#galefrey

There is no other word for it: Gale scoffs. “Favorite cantrip? Why, that’s…” His protests founder as he glances over his shoulder at Frey, who smiles patiently. “I… I do rather enjoy casting illusions,” he offers.

“Perfect!” Frey settles back to watch, arms folded. “Let’s see it.”

Far be it from Gale of Waterdeep to forgo an opportunity to grandstand. Though he had hoped for a more structured approach to his first lesson in sorcery, he nonetheless plucks a bit of fleece from the inside of his robe’s pocket and draws a simple sigil in the air. The scrap goes up in a flash of violet, and a song spools from the brush around them—a clutch of clarionets, presently joined by a careful strumming of strings. There, a piccolo, as if their own Piper were ambling by, only backed by an entire orchestra—is that a harp? Gale smiles to himself, and so rapt is he in the piece’s gradual crescendo that he hardly feels the exhale of the sorcerer’s spell as it twines with his—and then the horns join the concerto.

They both know the piece, it seems. Gale closes his eyes, and he is in the plush seats of Cymbril Hall, waiting for the Waterdhavian Philharmonic to take the stage, and he reaches for his mother’s hand, only she is not his mother; she is a gnome with Frey’s dark curls and brown eyes, and she looks at him with all the love in the world. The magic around them wanes, and the music quietens—has it been sixty seconds already? Frey, having joined in the casting later, finishes the composition with a percussive flourish and the distant sound of applause.

“Well done, my wizard,” he says, and his hand finds Gale’s shoulder once more. 

A channel has opened between them, and through it, Frey sends a whip stitch—a light erupts from his palm, and as it does, Gale feels a pleasant tingle at the base of his skull. Frey leans closer, as if sharing a secret, and the sensation uncoils down Gale’s spine all the way through his soles and into the earth. At the same moment that he becomes aware of the ground beneath his feet, color erupts in the air. Illusory monarchs and morphos whirl about their heads, and roseate petals cascade from above. “Is this…?” 

Gale need not ask; he recognizes instantly the anarchic signature of one of Frey’s wild magic surges. Only, for the first time, he feels as Frey does in the moment—elated beyond belief. His body has become oddly buoyant; indeed, he feels as if he could fly. Frey bursts into tinkling laughter, and Gale cannot help laughing along.

“Lucky we got flutter-bys rather than flames, this time.” They both laugh harder, Frey with his full weight on Gale now. 

The spell is only just fading, that precious seam unraveling, when Gale thinks to return Frey’s favor from their previous practice: he imagines, as clearly as if he’d done it a hundred times before, pulling the sorcerer close and kissing him. Frey’s face flushes, but he stands up straight, ever the poised scholar. 

“How very cheeky,” he chides, unable to keep the smile from his lips nor his voice.

“You’re an excellent instructor,” Gale says, and he means it.

Frey has taken up his logbook once more and flips through it with great concentration. “I’m aware,” he responds, world-weary, then looks back at his wizard. “And, unsurprisingly, you are an admirable pupil.” It may be the most earnest compliment he’s ever given Gale. “Perhaps I’ll see you at the fête?”

A quip stills in Gale’s throat, and he can only watch, mute, as the sorcerer takes his leave. He ought to return to what he was doing, then.

A laugh bursts from Frey like a bird startled to flight. “Really!” he says. He’d thought more highly of the wizard’s intelligence. “Magic goes far, far beyond Mystra.” He pockets the vitriol and makes a mark on his list.

“Pish posh,” Gale says, looking skeptically at the mound of dried acorn truffles the bard had earlier bestowed upon him. “One might as well deny one’s mother’s womb as the cradle of life.” Frey wrinkles his nose, places down his logbook and picks up the spare mortar he’d swiped from the necromancer’s lair. They set to work reducing the truffles to a fine powder, and Gale continues, “You don’t understand. Magic is… my life. I’ve been in touch with the Weave for as long as I can remember. There’s nothing like it. It’s music, poetry, physical beauty, all rolled into one and given expression through the senses.” He pauses, finally, for a breath, and his pestle stills. “Is it the same for you?”

Before he answers, Frey pours the essence into a pouch and marks it in his book. “Magic is like music,” he allows, dusting a bit of truffle from his palms, “although, you’re reading a piece of notation, while I’m playing by ear.”

“Fair enough—though in the end, we’re still playing the same composition.”

“Are we?” Frey says. “I do think my musical style is rather more improvisatory than your own. I may not always know where my spontaneity will take me, and I may occasionally play a note off-key, but one might argue that the piece I play is richer, more varied and more interesting for its extemporaneous nature.”

“One might argue,” Gale responds, smiling, ever a good sport, “that a classical piece is best played as it was written.”

“One might.” Frey returns the smile. His alchemical inventory is complete, but as he takes his leave, a hand finds his shoulder—gentle, imploring.

“Perhaps I can show you,” Gale says. “We can reach into the Weave together.”

Frey raises a brow, hazards a glance back at the rest of the rambling camp—most have settled into their tents or cots, though candles are still lit, the fire still tended. Karlach plays a game of fetch with Scratch, the twig singed and blackened when he noses it among the brush. Lae’zel sharpens a sword on her whetstone, and the bard hums a tune for the stars. “Alright,” Frey says, and turns back to Gale. “By all means.”

“Then follow my lead.”

Over a century of Frey’s life collapses in the space between them when Gale steps into the role of a Blackstaff professor. He is, for a fleeting moment, young again; wild magic thrums restless in his limbs as he imitates Gale’s demonstration with a measured flourish. A surge of adrenaline nips at the heels of the incantation, and he channels it—as he was taught—into the final component, which Gale describes as “picturing the concept of harmony”. If Frey weren’t so focused, he would laugh. Instead, he reaches incorporeally for that old thread, the one that smells of chalk and clacks like a wooden staff rapping against a blackboard.

“You did it,” Gale says with a touch too much incredulity. “You’re channeling the Weave. How does it feel?”

Familiar, Frey wants to say. A bit dull, really.

But there, Gale sits with his hands slightly aloft, fingers curled as if holding one delicate string, and his face shines with unselfconscious joy, brown eyes sparkling in the light of the spell that surrounds them. Frey takes a step closer, allows the magic to envelop him. An image rises in his mind unbidden—another step, and he would be mere inches from the wizard, standing between his knees, their faces close enough for a kiss. Gale looks up at Frey with a start. Hard to tell, amidst the purple glow of Mystra’s Weave, but his face appears flushed, and he’s stammering now, and Frey smiles crookedly.

“Apologies,” he starts, though he is not sorry at all, and Gale cuts him off.

“I—I didn’t think… I wasn’t expecting it, is all.” The magic pulses between them, a slip stitch sliding together to bring frayed edges nearer. “It is a pleasant image, to be sure.”

“Is it?” Frey’s smile deepens and his ears warm.

“Most pleasant, in fact.” Gale clears his throat, sits up a bit straighter so that their eyes are level. “Most welcome.” 

His hands relax, and the Weave dissipates, leaving only the cool night air and the distant rasp of steel grinding against quartz. Frey could lean in now, he thinks, and make real the immaterial. He takes a step back, bows slightly. 

“I enjoyed sharing a moment of magic with you,” Gale says, his tone bordering on businesslike. He gathers up his abandoned supplies and stands. Frey fumbles for a proper response, finds it in the great mass of his heart which has, somehow, found itself lodged in his throat.

“Ow!” Frey shoots his irksome companion a stern expression typically reserved for misbehaving tutees. “Perhaps I should have clarified,” the voice from the portal intones, “a helping hand?”

Frey shoos away the giggling forest gnome and reaches out again for the thrum of unstable magic. It nearly knocks him off his feet. He rides the wave instead, shushes the susurration and grasps the disembodied hand with both of his own. It is the wizard, then, that knocks Frey off his feet.

The mages groan in unison as they stand and brush dirt from their robes. The wizard straightens up to nearly twice Frey’s height. “Hello!” he says genially. “I’m Gale of Waterdeep.” He volunteers a proper handshake, and Frey feels a jolt of homesickness. He recognizes the name but cannot quite place it amidst his pounding headache and sore backside. “Apologies. I’m usually better at this.”

A smile. “At introductions?”

A flash of annoyance, then a smile returned. “At magic. Say, but I know you, don’t I? In a manner of speaking—you were on the Nautiloid as well.”

Frey nearly glances back at the gaggle gathered behind him, but the tadpole in his head writhes in response to the impulse, displays in his mind’s eye the cleric and elf’s competitive brooding, the bard jostling their fellow gnome with something like amusement, and this new figure before him, reverberating with magic even in illithidvision. He blinks in the sunlight. “I was, yes.”

“And I can only assume you too were on the receiving end of a rather unwelcome insertion in the ocular region?”

“Couldn’t have phrased it more repellently myself.”

While the wizard prates of ceremorphosis, recognition alights on Frey—ah, that Gale of Waterdeep. Blackstaff prodigy, chosen of Mystra, and, incidentally, author of an incensed missive to one Arcturus Yarborough some decades prior, a student’s valiant attempt to debate the finer points of On Wild Magic. Frey never did get around to responding to that letter, though he had admired its tenacity. Now, that very student is asking if Frey might be able to contend with the forces of psionic parasites.

“I possess many gifts,” Frey says humbly, “but tadpole extraction is not one of them.”

“As we’ve established, few enough can. It’s not exactly a common affliction. We’re most certainly going to need a healer, and soon, too.” An idea appears to dawn on the wizard. “How about we lend each other a helping hand once more and look for a healer together?”

No need to clarify, Frey muses, that only one of them has lent a helping hand thus far. “Sounds like a plan,” he says. “You’re welcome to join us.”

“Most excellent.” Frey senses celebration from the bard and a synchronized eyeroll from the other three. “A parasite shared is a parasite halved… or, something to that effect.”

Eloquent, Frey thinks. He turns toward the path they had been investigating upon their discovery of the sigil—shouting up ahead, the bard had noted with remarkable discernment—but Gale stops him.

“Oh! Before you think you’re about to embark on a journey with most ill-mannered a man: thank you for pulling me out of that stone. It was an act of foresighted kindness, I assure you, for I have the feeling ample opportunities will present themselves for me to return the favour.”

Frey jumped and cursed again in Gnim. “Apologies,” he said quickly. “The initial sleep spell was entirely an impassioned misfire on my part. I suppose I could recast it, but the pain would likely wake you right back up.” He seemed gleeful as he said this.

“May I have a sedative, then?” Gale said. He was feeling lightheaded, but he was already lying down, so he simply closed his eyes and tried not to tense the muscles in his leg too tightly. “And where is the cleric?”

“Tending to the others,” Frey said, and his voice was closer than Gale had anticipated. “You are my responsibility.” Gale wasn’t quite sure what he meant by this, but did not feel well enough for banter, so he simply listened as the sorcerer shuffled around and vaguely wondered when the pain would return. A few moments later, he felt a cold compress laid across his forehead. At the same time, the faint scent of frankincense reached him. The effect was immediate. “You’ll still feel it,” Frey said, his tone almost apologetic. “But you can relax a bit.”

Gale tried to do as he was told, but relaxation was difficult when six stitches were being sewn into the skin of one’s thigh. He got by with only a few undignified grunts and yelps, and he managed to remain mostly still. When Frey finally tied off the suture, Gale exhaled and opened his eyes. The tent was a bit smokier now, and Frey was deeply concentrated on packing a salve of herbs into the gash before he wound a new bandage around Gale’s thigh.

“There,” he said, satisfied. He looked up with such an expression of care that Gale nearly closed his eyes again in embarrassment. They had not spoken about anything at all beyond magic and strategy since Gale had shared the Weave with Frey a few nights ago. Not talking did not dissipate the longing, however—it only made it keener.

“Thank you,” Gale said finally, clearing his throat. He tried to sit up, but Frey flicked his right hand carelessly and Gale found that he was unable to move. The spell’s signature was pure chaos—as was typical of wild magic—but he knew it to be a hold person charm instantly. “Why, I—”

“Bedrest!” Frey said cheerily, standing and brushing off his robes. 

He reached back and released his hair from its practical updo, dark waves tumbling over his shoulders in a more familiar style. Gale sighed inwardly watching him. Whether or not he understood where Gale’s mind was, Frey lingered in the tent for a moment longer; he rearranged the pillows on Gale’s cot so that he would lie more comfortably, and he used the cloth from the compress to wipe away beads of sweat that had cooled on Gale’s face.