Pure Magic ✨

Shadowheart does not announce her plans in advance. She simply appears beside Deia near dusk and says 'come with me'. Deia looks up from the dagger she is cleaning.

“That sounds ominous.”

“It should,” Shadowheart says. “If I’d told you beforehand that this was meant to be relaxing, you’d have found a way to avoid it.”

“That is slander.”

“That is experience.”

Deia narrows her eyes, but rises anyway. Shadowheart leads her through the quieter streets and away from the busiest parts of the city until stone gives way to ivy, and ivy gives way to a hidden courtyard tucked behind an old bathhouse whose pale walls gleam faintly beneath the first rise of evening. Selûne’s statues stand in still white grace among the garden paths, one of them pouring silver-lit water from a tilted vessel into a dark fountain pool below. Moonflowers trail along the carved arches. Soft lantern-light pools in corners where the last of the day cannot quite reach.

For a moment, Deia simply looks. The garden is all shadows and silver edges. Water murmurs quietly in the fountain. Somewhere beyond the walls, the city continues in its usual clatter, but here it is distant enough to feel unimportant. Shadowheart watches her take it in, then folds her arms.

“Well?”

Deia glances sideways at her.

“You brought me to a Selûnite bathhouse.”

“Yes.”

“You do realize that sounds like the beginning of one of your more tedious moral lessons.”

“And yet I brought wine,” Shadowheart replies, lifting a bottle from the crook of her arm.

Deia’s mouth twitches.

“You make a compelling counterargument.”

“I usually do.”

They walk slowly through the little garden first, passing beneath the statue’s gaze and the pale spill of moonlight across the fountain’s surface. Deia trails her fingers over the stone rim as she goes. The water is cool. The carved face of Selûne above them is serene in the way of goddesses who have never had to survive on spite and borrowed knives. Deia lifts one brow.

“She looks smug.”

Shadowheart snorts.

“That,” she says, “is probably the most honest thing anyone has ever said in this courtyard.”

They sit for a while at the fountain’s edge. Shadowheart pours wine into two small cups she has somehow acquired without explanation, and Deia, long practiced in not asking too many questions when the results are pleasant, accepts hers. The first sip is cool and dry.

“Better than Astarion’s,” Deia says.

Shadowheart looks absurdly pleased.

“I’ll treasure that.”

They sit shoulder to shoulder, neither touching at first, the fountain speaking softly beside them. The statue rises above, pale and watchful, while night gathers in the ivy and little white moths begin to appear like scraps of drifting silk. After a while, Shadowheart begins speaking.

“I thought one evening of your birthday tenday ought to involve no dancing, no kidnappings, and no aggressively sincere speeches by men who look like they write letters to their own feelings.”

Deia turns to her.

“That was an extraordinarily specific description.”

“I have eyes.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Shadowheart’s mouth curves.

“You’re welcome.”

They finish the wine in the garden. Then Shadowheart rises.

“Come on.”

“Where now?”

“The baths.”

Deia looks at her. Shadowheart stares back. Deia sighs.

“You have become terribly forceful since rejecting your terrible goddess.”

“I was always forceful. I’m simply less unhappy about it now.”

Inside, the bathhouse is warm as breath. Steam drifts lazily through pale stone arches. Candlelight burns low in wall niches and glints off tiled floors still damp from earlier use. Ivy has found its way indoors too, climbing latticework near the ceiling. More statues of Selûne stand in alcoves, soft-featured and moon-crowned, their presence somehow less oppressive here than in temples. More watchful than demanding.

By the time they settle, Shadowheart has changed into a simple white towel wrapped around her chest, while Deia sits beside her in a dark robe loosely belted at the waist, black fabric falling open just enough at the throat to show pale skin and the beginning of old scars. Her hair is damp at the temples, slightly unruly from steam. Her horns catch the candlelight in little silver edges. She looks, Shadowheart thinks, much younger when she is not armored. Not younger in age. Younger in vigilance.

They sit on the stone ledge beside one of the long warm pools, feet in the water, steam curling around them. Deia leans her head against Shadowheart’s shoulder with the quiet ease of someone who has stopped asking permission for certain kinds of closeness. Shadowheart stills for half a breath. Then relaxes into it. The warmth around them makes the silence easy.

“This was a good idea,” Deia says.

Shadowheart lets the triumph sit for a moment before answering.

“I know.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“That is rich coming from you.”

Deia hums. They sit with their feet in the water a while longer before Shadowheart reaches for Deia’s hand almost absentmindedly. Deia lets her take it, though her brow furrows slightly when Shadowheart turns the hand over and begins rubbing scented oil into the heel of her palm.

“My hands are fine,” Deia says.

“They’re cracked.”

“They hold daggers. They do not need to be delicate.”

“No,” Shadowheart says, working the oil carefully over her knuckles, “but they belong to you. That should be reason enough.”

Deia quiets. Shadowheart continues, thumb pressing gently into the base of her palm, then across the scarred places where old calluses have hardened and split and healed and hardened again. For a while, the only sounds are water, breath, and the faint crackle of candleflame.

“You understand this whole chosen birthday thing more than the others do,” Deia murmurs.

Shadowheart’s hands slow but do not stop.

“Yes,” she says.

Deia waits. Shadowheart exhales softly.

“People place a great deal of importance on beginnings,” she says. “On names, birth, faith, family. As if the things handed to us first must therefore be sacred.”

Her gaze rests on Deia’s hand in hers.

“I no longer believe that.”

The words settle between them, warm and clean. Deia looks at her profile, at the silver hair falling over one shoulder, at the calm line of her face that was once made sharp by secrecy and now seems gentler for surviving it.

“A chosen thing can still be false,” Deia says after a moment.

Shadowheart’s mouth curves faintly.

“So can an inherited one.”

That earns a breath of laughter from Deia. Shadowheart glances down at her then.

“You chose this day. The rest of us chose to celebrate it. Why should that make it less real than any other?”

Deia says nothing. She watches the ripples around their feet.

“Because it feels strange to claim something I was never given,” she whispers at last.

Shadowheart’s expression softens.

“Then claim it anyway,” she says. “There is a certain pleasure in refusing to let cruel people have the final word.”

Deia turns that over. The candles burn steadily. Somewhere farther within the bathhouse, water drips from one stone lip to another with quiet regularity. Outside, beyond the open lattice, the garden fountain keeps singing to itself. Shadowheart reaches beside her and produces something small wrapped in cloth. Deia notices at once.

“What is that?”

“A gift.”

“You already brought me to a bathhouse. That was suspiciously thoughtful enough.”

“Yes, well. It got worse.”

She places the bundle into Deia’s hands. Inside lies a small silver mirror, round and palm-sized, the back worked with moonstone and fine engraving that catches the light in pale blue-white threads. It is elegant without being gaudy, beautiful without seeming fragile. Deia turns it over carefully. There is writing inside the lid. For the woman you chose to become. Her breath catches so quietly that only Shadowheart hears it. Deia does not speak at first. Her thumb moves over the etched letters once, then again, as if confirming that they remain there.

“It isn’t a holy symbol,” Shadowheart says, almost too casually. “I thought that might be... ill-advised.”

Deia looks up at her.

“It’s only a mirror,” Shadowheart continues. “And a little moonstone. Symbolic enough to be irritating, but not enough to count as proselytizing.”

Deia’s mouth trembles very slightly at the corner.

“A mirror,” she says, voice low.

“Yes.”

“So I may admire myself properly.”

Shadowheart gives her a dry look.

“That seemed inevitable anyway.”

Deia laughs then, soft and warm and touched through with something more delicate. When she closes the mirror again, she holds it carefully, almost reverently, and that alone tells Shadowheart more than any dramatic speech would have.

“Thank you,” Deia says.

Shadowheart tilts her head.

“You’re welcome,” she replies. Then, because the moment has become too tender and therefore dangerous, she adds, “And if you tell anyone I arranged something sentimental, I’ll deny it.”

Deia leans more comfortably against her shoulder.

“I’ll tell them you threatened me into a bath.”

“Much better.”

“And forced expensive wine upon me.”

“You suffered bravely.”

“And then assaulted my hands with scented oil.”

“Atrocious behavior. Truly.”

Deia smiles into the steam. After a while, her head grows heavier against Shadowheart’s shoulder, not with sleep exactly, but with trust. With ease. With the quiet tiredness that only comes when a body finally believes it may rest without punishment. Shadowheart does not move away. Instead, she turns her head just enough for her cheek to rest lightly against Deia’s hair. The gesture is small. Almost accidental. It is not.

“You know,” Shadowheart says after a time, her voice softer now, “for all your theatrics, your impossible temper, and your tendency to acquire trouble the way other people acquire lint...”

Deia makes a faint sound of protest. Shadowheart ignores it.

“You’re my sister.”

Deia stills. The word hangs there in the candlelit air. Not as something fragile. Not as something uncertain. As something chosen. Deia closes her eyes. When she speaks, her voice is almost a whisper.

“You chose well.”

Shadowheart huffs a quiet laugh.

“Yes,” she says. “I did.”

Halsin does not tell Deia where they are going. He simply asks if she would walk with him, and Deia, suspicious by habit and curious by nature, agrees. The path he chooses winds gently through the forest, away from the busier roads and deeper into that soft, humming kind of quiet that only old woods seem able to keep. Leaves shift overhead in green-gold layers. Somewhere nearby, water moves over stone. Birds speak to one another with the ease of creatures who have never once worried about propriety.

Deia walks beside him with her hands loose at her sides, black skirts brushing the grass, horns catching the occasional blade of sunlight when it slips through the canopy. She is quieter than usual. Not sad. Not distant. Simply listening. Halsin does not interrupt that. They speak now and then as they walk. Little things. Dry things. Deia remarks that Gale’s “birthday tenday” has become suspiciously organized for something allegedly heartfelt. Halsin says Gale’s affection appears to grow more detailed the longer it is indulged. Deia replies that this is, unfortunately, true. Halsin smiles.

Eventually, the trees open. It happens so gradually that for a moment it feels less like stepping into a clearing and more like being gently let into one. A great tree rises at the edge of a wide field, its roots thick and silver-brown, its branches stretched broad enough to make a small world beneath them. At the base of the tree sits a low stone, old and weathered, with two shallow bowls carved into its surface. Many candles have been set around it, some half-burned, some new. The stone looks less like an altar and more like a place someone once made sacred by returning to it over and over again.

Before them, the field spills outward in a riot of flowers. White and yellow and violet. Small blue stars close to the ground. Red wild roses climbing low among the grass. Butterflies drift lazily through the air as though the whole afternoon has been made only for them. The wind is soft. The light is softer. For a moment, Deia says nothing at all. She steps nearer the stone, eyes moving across the candles, the bowls, the roots of the great tree. Then she crouches and begins lighting the candles one by one, the little flames answering her hands with obedient warmth. Halsin watches her without speaking. When she is done, she straightens and looks out across the field.

The view seems to settle into her by slow degrees. Not all at once. Not like surprise. More like water finding a place it has always belonged. Halsin sits upon the stone and waits. He lets her have the silence. Lets the breeze touch her. Lets the scent of flowers and wax and warm bark do whatever quiet work they have come to do. After a while, while Deia is still looking outward, he reaches into the grass beside the stone and begins gathering flowers. Wild roses first. Then small pale blossoms with thin stems. Then a few blue ones, bright as scattered pieces of sky. He works them together with patient hands. Deia notices only when she turns back toward him.

“What are you doing?”

Halsin glances up.

“Something I suspect you will tolerate with more grace than you expect.”

“That is ominous.”

“It is a flower crown, not a curse.”

“Debatable.”

He smiles and continues weaving. Deia comes to sit beside him on the stone. The candles burn steadily at their knees. A butterfly drifts low between them, then wanders away again. After a moment, Halsin says:

“Gale told me about your chosen birthday.”

Deia’s mouth curves faintly.

“Did he?”

“He seemed rather pleased with the idea.”

“He has been insufferably pleased with all of this.”

“As I said.” Halsin’s fingers move carefully through the stems. “Detailed affection.”

Deia huffs. Halsin studies the field for a moment.

“Summer suits you," he adds.

That earns him a sidelong glance.

“Summer?”

“Yes.”

“Because I am loud and prone to setting things on fire?”

“Partly,” he says, untroubled. “But also because there is something of it in you. Warmth that does not always know its own reach. Beauty that grows more visible when it stops trying to defend itself. Life that has survived harsher seasons and still turns toward light.”

Deia is quiet at that.

"That was dangerously kind of you,” she says after a pause.

“I took the risk.”

They sit for a little longer, speaking here and there in the easy rhythm that Halsin seems able to create without effort. He tells her he used to come to places like this when he needed his thoughts sorted into smaller pieces. She says she usually resorts to stabbing things, which is faster. Halsin says both methods have merit. Deia laughs once beneath her breath. He adds another rose to the crown.

“Gale came to me for advice some time ago.”

Deia turns her head.

“Advice?”

“He wished to know whether certain flowers would survive in Waterdeep.” Halsin’s tone stays mild, almost absent, though there is a quiet fondness in it. “Whether the soil there could be persuaded to accept plants it is not used to. Whether a wisteria tree might be managed with patience. Whether a garden can be made to thrive without relying upon magic to force it.”

Deia goes still. Halsin does not look at her immediately. He gives her the dignity of a horizon first. Then he glances over.

“He is doing it for you,” he says.

For a moment, Deia says nothing. The field moves gently in the wind. The butterflies drift. A candle crackles faintly as wax gives way. When she speaks, her voice is softer than it has been all afternoon.

“After we fought,” she says, “about his... ambitions... I left for a few days.”

Halsin listens.

“I made sure the others could manage without me first,” her mouth tilts slightly. “I am not entirely reckless.”

“No,” Halsin says. “Only selectively.”

She almost smiles.

“I needed the distance,” she says. “I needed to be angry somewhere that was not full of his face.”

She looks out at the field again.

“And while I was gone, I wrote to him.”

Halsin waits.

“I told him that he had made me want things I had stopped allowing myself to want,” her fingers tighten lightly in her lap. “Simple things. A home. Stillness. A garden.”

The word seems to surprise her a little, even now.

“I always wanted one, I think. I simply never let myself dwell on it,” she exhales. “It seemed... indulgent. Absurd, for someone who never stayed in one place and never had anything that could truly be called hers.”

The wind shifts a loose strand of hair across her cheek. She does not brush it away.

“He wrote back,” she says. “Said he would build it for me. With his bare hands. No magic. Just... effort.”

Halsin’s eyes soften.

“That made you return.”

“Yes.”

The answer is immediate. Deia looks down at her own hands, almost as though they belong to someone else for a moment.

“I thought it was impossible,” she says quietly. “But then, a great many things Gale says and does once seemed impossible to me.”

She falls silent. When she speaks again, the words slip out with less armor than she meant to give them.

“I often think I am not worth all that effort.”

Halsin stills. The crown rests finished in his hands. For a breath, he says nothing. Not because he has no answer, but because some answers deserve to arrive without haste. Then he exhales slowly, warmth and sadness and understanding folded together in the sound. He lifts the flower crown.

“Come here,” he says gently.

Deia blinks, as if only just remembering he has been making it.

“Halsin.”

“Come here.”

There is no command in it. Only patience. She obeys anyway. He reaches forward and settles the crown upon her head, careful of her horns, careful of the silver adornments in her dark hair, careful of the woman beneath both. His large hands move with surprising delicacy, adjusting the flowers until the roses sit properly and the smaller blossoms rest like scattered stars between them. Deia lifts one hand, touching the crown lightly as if she is not quite certain it is really there. Halsin looks at her for a long moment.

“You speak of effort,” he says. “As though love were measured only by how hard one must labor to keep it alive.”

Deia holds his gaze.

“In nature, there are things that bloom for a season and vanish,” he continues. “Beautiful, but brief. And there are other things, trees, rivers, forests, that shape the land simply by existing long enough. Their roots split stone. Their shade changes what grows beneath them. Their passing leaves marks that remain long after they are gone.”

The wind lifts the edge of her sleeve.

“What you and Gale have,” Halsin says softly, “is not a passing bloom. It is the sort of love that alters the ground around it. The sort that leaves a mark upon time itself.”

Deia goes very still. His voice gentles further.

“Do not mistake receiving such love for a burden you have placed upon another. Some things are worth tending because they are rare. Some gardens are worth building because there is only one person in all the world for whom they would ever do.”

Her mouth parts slightly, though no words come. Halsin’s smile is calm and kind and touched, perhaps, by a little ache of his own.

“You are not unworthy because you were not taught how to be cherished,” he says. “The fault lies with those who failed to see you clearly. Not with the one who sees, and chooses, and builds.”

For a moment, Deia can only sit there beneath the huge tree, flower-crowned and quiet, with the field before her and the candles at her knees and too much tenderness pressing against old, defended places inside her. Then she lifts her gaze to him. Her fingers brush the roses lightly.

“Thank you,” she says.

It is not a large sentence. It does not need to be. Halsin inclines his head.

“You are welcome.”

Inspo pic for the first one:

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The Martian - Hesperia

I'm sorry this is so silly. She is pondering the potato.

Gale’s knee jerks. The stack of essays slides. He catches it with the dignity of a man losing a battle against an opponent who has not even stood up. Deia lowers her gaze to her book again.

“Careful,” she says. “Those young minds need nurturing.”

Gale looks at her. The thing moving over his thigh pauses. It is warm now, warmer than her fingers would be, warmth shaped into a touch that drifts inward with unbearable leisure. He sets the essays aside. Very calmly. This is a tactical decision. Not surrender. Merely an acknowledgement that academic assessment and arcane seduction should not be attempted simultaneously, unless one has a wish to commit grave injustice against both.

“Deia.”

She hums.

“You are aware,” he says, “that retaliation is rarely an advisable magical discipline.”

“Is that what this is?”

“You tell me.”

She closes her book at last. The sound is soft. Final. When she looks at him fully, the room seems to draw itself closer around the two of them. The fire throws copper into her hair. Her robe has slipped from her shoulder, exposing the pale curve of skin, the faint glint of scales along her collarbone. One dark brow rises.

“I seem to recall,” she says, “a certain wizard making inventive use of a simulacrum.”

Gale’s mouth goes dry.

“Ah.”

“Ah,” she echoes.

“In my defense...”

“You have one?”

“Several. None likely to survive scrutiny.”

“Wise to admit it early.”

[...]

“Still all right?” she asks.

Gale swallows, then inclines his head with as much composure as he can rescue from the wreckage.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And if I begin composing a lecture on ethical spellcraft at any point, you have my permission to silence me by whatever means you consider appropriate.”

Her eyes brighten.

“Generous.”

“I am a very giving man.”

“Yes,” Deia says, and lifts one hand from her lap. “I remember.”

____________________________

Read the rest on Ao3.

(my post got flagged, how fun, trying again)

Thank you to @baelthi for being my first ever beta reader.

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