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Before, home is a tower overlooking the glittering water in the city of splendor. He spent daylight hours studying on his balcony, tugging on the strands of the Weave he could feel draped over his shoulders like a cloak or a blanket. Night was spent in their bed. His bed, although he never thought of anything as his when she was there to share it with him.
After… he isn’t sure. Home may well be a crater he leaves behind when the darkness in his chest gets to be too much and sunders the earth and sky. A pile of ash, perhaps, that some animal will walk over and track around the world or whatever’s left of it.
So he’s here, stuck somewhere in between before and after, and home is a clearing in the woods they call camp. He thinks calling it camp is generous indeed. A collection of things stolen or picked up off corpses strewn along the seaside they’ve found themselves in. A bedroll, a tent, and whatever they’ve been picking up from the various ruins they’ve trudged through. He craves his library of books, the endless supply of something to read or study or flip through. Something to bury himself in by the campfire so he doesn’t have to think about before, and because he doesn’t have the courage to think about after.
He can’t tell whether the others are struggling as he is. There is so much more to worry about than simply going home, whatever home even means now. He keeps his thoughts and his secret to himself. And then Mira hands him a book she pulls off a skeleton in the ancient ruin they break into and something stirs deep inside him.
He’s looked at her before, seen her before, but she’s so close now. Her eyes are a deep brown just like his. There are deep, dark circles around her eyes. The soft points at the tips of her ears are almost obscured by her flat and greasy hair. She looks tired and dusty and hungry and so perfectly mortal. He had caught a glimpse of his reflection in a puddle of rainwater just outside of the ruin and was suddenly reminded that he’s just a mortal too. Mortal and wanting a place or time to settle into, despite the situation he finds himself in. Mortal and looking for something to call home. The book in her outstretched hand feels like the beginning of that. The beginning of something, of somewhere.
The edge of the mark the orb left on his chest is visible through the opening of his robes. This moment is too full of something (hope?) for him to ruin it with the glaring reminder of his biggest folly. He adjusts his collar to hide what he can and accepts the book from her hands.
“You seem like the bookish type,” she says. “Hope that’s a good enough bedtime story for you.”
“I’ll be sure to let you know my very detailed review,” he says.
When she smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkle just a little. He feels an impact in his chest, like someone’s hit him, like someone’s pushed the orb deeper until it sits right beside his feebly beating heart.
The book is in a dead language. It will take immense effort to translate it. He welcomes the difficulty of the task, his fingers hovering over the faded ink on yellowing pages, not daring to touch with his dirty hands. He imagines himself in his tower, the warm glow of the firelight bouncing off the stone walls, the stacks and stacks of books surrounding him as he settled in for another night of research. There’s a slight twinge as his tadpole shifts behind his eye and that heavy darkness in his chest makes itself known. He remembers that he can never go home again.
Mira gives him more books, with intention. And he accepts intentionally. She wants to help. He wants to be helped. He sees her flip through books on cracked and broken tables in the derelict village they find, reading a little before tucking the book into her pack or leaving it in the ruins of what used to be someone’s home. She only gives him books he doesn’t already have in his new collection. He catches her looking at him as he sets up camp, placing the books into careful stacks in and around his cobbled together tent. Her gaze is heavy at first, almost tangible. Slowly, it lightens when he realizes he isn’t being watched, he’s being watched over.
His little stack of books becomes two stacks. He wants to share something with her too. So he tells her. Tells the party, but it’s her hand he guides to his chest and her palm that touches the darkness that presses up behind his rib cage. Something flutters in his core, utterly unfamiliar, as the words leave his lips. He thinks of Mystra. He can feel the goddess in between the air particles that shift around as he speaks and reveals his secret to this fresh new person who accepts him like it’s nothing at all. A sense of calm falls over him like a warm summer rain, a sense of security. Safety. Like being home, perhaps.
Somewhere in between heartbreak and falling back in love, Gale’s corner of camp is slowly being built up out of odds and ends he’s found on the journey. He has a few more books. A little table. A pot of ink. She hands him a pair of gloves he watched her loot from a dead body near the Grove. He can feel the aura of power around the worn leather as he takes it and feeds the ever hungry thing he let into his body.
“Here.” Another artifact, an enchanted necklace this time. Her hand touches his during the exchange. He feels it again, the pressure in his chest, and he tells himself it’s only the orb hungering for the power contained in the precious metal in his hands.
“Thank you,” he tells her, and he says a lot more besides, his mouth running as fast as ever. She only smiles and nods. Between them, she’s the one who acts as though she’s been sequestered in a tower alone with only a tressym for company for a year. He’s conscious of his speech, the words he chooses carefully, the gray hairs peeking through the brown over his ears. He feels like he’s trying too hard. He feels like he isn’t trying hard enough.
“Here.” A pair of boots this time, a spark of something passing from one shoe to the other, a shimmer of magic in the air just above the heels.
“Thank you. But I don’t feel the call of the orb just yet. We have some time before I need another artifact.”
“I know,” she says, her eyes steady on his face. “These are for you to wear.”
“Oh.” He’s speechless. A rare enough occurrence. About as rare as someone giving him a gift. He pulls the worn, muddy old boots off his feet and sets them down by his tent. Puts on the new boots. They pinch his toes just a little. But there’s more support in the soles.
To his horror, his eyes prickle with tears. He takes his time lacing up the new boots.
“You could use a pair of gloves too,” she says, almost to herself, her eyes scanning his hands, going up his arms, to his shoulders, lingering on the lines the orb left on his chest when it burned its way into his body and ruined everything. Her eyes snap back up to his face before he can hide how closely he’s been watching her. “I’ll keep a look out,” she adds, trailing into silence.
“I—thank you. I appreciate it. Very much.”
She’s already halfway toward her next task, another person to help, another decision to make. But she pauses and gives him a small smile.
She does come back with gloves, and a new set of robes, and another stack of old books. A telescope, barely used and only requiring the most basic tuning. He moves things around to make space for newer things. Stacks become bigger. The corner of the camp he calls his own starts to look like something he can call home.
Somewhere in between belonging and not quite, Gale looks through his new/old telescope and sees the same stars he used to see from his tower.
“What are you looking for?” She’s standing just outside of his space, waiting to be invited or dismissed.
He wants to invite her in but when he pulls away from the telescope, he feels a shimmer in the air that catches in his throat. The pull of Mystra, the magnetic draw of her magic that flits between the moments of a command leaving his brain and turning into action. It gives him pause. She’s here, in this camp in the woods in the exact middle of nowhere. She’s everywhere, all the time. Gale feels the press of her gaze and all the hair on his body stands on end. He focuses his eyes on Mira, trying to keep his mind from drifting down strands of Weave that he can always feel calling him back. The dark circles around her eyes. The dirt under her chewed up fingernails. All the ways that she’s as tired and as scared and as temporary as he is, trying to turn this place into something slightly less temporary.
“Nothing in particular,” he tells her. “Perhaps I’m trying to soak in the stars before we go to the Underdark.”
She looks up, exposing her neck. His eyes linger. He can see a vein pressing up against her skin. It fills him with an unexpected surge of want. He hasn’t felt anything close since Mystra turned him away.
“Come,” he says, quickly, before she can move on to the next task, the next problem, the next member of their motley little party. “Take a look.”
She approaches. Her demeanor is cautious always, even at camp and with the spells and traps set around their space to make it as safe as they can. Her hair has been washed recently, it falls in loose curls around her face and over her shoulders. At camp, she wears a sleeveless shirt and he can see the bones of her shoulder blades as she puts her hands on the telescope to steady it and peers through.
He steps up behind her, tilting the scope up and to the right. She smells like woodsmoke and grass. Warm and earthy. A shiver runs through him. He takes a careful step back and gives her and himself some more space.
“Wow,” she says. Her voice is light, quiet, like the stars she’s looking at. “I’ve never seen a sky like this before.”
“Neither have I. One of the few benefits of roughing it outside of the city.”
“Do you miss it?” she asks. “The city.”
He looks away, at the fallen stack of books inside his tent. The candelabra precariously balanced on the dirt too close to a pile of scrolls he hasn’t categorized yet. His extra boots. A wrinkled set of robes.
“Yes,” he says, haltingly. “I do. I miss my home, my tower, my things. Out here I have felt… untethered.”
She pulls away from the telescope and nods but doesn’t say anything. Cautious as ever, careful, as if afraid she will scare him away. He wants to tell her that he isn’t so easily offended, that she can speak and he will listen, that he wants to run his fingers through her hair and feel the strands slip over his hand like magic but he bites his tongue.
His patience is rewarded. She looks at the marks on his chest and says, “Me too.”
“Your generous gifts have helped immensely,” he says quickly, to reassure her. Something about the way she’s standing, tilted slightly away from him as if she’s about to take off, makes him speak fast, to tether her as she has tethered him to this place and time instead of floating away in memory of the goddess. He puts a hand on the telescope and then takes it off, realizing she’s still holding onto it and having his hands on the same instrument as hers feels almost intimate.
“I’m glad,” she says, and when she meets his eyes, she smiles and the corners of her eyes crinkle and he feels that thing in his chest slam against his rib cage and the flutter low in his belly. And he isn’t sure if it’s his heart or the orb or some other thing.
He puts his hand back on the telescope, next to hers. Above, the same stars that glittered down onto his tower in the city are also glittering down here in this clearing in the woods, and will glitter down in their next camp, wherever that will be. He’ll haul his books and his instruments and his artifacts. She’ll move on to the next task, or the next problem, the next member of their motley little party. He’ll stand at the threshold of his little tent with his things and watch her go, and he’ll think about home.