Memories of a Duet - a song of Solas and Mythal
Lyrium remembers. Lyrium sings.
The Shaperate treats lyrium as a living record, a vessel of knowledge that no parchment or stone could match.
To those who can hear it, lyrium hums with a melody both ancient and sorrowful - a song of what once was and what was severed.
Solas crafted his body with lyrium.
He is not just the last of his people - he is the last who can hear them. If the hymns of the past linger in lyrium, then every ruin he walks through is a place where past and present exist at once.
Perhaps that is why music is so important to him. Music allows him to shape a memory into the present, to take something lost and make it exist now. He composes not to relive what was, but to remake it.
In Veilguard, a duet is left behind.
I interpret this codex through the lens of memory (like everything in Veilguard) – I believe Solas composed this long after Mythal died – he composed it with her in mind, remembering her. In the codex, what is described is a diligent practice, the ruthless attention to mistakes, the relentless pursuit of perfection - these are the habits of a man who cannot afford to let a memory slip. It had to be captured exactly as it was, not for an audience, but for the sake of preserving it as truthfully as possible.
Perhaps it is not just about remembering, but about feeling it - letting the song resonate within him as something living, something real. As a being crafted from lyrium, music is the closest he can come to experiencing the past as it was.
So he composes and plays, not just to recall, but to let the harmony take shape again, to let the echoes of what once was rise within him, resonating through his very being, as if, for a moment, it is not lost.
When he absorbed Mythal’s fragment from Flemeth - he took in a piece of her song - a lingering resonance that still hums within him. And so he writes this as a duet, not just because he remembers, but because he can still hear her and he’s combining their frequencies, their harmonies reaching for something...
Then, finally, the memory surfaces:
“A smiling glance, meeting at a crescendo; a shared moment of understanding; seeing completely, and being wholly seen.”
This is the moment he is reaching for - not the music, but the understanding they once had, when they were not burdened by what they had become. When they simply were. He recreates that feeling, perhaps to find peace for a brief time, perhaps to ease his loneliness.
But then - the impressions fade.
The music always comes to an end.
However complicated, however fraught their relationship was, it mattered. It shaped him, tangled in all his regrets, bound up in the choices that led him here. And so long as he carries her fragment, he remains tied to her - to her song.
Until she frees him – and he can relinquish that song once and for all.
I'm going to go cry in the corner now.