When he first met Andraste, he little understood why someone who seemed so stern, unyielding, and brutal, who thrived on the insanity of battle-spent many of her nights sitting among the vines and flowers of the garden on the fifth floor. She was not a healer by nature, she knew little of the restorative powers of these species which had been hand picked from the forests of Pollat and Carpathie. But she sat among them nonetheless.

It was not until he understood the rest of her life that this place made sense. Life aboard the Ascendant often consisted of never ending labyrinths of desperate situations, suicidal rescues, and sacrifice. In the eye of the storm she stood with her crew, holding back the chaos and standing as their protector from the shadows haunting their footsteps. Peace for her was brief and hard to grasp. But the garden was another world-free from war and pain, where she could try and remember she was more than a soldier. That she was a human being, who found her freedom in a garden.