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Meraad has secrets.Oh, he’s forthcoming enough with little tales of his mercenary jaunts. Since he started making an effort to speak to you again, after the magic disaster and the sword to the chest, he’s been telling little tales again of how he almost died, or how other people almost died. Of ridiculous contracts and employers and allies and foes.The man has stories out the ass of weird shit that’s happened to him, and he can entertain a tavern’s crowd with them well enough if they deign to listen to a qunari. He told these before the magic disaster, too, to entertain the stranger he found on the road.Since you pulled that arrow from his throat, he’s started sharing the quieter ones. Two days after the fact, he sat at the fire with his throat still raw and his voice still gravelly, and told you about Nevarra. About how creepy the mortalitasi are. How the capital looks after sundown. Described the sights and sounds and smells of it until his voice gave out and he had to take a rest. Some other time, because you couldn’t sleep, he told you about the Emprise du Lion in winter, how the snow crunches underfoot and the icicles are large enough to impale and how the river looks in all that light. No adventure, no story to it, no tale. Just the feeling of it. Impressions.He barely mentions anything but his mercenary past. Now, you have excellent first-hand knowledge that the guy’s got issues with all things magical, but you don’t know why. Maybe a mage hurt him. Or a demon. Or an abomination. He has scars enough. Maybe he lost someone close to him. He carries a necklace that means heart, but hasn’t mentioned anyone who might share the other half. Maybe that’s connected. Maybe not. Honestly, who the fuck knows. Meraad plays his cards close to chest and his secrets closer. You know he doesn’t dream, or at least does his best not to, because the Fade freaks him the fuck out. That’s the first time he mentioned his parents. Said his mother taught him the Qun’s meditations that keep his mind from wandering at night. You didn’t pry, because it didn’t feel right, the magic thing too raw between you, but you wondered.It’s better now. Both of you flinched less at the other until you stopped entirely. It still hurts, but it’s a quiet hurt, not an open wound like before. More like a bone that hasn’t set quite right and aches in the weather. Maybe it would help if you knew why. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t, and Meraad is not inclined to share of his own volition. The fact of it is: He has secrets. Many warriors who have lived as long as he has do. Things they don’t speak of, horrors and nightmares they’ve seen or done. Maybe it’s battle sickness. He shows the signs sure enough. Probably wouldn’t admit to it if asked.All of this, the fact he doesn’t volunteer to talk about himself, the fact he’s huge and scary, the fact you can’t afford to piss him off because he’s providing for you, especially the fact you’re already in the negatives for the fatal flaw of magic running through your blood, makes you wary to ask anything, because you might ask the wrong thing. Scared to say the wrong word and find yourself without anyone. Alone as you were in that cave, because he might have not come back — he did this time, who’s to tell he will again? But all that’s nothing alcohol can’t fix.Alcohol, then. You’re not piss-drunk. Don’t like it. If you drink too much, you lose what happened. And everyone else has enough to lose, don’t they, years and years of it, but you don’t, you have to cling to every new moment you get because the old ones are gone. So you hold back after a while, tip back enough to earn you respect, not enough to lose your mind or your dinner. Enough for the buzz, the liquid in your joints, the floating thoughts.Meraad drinks more than you, but he can take more than you, he’s built like a wall, like nothing could take him down, least of all some measly liquid. You’ve seen him fall, but it's hard to believe when he's there like that. It still reassures, the solid presence of him. Also, warmth. The fire is nice, but the bite of winter lurks in the air, especially now that the sun is down, so you lean into him and he lets you. Puts a heavy arm around your shoulders and doesn’t mention it. Your heart dances. Just drunk enough to ask.“Hey, Meraad.”He shifts just a bit, must be looking down at you. Makes a sound that might mean yes.“How’d you lose that horn?”There’s a little silence.“Told a story about it just yesterday,” he says, and you can feel his voice in his chest where you’re against him. His wyvern tooth is just in front of your forehead, the shape of it under his shirt. “Weren’t listening, huh?”“No way you fought an ogre in the deep roads.”“Yes way. I did. Some desperate dwarves wanted help with clearing out darkspawn, so they hired a bunch of idiot surfacer sellswords. And I was an idiot surfacer sellsword.” He re-settles his arm around you a bit. You tip back your head and look at him and he’s staring into the embers of the fire. The shadows it casts make his face look foreign, with his broken nose and jagged scars highlighted all weird.“But it’s not how you lost your horn, is it.” If the ogre had pressed its shitty blade through slow, it would be splintered and cracked, not half-smooth as it is.Another little silence.
“No,” he says, “it’s not.” But he doesn’t offer more, so that’s a door that’s locked for now. Well. When a door’s locked, use a window.“Tell me something else, then,” you try. His eyes flicker down to meet yours.“Did I tell you about that time I met an Antivan Crow?” It’s an offer, but it’s also a deflection. The first kind of stories he unpacks, the harmless ones. The ones that don’t even have anything to do with him, he could be anyone, just some guy. He is anyone when he tells them. Just some big funny man in a tavern. You break eye contact and he turns back to the fire.“I mean like… about you. I don’t have anything,” and the thought makes your throat close up and your eyes well. Maybe it’s the drink that brings the emotions closer to the surface. You fight the tightness in your voice. “I don’t know where I was born, or where I grew up. I don’t know if my parents were kind, or if they’re still around. Y’know? All I’ve got is a friend. And you don’t talk on it often.” Not ever, but you don’t want to sound accusing.A little silence, again. It doesn’t feel hostile, but you take two breaths and he hasn’t said anything so you keep talking.
“Of course, you don’t have to. If it’s all bad memories or whatever. Forget I asked. It was silly anyway, I shouldn’t--”
“Hey, kid. Shh. Hey,” he shushes. Pats your head between the horns with his free hand. His calluses rasp against the stubble of your clipped hair, all short now for safety, and it’s kinda nice. Yanks you out of the disaster track your brain and mouth were going down with full sails.“Sorry,” you mumble, and he chuckles a bit, you feel the motion of it against your cheek.“Don’t be, kid. It’s fine, I don’t mind. Most folks just don’t give a shit where the big bad qunari comes from. Don’t wanna picture me, I think, as a baby with nubby horns and fat arms, drooling all over the place. Clashes with the whole deadly merc thing I’ve got going on now.”“Oh,” you say and he stops patting your hair, puts his hand back in his lap.“So… parents,” he starts, and he’s collecting his thoughts. His other stories are ready, practised with time, roll off his tongue. But if barely anyone wants to hear these bits, they’ve got to be deeper down. You settle in and listen.“Had two of them, as most people do. Was my dad, Aban, who picked the name. See, he called himself Aban because he had a love for the sea, so he had his son named for the tides. Probably something deep and meaningful. Or he was just a bit of an airhead. Waterhead? Either. Nicer than you’d think. People here see a qunari and they think ah shit, it’s those Qun warrior men, what barely speak to us, but all they know is the wars and the Antaam. My dad wasn’t like that. He was a fucking softie. All gentle and shit. Seven foot of him, was probably taller than I am now, wouldn’t hurt a fly. Never a fighter, not him.” He laughs, then, this fond little sound. A log shifts in the fire and sparks fly up into the night sky, like tiny fireflies, up and up into the dark.“My mother, then. Issala. She was proper Tal-Vashoth, unlike him. He never knew the Qun, never lived under it, just knew from his parents, but Mom lived it. She was with the craftsmen, a weaponsmith, supplied the Antaam with what they need. I think she missed it, sometimes. The structure, the rules. Sometimes she’d sit there and go ‘no wonder the Tal-Vashoth turn into mindless beasts, without the rules to keep us in place,’ but then my dad would be there, his sweet vashoth self. He fixed it for a while, could keep it at bay. Remind her that she’s a person of her own. Also the fact she kept working as a smith. Nothing like beating the shit out of some metal to deal with your inner conflict, I guess.” He sounds wistful, almost. And the stories he tells usually are designed to entertain, loud and clear and structured, but he’s just talking now. Much softer than usual. He’s not performing for a tavern, just telling you. Because you asked. It warms something deep inside you.“Your dad sounds nice,” you say, because he does. Aban. You try to picture a big guy who really likes the ocean, and a tiny baby Meraad, but you can’t quite imagine what a baby Meraad would look like. It feels like he should have been born with a broken nose and a frown on his face.“Yeah,” Meraad agrees. “He was a good guy. He liked speaking Trade more, so I’m good at it, and Mom was bad at Trade, never learned it before she declared Tal-Vashoth, so I’m good at Qunlat too. I remember my dad teaching me words. He’d take me on a walk and point at things and name them, and then I said it back.” His voice sounds like he’s smiling. “He did most of the child-raising, really. Took care of the house, the garden, the chickens. Sometimes he’d have to go to the market or whatever, and then I got to play in the forge where Mom had an eye on me. Almost died a handful of times playing with shit I shouldn’t’ve touched, but only almost.”“Who do you look like more?” you ask, because now you’re trying to picture his mother. She must’ve had some arms, working as a smith.“Hmm. Both, I suppose. I have my mother’s horns, all up and out and back down. And her muscle. My dad’s face and height, though. He was tall, but not built the same way. My grandfather on that side was an arvaraad that left. Never met him, but my dad said he was closer to eight than to seven foot, so there’s that. But yeah, all in all I think I take after my mom more. Dad had what Mom called the Beresaad Look, y’know, the bronze skin and the white hair, but I got mom’s dark grey and dark hair.”“Might be white in a bit,” you jibe. He pokes you in the ribs for it and you poke him in the stomach.“Cheeky little shit, you are,” he says, but he’s laughing, then he stops, suddenly solemn. The fire crackles in sympathy. “Yeah. That was my parents. Issala and Aban. They were good for each other. So when Dad died, it wasn’t good for her. Not even like lynched by the townsfolk, nothing worth avenging, he just fell off trying to fix the roof, broke his spine. I wasn’t even there, was at the market, come back and he’s dying. Should've been there.”Your heart does a painful squeeze and you put your arms around him. “I’m sorry,” you offer, because it’s all you have. But you try. “You don’t have to talk about it if it makes you sad.”He hugs you back, both arms now, and his heartbeat is steady and comforting against your ear. “It’s fine,” he says. “I’m okay. It was a long time ago. What has it been, twenty… twenty-two years, now. I left, not long after. My mother didn’t… She wasn’t the same, after. Didn’t want me taking care of her, told me to find my luck out there. I visited, a few times. No more, though.”“I’m sorry,” you offer again, because you don’t have better words and silence would be too cold. He ruffles his hand across your hair stubble again.“Like I said. It’s fine. Long time ago. People usually don’t ask, so I don’t talk about my parents a lot, but yeah. The Qun shit I do, like the meditating against dreams, they taught me. Hell, taught me every other thing I do. As parents do. Mom gave me my first sword.” He mimics a different voice, softer, deeper. “‘Issala! Why does the boy have a sword, he is six!’ My father was not a warrior. But it made her happy to see me prancing about with one, so he let us.”“I can picture it,” you say, and you can, this time, a tiny grey child with a scrap-metal sword, a Tal-Vashoth with the same skin and Meraad’s horns and smith’s arms smiling proudly, a tall, skinny Vashoth with white hair watching anxiously. Maybe Issala held him like this, tucked against her side all safe, ruffled his hair with smith’s calluses. Like Meraad’s sword-worn hands. Maybe you had a father who held you like that too. You hope so. Here, in the firelight, his arm over your shoulders, you feel safe.