a soul. Not yet.

Shall I come to you, lady? It has been some time since I visited Sundermount.

Yes. Be quiet, Kieran is abed, I wouldn't have him woken.

[Upon arrival Thranduil will find her with tea in the pot, the candles burning low and fire guttering in the hearth as papers lie spread over the table including the he damnable codex that has eaten some terrible hole in her. A dark book lies alongside, leatherbound, something of the symbol familiar.

Morrigan has been at this some time by the way her shoulders hunch inward, hair falling out of the updo, the circles beneath the eyes.]

I believe I see it all now, come, sit, I...I cannot tell another. And this cannot go even to your cousin. This must stay here in this room for now or you must leave.

[Does she sounds afraid or is it the exhaustion painting itself into the spaces where realisation, unwelcome, unwanted, hasn't already bled?]

[ he comes to her home in the night like-- like a man coming to a witch's home in the night, ducking into her doorway and following her directions absolutely. his eyes do not linger overlong on anything beyond the candles, the table, the teapot. ]

I have kept things from her before, it will not be difficult to do so again.

[ easy, even, for she has him curious. she looks tired. ]

[Where does she even start? Part of her wants to laugh at it, at how farcical this has become with all that she holds in her hands now, how blind even from girlhood buy she does not.

She pours tea. If she drank wine she'd almost certainly never get through it. Indicates for him to sit because once she starts it won't stop, it will spill out, it will be the flood and--

A breath. Her hands curl, uncurl, curl, uncurl.]

You were there with me in the Korcari Wilds meeting the shaman who told me that silence was not what it was, that it was her. Long have there been tales of my mother and the Chasind, and last I left her, someone took me from me this book. Her grimoire. 'tis where I learnt how she extends her life so.

[The old book he's seen before, but it's the stitching, how old yet intricate the detailing of a leafless tree.]

Did you know that Silentir resembles a dragon in flight? My mother who is a dragon as it suits her? Some believe too that before it was named so for Dumat that it was a set of scales of Mythal? There is an altar here where my mother took flight from, the Hawke brother confirmed it, that Merrill had an amulet and prayed, then from it she came to take flight.

[Out shudders her breath, she can't look at him, she almost can't say the last but he needs all the pieces to sit in silence himself with them.]

The timing though...when she was doing that, Cousland had not yet killed her. I have Geldauran's claim and I find myself wondering at who she is, what she is.

[ he sits, and when her hands curl, he makes to take the teapot and serve them both. this, he knows.

she speaks, he listens, and behind the courtier's mask, he smiles, laughs, oh-- if only he could tell solas. technically, he might well, for morrigan forbade him galadriel's confidence, but not solas'.

their pride will consume them indeed. he weighs what he can and cannot say as he guides the teacup into her hand and takes his own. ]

Is it not obvious? When I too sit before you, when the Dalish looked at me first and knew me before all the others? What is more likely, [ he says, ] that she is unique among all things or that one of those precious pieces of the past persevered, either by taking on the trappings of older things still, or simply surviving?

[ the dread wolf walks among them, takes wine with him some evenings, and the pantheon were the strongest of them. however solas locked them away cannot last forever. if one has already escaped-- ]

Speak your fears, so that they cannot grow fiercer in the shadows.

Edited 2018-07-26 02:31 (UTC)

How did I not see it? Ten years and more I have had this, it has stared me in the face, left behind in the Wilds and delivered into my hands.

My mother...in all the tales there was a thing she spoke with that made her the thing of legend. If it was no demon, if it was no spirit, if this Geldauran speaks any fragment that might be trusted...then it was her. Mythal somehow. Impossible as that seems.

[And there are parts that make sense more than just the tales. Even how her mother spoke. Held herself. Knowledge gleaned that couldn't simply be credited to unnaturally long life but it chokes her.

Shapeshifting, after, has more in common with elven magic than that of a Circle mage.]

I have no proof enough to give to satisfy but I know this in my heart enough to sicken me.

Morrigan, [ he says, and pauses, solas' secrets behind his teeth. ]

Would proof comfort you, or distress you further?

[ and slowly, slowly (he is not a creature given to comforting) he cups her cheek, presses his forehead to hers, utterly elven in the elegant overcomplicated way of all their movements, all the ceremony. ]

Do not blame yourself, [ he says. ] She had millenia
to practice.

[ and enough daughters to refine herself on. ]

[She almost laughs. It lodges somewhere high in her chest, catches tight in her throat that the tea forces it back down when she swallows, cup set down clumsily. Would it comfort her? Would it distress her?

It's rare that others touch her, and she almost startles away from her but sighs, eyes shut.]

More than ten years ago [is that but a blinking of the eyes to him?] I thought I knew something so terrible of her that I could know no worse. That I would leave with the one who would be Hero. That I would return. And that she would possess me. I thought I knew her secrets then, and the stories she had told before in my girlhood chilled the blood in my veins, the expectation in eye and voice. Bedtime tales for no child. No one enjoys being wrong.

[It's a bitter tonic to swallow, Morrigan who knows so much after all to the point that others outright distrust - perhaps even despise - her. But here she is.

Wrong.]

Is there somewhere between where I would simply know what has raised me that I might look upon myself and my son? Perhaps contentment but I cannot deny that I want to know. Do you understand that? Still wishing to know even with all that might follow...

The stark horror of the truth, [ he agrees, and draws back from the woman his wife loves as family.

he takes the cup of the tea she has made for him, and leans back in his seat to drink it, thinking. morrigan has always been clever. and now, she is peredhel, which changes his calculus only slightly. she is in her hurt, and her sorrow, but if she accepts what she accepts as truth, her whole view of the world must change.

thranduil's already has.

she deserves a warning. she has her son to think of. and speaking of which: ]

Would she skip a generation? Change her sex, for the ease of use of another body? If she has changed her race without thought, why not these things.

[ a pointed look to keiran, who is also his family, now. ]

I will take that. I will take that over a year since I began this hunt with it eating at me. [And it has been a year or close to that now.

She with her answers that mock her. She who thought she knew and did not, who has sat with another's head in her lap sobbing over her mother and almost wishes she might do the same, but knows it would invite question.

There's a long moment of consideration, of drinking her tea. The immediate answer would be all her anger, her fear, the worst ugly parts racing out to strike and that helps no one.]

Flemeth is first mentioned in the Towers Age. I never asked, and there is nothing to record it but how many of us are recorded? There is no record of my own birth, nor that of my son's yet we live. She has been Flemeth a long time, and it is always Flemeth and daughters and witches.

[Her heart twists as she looks at him, wondering if fate was good enough to give her a son to protect him from her fate.

Certainly her magic wasn't enough alone to have given her a son.]

Perhaps she is bound in some way. There are limits, after all, and she is no longer Mythal entirely if she were slain so easily as a dragon by Cousland and those with him. Spirits can be bound.

[Thranduil would know that better than her, as much as the nature of rifters is something she has tread lightly out of her love of Gwenaëlle.]

Would it be so strange a thing, to fake a death?

[ he must speak with solas, and soon. he is missing pieces, he loathes being misinformed. he keeps his hands warm and occupied around the cup. ]

The Dalish legends [ say because that's all histories are, after thousands of years. ] that Fen'Harel locked all the Elvhen gods in the Beyond.

[ she knows this. she knows her history. ]

I do not doubt that they existed. I do not know exactly what they are. I only wonder how, if one escaped, and this in the Towers Age, how many are yet bound?

Have you read the Tale of the Champion? She had an amulet. An amulet with a small piece of herself within as security should the worst happen. And if she knew me, it already had. [But it hadn't, not then.

But spirits see time differently, and what must time be to Mythal?] She is too proud, she has stolen Chasind men and used them until their death, lead Templars on a merry chase til they too met their end in the Wilds, 'tis not in her to do such a thing.

[Of that Morrigan is certain, able to say it with a firm voice and without her jaw shaking when she does it.]

And if...if they are not gods? If they never were? You saw Geldauran's Claim same as I, what does it take to make a god? Must they whisper loud enough? Flemeth in the legends sought aid of spirits and demons, and the Dalish call the Fade the Beyond.

[Put two and two together. Put two more together and wonder at the Archdemons whispering to the Magisters.]

They were not gods, [ this he says easily, perhaps with a hint of solas' intonation. this he knows. this he might have said before solas, too, for there is only eru and the music, even here. ]

There are too many knots in your histories for my liking, and too many of them the same stories with different words. They will unravel with time, but I dislike not knowing the truth.

[ this, at least, should be his. he should know of the histories, the shifting borders from memory, and not from the books that may have gotten the details wrong. ]

They were gods to the elves. [It's not so easily cast aside, this arguing of a point because it matters and she doesn't know if he listened to the arguments set forth before her that day she asked about it. What certain individuals in particular said about it all.] If you make a god in the minds of many, does it matter? They believe it. They build it. Would you so easily rip it from them?

[Would even he manage it, he remote and kingly in the face of a people who never again shall we submit. Zathrian's clan didn't even want a city-born First when he chose her, and that was one clan.]

My mother met Maric who went on to reclaim Ferelden. She met the Hero before he was that and Alistair. She rescued the Champion. [She perhaps (most likely) was the one to influence Calenhad. And she has read Avvar tales to Kieran, she has heard some whispers surrounding Tyrdda that now cause discomfort.] Again she plays the same role; here I am to offer aid and wisdom. 'Twas said that Mythal righted wrongs whilst exercising motherly kindness.

[Her mouth twists. Half the tea is forced back in one swallow.]

The rest are...a darker, more vengeful picture. What do you think the Dalish will wish to know? They pray to her still. There were those not so long departed from us with her Vallaslin upon them that you and I both knew and spoke with. What will you do with the truth?

[After all, she imagines that their idea of it is a rather different beast.]

Give me a few hundred years, [ he says, casually, as if it is no more than a handful of seed, ] and I could make a god of myself. Yes, I would. Not when it is folly enough that it would leash them still. They deserve their own history, raw and painful and true, when so much else has been taken from them.

[ look, what a clever trick, he opens his mouth and solas' words come out. more or less. he had some of these opinions before, and solas has only confirmed his fears. ]

Placing yourself in the midst of things is not difficult. The harder thing is to stay out of them.

[ which he knows from experience. he motions to the pot, to refill her cup should she wish it. ]

Tell it, so that she cannot find some suspecting Dalish woman to pour herself into. Or else wait. We will be drawn into one another's orbit soon enough. Such is the way of things.

A few hundred years. [Not so bitter as it might be, the disbelieving scoff instead. Thranduil is something other but the person she invites in her home, around her son, who loves and is loved by Gwenaëlle, someone she's complained over work with, has joked with more easily than some she's known ten years and has had to learn how to be around. And then he says these things. Tips his head. Holds himself in a way that reminds her-- As if a star has angled wrong somehow.] The mages in the Circles learn nothing of history; the elves and their fate was there, what happens when another is handed the leash and yet look what became of them. Then in Skyhold they made their little circle and called it a council, as if that made any difference. They might paint this much the same way.

[Coming from her mouth. One or two at least do not like her and they are very loud in their opinions. Often, she wouldn't care but this? When she is right, then she does.]

They-- they are not her daughters. There was a thing that needed to be done. [Her hand is upon the grimoire, curled tightly (in this light it grips as an old woman's might when age decides when to seize the joints, an absent nod of yes) to keep herself from looking.] To strip the will from-- from me. Not them. Perhaps in knowing she will need to find one of these sisters if they might be found.

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crystal;

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idk what time i was planning originally say it's bedtime for teenage boyos

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piles more onto thranduil's plate from the past

a heap, also hit me if he wouldn't have Geldauran's claim.

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