Title: Stifled night
Fandom: Dragon Age
Rating: G
Length: 915 words
Content notes: No warnings apply.
Author notes: Written for the ‘weather’ challenge in fan_flashworks.
Summary: On a hot and sleepless evening, Sara Hawke reflects on where they’ve landed

***

Despite how low he had fallen, Gamlen’s apartment, Sara had come to realise, was one of the wealthier ones. It had formerly been a shop, but the owners had obviously fallen on hard times and it had been converted into one of the most luxurious apartments in the tenement. For one, they had street access. The apartments on the upper storeys were accessed through a narrow staircase tucked into the corner of their insula. Secondly, they had multiple rooms for their family. The few times that Sara had seen the inside of one of their neighbours’ apartments, it had been crowded with multiple households subletting rooms. The cheapest apartments were those on the top floor - the smallest and hardest to escape from in the event of a fire. But on nights like tonight, Sara envied them.

Where they lived on the ground floor, they caught no hint of the evening sea breeze. Although their apartment was insulated from the baking sun by the bulk of the other apartments around them, the heat that radiated from the stone would, over the course of the day, turn their apartment into an oven where Sara felt like she was getting slow-roasted alive by night. The higher apartments had a greater chance of catching the breeze, and those on the very top had access to the roof. On nights like this, those lucky residents abandoned their apartment altogether and took their blankets out onto the flat top of the building, sleeping under the stars in the salty air. Meanwhile, Sara tossed and turned in the small back room where she and Bethany slept, desperately longing for Fereldan mud and drizzle.

Sometimes Bethany would pull ice from the Fade to cool their small room, but it melted quickly and provided little in the way of lasting relief. The only escape Sara could find was when she left their apartment altogether and made her way to the staircase that led down to the Docks. Here, the sea breeze was funnelled up from the harbour and into the former quarry that was Lowtown. She sat on the warm stone steps, the salt-laden wind pushing back stray strands of her dark brown hair, and watched the lights on the harbour below: the warm yellow of the lanterns swaying on the moored ships and, beyond them, the cool blue of the Gallows’ mage lights. The Docks were still busy, even at this time of night, and if she turned her head the fires in the bellies of Lowtown’s factories still lit up the smoke that billowed from their stacks. At least tonight there was an onshore breeze. She closed her eyes and breathed in the cool, clean air, grateful not to be choking on smoke in the oppressive heat of the night.

Kirkwall was far from the mud and muck of Lothering, the smell of dung and decay among the fields and forests. It was closer to the overwhelming smoke of the cooking fires among the army’s camp at Ostagar, the stench and noise of thousands of people crowded together. Like then, she felt like she was endlessly waiting for something to happen, without knowing what or when. Waiting for some kind of signal, some kind of event, that would let them finally act. Something that would change their lives, give them a choice, rather than slowly grinding them into dust. Sara couldn’t imagine what that might be. She only knew that she was waiting, and it felt like the whole city was waiting with her.

Sara didn’t know how long she sat there, but eventually it was time to go back home. As she let herself back in through the front door of Gamlen’s apartment, she could already hear Bethany’s snoring through the thin internal wall. That wouldn’t make it any easier to sleep. She climbed up onto the top bunk and lay on her thin blanket, staring up at the soot-stained ceiling. Bethany was still sawing logs in the bed below, but Sara didn’t have the heart to wake her. At least someone was able to sleep. She threw an arm across her eyes, wishing that she could join Bethany in the Fade, but her mind remained stubbornly grounded in her body. How long was it now until dawn? Were the first rays of sunlight peeking over the Vimmark foothills? Maybe she could get up and prepare breakfast, a plain gruel of weevil-infested grains that had been soaked overnight. But that would involve lighting the fire, and Sara didn’t want to bring any more heat into the house. So instead, she turned over, the blanket bunching up beneath her, and stared at the wall.

She must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing Sara knew she was being called for breakfast. She struggled awake, her eyes gritty and stinging, feeling like she had been run down by a horse. The air that made its way through the open door to their room was cool at least, and her mother sounded in a surprisingly good mood, chattering happily about the purchases she had made in the markets the day before. She made her way down the ladder, into the main room, and blearily ate her breakfast without really even tasting it. Which, admittedly, was an improvement.

She was starting to feel slightly more alive when Bethany came in.

“Hey, look who’s up,” she said. She brandished a piece of vellum. “Better get dressed, Meeran’s got a job for us.”