#silverweave

WIP Wednesday/Last Lines

tagged by @rdekarios

I’m fooling with so many things right now. Finishing my Regency piece.

At an awkward spot with Gale’s memoir, not wanting to make it a wholesale retelling of cannon events, so I’m crafting it in to a collection of letters between Lily and Gale, found by their daughter after their deaths, collected for the Keeper of Tomes at Candlekeep:

“To the world, they were legend. A Bladesinger whose moonblade split silence like song. A wizard whose ambition scorched the fabric of gods. Together, they reshaped the fate of Faerûn more times than the history books can cleanly record.

But this is not about that.

This is about the box I found, after they left us. A small thing, simply warded, tucked in the back of the Evereskan study no one had touched in decades. I opened it expecting drafts, fragments of spellwork, perhaps a treatise half-finished. What I found was something far rarer: a lifelong conversation.

Not a memoir. Not a confession. Not anything so formal.

Just love. In ink and margins. In torn paper and unfinished sentences.

Letters. Notes. Corrections. Jokes. Regrets. Reconciliations.

They had written to each other through the entirety of their shared life—across battlefields and bedtime, during council meetings and quiet cups of tea. And they answered each other not always in return letters, but in the margins. In the margins.

And somehow, across centuries and complications, they never stopped.

They didn’t write to preserve their love. They wrote through it.

Love was not a story they told. It was the language they shared.

I have chosen to preserve their words as they were found: disordered, undated, chaotic. What follows is not a record of public legacy, but a private map—each note a star by which they navigated one another.

This is not for scholars. This is for anyone who has ever loved, or been loved, or wondered if two extraordinary people might find something soft and ordinary between them and call it home.”

It is titled, of course, after my father’s phrase:

The Thunderclap and the Ivy.

And to those who would shelve this beside volumes of spellcraft and prophecy, I say—

You misunderstand.

This is the most powerful magic they ever cast.

Art by Takemi Art on IG/Bsky

Thanks for the tag @rdekarios and @optimisticgrey

I’ve swapped to working on the post cannon story that’s played out at our D&D table. It’s an ongoing campaign, and I still don’t know what happens.

(Oh and for those that care, Lachlinnë is Lily’s moonblade. It means Flamesong)

VP shot with the awesome Snapshots mod…thanks again for the awesome mod.

There is a moment when love becomes eternal, when trust ceases to be a sentimental notion and instead becomes the very ground upon which two souls stand. I remember mine with the ache of an old scar: the ruins of Karse behind us, the night heavy with the scent of ash and wildflowers. Every stone still thrummed with the echo of a battle narrowly survived.

Lachlinnë glimmered faintly at her side, its silver guttering like the last spark of a star. She had collapsed upon the stones, pale and gasping, her lifeblood darkening the dust. I went to her at once, frantic, already calculating distances, routes, the fastest way to reach a healer. My hands pressed to her wound, my mind a storm. “Stay with me,” I begged, the words more plea than command. “If we can reach the vale, I can find someone—”

Her fingers, slick with her own blood, caught my wrist and held fast. Weak though she was, her grip bound me as surely as any chain. “No, Gale,” she whispered. “Evereska.”

I shook my head, desperate. “Evereska? It’s days away. You won’t last the night. Please—let me save you now.”

Her eyes flickered, dim yet burning with that unrelenting will that was hers alone. Her voice, ragged though it was, cleaved through the ruin’s silence.

“I cannot die like this. Not here, not now. You—cast out, unclaimed—your soul would be lost in the City of the Dead, wandering without rest. Mine, returned to Arvandor. We would be sundered forever.”

The words struck like a blade turned inward. I had named myself heretic before, but never had the word sounded so final, so damning, as when spoken by her lips—no malice in them, only truth, and the grief of what it meant.

Her hand tightened on my wrist, desperate, defiant. “We must reach Evereska. My father—the High Magic—it is the only way. Swear to me, Gale. Swear that Mystra’s petty cruelties will not tear us apart.”

And so, in that firelit ruin, with her blood warm on my hands, I gave her the promise that made us eternal.

Now, years distant from that night, I see her resolve for what it was: wholly, unmistakably Lily. Of course she would rather wager her life on High Magic and love than accept a lesser salvation. Of course she would demand eternity in the same breath as she bled. That was who she was—and who she remains. But in the moment, it was a terror like no other: that she might die in my arms, not for want of magic, but for want of a simple healing spell.

Tagging

On my Gale origin, having this conversation with Lae'zel is also interesting.

I picked "Really? Thanks for noticing!" both as a joke and because of Gale's irrepressible optimism.

The interesting part is Gale's expression after she says she doesn't plan on staying.

If I'm out in the world with Astarion and Shadowheart in tow when we have this conversation, Gale's expression is visibly annoyed at what Lae'zel says, and he shakes his head at the end, almost dismissively.

If we're at camp in the evening, Gale frowns at what she says about his nose, then he gives her sad puppy face after she says the last line.

Nice.

And... interesting.

Sadly, I only get one character's response, even if I eat an artifact in front of the whole group outside of camp. I'll get the others and if I don't post videos, I'll at least share the dialogue screenshots.

This paints Durge, who notably has no option to be a companion, in a slightly different light. They can only be the protagonist; thus the harsher reactions simply cannot occur for them.

I'll also be trying out behaving like Gale does as a companion (evasive at first, then telling the truth later if possible) and see what happens.