first snow | jethro
It didn’t snow in the Anderfels. The Anderfels was wind and sand and sun. When a boy named Jethro was ripped from his mother’s caravan during the lull before dawn, the wind had quieted, the sand was still, and the sun was still under the horizon. While a trio of Tevinter slavers knocked the boy unconscious and slung him into a cart with four others and skirted the Orlesian border to spirit their elven cargo back to Tevinter post-haste, the only thing that stirred the sand was the horses’ well-shod heels.
As Jethro’s mother wailed, rending her clothing, the imprint of the slaver’s ring still in her lacerated cheek, neither sun nor wind had solace to offer her.
Magister Cassius called the whip-thin, stone-faced Ander boy ‘Third’, at first-- for he was third in Cassius’ sextet of young elven slaves. Later, when Cassius began to favour Third, began to fall in love with the way his body healed and hid all injury, with the way his lips never parted to cry out and his eyes never welled with tears, Cassius made Third first, and gave him a name-- Angiculus.
But when Cassius’ little snake tossed his shoulders back and shed his skin, took in the red lyrium that Cassius fed him and let it flower in his blood, let in the spirits that found him in the Fade and heeded their whispered instructions... when Cassius’ little snake turned red lyrium against him and then looked deep into his eyes as he slid the dagger in to the hilt with almost loving slowness, Cassius could only call him demon.
Jethro carefully wiped the blade clean and slipped it into the cloth belt wound around his slim hips, his own blood singing with power. He hadn’t thought he could do it-- but blessedly, the spirits and his own lyrium-infused blood didn’t give him time to think. He’d uncoiled and struck, and now he waited.
The spirits left him to infiltrate the slaves like a virus. Elven youth that had felt Jethro’s fingertips brush them in the months leading up to now were seeing visions. They were looking upon their masters with new eyes. They were uncoiling and striking. The Magisterium was running red with blood, and this time it was theirs.
Jethro stepped out onto Cassius’ balcony and felt the wind on his scarred cheeks. Next came snow, cold and sharp and stinging, like sand in an Ander storm. The wind picks up, driving the snow against him, and though he is underdressed, he doesn’t shiver or hustle back indoors.
In these first tenuous moments of freedom, in this quiet before the storm truly began, this was solace.
