there’s no sword in our lake; just a funeral wake; dovev

[leliana]

Her dreams are feverish.

They snake around one another, bubbling with an illness that stems from fighting one greater than herself. The golden light of her healing swells in her chest, beating it back, trying to soothe the overworked body, the overworked mind, but it can only do so much—only so fast. So she remains trapped in the storm of it, her body still damp with the exhaustion and the fever. She had pulled herself too thin, frayed the edges of her gift. She was always so willing to do that, always so willing to push it past its limit.

Maybe this time she pushed too hard.

In her dreams, she dreams of her sister. Of afternoons spent looping lazily in the air and curled next to each other. She dreams of her daughter. The beautiful snake girl with her father’s eyes and her coloring, her bright smile and curious mind and courageous approach to everything new. She dreams of Vulgaris and the way her heart both raced and stilled around him, his quiet strength always just below the surface, of the happiness he had brought into her life. And, of course, she dreams of Dovev. Of everything that they had almost had, of the almosts and the ifs and the possibility that had once lived between them.

Of the fury and pain in his eyes when he realized that the swelling in her stomach wasn’t his.

Even though he hadn’t even known her name.

She says their names now, the softest whispers as they bubble up in her mind.

Exist.

Adna.

Vulgaris.

Dovev.

She stirs, if only barely, when she feels the bloodied lips press against her cheek. Her eyes remain closed, her mind still trapped beneath the net of her exhaustion, and she murmurs incoherently. She shifts, and she aches for all that lies within her breast. She needs to get home, for her daughter, for Vulgaris, and she strains for consciousness, but it slips from her grasp. She breathes heavily, settling further into the dream.

it started with a perfect kiss, then we could feel the poison set in