I am well now. [ mostly healed. he can't feel the tips of his fingers yet, but he can sit a horse and get from orlais back to skyhold. that's what matters. ] I would like that very much, Maia.

[ for more reasons than he can admit. oh, gwenaëlle is happy he didn't die, he supposes, and galadriel cares in her own way, but no one here would come to greet him at the gates. no one since his son. it is... very nice, to know someone cares. it means more than he thought it would. ]

We were made for it, akin to the color of your eyes or the thickness of your hair. It is simply how we are. [ here, he pauses. he had offered maia anything, and he is young, and knows not what he asks. he's found, as of the last decade or two, that the pain fades with airing. he'll be reunited with her soon- every day passed is another closer. ]

We knew one another as children. I did not see her as one I might like to wed until we were much older. It was at a party, a diplomatic event where I was meant to be speaking for my father's house. I had not seen her in centuries. She was- magnificent. And then we spoke, and it was if all those years were mere minutes instead.