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THIS IS USUALLY where Maz says goodbye. Taverns. With another job done, heavy coins divided evenly across pouches secured on various parts on her person, and a spring in her step, Maz always ends her stay in another no-name town in Silmaria on a high. And this is what the half-orc rogue likes seeing before she goes: the pulse of a place with the clatter of silverware and the sloshing of alcohol, where townsfolk come to rest at the end of the day, to celebrate their little successes, to laugh, to share, to sing.
But it’s a bit different tonight. For the first time in months, Maz isn’t sitting among strangers, a hearty laugh on her lips as she partakes in a final drinking game or gets pulled into yet another embrace that her body will forget mere days from now. Tonight, on her last night in Ogmit, she won’t be leaving alone. Tomorrow is another day, and she’ll be seeing that next sunrise with… friends. If she can call them that.
(And after everything they’ve been through—encountering strange priests in underground caves; retrieving blessed water and seeing stone melt away to reveal a new friend’s gentle, strong-willed mother; saving children from shadowy forces behind their control; and learning that the man she’s been looking for is gone, but that she’s closer to finding him than ever before—she thinks that she can.)
It was a warm evening when The Brave Nimrods entered The Tipsy Barrel earlier, but the beer is cold in Maz’s hand when Deis hands the tankard to her, gracefully balancing the tray of drinks in her hand with cheerful tavern keeper conversation.
He-Can settles in at their little booth, a grin on the long-haired monk’s face as he clinks his tankard with hers, and Maz grins back, trying (mostly successfully) to avoid looking at his very exposed chest.
Ialug doesn’t drink, but the reassuring presence of the seven-foot-tall suit of armor fills the table, just as their elven wizard Tanith takes the seat across Maz and reaches for the ice-cold beer in front of her, green-eyed gaze traveling across the room.
And that’s when they hear the sound of strumming from the front of the room—a sound that Maz follows to Kalil el Mostana in his red scarf, an easy smile on his lips.
A light, surprised chuckle escapes her lips: Oh, so he’ll be performing tonight.
There’s a casualness in the bard’s posture that feels strange and new to her; Kalil pleased with himself after a long day of battling monsters or clever conversation is different from the person in front of her, his long fingers resting on the neck of his lute, warmth in his dark eyes as he smiles. Because there’s Kalil, self-proclaimed leader of The Brave Nimrods, proud and talkative and dramatic, and there’s this Kalil: confident and self-assured yet at ease, as if this is exactly where he’s supposed to be.
There’s a little banter, of course; it wouldn’t be Kalil without banter. “No familiar faces here, save for the people I came with,” he begins easily as he glances up at the crowd. “That’s a shame—I guess I’ll have to impress you folks all over again.”
But then he grins, the smile brightening up his handsome face, and Maz, unthinkingly, grins too, brushing her curly hair out of her purple eyes and resting her chin in her hand.
Then he begins to play.
From the very first notes, Maz realizes that she knows this song. Baba loves love stories, and this is one she has known almost longer than she has known her own name. A song known across Silmaria, the neighboring country of Gransys, and beyond: The Tragedy of Elraen and Helastina, a ballad about star-crossed lovers.
(As if on cue, in Maz’s memory, Baba turns to his wife and says, “Like you and me,” and Mama rolls her eyes, her lips curving into a smile around her tusks, but her hand reaching fondly for his, squeezing.)
Song and poetry are Silmaria’s lifeblood, and though Maz has never been a musician herself, this is as much a part of her life, her home, her family as she is.
So as Kalil sings at the front of tavern, his voice a little husky, eyes fluttering closed, she remembers summer nights with her mother’s family under the stars: lithe Faiza on her lute by the fire, glancing up to where Maz and her parents are seated on tasseled cushions. Baba is out of place around Mama’s family, his tan skin and shorter stature marking him as different just as much as his lack of tusks, but he isn’t looking at them; instead, he’s looking at Maz as she sings the melody in a high, clear voice. Baba harmonizes with her in his low voice, twinkling eyes meeting hers. Following her every note, letting her eyes—her mother’s eyes—anchor him in time and space, warm and sure.
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WHAT KALIL PLAYS isn’t the song of her childhood, not completely. The full Tragedy of Elraen and Helastina is a sweeping tale, and at festivals in her hometown of Eridu, the Gate City, performers turn it into a competition of who can make it come alive best. Sometimes dancers take the stage as the bards tell the story in its whole, heart-wrenching glory; other times, surprises unfold at every other verse, with guest performers from across the land coming to make their mark on a song that has been around far longer than they have.
What Kalil does with the song is different.
Without riqs and drums and ouds to fill the space, his rendition is nearly sparse. Simple—not a word that she has come to associate with this song.
But when his voice fills the room, it’s rich and warm—not the polished perfection that she expects from renditions of this story, but emotional and raw and real in a way that she doesn’t quite know what to do with.
Somehow it fits, that under his fingers, on his tongue, the song returns to what it should be: a simple love story. A tale of when darkness and light meet, and rather than destroying each other, complete each other.
As Maz listens, she suddenly misses her family, the ache in her heart sharpening at the thought of all the summers that have passed without them. She feels a warm prickling at the back of her eyes before steadfastly blinking it away, her thumb brushing across her lips to steady her. One person’s voice shouldn’t make her miss her family more than she has in months, and yet, and yet —
Then from the back of the room, she hears the thin, reedy sound of one person singing along, and her head lifts to see a middle-aged man at the far end of the tavern joining the ballad.
It’s funny and brave, believing that you can add to perfection—and perfect is what Kalil’s voice begins to feel like, the longer she listens to him. But that first addition is a dam breaking, and The Tipsy Barrel slowly comes alive in a different way from the night before.
When Maz turns to look around the rest of the tavern, the corners of her lips curve into a smile.
Because there’s Deis swaying to the music.
He-Can bobbing his head to the tune.
Tanith lost in thought, as if she can unravel the song to its essentials if she thinks about it just enough.
Ialug, seeing the movement in the room, seems to want to sway, too, but follows just a hair off-beat—so, making eye contact with him, Maz sways slowly, deliberately, inviting him to follow her lead, and the cleric does. Soon he’s swaying with the rhythm, and Maz gives him a big, cartoonish wink just as she joins the low hum of voices singing along, under her breath.
But then she looks up at Kalil, lost in the music, long eyelashes sweeping over his cheeks as his fingers dance along the strings, and the rest of the room falls away.
She doesn’t think about what this means, if it means anything at all, because there is a song to be sung. Because tonight, she’s surrounded by friends who feel like family—an odd, dysfunctional family, but family all the same. Tonight, she is singing along with a song that feels like home, and looking up at someone who almost feels like it. Tonight, she is in a place where she usually says goodbye, but instead she is saying hello, or thank you, or I’ll be back here one day, I promise.
So when Kalil departs from the melody, Maz takes up the thread in her high, clear voice, keeping the song going as his voice soars over the crowd, warm and sure.
And for a moment, just a moment, his gaze sweeping over hers, she thinks that he sees her—like, as she once felt on a summer night long, long ago, they are connected across time and space, too.
END