the bitter & the sweet

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," Gale 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."

Gale lifted a hand at once.

"And a twig in your beard."

Gale's 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.