Tesserae

by OpalApparition

Summary:

tes·ser·ae
/ˈtesəˌrē/
(noun, plural)
Small blocks of stone, glass, ceramic, or other materials used in the construction of a larger mosaic.

A collection of drabbles each of only one hundred words; tesserae arranged by theme into the patchwork of what members of the Inquisition were, are, and might yet be.

Chapter 1: Magic (Solas)

The carved halla horn rested against his chest beneath his tunic. Her magic—antediluvian, crude—clung to point rather than permeated within.

She pressed it into his palm after bearing Haven's fall, after being found, beneath canvas tent and Chantry song neither knew the words to sing. Her fingers were glacial, graceless, trembling… pressing the charm into his own. 

“For protection,” she said, like her fumbling hedge-spell, the magic of wayward Dalish mediocrity, could shield a god.

He should’ve repudiated it. 

Instead, the leather cord wore mark into his neck from wear, tine hanging over his sternum, piercing his heart.

 

Chapter 2: Freedom (Lavellan)

The spell abraded cold against her cheekbones. Ellana watched Solas’s face through the effervescence of his magic as he worked: the furrow between his brows, the way his lips parted to exhale. His fingers traversed the blood-marks with such tenderness she could weep. Her eyes shut.

Solas unmade each spurious stain. Years of devotion, of genuflection before absent gods, effacing away beneath his touch. This freedom from slave branding, this nascent flesh, was his gift. Proof of his ardor.

“Ar lasa mala revas. You are free.”

Ellana opened her eyes, ready to thank him, to kiss him. But his face—

Chapter 3: Pride (Solas)

Notes:

I am still taking a break from my writing, but little bite-sized nibbles like this are always fun and I have just enough motivation for one!

Solas's fingers traced the effigy, sliding over a cracked stone wolf with souls snapped up gleefully in its grisly jaws. Dalish who venerated what they feared, prostrating themselves before mythos, carved this while cursing his name.

An offering carved in appeasement brought more shame than it did pride.

They had caught the truth, though not the whole of it. He paraded ruin as if it were triumph, yes, but ruin born of exigency, not of malevolent caprice.

Ellana's breath warmed his shoulder. “Do you think Fen’Harel was truly so terrible?”

Torchlight caught her face, and he turned away.

“Perhaps worse.”

Chapter 4: Yearning (Cassandra)

Notes:

I've decided to do more than just Solavellan prompts and branch out with the rest of the Inquisition characters through my own lens - starting with Cassandra!

Cassandra traced the book's cover where the title had rubbed off from countless readings. Inside, lovers defied kingdoms for stolen moments to be soft while Thedas remained impassively hard . Her fingers found the ribbon bookmark… always at chapter seven, where the knight confessed his love beneath starlight.

Herald’s Rest echoed with laughter from the tavern bar below. Soldiers celebrating, finding warmth in wine and willing arms. She pressed the book to her chest, feeling her heartbeat against its spine.

Tomorrow brought duty, righteousness, the Maker's work. Tonight she allowed this indulgence: yearning for strong hands that were soft for her.

Chapter 5: Past, Present, & Future (Cullen)

Summary:

A Drabble for Day 1 of Rutherfest 2025

Kinloch Hold and the abominations within still burned behind Cullen’s eyelids when they closed. Stone walls. Screaming. The rancorous taste of betrayal coating his tongue like ash. Desire’s kiss. His past remained immutable, written in suffering and zealous faith, perverting soul and self. 

The present offered little comfort: Corypheus gathering his forces, spreading his red-Lyrium pestilence across Thedas.

But her words—the Inquisitor's words—conjured something else: a spectre shaped like a future worth fighting for. In it, there was children's laughter, wheat bending beneath summer wind, and peace, fragile and precious as his hope it would come to pass.

Notes:

If you liked this one, please keep your eyes peeled for my Oneshot for Day 2 of Rutherfest—Hoarfrost—which will be posted Saturday! Thank you for reading.

Chapter 6: Eclipse (Cole)

Cole’s fingers traced the merchant’s pocket, nimble as smoke. The man’s avarice blazed tangibly. Gold coins clicking, their weight a luminous greed Cole could taste, but beneath that acquisitive hunger lay something else: tremulous love for a daughter who wouldn’t speak to him. The merchant’s largesse meant nothing if she remained obdurate.

Cole withdrew his hand. The coins stayed where they belonged.

“She misses you,” he murmured as the man passed. “Your absence is the shadow that obscures her light, but she burns still. Write to her.”

The merchant turned, bewildered, but Cole had already melted back into the crowd.

 

Chapter 7: Potato (The Iron Bull)

Bull bit into the steaming baked potato, butter pooling in his palm and dripping between thick fingers. Steam rose from the split skin as he squeezed, exposing the pale flesh beneath.

“Now this,” he said, his eye fixed on Krem’s reddening face, “is how you handle something properly. Firm grip, bit of heat, and you work it until it gets wet for you.”

He took another bite, deliberately salacious.

“…‘course, potatoes don’t make any pretty sounds when you’re doing it right.” Bull’s grin turned wicked. “But the principle’s the same: patience, pressure, and knowing exactly where to put your mouth.”

Notes:

You can blame (thank) CrittaDownUnder for this prompt.

Chapter 8: Fangs & Flora (Dorian)

Summary:

A Drabble for Dorian Week 2025 🐍

Most botanists approached demon weed, Felandaris, with all the trepidation of virgins at a brothel. Dorian, however, plucked sprigs like he might caress a lover, even as the thorns pricked through his gloves like fangs.

“Yes, yes, do bite, darling,” he murmured, twirling a stem. “I enjoy a little danger.”

Where others saw poison, he saw kinship. Venomous, feared, and undeniably useful, Felandaris spines (when distilled properly) could produce a mist to heal the dying or disappointing in battle. It was a plant hardly different from himself: a maligned beauty with a reputation as sharp as fangs… function inconveniently essential.

Notes:

For more on Felandaris.

If you liked this one and are craving more of everyone’s favorite mage, please consider checking out…

Dorian Week Day 1 Prompt: Confessions & Understandings
Filled with the oneshot Casual, Allegedly, in which…
Summary:

Dorian's foolproof plan for casual sex hits a snag: feelings. Disgusting.

And for Day 4’s Prompt Moments of Respite, there is ”Two Bottle Reprieve”, a platonic Dorian/Lavellan oneshot that will hopefully make you laugh!

Summary:

Between diplomatic disasters and world-ending threats, Dorian and Ellana find respite in stolen evenings of wine and wildly inappropriate gossip.

Chapter 9: Lyric (Lavellan)

Ellana’s knife found its rhythm in dicing roots in even squares. These motions belonged to her hands before her mind; muscle memory from a hundred clan meals for her people.

But these weren’t her people.

The song was different now, and tricky. Cassandra’s portions needed to be large, Bull’s enormous. Sera picked around anything green. Solas ate whatever was placed before him without complaint. 

The stew bubbled, amalgamating scents that never would have mingled in her Keeper’s pot. Steam rose between Ellana’s fingers as she stirred, learning cadence and lyric for this discordant family she was teaching herself to nourish.

Notes:

You can thank Mabela for this prompt.

Chapter 10: Eyes In The Night (Solas)

Summary:

A drabble for Solavellan Week 2025, Day 6

Solas watched her sleep from the penumbra of her doorway, vigilant as any sentinel. Moonlight caught the curve of her shoulder, the gossamer strands of hair across her cheek. His hands stayed still despite the ache to trace the contours of her now-freed face.

She stirred, murmuring his name in dreams he could never enter without transgressing what little honor remained to him. His ardor was too pernicious to indulge even in shadow, even when she called for him.

A hush, a spell—an apology, perhaps—and her breathing deepened, placid as still water.

Dawn drove him back to shadowed exile.

Chapter 11: I Always Come Back to You (Lavellan)

Summary:

A drabble for Solavellan Week 2025, Day 6

Ellana returned to his rotunda again. Barren walls stared back at her, stripped of every fresco he had painted. Two years since the Exalted Council, and still she was drawn here.

Her prosthetic fingers found flecks of blue paint caught in stone cracks. Before, no one realized that each brushstroke revealed his true self. She remembered how his eyes would soften when he painted, how his voice would vacillate from teacher, lover, then dreamer.

And now… traitor. Trickster. Unmaker of a world, should he succeed.

But saved, if Ellana herself succeeded.

“Var lath vir suledin,” she promised to ether.

Chapter 12: Kiss (Josephine)

Josephine pressed her lips to crimson wax, breath warming the seal before it hardened to shine. Each letter bore this benediction; a kiss dispatched across leagues to reach her mother’s hands in distant Antiva.

This missive contained concerns of the highest order:

Tell me, how is Father’s health? Do the cats still sun themselves in my bedroom each morning? I miss you all terribly.

All the momentous Inquisition affairs paled beside these quotidian details, like the yearning for family arguments over dinner, jasmine perfuming their courtyard at dusk, and the resplendence of simply sitting together and doing nothing at all.

Notes:

Thank you Elynnism, for the prompt!

Notes:

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