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Ever since Shar had abandoned her, cast her out, excommunicated her from the faith, Shadowheart's dreams had been torturously empty. She dreamt of nothingness; of loneliness; A void stretched to infinity, rendering her senses useless, feeding into the wretched feeling of true abandonment. Hours and hours of the cold lapses of memory on repeat like a book burnt afresh every night.
Yet still she marched on, led by a stranger with a new face every morn, onwards still to a city that called for her and yet did not want her.
It was on the third night of hiking, a blessedly cloudless night, that Shadowheart pilfered an unopened bottle from the plentiful stolen supplies the troupe had, thus she liberated from it its full contents. If she was to be truly alone in her dreams, Shadowheart didn't want to remember it.
As she fell asleep, she wished not for company, but for a single embrace. She yearned for her parents, as if she had been a true daughter to them, not the vessel of broken glass and memories she currently was.
She remembered gazing up at the moon, neither in hatred nor adoration, and falling asleep clutching her empty wine bottle like it was a lover.
When she roused, she woke not in her tent, but a moonlit meadow. Grass that was tall enough to graze her hips swayed in the soft breeze. In the distance, barely a speck, stood a cottage whose chimney released gentle plumes of smoke into the night sky.
And oh, the night sky, Shadowheart had never seen such beauty, such colour, in all her years. Stars and clusters and meteorites painting an ever-moving tapestry, as if being still woven by the artist.
So taken aback by the splendour of the night was she that she did not notice the weaver herself initially. Beneath the leaves and bays of a grand willow tree sat a woman of beautifully rich skin, silver loom in hand, humming to herself as she worked.
Shadowheart approached, the grassy meadow parting as she drew near to the woman and her work. Occasionally, the woman of night-dark skin and starlight-white robes would finish her tapestry and release a constellation of stars into the sky.
The more Shadowheart tried to focus on the mystery woman's face, the more blurred it became. Each angle change made it impossible to perceive any consistent features, as if the woman herself was not meant to be observed.
Perhaps she wasn't. Perhaps Shadowheart was intruding.
A voice, however, prevented her from heel-turning and walking away. It sounded like the wind on a stormy night, but yet simultaneously warm. Like an embrace she hadn't felt for fourty years and counting.
“Thy countenance is a welcome sight, dear. Many a cycle hath passed since your loss.”
Everything slid into place. Shadowheart was dreaming, but, before her, in all her radiance, was the Moonwitch herself, spinning her magic and artistry unto the world. It was rather obvious, looking now, with the silvery robes and twisted-silver hair, each curl a constellation.
Disgust was the first feeling that overwhelmed her, shortly followed by frustration. Perhaps it was the wine-drunk emotions that carried over into this dreamspace, or perhaps Shadowheart was just this jaded, but she unleashed her turmoil onto the sitting goddess.
“Where have you been? I expected you to snaffle me up like a prize the moment your sister threw me aside.” Shadowheart snarled, marching up the small incline to the grand willow. “Every night my dreams have been empty, until now. I walk, every step bringing me closer to Baldur’s Gate, every step torturously alone, and now you appear? Like I’d be grateful to you? For snatching up your sister’s leftovers? I don’t even want to believe in you.”
Selûne took her vitriol in stride, vexingly so, simply putting aside her loom and focusing all her attention on her. Shadowheart held what she thought was her gaze as long as she could, before a small, precise headache forced her to look away. To look past the deity herself, into the knotted, twisted bark of the grand willow.
“An undamméd hatred, thy feelings clear. Hast thou anything else to speak across?”
Shadowheart's brow furrowed. Selûne was like Aylin, but worse . Always with the rhythmic speech pattern, always speaking in tongues. At least Aylin got her point across eventually.
“Why now ? And do not start another foot of pentameter, us Sharrans…” Shadowheart hesitated, realising her own mistakes. Was she even a Sharran anymore? “Sharrans did teach me my literature. Speak it plainly, or not at all.”
A laugh, restrained and whole.
“Fair enough, child. Prithee forgive mine rhythm and rhyme, ‘tis a habit forged in the passage of time.” Selûne pat the ground next to her, a warm purple blanket made of the softest wool. “Come, sit, and I shall talk to thee as an equal.”
So Shadowheart sat. She still couldn't gaze upon her, but at least she was close to Selûne. The Moonwitch may be able to avoid her eye contact, but she could not ignore her presence.
“I’ve sat.” Shadowheart spoke. “Why now?”
“Why not now?” Selûne retorted. “You entered my domain, not I entered yours.”
“I was drinking wine, and you must've brought me here.”
“For what end, you suppose?” Selûne continued. “Ever since mine twin abandoned thee, thee hast been able to approach, but one must not approach until you are ready.”
“As if I'm ready now.” Shadowheart bit back. “I don't know if I am ‘worthy',” Shadowheart spat, “of such a blessing. What use have you for an ex-Sharran?”
“You art not a tool. I do not ‘use’. You art a being, in all its splendour, alive and feeling. A simple love, an all-encompassing love, I view in thee.”
“What if I don't love you back? What then? Will you smite me? Hate me? Kill me?”
“Then you dost not love back. My love is freely given, and has been since thy mother presented thee bare and bloody to me on the eve of thy birth. You may not be of my blood, but you are of my joy. You are as equal to Aylin, and all beings under the moon.”
“Don't flatter me. No one is that giving, I've seen it in the teary eyes of torture victims, in the teethless maw of the hungry.”
“And if I am? What shall thee do with my gift of unconditional love?”
Shadowheart stumbled. Unconditional was a lie; it had to be. Everything had conditions. She was raised on conditions. Nothing was freely given, and love was a trap.
Tears welled up behind her eyes, unbidding and unwilling.
“What if I'm not deserving of that love? After all I've done, I don't even know where to go or what to do. I'm not even sure I can cast magic anymore. What use am I?”
“Look upon my meadows, my night sky, and breathe.” Selûne whispered, her breath billowing out miniscule stars across Shadowheart’s tipped ears. “You art under pressure, that I do see, but mine sister hast not broken the mirror of thine soul, merely… blemished it.”
“Then where do I go? What do I do?”
“‘Tis not a place you go, but a place you know. You have been suffocated by mine own twin’s malice, aye, but to think she crowned you with magical might is flattery undeserved.”
Shadowheart instinctively tensed up, but hands, warm and starlight-stippled, rested upon her shoulders. Whereas Shar’s nails pierced through skin, nerves and sinew, practically grinding against bone, Selûne merely rested, thumbs gently playing with the fabric of her nightshirt.
It was disarming, to say the least. Shadowheart knew she should resist -- who knew what the Moonwitch planned, what she wanted, but she could not remember the last time she was touched like this. With affection, rather than hatred or disgust. With a motherly love.
She wondered: Did her own mother touch her like this? Nestled at the foot of a grand willow tree, watching the wind dance across the tall grass, with no expectations of a grand design, of overwhelming hatred.
And yet, she still resisted, pulling away from night-darkened hands with twinkling stars for fingertips.
“For all I know, you could be softening me up like a pig, so you can feast on my fattened faith at a later date. Between Mystra using Gale, and my now ruined relationship with Shar, Gods have left naught but a bitter, bloody taste in my mouth.”
“An understandable hypothesis, a hand burned wants not and should not reach for an open flame. I shan’t speak for my brethren, nor can I, but my love for all things that the moon rises over remains true and easy, irregardless of subject. A baby born, red and bloody, choosing the path that calls to them, or finding the path that they were strayed from, are all equally loveable under my gaze. Tis mine duty to guide, to love, like I too bore them into this world.”
“Where were you then? When I was a knife-tip deep into the soft flesh of my parents? Where were you when Aylin was captured and trussed like a dressed prey animal and hunted and poached again and again until I freed her? Where have you been for the past fourty years? ”
“Do not mistake my absence for insolence, child,” Selûne warned, the hands on her shoulders stilling. “Dost thou think I did not weep when my own flesh and blood was taken? When the love of my own daughter’s life was snuffed out by the hatred of mine twin? I watched thee always, even when you could not hear me. I wept, I wept , for mine children of my blood and my joy, both equal and true, when Shar denied them their future. Their hope. You do not know of mine turmoil; mine own grief. You know of Shar’s, aye, for she forces it upon thee. But never, ever, mistake my absence for inaction.”
Shadowheart bit her tongue.
“I do not want to become another godly puppet. I just wish to be me.”
“It is not a place you go,” Selûne repeated, “‘tis a place you know. You know’st who thine are, you always hast. Or ‘twas not thee that cast mine sister’s spear into the abyss in favour of a future? Of freedom? Be who thee are, Shadowheart, not what you hast been told to be. I will love you, irregardless.”
“What if I’m not enough?”
“In my eternal gaze, you shall always be enough.” A breath; an eternity. “Prithee, may I touch your hair? It hast been so long since I last indulged in simple affection.”
She remained upright. Independent. And yet--
“You may.”
The first touch was gentle, almost reverent, as if Shadowheart herself was the deity, as if she was the one being worshipped, being loved. Fingers, moonlight-dappled, carded through her raven tresses, a touch divine in its own right. Attentively, slowly, Selûne brushed through Shadowheart’s wind-blown hair, each strand, each centimetre, ever so focused on her task.
The willow tree rustled, at peace with itself.
Shadowheart too, would be at peace.
Now that the knots were brushed out, Selûne moved up to Shadowheart’s scalp. Fingernails gently pressed down, enough so that Shadowheart sighed, unwittingly sinking further into Selûne’s embrace. Quietly, Selûne hummed, and the wind hummed back.
For all she knew, for all she felt, a thousand years must’ve passed, Shadowheart peacefully existing in this present dreamscape. The weight of a thousand tortured hours lifted, replaced by the feeling of stars tumbling, rolling, down her neck and spine.
Her eyes drifted close as she became limp in Selûne’s affectionate hold, nerves alight in comforting pleasure.
She was halfway between dreaming about sleeping and floating when a soft chuckle brought her back -- if she ever really left.
“It seems I got carried away in the simple act of touch and do forget my station.” A hand, larger than Shadowheart expected, came into view from behind, and shimmered into a shaky reflection of a half-elf woman with two-tone black-silver hair.
A beat passed, and Shadowheart realised that reflection was her, wisps of moonmagic slowly turning her naturally dark hair into silvered locks equivalent to that of Isobel’s.
“Say the word, child, and I shall undo what I have accidentally wrought unto you.”
The newly silvered hair was alien to her, so used to her darkened fringe dominating her hairline, rather than elevating the tones and angles of her face. In her reflection, she could see relaxation, hope, warmth, rather than the icy and closed off demeanour she was usually greeted with in the mirror.
Shadowheart may not have been convinced of the silver colouring, yet, but she couldn’t help but choose the Shadowheart she could see. The Shadowheart she chose to be.
“Keep going.” Shadowheart urged. “I’d rather commit than do a poor job of it.”
“As you wish, my child. It shall be done by the time you wake up in the morrow.”