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Gale awoke to the sound of his wife's gasp.
It wasn't an unusual occurance. He'd grown accustomed by now to the occssional night—once or twice a tenday—where he'd be pulled from his own quiet reverie to find Seraphina shaking and whimpering beside him, lost in the nightmares that had haunted her since their time on the road had ended. Their routine when it happened was ritual by now, almost a comfort to them both as he held her tenderly in his arms, shushing and soothing until she felt safe enough to fall back to sleep again.
"My love," he said, rolling groggily over to her side of the bed, stretching out his arm to comfort her and instead finding her spot empty. His heart lurched with panic, eyes opening to the bleary light of morning spilling in through open window shutters.
"Gale!"
Phina's voice carried over from the far side of the bedroom where she was leant against the windowsill, face all but pressed against the glass, clearly not mid-nightmare, as he'd first thought.
Quite the opposite, in fact, if her wonderous face was anything to go by.
"Are you alright, love?" he said, propping himself up on his elbows to take her in. She stood in nothing but her silk night gown, goosebumps raised across her skin that he could see even from a distance. The thin strap of the gown had slipped down her shoulder in an unintentionally seductive way, tugging fiercly at arousal within him, despite his concern.
"Gale, it's snowing," she said, her voice low, like raising it might break a spell he couldn't yet sense had been cast.
"Gods, no wonder it's so cold," he groaned, slumping back down against his pillow. "Come back to bed, darling, you must be freezing. I'll dig out the warmer covers for tonight, but I can think of a few ways we might keep warm in the meantime."
Seraphina tore her eyes away from the window then, looking at him with an expression caught somewhere between amusement and delight. "No—Gale, it's snowing. It never snows in Baldur's Gate."
His brain caught up to what she was saying then. His darling wife had never left Baldur's Gate before moving to Waterdeep with him. Her sheltered upbringing had kept her confined to a section of the Sword Coast that experienced naught but a temperate climate and dreary rainfall.
"You've never seen snow before," he muttered, almost to himself, a hint of a smile pulling at the corners of his lips. "I take it then that there's no tempting you back into bed?"
She shook her head, biting her lip and turning back to the window, the look of sheer wonder on her features telling him in no uncertain terms that there was nothing she wanted to do more than get outside and experience the snow's ethereal beauty for herself.
Not even fill their chilly bedroom with shared body heat and the quiet sighs of intimacy.
"You're entirely too precious to be my wife," he grinned, pulling the covers a little tigher around himself as he teased her. "You know, it will still be there in an hour or two. Longer, even. I daresay you'll be sick of it by Wintershield. That's when you'll know you're a true Waterdhavian."
"If being a true Waterdhavian means acting totally blase about how beautiful the snow is, then perhaps I'll remain an interloping Baldurian, thank you," she said, her nose crinkling adorably with her smile, and he laughed.
"You'll have to forgive my lack of enthusiasm for the weather, my love. Since meeting you, I've simply had far more beautiful things to admire."
"You're such a flatterer, Gale Dekarios," she said, rolling her eyes even as her cheeks flushed.
He grinned, raking his eyes over her body once again before lighting the hearth with a flick of his wrist and scrambling out of bed. He pulled on his dressing gown as he made his way over to her, wrapping his arms around her and gently pulling her into his embrace.
"You're freezing," he murmured into her ear, rubbing his hands up and down her arms to coax some warmth back into her. Her hair still carried the scent of the lavender oil she used at night to help her relax, along with hints of dusty old books from her time spent at the library, and he breathed her in, longingly. "Come, my love. Dress warmly and we can go outside."
She spun around in his arms, her bright, wide eyes finding his with a total air of childlike wonder sparkling in them. "Really? You wouldn't mind?"
"Mind indulging you? Never. I strive for it, in fact."
"Mind the cold," she clarified, raising her eyebrow and giggling. "You're a man of home comforts and warmth. Won't you miss the hearth?"
"Not as much as I'd miss the beautiful smile on your face if I didn't join you outside," he said, grinning as the compliment brought a blush to her face. "Besides: the hearth will be waiting for us when we return, and I intend to thoroughly warm you up."
He leaned in, captured her lips with his and sighed contentedly as she melted into him.
Gale might have taken longer to tend to his appearance before they stepped outside, but Seraphina had been captured by a spell of excitement so pressing that her usual, quiet patience had worn thin. She was fully dressed and donned in her new, fur-lined coat before he'd even finished buttoning his shirt. Half her long hair was loosely pinned back, far wilder than she usually allowed it to be, and she practically bounded on the the balls of her feet, all too eager to get out into the frigid air.
Waterdeep whispered hushed greetings to them as they made fresh foot prints in the thick layer of snow forming along the unusually quiet streets of the sea ward. All of the city's usual hustle and bustle was tucked away behind thresholds and curled up next to fireplaces, as evidenced by the pleasant aroma of pinewood smoke curling through the air from chimneys nearby - though Gale could still hear the faint sound of children's laughter in the distance, overjoyed by the snowfall.
They were not unlike his darling wife in that way. Seraphina's face was a wonder to behold, taking in the sight of snowflakes for the first time with the same reverence he reserved for newly dicovered spells, ancient tomes and her own, incandescent beauty. She reached her hand out, delighting in the way the snowflakes landed on her leather gloves and melted into nothing.
He grinned, devilishly as he watched her, his hand lazily weaving magic to form a snowball. With a flick of his fingers, he sent the powdery sphere flying toward Seraphina, chuckling smugly as it burst against her coat, eliciting a startled gasp from her. He raised his eyebrows in silent challenge, delighting as she rose to it, grabbing a fistful of snow and throwing it gleefully back at him.
The thing exploded in a puff against his coat, and he cocked his eyebrow, brushing away the offending snowflakes with an air of mock offence, looking back up at her with a dangerous glint in his eye. She let out a peal of laughter, turning and grabbing a fistful of snow in her wake as he sprinted after. He relished her squeals of excitement as she dipped, dived and dodged out of his way, hurtling snowballs at him over her shoulder as she went, until - at last - he caught her.
"Gale!" her voice rang out as he slid his hands firmly around her middle from behind, tugging her toward him. Her body shook with laughter as he pressed kisses she couldn't squirm away from to her neck, her chin, her ear, pulling her close to his body.
"You know, if you'd wanted me to cuddle you, you might have simply asked. No need to pelt me into submission. Though I admit," he said, nuzzling her neck, "it was terribly effective."
"You started it," she protested with a laugh, elbowing him playfully in the ribs before she turned in his arms, pulling his face down to join her in a fierce kiss. He grinned into it, cradling the back of her head in his hand and looping his other arm around her waist.
These tiny moments made him so grateful to have survived: to have clawed his way back from the brink of catastrophe. He barely recognised the man he'd been a year ago - alone in his tower, the sound of holiday merriment rising up to him from the streets below, clinging onto survival only in the hope that it might protect the people of the city he loved so much. He certainly no longer recognised the man he'd been a year before that. Ceaseless ambition, always striving for more, for better, unsatisfied even in the bed of divinity.
Now his heart was full with much simpler things. A warm hearth on a cold day. A familiar city rendered novel once again. And a person who found magic in every mundane thing, and saw something worth loving in him every day.
Art by the insanely talented WildMagicKatie, gifted to me by the wonderful OptimisticGrey