Leliana feels pieces of her rush forward into her chest at the sight of Noah. Bits and pieces, jagged around the edges, the cloud her golden vision and cause her pulse to stutter. It isn’t enough to drown the woman who now keeps her hand on the steering wheel, but it is enough to soften the edges of her molten face—enough to dim the glow of her eyes, keeping her stoic and solemn but not unkind, not ungiving.
“Noah,” she says the girls name quietly and isn’t sure whether she should mourn with her, or apologize, or say nothing at all. What can you say in a moment like this? How can you admit the regret that you have worn so heavily for so many years? The fact that she loved her father in the only way that she could; that he gave her peace in a moment of turbulence and she hadn’t been able to repay. She hadn’t saved him.
That fraction of doubt pulls at the corners of her crimson mouth, crumples her brow just slightly. But the second that it shows, it is smoothed over, the magic rippling beneath her skin enough to quiet it.
“I have thought about coming to see you for a long time,” she says, because she doesn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t her that thought about it but instead the past version of herself. The version of herself that feels as disconnected as the stars. She knows—she remembers—the long nights thinking about Rhonen and his young daughter. She remembers the tears and the pain and the ache that came with it. But only intellectually. The same pain only echoes against the borders of her now. It doesn’t strike.
Still, she dips her head slightly, orchids spilling over her shoulder. “You have grown up well.” She finds the other mare’s gaze again, the depthless, molten gold studying the lines of her face.
“Rhonen would be proud, I think.”
@[Noah]
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