Work Text:
Ches 1435
Baldur’s Gate
Eliwyn and her parents stand beneath the shade of a tree, well apart from the other mourners, as always. Elves tend to have an unsettling presence at a funeral. Especially Eliwyn, given she looks not a day over twenty yet her dearest friend is being laid to rest in the ground.
When the ceremony ends the others disperse quickly.
“Come,” her mother says with a gentle tug to Eliwyn’s arm. “Let’s go home and have some tea.”
Eliwyn gives no response. She cannot think of anything other than the mound of dirt under which now lies a precious treasure.
“Take some time, then,” her father says. “But don’t tarry too long. Rain is coming.” He kisses the top of her head, then he and her mother leave.
Perrin took to her bed last month and did not rise from it again. She was not ill. She was not in pain. She was simply tired…and old. Six score and seven years is a long life for a human with no magical or monetary means of extending their expectancy.
But it was not long enough for Eliwyn. She was not ready to say goodbye. She is not ready to be alone.
The tilled earth of the grave is musty and cool beneath her palm as she kneels over and places a kiss where Perrin’s name has been etched into the headstone. Loneliness hollows out her chest.
Eliwyn hurries through the streets, huddled in her cloak against the chill drizzle. She pushes past the guards at the gate and edges her way along the outer walls. By the time she reaches her spot on the cliff—the spot she and Perrin discovered many decades ago—the world around her is sheeted by rain.
Drops spatter on the surface of the boulder at her feet. A cold trail of wet slides down her chest and her back. The tendrils of hair that have come loose from her plait plaster to her face as she lifts it skyward. The freshness of the spring rain mixes with the salt of her tears on the edge of her lips.
She cannot breathe for the weight of this forlornness. In her desperation to fill the hole in her heart Eliwyn reaches out to the only thing she can think of that is immune to the ravages of time.
Divinity.
She calls first to the Seldarine, her mother’s gods. Corellon and Sehanine and even Vandria Gilmarith, the Lady of Grief. But she is met with silence. It is as she suspected. She has never truly felt a connection to the elven gods beyond the basic fact of her race.
So she turns to the pantheon of her home. The Faerûnian gods whose temples and shrines fill this land may be more willing to spare her their sympathy. Prayers to Ilmater and Kelemvor, those gods so often followed by the agonized and mournful, pass her lips. When the hollowness continues to echo she turns to those gods of joy and life and peace. Llira and Chauntea and Selûne.
But still, she remains bereft.
A thought flickers across her mind. Darkness and absence and sweet oblivion. Shar…
No. She is in despair, but no wallowing depth could persuade her to offer any of her prayers to the Lady of Darkness.
One god yet remains who may save her from her lonely grief. Her father’s god. Lathander. Though, the Dawn Lord disappeared and fell silent decades ago. He is surely somewhere beyond the reach of mortal prayers now.
But she prays anyway, if for no reason other than that there is some comfort to be found in these invocations of hope and peace. Now more than ever she needs to hear those favored words of the Lathanderians:
From death, life.
And then, the rain stops. The clouds part. She is cast into the heart of the gloaming, that hour of dusk just before nightfall. The sky ceases crying only to grieve the death of the day.
Yet there, just above the horizon, is a shimmering. A small patch of hued light refracting off the dampness of the air hovers before her. It is faint and if she were to turn her head even a little it would disappear.
But it is there, and she knows it to be a promise of protection and peace. It is an assurance that light will overcome the darkness. It is sign that she is not alone after all. For a moment all her grief is lifted away like the drops of rain returning to the sky on rays of sunlight. The tranquility of a perfect spring dawn wraps around her like a pair of arms. Warmth spreads across her and through her.
Eliwyn’s heart pounds. Her entire body is spurred into movement. She flies back to the gate, through the streets of the city, and up the steps of The Rose Portal. As soon as she wrenches the door open she is met by the dawnmaster.
“Please,” she gasps as her chest heaves. “Please, I wish to become a cleric.” The words fly forth without any thought.
The dawnmaster stares at her, bewilderment creasing her brow and frowning her lips. “Ms. Torleth, what are you—“
“Please!” Eliwyn practically claws at the dawnmaster’s hands. “Please I…I…”
The dawnmaster regards her now with a strange look. “My dear, have you had an Awakening?”
All the strength and exhilaration that impelled her here disappears at the dawnmaster’s words. Eliwyn sags, then sinks to the floor, her drenched skirts pooling around her.
“Yes,” she breathes. “Yes, I have.”