Love's Blush

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  Incense walloped her nose first, the oils as musky as a deer in heat. Two censers dangled near the door, not in active use with no ceremony to conduct but the scent lingered around them in anticipation. There weren't any pews, only a handful of chairs along the back. Mostly it was a small shrine to Andraste, the Lady in all white extending her hands out to her people while painted flames of gold flickered up and down her dress. Three painted backgrounds made up the scenery behind her, each one displaying her life in easy to understand form. Birth, Life, and Death; though hers involved a lot more of the Maker's attentions and toppling an empire, it was the same for anyone else in thedas.

  Reiss glanced warily around, realizing she had no idea what she was supposed to do. Even when escorting the King to the chantry, she'd wait outside. While there were tales of a few elves slipping in and out of the smaller chantries across Denerim, it didn't seem to be her place. Biting the inside of her cheek just to feel something Reiss glanced up at the stone face of the Prophet. She was supposed to fix everything, to stop the evil mages from hurting people, to free the elves from slavery. Well, there were still evil mages running around hurting people and elves...caring about elves required admitting that they were people first, a task that seemed almost impossible for most humans.

  "She's quite lovely," a crackling voice whispered beside Reiss.

  All but leaping to the side, Reiss' hand drifted down to her side where thankfully no sword waited for her. Drawing a blade upon a chantry cleric would be her final straw for certain. "I..." Reiss blinked slowly and nodded, "yes, she is."

  "It's funny, but I always wondered why she looks so Orlesian in all the paintings and statues. Pretty rouged up cheeks, a deathly pallor as if she'd never marched armies in the sun, bright glistening robes instead of the battle armor needed. Not even the fabled Ferelden stature, always tiny as a twig."

  Reiss glanced upward at the same face pictured and sculpted across all of thedas -- the bride of the Maker wasn't often depicted as a warrior but the woman waiting in anticipation in the bridal suite. Chaste and pure, not coated in blood and muck from getting into the dirt and stirring up shit. "I'd never thought about it," she said, her eyes drawn to the flickering bowls instead.

  "It is a pretty form either way," the cleric said with a smile. "May I ask what brings you in here today? We don't often get many elves."

  "I'm sorry, Sister," Reiss turned to scamper away, "I should not have..."

  "No, please," her tiny hand gripped tight to Reiss' arm and managed to hold the warrior in place. "Something must have brought you to me, to...Her," she gestured with her flat chin up to the Prophetess gazing lovingly down at no one. "There is pain in your eyes. I'd imagine in your heart as well."

  She shuddered at how quickly this unknown woman sussed her out. Reiss survived by hiding, balling up her emotions and burying them behind thick armor so no one else could pick them off her. But untethered from everything she'd ever known she couldn't cling to a single rope hold, her entire life picked open like a gaping wound.

  "Jader," Reiss gasped out.

  "A true tragedy," the woman drew her fingertips to her forehead and then brought them together in a prayer. Those bright pale eyes slipped closed as she whispered words from the chant through silent lips. "How can so much evil be allowed to exist in this world?"

  Because silent tongues let it fester. The thought burned fast in Reiss' mind as she stared at the woman, but she shook it off. Her hatred would only lash back at her, no one else truly feeling the sting. No, maybe one other person.

  After finishing her prayer, the woman smiled sadly, "Do you have friends there? Family?"

  "My sister," she didn't know why she was talking. Reiss never knew any of her grandparents. There'd been an uncle in one of the alienages, but between the blight and time, she'd long lost any track of other family. It was only her sister and brother, and maybe, now just her brother.

  Tears tumbled down Reiss' cheeks as her shoulder's began to shake. "She was in the chantry, worked in it as a Sister."

  "Blessed be," the woman didn't gasp in pain but smiled brightly as if Reiss told her Atisha won some grand award.

  Shaking it off, Reiss stepped towards the statue of Andraste and stared upward at the face that gazed past all the concerns of a little elf. What did her troubles matter in thedas? "I don't know if-if she's okay, or...not." Death floated through her life with every waking breath but somehow Reiss couldn't imagine the bright light of Atisha extinguished so cruelly. Was she burned alive while begging for help at the base of a statue just like this one?

  "I told her not to do it, not to take the vows. It painted a target on her back, the first elf in a chantry? An Orlesian chantry?" Shaking her head, Reiss glared up at the face. "How could you?" she whispered to Andraste, the Prophet's serene gaze never wavering. She was supposed to protect them, to help them, but just like all the rest she didn't care. "Atisha gave her everything for the chantry even before the new Divine, before she could be anything other than a cook. And they, it..."

  Fingers glanced across Reiss' shoulder, "We cannot all see the Maker's plan, often things are set in motion far beyond our comprehension but we must trust in it. All things happen for a reason."

  The reason being hatred blankets out common sense, love means nothing when it goes toe to toe against despair, and in the end good doesn't triumph over evil when good gives up on the fight before it's even begun. She wanted to scream that and more in the woman's face, to point out how if humans weren't so terrified of a set of pointy ears that her sister would be alive. Atisha wouldn't be some aberrant freak paraded around as the savage elf that learned to speak the chant, leaving her open to arrows from all sides. There would be dozens of others, normal elves trying to survive just like the rest of them.

  But she couldn't say it, because even without any true education Reiss knew what it would get her: an argument, a curse, a potential whack on the knuckles, and the label of dissident. People are most happy with elves that are frolicking, dressed in little to be pretty play things. When they stand up and start asking for more, then the claws come from out, often from the kind hand that swore they'd watch your back. Life taught her how to hold her tongue because a kick to the head is the sharpest teacher of them all.

  "Thank you, Sister," Reiss bowed her head, needing to get away quickly. Stepping past the woman, the numbness in her soul burned away as a fire licked through her veins. It felt like she drank the same potion they used to stoke Andraste's holy pyre, her entire body hot with the blue flame.

  "It's Mother, actually," the woman said, needing to get in the last word. "Please, return here anytime you require a balm for your soul."

  Atisha used to believe in the chantry. She felt something neither Reiss nor later Lorace ever did while listening to the chant. Her calling, as she kept insisting. Even when her elder sister pointed out that the chantry didn't like elves listening in on services, Atisha would find ways to sit near the chanters. Every setback drove her to try harder, every cleric or Mother dragging her out by the pointed ear convinced Atisha to try a new way in. She loved Andraste with all her heart regardless of how much Her followers hated her. It was idiotic, and often drove Reiss to wanting to scream the belief from her sister, but nothing could shake her.

  Outside the tiny chantry, without anyone watching, Reiss folded her hands and in her head said the only prayer she could think of. Maker, if you took her away from me, from this world she was trying so hard to help, please just...look out for her. She loved You without any good reason and deserves better.

  ***

  Alistair knew better than to tell Karelle that she was imagining whatever she thought she saw. Sadly, he didn't know any way to try and tell his chamberlain to not talk about the thing that wasn't in any way important to anyone without making it a big deal. She was too damn good at her job for him to have her killed outright, so that left his final option -- playing fully stupid. It was the one skill he mastered.

  If his chamber
lain inquired anything about his bodyguard, Alistair would glance around as if he was following a butterfly, or less than politely change the topic by leaping to his feet. He doubted it worked, but it seemed to annoy Karelle enough her pointed questions faded away before anyone else started in. While he knew some of the court would find his assumed dalliances entertaining, the Banns were always amused at how their King kept rutting around in the 'working class,' Eamon would be a different story. He believed in tradition and keeping things within the castle as it were. Then again, technically Alistair had.

  By the time he returned to his room, he wasn't certain what to do. Thanks to his requests, Charles brought in a fresh bouquet of lavender and mint because when it came to thinking of what to give a women, apparently Alistair defaulted to what went into refreshing drinks. Absently, his fingers plucked up a few sprigs of lavender as he stepped to Reiss' door. It was becoming routine in the way double knotting his boots kept him feeling safe, but after his fist gently knocked into her door, he froze. What would she think of that gesture? Would she worry he only cared about, uh, organizing her drawers, as it were?

  Foolish, it was better to not bring anything. He moved to toss the lavender back into his room when the door cracked open and Reiss stared up into his eyes. "Hi," Alistair squeaked out, his fingers traitorously twirling the lavender.

  Her bloodshot, heart breaking eyes followed the movement and she reached out to pluck the offering from him. He braced himself to have it tossed into his face, but Reiss forced on a soft smile as she placed it into the vase holding the rest of the flowers he brought her. With the fingers free, Alistair gripped onto the doorframe and leaned into her room. "How are you doing?" he asked, uncertain if he should enter.

  Reiss turned from her little vanity to face him. Plopping onto the bed, she asked, "How do I look?"

  Terrible. Her cheeks were so raw, it looked like pinpricks of blood were dashed across them from continual crying. The skin below that was wan and nearly yellow as parchment, while darkness hovered under her pain filled eyes.

  Sliding into the room, Alistair picked up her cold hand and smiled, "Beautiful."

  "I do own a mirror, you know," she said, a hint of something other than despair floating in her tone.

  Alistair glanced behind himself to watch their copies acting out the same attempt of him trying to pathetically console a woman perched upon the edge of a cliff. Unknowing if her sister lived or died, Reiss seemed to keep going on by assuming the worst. In her shoes, he'd probably do the same.

  A plate of food sat upon her vanity beside the bouquet, no doubt from Karelle, but it looked untouched. Swiveling back to her Alistair wrapped both his hands around her small one. Her fingers all but disappeared inside of his fumbling mitts, so surprisingly dainty for someone that wields a sword. He couldn't stop running the back of his thumbnail up and down each finger, feeling the bone hiding below her pale flesh.

  "I don't know what to do," Alistair whispered, wishing he had an answer to help her.

  "Neither do I," Reiss admitted. "I've been going through her old letters, to...maybe I shouldn't do that." She fumbled through a small box sitting on her bed. Parchment scattered across her duvet, each one in very fancy handwriting. Scooping up the wayward letters, Reiss stacked them back together and placed all back into the box. When she finished, she patted the empty bed and Alistair sat down beside her.

  "Do whatever helps," he said. Sitting on the edge, he watched his knees knock together in an arrhythmic song.

  "That's the problem," she pulled her shoeless feet up off the floor and tucked a knee under her chin, "I don't know if it helps or hurts."

  Maker, he wished he was better at this. That he had the magic words, or the right ideas, even the ability to give a really good hug might help. But no, all she had was him in his fumbling, idiotic state -- poor girl.

  Unaware of Alistair mentally kicking himself, Reiss reached forward for something sitting inside her box. She drew up what looked like pieces of grass braided tightly into a chain. Catching his curious look, she explained, "Atisha, she...she used to find slips of plants and knot them together to make bracelets or necklaces. Sometimes she'd trade them through the camp for bits and bobbles, then use that to make more. I...I told her to stop it."

  The bracelet slipped out of Reiss' fingers as she wrapped her palms against her eyes. "I don't even know why. It wasn't hurting anyone, the others in the camp liked them, it made us feel like...like people for a bit. But I, knowing me I got mad and snapped and took it out on my little sister who was only trying to..."

  He wrapped his arms around her, Reiss' crumpled body thudding into his chest while she berated herself for something decades past. Slowly, Alistair rubbed his hands up and down Reiss' arms while he said, "It's not your fault."

  "She was a child," Reiss cried, needing to hurt herself.

  Alistair bumped his chin into her forehead, wishing he could see her eyes, but she kept them covered as if afraid of the King seeing her cry. Brushing his cheek against her skin, he whispered, "So were you."

  The dam shattered again, Reiss gasping like someone kicked her in the chest. Her fingers flew from her eyes to grip tight to him. Rocking with her, Alistair buried his face into the top of her head. No words passed between them for minutes, perhaps hours, he couldn't tell as he tried to hug her and she clung to him. It was all he could think to do.

  After a bit, Reiss' tears stopped and she lifted her head away from her knees. That caused him to draw back, but he kept ahold of her while she stared into his eyes. "I...this is probably not what you were hoping for tonight."

  "Reiss..."

  She shrugged, half her face squinting in pain, "I'm not very good at this mistressing thing."

  "Hey," he tried to catch her eye but she kept glancing towards the door that led to the hallway. "I don't need to have someone entertain me at all hours of the day. I can handle myself, usually. You're not failing at anything here. You're in pain, but...I want to be here for you. To help, somehow."

  "Why?"

  "Because I," careful there Alistair, "care for you." Whew. She seemed to sigh at his avoiding the big L cannon. "And, I know what it's like to lose someone close to you," he kept talking quickly, trying to cover up for the awkward moment, "someone you never thought could die. Who was, not just your life, but your tentpole? The person that through everything would always come back."

  Reiss drew her fingers across her eyes, smearing away the tears and asked, "Is this about the Hero?"

  Duncan floated through his mind first. The first person to ever listen to him, to let Alistair choose what he wanted in life instead of dictating it for him. "When I received word that Lanny died I crawled into bed and didn't get out for two weeks. They were sending healers on the regular, scooting food under the door, once they even had the entire kennel of mabari climb onto the bed with me to try to get me out."

  "What happened?"

  "I got stubborn, stubborner than usual, and every time Eamon or the rest insisted I had to put on a brave face for the sake of the People I refused. My world stopped that day and...the worst part was how nothing really changed. She was gone and yet birds kept cheeping, pies kept baking, people kept laughing and smiling as if--as if the most cataclysmic thing in thedas didn't just occur."

  Reiss nodded along, her bun bumping into his chin as she did. "It's surreal, like a waking nightmare. Everything's different but not. How did you...? I shouldn't ask that, it's far too personal."

  Alistair smiled at her and wrapped his arms tighter, "I got hungry, famished really, and while sneaking away with a tray of food I stumbled across a book Lanny lent me ages back. Never got around to reading the thing because she was always sending me books. The woman is a walking library. While I was flipping through it, I kept finding small notes she'd leave. Not meant for me, but to herself. Comments on sentences, musings on the various 'motifs of story structure and how it relates to the ideal.' It's stupid but finding that, seeing her silly little words a
bout nothing important made me feel better because she wasn't all gone. Some things remained."

  "But," Reiss fell silent a moment in his arms, "she returned to you."

  "Not entirely, and not for two years. Those were a long two years, ones I didn't think would get better."

  "And yet they did, you healed as one does and gets over the loss," she spat out quickly, seeming to need to psyche herself up for healing.

  "No," Alistair whispered to the air, "some people you never really get over. You patch up the hole in your leaking soul with time and distractions, but it's always taking on water. Every now and then it needs a bit of bailing to keep you afloat."

  "That's surprisingly poetic," she whispered to him.

  "Guess who I learned it from."

  Reiss chuckled at that, nodding her head against him. "I should..." she glanced around the room as if trying to find something to distract herself with. "Um...."

  Opening his arms, Alistair scooted back but not away from her. He slicked up his hair and with his fingers knocking together brought forth the only idea he had. "I was wondering if you didn't want to, uh, have a go."

  "A go?" she almost flinched at the idea.

  "In the...with..." he folded his hands into fists and punched at the air. "I make a pretty good punching bag," Alistair shrugged.

  A smile that lifted his spirits crested across Reiss face. She drew a palm under her eyes to mop up the tears and nodded. "Yes, I...I think that having a go at each other will do wonders."

  Alistair stood off the bed while she picked up the box of her sister's mementos and carefully tied a string around it. Offering her his hand, he glanced over at the box, "Shall we bring the music or should I just hum a few bars?"