Who is your large horned lesbian who gets set on fire!
[slaps my own knee like a prospector who’s just found gold] BOY AM I GLAD YOU ASKED.She’s my Qunari Inquisitor, Basra Adaar. She mainly attacks with fire, even though her specialization is Necromancer. Because the Inquisition background for Qunari SUCKS, I wrote my own.She grew up in Rivain. When she was a teenager (like 14/15) she was able to hide her magic, but she’d seen what became of other mages under the Qun. So, when she had the chance, she decided to leave, which resulted in a conflict that ended in her setting four Ben-Hassrath and herself on fire (because she’d never had training at all). She got away, because the attack was powerful, but her body was pretty heavily scarred in the process, and all of her long hair was singed away up to her ears. She found a really old human mage who agreed to train her so that she wouldn’t hurt people, and after he died (She was around 24 at the time), she joined up with the mercenary group, Valo-Kas. That got her into the whole mess at the conclave. She’s also extremely gay and loves girls a lot. And there’s the tl;dr version of my very large horned lesbian who gets set on fire. (She also has a tag that currently just has dresses that she’d wear in it but i’ll be adding more to it periodically. It’s (X)
5 kisses meme for transsolas with haddiyah x basra because i have an endless pool of feels about this ship
1.
mouths are meant to be kissed, to be whispered secrets and promises with tongue and lips, to be toyed and licked and nipped, often, always.
these are the words fluttering in her mind as she read to the qunari woman, whose head has dipped to touch hers, and then withdrew. now haddiyah’s gaze is trapped in those lips, as they weight and taste and repeat the words she herself is saying.
she would like nothing more than to kiss Basra now, but she dares not cross the threshold of their burgeoning relationship, afraid she might be too bold, afraid that her boldness would not be welcome – she remembers how the woman had recoiled the first time she had tried to touch her, and since then, she had made a point of letting her set the pace of their exchange.
this was no different.
and so she says nothing, and her lips remain closed. the desire has not abated, however, and tries as she may, she cannot turn her eyes away from the woman’s mouth. the first kiss they share is in her mind.
2.
there is nothing more thrilling than kisses after a fight, she thinks. blood pumping, ears ringing, heart hammering, almost spilling out of its cage, seeking, reaching out, as if after escaping death it needed the proof that it was still beating.
Basra is there, bloody, sweaty, panting but undoubtedly alive, and haddiyah wants to laugh at how lovely she looks, as battered and bruised as she is, and impulsively leans in to kisses her.
It is an act of life, an act of love, and as basra melts in her arms, she is convinced there cannot be a sweeter way to live yet another day.
3.
“what are you reading?”
basra doesn’t answer, only shows her the cover of the book she seems so engrossed into that she cannot tear her eyes away from its pages. it is a romance of some sort, probably from cassandra’s personal library – though the woman would never admit it – and it pleases haddiyah to see basra in the gardens, claiming this time as her own.
months earlier, it would never had crossed her mind, to do something so idle, so unproductive, so alien to the qun and its teaching.
she leaves the woman at her reading – she’d be loath to interrupt the few peaceful moments they have outside the inquisition – and as she presses her lips at the nape of her neck, she takes her leave, lingering a moment over the smell of her lover’s skin.
basra still doesn’t look up, but haddiyah carries with her the bubble of pleased laughter that escapes her throughout the entire day.
4.
there is a uniqueness to the kisses they share after their lovemaking.
they are more tender, more gentle, as if to beg forgiveness for the earlier passion, when nipping became biting and left an angry mark on the skin, when lips made way to teeth and nails sunk into flesh.
kisses of passion are pleasant, and awakens desire like nothing else quite can. but it is not a matter of pleasure here, not anymore – it is comfort and care, it is a silent i love you whispered over the other’s body, it is the most tender way to wish one’s lover good night.
It is a good night they repeat often.
5.
the young believe kisses are the privilege of youth, for surely passion cannot be found in the elderly. haddiyah and basra have been young once, and while passion is still accounted for after all these years, it has become ripe, like a well-aged wine whose qualities have been enhanced by time and love rather than diminished by them.
they are in rivain now, and the sea greets them every morning as they rise. basra kisses her, a gentle nip on the mouth, a tug on the lips.
“are you happy, asala?”
she takes her time to answer, savoring her lover’s – her wife’s – lips against her own, a mixture of mint and spices that makes her hums in contentment every time they meet hers.
soooo ever since transsolas and I started shipping our Adaar inquisitors we've been in OC shipping hell, and I felt like I needed to have them come to life through the wonderful art of maqes, and look at how gorgeous this commission turned out!! Meet Haddiyah and Basra Adaar, the two ladies who've been ruining my life lately. sobs.
featuring transsolas's basra adaar. hope i didnt do her an injustice!
Basra is hunched over, carefully running her fingers along the words Asaaranda has been writing in the notebook. His handwriting is big and square, easy to read after years without anything to practice on. The other mages are scattered around the room--Adaar and their brother bickering in one corner, Meraad in another sitting in quiet meditation, Asaaranda sprawled over his cot and with the holey blanket Adaar threw over him an hour ago, when he started snoring, untouched.
She jerks away, turns to see who it is, already readying a blast of magic.
Asaaranda is standing half a step back, his hands up and open in a gesture of surrender.
"I'm sorry," he says, before she can say anything. " I forgot that you--that you don’t like to be touched. I should have asked. You looked--tense." Asaaranda pulls his hands back, folds them together, bares his throat, and the color rises on his cheeks. "The oldest saarebas in my karataam would do it to us younger ones. It's--it's a massage. It--she. Taught me how to do it." He swallows hard. It's still hard to look each other in the eye, hard to look at each other without seeing the scars and the calluses and warped backs and shoulder, still hard to talk to each other without the grunts and the sign language and the scrape of metal on horn and crying children drowning out their words. Hard to remember to be People. "And it--it makes the muscles and the bones hurt less. It helps. And you look like you're hurting. You can keep reading , we can just forget this." He folds his hands behind him and shuffles like a chastised child, the same way he does when Adaar says sweet things to him in front of the others.
She thinks for a long few moments. He understands time the way she understands time, how sometimes it's hard to get the words out, with hands or with lips, so he waits, eyes skating around her the way hers do around him.
She signs a careful "Yes," to him after long consideration, and he smiles.
"You can go back to reading," he reminds her. "But here, flip your chair around ,so I don't have to try to work around the back of it. Makes everything easier."
They shuffle around each other, turning chairs and arranging limbs, until she's settled with her notebook on the table and one leg on either side of the chair, the top of her chest against the top of its backpiece.
His fingers are gentle, slow; they press deep, and even as she tries to read she can feel muscles unknotting, tendons loosening, bones falling together right.
His thumbs start between her shoulderblades, ne on either side of the knobs in her bent spine. He presses down hard, smoothes his thumbs away from her spine ,then back in, then down until he reaches the incurve of her spine, when he lifts his hands and does the same movement again. She can feel his long, war fingers dragging against the roughspun fabric of her shirt, the edges of his calluses catching on the threads.
She feels the knots loosen in her muscles, lets herself slump forward, arms folded across the open book and eyes slipping closed. She can hear him breathing, and without thinking about it tunes her breath to his. They taught them--all of them, Asaaranda has mentioned it before too--to do that, in the karataam--all breathe together, all stay in sync, don't let your thoughts fall apart. Anaan varin aqun. He moves up onto her shoulders, fingers still pressing just hard enough to work out the kinks.
"You do deserve to live free," he tells her.
She shakes her head, signs "Basra"--still the word, instead of a letter-by-letter name--and won't look at him.
Asaaranda snorts, but doesn't say anything else.
When he finally removes his hands from her back, she does feel better. She can already feel the aches and knots creeping back in, though, there's too much damage to her body to be fixed by a single massage. She sighs.
When she turns her chair back around, Adaar and their brother have resolved their argument in angry huffs, and Meraad still hasn't budged from his corner. Asaaranda drops back onto his bed and bundles up his blanket.
She returns to the notebook, and settles down for another long bout of reading.
i’m in oc shipping hell because of transsolas haddiyah x basra is killing me
Saarebas are not given names. They lose their identity when they become weapons, mindless tools to be used by their arvaarad, and for many of them, this knowledge is lost forever. Thus Haddiyah isn’t surprised when the qunari mage simply introduces herself as Basra. Even this name, it feels like it isn’t hers, but the only thing she had dared choose for herself without putting too much of her past life behind.
Names carry power, after all, especially those you call your own. Haddiyah knows this better than most, as it is the custom among the Vashoth qunari for their children to select a name of their liking once they come of age. A final nose-thumbing to the Qun, a last defiance of its nameless tradition.
Haddiyah is a woman of many names. Nicknames, terms of endearments from various lovers, from business contracts and strangers in the streets to whispers in the sheets. They are mantles and masks, each with its own purpose, the meaning changing depending on who use what. She remembers the woman’s bafflement upon learning that 'Haddiyah' wasn’t the only name she was known by. As if a single name meant already so much to the former saarebas that she cannot conceive wearing more.
Somewhere along the way, Basra becomes kadan, and Haddiyah asala, and she feels there are no names more perfect than those, because they tell what they are and what they mean to each other in simple words. No more, no less. Heart and soul.
So when Basra comes to her, a question burning on her lips, stuttering and hesitant – can I wear your name, I want two names, like you, and I know no other more beautiful than Adaar because it belongs to you – Haddiyah smiles, and replies in jest;
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d take you for an Andrastian! Is it marriage that you want, so that you may wear my name?”
At the woman's confusion, Haddiyah explains – she forgets Basra is still learning, still unfamiliar with human customs outside of the Qun – and is surprised to hear her answer;
“Isn’t it what we are? Married, I mean?”
A pause, and then a smile. She should give her more credit than she does – for it seems Basra understands human customs better than she.
