Cremisius "Krem" Aclassi

Things settled more easily this time, for Krem, which was not to say that things settled easily at all. Merely that he had harsher comparisons to make. The first October in Darrow had been so dismal, so absolutely bleak, and he had come out of that--everything else, by comparison, seemed as easy as breathing.

But he felt haunted. The eyes of ghosts were on him, the memory of death, in ways it had not been in years. Staring into the eyes of his other self--not a spectre, not some mirror version of who he might have been with different choices, but simply him--lingered with him. He still wasn't sure which of them was the ghost in this case. It felt more confirmation than every that he was a member of the undead.

It was passed. The tide goes in, the tide goes out, and all that sort of thing. Krem was incensed with this place, a roil of things constantly. Not because of what it did to him, but what it did to others. All the suffering of that night, of the weeks that preceded it. He could live with suffering himself, but fuck Darrow for subjecting the rest of them to it.

Now, the cold of autumn felt like a relief. The trees on the farm where going golden, red, losing leaves in droves. Krem sat on the porch, sketching out plans for a green house to overwinter some of the things that were still in the ground or had just gone in. Other things would come into the house. He could be haunted, he could be a ghost, and still move forward. He was better at that now than he had been three years ago when he had been covered in ash at the end of it all.

The sun was up, still low and bright on the horizon, and it was still the cool crisp of spring morning. Later in the day, the tender heat of late spring would turn into humidity, something a little bit more like home. Krem had been in Darrow for nearly three years now--it would be three years in just a couple more months. Since he'd left Tevinter, he'd never settled anywhere for quite so long. The Chargers weren't a settling group--you couldn't be as a mercenary--and his time with the Inquisition hadn't been quite so long. But in Darrow? In Darrow, here he was, standing on this porch of a home he owned, that had his name and two others, though only one remained, sadly. In Darrow, he had friends and family, a business that was his and was lucrative. Things were settled here, in ways he never would have known in Tevinter.

Krem stood on the porch, content, watching the sun coming up with a steadiness over the horizon and lighting this property that held his family and their animals. He held his coffee and breathed in the world around him. He'd been terrified for so long about what this would feel like, about feel trapped. Instead, it felt like freedom and breathing. His heart was content, for the moment. And all the reasons why were here.