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Lae’zel is intense in everything she sets her mind to. That is your first impression of her. You don’t have much time to talk to her prior to the Absolute’s demise, but you’re observant enough to notice that something is going on between her and your daughter. They often sneak off together in the evenings. They probably think they’re being discrete, but the absence of Lae’zel’s whetstone shrieking across the campsite is impossible to miss. Shadowheart eats breakfast with you and Emmeline when you wake up before the food is served, but on the mornings you emerge late from the tent she’s pitched you, she and Lae’zel are always sitting together near the fire, heads bent together in conversation. Lae’zel never approaches you though. She never joins the three of you together. Maybe things between them aren’t serious enough, but it leaves you worried that she doesn’t think she’s welcome. That maybe Shadowheart doesn’t think so either.
It's true that Lae’zel wasn’t who you’d imagined for your daughter when she was a child and you and Emmeline used to talk late at night about who you thought she’d become, but as far as you’re concerned, that’s down to your own lack of imagination more than anything else. You imagined an ordinary life for her, when she was always going to be extraordinary.
You think about bringing it up more than once, but the way Shadowheart avoids your eyes when she looks at you tells you she isn’t ready for a conversation like that. You’re still getting to know each other.
It isn’t until after the battle in the High City that she comes to you, spattered with blood, looking nearly dead. She kneels just inside your tent, her hands twisting together in her lap. When you think back on the conversation, you will suspect that she intentionally waited until Emmeline was asleep, perhaps unable to face the possibility of disappointing both of you at once.
“I’ve been wanting to talk with you about something.” She stares off to the side of the tent as she says it. “I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with you since you’ve been at camp.”
You fill an iron mug with water from the carafe next to your bedroll and set it in front of her. “Go on.”
“Well…” She hesitates. “When we go away together to look for a place to settle, there’s someone I want to come with us.”
You push the water a little closer to her. She glances at it and then looks away again. You recognized the expression of fear on her face from when she was a child. In some ways, it feels like a hundred years have passed, and in other ways, it’s like no time at all.
“Who?” you ask gently.
“You know Lae’zel. The… the gith? I’m sorry, I should have told you sooner.” She sets her jaw, like she’s expecting to be met with anger. You remind yourself with a stab of regret that it’s what she’s used to.
You lean towards her, cover her nervous hands with yours. “Think nothing of it.” You cup her cheek and wait for her to finally meet your eyes. “Truth be told, we suspected.” You nod towards Emmeline. “We have already discussed it. We knew you would come to us when the time was right.”
Shadowheart blinks at you. “You knew?”
You chuckle as you let your hand slip away. You pour your own mug of water. “The two of you have made a habit of going missing at all the same times. What else were we to think?”
“And you aren’t upset?” the water sloshes against the sides of the mug as she picks it up with both hands.
“That you didn’t tell us?” you ask. “Why would we be? You needed time and for these last forty years, we have had nothing but.”
“And you don’t care that she’s a gith?”
You shrug. “We have no quarrel with the gith. It’s a bit unusual, but everything about your life has been.” You watch for her to relax, but she doesn’t. She’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop. “The most important thing to your mother and I is your happiness. When we were prisoners, we didn’t expect to escape. All we hoped for was that you would break free. That you would have the chance to live life on your own terms. That’s what the Moon Maiden teaches. We won’t stand in the way of it.”
Shadowheart looks away again, wipes away a tear. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“Don’t be.” You set your mug aside and pull her into a hug.
At first, she melts into it the way she used to as a child. Then suddenly, she tenses. She hisses and pulls her arm into her chest, her hand clenched into a fist. You tighten your hold her on her and cover her afflicted hand with your own as something in your chest twists with guilt.
You hold her until she pulls away, her cheeks shiny with tears that she hastily brushes away.
You feel hollowed, but you won’t make that her problem. Shadowheart has made her choice, and she’s impressed on you that she doesn’t regret it. What you wanted for her doesn’t matter now.
“Tell Lae’zel that she is welcome with us.”
Lae’zel isn’t just intense. She’s determined, single-minded, and stubborn. She wears heavy armor every day, even though there’s no longer any reason to think you’ll be attacked. Every word she says sounds like a threat. It would be easy to find her grating, but Shadowheart smiles at her like she wants nothing more than to look at her, and on the rare occasion that you catch Lae’zel smiling back, you can almost feel the warmth radiating off her.
The second day on the road, you pitch camp on a promising piece of land, a stretch of prairie where the nearest dwellings are small on the horizon. When the sun sets, the stars seem to go on forever.
While the rest of you busy yourselves making a fire and pitching tents, Lae’zel wanders out into the meadow, her head tilted towards the sky.
“That’s where she’s from,” Shadowheart says as she stacks stones around the firepit you dug with precision.
“Where?”
Shadowheart nods toward the stars. “She grew up on an asteroid.”
“Oh.” You raise your eyebrows and glance over your shoulder at her. You don’t know much about gith. You thought they all lived on the astral plane.
“You can go ask her about it,” Shadowheart says. You get the distinct impression that she’s pushing you to get to know Lae’zel. You want that as well, but you haven’t yet figured out how to approach her.
“Go on,” she says. “After months of camping, I hardly need help starting a fire.”
So you nod and you go.
Lae’zel whirls around, on hand reaching for the person-sized sword strapped to her shoulder, as you approach. When she realizes who you are, she doesn’t apologize. She merely drops her hand back to her side.
“Do you need something?”
Lae’zel has been all business every time you’ve spoken to her these past days. It almost feels unnatural starting a conversation of a personal nature with her. You decide to jump right in.
“Shadowheart tells me you were brought up amongst the stars.”
“Yes.” Lae’zel looks back up at the sky. “Creche K’liir. That is where I was trained for a lifetime of service in Vlaakith’s army.” She sounds so bitter that you’re surprised she doesn’t spit in the grass after saying Vlaakith’s name.
“Not the source of many happy memories, I take it.”
Lae’zel clasps her hands behind her back, a soldier’s stance. “I was the best of my clutch-mates in both my studies and my combat prowess. However…” She trails off. For a moment, you think maybe she’s thought better of sharing these things with you. “However, the things I studied were lies and my skills were used to against those whose greatest crimes were mere lack of utility.”
You’ve only encountered a single gith before, and you were both being tortured by Sharrans at the time so you weren’t in a position to ask questions about githyanki culture. But they aren’t known for their willingness to question their queen.
“So this is a point of common experience between you and my daughter. I’m sorry to here it.”
“Yes,” Lae’zel says. “We spent far too long at one another’s knife points before recognizing ourselves in each other. She tried to slit my throat the very first week.” She glances over her shoulder towards the fire, her eyes shining with pride.
You push the memories of her knife to Emmeline’s neck to the back of your mind and blink away the tears they threating to bring to your eyes. You turn and watch Shadowheart prop the large, green egg she and Lae’zel have been carrying beside Emmeline in front of the fire.
If Lae’zel notices that you’ve become distracted, she doesn’t say anything.
“Fortunate that the two of you moved past that.”
“I was not raised to pull a dagger I was not ready to use. If it had been me, I would not have hesitated.” Lae’zel pauses, lets the moment of silence hang in the air. “So I suppose we are all of us fortunate that it wasn’t.”
“Yes, thank Selûne for that.” You look back up at the sky. “I gather none of us are the same people we were the last time we stood freely beneath the stars.”
“This is the first I have ever been free.”
“I am hopeful—”
You’re cut off by Shadowheart’s cry. When you turn around, she’s clenching her fist to her chest. Shar has been tormenting her incessantly since your reunion.
By the time you take a step towards her, Lae’zel his halfway there. She kneels down beside her. Instead of seeking solace though, Shadowheart doubles over, her nose nearly touching the ground. Lae’zel raises a hand, but hesitates before placing it on her shoulder. She’s nervous, pained.
You ache to comfort your daughter, but you get the sense you shouldn’t interrupt. The last time you had her, she depended on you and Emmeline for everything. You remind yourself that she’s lived four fifths of her life without you. It’s natural to her to reach out to you for reassurance that she doesn’t remember ever receiving.
When Shadowheart hastily excuses herself and leaves the small but sturdy little house the two of you and Lae’zel put together, it takes you a minute to realize it was the sight of your crooked fingers that set of her off.
“Please, let me,” you tell Lae’zel, who is halfway out of her seat and looking just as confused as you initially felt.
You find Shadowheart in the meadow beyond the newly planted vegetable garden. She doesn’t turn even though she must hear you approaching.
“I think I might go home. I’m… not feeling well.”
“You don’t have to leave.”
She whirls around to look at you, her eyes wide with surprise. She was probably expecting Lae’zel. Then she turns back around. The lights of her own house twinkle in the distance.
“You should go back inside. It’s cold.”
“If you’ll come with me.” Your breath billows out in front of you like smoke from the foundry when you speak.
She sighs and hangs her head. You wait for her to answer, but she doesn’t. When you set a hand on her shoulder, she tenses.
“Please come have dinner. Your mother trapped the rabbits herself.”
She’s silent again for a long time. When she does speak, her voice cracks. “I know I did that to your hands.”
This time, you’re the one who doesn’t speak. You don’t know whether she remembers it or whether she guessed correctly, but whatever the method, she’s landed on the truth. The hands now clutching her sides broke each of your fingers several times over.
“It wasn’t really you.”
“Yes, it was,” she whispers. “I can… I can feel myself doing it.” She shudders and draws away from you. Your hand falls to your side.
“You didn’t know who we were,” you say. “You didn’t remember who you were.”
“And I still don’t,” she answers. “I don’t remember my time with you any more now than I did then. I hardly remember anything from before the nautiloid. Only the memories Shar chose to leave me.”
“Then you only remember the worst parts of yourself.” You take a step forward and peer over at her face.
“But I still did all those things,” Shadowheart says miserably. “The Mother Superior may have given the orders, but when I followed them, it wasn’t her wearing my face. I did it. For no reason but that I wanted her approval. I don’t know how you can even look at me.”
You restrain yourself from reaching out to touch her again. “When I look at you, I don’t see the face of an interrogator or a torturer. I see only the face of my daughter.”
It’s not completely true, strictly speaking. You do sometimes remember her scowl as she slid a knife between your fingers and demanded you renounce Selûne, or the sneer when she locked eyes with you as she made Emmeline scream. But Shadowheart will never know that. It’s a parent’s job to hide truths their children aren’t ready for.
“You were merely Shar’s tool. You were no more responsible than the blade you wielded.”
“A blade doesn’t make decisions. I agreed to do everything they asked of me, over and over again.” Her voice is shaking now. She’s clenching the sides of her shirt so tightly her knuckles are white.
“And they made sure you had only enough information to push you toward the decisions they wanted you to make,” you reply. “It wasn’t just to torture you that they took your memories so many times. If they’d left you too much of yourself, you would have broken free of their grasp.”
A sob wracks her body. You take a step toward her. When she doesn’t pull away again, you rest your hand between her shoulder blades.
“I can’t believe I was such a fool.”
“No mortal could ever hope to match a goddess.”
You stand with her, feeling her back heave as she silently cries. You heart is screaming to draw her in, but there is a danger in giving her too much too soon.
“I would have allowed you to take every single one of my fingers, every single one of my toes, if it meant standing under the stars with you again. And I would have harbored you no ill will over it. Having you here is nothing short of a blessing from Selûne.”
Her intake of breath is harsh. “You can’t possibly believe that.”
“Why not? Is it so hard to believe that you could be worth that much to us?”
“Yes,” she answers. Her breathing is rushed and erratic. She covers her face with her hands.
“You’re my child,” you tell her. “When the egg hatches, you will understand. There is nothing we would not sacrifice for you.”
Shadowheart takes a shuddering breath.
“Come back inside.”
“I will,” she agrees. “I need a moment.”
You nod. “Should I send out Lae’zel?”
“No,” she says. “I only need a moment. Then I’ll come back. I promise.”
It’s nearly dawn when the egg starts hatching. You wake up to pounding on your door that’s so loud you think a think I storm has hit.
Shadowheart looks dazed as she leads you across the meadow between your house and hers. She keeps getting ahead of you and having to stop and wait. You can tell she wants to be walking faster, but Emmeline’s hips have been bothering her.
“Go on, we know the way,” you finally tell her. For once, she doesn’t argue.
By the time you arrive, the egg has a large crack down the side with a few smaller ones jutting off of it.
“It’s already closer than when I left to get you,” Shadowheart tells you without looking up.
She’s kneeling next to Lae’zel, who, for the first time since you met her, is not wearing armor or war paint. It’s jarring, how small she looks without it.
She’s nervous. As impassive as Lae’zel tries present herself, she has one of the most expressive faces you’ve ever seen. You remember the feeling. You wanted children, but in the moments just before becoming a parent, you were paralyzed with the thought that you’d gotten yourself in hopelessly over your head.
You help Emmeline get settled at the kitchen table and put on a kettle for tea.
“Lae’zel.” You nod towards the door. “A moment? If you don’t mind.”
Lae’zel looks over at Shadowheart.
“I don’t think it’s going to hatch before the sun rises,” she says. “I’ll come get you if something happens.”
Lae’zel hesitates, but then she nods and stands up, follows you out the door and into the garden, where her whetstone sits among Shadowheart’s softly glowing night orchids. Sometimes you can hear her sharpening her swords from inside your kitchen.
“You wish to speak with me.” She comes to a stop with her hands clasped behind her back. She looks as if she expecting you to give her orders to march into a battle she has no hope of winning.
“Yes.” You sit down on the crude bench you made for the garden. You don’t expect Lae’zel to sit down beside you, and she doesn’t. “You know, I was terrified before Shadowheart was born.”
She looks at you blankly, so you continue.
“It’s normal to be nervous before the birth of your child.”
“Gith children are not born. They hatch.”
You nod, gratified that she at least made the connection to the hatching egg on her own. “Be that as it may, if you are feeling anxious, there is no shame in it.”
Lae’zel looks up at the sky. After a moment’s pause, she speaks. “I have defied Vlaakith, slaughtered the Chosen of three gods, been infected with a ghaik parasite, and lived to tell about it. Yet, about this, I feel… apprehensive. It is disconcerting.”
“It’s natural to be afraid,” you say, because you get the feeling this is not something she’s been told before. “Especially about becoming a parent.”
“That is what concerns me,” Lae’zel begins to pace back and forth in front of the bench. “I did not have parents. I was raised by a varsh and his sole duty was to train us to be soldiers by any means necessary. I do not even know what a parent does.”
“Did you have no one in the crèche who loved you?” you ask. “A family doesn’t have to be parents and a child.”
She stops pacing for a moment. “No. Those who follow Vlaakith do not know love. They know violence and brutal competition and death. We were burned and flayed and made to slaughter each other as part of our training. Until I landed here, I did not even truly believe in love.”
So this is what drew Shadowheart and Lae’zel to each other. A lifetime of being used as a tool by a ruthless pretender of a god, of receiving abuse from those who should have cared for them.
“Well, you have a place in our family,” you tell her. “If you want it. There is no denying that you and Shadowheart are devoted to each other.”
For the first time since she started pacing, Lae’zel looks at you, her eyes wide with disbelief. She looks so young without her paint. She’s hardly had time to figure out who she is and what she wants before being saddled with a child. But she and Shadowheart had been clear that they planned to raise it. You wonder whether how much of there decision came from some latent sense of duty, an impulse to self-sacrifice.
“I do want it.”
“Good.” You nod. “And of course, if the two of you need anything, we’re not a stone’s throw away. We do have some experience raising a child.”
Lae’zel goes back to her pacing without acknowledging you. You’ve noticed that she has difficulty accepting help even now.
“In fact, Emmeline and I would be grateful if you informed us when our help would be appreciated,” you add. “We were separated from Shadowheart for so much of her childhood.”
“Very well,” Lae’zel agrees. “I sense this is important to you.”
“Wonderful.” You clap your hands together and stand up. “Let’s go watch your egg hatch, shall we?”
“It’s is not my egg,” Lae’zel replies as she leads you back towards the door. “We took it from its crèche during our travels.” Shadowheart has told you all of this, but you let Lae’zel continue. “It was nearly destroyed for not hatching at the same time as the other eggs in the clutch.”
“How unfair,” you reply. “Being made to prove you deserve to live before you’re even born. I’m sorry,” you hastened to add. “Before you hatch.”
“Yes.” Lae’zel pulls the door open just as Shadowheart calls, “There’s a new crack! Get in here!”
You close the door and rest a hand on Emmeline’s shoulder as Lae’zel kneels down beside her, their shoulders pressed together.
The child—Xan, they call him—hatches with teeth and hair and is toddling unsteadily by the end of his first day of life, a task that took Shadowheart the better part of two winters to accomplish. He’s not what you expected, but then, he’s the first gith child you’ve ever seen. You suppose you shouldn’t be so surprised.
As for Shadowheart and Lae’zel, they step into the roll of parents with the trepidation you remember having during that period of your life. They’re more competent at it than they think they are. It’s in the quiet moments—Lae’zel carrying Xan on her shoulders and showing him the stars, Shadowheart teaching him how to pet a cat—that they’re at their best.
Part of you wishes they had been able to spend more time getting to know themselves before becoming parents. Another part is grateful to have a grandchild while Emmeline can still know him. But their lives are their own, and you’re reticent to offer unsolicited advice when Shadowheart is still getting to know you, so you keep your thoughts to yourself.
Your tending the garden when Shadowheart comes to you.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” You stand and brush the dirt off the front of your pants. You’re expecting her question to be about picky eating or the biting phase. It’s not until you look at her that you realize she’s near tears.
“Come in.” You open the front door. “We must speak quietly. Your mother is napping.” Already, Emmeline tires more quickly than she did when you first escaped the Sharran’s clutches. The decades of captivity were not kind to her. In another life where things had been different, she might have lived to see Xan reach adulthood. You can’t think about it too long or your anger gives you a headache.
She follows you inside and sits down at the rickety kitchen table—carpentry has never been one of your strengths. You put on a kettle of water and sit down across from her.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Well…” Shadowheart hesitates. “I guess I always knew but I never really thought about it before.” She takes a deep breath. “What do you do with the knowledge that you’ll outlive your wife and child?”
There’s a sinking feeling in your chest. You knew this conversation was coming, but you were hoping it might be another ten winters out. “It’s not an easy burden to carry. Your mother and I discussed it early in our relationship. What I would do after she died. What we would tell our children. Nonetheless, it is difficult to accept that the lives of your family are but a chapter in yours.”
“I’ll have decades left when they go,” Shadowheart says. “Nearly a whole second life. Just thinking about it pains me.”
“In the early years of your life, I dealt with it precisely by not thinking about it,” you tell her. “And when we were captured, I began to think it was a mercy that your lives would be so much shorter than mine. I thought they might just kill me once you were gone anyway, so the whole matter felt irrelevant. It’s only since you freed us that I’ve been forced to confront it.”
“I don’t know how to live without them,” she says. “From the moment I turned from Shar, Lae’zel was there.” She takes a deep breath. “I… I don’t know who I am without her.”
You lay a hand on her shoulder. “You must look within and learn how to define yourself outside of those you love. It’s the only way to survive when you belong to a long-lived species. I had lost human friends from old age before I even met your mother.”
Shadowheart looks away. “I don’t know how to live with them knowing I’ll one day have to live without them.”
“I understand,” you reply. “Losing her will be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Losing you will be even harder. In my weaker moments, I’ve envied the drow of Menzoberranzan for living solely among their own kind. But we carry on. The love we experience along the way is what makes a life this long worthwhile.” You point out the window, towards the sky. “In two hundred years, I will look up at these stars and know that they’re the same stars I looked on with you, and with your mother, and your son, and the childhood friends who have yet been gone for a century, and it will bring me great sadness, but it will also bring me great joy.”
“It’s funny that Shar taught me to embrace loss when I had almost no one to lose,” she says. “And now that I no longer follow her, I’m going to lose everything.”
“Shar teaches her acolytes to embrace loss, to seek it,” you tell her. “Selûne teaches that loss is neither positive nor negative. It’s merely a part of life, a neutral force that we can only make our peace with. That you weren’t able to grow up with those philosophies is one of our biggest regrets.”
The kettle begins to whistle. You snatch it off the stove before it wakes Emmeline and set about readying two cups. “What brought this on?”
“Lae’zel’s knee hurt this morning.” She accepts the cup she offers you.
“Give it a moment to steep.”
“I know it’s foolish. She’s still young. It’s only because she’s not adapted to live somewhere with so much gravity.”
“It’s never foolish.”
“I just wonder if I’m being selfish.” Shadowheart looks down into her cup as she swirls the water around. “If Lae’zel and Xan went to live on the astral plane with their people, they could live centuries. They’re only here because of me.”
“Far be it for me to speculate on what Lae’zel wants,” you sit back down and stir your own tea. So much about her is still a mystery to you. “But she has never given the impression that she wants anything other than to be here with you.”
Shadowheart sighs. “That’s just how she is though. If she sees something as a duty, she won’t complain about it.”
“Something the two of you have in common,” you point out. “But seeing something as a duty is not mutually exclusive with being honored to take it on. In fact, in parenthood, the two overlap more often than not.”
She sighs without looking up from her cup.
“Here is my advice,” you say. “Go back to Lae’zel. Ask her if she wants to return with Xan to the astral plane. If this is truly weighing on you, it’s the only way to know.”
“I’m afraid to,” she admits. “I’m afraid that if I ask, she’ll say yes.”
You reach across the table and lay your hand on top of hers. You almost feel her pain, her fear. “Do you really believe she would leave you so easily after everything the two of you have gone through to build this life together?”
She looks up and you and you can immediately tell that she doesn’t.
You tighten your grip on her hand. “We love you. Your mother and I and Lae’zel.”
“I know,” she answers through a water smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.
“And if even she did want to go back to the astral plane,” you sip your tea, “there is nothing to stop you from going with her.”
“I could never leave you.”
You fix her with an exasperated glance. “Do you think we want to hold you back from the life you want to live any more than you want to hold them back?” When she doesn’t answer, you stand up and open the door. “Go talk to your wife. You have got to be able to talk to each other about what you want for your family.”
Shadowheart stands up, her tea still untouched, and walks through the doorway. You close the door after her and watch her look back at you through the window. This is something that’s so painful for both of you, and yet it’s satisfying to have had this conversation with her, to experiences something you knew you would have to do from the moment you became the father of a half-elf. It feels like you’ve taken something back. A small piece of the life you and Emmeline and Shadowheart would have had together if things had gone differently.
You watch her walk across the meadow until she blends into the tall grass. A rush of fear comes over you. She’s out there by herself again. What’s to stop Shar from snatching her back. It’s gone as soon as it came.