Chapter Text
When Gale had first proposed that they visit the Moon, Giliath actually spat out his beer. And when he saw that Gale was fully serious, he dug his fists into his eyes and wondered out loud if this was a dream.
“It’s a nightmare,” muttered Gale as he clutched his rounded belly, his face contorted in pain. “Do you know how difficult it has been to move around lately? I will tell you: It is difficult. Strikingly so. Ergo, the Moon.” And then he spent the better part of half an hour explaining and gesticulating about gravity and pregnancy and kinesiology and various other topics that end in “y.”
“But,” said Giliath, “the Moon?”
“Yes.”
“How in the hells do you plan to get us up there?”
A week later, they were up there.
It wasn’t all that difficult in the end. Lae’zel called in a favor with her people and they were ship-shaped for a spelljammer on the double. And since Gale had proudly announced to their old companions that they would be relocating until further notice and could use some minding, both Shadowheart and Astarion were amenable to tagging along; Shadowheart for her new goddess, and Astarion for some blessed dark. Even Karlach had managed to buy some time away from Avernus, and Wyll enthusiastically chimed in that he was “great with children” and in Giliath’s honest opinion, probably the best of their company and his first choice for the job.
But children, or rather the end product of them, was a ways away yet. Gale was obviously quite pregnant. So pregnant that he had suggested going to the Moon, for starters. But he wasn’t due for at least another month by Giliath’s estimations, and so off they went to prepare and to give Gale a much-needed break.
“Just like old times,” said Giliath with carefully concealed nerves.
“Twice the company I had bargained for,” replied Gale with barely masked annoyance.
But their company would not be arriving until later that week. And this turned out to be a blunder in the end, because after some Selunian agent had dropped the ball on cementing their lodging plans and Giliath lacked the gumption to correct it.
“But it’s airless,” he complained after being shuffled off to a booth with some lanyard-swinging employee he had clean-forgotten the title of. “And my husband, he’s—”
“Going to love the rustic charm of the Near Side Cabins,” interjected the employee in a very bubbly, very final way. “Oh, don’t get your antlers in a twist! The cabins are pressurized and come with suits with breathable air if you get a little restless and want to explore. Your husband wouldn’t happen to know the Wish spell, would he?”
But Giliath, still trying to work out just who he had been sat in a booth with and what position he held, was about five minutes behind in processing. “Antlers?” was all he said.
He was shuffled back out and another customer quickly took his place.
Gale dragged a palm across his face when Giliath broke the news to him in the lobby. “Leira,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”
“Why did he ask if you knew how to cast Wish?” said Giliath, eager to worm his way out of any possible blame.
“Because the Near Side of the Moon is under an illusion. Only its inhabitants, the Leirans, and those who know Wish can perceive its true beauty.”
“Do you know how to cast it?” asked Giliath.
Gale gave him an incredulous look. “It’s a powerful spell.”
“You’re a powerful wizard.”
“I’ll have a word with the agent myself,” huffed Gale. “As a pregnant fellow, I invite them to do their worst. I am Morena Dekarios’ son after all, and I daresay I can call upon that same power that has won her many an argument in the markets of Waterdeep.”
And so they tried again. Someone loudly mispronounced Giliath’s name over the speaker and they were squeezed into a different booth, this time with a beefy goliath whose lanyard was dwarfed by her thick neck.
“We can accommodate you with a bigger space suit,” she said to Gale. And then she cracked her veiny neck at Giliath and Giliath quickly took her point.
“You could try Friends,” said Giliath doubtfully after they retreated back into the lobby. He slung a quick look behind him to make sure that the goliath was out of earshot.
“Friends,” grumbled Gale. “I’ve got plenty of those already. They’ll be here later this week.” He sighed. “How I could use Lae’zel's sharp tongue right about now. Maybe a sharp blade if the need arose. No matter. I seem to recall signing something, and I seem to recall you also signing that same something. Paperwork for a cabin on the Near Side, was it? Perhaps we should go there.”
“Perhaps we should,” said Giliath. And so they went there.
The tramline was, at the very least, blessedly quiet. Not many were in a hurry to see the Near Side, unsurprisingly—just a handful of Leirans that kept to themselves in small clusters, and a tourist with an anxious grin who, after a few subtle glances about the car, tapped on the shoulder of the lady next to him and whispered something that sounded a lot to Giliath like “Oh hells, I think we’re going the wrong way.”
And that was precisely how Giliath was feeling. “Lucky bastards,” he muttered as the couple flagged the ticket-taker down and scurried off the car. Then with a lurch, the tram bolted away from the station and Giliath at once felt like he might be sick. Gale looked at him sympathetically, then with some horrible realization that he might also be sick, and was.
The vibrant domed structures of the Far Side cities and spaceports quickly melted into the darkness of the Moon’s Near Side. The landscape outside Giliath’s window splashed by in shots of gray and black so drab that he, a black-haired gray-skinned tiefling, felt as though he could stand outside and be the most colorful thing out there.
“I hope it’s not all like this,” he said.
Gale gave a queasy look out the window. “Can’t make out what’s out there, to be honest. It’s all a fuzzy blur. How’s a man even supposed to see where he’s going in these things?”
Giliath thought about this for a moment. “I don’t think we’re meant to,” he said quietly. “I think we just move.”
The tram deposited them at a sleek but altogether quite soulless station, soulless in the sense that there was no decoration save for a giant timepiece which may have seemed to its creator a sort of bold fashion statement but was ultimately unreadable and therefore quite useless.
They were also utterly alone. No clerks or workmen were to be seen and the Leirans had dispersed almost immediately while Giliath and Gale awkwardly got their bearings in lighter gravity. It was lighter even than the Far Side, which felt just comfortably shy of Faerun’s. Here Giliath felt he might drift away if he wasn’t careful, and he thought at once of the Shadowfell, another strange dark place he had never imagined winding up in. At least the stakes were lower this time. He hoped.
“Now what?” he said as they wandered over to a plain slab that he supposed was meant for sitting on. A second and even third scan of the bland decor of the station revealed nothing. No indication where they were supposed to go nor indeed any sign that they were not to just walk out into space and die. This was perhaps indicated in the station’s signage, but since neither of them knew the local letters, they were none the wiser.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” he said uselessly. He looked at Gale’s rounded belly and something crystallized in his throat.
But Gale simply rested his head on his shoulder, and Giliath instinctively wrapped an arm around him. He was warm against him, and suddenly it seemed to Giliath that it didn’t matter that they were in a place with no sun. Sitting here beside him was all the warmth and light he needed.
“I think I can divine what the letters mean,” said Gale in a soft voice. “Simple ritual spell. Not really my forte, but in this case all one needs is a pinch of soot and salt and persistence that would put most tax collectors to shame.”
“That’s all very well and good,” said Giliath. “But I don’t see any soot and salt around, do you?”
Gale chuckled. “Ah! You underestimate me, my love. A good wizard always keeps his supplies close at hand. A better one would have realized he could have done something about our predicament sooner, but you and I will have to settle for, well, me. Hand over my pack, won’t you?”
Giliath did just that. He watched as Gale plucked out two vials and mixed them in a shallow dish. Then he carefully sprinkled the contents onto the table near the entrance to the station and formed a sigil pattern.
A muttering of words. A flash of white, first across his eyes and then surging like a trail of flame down his arm into the sigil. And then the light faded and he smiled at Giliath, eyes warm as ever, the otherworldly white melting away to gentle brown.
“Let’s try it then, shall we?” he said.
Giliath gulped, smoothed the prickling hairs on his forearms, then followed Gale to the sign at the station entrance.
Gale placed his hand on the text and the magic crackled as before but a little more faintly this time. His brow creased in concentration, then jumped in surprise. “An elevator!” he exclaimed. “By Mordenkainen’s twisted mustache—there was an elevator here this whole time and we missed it?”
“But I don’t see a lever or… anything,” said Giliath, struggling to remember if he knew what an elevator was.
Gale dragged a thumb across his chin. “I’m a little turned around myself,” he admitted. “Alien technology that I can make neither heads nor tails of. Perhaps there is a switch, or button, or—ah.” He gestured at the far wall and laughed. Sure enough, two suspiciously door-shaped depressions were etched into the wall, steelwrought and sword-bright. And beside them, a panel with two small buttons.
Giliath stared at them stupidly. “Nothing makes sense here,” he said.
“No indeed,” laughed Gale. “But perhaps this trip will make worthy spacefarers out of us yet. To the elevator!”