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There is a vase of flowers sitting on the nightstand in front of him.
The bouquet stands proudly on the small, wooden surface, as if keeping post over the room. Healthy green stalks uphold brilliant orange petals that nearly shine in the light of the midday sun. Dotted between them and strewn about the table sit smaller, yellow compatriots who are definitely not meant to be there—almost assuredly the addition of the innkeeper’s young daughter wishing to help however she could.
Wyll did not recognize the yellow flowers beyond the fact he saw them blooming in the hills on his way in, but the orange ones…the orange ones had him dropping his bag with a dismayed laugh.
“These were your mother’s favorites.”
Wyll heard the phrase often throughout his childhood, almost as often as the orange swamp lilies adorned the halls of his home. If he didn’t know better, he would swear it was his father’s favorite reminder—or justification. As if Ulder Ravengard needed a reason to have flowers in his home, as if he needed a reason for the reminder of his late wife and the mother of his son.
“They are meant to represent the pride and chivalry of a knight.”
In his youth, Wyll had gobbled that information whole. How could he not? The lilies were—and still remained—one of the only ties he held to a woman he knew only by the marked absence of her presence. One of the only things that remained of a woman he knew—still knows—should be more to him than an abstract ideal based on what others have said.
Perhaps they all had more in common than he ever wished to believe.
Wyll had come to know a lot about the lilies. What they symbolized, yes, but also about their care. The noble orange swamp lilies flourished during the summer months in the wetter areas around Baldur’s Gate. They needed sandy soil, excellent irrigation and sun to survive. In the winter, they went dormant but survived in the ground, waiting for the opportune moment in spring to bloom again.
As he approaches the table—drawn in by the color and the sheer, humorless audacity to be faced with them now—Wyll notes the bouquet before him will not survive much longer than a tenday, ripped from their home as they were and implanted in a flimsy, water-filled vase.
He stops before them and sighs, breath fluttering over the petals. They are in the prime of their life, beautiful, healthy, vibrant, and do not know they will soon be gone from this world. Dead, far from their home, not even aware of the purpose they served.
Without thought, Wyll reaches a trembling hand towards the flowers. Just before the tips of his fingers brush along the soft petals of the nearest flower, he snatches his hand back as if burned. He knows it is an old wives’ tale that flowers wither quicker if one touches their petals too often, but something about how different his own touch is now gives him pause.
They are his mother’s favorites, and they are already dying. He wants to honor them, not speed the process along.
He sighs again, hands going lax at his sides in defeat and thoughts grudgingly racing. Emotions unwillingly churning. He should be able to handle this, but as his eyes trace the flowers, cataloguing the hues of oranges, reds, and yellows blending together towards the starry center, he silently acknowledges he cannot.
Wyll ascribed some of his own meaning to the flowers once as well. The colors often reminded him of a sunrise, the promising start to a beautiful day. The promising start to a beautiful life. The promise his mother would have wanted for him.
Sunrise was his mother’s favorite time of day, if he were to believe his father.
The colors blurring together now though spoke of a different story. Staring down at them, all Wyll could feel was heat. All he could feel was the burning sensation of flames lapping at his face and the choking bind of a collar.
“Would they still be your favorite, now?” he asks softly. What he wishes to ask is ‘was this what you would have wanted for me?’
The lilies were his favorite flowers once, just as they were hers. All he ever wished was to be everything they symbolized.
“Would…” He swallows, hating how his voice trembles. Hating the wetness he feels upon his cheeks and spilling onto the petals below. Hating the weakness of it all. “Would you still love them now?”
Could she? Could she understand what transpired? Would she still be able to see the sunrise in them? Could she still see the chivalrous knight worthy of pride?
For the first time in a tenday since he was exiled from Baldur’s Gate, Wyll Ravengard sits alone in a distant inn and allows himself to cry.
***
There is a vase of flowers sitting on a nightstand in the far corner of the room they all share at the Elfsong Tavern.
The bouquet stands proudly but almost invisibly in the corner of the room, as if acting as a silent guardian. Vibrant orange petals glow warmly in the candlelight, standing firm with the support of healthy, green stems. Sprouting from the mouth of the vase rest several sprigs of small, white flowers, as soft and pure as the fallen snow before a campfire.
Wyll recognizes them – both of them. Orange lilies and edelweiss, an arrangement commonly seen in his childhood home. That didn’t explain what they were doing here, in the tavern room he’s been sharing with his fellow tadpoled adventurers.
“Hey, soldier!” Karlach’s voice greets him from the side, but whatever else she was going to say trails off into nothing. Instead, she follows his line of sight towards the flowers. “Oh, yeah. Your dad brought those up earlier.” She shrugs. “Muttered something about needing to brighten up the room…or something. We figured you’d know what that was about when you got back.”
It’s an apology, Wyll knows.
“They were my mother’s favorite flowers,” he says.
He walks over to them slowly, Karlach following behind. “There is a portrait of her on their wedding day with her bouquet arranged quite similarly.”
“Your mother was a woman of refined taste, then,” Gale remarks from his cot. “Edelweiss is a common choice in wedding arrangements. The lilies less so, but they are a striking and subtly matching companion.”
“Do you know what they mean, Gale?”
The wizard hums in thought. “I’m far more equipped to speak on their alchemical properties, but if I recall, edelweiss is for love and courage while the lilies are for chivalry. Excellent desires for the future of a marriage.”
“They were your mom’s favorite?” Karlach asks. Of course, she is the one to recognize the heart of the matter.
Wyll nods, a claw brushing over the orange petals of the lilies. “Mine too, at one point.”
Karlach frowns. “At one point?”
“They…” He hesitates, uncertain how to explain his loss of appreciation. The pressure they represented, the fires they looked like, the failure they reminded him of. “I have not found them suitable for some time.”
Truly, the issue had been that he was not suitable for them.
Silence settles over the room. Wyll cannot bring himself to look up at his companions, but it is Astarion that walks over to inspect the flowers. “Orange is quite suitable for your pallet, you know,” he says after a moment.
Karlach reaches over and plucks the flower he was tracing with his claw out from under him. Wyll finally looks at her while she inspects it, holding it close to his face. “Fangs is right,” she decides, handing the flower to him. “I think they fit you just fine. Your dad does, too, by the look of it.”
Wyll’s fingers delicately curl around the stem, taking the flower from her. There is something about it being handed to him that has him examining the flower closer than he has been able to bear for years. He appreciates the way the colors, the oranges and the yellows and the reds, bleed together more than usual.
Indeed, it still looks like the flames that once chained him. But it also is starting to look like a sunrise again, and if he can see the sunrise again, maybe she would have been able to as well.
Perhaps this is what his mother would have wanted for him all along. More importantly, it is what he has wanted for himself all along.
“I…”
He hesitates, floundering with the flower before deciding to delicately tuck it into the breast pocket of his shirt. The soft petals brushing against his chest reignites something deep within him. Something he had long believed lost.
Wyll’s smile grows, lighter and larger for the first time in years. “I think that perhaps you all may be quite right.”