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Disclaimer: Dragonlance brings to TSR, Ballantine, and Margaret Weis, and Tracy Hickman.
Written as an extra treat for Miss Hammer in the Final Ship Swap 2016, the request was for a fix-it fic, so I hope this serves. The title was inspired by the song by Julia Ecklar.
"Burnish Me Bright"
The sky is too high above us tonight to paint tonight, or so it seemed.
The trees are closely bunched in the clearing that she comes to get away from the hustle and bustle of the council hall or the duties demanded of her as the only living heir of the last king of the Silvanesti.
It’s a role that’s she’s been born and bred to serve and one that she had always known would one day be hers and one that she had once found stifling, even frustrating, but accepts over time.
Sometimes Porthios would chide her for what he referred to as her overly dramatic paternal duty, but in between that smug and arrogant attitude that he might as well wear around like a second skin; in a way; Porthios had given her a compliment. Back-handed but a compliment.
She dismissed Porthios from her mind and took several deep cleansing breaths, centering her mind and energy on what came here to think about, what she needs to think about.
The sudden heat that she felt does not come from the gradually warming dawn sky or the heat from the small bronze brazier to her left.
No, she quickly realized that the source of that heat comes from the blazing green jewel she always wore close to her heart, the Starjewel.
It’s an item that the Silvanesti traditionally only bestowed upon one another, usually from lover to lover or close family members.
Until now it has been unheard of to be given outside of the tribe; let alone to someone who is not an elf.
And, yet, she broke that precedent; and she might have thought it an act of impulsiveness or even compassion to the dying, tragic, even doomed man that she had given her secret heart to.
“Sturm Brightblade,” she murmured, unaware and uncaring of who heard her. Although they never actually met in life, through the bond created by the magic of the Starjewel, she could experience what he felt, and felt when he made his last stand against the armies of the Dragon High Lord at the High Clerist’s Tower, she felt every blow, every thud, every bit as he died as he breathed his last.
Why that should be so Alhana doesn’t know, but was it, love? Is it love? Do I love a dead man? At this late remove, she no longer worried over the propriety.
The Silvanesti, she knows, and probably with due cause, were haughty and even arrogant in the opinion of their cousins, the Qualanesti elves, and even by other tribes, including humans and other races, such as dwarves.
But her life had changed that day after a handful of the Companions had come to Silvanesti when she had helped them and in doing so, found a connection to the outside world that she had never experienced before then. “Sturm”, she said again, and this time it was more of a summons than an exhalation. “Do you hear me?”
**From the ether, the one who had worn his name much like he wore his armor, his quiet and unrewarded oath to the order that had become something of an outmoded ideal, stirred.
He raised his head as if he thought he heard a voice calling his name; or in the manner of a hunting dog that hears and responds to the silvery belling call of the huntsman’s horn echoing across the rolling green fields of the country.
It took a while for him to put thought to deed and form words. It’s been so long, so long that the counting of the passing hours, days, months, years, no longer matter.
If he thought that responding to the summons is strange, or odd for one that is no longer living, it passed in the flash of light of armor. Armor, that he dimly remembers that was once his father’s and then became his. “Who’s there?”
“Sturm,” a low, mellow voice replies. “It is I.”
“I, I,” Sturm mutters and then trails off.
And then with a tug like the undertow of an ocean at sunrise, Sturm is pulled out of his crypt and into a forest clearing that he finds more familiar than it has any right to be.
“Where am I?” Sturm asked.
And he is standing upright and clad, not in his armor that he was buried in, but in the clean cloth jerkins and leather breeches much as becoming accustomed to wearing around his adopted home village of Solace.
“In Silvanesti,” Alhana replied.
“Alhana?”
With a silvery laugh, Alhana asked, “Where else?”
“How?” No Sturm shakes his head. I don’t want to know how I got here.”
“Even if I were to answer your unasked query, my friend,” Alhana said, “I don’t think I could find the words, it’s magic, but a very rare and special kind of magic. In all honesty, I think I am being selfish.”
“Selfish? You?”
“It has happened, even to the best among us, human, elven, dwarven, or what have you, but no, I meant employing the magic of the Starjewel to bring you here.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Do you mind? I hope, oh, I do hope I am not disturbing you?”
“What an odd thing to say,” Sturm replied with a chuckle, moving forward to take her hand in his and folding them one over the other. “Disturbing me. No, not at all. I thought nothing like this was possible. It’s not the magic, because of magic. I always brought up to believe was something like the wind and storms, and fire; something of the elements, but unknown and nigh on impossible.”
“You think differently now,” Alhana remarked, adding, you knew Raistlin of the Black Robe, back when he donned red robes of neutrality when he came here if I recall correctly,"
“Aye, I did; but that’s different, I suppose. I don’t know exactly how, but it is.”
“I suppose so,” Alhana agreed.
“I love you, Alhana.”
“I know, Sturm, believe me, I know you do.”
“How long do I have; I mean, here, with you?” Sturm asked, feeling a wave of ambivalence suddenly about having to go back; as if it were the back were some cold, lonely place.
“Not long, maybe as long as we wish to. But when you go back, know that you do so with my love, Sturm. I will always love you.”
As she reached over to embrace him and they stood locked together until the fire of the brazier burned out; and with the approach of dawn; Sturm’s form shimmered and gradually faded away, but not without leaving its mark on both of them.