You Can't Save the Spider *and* the Butterfly

spicyshimmy:

The first draft. The raw material. The baby in his mother’s arms, carried like seasickness across the wide waters from the Free Marches to Ferelden. The thing is, nothing ever begins as a spark. It’s always a bonfire or a firestorm at the start, then dwindles down to nothing more than a single, pure flame.

‘Suck on a fireball,’ Anders always said, and it was something Varric could relate to. The spell he lobbed into the playing field: Hawke, like a column of light in a dark city. An explosion dressed in a champion suit.

‘I know you love me, Varric,’ Hawke told him once. ‘Why, you practically gave birth to me, didn’t you?’ 

Somewhere in the deep roads. Running from the darkspawn. Setting the world on fire. The first draft; the raw material. What every dwarf saw in the stone—the shape was always there. And then, finally, taking form, funnier than he was handsome, more bearded than his loyal dwarf. ‘Yeah,’ Varric agreed. ‘You know, sometimes, I wonder if I created a monster.’

‘Don’t tease me,’ Hawke replied. ‘You know how I’ve always wanted to be a dragon.’ 

(via stormdragon)