(no subject)

[witticaster]

Kieran and his mother are walking hand in hand in an Orlesian garden with walls so high, it's possible to imagine there's nothing that lies beyond them. He can't see anything but the carefully pruned trees and little beds of flowers around them and the sky above them. That's a silly idea, of course--everyone knows there's a whole world beyond this one garden, and more worlds past that--but when he and Mother are together, sometimes it feels like no one else exists.

He likes it that way, just them and a quiet emptiness around them. It reminds him of stepping through mirrors and the long, silent lands they lead to. In Orlais, he doesn't see Mother as much as he'd like--but she always seems to find ways for them to be together without leaving the world entirely (though sometimes they leave, too).

They look at the fruit trees that stretch up towards the sun and the carpets of violets crowding the shadier corners, and eventually, Kieran asks, "Mother? Did I have a father?"

She stops with one slipper reaching out for her next step, staring down at him with raised eyebrows. After a moment, she sets her foot back down and smiles. "Of course you did, Kieran. You don't think I conjured you out of a bone and a few pieces of velvet, do you?"

"No." He smiles back; the story of the bone boy of Denerim is one of his favourites. Before now, he'd never thought of them as having anything in common--but the bone boy hadn't a father, either. No one ever asked the bone boy who his father was, though. Maybe they were too distracted by his carved skull face to wonder.

"Why do you ask?" Mother begins to walk again, but this time, it's not the aimless wandering they've been doing since they came to the garden. She's marching them over to a bench shaded by a trellis of roses.

With a shrug, Kieran sits down, careful not to crumple his mother's voluminous skirt. "People care about fathers in Orlais."

"They would." The way she mutters it, Kieran's nearly sure that wasn't a comment for his sake. There's a quiet, not quite amiable silence, during which he watches her bite down on her lower lip. "I always knew you'd ask eventually, but I didn't expect it so soon."

"I'm sorry."

Mother shakes her head firmly. "You have nothing to apologize for. Little boys should be curious about the world."

Kieran doesn't know what to say to that, and Mother doesn't seem to be sure what she should say, either. For a few minutes, they sit under protection of the trellis roses, waiting for one of them to figure out the answer.

"Your father was a good man." Mother smooths back Kieran's hair from his forehead, looking at his face like she's hoping to see something of his father in him. "We were...friends. Of a sort."

Which means they were in love, Kieran thinks.

She goes on, "If he could meet you, he would love you. You have all his best traits--and none of his more irritating tendencies. Right now, that is what you need to know about him."

If there's a right now, that means there's a later, too. One that Kieran suspects is a when you're older kind of later. "Did he die?"

"Oh--no! He's in Ferelden." Her lips twitch. "Which is nearly as bad."

That's what everyone in Orlais thinks about Ferelden, as far as Kieran can tell. Sometimes it's hard to believe Mother is from Ferelden in the first place. "Ferelden is next to Orlais. He could come to visit."

"No. He is...there is much work for him in Ferelden." Mother's face turns a strange mix of sad and sorry--strange for her--her brows dipping down into a frown. The warm weight of her hand settles on his shoulder. "Were it possible...for you, I would invite him to see you. But it cannot be. Do you understand?"

Kieran isn't sure he does. It's a story with as many holes as a lace shawl. If it was a fairy tale Mother was telling him, he'd ask more questions, making her fill in every detail she missed. But this is something true, something that pulls Mother's mouth into a sorrowful curve. A voice in him whispers yes, and stop, and another day.

"Yes," he tells her. Standing, he takes her hand and pulls her back onto the garden path.

❧

Later, he will wonder about letters, and eluvians, and all the other ways they could speak to his father. But it cannot be is what always drifts back to him when he imagines suggesting them to Mother. Whoever his father is, whatever he does in Ferelden, there was something so heavy and final about the way Mother spoke of him that Kieran doubts his ideas will change her mind.

When he's older, he decides, he'll ask for the truth. He'll demand it if he has to. For now, what he knows will have to be enough.