" What's Waterdeep truly like? You oft speak of it in such reverence. - hard to imagine you don't yearn to return to it anon." she is genuine; half-way through the red wine at her feet, arms slung around drawn in knees. There is a tinge of exhaustion to her voice, the commonplace dry edge to any word she speaks aside; a tiredness of spirit / a fatigue so deeply set it paints bruises underneath make up & draws facial lines with so rough a pen, skin paled further through the white in her hair.
She allows herself to let shoulders & demeanor drop in his presence because Gale is a friend / a friend dead set on personal oblivion, a friend with thoughts drifting into lightless places she herself had been coaxed to tear oneself out off with tooth & claw. - Even now a part of her considers it still : how beauteous all-annexing / all-encompasing self-ruination would be; to let go. Pray for a Sharran lookout with a horrific temper, knife & a death wish in tow, brave enough to target her throat [ dark eyes drift, cling to the night-bathed sheer endless sea of rooftops cascading below & the almost too familiar smell of ocean's salt lingering at the tip of her tongue.
- tell me of home, you inquire in-between the lines, explain to me why the ache in my chest is both so unbearable & soothing at the same time. Why the thought of stepping into the Cloister again fills me with harrowing dread & pleasant anticipation alike ] " just... at least try to limit the metaphora to a minimum, if you would be so inclined. My every thought is already dazed and dulled enough as it is. "
No one had imagined this journey would be easy; however, the weight and the heft of all their aching... there's not a word in any tongue that says it well.
Gale sits beside her, their shoulders nearly bumping, and he tastes the dryness of wine like autumn winds.
No, sentences will do it. Perhaps even paragraphs. He looks carefully to Shadowheart, and he thinks even volumes. So much has happened of late, her hair pitched in that color of the first season's snow, and her eyes, spring-peridot, wrought with conflict. She has ever been a daughter of abject sorrow, of pain and loss in wretched scales, but now beyond the horrors that she'd once delivered, the grief's far more personal. Internal. Hers. She sits a nursery of woe, spirit tilled with the loss of her treacherous goddess. She's watering it, Gale thinks, on her many tearless nights with every sob and every wail that Shar had stolen.
Her gaze screams conflict. Her hair's white with stress. There are lines about her eyes that belie her age--yes. So much, such ache, has truly worn them.
Her wizarding companion palms his chest.
"Believe me, there is little I desire more than to wake to her early mornings," he whispers. "The stirring of her markets with my hearth crackling to my back... It truly is the small things that you forget to cherish."
Indeed. Gale smiles kindly, but a flavor of something rueful roils within it. He is, by the gods, he aches, too. To see her, the weight in her eyes show their connection. Shadowheart knows him, of course, can shuck off his skin to slip greedily into, burrowing, plunging in the space it leaves. She has known his despair, can profile like this wine they're favoring, for all of his musings, dark and wretched, she, lonely, has thought as well. I adore my goddess. We now speak no longer. Then what have I done? Why did I do it? In fact, like him, she'd thought to die, too. No, there's no one like Shadowheart, a soul so alike to him in all ways that matter. It's as though the night has fashioned her out of starlight for Gale--a friend, a companion to thwart all solitude. He hopes he, too, thwarts her own. Well... "Then allow me to adopt your charming frankness, if I may," Gale teases, eyes gently crinkling. "She is majesty whose heights would leave you breathless," he begins. "She's a fortress of stone and a bed of water reaching for horizons far beyond reach. Her streets are filled always with parties and song, and she boasts spires that would clamor for the seat of the stars. She is endless beauty, her nights in particular. To marvel at the moon as she flickers on the sea... as if she's lantern in the dark eager to guide you." Wistful. Gale twirls his cup, love ever about him. "When all this is over, know you are always welcome to pass through her gates. The Family Dekarios will eagerly have you. I'm more than certain they'll see you as their own."
Gale's quiet, the moonlight sweet in his eyes. (But, gosh, he longs to.) He pours her another glass. "Long after the sun sets, she is still filled with kindness. And warmth."
