Archive of Our Own

It really was easier, he was reluctant to admit.

The last year had, well, the last year had happened, his permission be damned. He was widowed, and in a fit of injustice the world had refused to stop. The winter approached heedless of anyone's permission or readiness, the spring not long behind, and so on and so forth in all that dreadful inevitability until he looked up and he had found himself back here, a year later, older and still widowed and miraculously still going.

Music filtered in through his reverie. In the distance cried the food stall hawkers and the sellers of flowers or little trinkets peddling their wares. Families prayed at various graves. Friends gathered for a final night of revelry before the winter chill sent them drifting off to warmer climes. Songs drifted into the night air. Impossibly, there was dancing. All around him the City of the Dead buzzed with life, and before he could give anything permission it was the Feast of the Moon.

Through the protective barrier of Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum warding the entirety of the Hall of Sages, the moon shone above and through the laced gates leading into the Hall, bright and beautiful and impossibly full. Astarion Dekarios stood, in the Hall of Sages, in front of his husband's tomb as if his world had never ended.

And it was okay.

Button, used to the routine of visits he had cultivated by now, wagged her mighty tail and took position napping where Gale's colleagues and admirers had left flowers out of respect. She gently cleared a spot for herself, snuggling into the softness as petals fell upon her like a crown, yawned, and wagged her tail again.

Beside him Amroth poorly feigned a lighthearted smile. "All right?"

He should've been crying, he thought. Leandra had made sure to fashion the ward so that should Astarion have a repeat of last year's outburst, there would at least be some safe way to contain his grief in peace and privacy. Sobriety and healing aside, some part of him figured that was probably the done thing, wailing and keening for his lost love on the night that the city had set aside for honouring the dead.

Instead he found himself rolling his eyes and finding almost a hint of a chuckle in his voice. "Expecting a repeat of last year, are you?"

All good cheer and humour drained from his friend's face like a kill swiftly drained of blood. "I swear upon the Binder, Dekarios—"

"Unclench, Amroth, gods," he said. "It's fine. I'm sober, as you've all made very sure."

Amroth exhaled oh so swiftly out through his nose and narrowed his eyes just a touch, which coming from him might as well have been a full tantrum. "That much is obvious."

The grin escaped Astarion before he could even consider the barest modicum of politeness.

"Oh la la, the pinnacle of investigative journalism, everyone," Astarion cried. "However you managed to dodge reassignment into the gossip department remains a complete mystery. You should be tailing the Open Lord. You should be releasing her diary pages!"

Amroth Ironwood of The North Wind never did recover the liquid grace and easy smile of his decades before the loss of his wife. The once effortless charm of his interviews as he swirled wine in one hand and transcribed shorthand with the other was now rehearsed and strained with effort, his movements stiff as if wary of a world composed of spike traps and knife edges.

So the visible cue that he was not only smiling but actively trying to suppress his laughter for the sake of the moment had been enough for Astarion to back off and internally declare a little victory.

He'd made his automaton friend fend off laughter, and that was prize enough.

Beside him the mirth quieted, as if Amroth suddenly remembered where they were. He laid a hand on Astarion's arm, and more of the world around them came into focus as Astarion suddenly remembered the loose dog lead in one hand, the bouquet in the other, the dog panting against the smooth tiled floors and the smell of incense and flowers not far ahead.

It was a softer smile that greeted him when he deigned to look up to find his friend unable to meet his eye, his gaze kind all the same.

"But really," Amroth said. "It's okay."

"I know it's okay."

"It is, though."

"I—" Astarion attempted to laugh it off, even as his voice grew wet and his chest ached with the threat of a shout dissolving into tears. "This is ridiculous. It's hardly my first time here, darling."

"We can step out—"

"No," Astarion said. "I just— Would you mind just… staying with me a while, while I…?"

"Of course."

Astarion Dekarios quite enjoyed the act of lying, regardless of his outcomes being some rather even distribution of hits and misses. It was power of its own sort, to use exact words and a certain finessing of the truth to achieve the ends he wanted. It was sport, arguably, and above all else, it was fun.

But there was no such manipulation here. He had, rather unwisely, spoken plain.

This was not in fact a rare visit. In the tendays immediately following Gale's burial the trips to the Hall were occasions, silent and whelmed with pain and meaning. He dressed up and prepared with all the gravity of an official summons, speaking to his husband's memory half-choked with tears as he imagined a voice responding to his awkward mumblings in the silence. But the year had passed before he had given it permission to, and his niece and his friends refused to let him grieve alone, and before he knew it he found himself at the Hall of Sages nearly daily, his dog at the foot of the freestanding tomb and the cool marble of the Hall as his seat, chatting away about idle gossip as if Gale had never left.

Though therein probably laid the trick in anniversaries: there were rather less opportunities to rehearse those.

He'd made a fool of himself the last Feast of the Moon. Boredom, grief, and some reckless combination of medication and drink had driven him stumbling into the Hall in a slurred rage, railing against Gale's selfish decision to age normally and die at the criminally young age of a hundred and six. There was rather less he could say to that as the wound scabbed over. He was sorry, obviously. He was better, probably. It all would've been easier with some sort of script, some form of ceremony.

Crying did feel like the appropriate thing, for someone in his situation. He wasn't sure what he had expected, but rending his clothes and screaming into the air weren't completely off the table.

He laid down his bouquet and regarded the kind statue standing at the head of Gale's section of the Hall of Sages. Leandra had it commissioned sometime in Gale's nineties. An upstart young artisan had created something the very image of Gale in his fifties: rounded in his age and his life of fine wine and home-cooked meals, vibrant and strong and self-assured from his years of hard-won wisdom. He looked in the middle of a thought that excited him to speak about, finger pointed upwards as he readied to pontificate, a bag just about spilling with books at his feet. Leandra and Belladonna had just about festooned the whole area with flowers, an abundance garlanded all over just as he was on the day he was buried.

Astarion missed him, despite everything. The gossip rags had, even before Gale's death, declared him free to find love again, and still all he wanted was the return of the one he had just lost.

What was there to say, after seventy years of a best friend to share his life with? What was there to say, when it still stung sometimes to turn to his side and find no one there? His mind had grown used to a home with his husband, and a year after his loss it struggled to move out of the familiar paths of habit that told him that Gale was somehow still at the tower, waiting for him to come home. What was one year of growth after a lifetime of certainty?

He felt the flush bloom across his face like a punishment, an admonition from his own inner voice as if he were a child caught stealing biscuits from the cooling rack. He winced at the sudden reminder of the scar running across the back of his ear from the day he had buried Gale and the knife slipped as he cut off a lock of his hair. He frowned at the sudden reminder that he had brought along a container of Cormyrian boar stew to offer at the grave on the day the dead were most with them.

He and Gale had shared everything, said everything.

What could there be to say?

He had apparently been standing there longer than he'd thought, observing a moth that had landed, gently, on the fingertip of Gale's statue like a conjured illusion, because he found himself soon joined by Amroth on one side and Leandra on the other. Both stood ready, bracing themselves for some sort of outburst, when Astarion sheepishly turned to Amroth with a face nearly incandescent with shame.

"It's okay, Astarion," he said, and if he had picked up anything from Astarion's weak attempt at a shrieking giggle to defuse the tension he chose not to show it.

"I can't face him," Astarion said. "Would you believe it? I'm here nearly every day and I can't—"

On his other side his niece repressed the urge to speak too obviously like his elder. "Yes. Uncle, it's okay."

"He's probably looking down on me all morose and disappointed."

Leandra Bywater was, quite definitively, not Gale's daughter. Her dark skin and clouds of coiled hair came from her mother Rhiannon, and whatever resemblance could be attributed to Gale was in fact courtesy of his half-brother, Titus, born and raised in the Moonshaes where Leandra herself had also grown up. Those were their features she inherited, their gestures. But she had been decades in Waterdeep, often with Gale and Astarion as the closest thing she had to guardians. She would be seventy next year, and sometimes she smiled, or sometimes she found herself struck by an idea, or sometimes she even huffed the way he did, and Astarion couldn't help but see the echo of the man he married, some part of his legacy living on if only from a lifetime of exposure.

Leandra tilted her head in such a specific way, her eyebrows knitted and her indulgent smirk in such a familiar shape.

She was not Gale's. She was not theirs. But it was almost resemblance enough to ache.

"Oh? And what did your cleric say about projecting things Uncle Gale wouldn't have said?"

He sighed. "You're right. You're right."

She smacked him on his arm, barely a tap, before making a show of wrapping her shawl around herself more securely. "Chill's coming in. Gods, my bones won't handle a night out."

It was theatre, more than it was anything. After the disaster that was Astarion's tirade and subsequent collapse caught on camera last Feast of the Moon, Leandra had done her fair share of battling to ensure permission to ward the Hall from view of anyone outside of it, so that whatever outbursts or fainting spells Astarion may have had could at least be done in peace and some form of finality. City authorities had agreed, and Leandra and her halfling wife Belladonna had taken the opportunity to set up a smaller warded area in the immediate vicinity of Gale's grave, a cosy little magical space that looked from the inside to be a cottage replete with plush chairs, tea, a bonfire, and a not inconsequential selection of provisions in case he had forgotten to eat. If Astarion were to have another outburst, the setup seemed to argue, he would at least have a soft place to land.

He made a show of rolling his eyes. "So, the arthritis really did run on both sides of his family."

The next tap came more forcefully, and she stuck her nose slightly further into the cool night air. "It's my duty to inform you that I have Dethrone prepared for emergencies and very quick fingers—arthritic though they may be."

"I love you too, little niece."

She shook her head and shooed him away. "Go. If it's too much for you right now, you may as well have your first actual experience of the Feast first."

He stared at her, asked if she wasn't coming for a walk around the City, and she looked at him as if wondering if now would be a good time to break the news that she was in fact one bad fall away from death.

"At my age?" she said. "In this cold? When there's a perfectly comfortable Hall right here? Tell you what, though, I could do with some snacks when you're done. Come round after you've explored. How long's it been since you got me snacks?"

"But the crowds, darling! And all the damp. And so many stalls! You'd have me face them alone?"

Belladonna spoke up from her portable stool. "And you'd have a senior citizen brave all that because you're uncomfortable in a crowd?"

Truthfully he would, but there was hardly any arguing worth its time when it came to wizards and bards. "Eugh. Fine."

Bell ushered Leandra back towards the chairs. "And anyway, you've got Button and Mr Ironwood with you, eh? Not exactly alone."

He tried not to pout and stamp at the thought of following through with his own plans. Outside of the Private Sanctum was the real world, crueller and louder and literally colder than the little bubble of safety they had made for themselves there. He could imagine the insufferable snaps and clicks of cameras as soon as he stepped out, and whatever fun that could be had during the festival would be overshadowed by the worry of his name appearing in the betting rags the next day to settle whether or not he had made another spectacle of himself.

The sneer came out regardless. "As entertaining as Amroth's company is, my dear, I'm afraid there's a whole other set of problems out there."

Leandra perked up. "Oh! Right!"

The flap of her bag opened to reveal a selection of Illusion scrolls written in her neat hand.

"So, disguise, or laying low?"

Astarion picked a scroll at random. Invisibility to Cameras would be no good if he were to keep wary all night. Knowing her, it was likely either a scroll to make him near impossible to notice unless he made himself known, or one of the rarer forms of hard light illusion that made him tangible even when inspected.

It was with no small measure of relief he found himself transformed yet again into a now-familiar moon elf woman persona he had the honour of slipping into when times looked especially fraught with Waterdeep's more vulturous members of the press. She retained Astarion's height, and for the sake of the illusion was not much different in build save for the curves, but her pale blue skin and midnight blue hair would be enough to throw off just about anyone's trail. A modest walking suit flowed outwards around him like a barrier, the physics undetectable to all but the most trained eye. The disguise had even extended onto his dog, transforming her from a scarred and sturdy cart dog bred for hauling small wagons along Waterdeep's narrower streets, to a pampered hound with a bloodline optimised for countryside hunts outside the city walls.

He'd grown attached to the woman he wore as a disguise. He'd taken to calling her Ilma.

Astarion adjusted his hat, already relieving the tension in his stomach as his new voice came out higher and more bright as part of the disguise. "Leandra, dear, I really thought, in all our half-century together, you would've picked up at least some of the, erm, well—some fashion, darling."

"You really think wearing haute couture would get you less attention?"

"Something nicer than these pitiful rags, my sweet? I may be in mourning, but I do have standards."

It was nearly identical to her own walking suit, minus the shawl. He grinned his now less pointed canines at her as the insult landed exactly where he'd aimed.

His niece rolled her eyes like a petulant teen and updated the outfit to something less drearily plain: one of the subtler walking suits from the late Tyson Walker's collections of 1542. Sleek, tasteful, and just old enough to avoid screaming nouveau riche, the mourning gown gave him the air of a beautiful noblewoman more than it did a frumpy old academic.

"Now, was that so hard?"

"One more word and I'm changing it to a Lucien Liadon 1558."

"All right, all right, I'm leaving!"

"Have fun!" she called as he made his way out of the smaller illusion ward. "That's an order!"

Button trotted happily beside them as they left the Hall of Sages, disguised tail wagging and pink tongue lolling out the side of her mouth as Astarion and Amroth did their best to emerge from the hall within a group already leaving after having paid their respects to the sages within. To anyone hoping for scandal, there would be no sign of one of Waterdeep's most prominent names in fashion.

Astarion hid his satisfied grin of triumph beneath the demure flaps of his folding fan.

"I don't know," Amroth mused once they had finally cleared the entrance and blended into the crowd nearby, "I thought you'd appreciate Liadon trying something new that year."

"Ironwood!" Astarion cried. "Those same dull fucking camellias but in bouclé? What's next, an uninspired clover bracelet costing five dragons and retailing for fifty suns? Honestly, it's like you don't even know me."

"I mean, if the aim was to blend in as a typical noblewoman..."

Astarion scoffed. He tried not to wonder if the gesture was something he'd picked up from decades of dressing said noblewomen. "If this was all a ploy to throw off any suspicion that we can actually stand each other, it's working."

They continued walking through the throngs of Waterdeep's bereaved in almost peace before Amroth piped up with, "Did anyone tell you you have these little lines around your nose when you're angry? They show up even under your disguise, it's fascinating."

"And did anyone tell you," Astarion said, gesturing at Rhapsody secured in a sheath strapped to the back of his satchel, "I brought a knife."

With most other people it would've been enough to cause them to back off. Instead Amroth eyed the now-familiar dagger, reached for his belt, and brought out a much humbler one of his own. His house was a few minutes from here, Astarion remembered, the Feast of the Moon went on late into the night, and the Southern Ward was never exactly a paragon of safety. "See?" he said. "Getting into the Feast of the Moon spirit already."

"Oh, shut up and show me what all the fuss is about."

It was rather a different experience both medicated and coming to the Feast of the Moon sober and medicated. The hazy cacophony of last year had become more an almost mundane buzz typical of any of Waterdeep's constant revels and festivities. Whatever desperate grasping loneliness that entangled him had faded with time and the knowledge that he, objectively, had not been alone all day. His cleric had made sure to see him before the holiday, giving him a Sending stone in case he had the urge to do anything. Shadowheart had Sent him a message from her family checking that he was all right, adding that Lae'zel could easily kill him if he tried that again, advanced age or no.

What Astarion remembered as an agonising blur that distracted from the truth of losing his husband was, this time, just another festival. Lights floated overhead and in cheery strings over the many booths and activities while underfoot the pathways glowed with incense and offerings of food left out for whatever spirits happened to cross the veil. Vendors advertised their flowers and trinkets as the beginning of the winter winds competed against smoke clouds and the smell of various foods freshly cooked in portable stations. He had even helped himself to a warming serving of Baldurian seafood stew as Amroth fed the pup sausages, music filtering in through the sounds of Waterdeep welcoming the winter.

Astarion had settled into an odd wonder, watching as Waterdeep's porous boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead made themselves known yet again. The City of the Dead, as one of the only green spaces in the City of Splendours, also served as a public park and everything people associated with parks. The dead were not dead so much as they were now "in the City", and everywhere he looked with the decorated graves and the people carrying baskets of flowers it had struck him that everyone here had likely lost someone, that anywhere in the crowd there was also probably the same fresh mourner he once was, stumbling through, overwhelmed, yelling at their loved one to come back.

A glance back at Amroth playing with the dog was reminder enough that wasn't just him.

There was a reason they had agreed to attend the Feast together.

They were on their way to the Merchant's Rest portal when a familiar melody drifted through the busy hum of the crowds, Button immediately stiffening and pulling at her lead as her nose seemed to pick up on someone she knew.

Moon reminds me of your grace
All the love I can't repay
Rest and know that I will pray
Farewell my dear old friend

There, by the base of Aghairon's Statue, standing on a small platform in the midst of traffic flow of feastgoers and vendors, was the dwarf bard he'd seen nigh every tenday at their grief support group.

Dori Ravenhill had made it a point to dress as blandly as he could during meeting days. He'd said he'd found it a relief to be able to appear without the glamours and charms required of his profession, all the easier it was for him to better express himself at his most vulnerable without worrying about his stage presence. His best friend was a tabaxi and a fellow bard. He had watched her scrapbook her funeral plans the way she had planned her weddings and divorce parties. Then he had watched as age took her, slowly at first and then all at once. Astarion regularly forgot the man was a bard at all. As a result, he had nearly missed him completely, hardly recognising him in his performance clothes, beard freshly trimmed, jewelled beading in his hair. A small crowd had paused to listen as he had set aside his usual violin to pluck gently at a lute. Button just about wiggled at the sight of her friend, eager to receive her pats.

Faith, care, all the love I can't repay
Moon, sun, all remind me of your grace
Faith, care, all the love I can't repay

Amroth, rather selfishly, had chosen to naturally possess the sort of tall and statuesque frame that made it easy to spot him in a crowd. Adding to his list of sins, he saw no harm in pausing to acknowledge the existence of the bard before them.

"Is that Dori?" he said. "Gods. It is. To think we nearly passed him by altogether."

No sooner had they spotted him than Dori noticed them in return. Ilma, Dori wouldn't have known, but Amroth had no reason to hide in public. The bard's melancholy melted into excitement as he paused his song to call them over.

"Ironwood!" Dori called. "Brought a friend, have you?" The jewelled beads in his hair and beard clinked softly as he gave Ilma a polite bow. "Dori Ravenhill, ma'am, at your service."

"Actually, Mr Ravenhill, this is—"

Astarion offered an elegant hand in a perfectly fitted glove. "You may call me Ilma Tindómiel, good sir. Don't mind me, darling. I've not been to the Feast in an age, and Mr Ironwood was so kind as to show me to the graves of our old friends."

The sadness flickered back into Dori's eyes as he took Astarion's hand for a kiss. "Aye," he said, as he drew away, "s'pose tis the way with elves. Speaking of, Ironwood, our friend Mr Dekarios, then, is he—?"

Amroth stole a glance at Astarion and Button, catching Astarion's hesitation before replying, "He's safe. You have my word."

"Lady of Mercy bless us," he breathed. "Here's hoping it's a safe night for him this time."

"Turns out our friend just needed some company," Astarion said. "Now, before we so rudely interrupted you, I believe you were playing a song."

He flustered at the reminder. The smooth ease slipped away to reveal a glimpse of the devastated figure Astarion knew from the circle of chairs in the private room at The Gentle Rest. "Ah. Bit of sentiment, ma'am. Just had the afternoon to decorate my friend's grave, you see. Fellow bard."

"You trained in Baldur's Gate."

He looked up at Ilma. "How'd you know?"

It wouldn't do to say he was there on the bright morning Alfira had composed the song. She was young then, sat away from the rest of her fellow refugees as she struggled her way through The Weeping Dawn. Astarion had been more impatient than anything as Tav gently encouraged her into finding the last few lyrics she needed, but refused to take any of his annoyance back when she suddenly rose to sing a song of loss and friendship that even he couldn't resist smiling at.

She was gone now, her death gracing the broadsheets decades ago in polite short paragraphs if she were mentioned at all. Lakrissa was devastated, and the broken heart that ensued had reunited them not long after.

Her school was still doing well, if Wyll's darling little letters were anything to go by. Astarion had visited with Gale, during some holiday or other.

Over seventy years since that blur of a morning and The Weeping Dawn never did go away.

"You could say I'm familiar with the song."

Dori's face softened with sentiment. "It was her favourite. Oh, she was beautiful, was Rain Upon Misty Rivers. Nimblest paws on the sword coast, voice that could soothe a dragon. She liked to joke that her fiddle strings were made of only the finest guts of whichever relative annoyed her." The soft bardic voice wavered, and he swallowed back tears before he fell altogether. "She told me whoever dies first has to perform something embarrassing at the Feast. Bastard."

"And her definition of it was The Weeping Dawn?"

"Oh no," he said. "It's this."

He took his lute back up and began the first few of a string of increasingly bawdy stanzas.

If you go to Nesmé
And ask for the Hole of the Wall
There you'll find Polly Armstrong
She ain't got a hole at all

She was a rum one, she was a funny one, she was the rum one, oh!
She was a rum one, she was a funny one, she was the rum one, oh!

At last I found the hole
'Twas underneath the flock
And if you gave me all the will
I couldn't find me cock

She was a rum one, she was a funny one, she was the rum one, oh!
She was a rum one, she was a funny one, she was the rum one, oh!

At last I found me cock
The cock was in my hand
And if you gave mе all the will
I couldn't get him to stand

She was a rum one, she was a funny one, she was the rum one, oh!
She was a rum one, she was a funny one, she was the rum one, oh!

"You truly never took part in the Feast in the City?"

Merchant's Rest was not much changed from the last time he had reason to traverse the portals leading into the cemeteries that the City itself could not fit. It was night, obviously, which was novelty in itself. The City of the Dead typically warded against entry of any sort after sunset, keeping its many gates and portals open past sundown a mere once a year on the night the veil was said to be thinnest. Astarion and Amroth navigated their way through the lightly wooded burial ground glowing with candles, torches, glowing globes, the more genteel light enchantments, and the cool shining white of the moon high above, armfuls of flowers between them as they went about their night of paying their respects at various graves and fended off the dog's attempts to run off with the flowers as toys. Pathways of incense and food offerings on the ground gently lit the areas with Kara-Turan graves alongside the more understated piles of flowers typical of noble Waterdhavians.

Astarion placed a small bunch of zinnias on the pile of flowers already amassed at the small mausoleum of the Serpentil family. Dwitt didn't last long after his wife died, and by the time it was his son Jym's turn to go, Jym was tired and ready, having handed over care of Waterdeep's premiere source of arcane tomes and rare books and maps to a former apprentice who had, in the decades since her takeover, turned the gloomy sanctuary into the airy repository of knowledge it was perhaps always meant to become.

Serpentil Books & Folios had practically raised Morena and Gale, both having learnt to read as they navigated the shelves and pored over the various tomes. When Astarion had first moved to Waterdeep Dwitt was kind enough to accept Morena's proposal of having Astarion help out with minor tasks until he was either cured or found something to do. The shop was famously boarded up and devoid of sunlight, and Astarion had both a fondness for reading and some level of experience charming strangers into whatever he wanted. By day he stocked shelves and confirmed that wizards could really be very stupid, by night he planned his wedding in the startling new environment of living as part of a family. Dwitt and Morena were practically siblings, Jym and Gale slowly rekindling their bond after Gale had spent so long in isolation. The Serpentils had come to dinner on the rare occasion they could spend a night away from the shop. Dwitt and Jym even made it to the wedding.

So much of the Waterdeep he had first found when moving here had simply washed away with time and the tide, and still the city kept going.

He got back up with a shrug. "You know, I've never had much reason to," he said. "Waterdeep can't go half a tenday without some festival or other. Most of Gale's family are buried well away from this city, if they're buried at all. Besides, darling, I'd seen enough cemeteries for a couple of lifetimes; Gale respected that."

Amroth nodded behind his own armful of flowers. It occurred to Astarion that the man had no need to ask for details about Astarion's aversion to burial grounds, simply because somewhere along the way Astarion had decided to tell him.

He tried not to think about that.

"So last year was…?" Amroth ventured.

"Yes."

They had no need to go into further detail. What Astarion had left out during the support group sessions he'd told Amroth alone as they moved chairs and tables after their meetings or trained the pup together on the increasingly frequent occasions the two simply found themselves running into each other. Things he'd admitted during their shared meals, or on his doorstep, confessions in the silence as they visited the City together during the days fraught with memory. The emptiness of the house, the void threatening to swallow him whole, the red wine in the kitchen and the collapse at the tomb. Amroth knew. This was hardly the first time they'd stood together, the only real barrier before the other could reach for a drink.

He tried not to think about that, either.

Amroth bent to pat Button on her head in lieu of actually facing Astarion. It was comforting in a way it shouldn't have been. Most of Gale's family had something of an aversion to eye contact during moments of high emotion. Their little oddities—the looking away, the bouts of fidgeting or rocking—were simply how their bodies processed feelings as they put their thoughts together, and Astarion had yet to find the words to express that it helped in ways he couldn't understand when Amroth did the same.

"Well. You're doing better this time around."

"Ha!" Astarion said. "I choose to take that as praise, faint though it is."

Amroth stroked behind Button's floppy ears and beneath her chin as she wallowed in the attention. He considered a thought, eyes lost in some sort of memory, then dismissed it.

They'd left something of a trail from the portal to this end of the Merchant's Rest. Astarion hadn't expected to see veritable strata of the shopkeepers and fellow designers of Waterdeep revealing themselves to him like waves upon the shore, but he supposed it was only to be expected over seventy years in a majority-human city. Faces attached themselves to the names in his mind's eye, first meetings and his last vague memories of the last time they spoke. His history was here, buried in the ground all around them. As Waterdeep continued to change around him while he remained young and beautiful, there would be more funerals. He would collect more history, until one day the Waterdeep he had first laid eyes on would disappear, and he would be left yet again with little more than a memory.

Amroth caught his lingered gaze at the plaque reading Serpentil.

"Did Gale ever mind the rumours about you and Jym?"

"Oh, Ironwood, I'm wounded. Not you, too."

"I never said I believed them!" Amroth said. "Personally Jym Serpentil was probably too handsome for anyone. Just as well he fell in love with his craft instead."

Astarion smiled. He wasn't wrong. Jym Serpentil had grown up in his family's bookshop, same as Gale and Morena, same even as his father, Dwitt. He was the closest thing Gale had to a friend before Blackstaff, a few years his senior and blessed with the sort of quiet life that allowed him to retain his youth to the point where people assumed Gale was the older of the two. Astarion was newly engaged and rather too busy trying not to burn in the sun during his time at the shop to bother with flirtation, but even he had eyes enough to notice the intense stare as Jym stood over his sieve in concentration, the sweat dripping down his neck onto his surprisingly muscled body as he carefully brought the guillotine down on a batch, the somehow eternally windswept hair framing his sculpted face and elegant beard. Jym, oblivious, had only ever asked if Astarion had opinions on a particular batch's level of tooth or bleaching.

In truth they were generally just two very attractive men who happened to stand next to each other occasionally. The most the smut peddlers of Waterdeep had as fuel was the occasional sight of Astarion catching up with Jym at Guildsmeet, or being spotted together on the rare occasion both Jym and Gale had the time to meet for drinks or a bardic performance, and Astarion was rather too casually invited along.

Jym Serpentil was a figure on the edge of his periphery, a cordial acquaintance that was always more his husband's friend than he ever was his. Jym was bookish, and he was odd, and in most circumstances he would not have been someone Astarion would've chosen to befriend.

But he was gone, and it was still a shame.

Astarion observed the pile of flowers left behind by generations of spellcasters who depended on his books, the occasional bowl of incense or ceremonial food from the Kara-Turan communities he had served during his lifetime with his artisanal paper. They shone in the moonlight, at home among the decorated graves and the warmth of the candles flickering against the fine stone of the mausoleum, decorated lovingly with garlands and lights.

"Gale always said they were only rumours," he said. "No use being maudlin when I was rumoured to be cheating on him with half of Waterdeep by the time he died. He never doubted, so there was nothing to fear." He attempted a little laugh. "Gods. He was an awful liar."

There were other graves in Merchant's Rest—a fabric merchant who gave him the best deals, a fellow designer he had grown to adore after a bitter rivalry, the various scatterings of his nicer clients that took him by surprise to walk past. Amroth didn't judge when they passed by the veritably gauche plaques of Gale's branch of his paternal family and Astarion revelled in the sheer lack of care and decoration, and Astarion chose not to bring attention to the gentle hand on his back guiding him towards the portal before Astarion lost himself in bitter vindication that the bastards were forgotten.

He eyed the much less diminished pile of flowers in Amroth's arms, a bouquet he had held since Aghairon's Statue softly nestled beneath. Merchant's Rest was hardly the place for most of Waterdeep. "Will it be another armful of flowers at Guildbones, do you think?"

Amroth continued walking, refusing to look at both his flowers and his companions. "It's like Dori said. It's the way of things with us elves. They leave. We remember. Someone has to."

Astarion looked down at his dog, who smiled up at him like he was the brightest light in her world. He tried not to think of how long dogs typically lived. "Gods, I should've made more elf friends."

"I take it you're working on curating an entire circle of just elves?"

"Gods, I take it back."

The points of Amroth's ears tipped slightly upwards as a smile entered his voice. "Come on. I told the grandkids you'd be joining us at Guildbones."

Button, true to her breed, perked up at the mention of the Ironwood grandchildren and pulled on her lead, leaping and spinning as she awaited the sight of them.

He'd seen the postcards and paintings. The Feast of the Moon wasn't exactly Founder's Day or Fleetswake, and it was hardly Waterdeep-specific, but it had its own charm in the posters and travelogues. Much ink was spilt on the beauty of the City of the Dead in particular becoming a necropolis come to life, with all the variety of faiths and traditions that the port city had come to welcome living alongside one another in a colourful cacophony bordering dangerously close to twee.

It was one thing to see the etchings or photographs in the broadsheets the next day after a night relaxing with his family at home, quite another to see it in person.

All he could say when faced with the sight of the everyday face of Waterdeep celebrating the Feast at Guildbones was, "Well. There is quite a lot more smoke than the paintings suggest."

The smile Amroth gave him was almost a glimpse of the interviewer he had been before the loss of his wife. Easy, smooth, something close to excited. "Welcome to your first Feast, Mr Dekarios."

The paintings did it no justice.

The iconic, almost cliche overview of the mixture of traditions had tended to view Guildbones from a distant, slightly elevated angle, all the better to capture the depth of the variety of stories found within Waterdeep. It had made for a lovely view, but the gulf between artist and ritual that had allowed for an almost omniscient perspective did, by its very nature, preclude the viewer from the finer details of the various death and memory rituals.

Along the now familiar paths of Guildbones, the occasional offerings of incense and bowls of food had exploded into trails of their own. Shou families occasionally dotted the landscape, burning bags upon bags of paper coins and the occasional paper boat or mansion. One, with what appeared to be a matriarch with a particular fondness for bags, had even secured perfect paper recreations of some of the latest designs to send to their loved one in the afterlife. Nearby were the Maztican families leaving bread as offerings on the sarcophagi or plaques themselves, banners made of colourful paper cut into intricate patterns hung happily above, filtering in the light from the various lanterns and glowing crystals down to the ground below, trails of flower petals leading out from some graves and into the portals leading out. A young woman in Kozakuran robes swept at an already pristine grave. Distantly a group of people displayed giant kites with messages of love and wards against foul spirits, while nearer by were families from he assumed the Sword Isles both participating in a sing-along and barbecueing, dangerously close to the shared bonfires of the peoples of the Moonshae Isles.

The moon looked on through it all, its gentle light shining almost in beams through the clouds of the various smokes.

The thought occurred that Gale would've loved this, and he pushed it aside before the ache could set in.

"You know, I always assumed it would be a sombre affair," Astarion said.

"You thought death would always be pain?"

Well, he thought, yes.

He looked at him. "I've caused my own share, darling. When I said death was fun I don't think I meant this."

A couple of people passed, carrying with them a paper recreation of a North Ward villa to add to the fires. Button wagged her tail and followed the shine of the gold foiling like a new toy.

"You did say you wanted the real party."

They left a similar trail of flowers as they found the graves of the people they had known over the decades. Generations of artisans, former apprentices, people they had traded with, people they just knew. Amroth's specialty of highlighting endangered artisan communities saw him with his armful of flowers all but gone by the time they had found their way to his family. Astarion introduced Button to the plaques and sarcophagi of those whose names he could remember, while they still stood. They'd always passed them by on the way to and from the Draper graves, but they had the time now to actually visit. Here lay Rosie Blythe, a former apprentice who went on to run a humble shop. There was Lysander Wei, a silk expert who curated some of the most niche varieties of the fibre in one of the most comprehensive selections north of Amn. There were countless more people they could have come across, had Guildbones not cleared the burial grounds to make room for more of the dead.

It was perhaps why the memorials were so much more outward in the cemetery reserved for those of Waterdeep who created the coin that the city ran on. Nobles and owners had their places guaranteed. It was only a matter of time and money until even the greatest artisans and people of the trades would be exhumed to make room for more.

The Draper graves were a comfortable, familiar sight by now. Astarion eventually did take Amroth up on his offer to keep Astarion company on the days Gale's death weighed too heavily on him. Astarion, still on sabbatical, saw no reason not to return the favour on the days Amroth found himself brought low on days significant to his late wife, if only out of the lack of company or anything to do. Button had no objections, happy to run around in the free space of the glade before trotting over to join them at the graves, and happier still to later be invited to family gatherings simply because they had room. The company helped, and over the next year what began as a favour offered during one of the most fraught periods of Astarion's life had become a lifeline that each had taken for granted: there was someone to call upon on the hard days, and the grave visits needn't be done alone.

Button exploded with excitement at the sight of the grandchildren rushing to her in her hound disguise, tail wagging so hard her bottom had wiggled along with it as Celebwen, Amroth's eldest grandchild, took her into her arms and squealed at the kisses lathered upon her face.

Celebwen's mother remained sitting, clutching the younger sibling's hand in hers before he ran off to get trampled by the beast. "I'm beginning to think you prefer your persona, Astarion. Might we be expecting some sort of announcement of a career pivot to drag?"

"Ms Draper! I'm hurt!" he said. "Ilma Tindómiel would never debase herself by performing for the masses, darling."

Her sister Simmerend watched helplessly as her daughter Giir wriggled her hand out of her husband Vragi's and bolted towards Button for her own share of kisses. "Oh, leave off, Laerlend. If Ilma is how he gets you lot off his tail then so be it."

One sister worked as an investigative journalist, the other a writer of quite healthily erotic romance novels. He was arguably safe around neither.

"We liking the decorations?" Gilmith, the youngest sister, called from a headstone. "Not exactly one of Mum's tapestries, but I reckon she'd like the effort."

Effort was putting it lightly. The headstones of the Drapers that remained in the cemetery could almost scarcely be seen for all the vases and baskets of flowers surrounding each grave like a garden. Simple clay works stood brightened by the unskilled but earnest work of small hands holding paintbrushes, gracing each vase with suns, flowers, and the odd misplaced fingerprint or streak of mixed colours. Each of the grandchildren seemed to have a hand in the creation, Celebwen's careful lines sitting alongside the scribbles of the toddlers and infants.

Astarion had never met Asphodel Draper, but this kind of sentiment seemed about right for a family as embarrassingly earnest as the Draper-Ironwood clan.

"I did the flowers," piped up Basil, the little halfling boy Gilmith had adopted with her wife Thistle.

"I can tell, little master!"

That was the other darling little oddity of Amroth's little brood. Imprinted upon by the sordid influence of an elf-human pairing that not only stayed together but lived a loving and happy marriage until death did them part, Amroth's daughters had brought it upon themselves to add even more variety of the family line, adorning the family tree with a little gaggle of dwelves, half-elves, and said adopted halfling. Amroth saw no issue, and before Astarion could attempt to put the words together to remark upon his family looking like a diversity pamphlet, Amroth was quick to remind him that Astarion's own family had consisted of an elf-human marriage, a live-in mother-in-law, and a talking cat summoned from a different plane.

He wasn't sure which was worse: that his friend was right, or that Astarion had also ceased to notice the sheer weirdness of it all. He drew his gaze away from Button trying to devour the grandchildren with tail wags and kisses, and turned back towards the literally florid display.

"All right, then," he said, "what fun little cultural rituals are we in for tonight?"

Simmerend settled into the blanket her husband Vragi had wrapped around her, her smile almost catlike in her contentment despite the sudden chill. "Ha! Nothing quite so dramatic, I'm afraid." She nodded at the bonfires, the massive kites, the paper offerings. "Mum's ceremonies were just about done by the time you started coming over. Now it's just a matter of grave decorations and paying our respects."

"Besides," Laerlend added, "Koro Tāne's people don't do graveside food. I for one look forward to some snacks once we're done here."

Vragi settled with a blanket of his own besides Simmerend. "So you're just in time for the stories."

Amroth addressed Asphodel's grave in her paternal language first, repeating the blessing in Common once he had finished acknowledgements of her grave and that of her Ossean father's, moving on to her Waterdhavian side of the family, a long line of weavers and tapestry artists passing on the trade from mother to daughter.

"I acknowledge you all. Those who have passed on, we are here to pay respect to you. Oh treasured ones, come back in spirit. Oh precious one, greetings. Although you are gone from this land, your descendants live on. They have arrived to acknowledge you."

His daughters stood tall and strong beside him as his voice shook and the words struggled to come out.

Four years since he'd lost her to time, to disease, to the sheer banal cruelty of a human lifespan. His partner, his best friend, and looked like it still hurt as if she'd died yesterday. He had only recently found it within himself to declare the mourning period over and allow the family to freely speak her name. He had shared the burden of his troubles. He had healed. Still, he had moments he could barely face her.

And, as Amroth had been trying to tell him all night, it was okay.

"I'm here, my love," he said, as he placed his bouquet in an empty vase Simmerend had set aside. "I'm here."

The stories the family ended up sharing surprised Astarion. From what Amroth had told him about the sarcastic weaver who had taught their daughters how to build their own furniture and who had managed to carry three children of elven heritage to full term, he had expected recounts of her infamous verbal spars with art critics failing to acknowledge the depth of the cultural knowledge in her work, or the time she had hurt a cheating commissioner's feelings so badly that he had paid an actually fair price for one of her tapestries. Asphodel was a strong woman, both in mind and in body, able to overpower Amroth in their spars despite their gap in height and refit entire rooms out of sheer boredom.

Instead what they shared were the private sides of her too intimate to discuss during the displays of bland politeness that was friends and neighbours asking how they were doing since dear Ms Draper's death, the poor dear. Laerlend waxed poetic about Asphodel's deft hands, strong and muscled from long days at the loom, braiding her daughters' waves of dark hair with all the care and precision she had when marking off the lines of coded language for each of her rows. Gilmith giggled about her specific turns of phrase. Celebwen spoke of her emphasis on posture because her livelihood relied so heavily upon avoiding back strain. They spoke of someone less legend and more tangible, the specifics of her elegant gait and the way she massaged her hands when they hurt from handling metallic thread. Amroth's gaze drifted somewhere into the past as if remembering the truth of her was a glimpse of being with the truth of her, and he had just begun stifling back the tears when Celebwen gestured at the headstones.

"Oh! Oh!" she said, little eyes wide as she regarded her new findings. "Is that them?"

Three moths had landed in their midst, peppered and placid and almost eerily like bark shaped like a pair of wings. They perched gently upon Asphodel's headstone and the plaque of the freestanding tomb her parents shared.

The family stilled, and the tension released like an exhale in the cold.

Laerlend's husband Colm spoke first, rubbing at Button's contented belly. "Fashionably late, dears?"

Astarion turned to Gilmith. Gale had once said something about beliefs to do with moths, didn't he? Maztican? Ossean? "You believe they return as moths?"

She seemed to debate telling him the full story of all the nuances between her grandfather's culture and her father's culture, and how all of that condensed into a larger conversation about what belief even meant in Waterdeep, before she simply held Basil and asked, "Would you rather they not return at all?"

He was well used to the water cleanse as they left the general area of the Draper graves. Button protested as she was led away from the grandchildren toddling off with their parents asking for various snacks, but was quickly distracted by the bonfire in the glade and the sight of food offerings on the ground. They attended the art show further into the woods, the Dance of the Unicorns observed by followers of Lurue who gently ushered them away before Button scared away anything that might have thought to join them. In the distance gathered the Myrkulites chanting the Flagons of the Fallen, prompting Astarion to lead them all away before the alcohol affected an already vulnerable Amroth more than it needed. By the time they stepped back through the portal leading to the City of the Dead they had barely washed their hands again before Button pulled towards the excitement of a dance that had broken out.

In true bardic fashion, Dori's song about erectile dysfunction earlier in the night had evidently attracted other bards, and what had begun as a single performer on a small platform had become a small gathering of bards with violins, lutes, lyres, and hand drums playing song after song as the mood took them, aglow in music and the light of the moon as the crowd joined in their harmonies.

And sure it’s an equally unpleasant thing
To be asked for a song when you’ve naught left to sing.
I could sing something old, if an old one would do,

A jaunty little tune. A spontaneous bout of dancing as the crowd found joy in the music and clapped along. He turned, frowning, to Amroth, and asked, "Really?"

Alas, he had selfishly shed all the melancholy of the grave visit to find himself swept up in the melody. His arms free of flowers and his wife newly visited, the weight of memory sloughed off him to instead stand by his side. He shrugged, and Astarion nearly startled at the ease in Amroth's smile that had once only come from the wine. "Oh, as if the masques in the villas get to have all the fun," he said. "Come, Astarion. This is the Feast for the rest of us."

But the world it is craving to have something new.
But what to select for the words or the tune?
I, in fact, know no more than the Man in the Moon.

Astarion had barely adjusted to the pull into the crowd when Dori looked up from his violin and beamed at the sight of them back in his audience. "Can you feel them, Mistress Tindómiel?" he said, as his eyes settled back on an empty space beside him like he had just experienced the joy of the plane's loveliest light. "Can you feel them dance with us?"

The Man in the Moon a new light on us throws,
He’s a man we all talk of but nobody knows.
And though a high subject, I’m getting in tune,
I’ll just sing a song for the Man in the Moon.

He would've expected his first thoughts to be of Gale, as this was the type of thing they had danced to, in the days he still had the strength to dance. Nights floating and falling at the Dancing Court or spent in taverns or quiet evenings at home. They bickered over timing and which steps Astarion had misremembered, leading Gale into embarrassing collisions and falls. He had thought as the music soothed and swayed him that the ghost he would see was his husband. Instead he looked down at his dog's mighty wagging tail and swore as the veil thinned around him that he saw Morena in the kitchen again, humming with the stove on and something delicious bubbling in the background, words forgotten as she improvised nonsense with Tara held helplessly in her arms as a dance partner, substituting lyrics with praise for Tara's soft feathers and softer belly.

The crowd held more than lovers in its rhythms. Children danced on their parents' feet. Dori danced with the other bards. Groups of friends stood drunkenly with their arms linked together belting out the lyrics in the call and response. So immersed in the memory of his mother-in-law dancing was Astarion that he barely noticed that Amroth had blended, quite impossibly, into the crowd, his grin lighting him up from his core as he danced with surprising grace with an unseen presence by his side. Somehow the audience seemed to swell around him as more people joined in, and though Astarion could never confirm it, Button seemed to catch glimpses of the people he had only mostly suspected were not actually there. Here, a flash of hair he swore belonged to a former apprentice, there, a pair of shoes from a client he knew. He could've sworn he saw Jym serpentil off in the distance, before the crowd moved again and he had seen someone else. Astarion joined the song, swaying with his dog in the gentle flow of the people around him, smiling at the memory of his family as they were, when a warmth had swept over him, a subtle and affectionate embrace in the cold of the beginnings of winter.

His mother. His friend. His beloved. The parts about them too private to extoll in ceremony or print. Their own particular gaits, the exact textures of skin and hair and feathers, the specific way Gale's hand rested on his shoulder as he trusted Astarion to lead. Memory became feeling, and all around was the feeling embracing him, accepting him, alive, in this wishful moment, as the moon shone in its encompassing fullness upon a night heralding the coldest months of the year.

Almost like he could touch them.

Almost as if they were there.

Soft, and warm, and loved, on the night the dead were most with them.

He lost track of how long he danced.

"Ready, then?"

Whatever sharp edges Astarion had anticipated on the way back to the Hall of Sages had smoothed over by the time he returned. Belladonna greeted him at the entrance to the sanctum with her hands eagerly reaching out for the small feast of street food he and Amroth had gathered as Leandra awoke almost startled from her nap in her comfortable chair. He'd kissed her atop her silvered curls as he did when she was a girl, and she accepted it as if no time had passed at all. It was almost enough to forget that he had slowed his steps back to the Hall, refusing to admit that the prospect of finally confronting his husband had carried with it no small amount of dread.

It was hard to believe he had almost come to expect a fight, some grand confrontation ending in tears and revelation.

But that was last year.

And it really, truly was better.

He looked at his niece tucking into her battered quail eggs and her wife stroking Button on the belly. The pile of flowers at the foot of Gale's tomb had grown somewhat, trails of petals leading out back towards the entrance. Tea cooled softly on the small table they had brought for the night, the campfire a spot of warmth in the cold of the winter air. He had expected another heartbreak and returned to find just another family, gathered by just another grave.

He turned to Amroth. "You know, I fully planned on lying to you. But I think I am."

Last year he had stumbled towards the tomb in a haze dulled by drink and made more dangerous still by the mix of herbs and magic the formed his specific medications. He was alone, save for his dog, yelling and crying in a series of swaying wails. This time he was met with a gentle hand guiding him forward, a dog relaxed nearby, his family proud that he had survived a night that had left even him in some doubt.

He chose not to remark upon the moth that remained on the tip of the statue's finger, mottled brown in patterns of almost lace, fringed in rows of iridescent purple swirling into little eyelets. It waited, wings slowly opening and closing, settling on where it first landed, its hints of violet catching the light.

What was it that Gale had said, again?

Did it matter?

He approached the statue with an exhale. He approached as he would've approached someone who understood.

The disguise fell away like moonlight caught in the peaks and valleys of a midnight sea. The designer mourning gown dissolved in a shimmer to reveal the much humbler walking suit he had worn to the City. Button's dignified hound posture gave way to the much more rugged movements of the humble cart dog, brown dots for eyebrows and the silvered scars of her past life returning to her face and chest. The layers of illusion stripped him bare of artifice to speak to his husband.

It was okay.

"Hello, my love," he said, his voice deeper and his own again, and it was as if no time had passed. "I suppose you're sick of seeing me here, darkening your doorway. Well. It's not as if you could shoo me away, and it's not as if I would listen if you did."

He gestured around him. "You remember Button, of course. You've met Amroth." Amroth waved, almost shyly. "Leandra's done a wonderful job decorating and I…"

He steadied his nervous hands. One of them reached, instinctively, towards the scar behind his ear, from the day of the burial, before steadying itself on the bottle of libations he had brought for the night. He cursed his cured heart for his deep and healthy blush, and cursed again at the knowledge that Gale would've teased him for disrespecting his cure.

He sighed.

"I really am… sorry, about last year, Gale," he said. "My first Feast of the Moon without you and I just… Though you did just about admit it was partly your doing, so it's only fair we share the blame." He smiled up at the moth. He imagined its slow little flutter to be some sort of reply.

Gale would've fought him. Then Gale would've laughed.

Gale was also, as everyone was quick to remind him, gone, and the best Astarion could do was what he had always done this year: imagine, fill in the gaps, and hope that some part of Gale's memory remained true to what he was.

"I miss you, you know. You've barely left and it's still been too long. I'm not sure I'll ever forgive you for that.

"Anyway." He poured the bottle of libations over the foot of the statue. The mixture of perfumes, honey, and wine barely settled into the base before Leandra swiftly cast Prestidigitation to dissipate the smell and clean his hand. Amroth had stepped away regardless, happy to distract Button as he distanced himself from the scent of wine. Astarion turned back to the statue. "All my love to Mum and Tara. You'll drink my share, for obvious reasons. I'll be back sooner than you'd like."

An arm snaked around his just as he felt his legs threatening to give way. He steadied himself into the hold to find it was Leandra who had bolstered him, a smile in her voice as that mischief of her youth peeked through her many decades of age. She looked ahead instead of up at him, and her hand squeezed just a bit tighter. "He'd love that, Uncle."

"Ha," Astarion scoffed. "He must be so tired of me."

Belladonna scoffed in reply by the fire and a sleeping Button, her mouth partly filled with grilled chicken intestine. "Would he, though, Astarion? Would he really?"

"Gods, let me indulge in my brooding for one night, will you?"

A hand lay softly on his other shoulder. Amroth's eyes glinted with the same quiet sense of play. "Not a chance, Dekarios. Not tonight."

Leandra was never his. She had parents of her own and a whole life she had led before him and Gale. She was strong, and she was clever, and she was wonderful, and tonight as she leaned against him with an unsubtle pride that he had survived the night, he let his limbs loosen, just a little, just enough to be a softness against her. "I know I'll regret this later," she said, "but… how's about some music before we head home?"

Belladonna had barely polished off her skewer when she produced her tin whistle from its case. "Thought you'd never ask!"

Astarion laid out the container of food the way countless people before him had laid out meals for the dead earlier in the night. The smell of Cormyrian boar filled the night air enough to wake Button, who had sleepily woken from a twitchy chase dream to wag her tail slowly at the smell of food. A secondary container made of the stew before he had added the wine and aromatics was placed indulgently before her, where she ate half-awake on the floor, tail lazily slapping against the marble tile once, twice, before she nodded off once more. Bell's various melodies played backdrop to the stories Astarion and Leandra began to tell, and Amroth sat with a quiet reverence at what he knew Astarion would never speak in an interview or profile: Gale's voice, Gale's gestures, the rough skin of his hands after a bout of fencing practice and the feel of his hair, always meticulously moisturised and scented. Shadowheart always said he smelled like a wealthy dowager, and Gale himself took that as a point of pride. The legend had given way to the person he was behind the ballads and memorials: an uncle, a partner, a friend—a person with quirks and hopes that only those who loved him would even remember to miss.

Astarion sipped gently at the elderflower cordial Leandra had provided, recounting memories of his husband that had tonight refused to hurt as they usually did, as the moon shone above, bright and beautiful and impossibly full, the moth listening quietly by the statue. Just another family, gathered around another grave, sharing the night with the dead just as everyone else in the City did. As they kept talking, the campfire shone brighter, and a warmth had come around him as if more had gathered.

The weight of fur and feathers weighing down upon his lap. The hum of a mother who claimed him as her own.

A hand against his.

Soft and cherished, familiar and there.

It really was easier, he was reluctant to admit. He had seen himself past the ending of his story and here he remained, warm, and loved—still going, and still living, in front of his husband's tomb, as if his world had never ended.

Astarion sat with his living family and his dead, welcoming the fluttering of the veil between them.

And it was okay.

Written by a human in Ellipsus.