Archive of Our Own

The night started with an exhausted messenger.

At barely midday Astarion had looked up from his lunch at the sound of a ringing at the boutique’s door. He looked around at the workshop he clearly knew was empty from everyone leaving to eat, peered near the entrance for a last hopeful glimpse of Sigrun just in case, and sighed.

He took a dejected look at the day’s offerings. Gale had very lovingly packed him those honey glazed prawns Astarion loved, which Astarion knew came from a very early trip to the fish market and possibly a few bribes for the good stuff, with a little container of his homemade hundur sauce and rounded out with honey vinegar white cabbage seasoned with dried rue and asafoetida, all carefully prevented from touching from each other and protected with spells that kept them fresh and at ideal temperatures when time came to eat. Astarion had smiled fondly upon opening his lunch container and he’d rather planned to take his time with it, really settle in for a good uninterrupted meal, but alas, he truly was the only one there.

Really, the downsides of being a business owner who actually did things. It was a swindle, honestly. He didn’t recommend the experience at all.

He opened the door to find a weary messenger sweating in the autumn chill, still panting from the effort of dragging behind his little cart filled with stacks of similar or even identical boxes wrapped in red paper and decorated with intricate designs.

“Package for Mr Ancunín,” he said, barely holding back a wheeze.

“I haven't ordered anything.”

“Gift delivery, sir,” he explained, “from a Ms Khoo.”

Astarion frowned. Ms Khoo?

“Ms… Lily Khoo, would you say?”

He shrugged. “Can you sign for Mr Ancunín or not?”

Astarion shook himself out of it. “Yes, yes, of course.”

He may have been most unceremoniously interrupted from his little feast, but never let it be said that Astarion Dekarios would ever be one to miss the opportunity to indulge in an unexpected gift.

The messenger handed over one of the boxes with barely a glimpse to double-check its details, collected his signature, and left with the barest and most obligatory of bows before huffing his way up the street still laden with a concerning number of the mysterious packages.

Astarion had seen those before, he vaguely recalled, mostly around the Southern Ward or Dock Ward. Typically it seemed like something for Kara-Turan families, carrying them around and exchanging them. He was sure he’d spotted Sigrun with one at some point, though never did catch them actually opening a box at their table. Astarion was always too overworked with the coming of autumn to do more than shrug it off, too many things happening at this time of year for him to really think of it as anything other than yet another Waterdhavian holiday he could never really keep track of, so receiving one himself may as well have been an invitation to some sort of exclusive little club.

Funny. He’d never had the chance to see one of these up close before.

He laid the box carefully on his desk aside his slowly cooling lunch and carefully unwrapped the paper. A handwritten note laid atop what he could now see was an elegantly designed box with an almost lustrous red flocked paper and obscured hints of embossing and gold foil beyond what was currently visible.

Dear Mr Ancunín, the note read, in a hand he now recognised as Lily’s.

Thank you again for my Faerûnian wedding dress. I had wondered if anyone would dress me at all, and you made me feel beautiful. I spoke to Sigrun before I left back to Malatra. They said you had never had the chance to try these cakes and that your husband has a sweet tooth. Enjoy them with your family under the full moon tonight. Happy Lunar Harvestide.

L. Khoo

Cakes? Was that what Sigrun had been squirrelling away every autumn?

This box only looked big enough for just the one cake, and quite a short one at that. Was it a magical box?

Astarion suppressed a little giggle at the precisely embossed white rabbit on the large outer box. It was beautiful, undeniably so, just stunning craftsmanship down to the tasteful little touches of a gold foiled full moon and the careful calligraphy of some sort of greeting in High Shou he couldn’t read, but the soft floppy ears and the haughty little stance of the rabbit couldn’t help but remind him of Gale in the middle of a lecture.

He allowed himself one last fond little chuckle at the rabbit and repackaged the gift.

Yes, he smiled as he savoured that first bite of honeyed prawn. Gale deserved a little treat.

It truly was almost too much for just the two of them.

Morena was presently out of town sourcing rare books for the shop, Tara cheerily in tow to keep her company and provide the occasional fireball or healing potion when needed. Their absence was welcome at first, providing ample opportunities for some fun in new parts of the tower, until the novelty wore off and they found themselves dwarfed by the emptiness of the space. Lunches and dinners consisted of more leftovers as Gale adjusted to the smaller portions. Occasionally Astarion would tease Gale and instinctively search for an approving look or additional little chime in from the rest of the family, only to be reminded of their absence.

He wished they were here right now.

Gale had perked up at the sight of the red box and insisted on preparing a little Shou feast as best he could on practically no notice. Mage Hand and the joys of magic had been a boon, but none of that stopped Astarion from his duty to do his part. The rest of the cabbage from earlier that day went into a light soup. Gale took what they could finish of the knucklehead trout in the icebox to turn into steamed fish with soy and ginger. The prawns had been prepared two ways, fried and then tossed in a sauce fashioned from various bottles in the larder, and lightly stir-fried and prepared with cooking wine and some brewed Pale Jade. Astarion puzzled over the river crabs getting nothing more than a steam before removing the meat, only to deal with Gale fretting over improvising what he could of the vegetables, aged duck, and roasted pork in the larder, batting off Astarion’s complaints that they’d already done quite more than enough for just the two of them. All in all, though, they wiped their brows at the veritable glut of dishes, gently steaming in the evening cold.

“You are casting Prestidigitation on the entire kitchen after this,” Astarion muttered, and Gale chuckled as he transported them and the little banquet up to the roof.

He’d conjured them a low table, perfect for holding everything without risk of it all slipping off the tiles. There were floor cushions in the Kozakuran style because any aspersions of mixing cultures aside, Gale wouldn’t stand for neglecting some measure of comfort if he could help it.

Gale stretched out in his seat, his back audibly cracking. Astarion sighed at the spread, bathed as it was in the light of the full moon.

Tara would’ve loved the trout, if nothing else.

“These full moon viewings are meant to be family affairs,” Gale said, as if reading his mind. “Full moon, full circles—it’s about being whole, about unity and togetherness. It’s a time for family reunions as they celebrate the harvest, hence the abundance of dishes. But we’ll make do, and anyway Mum and Tara’ll be back any day now.”

Astarion settled in as well. “Your mother would’ve scolded you for not seasoning the river crabs.”

“Ha! I’d think not. For you see, dear husband, that, is traditional,” Gale said. “In some parts of Shou Lung, altering river crabs more than a gentle steam was a way to skimp on serving the actual meat. As a show of goodwill and to showcase the quality and freshness of the catch, it’s now served as unadulterated as possible, with a simple dipping sauce for additional flavour. I daresay it’s caught on in the diaspora, and now in some circles it’s simply just the done thing.”

A lifetime ago he would’ve told Gale to shut up about his detailed food explanations over the campfire. A lifetime ago he had done exactly that, snapping as he watched them all eat whilst he urged the bitter wine to get him drunk faster.

Astarion took a bite of his husband’s cooking, and indulged in the gentle flavours of the tea-soaked prawns.

He was glad to be in this lifetime.

“Go on then, clever clogs,” he said. “Explain the eight dishes.”

“Not strictly enforced, no, but the number eight is auspicious to many communities of Shou influence and I thought it fitting. You know, balance, harmony, lucky numbers, that sort of thing. Ah! And just in time. Regard.” He gestured off in the distance, towards the Southern Ward and then closer, in the direction of Fishgut Court. Streets already lit bright with scores of cheerful paper lanterns glowed further, as the sky slowly filled with lanterns floating up and into the air. “Have we watched this before?”

There was a vague memory of their first year together in Waterdeep, they were planning their wedding and Astarion needed to be kept safe from the sun. Gale had asked if he was up for some event nearby and Astarion was too tired to remember anything outside of lanterns in the streets.

“Not properly, I think,” was the most accurate way he could answer. “Honestly, even I can’t keep up with all of Waterdeep’s festivals.”

“Never been to Lunar Harvestide in Baldur’s Gate, then?” Gale asked, and immediately coloured furiously when it occurred to him that Astarion probably didn’t have time for actual recreation in his time there. “Sorry. Apologies, my love. I only meant—”

He laid a hand on Gale’s. “It’s fine,” he said. “Tell me about the tea you’ve brought out for tonight.”

Gale’s fingers squeezed against his, and his face lit up with the kind of excitement that had Astarion gazing fondly at the crinkles in the corners of his eyes.

“Ah, well, now that is a story!” Gale said. “As you know, most tea in Faerûn is herbal, with tea from actual tea plants being rather a pricey import, and even then, the types we manage to procure here in Waterdeep tend to be of the green variety, such as Pale Jade. However, with my connections, I managed to procure, through no small amount of finesse and a few greased palms—”

They, impossibly, managed to finish the meal with only minimal leftovers for the next day. Gale poured them both cups of what was admittedly an excellent fermented red tea and began setting up the gift as well as a small plate of peeled and segmented pomelo followed by pomegranate seeds neatly prepared in a bowl.

“This whole thing was meant to be a treat for you, you know,” Astarion reminded him, for the umpteenth time that night. “You needn't have gone through all the trouble. You do so much for me, Gale. I know it’s busy this time of year. I know it’s a lot of late nights. But I saw the note saying to share these treats with my family and I thought…”

Gale slowed in his careful unwrapping of the box.

“Gale?”

He shook it off. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s just nice, sharing that word with you.”

“Nice?” he said. “You must be tired indeed, Professor, if your vocabulary’s been reduced to you resorting to words as pedestrian as ‘nice’.”

“If the overall quality of my verbiage has suffered, Astarion Dekarios, I have only your sordid influence to blame.”

“Oh?” he said. “Sorry, and who chose to marry this ‘sordid influence’? I seem to recall the proposal involving the crack of at least one arthritic knee, darling, and it certainly wasn’t mine.”

Gale paused again, and it spoke to the strength of their bond that Astarion could see him here, with his back almost fully turned, lit only by the light of the moon helped along with the strength of Astarion’s darkvision, and know that the pause was purely from the effort of holding in a fond exhale of amusement.

“All right, all right.” Gale spoke with a smile in his voice as his hands brushed against the fine paper of the gift wrapping, traced carefully along the contours of the note, and then fiddled with the stiff cardboard lid. “I concede, my love.”

Astarion kissed him lightly on the cheek before taking a segment of pomelo from the bowl.

“So, what are these supposed cakes, anyway?” he said. “It was cakes as in plural, right? It’s not just the one? They must be practically bite-size.”

“Cakes plural.” His words were punctuated by the sound of the last of the wax paper packages being opened. “Come see for yourself.”

He did.

“Behold, the humble mooncake.”

He set the pomelo down on his plate. He’d never seen anything this intricate in something as simple as a pastry.

They were barely the size of a palm, though that wasn’t the most interesting part. The things had gods-damned writing on them, raised into neat ridges and legible as anything, geometric patterns and little mazes of lines, too much labour to shape en masse by hand but a shameless display of craftsmanship purely looking at the moulds they surely used. One had a delicate flower patterned with layers of neat petals, another had mesmeric swirls bordered by orderly lines. Different flavours, Astarion assumed, and the wax paper must’ve contained labels explaining them.

“So,” Gale said, “someone must’ve liked you to book you a delivery from Double Happiness.”

Astarion looked up at him. “Double what?”

“Bakery,” Gale said. “Southern Ward, on Coach Street. It’s been ages since I’ve had their cakes but I’d know that red paper anywhere, and make no mistake. They’ve been commissioning the wrapping paper and foiled flocked paper from Serpentil’s for decades now. Trade secret.“

“Have they?” It was the first he’d heard of it, and Astarion had worked at Serpentil’s under Morena before his fashion career took off.

“Oh yes. Not surprised you’ve never seen it. Jym would’ve kept it all a bit sub rosa, so to speak. These big bakeries get serious about their mooncake packaging.”

Astarion knew Jym to run a side business making paper but their paths hardly ever crossed, what with Astarion busy dusting the shelves and cataloguing Dwitt’s frankly haphazard method of organising the magical books his store offered for sale. No wonder he hardly ever saw Jym so much as poke his head through the back door leading to the paper workshop.

“Double Happiness has been a Waterdhavian institution for about… oh, seventy years now?” Gale said. “They sell out quickly. The gift deliveries need to be placed days in advance—tendays, even, for the dedicated. You’d have seen messengers hauling gift deliveries all over town, or people carrying around boxes for gifts.”

Ah. That explained the laden cart and the proliferation of boxes he’d see around this time of year.

Astarion nodded. “Lily Khoo,” he said. “Not sure if I’ve mentioned her. Heiress to some fortune over in Malatra, real estate or manufacturing, or possibly both. She fell in love with a Waterdhavian classmate whilst studying in Silverymoon. They had the one wedding in Lumpur and had trouble finding someone willing to dress her here for the Waterdhavian one.”

Irritation bubbled up in him just thinking about it. He spoke gently at the sight of Gale’s tilted head and general look of confusion as he tried to puzzle out why. “Her size, darling. Those creatively bankrupt charlatans all turned her down. The more daring of them offered to dress her in tents. Well,” he said, “my initial plan to become Waterdeep's premiere designer simply through the systematic murder of my competition turned out to be somewhat frowned upon, so I reasoned that complete and utter humiliation through my own superior skills was the next best thing.”

Pity flitted across Gale's face, those huge brown eyes overshadowed in the moonlight by the knit of his brows. His tendencies towards compassion had once truly vexed and infuriated Astarion, until he felt what it was to be truly cared for.

Pride now, silent and warm enough to stave off the evening cold, the same look Gale had at every mention of his creations in the broadsheets, at every time Astarion managed to impress even Morena with his cooking.

Gale began cutting into the already little cakes to make them smaller still.

“Well, Ms Khoo has my thanks,” Gale said. The knife seemed to struggle in a way he hadn't seen with more typically Faerûnian cakes, slicing through some sort of mire before gently hitting the paper with a soft thunk. “It’s been many a year I’ve forgotten about the coming of this wonderful little Shou festival, and I always tend to forget about these cheery delights until they’re well past sold out.” He peered at the insides of one of them, and gestured for Astarion to come closer. “Look.”

He did.

“Is that…” Astarion held it to better catch the moonlight, “an egg?”

Gale beamed. “Well spotted!” he said. “Salted duck egg yolk, against a backdrop of sweet lotus seed paste, to mirror the full moon in all its glory.”

His eyes danced with silent laughter to see the hesitation in Astarion's face.

“Come now, dearest. After everything you've put in your mouth voluntarily, surely you’re not put off by this.”

“If by everything, you mean like your—”

“Just eat the cake.”

“Blood,” Astarion finished, with a wicked grin of his own. “You think so little of me, my love.”

He took a bite.

The pastry was softer than what he'd expect from something labelled a pastry, thicker than anything he'd expect from something called a cake. Thin, soft, almost bread-like pastry gave way to a condensed, softly chewy filling that shocked him with its earthy sweetness, followed immediately by the slight tang from the crumbly yolk. Butter, sweetness, salt. So much sensation in just the one mouthful.

It was delicious, that much was true, but he regretted the choice to bite off so much at once.

“There’s a world of flavours,” Gale said. “Red bean, dates, an assortment of nuts and seeds with sweetened pork, but this was my introduction.”

Astarion, after what seemed like an age, finally swallowed. “Gods,” he croaked. “It's dense.”

Gale chuckled. “Hence the size,” he said, “and the advice to share.” He handed over Astarion's teacup. “Here: tea.”

It did help.

Long-winded as his husband was about his detailed observations about food, he wasn't wrong about how this rare stuff balanced out the richness of the cake perfectly.

Their next few bites would be much more manageable, much calmer under this sky of lanterns and stars.

Astarion sat in the brightness of it all, gazing up at the impossible fullness of the moon above.

“Lily was right,” he said. “This is a good night to watch the moon.”

“Hmm.” Gale sighed into his tea. “I wonder if she’s lonely up there.”

“Who, Selûne?”

Gale took a sip. “Oh, no, her Shou equivalent, from the myth.”

Myth?

“Have you not heard this story before?” Gale set down his teacup and stretched his fingers. “Ah, excellent. What better time than now for a little mythology under the moonlight?”

Oh, gods. “Here we go.”

“Now,” Gale said, “to preface, this particular myth was passed down orally in numerous places, almost beyond count, so needless to say there are endless variations about the withertos and whyfores and the minutiae of who did what and the reasons behind each story element.”

Astarion stretched out again, bracing for the inevitable light show. “Just the best one, my love.”

“Oh, but best is subjective!” Gale said. “Best as in most reliably verified to be most likely to be the original, best as in most popular version within the general public, which carries its own implications about the function of myth and whether or original versions and the faithful retelling of them is as important as the general milieu of the story, and even then the predominant version varies by region, which I don’t have to tell you—”

He took a bite out of his pomelo slice. “Your favourite one, then.”

“Are you sure?” Gale said. “Because the differences in elements, I feel, really show some interesting—”

He stopped. The finger he used to point upwards excitedly curled back into his palm and he ran an awkward hand through his hair.

“Anyway,” he said. “I’ll go with one from my picture books as a child, then, shall I?”

Astarion had to do little more than a slight quirk of his brows to show interest for Gale’s ember of excitement to reignite into a cheery blaze.

“Right, so.” It was the mere work of moments, and an illusion in the style of a magnificent Shou ink painting came to life in magical wisps of smoke. “Once upon a time, the world had ten suns.”

He leaned back to make room for the illusion, and watched as Gale revelled in the chance to tell a story.

”The Jade Emperor desired a world that was not, in fact, covered in fire and ruined crops.”

A white figure appeared, surrounded by clouds and dressed in silks and finery, shaking his head in disappointment at the misery below.

“And so a human archer named—and, forgive my woeful lack of tones here—Hou Yi, shot down all but one of the suns.” At this, a new character’s arrows shot through the magical suns like a bird piercing through clouds. One by one the swirls and gentle washes of the simulated inks dissipated, like a drop of soap coming into contact with oil-slicked water. “It earned him a debt of thanks from the gods and two pills of immortality—one to share with his wife, Chang’e, once they were ready to ascend to the heavens as gods.”

Now a beautiful woman alongside the archer, her hair in elaborate sculptural styles decorated with beads and trinkets, her clothes all soft flowing silks. They smiled at each other, palms gently kissing, happy above all else to have the other in their lives. The wife watched placidly as Hou Yi sealed the pills in a bottle and hid them in some unassuming corner of the house. She kissed him goodbye as he left.

“One day the husband was off fighting demons, you see, and a burglar came into his home to steal the pills for himself. Chang’e, being woefully untrained in combat, gathered the pills and, in a fit of desperation, downed them both before he could get his hands on them.”

The story paused as she and the burglar regarded each other in silent disbelief. She braced herself, she checked her hands for any change, and just when it looked like nothing would happen, her feet floated gently off the floor.

“One pill was enough to turn her into an immortal goddess,” Gale said, “but taking two had outright lifted her past the immediate heavens and straight up and onto the moon.“

She grasped for the ground, fought to head back. Her husband appeared outside their home just in time to watch her silent figure reach for him, clawing to find purchase on a hold that simply didn’t exist.

Astarion followed the figure as it floated up towards what they could see of the actual moon. The new goddess looked down at the world below. Her husband stayed behind.

“She lives there now with only the Jade Rabbit for company,” Gale said. The figure took on a pose he would’ve expected from a statue of worship, and her long flowing lines and elegant silks formed a silhouette against the shadows and craters. “You can see them there, if you try.”

Astarion took another thin slice of the sesame paste mooncake. “Gods, and this is the sort of tragic sentimentality Morena read to you as a child?” he said. “That explains so much.”

Gale chuckled before he continued.

It was the goddess again, imposing in her divinity, and her husband on earth, just a man. She reached for him just as the moon reached the peak of its brightness.

The sudden appearance of the bridge shocked them both. They stared at it, experimented with its hold under their feet, and sprinted towards the other.

“Some versions have them meet only once a year, on the night of Lunar Harvestide,” Gale said. “Sometimes it’s a bridge, sometimes it’s the efforts of a kind higher goddess willing to bend the rules.”

Gale sighed to see them reunite, weeping in each other’s arms.

The scene reset, inks washed away to leave a blank canvas.

The goddess now stood lonely in her domain. She reached for him, to no avail.

He gazed up at her, steadfast in his hope for so much as a glimpse his way even as she turned her back to collapse into tears.

“Most have them separated forever.”

The harvest arrived. The archer celebrated with his village in its abundance.

All was well, until he came home to an empty house, staring at the chair where she would’ve been.

There was now a low table set outside in the light of the moon, laden heavy with a feast. He sat beside it, set down a mooncake, and watched for her.

“Hou Yi never forgot about her,” Gale said. “He created the mooncake in her memory, leaving out her favourite foods every year in the light of the full moon at Lunar Harvestide until his death.”

An empty table, back inside the house because there was no one to bring it out into the moonlight. The goddess held the rabbit, waiting for him to join her.

Astarion watched as the illusion faded into starlight.

Something ached in him that he didn’t want to acknowledge, some sense of loss he didn’t want to name.

He looked again at the table, and the places they could’ve easily set aside for Tara and Morena.

“Until his death,” Astarion said.

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a surprise,” Gale said. “He never got his share of immortality. It stands to reason that her waiting for him eventually became her mourning him.”

Gale took a slice of cake for himself. “I like to think he lived well, considering, and she probably had moon things to do—tides to raise, prayers to answer, that sort of thing.”

He looked at Gale, and thought about the archer, looking around at his empty table.

“All that time alone.”

“With the rabbit!” Gale said. “Interestingly, sources conflict with regard to the origin of the rabbit. Now, my High Shou is rudimentary at best, but from translated sources, some had him join later, others had him float up alongside her, though I wouldn’t know where I could’ve put him in my own humble retelling—”

He stopped.

“Astarion?”

Astarion couldn’t look at the moon. He could hardly look at Gale. His body braced against a threat that wasn’t there, the night cold again with the sea breeze. He cursed at the catch in his breath, the insisted ache in every beat of his cured heart.

It was absurd, really, because everything was fine. He was fine. Gale was fine. They’d been having a good night. They could continue to have a good night.

Why did it hurt?

“Oh, dearest.” Gale shuffled closer to embrace him, and Astarion’s heart calmed at his warmth, at the scratch of his beard, at the scent of kitchen and sweat and books and his perfumed blend of rose, and tilia, and the seawater of home. “It’s only a myth.”

“I know.”

“Do you need to talk it through?”

Astarion took a steadying breath against him.

“I—” He tried again. “Do you find this romantic?”

“Romantic?”

“The moon goddess, just… pining, forever,” he said, “after she watches her husband grow old and die.”

Gale puzzled at the question. As far as he was concerned, from the looks of it, he was simply telling a story he enjoyed. Gale was never the best with people, he would be the first to admit. There were wavelengths he could never quite pick up on, as if everyone else heard sounds he couldn’t, messages he had to work harder to decipher. Astarion recognised him piecing it together, listening for the sounds he couldn’t hear.

“I suppose,” Gale attempted, “as a story it has its appeal. That’s why it’s lived on so long. But in practice?”

He followed Astarion’s slow gaze upwards to the moon.

“I don’t think he would’ve wanted her to become some shell of herself, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “I like to think, as a goddess, she probably started a new life up there.”

“Raising tides, you mean. Fighting Kara-Turan Shar.”

“Among other things,” Gale said. “It’s a life. Hers by definition couldn’t end with his.”

It was one way to put it.

He knew what he was getting into the moment Gale asked him to come to Waterdeep and marry him. He watched as the man he loved struggled down onto that creaky knee and tried not to think about the streaks of grey already in his hair, the deep and painful knowledge that even if Astarion were cured, restored back to life as a regular elf, Gale could only ever hope to be a fraction of their lives together if he chose a mortal life.

The threads of their lives were never measured out equally. Astarion’s by definition couldn’t end with Gale’s.

Gale’s hand wrapped around his, warm and full of life. The two mismatched metals of his wedding ring glinted in the light.

“My love,” Gale said.

“Yes, darling?”

“I…” He hesitated, and his voice came out small. “You will be happy after my passing, won’t you?”

“Gods, Gale,” he said. “Of all the things.”

But he kept his hand where it was. He squeezed Gale’s fingers in return.

“I mean, sad, obviously, for a while,” Gale continued. “But after. You’ll be all right.”

They’d only just gotten married. Neither of them needed to be thinking about any of this.

“We have so much time, my love.”

It was unsure and unconvincing, and as difficult a time as Gale had with subtext even he undoubtedly picked up the lie of it all.

“Of course,” Gale said. “Thirty years—forty, if I’m lucky. I daresay it’s just long enough for you to come to your senses and leave me for some younger model. But… after.”

“It’s too soon to talk about after.”

“After, Astarion Dekarios,” he said, and all momentary resolve and strength in his voice crumpled towards the end. He rocked, ever so slightly, as he summoned the nerve to continue. “You’ll have hundreds of years after me, my love—hundreds of thousands of days to come. Promise me you’ll live them.”

“I don’t—”

“No pining, all right? None of that wasting away. No isolation,” he said. “You’re not a goddess, and despite all my efforts to the contrary I’m certainly no archer. I would not have you alone all these long years.”

He swallowed the acid in his throat, banished away the images of being torn from each other, grasping for a hold that simply wasn’t there. It would happen, he knew it would, but not for years, not for decades.

This was here, he had to remind himself. This was now, and Gale was worth it.

Astarion leaned into his husband’s warmth, comforted in every breath, every beat of his living heart.

“All right,” Astarion said. “I promise. Best as I can. Don’t… Don’t float off into godhood in the meantime.” He batted at the closest arm. “Stupid, useless wizard.”

Gale kissed him under the moonlight, so very, very human, and still very much alive.

“Who knows?” Gale said, as his gaze returned to the moon in all her gentle glory. “Perhaps fate will smile upon us, and on some moonlit night we may find ourselves with a divine little bridge of our own.”

Astarion tucked a stray lock of hair behind Gale’s ear, and tried not to think about the strands of silver catching the light. “A long time from now.”

Gale leaned into his husband’s care, rejuvenated by every soft touch, every tender word.

“A long time from now, my love,” Gale smiled. “Now come. Let us not be maudlin, eh? It’s a feast for reunions. It’d be a shame to borrow grief from the future when here and now, we’re both still very much alive.”

In true Dekarios fashion, he handed Astarion another segment of pomelo and took a small bowl of pomegranate seeds for himself. Here he was on the verge of tears and the near absurdity of the love in this gesture was almost enough to have him laughing.

Gods. This family. This man.

What did he do to deserve this life?

Something about the sharp sweetness of the fruit bursting with juice in every bite was enough to prove Gale’s point. Life thrummed on all around them. Lanterns still floated up towards the sky, sounds of joy and revelry down below. The moon looked on in its impossible fullness at all the celebration of the year’s bounty, families all gathered with their own little feasts indulging in this time of abundance before the winter’s chill.

Could she still be lonely, looking down at all the love before her?

“I suppose there’s meaning in these, too,” Astarion said.

“Ah, that?” Gale said. “The moon goddess’s favourite fruit, depending on who you ask. Additionally, wishes for blessings and good luck. If Tara were here I’d probably have made her a little hat from the rind. But personally I like the traveller interpretation. Reunion. Families coming together, circles becoming whole, that sort of thing. I imagine even a goddess isn’t above wanting to be with those she loves.”

Astarion shuffled closer, just a little, just to help the moment feel more real.

Here and now they were together, happy, and sated. Their breaths mingled in the cool sea air and time was still to take anything real from them. Gale had grown softer in their short years together, no longer as gaunt as he was when they met when the orb was eating him alive and the tadpole scrambled for what was left. The lines around his eyes had grown deeper from smiling, the silver in his hair beautiful for all the terror they sometimes evoked.

They could face what was coming, if it meant a lifetime of this love.

Gale held up the pomegranate seeds. He always did light up whenever Astarion asked him to explain something that interested him.

“And this,” he said, “this is for abundance, for good fortune, and—this may explain Mum’s need to buy them in bulk every year—fertility, and many, many babies.”

Astarion's swallow of his bite nearly turned into a choke.

”You stop that immediately.”

Gale ate a small mouthful of them. “But they’re so good.”

“We are not giving Morena the satisfaction!”

It was a long night under the stars, beautiful, and sparkling, and very much alive.

They sat in the moonlight, and found warmth in the other, and once the feast was over and the dishes all cleaned, the kitchen magicked into an acceptable condition and the two of them thoroughly unglamorous after their evening ablutions, Astarion lay closer than usual to his husband in bed, breathing his scent, feeling his heartbeat, comforted in every quiet little movement as his chest moved up and down.

Here and now, Gale had said.

Here and now.

The moon shone out the window, as the celebrations went on into the night.