The Life Cycle of a Canary
I'm blaming thanking @davrinsleftpectoral and @blackwall-my-tiny-husband for reblogging their versions of this that I had never seen and for putting this idea in my head.
Beds somehow play into my Rook's life more than I thought.
At 4 years old Gemma knows her name and little else. Her first solid memory is being shown a bed in a row of beds and being told it belongs to her. All the rest of the children fade into the background as she contemplates the cot, so much bigger than she needs. She never had a bed before, she doesn’t think. When the kind woman asks questions about her parents, she shrugs. Instead, she asks where she is, and is told she’s in Treviso. Home.
At 6 years old, Gemma wakes up and feels off. Too hot. Like something crackles beneath the surface of her skin. She finds the dorm mother, the kind woman she has now known for a year. She doesn’t mean to set the woman’s cloak on fire. After that, her schooling changes, and she learns what magic is.
At 7 years old Gemma realizes that the voices in her head are hers alone. That’s fine. They talk about things she doesn’t understand, and they don’t seem to hear her, but their voices are comforting, especially lying in her bed at night. She’s still the size of the younger fledglings but is determined to remind her teachers it doesn’t matter, to remain noticed. Fledglings who are not noticed sometimes disappear, but their beds are always refilled. School and training are hard, but she’s determined to keep the bed she calls her own.
At 9 years old, Gemma is practicing sparring with an older fledging, a beautiful elf with dark curls. She’s so taken by how agile and quick the girl is, wishing her body could move like hers, that she misses a block and the girl’s blade slices through her upper lip to her nose. The pain hurts less than seeing the flash of guilt across the girl’s face and the cry of the voices in her head. When she tries to comfort the girl, with the blood pouring down her face and darkening her tunic, the girl laughs, her dark curls dancing around her shoulders. From that day on, Gemma was noticed. By Teia.
At 11 years old, Gemma stumbles through the fledgling house, finding the way to Teia’s rooms by memory. Teia will be a full Crow soon, and there is talk even in her youth that she will take over management of the Cantori Diamond Casino. Her head hurts, the voices are so loud, her body is sweating and shaking. She knows Teia will help her. Teia brings a man to her room, a tall, frowning man, and they argue. Teia pleads and the man sighs. She spends the night in Teia’s bed, held tightly like she has never been held before. They travel to a cold, old place made of stone. There is another man here, with a soft smile. He understands the voices in her head. He promises to help.
At 12 years old, Gemma returns to Treviso. Her bed has been given away. Her new bed comes with something else, a new name. She is now Gemma de Riva.
At 15 years old, Gemma spends her days in school/training and her nights on the rooftops of Treviso with Viago. For years, he has trained her how to listen to the spirits in her head, to pull out the answers he seeks. She is still small, but she is old enough to test everything he has taught her.
At 18 years old, Gemma is a full Crow. She receives another new bed, this one in a room of her own at the casino, a graduation gift from Teia. Another name has attached itself to her. She is Viago’s Canary. Underestimated, misunderstood, feared to be a mind reader. Crows are wary of her. No one can deny the sudden power of intel House de Riva now holds.
At 20 years old, Gemma has a torrid affair with a young musician. The dissolution of her brief fling turns into a thing of legend, causing the end of live music at the Cantori Diamond and the House de Riva newsletter.
At 20 years old, Gemma is told by Viago to tell Illario Dellamorte, “nice try, Dellamorte,” which she does, and then asks him to take her out for coffee and tell her all about his cousin, the Demon of Vyrantium. This begins a secret friendship and another name, Belita to her Falon. (It isn’t until years later that Gemma discovers Viago knew this secret and Teia made him let her keep it.)
At 21 years old, Gemma is discouraged to discover her infatuation of the man more beautiful and brutal than anyone she has ever seen before is useless when neither she nor Lucanis can do anything other than stammer uncomfortably at each other. Illario sighs.
At 24 years old, Gemma is angry and confused. Illario has told her their close friendship is over. He is too busy, too distraught by the death of his cousin, to deal with the distraction of their friendship. Out on a contract for Viago, she sees an Antaam patrol with a wagon full of elven slaves. She saves the elves and embarrasses House de Riva for not knowing about the Crow’s bigger operation. Viago sends her away with a convenient old friend.
At 25 years old, Gemma has another new name, Rook, one she finally likes. Varric taught her how to be a better person, how to control her anger, how to exist among the living as well as the voices in her head. With her best friend Lace Harding at her side, they continue Varric’s quest to stop Solas. While the Lighthouse provides her with a couch instead of a bed, her friends eventually provide the bed and she makes it not just her own, but theirs.
At 28 years old, Gemma has many names. Canary. Belita. Rook. Slayer of Dragons. Leader of the Veilguard. Defeater of Gods. Her favorite is wife of the First Talon.
