Chapter Text
The day is cool and bright and sweetly perfumed by the osmanthus trees under which Felassan has chosen to spread his blanket. He has tucked himself away into the dappled shade of a grove designed for nothing more than to be beautiful and to recall nature without its wildness. The pathways between the trees are narrow and winding but always just wide enough to fit through without stooping, even for a man of Solas’ height.
Each corner of the woven blanket is weighed down by a book, a basket, or a bottle of what is probably very good wine. Solas lifts the bottle to read the tag and finds that it does not have one - a gift, then. Felassan himself sprawls in the center of the blanket, idly plucking out notes on a lyre that he has balanced on his belly. It sounds like nothing yet, but will probably be a song before the day’s end.
“You’re late,” Felassan says, though he says it with the sort of patience that suggests that waiting has not been a hardship.
“Yes,” Solas agrees, and does not throw himself onto the blanket only because Felassan is taking up a vast majority of it. He settles himself on the edge instead, shaking his sleeves back from his hands so he can poke through the basket to see what Felassan has brought to eat. “Figs?”
“At the bottom,” Felassan says, and closes his eyes when the leaves shift so the sun is in his face. “If I’d known you’d come starving, I would have brought more. Lady Mythal’s mercy may abound, but her hospitality leaves something to be desired.”
“Elgar’nan was there,” Solas says, and Felassan hums a vague noise of understanding. Solas has complained enough about Mythal’s lord husband for Felassan to know that eating is the last thing on Solas’ mind when they three are in a room together. There is something about Elgar’nan that leaves Solas unsettled - or perhaps it is the way that Mythal behaves around her husband that is unsettling.
The figs are halved and sticky with honey, which Solas catches in his cupped palm so it does not drip onto his robes. They are almost too sweet, which makes them perfect for Solas’ tastes - likely this is why Felassan had chosen and left them to him.
“I’ll admit I’m surprised that he was at your meeting,” Felassan says, tipping his face to the side. His eyes follow Solas’ hands. “He should have been at the head of the parade column with the rest of the returning soldiers.”
“It was postponed to accommodate Elgar’nan’s schedule,” Solas says, and cannot hide the tone of disapproval: he does not like the military parades, but he likes Elgar’nan even less, and thus finds the altering of a scheduled public event for a single man frustrating.
“His need to posture for Lady Mythal, you mean,” Felassan says, a smile creeping across his face. The sun casts leaf-shaped shadows across his vallaslin. “Did he tell her all about how the victory was his and his alone?”
Solas laughs and shakes his head, licking honey from his palm so he can rummage through the basket again without leaving sticky fingerprints. “Not in so many words. The victory was owed to one of Mythal’s soldiers, and she would not have taken kindly to its theft. Elgar’nan implied that it may have been his tutelage that allowed her to be so successful.”
“I’m certain that went swimmingly,” Felassan says, and leans up on an elbow so he can trade his lyre for the bottle of wine on the corner of the blanket. “Lady Mythal is well known for her pleasure in sharing credit.”
“Oh, yes,” Solas agrees, unearthing soft cheese and fresh bread. There is meat, too, but he leaves it in lieu of another fig. “More likely than not the parade will be postponed again.”
“To give them time to fight, fuck, then kiss and make up?”
“Certainly not,” Solas says, licking a rivulet of honey from his wrist before it can fall into his sleeve. “They were halfway through the second by the time I left. But Elgar’nan will need healing for the bite marks if he wants to be presentable.”
Felassan laughs around his mouthful of wine, sputtering when he cannot swallow quickly enough. Solas covers his smile with a hand.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
The parade proceeds slightly later than originally planned, as Solas had predicted because he is always correct. He had not initially intended on attending, but Felassan has foisted pomegranate wine on him - very good wine, as he’d assumed - and he is drunk enough, now, to be pliable.
There are perhaps twenty score soldiers in the parade, all in shining ceremonial armor that Solas is certain they would love to be free of. They gleam in the buttery sunshine, silverite turned to gold and all of the etching and strapping polished within an inch of its life. They are flanked by musicians and dancers in gauzy silks and bells clasped at wrist and ankle, who spin and clap and throw flower petals to the reaching crowds.
Terribly impressive, even from the balcony from which Solas and Felassan are watching. Solas wishes he had more wine; the pleasant haze of mild insobriety is not enough to stifle the knee-jerk distaste he feels when he sees Elgar’nan astride his wyrm, which is winged only because Ghilan’nain has deigned to make it so.
So distracted is he by Elgar’nan’s oversized dragonling in all of its ceremonial bunting that Felassan must elbow him twice - thrice - to regain his attention. Solas elbows him back in the interest of fairness before turning his eyes away from the parade.
“The woman beside Elgar’nan - that is the soldier who commanded the army to victory?”
Solas must take a moment to find the woman in question - she is riding a hart, which is not a small creature but is overshadowed by the size of Elgar’nan’s drake. Her position in the column suggests that she is important, and the ribbons and flowers she and her hart are festooned with imply that the importance is situational. She is wearing the same armor as all the rest, dark hair bound up with military attention to neatness. Someone has threaded a spray of flowers through the crown of the braid.
He shrugs. “I do not know her.” He has little patience for military goings-on, and avoids them wherever he can; Mythal allows it, though for how long he does not know. Until she has use of him again, he supposes.
Felassan shades his eyes with a hand. “She wears Lady Mythal’s vallaslin. That must be her. Elgar’nan would not otherwise abide a rider in a position so close beside him.”
“Likely Mythal commanded it,” Solas acknowledges. “Why this curiosity? Surely there are spirits better suited to your attention.”
“Ha!” Felassan’s laugh is a bark. “That remains to be seen.”
Solas does not know what to make of that, so he declines to comment on it further; the head of the parade passes below their perch and Felassan leans against the railing so hard he looks like he may misbalance directly onto Elgar’nan’s crowned head.
The dancers’ bells are loud and their skirts flare out like flower petals when they spin. The crowd stomps in time with the clapping hands of the musicians and they chant for Elgar’nan - for glorious victory, for the sun’s scorching rays, for civilization, for The People. So on.
“To what end was this battle waged?” Solas asks, having failed to keep up with the military campaigns that Elgar’nan throws himself into with such vigor. Mythal has not involved herself, and thus Solas has not been involved.
Felassan shrugs his reply. He is not a soldier - he is a softer and more gentle creature than that, given more to poetry than warfare. Solas would prefer never to see him change: he likes the company of the Felassan that paints and writes songs for pleasure rather than for any particular purpose.
Perhaps that is why this newfound preoccupation with Mythal’s soldier has so disquieted him; Solas prefers to separate Felassan from combat in his mind. Arlathan cannot be a refuge from war if there is no one in it to create but for the war, and the idea of Felassan writing odes to blood-stained hands and blades and battle hymns is an upsetting one.
“Only you could look so grim during a parade,” Felassan says, shaking Solas out of his thoughts, and bumps their shoulders together.
“Surely I am not so singular,” Solas defends mildly, but he can recognize that he is mired in unhelpful thoughts and does his best to shake them off. The weather and the company are good, the sun is bright, and now that the main wall of noise has passed, the music is tolerable. “Forgive me, my friend. Seeing Elgar’nan so early in the day has left me unsettled.”
“Speak more quietly,” Felassan laughs. “He would have you flayed if he heard you implying that just the sight of him is enough to leave your skin crawling.”
Perhaps true - vanity is one of Elgar’nan’s foremost traits.
“He would need to value my opinion more,” Solas notes, and finally lets himself smile when Felassan laughs again.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
It rains the next day, curtaining the world in misty grey and making everything smell like the bruised flower petals of the previous day’s parade. Solas’ home overlooks Mythal’s gardens rather than the main street, which means that the mornings come on soft and quiet feet away from the noise of the crowds.
The rain has rendered the trees and low flower bushes in diamond-studded outlines; they are beautiful, but not so beautiful that Solas can be tempted outside. He is old enough now that he takes very little pleasure in dragging his hems through muddy grass - some things, he thinks, are better experienced from a position of relative comfort, as art might be.
He expects no visitors so he permits himself the luxury of drawing his morning routine out to near-absurdity. This, of course, means that he receives a summoning in the form of a letter shoved into his hands by a harried messenger, who wordlessly lopes away under a spell only just barely big enough to protect their shoulders from the rain and with the general bearing of someone who has many missives to deliver and very little time to deliver them all.
The letter is speckled with water but Solas knows that it is from Mythal; it smells like her, for one, but additionally, no one else would think to summon him.
It is not written in her hand, nor is it addressed to Solas specifically; likely she had dictated it to one of her people and sent all of the letters out en masse.
He does not feel slighted by this, though perhaps he should. Once, Mythal had called him her dearest friend, and all they had been was all that they were. Now someone else signs her name on her letters to him.
At least, he thinks with some wry amusement, he is invited to her parties. He has very little interest in them, but is it not good to be remembered?
He sets the letter aside, but he cannot stop turning its contents over in his mind. Had that battle’s victory been so pivotal that it merits a celebration in specific? What had Mythal’s soldier - her commander, now her general, he supposes - done to merit such attention, or such a promotion?
For so long, Solas had been Mythal’s first and only general - she had not involved herself directly in any skirmish since that with the Titans, and she had set her sword aside when they had won that war together. To what end does she need a new general?
Felassan would mock him for his jealousy, but truly it is concern; Solas does not like the idea of Mythal returning to battle, or dragging her people to it, either. The war against the Titans and their stone-spawn had been terrible, and he cannot imagine a reason that they would need to return to such a time.
For whom, now, is Mythal fighting? Or perhaps it is some movement of Elgar’nan’s, though to Solas’ eye Mythal has always had her husband well in hand. But then -
He does not finish the thought. The concern makes something twist uncomfortably in his chest, and he cannot swallow around the knot of it.
Mechanically, he stirs honey into milk that he warms with a spark of magic between his palms. The rain is sheeting now, lashing against the window with a driving sort of force. The flower petals on the street will be turned to pulp by the time it stops.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
Felassan has not received an invitation, which means that Solas must press him into service - not that Felassan is ever of a mind to complain, social creature that he is. He loves parties, even the parties with a military slant, and he has the unique gift of being able to talk to anyone about anything. He makes an excellent conversational shield.
It is still raining when Felassan arrives, but he is smiling, as he is so often smiling.
“Nice day for it,” he says bracingly, and Solas smiles faintly in return. He has set aside his thoughts and is electing to preoccupy himself with the way that Felassan is dripping puddles in his entryway.
“Don’t you want to change?” Solas asks, and he thinks he sounds nonjudgemental until Felassan starts laughing.
“I suppose I do,” Felassan agrees, and starts peeling off sopping-wet layers right there in front of the door. How he’d managed to get so wet, Solas has no idea - Felassan is a skilled enough mage and knows how to use a barrier as well as anyone else.
If he asked, Felassan would surely tell him something about experiencing the world for the sake of art - perhaps because he is not so old yet that muddy hems have worn out their novelty.
Solas takes his wet clothes piece by piece and sluices the water off of them, suspending it in the air with a flick of magic so it does not risk damaging the mosaics laid into the flooring. He does a less thorough job than he is perhaps able to; there is no reason to perfectly dry a robe that will not be worn.
The water he drops into a nearby plant pot, which has already been watered for the week but probably will not die from one instance of being shown too much love.
“Show-off,” Felassan chuckles, and wanders up the stairs nearly entirely nude so he can raid Solas’ wardrobe. Solas hangs Felassan’s robes and underlayers in front of the fire, although for all his attitude perhaps he deserves to have to change back into damp clothes.
They leave the house wearing robes of silk cut from the same bolt, draped in shimmering layers so fine that they are still nearly translucent. The gemstone beads that Solas has woven into Felassan’s hair match the beading at his cuffs and hems, sparkling like tiny picked-out stars against the dark fabric.
Felassan’s fingers brush against Solas’ jaw when he touches an earring.
“It was twisted,” he says when Solas glances over, and Solas smiles his silent thanks.
The silk will not bear the rain so it falls to Solas to cast their barriers. Mythal’s home is close to Solas’, though it dwarfs his in both size and grandeur, so their single idle topic - Felassan’s newest composition, Solas’ experiments with charcoal - is enough to get them to the door.
Mythal’s home is somewhere between a palace and a temple, something that her people have built and dedicated in her image. The walls themselves resonate with how well they love her, the carving of every stone singing with the joy of her passing. It does not feel like a place that a person could or should live, as loud and choral as it is. How does Mythal sleep here?
Not that it matters, of course; it is not his home and it is not his burden to bear.
Stepping into the great hall is like stepping into the Fade itself. The floor is spelled to look like a thin layer of clouds high above rolling green hills, lush and verdant and draped in thick forests. The ceiling above is nothing but unbroken evening sky and endless, uncountable stars. It is undeniably beautiful, painting the room in creamy purples and vibrant orange, but it is also overwhelming; Solas watches people carefully pick their way across the clouds, as if they fear that they will plunge to the illusory ground with one wrong move.
“We matched the theme by mistake,” Solas murmurs to Felassan, who has to hide his laugh in his hand.
“Not quite,” he disagrees quietly, tipping his head towards the front of the room. “Look at Lady Mythal.”
She stands atop a dais, her dark hair caught up in an intricate series of knots that imitate the ridges of a spine. Her dress looks as if it is made of a cascade of scales, pooling at her feet and rippling down the stairs in a shimmering spill of not-quite-fabric. They shift from red to violet and back again, depending on the angle at which she is viewed.
“Ah,” Solas says, unable to suppress his faint amusement. “Dragons again?” He wonders if Mythal would be upset with him for thinking that she is predictable.
“We should only hope that Elgar’nan doesn’t wear the wings outside of the bedroom,” Felassan agrees, and Solas has to elbow him so he doesn’t start laughing. “He’ll knock over the drinks.”
When her guests have arrived, Mythal gives a speech from atop the dais about the importance of the victory that they have won and the territory that they have gained from the battle. Solas tunes it out for the most part; Mythal says nothing that he does not know, though he knows precious little of the campaign. He supposes it should be of little surprise that she speaks so vaguely of military strategy in mixed company, but something about it discomfits him.
Mythal does not step down from the dais, but she does stop speaking, and the guests drift away to pluck food and drink from the trays of Mythal’s people. Solas takes a glass and holds it defensively, not feeling moved to drink in such mixed company.
Felassan leans into Solas’ shoulder to murmur in his ear. “The soldier that won the battle is watching you,” he says.
“More likely she is watching you,” Solas disagrees, glancing up to see what Felassan is seeing. Mythal’s new general is there indeed, clad in armor that looks well-worn. She looks dreadfully out of place silhouetted against the overwrought splendor of Mythal’s great hall. Her eyes flick away when Solas looks up, which could mean nothing. He turns away to give Felassan his full attention. “And no single soldier wins any battle.”
“Hmm,” says Felassan. “The way I hear it, her strategy alone allowed them to rout their enemy, outnumbered as they were three to one. And before this, she held a pass for three days and two nights to allow Elgar’nan’s soldiers to ford the river, circle behind Falon’din’s army, and force a surrender.”
“Then by all means,” Solas says, keeping from rolling his eyes by will alone. Felassan knows very little of war, which is a comfort in all times but this. “Let us hear how she would have fared against the endless hordes of the Titans, then, outnumbered not by three but by ten.”
“Likely much the same as you did, my lord,” says a woman’s voice behind Felassan’s shoulder. Mythal’s new general is shorter up close, and apparently stealthy whether the situation demands it or not; Solas had not noticed her drifting away from the dais. “In school we studied your use of the land to your advantage. It was your strategy in the Battle for Vallas’vhen that I most frequently referenced in the victories that I can claim.”
Felassan sways back on his heels, the movement making his robes glitter in the low light. “Come now,” he says, “surely we do not need titles amongst friends.”
Solas, who is not a lord by any metric, tips his face away, feeling caught wrong-footed. He should not have allowed himself to be goaded into debating war games; he does not like to speak of them, and he does not like to praise or argue their strategy.
“Are we friends, then?” Mythal’s general asks. Her eyes are vividly blue in the dying light of the indoor sunset. “Had I been informed, I would have joined the conversation sooner.”
“Of course,” Felassan says. He smiles at her winningly - a smile that has likely allowed him out of situations yet more awkward than this. “Only, my lady, I have not heard your name, and I am on a first-name basis with all of my friends.”
“Nehnan,” she says, her eyes flicking between them. “And you, of course, need no introduction. Forgive my interruption - I had a question, but I confess that I’ve forgotten it.”
“No forgiveness needed,” Solas says softly. “Perhaps you will recall your question later, and we will find an answer for it.”
Nehnan gives him a sharp sort of smile that does not touch her eyes, but does not reply. From across the room, someone calls for her - or perhaps simply calls. Regardless, she offers a shallow bow before she slips away.
Solas wonders at what the question had been - more military strategy? Or perhaps simply some excuse to speak to Felassan, who certainly would have welcomed the conversation. Likely he even would have enjoyed the conversation about strategy; maybe he truly is writing some war poem.
“Ooh,” Felassan says, watching her cut through the crowd. “I don’t know if we could have made a worse impression if we’d tried.”
“Mm,” Solas agrees. “Perhaps you could catch her elsewhere and apologize for giving offense.”
“I should apologize?” Felassan asks, raising an eyebrow. “My friend, the offense given was not mine.”
Solas shakes his head impatiently and finally sips his drink. It has gone warm from the heat of his hands. “Could apologize, I said. She wanted to speak to you - would apologizing not allow you to speak with one another?”
Felassan’s second eyebrow joins the first. “She wanted to speak to you, Solas. She studied your battle strategies, she said. Perhaps she wanted to speak general-to-general.” There is something almost like laughter in his tone that Solas cannot parse.
“I am more librarian than general now,” Solas demurs, though truly he is neither. “And I have no desire to speak of military strategy. You know this.”
“Sure,” Felassan says. His eyebrows are still high on his forehead. “And that’s all she wanted to speak of, I’m sure. Let me get you another drink.”
Solas wants to leave more than he wants to have another drink, but they have not stayed long enough or been seen speaking to enough people for it to be polite. He sets his empty glass down on a tray and follows Felassan back into the crowd.