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Solas is absolutely not an old boomer, because he’s something infinitely funnier: an old zoomer.
Literally his core personality trait is being the world’s most unsalvageable iPad kid. This boy spent not one second of his childhood without access to the internet. This is an ancient, millennia-old elf who grew up on spiderman elsa.
DAI: Trespasser DLC
Vir Dirthara
Oh, just some stray foci.
They Sleep, Masked in a Mirror
Cole: They sleep, masked in a mirror, hiding, hurting, and to wake them...
You know....when you look at it like this, they really do look like figures hidden in eluvians. Complete with orbs in front of them. Considering it is found in the Vir DIrthara, this is totally a legitimate way of looking at this mural.
-MM
Indelible
Each time Solas returns to Vir Dirthara, he feels parts of him fragment and fall away. It is just that the archivist bears witness, a kind of atonement the spirit will never understand even when it is whole. Its purpose remains pure, however, and will always reconnect him to what he has slowly torn away, piece by piece, and committed to this book.
He has no Well. There will be none he will bind to him with his thoughts and memories, and he cannot be certain of returning in any form. Once he is finished here, his own purpose will be pure again and the din’an’shiral almost over.
It is only the hope that she gave him that created this book of memories. If nothing else, it will be his epitaph and a lesson for others who follow. But perhaps some younger version of him will find it, someday, and reconnect.
On this page... snow falls and it catches on her lashes. Her breath plumes the air as she steps toward him, incredulous. “Felt the whole world change?” It was then his path wavered, undone by an unguarded moment between lonely souls.
On this page... she bursts into the rotunda, flush from victory. “I wish you had seen it. Terrifying, glorious.” She does not want to take pride in killing the high dragon, but the fight has brought her to life in a way that nothing else will, he discovers. She still crackles miles later, then stills on an indrawn breath. “Oh, Solas. Your work...” Her deeds, forever marking the castle he gave her.
On this page... her fingers brush reverently over crumbled mosaics in Dirthamen’s Temple. She sinks to her knees and weeps for Eladrin and Lindiranae and a hundred other names in the Dales long-forgotten even by some of her own people. Even as he warns her of the Sulevin blade, she forges ahead. Ever lost but determined all the same. He is never certain which of them derives more solace from sleeping together, forehead to forehead, hands within hands.
On this page... laughter. Only her laughter rippling up from the garden as Cullen beats her in another chess game.
On this page... climbing after her as rocks tumble into the sky, uprooted as he is, fear for her and the orb mounting. She flashes in this darkness, her uplifted mage’s blade bright with her righteous anger. She throws back Corypheus’s threats, denying this thing’s foothold in the world time and again until its source is stolen, hurled, cracked upon her power. She is now the fulcrum on which this world turns and he is broken on it utterly.
Page after page of this woman’s imprint on his heart, fluttering helplessly under his fingers, each of them lanced cleanly away and put here. Metaphorically he knows he ought to be bleeding and raw, but it would be an injustice to who they were - no keening poetry, here, but duty and faith in each other, only.
He fills a final page.
She cries out in pain and finally kneels before him, all illusions gone and her power killing her. And yet still, as in Crestwood, she believes they will endure together. “Var lath vir suledin!”
All he can do is take what is killing her and hope she will endure for her own sake. His is not worthy. A goodbye he did not give her before. “I will never forget you, vhenan.”
He stumbles on his feet, overwhelmed by a sorrow he cannot name. Absently he shelves the book in his hand, knowing that if it was important the archivist will direct him to it again. Meanwhile, he has a battle to prepare for and he knows the Inquisitor will give him no quarter in this final hour.
She is a formidable foe, after all.
[Solas giving up his memories of Vhenaste. Inspired by “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” R I T U A L “No Escape Out of Time” (specifically “Wouldn’t Be Love” and “Better By Now”) and The Cure, “Pictures of You”. Additional lore-meta support and inspiration from wyrdsistersofthedas’s post on uthenera and the origins of the elven people, and of course the codexes found in Vir Dirthara.]
"Listen with fearless hearts, and great works will unfold."
-Dragon Age: Inquisition-Trespasser: Attentive Listeners
Vir Dirthara - Shattered Library - Trespasser DLC.
