It seems wrong that she can hear these sounds tumble from her father - the rattle and hiss of weary lungs, the wet way he coughs when he brings blood up to smear against his lips - and find them to be usual. This shouldn’t be normal for anyone, man or woman or child. Even the healer at her hip seems more than a little surprised by his condition. She had tried to do her best to explain how her father lay wasting away from a disease that just woudn’t relent, but an explanation is nothing like seeing it in person. Feeling each rasping breath tightening sympathetically in your own lungs.
They understand now, though.
She leads the women into the grotto, leaves them standing together so she can go accept this kiss from her mother, touch her own blue lips to the curve of a white cheek as pale as bone. It is so quick and so brief, like the flutter of moth wings against warm, worried skin. But it is so much from the girl who doesn’t touch, doesn’t hold, doesn’t know how to be just like everyone else.
Then she is walking to her father and her movements want to be stiff, her muscles locking up at the idea of moving closer to the cloud of death and copper blood that seems to hang over him. Every deep instinct wills her away from him - no, not away from him. Never him. They will her away from the death hovering over him like a second skin. But he is her father, he is hers, so pushes it forcefully back until she is at his side and the feather-touch of her navy nose is nuzzled against his skin.
She can see the color of the ground beneath his mouth, like a rainstorm of rubies fell and buried themselves here to grow into something more. Roses, poppies, something red. Always so red here now. For an instant she closes her eyes against it, doesn’t want to be reminded of this color she has grown to hate, of the way red reeks of copper and pain and desperation. Especially hers. “Hi, daddy.” She says, the words soft and whispered, to be caught only by those who know her well enough to be listening for them. “This is Exist and Leliana. They’re healers.” And then she’s easing back to give them room to work, leaving one last nuzzle beside his ear and slipping out past her mother with a gentle nudge and a whispered, “I’m going to go find Sibyl and Warden.”
There is a part of her that hates to leave. A part of her that needs to see what happens next, if the sisters laugh and turn away and tell them how silly they are to think that this dying king could be fixed. A part of her that needs to leave for the same reason. Mom and dad will understand.
marble