Jeanne Silverleaf 🌙

My mother is 77 years old, she struggles with things "normal" for her age: high blood pressure, cholesterol, trigliceridi, anxiety, sleeping issues, back hernia, allergies and eye problems. I deal with chronic back/leg/feet pain and migraines (also chronic dermatitis, severe anxiety, depression, ocd, possible borderline, and vitamin deficiency to which I need supplements). If you follow me you know this. That being said, between both of us we take more than 10 different medications a day:

Blood p: Captopril, Losartana, Hdt / Trigliceridi: Puran t4 / Cholesterol: Sivastantina / Sleep: Melatonina, Clonazepam / Anxiety: Duloxetina

NOT counting eye drops, creams, vitamins (omega 3, vitamin D, b12 and iron), powder replacements + diapers and common painkillers

Benefits + I make doing odd jobs makes us around $700 monthly, where $300 alone goes to rent, and we can't pay everything else (utensils, medicine, groceries) with only $400. Work is hard when I deal with daily pain and still need to take care of my mom's needs. We live in Brasil, my currency is BRL (1 USD = 5 BRL / 1 € = 6 BRL).

It has come to my attention that people have bad things to say about others struggling, as if people who "e-beg" do it for fun, or as if it doesn't cause us anxiety when we know something important to us depends on the kindness that might not come. I have seen posts directed at me even though they were "venting". Your lack of sympathy/empathy is your problem and says more about you than about me.

Baldur's skate: my figure skater/hockey player au...the one that started it all for me. There have been a few fics on ao3 already!!! it's lovely

Modern AU: just a continuation of the one larian made...but brainworms on their daily life. disgustingly domestic

Post Crisis: my vision on how these two navigate life after all that bullshit

Supercorp au: what's better than shamelessly shoving two hyperfixations together?? Indulgence at it's finest (golden retriever x wet cat dynamics my beloved)

Missed connections/Knights and Magic au: this one is rather...complex. Still haven't worked out how I want to tackle it, but the skeleton is there

Assasin/mafia/cyberpunk au: the most barebones of them all. I'm still spitballing but I have thoughts

Regency/Bridgerton AU: who doesn't love a good old too-repressed-to-notice-they'v-fallen-in-love love story? I've spied some art here and there, but the prospect of painting shadowheart in fancy clothes keeps me up at night (my personal favorite)

Bounty hunters: need I say more

Lumberjack Werewolf/repressed werewolf hunter AU: a hallmark movie, abo, and a very obvious set of kinks walk into a bar..............

(and if not......come yell at me in my inbox I've got ESSAYS ready)

I come up with au's like I'm getting paid for it LMAO

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.”