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“We’ll head to camp after I check in on the kid,” Trinity panted, her immediate response to Astarion’s insistence that they rest. They’d just fought off a nest of harpies, so now in addition to physical exhaustion the likes of which he could barely tolerate as a man whose heaviest bit of exercise prior to this ill fated adventure involved being flogged, his head felt like it was splitting in half after those freak bird women dug around in his very crowded brain with their song.
“Darling, I can’t promise I’ll be kind if I’m asked to interact with any of the charming denizens of this hellish grove,” he warned. She turned to give him a look, and he put his hands up in immediate defense. “To say nothing of the tieflings, but surely you agree that this place is a waking nightmare.”
“Fair enough,” she groused, not looking wholly satisfied by his answer. He really hadn’t meant to insult the refugees, although maybe he would have cared less about avoiding it if she were just a little bit less charming. “Will you wait, then? I’ll only be a second, but these kids don’t have the good sense to avoid harpies let alone go straight back to wherever they’re hiding out.”
“Do I have a choice?” he asked with a terse smile. Of course he didn’t, unless he wanted to chance walking back to camp alone in the goblin-infested woodlands. It just took one of the feral little beasts to not get the message about the brain worm and suddenly he’d be facing down three hundred of them.
“You could come to the children’s hideout?” she suggested with a knowing smile.
“Pass. Do hurry, won’t you?” She smiled, which wasn’t an answer, and limped off to go find whatever hole she had to crawl in to check on the terrible little derelicts who’d been giving her the runaround since they got here. Better that Astarion not be exposed to them with this sort of headache.
Which is of course what led him to Alfira.
She was brutalizing a lute and half sobbing her lyrics, so distraught that even the squirrels seemed to be in pain. Naturally he approached to tell her off, before remembering that if he was mean to the refugees then it would annoy Trinity, and annoying her would just mean he’d have to think of some faux-apology later, which was a situation best avoided. That left him, however, in the unfortunate position of having approached this crying stranger without a word to say to her. “I’m sorry,” she sniffled, so at least she understood that she was in the wrong.
“If you were truly sorry, you wouldn’t be doing it,” he told her in what he hoped was a sympathetic voice. She seemed confused, so in retrospect he’d probably very gently delivered that particular insult. “Now, what do I do to spare myself the headache?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My friend over there,” he gestured outward in the vague direction of Trinity, which earned him a gasp (as if she’d single handedly fought off the goblins!), “has informed me that I can make a myriad of problems go away by solving them, and so I’m giving that a try instead of smashing your lute to pieces. What do I do to make you stop wailing on that poor instrument?”
“I-I’m sorry,” she repeated, much more breathlessly than before. “My name’s Alfira, and I’m just having a hard time of it right now. You’re probably used to much more polished pieces, travelling with the Harpy like you do.”
He frowned, following her eyes back to his retreating companions (of course Trinity had stopped to talk with everyone she passed on the way out, which is exactly what he’d trailed behind to avoid; even Gale was leaning balefully on his stupid staff, and he was the most infuriatingly, pointlessly friendly one out of all of them; at least Wyll would let them kill goblins). “The what now?”
“The Harpy of the Gate—the bard?” Trinity was the only bard he knew, but she’d never actually performed in the camp. No instrument, she’d said with a shrug, and as if to prove it her hands were twitching restlessly at all times like a thief in a jewellery store, reaching for strings and keys that simply weren’t there . “She’s a renowned ghost writer in Baldur’s Gate, you know.”
“I did not.” She’d never mentioned, and he’d never asked; he’d simply assumed all bards made their living singing folk music in taverns, although in retrospect that would probably be a crowded solution to the problem of needing to eat.
“Well the theatre takes credit for her work so I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of her, but she always sneaks in an Infernal calling card so tieflings will know that she wrote it,” Alfira said dreamily. “They call her the Harpy because the only time she’s ever performed onstage was as a harpy. It was a small role but she researched it so well that the audience swore she was working actual harpy magic.”
“Why would she allow the theatre to take her credit?” he asked. He frequently poked at her for being too soft towards the helpless, but a successful production company hardly sounded like the sort of down-on-their-luck lot that made her go doe eyed. Outside of the needy refugees that she felt she had kin ties with, he really didn’t find her particularly asinine as far as directionless do-gooding went. She was sensibly hostile to the druids, and she’d killed the brothers to protect the hag.
Alfira gave him a look. “We’re all hoping that things will be better in Baldur’s Gate, but we’re not stupid,” she scolded. “Being a performing tiefling means that you’re either famous for your cambion impressions or you’re toiling backstage. If she wants her work seen in the sorts of places that matter, she can’t put her name on it...even if she is one of the most prolific writers of our generation.” She smiled bitterly, down at her lute. “What hope do the rest of us have, right?”
“Quite a bit, I’d say.” She looked up and he folded his arms over his chest. “Well, the only way forward is up and all that, and as long as you’re not beholden to any other powers you can write whatever you please; like a song that doesn’t make me feel like I have a concussion.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she seemed more thoughtful than annoyed by his flippant response. “You know, I can’t tell if you’re trying to be rude to me, but that does mean a lot to hear. My mentor, before she...died, said something similar: that when we create our own art, we’re creating—”
“Yes, that’s wonderful, and I’m glad it resonated with you.” He didn’t much care either way, but he’d suddenly spotted something on her person that he decided to give a try requesting (he could always simply take it if she said no); Trinity had fondly informed him, after all, that he could be terribly sweet when he wanted something. Hopefully that didn’t just apply to people he was attracted to.
. . . . .
Trin had seemed embarrassed when he’d coyly introduced her to Alfira, who’d been thrilled to meet the Harpy; he understood, of course, why she was so flush under well deserved praise. It was one thing to admit to being a performer, but quite another to admit to being a performer that was forced to give her work away for very little material benefit. Although it was technically a success, it still felt like failure to be so unable to assert oneself.
Different applications, of course, but he was familiar with the sensation.
After they’d finally left the grove and slouched back to camp, he’d discovered that she really did know the harpy’s song very well, even if she wouldn’t properly sing it. She seemed to have it stuck in her head after the fight. “If you hum that one more time, I am going to have to knock you out,” he warned her as her fingers once again fluttered uselessly against her stomach. Her head was rested in his lap and if she wasn’t incessantly humming, he might have thought she was dozing off.
“You can’t tell the bard to be quiet,” she scolded with a laugh. “If I keep all the noise in I’ll explode.”
“For a bard on the brink of explosion you’ve been puzzlingly quiet since I’ve known you.” Her face fell and she opened her hands demonstratively.
“No instrument, and my work isn’t really campfire material. It’s mostly horror.”
“Is that a large market in Baldur’s Gate?”
“Rich people love hearing about things that could kill them. I suppose it’s a lot like being a very old vampire, where the idea of death is so foreign that it’s a novelty.”
“Have you spoken to many vampires?”
“One.”
“I’m not even an old elf, darling, nor a proper vampire.”
“If I don’t make up romantic lies about the supernatural then I will also explode.” She closed her eyes and settled again, so Astarion took the opportunity to remove the lute that he’d exchanged for a meeting with the Harpy from his pack. Alfira hadn’t breathed a word about their agreement to Trinity, which meant that he’d been hanging on to the heavy thing for the whole walk back: and it was worth it, to see the fascinating way her hands settled on it before she even realised what it was.
He snorted when she finally realised what she was holding, her eyes flying open in surprise. “Apparently I’m completely unable to dissuade you of your incorrect, although flattering, notion of vampires, but I can solve the no instrument problem.”
“Astarion, where did you—A-Alfira, right?” she asked, sitting up (a pity as his leg once again forgot warmth). “She had a spare?”
“Indeed and I thought, what better application for it than in the hands of the most famous person in our terrible little brood?” She opened her mouth, but he held up his hand. “And before you even say it, yes I’m counting Wyll.”
“Flirt,” she accused breathily. “If I’m well known, it’s only among other tieflings.”
“Please, darling, I may not be an artist but I firmly believe that if people are hungry for something only you can provide then that’s a sort of power even if they don’t want to know what your name is.” Her fingers twitched again, before she remembered that she had an outlet for her restlessness now: without looking or seeming to really think about it at all, she strummed out a fast set of disjointed notes as if to remind herself that she could.
“Careful: if you’re nice to me I’ll just keep coming back, and no one likes a sentimental bard,” she warned with a fond smile, turning to avoid the directness of his gaze. She always chose the oddest times to be shy, although he knew he was impatient for the barest indication that she preferred him. At least with that awareness he could pretend he was less annoyed that she was so slow to just give him what he wanted. “You didn’t have to do this, you know.”
“Oh I’m aware. I was under the impression that this was part of the friendship thing you and Wyll go on about.” It was simply easier for her and Wyll, who hadn’t been conditioned to distrust and disdain the very idea of allowing someone to get close to you because it was technically polite. Astarion was frequently told that he ought to be nicer for the sake of being nicer, but what would that do but make him either a gullible sap who ran himself ragged for the entertainment of ingrates like that gods awful Mayrina girl, or even more vulnerable than he already was?
With Trinity, he could at least confidently say that he wanted her companionship. He didn’t need it, but now that he was enjoying his freedom he was exercising the novel notion that he was entitled to chase what he wanted simply because he wanted it, and needed no other reason to pursue his own goals and desires after so long tending to the whims Cazador. If it so happened to require him to play her game and pretend to be a better adjusted person than he actually was, then fine; he did it for his own reasons, not because he was obligated to by her or anyone else.
“It’s just very sweet of you, which makes me a little nervous. No offence.”
“None taken.” Trinity was smart enough to understand him even if he was still unravelling his own motivations. She knew how their play-pretend worked. “Perhaps I just want you to like me best.”
Another series of notes, more purposeful this time although sinister: she had said that she specialised in horror, though, so he tried not to take it as commentary. “You didn’t need to get me a present for that,” she teased, leaning over to kiss his cheek.
He felt the same shiver he did when he saw the sunrise, or when he absently noted that it was usually the time of night that Cazador would have sent him out for food; the heady thrill of the forbidden, the certainty that while this pleasure may have turned to ashes in his hands before, he need only play pretend for a little while to clutch it now.