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Footsteps hit the wooden floors and long dining tabletops as couples hook arms and spin around in circles, switching directions every few seconds and letting out hearty chuckles. I watch as a woman squeals when her partner lifts her to his chest and spins her about him making the white dress at her waist ripple in the air. Discarded plates lay beneath their bare feet with chicken bones and smeared gravy decorating their pale surfaces, the leftover peas jump along with the couples to the tune being played by a band in the corner. An old woman smiles as she shuffles around the room, dodging stray hands and feet while collecting the plates and utensils from the tables, unbothered and enjoying the rowdy turn of the night.
Being a small village, small enough to not even have been recognised on the map, the excitement of their rather peculiar guests seems to have caused an unforeseen series of festivities. Every person who resided here had come to lay their eyes on the pack of eccentric travelling companions, filling the tavern to the brim with bubbly chatter and curious glances. Drinks flowed from the small bar like the ocean into a river, never-ending and overflowing. Six of my seven companions, all of which hold a glass of foaming golden liquid in their hands, Karlach is sat closest to the merriments in awe, watching as people mingled and embraced, it’s quite endearing to see her tough exterior fade when so entangled in something.
Like a child given a bag of sweets her eyes bulge and form a puppy-like roundness. I sit directly parallel to the Tiefling, my eyes flicker back and forth from Karlach and Gales rugged face rambling on about something rather with quite a lot of passion. If I’m were honest, half of the things he says fly through one ear and out the other like a gentle breeze, though it’s not something I mind, he often has a very many interesting and important things to say. In the flittering candlelight the wizard seems perfectly ordinary, wearing a cream-coloured tunic and fitting in with the drunkards and poets quite well, I giggle at this.
Lae’Zel and Shadowheart sit side by side, furthest from the spilled rum and spinning couples; it’s relatively amusing to see the two so out of place. They were very welcomed to escape to the second story where their rooms for the night were or out the door and into the streets paved with cobblestones, still, they remained with a tug of a grin gracing their faces. The pair slumped against the wooden booth with eight empty glasses piled so high in front of them, it was hard to even notice that they were there. By this point Gale had stopped his rambling and now searched the crowd with his eyebrows sewn together.
“Wait… where has Wyll disappeared to?” he questions, though I’m sure he says it out of a will to be the cause of some mischief rather than actually being concerned for the Knight.
It does not take long to spot the man through the crowd, a look of pure panic on his face starkly contrasted against the obnoxious smiles radiated from those around him. He must have gone off for some more drinks and been swept off along the way back because now he was a part of a long chain of drunk, dancing, bar maidens. If Shadowheart and Lae’Zel looked out of place, Wyll looks as if he had dropped himself on the wrong planet by some gruesome mistake. Gale and Karlach hit the table, laughing uncontrollably as the table shook and the mountain of glasses toppled over, stopped only by the reflexes of Lae’Zel, Shadowheart and…
I had almost forgotten he was here entirely, it was very rare for Astarion to be so quiet, so rare for him to be without his clever quips. But he had fallen into complete silence for the duration of the night, practically invisible, as if he had melted into the uneven lines of the dark wood behind him. But now that I have noticed him, I am more than aware of the way the candlelight hits his pale skin and sifts through his silver-bleached hair, and the deep red tunic he adorned which accentuated every emotion that was not there in his carmine eyes before.
The laughing. The smiles. The music. The stomping of bare feet on tabletops. It all ceased, blurring into an unintelligible murmur in my left ear, the sound of my heavy inhale and exhale, the sound of my bleeding-heart beating in my squeezing chest takes over. All I can think to do is to run away, to disappear into the crowd and not have to think of when his thumb grazed against my bottom lip in yesterday’s settling evening. When the bugs chirped, and the bats flew in swarms from the trees.
“ I believe I have been too still for too long; I am going for another drink” I say tearing my gaze away to address my other companions.
“Maybe I can save our poor knight,” I throw them a wink as you stand and adjust your white dress and tug the pale fabric through the bottom of my olive-coloured corset.
A luxury of sorts that makes me giddy with excitement to be wearing, not that I would let anyone know, beauty, of course, was never at the forefront of my mind while traversing dark forests and shady city streets. Entering the crowd of dancing strangers, a hand grabs my wrist and pulls me from my thoughts as an unknown man twirls me and lifts me from my feet. The green-eyed man places you beside the bar, his hands still firmly planted on your hips. Smiling with pale yellow teeth, he stumbles back onto his next victim, turning to the large man behind the counter, a friendly face and a long red beard, eyes hidden beneath twisting eyebrows, the same auburn colour that his beard is. But before even thinking of the words you mean to utter; the bony hand of an old man pulls you to the centre of the room and raises his hand to silence the mob.
“ Who wants to hear the lass sing us a song!” He yells.
The crowd erupts into a chorus of hoots and whistles and cheers, and those red eyes once again burn into your skull.
“ You’re a bard ain’t ya dove!”
“ I am yes, though I’m not familiar with your melodies… I do not know any of this region…” you sputter, stuttering and stumbling on every second word as you look across the expecting crowd.
“Errrr…” he drunkly mutters, “ What’s the one about those lovers… everybody… knows that- *hic* one.”
“Oh! Of course!” Recognising the song my mother sang to me as a child. The band starts up and play a song all too familiar, it is familiar to all that stand in this crowded room, a love song passed on and sung for many generations. A song about a love gone dangerous and foul, it is a song far too fitting.
Now Playing: Tongues and Teeth (live) by The Crane Wives.
Faces blend into one another as they dance around in circles and lock arms with one another. The dim candlelight warms the skin on my arms and the exposed skin of my neck as I recite the words to the melody, at first struggling to find my voice above the murmuring of voices and laughter dispersing from around me, starting a little late and losing track of the words here and there. But slowly my raspy voice makes its way above all else and finds its place in amongst the beating of drums and strum of strings. My feet glide through the sea of people, swerving and twirling to avoid crashing and my arms raise above my head to draw imaginary lines in the air.
The feeling of Astarion’s red eyes only ever leave my face when another dares to step in his line of sight and it makes everything in me go wobbly. It makes my stomach do a cartwheel and causes my legs to tremble beneath me, threatening to give out at any given moment. A tall woman grabs my waist and picks me up spinning me around, she is rough and scarred but her gentle eyes smile into mine as she places me onto a tabletop before disappearing into the crowd once again.
His stare feels hot and overwhelming, like a hot blade slicing through the skin along my spine, encouraged by the lingering feeling of another person’s hands on my hips. I lean towards the crowd who spin in circles and stomp their feet, tangling the words of an ancient heart break with their joyful smiles and drunken laughter. Letting the bittersweet taste of the melodies words swim around my mouth and swirl around my pink tongue before escaping through cherry rouged lips. This song reminds me of him; of the feelings I know he holds for me.
The feelings he made so very clear last night in the waters of a lake a few leagues north from this small village.
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My naked skin prickles in small bumps at the chill of the air, the glow of the moon shines down on me and snakes its cold arms around my waist tracing my curves with its hands. Placing my clothes on a fallen tree nearby I run towards the water cloaked in that same cold light, the water explodes as my feet tear through it, and I dive. Submerging myself in its icy divinity, it hurts, it pokes through my gentle skin with its frozen needles, but it does not matter because for a moment I am not stained. I am clean and pure; the scars disappear into nothingness and my heart rinses of the black tar that stains it. I let myself sink to the very bottom; one meter, two meters, three meters, fours meters, five… I count before finally finding the slimy texture of seaweed and moss against my back.
Like Ophelia driven to madness I lay against the slimy rock and feel the caress of swaying seaweed against my naked thighs. I grab the seaweed, clenching my fist around it so that I do not float back up. One second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds. Five… If I stay here clutching the seaweed in my palms and staring up at the ripples of the moonlit night through the clear water, I may drown. I cry for air but the silence keeps me lying at the bottom of this lake, my hair tangling with the seaweed convincing me to stay just five seconds more.
My head aches and my eyes burn so I squeeze them shut; that is enough. I may really die if I stay here in the cold any longer, but before I can let myself float back towards the air and kiss of the moonlight. Strong hands wrap around my shoulders to force me above the water, my visions blurry and the figure looms above me even in the water. My legs kick at their chest trying to distance myself, but a familiar, whining voice interrupts my panic.
“ Would you stop that! You would think I tried to kill you!” The false, condescending tone of a common pest twitters. Astarion. “I saved your life, and this is how you repay me? I’m soaking wet!”
I push my hair from my face before spitting back an out of breath response, “I.. did not need sav-… saving… Now leave… leave me… alone.”
Before the white-haired vexation could respond I splash water in his face with a kick and push myself to shore. My feet scramble against the sharp rocks along the bank, the water rippling from just below my collar bones, his angry ramblings not far behind me.
My clothes…
Sitting on a log, meters from the water sit my folded clothes, “shitsticks.”
“ What is it my dove, you were oh so energetic earlier when you pulverised me-.” His breath hits my shoulder, I turn and slam a hand over his eyes. “Close your eyes, now.”
“ I am not loving this game, dove,” He grabs my wrist and pulls it from his face, the sharp contours of his nose and eyebrows gliding from beneath my pruned hands. I notice now that he is fully clothed, sword at his hip and heavy boots still on his feet. Moron. His kindness is a blade through all rationality and good judgment that remain underneath my thick skull. I hate him. I stay silent as I usually do but for the first time I find it a result of the embarrassment our situation calls forth.
“ My clothes,” is all I say as a shaky hand raises above the water to point at my discarded garments.
“ Oh.”
“ Oh? Just leave if you are going to be so unhelpful,” I saying stepping towards him, stepping a little too close. Stepping close enough to see the faint stars scattered along his cheeks and the light pink dusting the tip of his nose and the tip of his ears, close enough to see the lethal depth of his blood red eyes staring, stunned, into my own. He shakes off his jacket, now staring intensely at an immensely interesting group of lily pads closer to shore and holds it out for me to take. What a joke.
“ What? Are you too good for my help? Only a moment ago you were so adamant!” His eyes fall back onto my face only to surrender back to that same patch of lily pads. I stay silent, staring at the purple, leather jacket within his cold hands, taking it and wrapping it around my shoulders, buttoning it up as he walks past me pushing his wet hair from his face and wringing out his white blouse. The jacket sits just below my collar bones, lower on my neck than Astarion’s and ends above my knees, showing off the raised skin of scars.
The purple jacket is cold, but not cold like the bite of midnight breeze, cold like he is, a cold that is not even really cold; a cold that stands my hair on end and makes me want to run and find a warmer jacket. A jacket that will not make my hair stand on end; a jacket I know will not wound me. I stomp up the bank towards Astarion where he sits next to my dry clothes emptying water from his shoes, angry, I am angry.
“ Why did you do that?” I ask, hate spilling from my mouth.
“ What have I done to let you despise me now?” His voice is calm, tired even.
“ Why did you swim to me?! Who dives headfirst into a freezing lake, fully clothed might I add to ‘save’ someone who they know does not like them? It is madness!” His head stays tilted down at his boots as he places them next to his feet, he looks up at me in disbelief. Pain in his eyes, pain that I put there. This time it is his turn to stay silent, our conversations on the road consist of his idle chatter, his words bouncing off the top of my head as he remains unfazed continuing to ramble. I sigh and take a deep breath; it is a meaningless thing to become so bothered by a pest such as him.
“You did not think us friends, did you?”
He does not answer me and my many questions but pats the space next to him for me to sit, I comply to his request, the fabric of his jacket folding beneath my bare thighs.
“… What were you doing in the lake…?” He says.
“ Swimming.” I reply.
“ It did not look like swimming to me dove.”
His red eyes stare at me through my peripheral vision, he does not look at me like the others do, it is something I noticed very early. It scares me.
“ I felt polluted…” Astarion does not speak and so I continue, “At times it is like the very air I breathe is tainted, like the ground I walk on withers as I touch it. No matter how hard I scrub my skin, the filth does not disappear... When the water is deep enough, it is like my very being is wrung clean of its obscenity.”
His pale hand cups my face turning it to be in front of his own, the heat rising underneath my skin fights against the corpse like coolness of his palm. His hands are bony, almost skeletal, calloused on his palm and on the plush parts of his fingers, his thumb extends to my lips to trace the thin outline. He stops in the middle of my bottom lip and I cannot come up with a single coherent thought, the thoughts that do come to me are nonsensical jargon, a mix of words that do not hold any kind of significance to one another in any logical context.
“You cannot do this. Not to me.” I say, quiet and warning.
“ I love you.”
“ No, you don’t. Please, leave me.”
“But I-!”
“Leave!”
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The melody slows and I find his eyes once more, hoping that the words I sing to him cut through whatever madness led to last night’s revelations and his ill-advised confession. I hope that he stops loving me, that he stops thinking of me or caring entirely, I hope that he understands, that he does not hate me and that he finds peace.
Peace I cannot provide. The climbing pile of glasses in front of him topple as he stands, never breaking from my eyes, not as our rambling companions yell slurs at him or when he pushes past person after person, not when he is finally in front of me and pulling me from the tabletops. His eyes only leave me when his hand is wrapped tight around my wrist.
I barely have time to snatch a purple, leather coat from the steel rack before Astarion and I are through the door and into the cobble streets. He stops for a moment and observes the quiet street, deciding where to drag me next, a man walks along the opposite strip of paving, hands in his pockets and staring at his feet, fighting the cold away, or at least trying to. The man’s eyes switch to observe us and linger, Astarion darts left to escape it.
We stop at a four-way intersection in the road, an old fountain placed in the centre adorned by wreaths and banners, all purple and red. The street is dark and quiet, the only light, the cold stare of the half crescent moon. I stand staring at his back, waiting for him to say something, anything, my tongue is caught by sharp wire in my throat. I wrap the purple coat around my bare shoulders, the chill of evening air attacking me through the thin material of my olive-coloured dress. Astarion’s hands clench at his sides, red blood spilling from where his long nails imbed themselves in his skin. It slides down and across his knuckles before falling to the ground, slithering between the cobblestone slabs. I reach out my arm, to stop him, but I fall short.
I look up to see his head turned and his eyes fixed on my movement, a black sea of ire and sorrow in his beautiful eyes, his tears stick to his long eyelashes. His eyebrows knit together and force out the lines along his pale forehead, they map his misery, each line a new misfortune; they are numerous. His plump bottom lip quivers, stuck out in a slight pout and swollen. It is too much, his pain is too great, I cannot bear witness to it.
So, I don’t. I look away down the street to our left though it doesn’t help the overwhelming guilt. I begin to weep; I begin to weep like a child in its mothers arms, I weep like I never have done before. I sink to the ground, legs curled beneath me and face against the stone as if I were praying to the gods who forgot me. Who made me so cruel, who made me so imperfect. The gods who cursed me with such little feeling or remorse.
“Is it your intention to confuse me so? Do you find it amusing?”
“No-.”
“Then why do you look at me like you do and then reject me as you have!”
“I’m sorry! I am so sorry!” The words break through my hard exterior in an instant. “I was only scared… please…” The tears fall from my face faster. “I… I cannot trust you with my heart… I cannot subject myself to another suffering. Not as I have in the past… Oh how I want to be loved by you and to love you, but I worry night and day of what you are and what you have done.” I look up at him, tears still pouring down my face.
He looks down at me with his eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar, maybe he is surprised at my vulnerability. Maybe he is disgusted by it, I cannot tell. His face has a way of disguising itself beneath many layers, like garlic. It’s amusing the ironic nature of my comparison I realise, but laughing would not suit the situation well so I keep it in. A silence prevails over us for a time, and then Astarion kneels down in front of me, as you would with a small child who has lost their parents. His arm extends cagily towards me, hesitating to touch me like I would burn him and when his hand finally meets with the skin upon my reddened cheek it does burn. His touch burns like a fever in the summer. Though this time, this time, I do not mind the burn.
“Dove, you are my only light. That will not change, not as you grow old and your hands no longer feel the same as they do in this moment,” His free hand slides into my own, “I know what it is that I am asking of you. You are a dove, lost in such a dangerous world, allow me to protect you. I want to protect you. I want to be by your side, even after you cannot be by mine. Will you let me?”
His face is blurry through my tears and yet his beautiful red eyes are still there clear as day and night. I close my eyes, the darkness engulfing me, and they’re still there. His beautiful red eyes. I realise they never left, his eyes plague my dreams and my thoughts, they remain with me even in the deep cold of the lakes that I frequent. They are always with me, and I am safe with them. My body falls forward into his shoulder suddenly feeling very small in his arms and I cry, and I cry, and I cry. And he does too.