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He had never wanted a body.
Content to be as he was: the question in an inquisitive mind; the fire kindled in the hearth; the lesson passed from mother to son, he had never dreamed of inhabiting one of the bodies that partook in his nature. He had known the world as a current of air, as the flow of a river, as the first spring shoot pushing through snow. He had known it, embodied it, been it.
And now he is this.
The pond he kneels before is compelled to stillness, the waves smoothing until the surface resembles a silver pool that reflects his image. It is not the one he remembers, not the image he imagines himself as in the quiet of night, when his eyes close and he finds dreams again. It is strange, pale, albeit less so than the last time he had looked at it. A constellation of spots have crowded across the bridge of his nose and over his cheeks, as though the stars he'd laid beneath had taken residence upon him. Beneath his eyes hang small shadows, and the hair that falls over his shoulders now shines with a burnished red quality he does not recall in those first heaving breaths of his existence.
When he had made himself, it had been at her request, and in her image. If he must be, let it be an echo of her noble bearing. In some respects, he has failed in that endeavour. Though he is possessed of her long face and high cheeks, her hair is dark, unpersuaded by the sun and her skin unblemished.
Yet he does not hate it as he ought to, he thinks, though he cannot place why that is.
He is a question, still. The realisation flutters in his chest, as though his old self still resides within, its tendrils the veins that sustain his shell.
He leans in closer.
There are no easy answers in what stares back.
He touches his face, his own fingers cool against his skin. He looks at his eyes: blue in the centre, white in the middle, pink in the corners and where he pulls back the skin to peer into himself. He looks at his nose: the prominent feature in the centre of his face, flaring at the base when he breathes in and out. He looks at his lips: full and frowning, not in anger, but a quality he will one day come to know as studious.
Disparate features, but he studies them as lines in a poem, hoping to weave together a cohesive whole.
Andruil has few hard and fast rules: strike true; bend but do not break; receive the gifts of the hunt gratefully. Rules that are, more or less, beyond reproach. Yet one more peculiar stipulation is the nature of her guests:
No man may set foot within her domain. Try, and risk being lost to the woods that surround them, or worse, be strung upon the same arrows that her traditional prey fall victim to.
What gave rise to the tradition is a matter of rumour throughout the empire, but whether it is the consequence of an impertinent guest or the huntress's particular tastes remains a mystery he gladly consigns to others for debate. He is here to ask and answer in regards to more pressing matters, with repercussions beyond the edge of the Tirashan.
Though some are less interested in the debate, and more invested in how it inconveniences them.
"It is an insult." Once Justice, now Arthas, stalks the dressing room as though some shadow will provide an explanation that will soothe his ruffled feathers. "I am as much Mythal's as you are."
Once Wisdom, now Daras, prickles at the phrasing, but does not allow it to distract from the stroke of kohl under his eyes. It does not dutifully follow the lines of his golden vallaslin, defiantly complimenting the angle of his gaze over the boughs upon his cheeks. "Among us, you are most like her other half." Her lesser half, he remarks only to himself.
"She would not deny Elgar'nan," Arthas rebuts.
That much cannot be argued with. Why the high evanuris operate under different laws and stipulations as the rest of the people is a question worth asking, though to ask grows increasingly dangerous.
"Few would," he says instead. "Now help me into my robes."
Arthas sighs, tearing from the corner of the room he had been brooding in to attend to the request. Daras had begun the process for him, wrapping the fabric around his middle and draping it around one shoulder. To achieve the full effect, however, two pairs of hands are needed.
"Why you insist it be one of us that dresses you…" he mutters.
"It was always intended to be a ritual between equals," Daras replies. Then, smirking, adds, "You ought to take it as a compliment."
The remark earns him no favour, but Arthas is faithful to any task he is set upon. The robes, spun in a dark fabric, catch the light as the waves catch stars, glimmering as he weaves them under Daras's arms. They represent the complicated act of creation, a symbolic nod to the fact that it had taken two pairs of hands to make the empire. Traditionally, he would be expected to help Arthas into his robes (black and orange, reminiscent of fire kindled on a moonless night) in turn.
Tonight, that would obviously not be necessary.
He had once feared that his body was not intended for these robes. It had been made as a weapon, without thought to fashion. Honing it into something he was satisfied with had been a journey unto itself, but he found, and finds again as Arthas winds a tie around his waist, that it does not lack for curves. The neckline weaves tight against his breast and the broad span of his shoulders, then falls straight over narrow hips. His thighs test the weave of the silk against muscles bred for battle, though at rest they are softer than the most delicate velvet.
A deception, perhaps. Or a hope.
But there is no lie in the face that stares back from the mirror's surface. Auburn hair falls in braids around him, complicated as his robes, and requiring just as many hands to fashion. They mark him as Wisdom, every strand charts the course of a year, containing memories he will use to compel the huntress to reason. His lips, his eyes, are painted, and beneath the setting of his makeup his freckles are dull. He is both the most himself he has ever been, and the least.
Behind him, he sees Arthas watching his reflection, and cannot help a question, "What do you think?"
"You are asking my opinion?" Arthas asks, a heavy furrow to his thick brow.
"It is your nature to judge."
He is rewarded with a scoff that turns his painted lips into a smile. When a begrudging answer is provided, it is lost to the indulgence of the vision he has made himself into. Unlike his murals, he changes with the hour, like a flower through the seasons: one day a bud, the next a blossom. With every stirring of his lashes from slumber, he remakes himself— a question with a thousand answers.
He is a question, still.
But outside the confines of an empire, everyone is.
They come to him as slaves: as cooks and maids, as soldiers and sacrifices. They come to him with names foreign to their mouths and more potential than the world can hope to hold.
They come to him with questions. Questions that pertain not to war or rebellion, but the very nature of their existence.
He does not answer as Wisdom.
"You wish to know who you are now?" Once Wisdom, now Pride asks.
His first instinct is to kick away the authority they lay at his feet, an instinct he curbs, instead handing it back. Their hands shiver as he folds them in his, the naked terror of freedom rattling them to their bones. "It is not mine to tell you," he says. "When we cast the the godsblood from your brow, it was not with the intent to write our own will in their stead."
It is not the answer they hoped for. Their lip trembles, eyes welling with hopeless tears.
"Then you've left me with nothing," they say, near to sobbing.
"No, not nothing," he replies gently. They are a stranger, but he has learned enough of people to recognise what they accuse him of is no simple task. Burn the memories from a person's skull; strip them of their spirit, their home, and still some essence will persist, a stubborn heart beating at the centre of their existence. He looks at the hands enveloped in his, like a bird with folded wings, examining them. They are finely calloused at the fingertips, and he names their experience without hesitation, "You play the harp."
They hesitate in answering, breath shallow with foul and fond memories, both behind them. "My lord would ask me, on occasion."
"He will not ask again." The rebellion had butchered many lords, in many palaces, but whatever their master's fate he is certain it was not kind. "But you may play again, should you wish to."
He pulls them to their feet, and they rise higher than his height, shaved head bared to the heavens. Chin tilted to look them in the eye, he tells them: "You have your harpist's fingers, you have your hands, and you may act with them— whether you inflict them upon the world or mould a more gentle future. So long as you hold breath in your lungs, no one can strip you to nothing. Not the evanuris, and certainly not I."
They are young, full of promise, and it falls to him to point the world towards a tomorrow where that promise may be fulfilled. Around them, the Lighthouse hums with satisfaction, its purpose having found new use in this age of revolution. Once it provided answers meant to satisfy the brighest minds the empire had to offer. Now the questions are intrinstic to their askers' nature, and it is glad to help guide them to their truth.
"The question you asked is a good one, but it is one only you can answer… though I would hope when the time comes you avail me of it. For the time being, the only answer I can give is who I am."
It is a journey writ in blood, his and others', a stumbling path that has led him to this place. They do not shirk from the answer, the same as they had not flinched when he took their hands. Though he suspects the name they expect and the name he gives are not the same. The anticipation of its sound brings a smile to the Dread Wolf's face as he says:
"Solas."
"Will it be much longer?"
"Asking won't make it happen any faster, Solas."
Gone are the days of silver mirrors and pools that still with a single, curious thought. Between the four of them there is but one hand mirror, a humble thing made of hammered and polished bronze. The Herald has manoeuvred it to sit upright while she hunches over it, plucking the stray hairs from around her chin. Thora Cadash's copper tweezers glint in the sunlight dawning over new Crestwood, wringing the rain from the ground and into the air.
"Besides," she adds, gesturing towards him with the tool, "what do you need this for? You have hair like a peach does."
Solas snorts, uncertain whether to take the remark as a compliment or insult. If Blackwall is any indication of her tastes, likely the latter.
"It is not the hair on my chin that concerns me," he remarks, leaning over her to crowd the reflection in the battered metal.
"Hey"— she laughs, elbowing him away— "just wait your turn."
He sighs at a volume he knows will be heard, lips suppressing a smile as he settles back against the ground. While he waits, he passes a questioning touch over the top of his head. There is minimal resistance, but not none. Hair prickles his palm, catching where it ought to slide smoothly, and the sensation irritates. It feels childish to be so troubled by what amounts to a few pinpricks, but there is so little he can control about the world, now; the precious few things that are within his power feel all the more important to maintain.
"There," Thora says, scooting back for his easy access. She smiles at him, teeth bright. "I'll even let you use my mirror stand."
The 'stand' in question is the spine of a book and her bag to provide a backing, but it is a kind gesture, even if he has to hunch even lower than she does to look at his own reflection. It is a face that wears its age more openly than when he had last looked at it closely, dark shadows cast under his eyes despite what Thora would call a full night's sleep. A man's face, according to this age.
It does not ask for his opinion in the matter.
He frowns at himself, feathering the texture of his hair, colour dark in its newness.
"It doesn't look bad," Thora offers.
"Neither do the hairs on your chin."
"If there were more of them I might agree with you." She rubs at the spot thoughtfully, dark skin tinged red where she'd plucked her face clean. "Unfortunately, I inherited my dad's patchy beard."
Seeing the logic, he decides against pressing the point, just as she doesn't remark further on his hair as he prepares his tools. He lathers the dome of his head with a bar of lye soap moulded to the shape of his palm, and retraces the path with a razor. It is difficult, being gentle with himself in this, but with each follicle relieved from his scalp his spirit feels lighter. The mirror bears no memory of the face that had occupied it before his own, but he wonders if Thora felt similarly when she was sat before it, making her face into the one he knows best.
Would she make that choice, he wonders, if she lived solely among her own people? Or is it the pressure of human society, the desire to be seen as the woman she is, that drives her? He had shaved his own head in pursuit of neutrality, only to be shoved into a binary box that suits their expectations. No longer permitted to be a flower that changes with the hour or seasons, but a man. Always a man, be it morning or evening, winter or spring.
"Does it bother you," he wonders, aloud this time, "that a company of humans would not see your beard as your people do?"
"There's a lot of things about me humans don't see like I do." She doesn't need to be specific for him to think of what she means. Thora's shoulders are square with her hips, her chest flat, her muscles broad, especially without her armour. She is not shapeless, however; her biceps alone possessed of curves that would make warriors twice her size blush.
Human culture, or what he has observed of it, possesses its own share of women warriors— the prophet Thora is meant to herald among them, and yet in depictions Andraste is as oft garbed in dresses as armour, as though the vestiges of the culture that came before her ascension cling stubbornly to the human concepts of masculine and feminine.
"I try not to let it determine what I look like. I've got enough of that from my own people," Thora adds. From the corner of his eye, he sees her shoulders shrug.
For some time, neither speak, the only sound is birdsong and the lapping of water against the shore, interrupted by the occasional scrape of a blade over his head. She adjusts herself before she raises her voice again, this time in question: "Does it bother you?"
Pausing to clean the soap off his razor, Solas considers.
Such direct questions are difficult to answer, given who he is— or rather, who she must believe him to be. It would be easy to admit to her that he has lived as a man, as a woman, as neither, as both, but more difficult to explain when, where, and how. He had not walked the streets of Haven in skirts, and appeared by every measure to her eyes a man, and yet he cannot bring himself to lie.
"It bothers me more that they presume to know me at all," he says. "Never mind assume whether I am a man or woman."
His answer confuses. He can tell even from this inconvenient angle. It isn't the first time he's baffled the Inquisitor, who before their meeting beneath the rifts had never seen a spirit in her life, never mind considered their worth. Since then, he trusts that she will listen.
"What would you want them to think of you as, then?" she asks.
Solas towels off his head, the pointed tips of his ears catching on the cloth. He leans in closer, inspecting his head for a stray patch of hair he had missed, but finds, instead, old questions. Eyes that are blue in the centre, white in the middle, pink in the corners; a nose that is still long and prominent; his lips turn a smile, with an expression he now knows as satisfaction.
There will always be days where he resents this body, how it limits him, defines him, but in this moment he cannot loathe what he has made of it. He thumbs the divot above his brow, a scar that had never healed, and answers:
"A question."