4 for sorcha amell and the codex entries!
AAAAUUUGGGHHH ok 1) thank you so much 2) this will be painful
A crumpled letter that seems to be written in a shaky hand. Whether or not it was ever delivered to the intended recipient is anyone’s guess, and although the author is technically anonymous, many suspect it to be the Hero of Ferelden—who’d been virtually impossible to trace by anyone other than Sister Nightingale—who had disappeared a scant few years before this vellum had been discovered.
“I do not wish to hear such nonsense. You, in your naïveté, believe that humanity is inherently altruistic, but ‘tis not the case and never has been—humanity is selfish right down to the marrow of our bones.”
Do you remember saying that to me by the campfire? Everyone else had gone to bed, or at least were doing a bang-up job at pretending that they had, but you and I were practically huddling together as though it was a freezing winter night and we had no other way of surviving through the night, confessing things we’d never told anyone else with only each other and the stars as our witnesses. Your eyes were shimmering, a liquid gold cutting through the soft glow of the firelight, but I didn’t think you were ready. You probably still aren’t.
Andraste’s blessed tits, I should’ve asked if I could kiss you back then. At least then I wouldn’t have to deal with this all-consuming uncertainty. I wouldn’t have to wonder if
the child could’ve been my son, too, in a different life where you love me back
if you’re safe from that wretched being who calls herself your mother
if you’re getting enough to eat, because you’ve always had a habit of hoarding food as though someone is going to take it from you
there could’ve been a spark there, once. But it’s been years since I’ve felt your presence through the ring you’d given me, and so I have learned to accept my feelings and keep them to myself. We were not meant to be lovers, and that is alright. You seem to have stopped seeing me as your closest friend—or, indeed, a friend at all—and that, too, is fine.
I do my best to no longer think of you or ponder over the boy.
Yet I still can’t help but worry. I think we can both agree that my mother, as little as I remember of her, gave me a name meaning “clear, shining, bright”—depending on the interpretation—as a cruel sort of desperate hope. Perhaps she was pleading with Andraste for the Maker to turn his gaze on me, to bless me and absolve me of my original sin, but you and I both know that it was all for naught: I turned out to be a mage anyway, the same as my older brother and younger sister. The same as my older stepsister. And, if I’ve heard correctly, the same as my youngest brother and sister. They’re twins, making it even more likely that my mother would bear yet two more mage children.
Or perhaps she wanted me to rise up in this world and become an influential figure, to restore the Amell family name to its former glory. I’ve never given a shit about any of that, though. You’ve heard me bitch and moan about it enough to know my views on that particular subject.
Or, the simplest explanation—she simply liked my name. And perhaps, in an ironic way, I did fulfill its meaning: I became a tool used with a clear purpose, a bright spot in an otherwise doomed situation. A shining beacon of “love is the death of duty.”
If there could’ve ever been any chance of it coming to fruition, sometimes I have nightmares that I would’ve been selfish enough to run away with you, to leave it all behind and make my “Second” the official leader of our ragtag band of questionable characters.
I want to tell myself I wouldn’t have been.
I don’t know if that’s true. I’d like to think it is.
Thankfully, maddeningly, I’ll never have to know.
I’m only writing this letter because we may not have the chance to meet again, and part of me is glad for that—I am, after all, to the very core of me a coward. Those who would argue otherwise, who would say that I rush into danger when the most seasoned of veterans would sound a retreat, have not been privy to my innermost thoughts the way that you have.
I have been contacted by Cousin. She informed me in a roundabout way that the Inquisition could use a hand. I will not let her be dragged into this mess. If someone has to do this, it has to be me. Someone else might get it wrong.
The plans I’ve heard whispered by those scant few I still hold dear are madness. It has to be me. I’m sorry. I hope you care. I hope you don’t.
[There’s no signature, but a few darker spot indicate that something may have spilled on the vellum.]
