Thinking about the feeling Elgar’nan destroyed - that feeling connected to returning home. "Have you ever ridden home in a wagon and felt the streets go from paved to dirt beneath the wheels? The horses slow, and everything grows quiet as you near home. What do you call that feeling?"
Elgar’nan burned it from every living mind.
And when that feeling vanished, the spirits faded too. Spirits that embodied the recognition of returning home.
But spirits don't end as mortals do. After the death of Solas' spirit friend - All New, Faded for Her - "the energy of spirits returns to the Fade. If the idea giving the spirit form is strong, or if the memory has shaped other spirits, it may someday rise again."
And the idea of returning home is certainly strong in Solas.
Millennia later, Solas meets a being whose spirit he studies with careful attention. He asks whether the Anchor has altered Lavellan's spirit - "a rare and marvelous spirit."
In Crestwood, he tells Lavellan he never expected to find someone who could draw his attention from the Fade.
His home.
"Know that whatever happens, you are a rare spirit in this world."
On the balcony he confesses his love and names Lavellan with a word bound to heart. Vhenan. A root that echoes vhenas - home - Elvhenan. Heart and home share a linguistic thread. Arlathan - this place of love - Ar lath ma, vhenan , I love you my heart - Ara ma’athlan vhenas - I will call you home. “In all Thedas, I never expected to find someone who could draw my attention from the Fade.” In ‘all Thedas?' In ALL the times of Thedas. In all of the places - Fade and Waking.
Lavellan is a return to home. "I was Solas first." “I could have stayed with you as Solas, as I wanted.”
When he begins to leave the balcony, she stops him, he falters, “But losing you would-”
Be losing the return to home all over again?
He watched that feeling disappear from the world and felt the emptiness that followed. “When you grow quiet, it is a part of your soul reaching for a feeling and finding emptiness”.
He can’t finish the thought because he knows what that absence becomes. Losing Lavellan is burning away the possibility of returning home. Perhaps this becomes yet another reason why the Veil must come down.
And at the end of all things? After years of isolation and denial and regret? As home draws near? Everything slows and grows quiet.
The old spirits might be gone. But "if the memory has shaped other spirits, it may someday rise again."
And perhaps it has.
All New, Risen In Her.
***
(This is an exploration in narrative and not that I necessarily believe Lavellan is this spirit - as I have my own world state - but sometimes you need to explore a persistent theme.)
