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"The view is fucking stellar out here." Merle glances over at Magnus and grins. The human meets eyes with the dwarf and then his face contorts. "No, ugh, not like that. Fuck. Pun not intended." He groans as Merle lets out a raspy bout of laughter.
"It's still funny though," Merle says, wiping a small tear from the corner of his eyes. Then he cleans his glasses on his casual clothes, inspecting them in the bright light of Faerûn's true moon. Crystal clear. What an odd chance. Istus may be smiling on him today.
"Yeah, yeah...," Magnus snipes. Merle chuckles again.
"So what brings you to my humble stargazing spot on this chilly evening?"
Magnus looks down and to the left, "nothing much."
He doesn't need a zone of truth to figure out that Magnus is dodging. Merle raises an eyebrow and Magnus grits his teeth. No one can resist the dadly powers of Merle's eyebrows.
"I just...I was thinking. About June and the Chalice and such. And...what you think about dying and death and shit. Kinda morbid but—"
"I getcha," Merle nods, looking down at the perfectly green grass underneath him. He plucks a few strands of grass free and lets them flutter past his wooden hand to the dirt below.
(How in Pan's name they managed to keep the grass and the courtyard this gorgeous but he had to hand it to them. Specifically the tiefling groundskeeper who painstakingly trimmed and tended to every inch of the false moon's plant life. They were very good at their job. He'd have to pick their brain later for some gardening tips.)
"Death is...," Merle trails off, looking down at his soulwood arm, "death is different. For everyone, I guess. I'm...not really an expert on this sorta shit so you're gonna hafta hold on for me. Like No. 3113 said that it was white and peace but—" he grunts noncommittally and shrugs, picking some dirt from under his fingernails. He was absentmindedly digging a small hole in the ground and debating whether or not he should transplant one of the edelweiss from his beard into it, just to see if it would take. He was shaken.
"At Refuge...well," he tenses up, forcing a smile, "Refuge can't really be considered dyin', right?"
Magnus meets Merle's eyes and stares for a while—or what feels that way to him—before breaking eye contact and scratching his beard. "I'unno. That's why I came to you. You're our cleric. You know all about the afterlife and that shit."
"Well sheeeeeit!" Magnus laughs as Merle tugs on his beard, drawing a few strands of grey hair from the braid there. "Um—"
"This is reassuring," Magnus chuckles.
"I haven't really died—I mean, not according to Kravitz, but fuck if I know about that—but I guess I can tell you what I was taught and what I think and shit."
"Fair 'nuff."
"So like, you know that when you die and shit...like fuckin'...Kravitz and the Raven Queen and...," he gestures a bit, fumbling for the right words. Fuck, being delicate wasn't his strong suit. Magnus rushes in, Taako speaks his mind, and Merle tries to be tactful. Keyword tries.
He's not all that great at it.
(A memory, unbidden, rises to mind and Merle swallows heavily. He's 'leaving to get milk' and doesn't look back. Fucking tactful, right? Poor kids.)
"Look," he sighs, patting the ground on the other side of him. Magnus sits down and leans against the smaller dwarf gently, so as not to knock him over—as if the weight of Magnus leaning would do that to sturdy ol' Merle. "Your soul...goes to the Raven Queen. It ain't what I was taught at like Pan camp, but it's what I learned." That fucking Candlenights mission.
(He doesn't say it out loud but Magnus hears it in the pause that follows. Magnus is very good at listening to silence.)
"But th' meat of what makes you, you—" he nudges Magnus none-too-gently, "—this big hulking body goes to Pan. It gets buried in the dirt," fucking tactful as usual, "and then worms chew it up," Magnus makes a gagging noise, "and then it's dirt. After dirt it becomes maybe grass," he throws a small fistful of grass into Magnus' hair and the fighter giggles, brushing it away. "Or a tree," he lets his hand wander free for a moment before it reattaches to his stump, "or flowers."
Here, Magnus goes silent. Were there air on the moon, it would have sung of loss and fear. There isn't so it's just tired and worried silence. Then he speaks, slowly at first and softly, as if he's afraid that his words will break the lull of comfort that had begun blanketing them.
"You...know about Julia right?"
"Only what you told me." Jack and shit pretty much, but Merle wasn't going to push the issue. He was no saint either and had his fair share of lich in the closet.
"What...what do you think happened to her?" Pan it hurts like actual physical pain, deep in his chest. Merle hates that one of his boys, his ruff boi Magnus, is hurting.
"Well...," fucking tact Merle, be Pandamned tactful, "I'm sure that somewhere in Raven's Roost is a wide patch of lavender that spreads further and further every year. And no—no matter what people do...it'll...persevere." Pan, he was tearing up now. He needed to be strong for Magnus. He needed to be there for him.
"Lavender, huh?" His voice cracks and fuck Merle is definitely crying now, his glasses fogged up and nose running. "I think...she'd like that for sure..."
(And he grabs his face and chokes back tears because he's been holding it back for so many years that there's no reason to let the dam break now. And later he holes up in his room and cries quietly. And despite all of his steps to make sure that no one heard him, Taako casts sleep on him later, a worried look on his face.)
(And in the morning there is a small sprig of lavender in a pot on his night table. And Magnus knows where it came from and who gave it. And he cries again, but this time with a smile. And he may be without her but he has them. And while that's not equivalent, it's enough.)