Chapter Text
Neria could remember exactly when she’d met her first imaginary dream-friend. She had been exploring in her sleep, wandering from dreamscape to dreamscape, watching the people and things that filled her sleeping mind.
Loud shouting had caught her attention, and she’d turned to see a boy swinging a sword at straw dummies in fancy uniforms. He was yelling enthusiastically even though he rarely hit the straw men.
Curious, Neria approached him, staying well back to avoid the flailing blade. “What are you doing?”
“Killing Orlesians,” he responded. “I’m King Maric!”
Neria stared at him dubiously, thinking he couldn’t be much older than she was, certainly not as grown up as the king. “No, you aren’t.”
“I can be if I want to.” He grew as he spoke, becoming a tall blond man in shiny silver armor with a pale sword that glowed blue.
Neria thought his face still looked more like a little boy than the profile she’d seen on coins, but it probably wasn’t polite to say so. “What do you want to do now, your kingship?”
“We have to kill all the Orlesians so I can avenge my mother and win my throne.”
Neria decided that sounded like more fun than walking through lots of different dream places, so the two of them spent the rest of the night pretending to be heroes and hitting straw soldiers dressed in fancy uniforms.
*
Neria went to play with Not-King-Maric in her dreams off and on after that. They had lots of great adventures, all of which included him dressed in shiny armor with a glowing sword, no matter who he said he was pretending to be. Neria had never dreamed about swords and battle before, and she enjoyed sharing Not-King-Maric’s games.
Then she met the wolf-girl.
Neria was used to most of the places in her dreams looking a lot the same: houses, open fields, sometimes woods. The treehouse in the top of a giant tree was something different, so she went to look at it. An elf girl with dirty, scraped knees was sitting in the treehouse, glaring down through the branches. Neria had never been in the top of a tree, so she sat down next to the other elf girl to enjoy the view.
“I’m going to be a wolf when I grow up,” the other girl announced after a few minutes, still staring downwards.
“I don’t think it works that way,” Neria said. “You have to grow up to be an elf, same as me.”
“I don’t want to be an elf.” The other girl turned to glare at Neria. “Elves live in dirty, smelly alienages where humans tell them what to do and hurt them for no reason. Wolves run in the forest, and if a human even looks mean at a wolf, the wolf can kill it. You can be a stupid elf if you want to, but I’m going to be a wolf.”
The wolf-girl was scarier than Not-King-Maric, even though she didn’t have a sword, so Neria didn’t visit her as often. But she liked the treehouse, being so far above everything, so she went there sometimes to sit with the wolf-girl and look down on tiny people below them.
*
After seeing the treehouse, Neria searched her dreams for other places that were interesting and different, places that weren’t like her waking life.
That was how she first found the tunnels.
The tunnels were big and empty, like giant stone hallways. They were hard to find because there weren’t very many of them. Neria liked them because she could walk and walk and never see the sky. It was a different way to look at the world, just as different as sitting in the top of a tree. Neria thought the best thing about dreams was seeing new places and dreaming about what it would be like to live there.
The tunnels, she discovered, would be a very noisy place to live. She followed the loud clanging noises until she found a dwarf girl standing in the middle of a big room full of metal things hitting one of them with a large hammer.
Neria covered her ears to block out the noise and walked closer, trying to figure out what the dwarf girl was doing. The metal things were bent into strange shapes and looked very complicated. The most complicated one was sitting on a big anvil so the dwarf girl could hit it. Every time the hammer hit it, it made a loud clanging noise and the metal thing became even more complicated.
The dwarf girl had very strong-looking arms with lots of scars and burns on them, but her face had no marks on it at all. Neria tried to talk to the girl, but the hammer noises were so loud that she couldn’t hear herself, even after she took her hands off her ears.
Neria stood in front of the anvil and waved her arms until the dwarf girl looked at her and stopped hammering. “What are you doing?” Neria asked once it was quiet enough to talk.
“I’m a smith,” the girl answered. “I’m making things.”
Neria looked at the complicated metal thing on the anvil and tried to guess what it might be good for. “What kind of things?”
“Important things that people need and appreciate.”
Neria liked that answer. She thought that was a very nice way of saying, “I don’t know.”
When Neria didn’t say anything else, the smith girl started hammering again, and the big stone room filled back up with loud clanging.
Neria stayed to watch for a little while, waiting to find out what the smith girl was making. She left when her head started to hurt from the noise, but she came back on other nights to watch the smith girl work on her important things.
*
The next time Neria found tunnels, they were darker and smaller but much less noisy. Instead of a smith banging on metal things, there was a dwarf boy with an axe in one hand and a shield in the other. His armor and weapon looked less shiny and more solid than Not-King-Maric’s. He was standing in the tunnel not fighting anything. Neria thought maybe he was waiting for something, so she waited too.
But nothing happened, and Neria got bored waiting. “What are you going to fight?” she asked, thinking that was more polite than asking if he was ever going to fight anything.
“Darkspawn,” the boy answered. “I’m going to kill a lot of them and reclaim the abandoned thaigs and our lost history. I’ll be a Paragon.”
Neria didn’t know what a thaig or a Paragon was, and she wasn’t sure how history got lost either. Killing lots of darkspawn sounded exciting, though, so she liked that part. Except that he wasn’t actually doing it yet.
“That sounds like it would take a long time,” Neria said. “Maybe you should start soon.” Neria was proud of herself. That was much nicer than saying she was bored.
Paragon nodded. “It’s time to begin my real training. You go stand over there.” He pointed to a spot further back in the tunnel.
“I can fight, too,” Neria insisted. She imagined the sword that Not-King-Maric had given her and showed it to Paragon. “See? I have a weapon.”
“You don’t have training. You can’t fight darkspawn unless you’ve learned how.”
Neria thought that was a stupid rule, but she was pretty sure that Paragon wasn’t going to fight anything until she did what he said. And she really wanted to see a darkspawn. So she unimagined the sword and stood where Paragon had pointed.
Paragon faced the other way down the tunnel, and an ugly thing ran out of the darkness at him. It had green skin and sharp teeth and waved a long knife. Neria was very excited as she watched Paragon fight the darkspawn. This was much more fun than swinging a sword at straw men!
It would have been even better if Paragon had let her fight, too.
Paragon hit the darkspawn in the face with his shield and cut its arm almost off with his axe. Its knife made loud screeching noises against Paragon’s armor, but it didn’t cut him. Neria clapped and cheered when the ugly thing fell over and Paragon hacked its head off. She made Paragon promise that she could come back later to see him kill more darkspawn and maybe even help.
Neria couldn’t think of anything more exciting than killing darkspawn of her very own someday.
*
Neria met the last of her dream-friends in a forest. It wasn’t strange to find dream forests, and Neria thought most of them were boring. But this forest was different.
It was very big. Neria walked for hours but never left the forest. It was very old. The trees were tall, even taller than the wolf-girl’s treehouse. It was very quiet. Neria could tell lots of things lived in the forest, but she didn’t see or hear them. Neria thought this forest was what other forests would dream about being when they grew up.
The forest had everything Neria thought a forest should have. Some places had ferns and mist and streams. Other places had sunlight and wildflowers. Then it had an elf, stepping from behind a tree. He was tall and almost a grown-up with a stern face and sharp eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked her. Neria was surprised. People in dreams usually let her ask the first question.
“I’m Neria. Is this your forest?”
“Forests don’t belong to people. It’s not my forest; I’m its guardian. I’m Theron.”
“It’s a very nice forest.” It was, and Neria thought Theron might be more friendly if she was nice to his forest. Even though he said it wasn’t his forest.
“It is,” Theron agreed.
Theron didn’t say anything else, and Neria wasn’t sure what else to talk to him about. So Neria stood quietly and looked at the forest and thought. She thought about the wolf-girl in her one tall tree, looking sad and lonely and wanting to be a wolf in a forest.
“I have a friend who would like your forest. Would you mind if I bring her to see it?”
“It’s not my forest,” Theron repeated. “But it welcomes anyone who respects it.”
Neria thought that was probably a yes, so she decided to bring the wolf-girl to visit Theron’s forest next time she saw her. Maybe being here would make her less sad and angry.
*
It wasn’t easy to talk the wolf-girl into going to Theron’s forest. She didn’t like to leave her tree house because she felt safe there. So Neria told her about every wonderful thing in the forest she could think of until the wolf-girl was so curious that she agreed to go see it for herself.
Neria had never tried taking someone with her from one dream place to another. But she decided it shouldn’t be any different than going by herself, so it wasn’t.
The forest was exactly the way Neria remembered it, and Theron found her sooner this time. Neria wondered if it was because two people were easier to notice than one or if he knew she was looking for him. She introduced the wolf-girl to Theron and asked him if they could explore his forest.
“It’s not my forest,” Theron said. “But I will gladly share what I know, and you are both welcome here.”
“It’s beautiful.”
Neria had never heard the wolf-girl sound anything but angry before, and she had never seen her look happy instead of scared and sad. Neria was glad she had brought her friend here to be happy, even if the wolf-girl was only part of a dream. Even dreams deserved to not be sad all of the time.
For the rest of that night, Neria followed along as Theron showed the wolf-girl every special thing about the forest he said didn’t belong to him.
When they were ready to leave, Neria imagined a very long string. She tied one end of it to a tree in Theron’s forest and the other end to a branch near the wolf-girl’s tree house so the wolf-girl could find her way to the forest without Neria’s help any time she wanted to.
*
After that, sometimes Neria found the wolf-girl at the tree house, and sometimes she was in the forest, with or without Theron. Either place, the wolf-girl seemed happier now, and that made Neria happy, too.
It also gave her an idea.
*
Not-King-Maric was very good at telling stories about things to fight. Orlesians and Qunari and Tevinter magisters. But he wasn’t very good at imagining them. No matter what he said he and Neria were fighting, they always looked like straw scarecrows dressed up in armor. Not-King-Maric was her first dream friend, and Neria liked having adventures with him. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she didn’t tell him that his games were getting boring. Even though they were.
“Did King Maric ever fight darkspawn?” Neria asked one night when Not-King-Maric was trying to decide what they should pretend next.
“Of course!” Not-King-Maric said. “That’s what the magic sword is for: killing darkspawn!” He waved his glowing blue sword around. “We could defeat darkspawn in the Deep Roads tonight if you want.”
“I could show you somewhere with really real darkspawn, and we could fight those instead of straw men dressed up like darkspawn.” Neria hoped that didn’t sound like a complaint.
Not-King-Maric didn’t answer, but he got very loud and started swinging his sword around even more. Neria decided that probably meant yes, so she took him to find Paragon’s tunnels.
*
It wasn’t easy to convince Paragon to let Not-King-Maric fight darkspawn with him. Paragon didn’t seem very impressed by shiny armor and a glowing sword. He said Not-King-Maric couldn’t know how to fight if he dressed like that. But eventually Neria persuaded Paragon to imagine a genlock as a test for Not-King-Maric.
Not-King-Maric’s eyes got very big when he saw his first real darkspawn, and his sword glowed even brighter blue. He fought the genlock the same way he did the straw men, and just like the straw men, the ugly creature flew apart in a puff of dust when Not-King-Maric’s sword hit it. Paragon seemed confused by that, but he agreed to let Not-King-Maric fight darkspawn with him.
So that night, Neria cheered and clapped as Paragon and Not-King-Maric killed lots and lots of darkspawn in the tunnels. It was even more exciting watching both of them fight together. The only thing that would be better would be getting to kill darkspawn herself. Maybe next time Paragon would let her join them.
*
After that, Neria gradually introduced the rest of her dream friends to each other, and most nights they all played together. They played tag running through Theron’s forest and pretended to be heroes in Not-King-Maric’s stories. Neria’s favorite nights were spent fighting darkspawn in Paragon’s tunnels. With all six of them together, the monsters didn’t seem scary at all.
Things weren’t always perfect. The wolf-girl snarled and snapped at Not-King-Maric, and the smith girl didn’t trust Paragon. But Neria could usually talk them into being nice for a few hours, and her dreams were much more fun when all of her friends could play together.
But eventually Neria grew up, and she forgot about her dream friends. Like any other imaginary friends, they were put aside with the other games and hopes of childhood.