Staring into space 24/7

(bg3 exclusive for now but who knows what the future may bring)

[AO3 link]

The battle is won, the Netherbrain defeated, and Astarion is free. But as he returns to the shadows, someone fails to follow him —his lover, child of Bhaal, condemned to madness by his own father. For weakness, for disobedience, it matters not, Storm is lost. Astarion navigates his grief with the help of Tav, and fights for closure as they both try to find where the balance of their friendship lies, now that Storm is gone.

In progress : 19/30. Updating... when I can.

Longfic Interview is here The context of how this happened in my head can be found here

General tag | WIP tag

Snippets of my Dark Urge's tadpole journey alongside Natavriel, of their platonic bond, of his friendships with the tadfools, and of his romance with Astarion

POV varies between Storm and Tav

Home (some backstory, lots of angst) [AO3][Tumblr]

Violent Delights, Violent Ends (durge backstory, tragedy, mind the tags) [AO3]

A Name is a Powerful Thing (angst, some minor comfort in the form of Tav being here, mind the tags. One of my fav piece of writing ever.) [AO3][Tumblr]

Conflicts Of The Mind (act I angst, hurt/comfort, mental health exploration) [AO3] In progress : 3/4

His fangs mean Death (character study for my Durge, mild smut) [AO3]

(mostly, those are the chapters of the previous fic diving into Astarion's memory of the tadpole journey, and they more or less all work as standalone if that's all you have the space for)

The simple plan (angst and comfort, durgestarion/bloodspark) Chapter 1 [AO3][Tumblr] | Chapter 2 [AO3][Tumblr] | Chapter 3 [AO3][Tumblr]

Kindness is a hateful thing (hurt/comfort, durgestarion/bloodspark) [AO3][Tumblr]

You will feel my hunger (hurt no comfort, durgestarion/bloodspark) [AO3][Tumblr]

Here Comes the Sun Again (fluffy angst? is that a thing?, Tav & Astarion) [AO3][Tumblr]

Stay (angst) This one is about Nocturne and Shadowheart! Also unedited because it was for a flash fiction prompt and I rarely go back on those Only on Tumblr (if I edit it it might make it to AO3 one day)

First Snow (fluff, Shadowheart x Halsin x Karlach) [AO3][Tumblr]

Astarion and gratitude

Astarion and Drizzt

Astarion's resilience

Astarion thinks deus ex machinas are very twee

Why Astarion's character resonnated with me (answerring an ask)

Shar, Shadowheart, and grief

My favourite BG3 NPC (it's Doni, if you don't know who that is go read the post and I might forgive you /j)

Karlach/Shadowheart/Halsin headcanon

Karlach/Shadowheart/Halsin relationship post game

The Natavriel/Storm/Astarion situation

My Gale'zel version

The Mucha series (almost complete with the Origin companions, I'm only missing Karalch :3)

Hugs (Astarion x Storm & Natavriel)

A Night of Peace (also Astarion x Storm & Natavriel)

Kitten Agression (still Astarion x Storm & Natavriel but happy)

Kisss 🩶 (bloodspark)

Wyll's portrait

Not everything is listed here, just my fav pieces 🩶

Yae of Evereska for @burnt-by-marigolds

I have so many things planned here, and so little bandwidth for it 😅 More will come, eventually 🩶

An Unexpected Invitation - Gift fic by @missfortunetherogue, featuring their OC, Miss Fortune/Sasha Amastacia

The Silent Three - VP by @burnt-by-marigolds, Storm sharing the pantheon of silence with Yae and River

All in the Golden Afternoon - VP by @burnt-by-marigolds with their OCs Yae and Kirian

Storm's portrait - Art by @theya-art

Storm and Natavriel's Christmas - Art by @endermal

Thank you, you wonderful people 🩶✨

Most of those are written in one go, and unedited, so they have various degrees of quality haha I do those mostly as a way to practice, and also because I like to procrastinate when I'm at work (yes, those have all been written on company time... Does that mean I'm a paid writer??)

Gravity [Read on Tumblr][AO3] This one is dark. CW : depression, suicide (though not super explicit)

Chrysalis [Read on Tumblr] WoD:Changeling themed if you squint

There is power in a name [Read on Tumblr] Also about faes, if the fae in question is a child snatcher

Night Killer [Read on Tumblr] This one is an experiment with some worldbuilding I had done a long time ago and I wanted to bring back. I had a lot of fun writing it but I'm not sure how readable it is.

She’d call upon lady Shar to grant her patience, but in the current circumstances she supposed the option was off the table. If the Mother Superior had known what she was about to do, she’d surely call such audacity bordering on sacrilege.

Normally, she would have enjoyed a barbed exchange with Astarion. It would have been lined with goofiness, not vitriol.

“You’re one to talk about mutts. You’ve been trailing Yae like a faithful puppy ever since we’ve found the body. Why do you suddenly care so much? He rejected you twice.”

Astarion bristled. In an instant, his face became a distorted mask: hurt pride, blistering shame, even fear. It all blended together like pigments on a palette, and the resulting colour was anger.

“I thought,” he said slowly, examining the fingernails of his left hand with utmost care, “that the position of Yae’s lapdog was already taken. You know, by a certain sycophantic cleric. ‘I’d rather listen to Yae than to you,’ ‘Yae can at least be the voice of reason,’ ‘Let’s do as Yae says’,” he mimicked Shadowheart. “Ever heard of her? Pity, however, because this great fan of his didn’t even once check on him tonight. Offered no herbal teas to alleviate the anguish.”

“What do you know!” she erupted, stomping her foot with such force the vampire actually took a step back. “I can’t face him,” she added quietly, her shoulders sagging. “Not after what I’ve said.”

She fully expected the vampire to press on, to continue to mercilessly stab her with words and inflict a mortal, a mortifying wound. To dance around with a metaphorical dagger until he bled her dry of dignity. Just like she deserved.

But the usually mouthy elf kept silent. Fine, she’d have to go for the heart herself.

“I can’t remember ever having friends, Astarion.”

The pair of ruby eyes bored holes into her. There was something amiss with that gaze, as though behind it a million thoughts raced in different directions. Why wasn’t he laughing? With that jarring, terrible cackle of his that somehow proved contagious every time. Why didn’t he continue to mock her? Or maybe he was so taken aback with her pathetic display it rendered him speechless?

Astarion cleared his throat.

“So... Back to the original subject. You said you need the gear for… scouting, right? And where, pray tell, are you going to be ‘scouting’?”

His hands rested on his hips in an almost relaxed, open manner, and he kept his features surprisingly straight. All verbal weapons sheathed.

“Or you know what?” He picked on again almost immediately. “Never mind, let’s not waste time, you can fill me in along the way. I’ll just get a thing or two myself. I’ll be back before you can say ‘All Selûnites suck hard’.”

The vine blights at the gate had delayed them by ten minutes at most.

Elenion plucked a sharp, discordant note from his lute and whispered something beneath it, soft enough that Gale barely heard the words. The blight heard them. It recoiled as if the sound had split its roots, and Gale's lightning took it a heartbeat later.

It collapsed in a heap of twitching leaves and split vines.

Elenion lowered their lute, the final note of the spell still trembling in the air. Beside them, Gale let the lightning fade from his fingertips and looked down at the torn hem of his robe with the solemn grief of a man who had suffered a scholarly tragedy.

He had, however, failed to notice the leaves caught in his hair.

"Well," he said, "I believe we've established that the site is not entirely abandoned."

Elenion, still breathless, tried and tragically failed to stifle a laugh behind their hand.

Gale gave them a wounded look. "I fail to see what is so amusing."

"Sweetheart," they said with a smirk, "you have leaves in your hair."

He lifted a hand at once.

"And a twig in your beard."

His eyes widened. "That," he said as he brushed indignantly at his beard, "is field research."

Elenion laughed harder as they reached over and plucked the twig free themself.

"There," they said. "Your dignity is restored."

"An optimistic assessment," Gale muttered, though a smile tugged at his lips.

Together, they turned toward the gate. Vines had grown through the ironwork so thickly that the old hinges groaned as Gale's magic eased it open.

Inside, ivy climbed the pale stone walls. Birdsong echoed beneath the cracked dome. Ferns crowded the broken steps where astronomers had once stood with their instruments lifted toward the stars. Moss filled the grooves of a circular star-map beneath their boots, turning old constellations soft and green.

The observatory had not belonged solely to the stars for a very long time.

And yet Elenion could still see what it had been.

A place built for looking upward. A place the world had slowly, patiently, called back down.

Gale was already reaching for his journal before they were properly inside. Elenion couldn't help but smile as they ran their finger over the star clasp on their own journal.

They watched Gale kneel beside a fallen brass ring half-buried beneath fern roots. Then Elenion crouched near the center of the star-map and brushed loose moss from one of the carved constellations. They balanced their journal on one knee, sketching the pattern as Gale murmured a careful spell to lift dirt from the brass without disturbing the roots curled around it.

"Look," they said, tapping the page with the end of their quill. "This one has a local name. The villagers called it the Lantern-Bearer, but the old woman at the inn hummed a tune that sounded almost exactly like the second verse of Sails of Silver Light. Which means either the song traveled farther inland than I thought, or someone adapted the constellation myth for river folk."

Gale hummed. “And this dial is not purely astronomical. The inner ring measures seasonal drift, but the outer markings suggest planar observation, which would make the donor’s sketch either more accurate than expected or wildly lucky.”

Elenion looked up from their notes. “You seem happy.”

Gale’s spell dimmed between his fingers. "I am," he said, looking back at him. "Aren't you?"

Elenion glanced down at the star-map beneath their hand, then at the roots curling gently through the stone.

"Yes," they said, feeling themself smile. "I think I am."

They had come because of a donation to the Starlit Gallery: one damaged travel journal, three pressed leaves, and a half-legible sketch of a ruined observatory. Elenion had recognized the constellation in the margin from an old ballad, and Gale cross-referenced the name with an old academic catalogue.

Then Gale had taken leave from his lectures, and Elenion nearly backed out for fear that every display case in the museum might shatter the moment he stepped outside Waterdeep. In the end, he'd left it in trusted hands, and now they were pretending this wasn't also a holiday.

The road had led them through a small village near the High Forest, where people gave stories as readily as directions. A woman gave him fresh bread for the journey, a child sang half of their favorite folk song, and three different people gave contradictory warnings about the path through the trees.

He wrote the village name in the corner of the page.

Then his quill stilled.

He had forgotten how much he used to love that part of traveling. The unfamiliar faces, the old songs, the detours into antique shops and artisans’ stalls. The joy of knowing the world still had stories he had never heard.

Not the stages. Not the rented rooms and nights spent with strangers. Not the hunger of crowds.

Just this.

Gods, he had wanted to say yes when Lae’zel asked him to come to Chult. The Gallery had been too close to its preview gala for him to walk away, and he didn't regret staying. But he'd have loved to fight beside her again, to see the jungle and uncover whatever stories waited there.

Where had her road taken her this time?

Across the room, Gale’s voice trailed off mid-sentence.

"Len?" Gale’s voice softened. "You’ve gone very quiet, my love."

Elenion blinked down at his journal. "I was thinking about Lae’zel. About when she asked me to go to Chult."

"We can send to her tonight," Gale said.

“She could be anywhere by now.”

“Yes,” Gale said, “which is generally why one uses Sending.”

Elenion huffed a laugh.

"And if she replies only to insult our pace, our softness, or my beard," Gale added, "then we shall know she's well."

That laugh came easier.

They worked together in a quieter rhythm after that. Gale cleaned the brass dial with a careful spell, while Elenion made a rubbing of the star-map.

"Ah," Gale said softly, "Len. Look."

A shard of green glass no larger than Elenion's thumb had fallen between the roots. It must have broken from the old viewing lens centuries ago, but it still caught the light beautifully.

Elenion lifted it carefully into his palm.

"We shouldn't take the lens."

"You're certain?"

Elenion nodded. "It belongs here. But this…"

Gale hummed thoughtfully. "A fallen fragment," he said. "Already loose. Documented, contextualized, and not pried from any historically significant mechanism."

"Exactly."

The curator in him did want the lens. But the museum didn't need to own every beautiful thing. The shard could come home with him, and the observatory could remain itself.

Elenion closed his fingers around the shard.

"When we get home," he said, "we should start a list."

Gale glanced over. "Of poorly maintained historical sites?"

"Of places worth seeing together."

"Ah,” Gale said, taking his hand. “A far more dangerous list."

By the time they finished, the first stars had begun to show through the broken dome, caught between the leaves of the young trees growing through the roof.

Elenion looked up.

The green made the stars feel closer somehow. Less like something distant he had to chase until he lost himself, and more like something waiting to be found along the road.

And maybe the road could still lead somewhere beautiful, so long as he had a home to return to.