Shianni Tabris - Blog Posts

City Elf Appreciation Week

Day 5: Alienage

As the eldest Tabris cousin, it is Novhen's familial duty to show his younger cousin Shianni the ropes around Denerim, and in his rogueish mind, this obviously includes how to scam the city's human population. 2666 words.

and a thank you to @cityelfweek for putting all this together (and giving me the motivation to finish this fic) ^.^

✨Shianni ✨

A portrait voted by my patrons this month! The theme was non companion elves :D

you ever think about a tabris that does the ultimate sacrifice

how their family and fellow elves fighting so fiercely to defend their home (just as they did when they passed through only mere hours before) see the retreating darkspawn and cheer so loudly surely their elven savior could hear them all the way at the top of fort drakkon

how shianni soris and cyrion all break away from the celebrations and shouts go retrieve tabris because there's no possible way a shem party could even come close to the one they'll have in the alienage (they can bring their friends too if they want, they did help tabris after all)

how joy so quickly turns to despair when they see those doors slowly creak open at the bottom with an unmoving tabris held in the arms of another, perhaps a friend, or a lover, with unrestrained tears flowing down their face (maybe with one witch absent, long gone before this even took place)

how shianni and soris cannot begin to believe that the savior, their savior, their cousin, is no longer with them, they were so alive before, and now they are not (their hero is something they will make the shems remember, they are gone so they could live)

how this is now the last time their father has to hold a funeral for his child, and only this time does he have a body to weep over (it's not any better than the first one)

do you ever just think

Tabris

Day 2 - Folklore and History

A 100 word drabble for @cityelfweek :3 [divider credit]

A preacher's visit was always frustrating.

"What about us?" one of the kids whined.

"What do you mean?" Kallian whispered.

"What about us!"

"You and me? Girls? Elves?"

She fiercely nodded at the last word and Kallian smiled.

"I'll tell you later."

Afterwards, Kallian, Soris, and Shianni slipped under a boardwalk and waited for their audience.

They grabbed whatever props they could – loose string and pigeon feathers – and spoke of Aderyn, a city elf who weaved and stitched the birds and the sky to remind them that they could do more.

They never needed to know it was made up.

Hahren Shianni Tabris of the Denerim Alienage

In Confidence

( Arianwen Tabris/Zevran Arainai | 2,392 Words | AO3 Link | CW: Fantasy racism, past parent death, emotional hurt/comfort)

“Where are you taking me?” Zevran asked, keeping pace with his Warden as they scaled the side of a building in the alienage. It was not a difficult task, though the state of the scaffolding they were climbing did give him pause. 

“You’ll see,” she told him, grunting slightly when she caught the board over her head and pulled herself up. 

Only fifteen feet separated them from the top—or so he hoped. Meeting her family had been trial enough on its own. He had not anticipated this sort of exertion afterward or he would have eaten far less at her father’s table. 

“Almost there,” she added, and there was the faintest note of an apology tucked beneath her usual impassive tone. If he had not known her so well, Zevran might not have heard it at all. 

“I am in no particular hurry,” he told her, and she stopped climbing to cast him a skeptical look. 

“Well,” Zevran amended, glancing below. “I must admit this is not how I thought we would be spending our evening.” 

Below, the vhenadahl swayed in the evening air off the Drakon River. People stood in clusters, their voices ringing off the stone, and food peddlers had staked out rival ends of the courtyard. It surprised him even now to see the condition of the alienage; he supposed that it explained something of his Arianwen that she had grown up in such a place. And yet—these people had built something here, among the ruins. He could see the bright hair of Tabris’s cousin bob through the crowd, pausing near one cluster of people and speaking for a time. They opened to her reluctantly, but even from this distance Zevran could see some of them begin to nod. Perhaps they would yet rebuild their community, even after what the slavers had done to them. 

“Are you coming?” Arianwen called down, and he realized that she’d made her way to the top while he’d looked below. Zevran climbed instead of answering, and reached for her hand at the top when she offered it. 

“We used to play here,” she told him, bracing to pull him over the edge and onto a wooden platform. “Shianni and I. Before and after it burned. It was our secret place, just the two of us. Poor Soris was never one for heights. He’d wait until he heard us climb down and then we’d all wander together. When his parents still lived, he’d grown up in the building next door. I used to hear his mother singing while she made dinner, back when I used to wander the streets looking for strays.”

“Ah—I see,” Zevran said, glancing around. 

The two of them stood in the burned shell of a house three stories from the ground. He had thought that they’d reached a platform at the top of the scaffolding, but he saw now that he’d been wrong. They stood on all that was left of a wooden floor, the edges blackened and crumbled away. Arianwen stood to the empty doorway, patting the wall beside it fondly. There was little else to see here—only the remnants of a bed, piles of fabric in the corners of the room that might once have been blankets or clothing, holes in the floor where the structure below had given way. He did not struggle to imagine two young girls finding this place out of curiosity, for he had done much the same when he’d been a boy. 

“Ready?” she asked while he was still considering this. She vanished through the darkness of the doorway before he could answer, so Zevran had little choice but to follow her into the hallway beyond. 

“How did this place burn?” Zevran asked, ducking a fallen beam and testing the floor before he went on down the hall. 

“Humans,” Wen said, and her face was shadowed when she glanced back at him. “It burned the night Soris’s parents died.”

There was a heavy silence then. She stopped long enough for him to catch up and caught his hand in hers. This was still new—Arianwen reaching for him, for comfort. Zevran did not know quite what to make of it yet. 

“She tried to escape the building after they set it aflame. One of them kicked her back inside. The man who—oh, nevermind. You don’t need the details,” she took a sharp breath, her hand squeezing Zevran’s, and went on down the dark hall. “A few days later, my ma was gone all night long. They found his body washed up on the river, cut to ribbons and bloodless. I didn’t realize until far later what that meant.”

“She was a fighter, your mother?” Zevran asked, for it seemed the safer topic of conversation. Tabris dropped his hand to climb under more debris. 

“She taught me everything I know,” she sighed, “I tried to forget it after she died. My body remembered for me. I’m grateful to it. But—here. Look.” 

They’d found the end of the hallway at last. Arianwen pushed the door open and revealed—

A closet. 

Zevran looked at her, brows arched high in question. To his surprise, she laughed. That was new, too—hearing her laugh when they weren’t in the heat of battle. It was a tired laugh, but that mattered very little in the run of things. 

“Watch,” she said, and turned the coat hook on the back wall. The wall fell away at the pressure of her hand, swinging open into the room beyond. 

“However did you find this?” Zevran asked, stepping into the room behind her. This room was lit by the lone window on the far wall, through which moonlight poured. In the cool light, he could see her clearly enough to read her face. Wistful—yes. She seemed wistful. 

“You know—I don’t remember,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know which one of us opened the door, or even when it happened. I only remember it being our place, Shianni’s and mine. Here.”

She lit a candle and held it up to the wall. Messy colors snaked up the crumbling plaster, handprints followed by rough drawings and holes in a familiar shape. 

“Throwing knives?” he asked, making his way to her side. Arianwen nodded silently, her lips parting and pressing tightly together again. 

Zevran knew that look. She was fighting some battle with herself, weighing what she ought to say to him. They would both be better served if he gave her space. 

“May I…?” he asked, gesturing to the room at large. Tabris nodded again, stepping closer to the marks on the wall, and Zevran slipped away. 

The corners held stacks of books here and there, all adventures set in distant lands or histories of Ferelden. He found only two that he supposed must have belonged to his Warden: a book about animal physiology and one about the care and keeping of various household pets. Zevran smiled at the sight of them, leaving a streak in the dust covering each volume, and moved on. 

Most of the wooden walls bore the marks of her blades. Many of the marks had been thrown wide from their fingerpainted targets. He could follow the progress of her skill by those holes, could trace the time spent in this room by the neatness of the circles they fell within. 

When he had met the Wardens on the road all those months ago, he had met a blade of a woman. She was hard and quick and sharp, flashing through the crowd of Crows like light through a fast-running river. There had been nothing of fear or weakness in her. She had seemed—impervious, somehow. As if nothing in the world could touch her, as if she had sprung into existence precisely as he saw her in that moment. 

Zevran knew better now, of course. He had seen her at her most vulnerable in the mornings when she slept, had watched her uncertainty upon seeing her father again. Two days ago, she had wept over Zevran’s body when she’d thought him dead by Taliesen’s hand. Today, standing in the dusty remnants of her childhood, he knew her better than he might have thought possible even a month ago.

Even so—it was surprising and endearing, somehow, to know that she had not leapt from her mother with blades in hand. Once, many years ago, she had learned her craft just as he had. Maker’s teeth, but sometimes Zevran wished they had known each other then, before the softness had been carved from them both. Who had she been? Who might he have been, in that other life that neither of them would ever live? 

“Here—this is what I actually meant to show you,” Arianwen said. 

Zevran blinked and found her beside him, though he had not heard her approach. She slipped her hand into his, lacing their fingers together, and pulled him with her to another door. When she opened it to the night beyond, cool air brushed over his cheeks. They had only been in the room for ten or fifteen minutes, hardly long enough to notice how still the air was. Even so, it was a relief to step into a fresher breeze.

“You can sit,” she told him, but leaned forward against a flimsy railing. 

They’d stepped out onto a narrow balcony of sorts. A broken pulley hung from the wall to their left and an alleyway stretched into the darkness of the alienage beneath them. It was wide enough for two chairs and little else, though the gleam of glass bottles beneath them suggested what this space had been used for most recently. 

“This was—” she sighed, and one fist thudded lightly against the wood of the railing. “I was last here on the night before my…before the wedding.”

Arianwen leaned forward until her shoulders hunched.  Her hands were joined into one fist, knuckles pale against the brown of her skin. Zevran breathed sweet night air and watched her. It was still difficult—to wait, to allow her to unspool whatever she’d been fighting. It would be easier to make some joke. Already, one stood waiting on his tongue. But—no. 

No, he found he rather wanted to know what she’d brought him here to say.

“Shianni was too drunk to climb down. I was too scared to try on my own. We dozed off here and dragged ourselves back home at dawn. I remember thinking that it would be the last time I ever came up here. I knew…I knew I would never want to share this place with a stranger. How could I?” 

Zevran nudged one of the chairs aside, wincing when he heard the bottles beneath tipping against each other. He found a spot beside her at the rail and rested his arms against it. Arianwen did not look at him.

“The night my mother died, I was here. I came home late because I’d argued with my father and I knew he would worry if I was out for too long. I was…punishing him. By the time I came back, she was already gone.”

A breeze brushed small, loose hairs over her forehead. Tabris reached up and pushed them back, frowning slightly. Zevran edged closer and leaned his shoulder against hers. After a moment, she bent to lean her head against his shoulder. 

“I don’t blame myself. It wasn’t my fault. This isn’t about that. This is—ugh.”

Zevran wrapped an arm around her waist, thinking hard, but there was little he could say. He had come to trust her slowly, had given himself over one careful piece at a time before he’d realized that he was doing so. It did not often pain him to tell her the hard things now. For her part, Arianwen had opened her arms to him readily enough once she’d begun to care, but it had taken longer to offer pieces of her heart to him in turn. Even now, he could feel her cutting them free for his perusal. 

“There is nothing that you must tell me. Yes?” he said, resting his shoulder against hers. “It can wait. A different night, some other place.” 

“No,” she said sharply. “I want to say—I’m glad you’re here. You should be here. I love this place and I hate this place and I miss it all the time. It was my secret, but now it’s yours, too. And that’s all.” 

Her eyes flicked up and away again, focusing on the dark alley below. 

“I’m glad you’re here, Zev,” she repeated quietly. “That’s all.” 

What could he say to this? Wen could be harsh and difficult and wore the intensity of her feelings like armor. Even so—she had brought him to this, the most vulnerable of places, the tenderest of wounds. She had brought him here and no other. 

Zevran swallowed around the thickness in his throat and nudged her hip with his. She looked up at him, the moonlight snared in her eyes, and what could he say? 

“Do you suppose any of these bottles still have wine in them? Some wine, a fine whiskey, perhaps?” 

Arianwen snorted, shoulders loosening slightly. 

“None that I’d chance drinking,” she said, but tugged a slim, dented flask from her pocket. “Here—I’ll share. But only because you asked.”

“You have my most sincere thanks, dearest Warden,” Zevran told her, voice smooth and dripping with charm. She snorted again, tapping his chest with the flask, and he took it. It was warm, held tight against her side all this time. He treasured the feeling of it as he unscrewed the cap. 

When they walked back to Eamon’s estate later, all but alone on the street, he sought better words. It was easier when she wasn’t watching him. It was easier when they were away from the place that had hurt and raised her. 

“I am glad I am here, too, mi vida,” he told her, watching the ragged road ahead. “Thank you.” 

Her hand slipped into his, palm warm and rough. Zevran wondered if she knew that the words were meant for more than just tonight. He wondered if she understood how far back the sentiment could stretch, that he was grateful for more than a secret shared and glad for his continued existence in a broader sense than glad could encompass. 

“Thank you,” she echoed quietly, and held on tight.

(For Zevwarden Week Day 2: Secrets, Kept and Told. Thanks @zevraholics for organizing this!)

writing prompt: A plaque denoting the Hero of Ferelden’s birthplace

Happy Friday! for @dadrunkwriting

Anora wouldn’t shut up.  Wouldn't stop blathering on about Alistair this, Alistair that, like she hadn't been ready to throw him to the wolves just weeks ago.

Tabris sat straight-backed in her chair, dry-eyed and stone-faced.  These shem wouldn't see her cry.

When she finally wound down, the grand cleric nodded at two servants.  Elves, Ris noted bitterly.

"We send you to the Maker's side."  At her words, the pyre was lit.  They had to treat bodies with something to make them so . . .combustible.  Alistair's body caught instantly, and the smoke stung her eyes.

The rest of the mourners started filing out of the courtyard, but she stayed put, hoping the attendants would leave too, just so she could have a moment alone with him once more.

"Warden Tabris."  The queen was approaching.

She didn't move to stand.  Didn’t even flick an ear.  

Anora smiled thinly.  "I know you and my husband's brother were . . .close."

Fuck you.  Ris just nodded.  She might have power now, but it wouldn't last, even if she had put this bitch on the throne.  "And?"

"Is there anything he'd want?"

To be alive.  She shook her head.  "Nothing you can give."  It wasn't a politically savvy answer and she didn't care.

Anora sniffed delicately.  "I know what it's like to -"

"Go away, your majesty."  She pointedly turned back to the pyre.  Alistair was already ash and she'd never been able to say goodbye.

She didn't go away, but she did finally stop talking.  Ris ignored her as she watched the ash blow away.  Her eyes burned with tears, but she wouldn't cry.  Not in front of her of all people.

Only when the fire died down and the last few attendants started to sweep up what was left of him did she stand, still not acknowledging Anora.  The bitch followed her as she walked out.  "Warden, would you walk with me?"

She bit back the Do I have a choice? and just nodded again.

Ris followed her through the winding corridors of the palace.  Anora collected a few more guards as they continued out the front gates.  They headed toward the alienage.  Years of practice kept her face neutral, but nothing about this felt right.  What is she playing at?

The vhenadahl looked the same: sickly, but trying.  Just like the alienage itself.  Shianni was talking with Alarith nearby, and headed toward her as they approached.

"Your majesty," she said, nodding respectfully, before falling in next to Ris.  "I told them not to," she muttered, so softly only an elf could hear it.

Before Ris could ask what Shianni meant, Anora clapped her hands.  There was a sudden cacophony of trumpets, and only Shianni's hand on her elbow stopped Ris from drawing her blades and falling into a defensive crouch.

"We've gathered here to honor one of our own: an elf from Denerim, who saved us all!  The greatest elf since Garahel"  Anora'a voice was resplendent and insincere.  A politician's voice.  "She saved us from certain doom, stopped the Blight in barely a year!  How should we thank her?"

Leave me alone, Ris wanted to scream.  Wanted to, but didn't.  Not when confronted by all that fucking hope on the faces of the gathered onlookers.  This was what heroes did, she supposed.  Fought and died by inches, giving others a chance to keep going.  She didn't even recoil when Anora grabbed her hand and hoisted it to the sky.  "Behold, our Hero of Fereldan!"

The crowd cheered.

She held her tongue and smiled.  Anora nodded at her, like she could see through it, like she knew Ris was fantasizing about cutting her throat.  "We'll build you a statue later, but this is all we can do for the moment."  She let go of Ris' hand and pointed at the vhenadahl.

Ris followed her gesture with her eyes, despair turning into horror.

It was a gold plaque.  Nailed to the tree.

Birthplace of Kallian Tabris, Hero of Ferelden, 9:10.

They'd poisoned the only thing that mattered in the alienage to honor her.  Her gaze swung to Shianni, begging her mutely to tell her this wasn’t happening.  Her cousin only shrugged, then low under her breath, mumbled, "Fucking shem."

Fucking shem indeed.  To the void with appearances.  Ris fled.

WIP Wednesday

Thanks for the tag, @daggerbean! c:

I haven't had much time to write this week (given the circumstances), but luckily I have a handy pile of WIPs in various states of completion. This one covers the wedding scene at the beginning of Origins, the return to the alienage, and the Landsmeet, but it's a bit patchwork at the moment. This scene is set just after finding Shianni later in the game.

Sorry if I tagged you on the other blog already this week haha, my brain is goop. Tagging (no pressure): @demandthedoodles @dungeons-and-dragon-age @greypetrel @ndostairlyrium @vakarians-babe @star--nymph @zenstrike

CW: Panic attack, indirect references to the events of the Tabris origin

“The things that happened after your wedding,” Shianni said, her voice tight, “it was horrible.” Already, being back in the alienage was doing something to her. Wen was not the same girl who’d walked away from here. She could not duck her head and hope for the best as she had for the last ten years. She…also could not hate these people as she had when she’d left. Plenty of them were awful—had been awful to her family for as long as she could remember—but she could see the pained exhaustion in their faces now, too. They were all trapped here together and none of them could do a blighted thing about it. The closest they’d ever come to feeling powerful was kicking at her family when they could.  Arianwen didn’t want them all to die.  But this was—oh, this hurt her. Shianni’s eyes flicked to the left a second before Zevran spoke.  “A wedding?” he sounded like his old, amused self—which, she supposed, meant that he was very hurt. Curse it all. Curse this place and everything that'd happened here. “So there is a secretive side to you after all.”

Little insects crawled around inside of Arianwen’s skin. They carried with them the stench of the alcohol on Vaughan’s breath, the sharp scent of the hair oil Wen had been wearing that day, the heaviness of the dress on her body, the ringing in her ears when she’d woken in the arl of Denerim’s residence. Secretive—yes, she’d been carrying many tiny secrets inside of her. She’d thought she’d gotten rid of them, pawned and forgotten like the golden ring in Ostagar.  Zevran was waiting; she did not want him to wait. Wen looked over her shoulder at him and forced herself to meet his eyes.  “I was…betrothed,” she said, and his face didn’t change one whit. She’d have to explain herself later, when she wasn’t…when they weren’t… “It didn’t end well.” Shianni looked at her, but Wen couldn’t read her expression. It was too loud in her ears to make anything out, though she’d once known her cousin’s face better than her own. Everything around her seemed blurred, somehow, oil paint smeared by a careless finger. Zevran and his bright eyes and his kidskin voice were her present; this place, crooked and dark and foul-smelling, was her past. She didn’t like them meeting. If she’d been thinking, she would have left him at home and dragged Leliana and her pity along instead.  “No?” Zevran’s brows were arched, his mouth crooked with something that might be described as a smile. She wished she didn’t know him so well; she wished she couldn’t see the wound underneath the golden veneer.  Wen wanted to crawl out of her own body. No—she wanted Morrigan’s trick of shedding her own skin and taking another instead. She’d be a cat up the vhenadahl by now if she could, or a mouse lost to the roots.  “You left him at the altar, didn’t you?” Yes.  Yes, she had, in a way. She hadn’t been there for that, though. She’d been neither here nor there, really. She looked at Zevran, her lips parting and pursing again, and his smile faded to a sliver. Beside her, carefully, Shianni’s hand crept into hers. They’d stood like this a hundred times: in the market, when the other people would jostle them as they carried their purchases home; down the street to the gates when Shianni would leave for work; beside the pyre when Mother had been burned. Wen squeezed and Shianni squeezed back, her hands rough and cold but nonetheless comforting in their familiarity.  Tabris couldn’t read Zevran’s face, either. He wasn’t smiling. His eyes looked—she didn’t know. Would it be horrible if she was sick right now?  Yes. She should say something instead. Wen worked her jaw loose from its rictus and spoke.   “He died,” she said. 

Don't leave me alone. Please...please take me home... — Okay, Shianni. Okay. Let's go home.