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Plugging the Sky-Hole Rubbish	By : Ghost-of-a-Chance Category: +A through F > Dragon Age (all) > Dragon Age (all) Views: 41 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age Inquisition or any of its related characters or devices I'm not making any money from this.

Chapter List
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A brief note before this chapter. As stated before, I’ll be including a lot of folk music, often from artists and groups I was raised with. In the process of researching, I’m learning some…uncomfortable things about some of these stories. You know, ‘green clothing was stereotypical code for saying a character is an elf or Jewish and who knows which was which’ and ‘unwed rapists had the option to marry their victims or be executed.’ The kind of stuff that hasn’t carried over to our culture and makes us feel gross. There are occasionally culturally insensitive words and (what we now recognize as) cultural slurs, which I will omit if any such songs are chosen. On the other hand, I’m finding neat little details about some songs that, honestly, make me a bit nerdy. I’ll save this chapter’s nerd-splosion for the end notes because, no lie, y’all probably wouldn’t give a hoot.
Fair warning, Iaspis/Melanie’s internal monologue in this chapter made me choke as I wrote it, so you might want to not drink anything while reading. Minor warning for brief depiction of non-explicit verbal child abuse featuring a bit of religious hypocrisy.

Music: Steeleye Span "Galtee Farmer" and "False Knight on the Road," Loreena McKennitt “The Bonny Swans,” Steeleye Span "Two Sisters” and “The Three Sisters”
3: Of Sparrows and Dead Lady Swans
At first, the scenery is similar enough to be familiar but different enough to be interesting. Wide, scrubby grassland stretches beyond the limits of sight, interrupted by winding creeks and jagged rocky outcroppings. The drumming and cries of strange animals echo through the sagebrush. Wooly, scaleless Druffalo swat at flies. Perhaps the Dirth changed more over the centuries than he realized; the Fade imitates reality, after all.
The further Solas walks, the less he recognizes. Grassland turns to scattered glades and woodlands littered with unfamiliar flowers and antlered creatures. The landscape dips and rolls in hills and valleys—tree-studded knolls and deep fissures cut with unnatural black paths and lined with towering stone cliffs. There aren’t any spirits here, at least none that will speak to him.
Solas walks on, for minutes or months, for meters or miles, until the scenery blurs together. The sound of rushing water leads Solas to the banks of a muddy river too broad to cross without a vessel and too deep to swim. Waterfowl glide along the river’s surface, and whiskered fish disturb the silt below it. Connecting the near and far shore stands a mighty bridge crowded with haze-obscured creatures with gleaming skins. Solas crosses, ducking between the strange beasts frozen in time, now and then jolting at their tinny and growling cries.
There persists a dreamlike quality of voices without speakers, unseen horns, and heavy, oppressive fog that stinks of fuel and filth. Off in the smog-hazy distance, a shining structure like a gargantuan unstrung bow connects the sky and the ground, straddling a verdant parkland.
It’s in this park, bare toes curling in the manicured grass, that Solas realizes the truth: this place is none he has ever before encountered, nor one of which he has read. Where would even spirits fear to tread?
Distant laughter breaks through the bewilderment mooring him in place. Beyond the line of bushes, he walks, following a yellow-striped road, and into a small house with peeling Dawnstone-colored siding. At a tired wooden table scattered with the detritus that comes from schooling—books, papers, and far too much clutter—sit two young human girls. The first is tall, blonde, and comely, while the second is short and plain with brown hair and countless freckles. Music plays low, although Solas cannot locate the musicians. Though he cannot recognize the tune, he’s sure he has heard the words before, sometime in the current present or forgotten past.
"Squirrel?” The blonde girl taps the tip of her pen against her paper in time with the beat. “I don’t get this song. Why doesn’t the farmer recognize his horse? He just sold it, right? How could he not recognize it just because someone—checks notes—gave it a haircut?”
The brown-haired girl blinks behind the twin sheets of glass propped on her nose, without ever looking up, and ruffles the tight curls on her head. This action reminds Solas of someone, though he cannot place a name or face to it. And what manner of name is Squirrel? “Moose, honestly.” The brown-haired girl’s eyes cross and she scratches out and rewrites a number on her worksheet. Moose, although a name that means nothing to him, is one he’s at least heard. “You’re overthinking it. The farmer hasn’t got two brain cells to rub together.”
"Melanie Elva Jasper!”* The brown-haired child flinches and ducks her head until her scalp stands almost level with her shoulders. A portly, plain woman waddles around the corner with a black-haired toddler on her hip; neither she nor the baby resembles either child to Solas’ eyes. “From your lips to God’s ears,” the woman scolds. “Would He have you speaking about someone that way?” This could not have been the woman singing; the vocalist has an airy and trained falsetto, but this woman’s voice reminds Solas of the screeching of a Despair demon.
“No, Miss Jane,” the brown-haired girl mumbles into her chest. “Sorry.”
Her name isn’t Squirrel, then? Why did Moose call her Squirrel? Does this mean the blonde’s name isn’t Moose? Is this some strange human custom he’s never encountered?
For moments or minutes, Solas watches the woman—Jane—lecture a child who isn’t hers. With every sentence, her temper builds, the girl’s shoulders draw tighter, and her tea brown eyes grow waterier and weaker. At last, the woman barks a list of chores and storms out with the unimpressed toddler babbling on her hip. The whole time, Solas wonders what called him to this memory. Why should he bear witness to this moment out of so many more intriguing? Events both triumphant and calamitous start with the most humble and mundane of seeds; what history will grow from roots born in this interaction?
“She hasn’t got two brain cells to rub together.” The insult, whispered by Melanie’s blonde friend, triggers a wan smile.
“She’s trying, Sash,” Melanie insists, although her friend shakes her head with a disappointed moue. “Look, think about it. The farmer and his son didn’t see the mare’s good qualities when they sold her, and they didn’t see the bad when they bought her back.”
Sash—what manner of name is that? Tevene? Antivan?
The blond girl stills and the pen tucked between her upper lip and nose falls to the table with a clatter. Melanie jolts and glances through the doorway after the older woman, and Sash bumps their shoulders together to garner her attention. “Then it’s about…perception? He doesn’t realize what he has until it’s gone, or until someone points it out?”*
Melanie smiles, a weak, wilting thing without a hint of teeth or happiness. “Yeah. It’s about paying attention and valuing what you’ve got.” She glances through the doorway again, leans over the table, and adds in a conspiratorial whisper, “Plus, you know, dumb people and institutionalized racism.”
Solas blinks. He understands the words, he knows their meanings, but what she just said makes no sense to him.
The music changes—in the new song, a man sings of a young boy encountering a brigand impersonating a knight.* Sash cracks a smile as Melanie’s head bops in time with the energetic beat. Where is the band? With so many musicians—Solas counts at least two singers, multiple string instruments, a hide drum, and perhaps a horn—they would be difficult to conceal. Were they in another room, out of sight but not earshot, the walls would muddle the lyrics.
“Remind me why you listen to this stuff?”
“This world is a steaming plate of—” Melanie glances out the doorway again and mumbles, “horseradish. If you get isekaied—or even Tenth Walkered!—the last thing you need is to be caught singing K-Pop, right? That’d be like wearing a giant neon sign with Nazgul target on it in big block letters!”
Mist rises from the corners of the room, muffling the giggles and music and blurring the faces and features. From the distance comes the sound of vaguely familiar humming and repeated grunts and thuds, and as it grows louder, Solas can swear he smells flour. A sneeze—a crash—a cry. The Fade swirls around him, scarlet and smelling of blood; a crack resonates like thunder, followed by a shrill monotonous noise that swells and falls in pitch and volume, and a litany of frantic voices.
Everything vanishes in a flash of searing green light.
Solas woke with a start and studied his surroundings one sense at a time. Chilled air smelling of smoke and healing herbs. Grumbling in the cabin next door—that human alchemist was in as fine a mood as ever—and raucous laughter from the tavern down the hill. The atmosphere is sharp and electric with the intangible crackling of the Breach. The timid spirit of Faith hovering in the corner of his hut, eager to witness the dawn of a new chapter in history. Everything together told Solas something impossible.
He never left Haven. He visited a part of the Fade which he’d never discovered, and which followed none of the usual patterns he knew by heart, without stepping foot through the gates.
How could such a thing be possible?
He made a harp of her breast bone—a hey ho and me bonny-o—and straight it began to play alone.*
Seated at Josephine’s desk, Iaspis flipped through the stack of news and records, humming the whole while. The weight of her advisors’ eyes was smothering and restless as if they thought she might find a line out of order and demand explanations. This fame shtick was exhausting, and that was when she could focus on something for a few minutes at a time. Now? Right now, she had the attention span of a goldfish, that goldfish might actually be dead, and its neighbors in the next bowl were playing the same song on repeat.
The swans, they swim so bonny-o.
“—we’re limited on resources as it is, and having her wandering about cannot be safe.”
Iaspis blinked, her train of thought derailed by Cullen’s grousing. Or was he brooding? Scolding? “Huh?”
“That refugee who followed you from the Hinterlands.” Did Leliana have any expressions that didn’t look smug or sly? What was with that? Could she read minds? Orlesians. Bards. Swans. Every one of them made her head hurt. “I am curious as to your reasoning for bringing her here, especially when we haven’t the resources to house civilians.”
“Don’t blame me.” Iaspis buried her fingers in her messy hair and tugged at the roots until her scalp stung. …hey ho and me bonny—No. Focus. You got through school, you got through college, and you got through that hellish managerial training. You can darned well get through one Inky Update without going full-on space cadet.
…but we had Adderall for that.
…shut up, Melanie.
“You read my report,” Iaspis said even as the proverbial angel on her left shoulder and the devil on her right traded insults and offensive gestures. “We tried dropping off Miss Hafter several places along the way—”
You lying liar-pants.
“—but she kept following us.”
Because you ate everything she cooked, you glutton. Because you never brought up where she should go. Because you let her ride Moose the Second with you, and you made the effort to learn her name. You may as well have paved the road with breadcrumbs and waved a sign that said candy house this way, come get fat.
Shut up, Melanie. Swans. Remember the swans? They swim so bonny, yo?
A rapping at the open door of Josephine’s office shattered all thoughts of Félice, food, dead lady swans, edgy corpse-harpers, candy traps, and possible mind-reading bards. In the doorway stood Varric, knuckles upraised; in his other hand was a sheaf of papers bound with silk ribbon and wax stamped with an M. “The courier mixed up brains and beauty again,” he quipped as he handed the bundle to Josephine.
Iaspis suspected which title Varric assigned himself; he was almost prettier than Cullen in a scruffy might pick your pocket, might charge you rent kind of way.
Josephine collected the misdelivered paperwork and inspected the broken seal with a sighed, “I do not suppose you contained your curiosity when you discovered the error.”
Varric swept a hand over his chest hair with an affronted expression. “Who, me? Of course, I didn’t read your very private correspondence. By the way, you may want to fire your accountant. Five thousand Andris for one night in Val Royeaux is highway robbery, even for a class S merchant ship.”*
Josephine blanched and flipped through the papers in a rush, only to notice Varric’s grin and wink, and set to breathing with suspicious measure.
God damn her bones, for it is she who pushed me in and drowned me, so play me, sister, come play—wait. Wrong song. Wrong swan.* Iaspis shook her head as if she could rattle her loose screws back into place. That wasn’t even the same artist.
“Herald. The Hafter girl?” Cullen, of course. For such a pretty boy, he sure was persistent.
“If you’re talking about the little sparrow,” Varric said, “I wouldn’t worry too much. She probably just decided she’ll be safer flying with us.”
Iaspis’ eyes crossed and her vision blurred as Varric related Félice’s applicable skills, but she heard none of it. The groan that ripped out of her throat made the advisors back away; she let her forehead fall onto the desk with an audible thonk that made her wonder if her head was empty after all. “He named her.” Iaspis lifted her head and let it thonk down again. “Dammit. He named her. Now we’ll never get rid of the kid.”
Bow down, oh, bow—nope. Still the wrong song. This time, she couldn’t even blame it on the swans.

Coming soon: Félice is for the streets in Contradiction and Confusion, and Compassion.
Notes in order of appearance
* Galtee Farmer—Take the stated song meaning and the following bit about institutionalized racism with a grain of salt, because the person saying this would be a pre-teen. God knows half the crap I thought I knew at that age was full of cheese. While “Galtee Farmer” can be interpreted in this way, the main lesson is to be careful when making decisions, especially when you’re dealing with horse traders. The racism bit might also be inaccurate because both Dublin and the Galtee mountains are in Ireland, and this song has Irish origins.
* “The False Knight on the Road,” originally spread as “Fause Knight upon the Road,” was featured in The Child Ballads, a collection of songs gathered by Francis James Child in 1880. It tells a story of a devil or witch confronting a child on his way to school, and that child outwitting the false knight’s attempts to trip him up or ensnare him. Honestly, it strikes differently in this day and age, with the kid coming across as a little smartass.
* Swan songs—First, The Bonny Swans by Loreena McKennitt. Second and third, Two Sisters and The Three Sisters by Steeleye Span. These songs are all related to a murder ballad from The Child Ballads. They tell the same story with some amount of variation. This story involves two (or three) sisters, one faithful and one jealous, being courted by the same man; when the faithful sister wins the man’s love and a promise to wed, the jealous sister throws her into the river to drown her. In the first two songs, the faithful sister is found by a miller’s child when her body—described as resembling “a milk-white swan”—gets jammed in the waterwheel. The scene is discovered by a passing harper, who for some fking reason decides to make a possessed harp out of pieces of her corpse—because why the fk not—and that harp can play beautiful music by itself. The harper takes it to the king’s castle and plays for the court, but instead of beautiful music, the voice of the drowned sister outs the jealous sister as her murderer. In the final song—The Three Sisters—the story is cut short; the miller discovers the faithful sister drowning, rips off her golden jewelry, holds her under until she drowns, and is hanged for her murder. This song has nothing to do with swans.
Folk music gets put down a lot, and people associate it with banjos or “nonny nonny” nonsense. The reality? It can be metal AF and often involves someone taking a permanent dirt-nap.
* Five thousand Andris – according to the Dragon Age wiki, the Andris is the currency of Antiva—yep, home of our lovely diplomat. A sum of five thousand Andris has come to be known as “one bastard,” and as such, is sometimes used as a veiled insult in negotiations.
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Plugging the Sky-Hole Rubbish