hansaera:

Abelas and Athera Lavellan for @pikapeppa! Thank you so much for commissioning me! ❤

The inimitable @hansaera did this GORGEOUS art for my tragic baes to accompany a scene from The One Who Will Live On – I’m so thrilled with this image, I can’t even express! 

The scene that inspired this beautiful art is below… ^_^

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The voices of the Vir’Abelasan were particularly loud that night, and she’d been having trouble blocking them out. Her wayward hair roiled around her shoulders like a nest of snakes, and the susurrus of incomprehensible Elvhen voices was increasingly difficult to ignore.

She’d turned to Abelas in desperation. “Do you know a spell or anything to control this?” she pleaded. “I might cut my damn hair off if it doesn’t stop. I think I’d make a more charming egghead than Solas.” The joke was weak, but the sentiment was genuine; she could barely hear herself think through the increasingly vocal whispers.

Abelas had frowned at her for a long moment, and Athera initially thought he was going to refuse. Then he reached out and stroked his fingers through her hair.

A sudden shock rippled from her scalp clear down to her toes, and her breath abruptly stalled in her chest. Abelas slowly wound the length of her hair around his fist, then leaned in close.

Athera’s eyes fluttered shut as his whisper ghosted across her ear. “Mar’an melana enan ame dinem, lethalla’an. Amen atisha. Ma’an din silaimast.”

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. She had no idea what he’d said, and the fickle whispers didn’t deign to clarify, but the foreign cadence of his voice sent a cascade of goosebumps down her arms. It took a long, mind-numbing moment before Athera realized that the voices in her head had gone quiet.

She finally inhaled and opened her heavy eyelids, only to meet the Sentinel’s unflinching stare. His golden eyes glowed like the wisps he’d so aptly described, and though his brow was creased in a frown, the expression didn’t carry his usual faint disapproval. There was something different about his face that night, something softer yet somehow more piercing, and she couldn’t decide if she wanted to look away from the intensity of his gaze, or never look away again.

For the space of a few long, paralyzing heartbeats, Athera couldn’t breathe. Then Abelas slowly unwound his fingers from her hair. When he finally released the wavy mass, it fell to the middle of her back like the inert entity that it was.

Read The One Who Will Live On on AO3.