Chapter Text
The neighbors said it was a tragedy, the day the Paladin returned to Baldur’s Gate a walking shadow. To be so young and to lose your True Love, what a sorrow to see it.
The neighbors said the Paladin’s True Love had been an oak tree of a Druid, far older than the Paladin—but that wasn’t a scandalous thing necessarily, especially for elven kind. None of the neighbors had met this True Love, of course, but word was the two had met when the Paladin had been sent by the Duke himself to find a way to cleanse the Waste.
The neighbors said the Paladin—a very friendly, proper young half-elf fellow—had joined forces with many strong, capable allies. But like so many very friendly, proper young folk before him, the Paladin and his strong, capable allies had failed, and only he had returned home to Baldur’s Gate.
But the Waste was an old problem, the neighbors agreed. Every year the Waste expanded just a little bit more. Every year more people abandoned their homes for fear of being swallowed whole. In a hundred years a country’s worth of towns, villages and farmland had been transformed into the Wilds, the only border between Baldur’s Gate and the Waste.
Coppices turned to impenetrable hedges, scrub brush and meadows turned into forests as farmhouses, cottages, and barns fell apart. Abandoned dogs and cats joined the wolves and other beasts in the Wilds, trapped between the Waste even they had sense to fear, and the city of Baldur’s Gate they shied from.
The trouble with old problems is that life goes on regardless, even if it struggles every step of the way. The first few decades when the Waste was new, the loss of those fecund lands had made Baldur’s Gate grow lean and hungry. The city had turned to debt to feed it’s many mouths, begging and bartering for the other jewels of the Sword Coast to send aid in food and arms. It had taken decades of Waterdeep and Neverwinter growing fat on the Gate’s distress for them to rouse to the danger of the Waste’s maw, to realize like a reveler waking from a drunken stupor that if Baldur’s Gate fell to the Waste, Waterdeep or Neverwinter would not be far behind if nothing was done.
So it was not from callousness that the neighbors seemed uncaring of the Paladin’s failure. Baldur’s Gate had only known the taste of failure these last one hundred years. Failure was expected, though his attempt was lauded. The Waste was a constant, a given. No, what they cared about was that the Paladin was still young himself, no where near his first half of a century when he had at least two centuries to look forward to.
Certainly young enough to find a new love!
Many tried at first, after the appropriate mourning period. But the Paladin—whose smile was sweet but whose eyes were sad—seemed wholly unaffected by all those who tried for his hand.
So many tried. Young and old, rich and poor, woman and man, to no avail. It was like his heart was locked away, and no key or spell could claim it.
Another beautiful thing lost to the Waste, the neighbors moaned. And one so young and handsome.
The Paladin had a name, of course, and that name was Tav. Tav put away his sword and shield, and did not seem to mind the gossip of his neighbors. He was a great collector of books, and opened a bookstore in first floor shop front of the two-story house he moved into. He spent his days dusting and curating and reorganizing the books, and did not appear to sell very many of them.
Each day marched on much the same as the others and he might have continued on like that all the rest of his days had it not been for the first baby.
In Faerun—where Longstrider Boots and Wishes really exist—opening a front door to pick up the milk only to find a baby in a basket was not the most unusual way to become a parent, but it was not what Tav had expected that morning.
The baby was a high-elf infant with moon-white fuzz on the top of his head like a dandelion’s kiss and bright eyes of a stormy gray. Embroidered on the starry blanket that wrapped him was “Astarion”.
And so, that became his name, seeing at the basket offered no other information.
‘Trouble will follow this one like a summer’s storm,’ the old folks warned Tav, ‘just look at those eyes!’
Tav was afraid he had to agree for Astarion was a difficult baby. Nothing seemed to sooth him: not bottle, nor soft touch, nor whispered word. The healer promised that there was nothing physically wrong with him, he just had to cry it out. Another adult might have been at their wit’s end, but Tav nodded and with the patience of a mountain kept his vigil over Astarion.
The second child came nearly a year later.
Astarion was now old enough to pull himself up and walk around, and worse, old enough to grab things and pull them DOWN. The needy baby was growing into a quick and needy child, curious and impulsive. Tav had his hands full already when he opened his door to find a young half-elf toddler with night-dark hair.
She was old enough to have words, one of them being her name. ‘Jenevelle,’ she repeated, with the certainty of a small child lovingly taught. But Jenevelle didn’t have any memory of the names of her parents, or where she had come from or who had brought her here. She had a fear of dogs and a terrible looking scar on her hand that Tav fussed over quite a bit, which made the baby Astarion jealous with rage.
Well, the neighbors gossiped, how interesting that another child should be left on Tav’s door! And what a matching pair! An elf boy with hair as bright as the moon, a half-elf girl with hair as dark as night.
It seemed very auspicious.
It was the third child that sent the neighbors into a tizzy, for a year after Jenevelle arrived Tav opened his door to find an egg on his front step!
An egg! A large one at that! Tav went to his books of nature and medicine, trying to determine what manner of egg it was. It was large enough to be an owlbear egg, but it had the coloration of a dragon’s egg, perhaps?
He tried to keep it warm, wrapped in hot water bottles and damp blankets. Just in case.
It was Astarion who noticed the first crack, though Tav would wonder if Astarion—with his impulsive need to touch and poke and prod—hadn’t caused the crack in the first place.
One crack became two which became a spider’s web of cracks, until a tiny fist with sharp claws punched through the egg shell.
Tav had heard of githyanki but had never met or seen one before. Washed and bundled in a blanket, she looked nothing like the other children, and Astarion and Jenevelle were young enough to notice most cruelly.
“She looks like a toad. Or a frog,” Jenevelle sneered.
“Frog! Frog!” Astarion said as he kept trying to grab the squirming baby. Tav was able to block even his sneakiest attempts so far.
“Stop that!” he ordered when they continued to shriek at the ‘frog-baby’. “This is your new sister, and you will love her.”
Jenevelle had turned her pert nose up at that, stubborn as the night was long. “I don’t like her,” she decided then and there.
“Frog!” Astarion giggled—he was still at the age were words were hilarious. “Frog frog frog—”
Tav sighed, sure that he was at his wit’s end with three children in barely three years time.
When Astarion had arrived, Tav had thrown all of his knowledge and ability into trying to find the baby’s family. He did the same when Jenevelle showed up, and the same with Lae’zel (a name he found in a book about the githyanki which seemed to suit the small baby with an impossibly strong grip, sharp teeth and nails). But he could find nothing, not the slightest hint of who they belonged to or where they had come from. It made his heart ache that someone might be missing their child and unable to find them.
Tav swore he would never stop trying to find the children’s families, that should the day come he would give them back willingly, knowing that he had done all he could for the child in the time he had with them.
He tried to not get too attached to the children. He should have known better.
Astarion’s arrival planted a seed in his heart. Jenevelle planted another seed of the same kind, and Lae’zel after her. The three strands grew like ironwood, fierce and loyal and protective. They spread like the tendrils of cat briar, strong enough to choke if not minded, sharp enough to pierce if one tried to hold on too tight. It was love; a new kind of love, so different from the kind he had lost. It delighted in the children, it was exasperated by their squabbling, it feared for their safety. It was all-consuming and terrifying.
But he had been a Paladin, even with his sword and shield put away. He would not shirk from that which he was tasked to do.
And Fate spun along as it should…