A little down-time stuff for Amon “The Weary” during his house arrest, after a very difficult talk with one of the NPCs from his backstory.
Posted here at the urging of @colonelcupquake
@frenchy-and-the-sea @villnis @phoenix-failing @themilokin @urdnotgrunt @kelseyofcake
“Ok, now you’re just making things up, what purpose can this possibly serve?” Val said, as she entered the crowded tavern downstairs of the Lesan Inn. She and Tara stood side by side, Val’s hands on her hips, Tara’s arms crossed, watching Amon and Rona.
Those two were balancing in the middle of the floor, on one foot with the other leg stretched out directly in front, their supporting leg bent to a ninety degree angle and their arms held in front and, in Amon’s case, his tail wrapped around his torso.
“Balance is the point. Balance within and without.” Amon said.
“And why is Rona doing this? I thought you were learning pole-fighting, yeah?”
“Amon needs to meditate and I wanted to keep him company… somehow… it became this.” Rona said, her voice taught against the strain in her muscles. Sweat was forming on both their brows and the tavern patrons were starting to take bets as to who would fail first.
“There’s a sort of game- sort of training we can do next, but this always came first. The Masters said it was to establish balance but we novices always thought it was just to tire us out first.”
“Then why are you doing it if you don’t even think it helps?” Asked Tara.
“For Balance” he said. “Depending on where we were, sometimes we’d be balancing over burning embers, or on loose rock or ice or at the edge of a windy cliff, but that’s harder to do in a tavern.”
“For which I thank the gods!” Called the Innkeeper, which sent laughs rippling around the watching crowd.
“Right, well we’re going to go do some shopping for potions and the like – do you all want anything?” Asked Val.
“Health potions?” Said Rona.
“Better tasting trail rations?” Said Amon.
“No such thing,” Said Val, “but I’ll see what we can do.”
When the rest of the party returned to the Inn, they found Rona standing before a large boulder that she or Amon must have rolled in from outside. It was slightly large than Rona herself was. As they stepped inside, Amon spun around, whirling his booted foot into the boulder, which cracked, sending smaller pieces scattered around the room.
There was a collective “oooh!” from the crowd, and Sarula watched as money changed hands. “What are you doing now?” they said as Rona cursed and Amon pulled his arms into his body, gathering the scattered pieces of earth into a solid boulder again.
“Ok, ready? You take it now.” He said, and Rona dropped into a low stance, her feet spread wide, arms half outstretched, concentrating on the boulder. As she did so the others could see the boulder begin to shrink, the earth groaning, Rona’s face scrunching with effort.
This time Amon stepped forward and slammed a steel-knuckled fist straight into it. The boulder wobbled but didn’t move or break. He punched again, and again. Small pieces were beginning to fly off, cracks forming. He rose a leg straight into the air and brought his heel down like an axe atop the boulder as Rona’s body suddenly slumped, and the rock shattered into pieces.
“If I find rocks on my floor, I’m charging you extra!” The Inkeep called now, but with a smile on his face as he filled tankards for the gathered crowd. Apparently Amon and Rona’s training had become somewhat of a spectator sport.
“We’re training.” Rona said.
“You’re connection to the elements is undeniable, and the power you wield it with is overwhelming” Amon said to her, “but there is another power within the elements, and within you and the air, the gods and the planes. You cannot simply wield it like a god and overwhelm your enemies, or the environment, because it is in them too.”
“That old lady really got to you, huh?” Said Tara.
“She echoed what I’d heard often.” He said. “Ianry understands, that’s how fire feels, right? Almost like another heartbeat?”
Ianry shrugged. “I guess, I don’t know what life is like without feeling that so how would I know?”
Amon flicked his tail at him.
Rona looked up at Amon. “I know that, I can feel it too but I don’t know what you mean by not wielding it like power. I learned to call in such a way that the wilds answer, but its also almost like alchemy – you call to a seed to sprout a vine, you call to the water in the soil and the air to make a tidal wave, you call to the little pieces of rock in a boulder, and it all condenses together.”
Amon looked at her quizzically. “So that’s how you do it? That’s fascinating. I get that, to walk over walls I just kind of focus on the earth under my feet, and the air around me and sandwich myself between them, but it is already there. I hadn’t really thought of it like a science though.”
“Yeah, what you’re talking about sounds more like Ianry’s magic.” Rona said, frowning.
“Sort of, you can learn it though. It becomes more like… a relationship? Like when you look into someone’s eyes and you can feel what they feel, if only for a second.” He said.
Rona and Val inadvertently locked eyes. “I think… maybe I think I can understand that.” Rona said.
“Wait, so you’re like, having sexual tension with a rock?” Ianry said. “That’s not at all what I do.”
Amon ignored him and squared up with Rona again. “Ready?” She nodded. “Remember, it isn’t about answering power, its about a relationship – two parts of one energy seeking balance.”
They repeated the process until Rona was physically falling over when her rock was shattered.
“Ok, I think you all could use a break and a snack.” Val said, from the table where the rest of the party had been resting and watching.
“No! I think I figured something out!” Rona said through gritted teeth. She rose to her feet again and looked at Amon. “This is like fighting right?”
Amon nodded “It can be.”
“Ok, I think I’ve got it, lets go again!” She said, bracing herself before the boulder.
Amon swung is foot up again in another axe-kick – the kind his friends had seen shatter bones, and brought his steel-clad heel crashing down. But instead of a crunch or crack, there was a soft “ptch” as his foot landed it what had suddenly become a pillar of sand. He wrenched his foot out and spun around, swinging the back of his fist towards – nothing, as the pillar of sand collapsed onto the ground. Not losing his balance, he shifted into an open stance and swept his tail at the loose sand, which pulled together into a round boulder which rolled away before becoming vaguely cubical and shuddering to a halt.
Amon grinned ear to hear, gazing down at Rona who looked up at him with a fierce and wild expression. “It takes most of us at least a week to figure that one out. Now the real fun begins.”
For the next few hours the pair took turns using whatever strategy they could think of to protect the boulder the others attacks. Amon often hardened just the part of the boulder facing the blow, while Rona swiftly transformed the rock to avoid attacks. Both were fans of suddenly turning it into a sphere and letting it roll across the tavern floor while patrons gleefully lifted their chairs out of the way. Eventually they even split it into two large rocks and let their friends and random patrons take turns trying to shatter it. There was little either of them could do but dodge when Tara broke out her Crab Hammer, which routinely showered those in the “splash zone” with pebbles.
Only when Amon slipped on the puddle of sweat that had formed beneath them did the Innkeep insist the games end. Rona rolled out the boulders and Amon used rags to clean the sweat from the floor, too tired to use his ki magic.
“Well, my star pupil, I don’t know about you but I’m taking a long bath.” He said, slinging his tail around Rona’s shoulders as they headed upstairs.
“Ugh, me too. Do you feel better?” She said, tugging at the tuft of hair at the end of his tail to keep it out of her face.
He whipped his tail side to side and paused on the stairs for a moment. “Yes, things make more sense, I think.”
“You think? So I’m guessing more of this tomorrow?” She said, smiling at him over her shoulder.
He grinned back. “If you’re up for it – you’ve got a lot of work to do yourself.”
“MMmmmaybe” she said “Or maybe I’ll whip up a nice big lunch and just watch, I’m starving.”
Down in the tavern, Sarula was smiling up at their retreating bodies. “That doesn’t make any sense to me, but I’m glad they’re doing ok.” They said to the party.
“Monks relaxing looks exhausting.” Said Tara. “And messy.” She fished a small pebble out of her drink.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to turn in for the night.” Val said hurriedly, already halfway up the stairs.
“I’m not!” Said Ianry “You guys want to play cards or something?”
“Now that sounds more my speed!” Said Ievos, pulling up a chair next to Sarula. “What do you say?”
Sarula grinned. “Sure, now that its actually quiet enough to play.”
Upstairs, Amon was in his room alone, staring into the bright blade of the sword he called the Taiyang Jian, the “Sunlit Sword.” In his mind he weighed the teachings of his Order, echoed by Urgath. He saw the Planes in a constant dance of entropy, crashing into temporary balance before sending each other spinning off again into one another’s gravity. He saw his mother walking into the woods to find him, his sisters slung on each hip. He saw the yawning portal of water breaking loose of the mirror’s frame, his friends embroiled in battle against the Aboleth, and the shadows retreating from the swinging blade of light above the Black Dragon’s seal. He imagined Urgath’s hut in flames, the hate in the old captain’s eyes, recalled his own burning rage.
Which way would the balance fall? Would the world be ready? And who was leaning on the scale?
Well, I slid a little backwards into my writing slump, but I wrote this before the event started so I figured that I might as well put it out there anyway!
I’ve had this silly little scene of my wife and I’s d&d girls kicking around my brain for years now, honestly. The concept got a little tainted not so very long ago, but I decided the best way to overthrow that was to just. Go ahead and write the damn thing. So I did!
Have my Val and @colonelcupquake‘s Rona being cozy. ~1100 words
----
The hammock had taken twice as long to set up as the rest of camp, but Val was nothing if she was not stubborn.
Her argument had been thus: if she had spent years slinging canvas and rope between beams on a ship, then by all rights, she should have no problem doing so between the trunks of trees. The reality was that trees lacked all the convenient little nooks and crannies of crossbeams, and that sailcloth was hard to find further inland, and even harder to lug around. That left only the simple weaves she could find at local trade stops, the sort that she looped around her shifty knotwork while praying to whatever god or powerful, otherworldly mage that was still listening that the whole thing didn't collapse underneath her.
It hadn't, yet, but the groaning of the ropes threatened.
She had just finished adding a second line to the ends of the hammock and had stepped back to examine her work when Rona appeared beside her, head cocked to one side.
"So this is what you've been up to," she said. Somehow, the words came out all curiosity, without the slightest hint of teasing. Val appreciated that; even her wounded pride wouldn't let her deny how haphazardly she had fumbled her makeshift hammock into existence.
"More or less," she said, shrugging. "Doesn't look pretty, but it didn't break when I tested it. That's something."
"Definitely something," Rona hummed. She picked her way over to the hammock and flattened her hands into the curve of it, pressing her entire weight straight down. The ropes creaked gently, but the hammock mercifully didn't fall.
"You can give it a try," Val offered, stepping up beside her. "It held me. I doubt you'll give it much of a problem."
"Knowing your work, I'm pretty sure we could pile all of us in here and not give it much of a problem," said Rona with a sidelong grin. Val huffed, but denying the little blossom of warmth in her chest at the faintest scratch of praise from Rona was like denying gravity, or coming rain. She offered her hand instead, which Rona took obligingly before stepping back and flinging herself bodily into the hammock.
“Not bad,” she said when it stopped pitching sideways, wiggling to arrange herself inside. “A nice change of pace from the ground, for sure. Probably too hard to set up often, though. And it needs a pillow.”
She glanced pointedly up to Val, who snickered and swept into a low, theatrical bow.
“Your will, Your Grace,” she said, with as much dour resonance as she could manage while laughing. Then she turned and started towards the piles of fabric that Sarula had arranged at the edge of their meager camp, only to stagger as her captive hand was yanked backwards.
When she turned, blinking, towards the hammock, Rona was staring up at her with one eyebrow raised and gesturing pointedly to the space beside her.
Fondness welled up through the hollows of Val’s chest, the deep, thought-numbing, flooding sort that only Rona had ever seemed to wake in her. She turned back, feeling her mouth curl into the stupid, love-sick grin that she knew meant she was about to do whatever was asked of her. She let her good sense have one last go at winning her over anyway.
“I don’t think it’ll hold both of us.”
“It will,” said Rona immediately, with a wave of her free hand. “Or it won’t, and it’ll be funny. But it will. C’mon, Val.”
She tugged again, gentler now, but Val had already been done in by her name in pleading tones. Sighing the long-suffering sigh of the thoroughly defeated, Val gestured Rona to one side of the narrow stretch of fabric, double checked her knots, and then gingerly clambered her way in.
It took no small amount of figuring - and a few giggling shoves at offending limbs in decidedly offended stomachs - but very soon they were laying side by side, Rona curled heavily in the crux of Val’s arm, breathing ticklish sighs of content across her collarbone. Their arrangement had left Val with both legs dangling uncomfortably over both sides of the hammock, and with her tail squashed to pins and needles beneath her, but Val had never once fretted about her own discomfort over someone else’s, and she didn’t intend to start now. With monumental effort, she extracted her arm from where it was pinned against the hammock’s side and slid it onto Rona’s back, rubbing lazy circles into the tight bands of muscle there. Another hum of satisfaction washed against the skin of her neck. If Rona could purr, it sounded very much like she would have started.
“Told you,” the halfling muttered, more sigh than word. “Now you can do this all the time.”
“Oh, I can do this all the time, can I?” Val shifted her hand to squeeze at the little peak of Rona’s hip, and grinned as a foot jolted against her thigh. Rona reached back and swatted lazily at her.
“Fine," she conceded with a wave of her hand, "I'll make the trees for you. Nice fat ones with branches you can tie the ends to. And bigger ones, for shade. A whole army of them. Oaks.”
“You’re getting mighty commanding there, for someone who isn’t royalty,” Val said with a hazy smile. “What if the trees revolt?”
“I’ll give them to Amon.”
They dissolved into a fit of conspiratorial snickering, delirious with their own stupidity and the giddy exhaustion of near-sleep. Their monk’s predisposition for making nature his own personal sparring partner was matched only by his predisposition for setting things on fire. That Rona would retain him for a personal crusade against disobedient trees was too ridiculous - and too likely - not to giggle about.
Eventually, though, their weariness got the better of them, and their laughter lapsed into a warm, glowing silence that Val felt like the last creeping rays of sunlight over the horizon. Something shifted beside her, and then Rona’s hand groped across her chest, finding her free hand and twining it with her own. Warmth bubbled up through Val’s innards again, pooling high in her belly. She clasped their fingers tighter.
“We ought to be finishing camp, you know,” she muttered, with effort. Rona grumbled into the fabric of her shirt.
“I finished making my camp,” she said petulantly, and buried her face closer. “Bed. Pillow.”
“Mm. Technically I made the bed.”
“Shh.”
Grinning, Val curled her arm tighter around Rona’s shoulders and allowed her last little touch of good sense to slip away. A rest wouldn’t kill them. There were still hours till sundown, even more till first watch. Amon could make a fire; Dot could cook. Val was thick-headed, but she had spent too long not dying in the company of her friends to think they needed her help in any great capacity. They could afford to let her sleep.
I wrote most of this a solid two years ago and then put it away because it was so silly that I couldn’t bear putting it into the world. But I’ve grown as a writer, which means I have even less shame than before! So for Halloween, have my beefy fighter/paladin Val and @colonelcupquake‘s clever druid Rona being adorable with a couple costume. Keep your expectations low, because they’re meant to be met at about feet level LMAO.
300 words.
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“Alright,” Rona’s voice called from around the corner, high and pitched with stifled laughter. “We’re coming out!”
“Bit late for that, ain’t it?” Val’s voice muttered from somewhere further back, just as Rona stepped out into the hall, arms outstretched in a gesture of grand presentation. The plaid shirt she wore very reached nearly her knees, and its sleeves had needed to be rolled up more than a few times to fit properly, but the hatchet clutched in her hand and the dirt-stained undershirt made her costume clear enough. She flexed for the assembled, grinning when they erupted into cheers and laughter.
“And…” she said, drawing out the word and gesturing towards the mouth of the hall behind her with wiggling fingers. There was a pause as the cheering settled, and then a long, heavy sigh.
“Yeah, alright.”
Val shuffled out into the hallway, wearing a thin scowl and an ensemble made up entirely of dark, woody brown that covered her from neck to toes. Twigs and leaves had been stuffed into the mane of her hair, making a rough halo of woodland detritus that looked rather like she had been rolled around in the middle of a forest somewhere. The expanse of brown cloth wrapped around her was dotted with patches of soft moss - too fresh to be anything but Rona’s doing - and she wielded a leafy tree branch in each hand, which dangled limply from her fingertips.
This time, when the laughter came, it came as a roar.
“It’s not that funny,” Val insisted, glaring towards where Dot and Amon were sagged against one another, trying desperately not to spill their drinks. “And it doesn’t make sense, besides. You’re the druid! If anyone should be stomping around waving branches at people, it ought to be you.”
“Shh, Val!” said Rona, pressing a finger to her lips like it hid her grin. “Trees don’t talk.”
@colonelcupquake and I commissioned @decarbry for these absolutely STUNNING color palette commissions of our d&d girls, Rona and Val! We’re so pleased with how they came out; I literally cannot stop looking at Val’s. The dynamic poses, the color, the movement in the pieces? I’m in LOVE.
The ship has officially sailed! In today’s session, Val took Rona out into the bay during our night carnival escapades, and finally revealed the thing she’s been working on for several weeks now; a song that Val had written for her, performed to an audience of one. It went rather well, as you’ll see.
I actually wrote this a year and a half ago, and have been sitting on it for the day when something like this happened. I’m actually really excited to share it because it’s just….. ungodly fluffy, which I never get to write. I’m already sorry for your teeth.
1,669 words, (nice) set the morning after.
———–
Val awoke with a pleasant warmth curled against her side, and a dull, prickling numbness in her arm.
Confusion crept in through her sleepy morning haze as she slowly shook herself awake: she slept alone nowadays, or only in the same room, or with an arm’s breadth between her and whoever had wandered into the inn room with her to find only a single bed at their disposal. There should not be such a heavy warmth turning her arm to pins and needles beneath it, or the soft squeak of a yawn near her ear, or a morning chill that she was suddenly, alarmingly aware of across her very bare chest, or -
Her confusion disappeared the moment that the thought crossed her mind, replaced by a surge of pleasant memories as the warmth on her arm shifted.
“Well, well,” she murmured around a little smile, cracking an eye open to glance down at the tousled mess of blond curls brushing against her shoulder. “Morning, sweetness.”
Rona tipped her head back and squinted up at her through the splinters of sun leaking in.
“Mornin’,” she mumbled. Val watched as she pushed herself unsteadily onto an elbow and glanced around the empty room. “What time is it?”
“No idea. Mid-morning, maybe? No one’s come to rouse us though, so probably not too late.”
“No,” Rona huffed, flopping back down against her side, “no, it’s definitely too early.”
Val stifled her grin. “What’s this, now? Did I really wear you out so terribly last night?”
“You did.” Rona managed a sleepy smile and a returning shove that was decidedly less gentle. “Not that the enthusiasm isn’t flattering or anything, but gods….”
Val recoiled from the blow like it had moved her at all, laughing softly. “Sorry, love. Two years have, ah, not been terribly kind on my patience, I guess.”
“Well, I suppose we’ll just have to make time for more practice then, won’t we? Lots and lots of it.”
And Val laughed, of course, because that was what the scene and Rona’s wiggling eyebrows demanded; but she would swear that the entire inn should have felt the sudden, electric thrill coursing through her too for all the strength of it. Their conversation about the state of their budding relationship the night before had seemed honest enough when they were warmed by moonlight and a little drink, but Val had weathered that storm many times. The stark light of morning usually painted her trysts as they properly were; a business transaction, a passing infatuation, a novelty.
But this, with Rona threading fingers into hers and snuggling closer? This felt as far from those detached affairs as she had ever been before.
They lay in comfortable silence for a long while, listening to the sounds of the inn waking up around them. Floorboards creaked gently down the hallway as late risers like themselves shuffled down to the tavern below; beneath that, the low rabble of conversation pressed up, borne by the heavy scent of cooking meat. Somewhere far away, Val heard Amon’s voice, and a scattering of familiar laughter.
She was just about to suggest they set about removing themselves from the comforts of the bed when Rona suddenly shifted beside her.
“You have a lot more of these than I thought,” she murmured, propping up on an elbow again and frowning down at the place where their fingers entwined. Val glanced down as Rona’s hand slid out from under hers and began ghosting over the raised lines of scar tissue that crisscrossed her stomach, her chest, her arms. She chuckled.
“What, you think I stand in front of people swinging pointy bits of metal and don’t get a few scars out of the deal?” The grazing fingers suddenly became a jab at her side, and Val twitched away, laughing.
“I knew you had some,” said Rona, fighting off a smile. “I’ve just never noticed this many before.”
“Well, yes. You see, unlike this very moment, there are times where I display some mastery of the art of modesty.”
Rona rolled her eyes, but didn’t fight her smile this time. Her fingers continued their trail across the lines of healed pink as she sank back down again, moving from the tops of Val’s shoulders down across the curve of her bicep, across to her chest, over her stomach, carefully retracing the paths they had taken the night before with newer, gentler consideration. Val just barely suppressed the pleasant shiver building across her spine. What a rare and wondrous thing, she thought, for her to be considered in need of such a delicate touch. So few people ever thought so.
Finally, Rona’s hands stopped on a mottled web of scar tissue nestled against the curve of her stomach.
“What’s this one from?” she asked, her breath soft and warm against the skin. Val craned her neck to see, then grimaced.
“That,” she said dryly, “was my parting gift from Hakir. You remember him, yeah? Big angry cultist, with the tiger?”
Rona’s expression soured. “How could I forget?”
“Well, he made certain I didn’t.” Val let her head fall back against the pillow with a heavy sigh. “Asshole. Nearly killed me, and didn’t even have the decency to leave a clean scar for me to impress with.”
“Oh, certainly you don’t need the help?”
Val picked her head up again to find Rona staring back at her, eyes too wide to be properly innocent. She snorted.
“I think I certainly do. Two years, love.”
“Well, okay, yes,” Rona conceded. “But you’ve got plenty of other scars. You could make up any story you wanted! Look.”
She pushed herself up onto her knees and leaned forward, pouring over the canvas of dusty red skin like a scribe over a freshly printed vellum. Val cleared her throat and shifted, suddenly painfully aware of how little she was wearing. A night together and a full conversation unclothed didn’t quite compare to this level of scrutiny, to watching Rona’s eyes glide across her skin, narrowing and widening with some unknown metric that Val quietly hoped that she was meeting.
Eventually, her fingers found their way to a little slash of pink across Val’s bicep and stopped.
“This,” Rona said matter-of-factly, “is from when you fought off an Aulairen assassin who had been sent on a contract for your head.”
“Ah, yes,” said Val, chuckling. “From all of those years I spent off continent, tangling with elven nobility.”
Rona ignored her, turning to prod at a thick line drawn over Val’s ribs that made her flinch away with a startled laugh.
“This one is from when you jumped into the water to save a drowning shipmate and had to wrestle down a shark.”
“A shark armed with a knife, apparently. Wait, Rona, stop - ”
Another series of soft jabs suddenly dug into her sides, coaxing little bursts of breathless laughter out of her before she could twist away. She swatted at Rona’s hands, but the halfling ducked around every half hearted gesture with a grin, and then swooped in for another attack.
“These are from a fight with a whole family of bugbears! A company of undead! A rallied Feywild army! A dragon!”
Before she even realized it, Val had retreated against the headboard and drawn the blankets up around her chest like flimsy armor, laughing hard at the ridiculous explanations for her scars and harder at the little halfling fingers spidering up and down her sides. At some point, Rona abandoned her stories altogether, and Val found herself with a tenuous grip on her usual awareness of size and strength as she was systematically reduced to a squirming, giggling mess.
“Mercy!” she cried at last, when she found her breath for it. “Mercy, please! I yield!”
The little fingers stopped their ticklish crawl almost immediately. Rona leaned across Val’s stomach as she flopped breathlessly onto her back, propping her chin in her hands and peering down with a wide, satisfied grin.
“Well, well,” she teased. “Who would have thought that our mighty fighter could be bested so easily?”
Val, still giggling, shot her a limp gesture that she usually reserved for starting bar brawls. Rona gasped and pressed her hands to her heart, flopping down onto the bed like she had taken the full insult of the motion and snickering when Val swatted playfully at her.
Slowly, their mutual laughter subsided, and Val glanced down at the halfling in her arms with a wry smile.
“This is, uh, starting to feel awfully familiar, isn’t it?” she asked, gesturing down to the tangle of their limbs. Rona giggled.
“It is. Which means we should probably get up before the others get any more ideas, huh?”
“Please,” said Val with a roll of her eyes. “If I manage to make it through the morning without wanting to punch anyone’s teeth in, it’ll be a miracle.”
But she gathered herself up anyway, forcing Rona to slip aside with a resigned sigh. She shed the last of the blankets in one long stretch, then stooped down and began casting around for her clothes. Behind her, something shifted with a faint groan of wood, and a very quiet voice that said, “Hey, Val?”
She turned to find Rona scant inches away and reaching up to take her hand. A shiver crawled up her arm as little fingers closed around it and grazed the thin pink line across her palm.
“One day,” Rona said, her voice soft and warm, “you should tell me the real stories behind these.”
Val’s stomach flipped full on top of itself. She grinned, and tried to pretend she didn’t feel it sliding sideways. “Shouldn’t I be telling you all those ridiculous ones? You know, woo you proper?”
She expected the laugh, bright and clear and so brilliant that it made her stomach do a few more pleasant flips for good measure; but the reassuring squeeze on her hand and Rona’s upturned smile very nearly took her to her knees.
A few days ago, doing our weekly trip to Disney, @colonelcupquake and I discussed a few things about our d&d kids, and about all the ways in which their growing relationship is...growing. This is what spawned from me thinking too much about what that meant.
Set in current game time, while the idiots are helping our resident monk through house arrest. 2,200 words.
If asked, Val wouldn’t have been able to count high enough to number all of the moments that made her miss her parents most.
There had been plenty in the early years - after selling the wagon, and then the horses, every time she had made her own coffee, Gavaar’s heavy silence on a long travel road - but the newer ones didn’t seem to dig any less deeply. Dandelions still made her sigh; the sight of Amon bent over his alchemist’s kit still made her heart clench just a little too hard.
And she knew, so bitterly that it hurt, that at least her father would have known exactly what to do with Rona Greenbottle.
He had left her some notion of it, of course. His telling - and frequent retellings, at a younger Val’s incessent requests - of how he had met her mother carried the notes of romance so thickly that even she couldn’t have missed them. But Cairon Hillcrest had also been one of the lucky sort who hadn’t made himself the company of his lady love for the better part of a year, who didn’t spend a harrowingly frequent amount of that time dragging her into danger, and who had at least had the fucking decency to know more about her than her name, and her strength, and the bright, sunshine sweetness that had captured his attention in the first place.
Val glaced up over the top of the book she was not reading to where Rona was settled on the floor of their collective room, pawing through the pile of satchels around her with the keen slowness of someone who knew exactly what she was looking for. She pulled a tough looking stalk as thick as two fingers from one, and Val watched, enthralled, as she deftly slashed it open and stuffed a coffee bean inside.
Her staring must have been the weighty sort, because after a moment, Rona’s mouth curled into a smile.
“Yes?” she said without looking up. Val instinctively tucked back into her book, feeling a rush of heat up her neck.
“Nothing,” she said automatically. She stole a glance around her book’s edge and found Rona looking back out of the corner of her eye, grinning. The heat on her neck grew warmer. “I just, ah...I was just wondering what you were doing.”
“Just that?” Rona asked, with a pointed raise of an eyebrow. Val huffed.
“Well, I won’t say that I terribly mind the view either.”
Rona hummed in acknowledgment and turned back to her work, but Val noticed with a tiny thrill of delight that her cheeks had a much rosier tinge.
“They’re for spells,” Rona said at least. Her fingers worked carefully, now winding a thin piece of twine studded with apple seeds around a length of thorny vine. “You’ve seen me using them before, haven’t you?”
“Here and again,” said Val, as she set her book aside. No use hiding behind it now; and besides, she had only caught as much of Rona’s casting as the corner of her eye allowed. With her own recent foray into magic, it seemed of dire importance that she actually try to listen.
Not to mention that Rona seemed rather pleased at the attention; she straightened as Val leaned forward, and shifted to face her.
“I decided that I should start prepping some of my components early,” she said, nodding towards the vine clipping that she was turning over in her hands. “I used to do most of these on the fly, but I figure now that I’ve got to try to keep up with you, and Tara, and Amon…”
“Mostly him, I'm sure,” Val said with a wry smile. “I’ve just taken to making sure the red blur is still moving instead of trying to keep track of him.”
“Well, I'd still rather be fast enough that I don’t catch him in this.”
With one swift motion, Rona suddenly wrenched a hand sideways and tugged the vine taught around her palm, so tightly that Val could see the thorns digging little dents into the meat of it. A soft green glow began to pulse from between her fingers, coiling down the length of the vine, and before she could blink, Val suddenly found herself in the center of a mass of woody tendrils creeping over the edge of the bed towards her.
“Don't worry,” said Rona when Val instinctively scrambled back. She waved a hand, and the vines suddenly curled away like a receding wave, and then crumbled to dust. “I don't use those on people I like if I can help it. You know, unless they want me to.”
She winked at that, and grinned, and the heat that had started to fade on Val’s neck suddenly came roaring back to life. She managed to keep her face carefully neutral as she tucked that particular thought away for later perusal.
“So, that’s, uh, that’s how your magic works, is it?” she said after a moment, coughing delicately to disguise the hitch in her voice. “You just sort of stick things together and - ”
“Not quite.” The little laugh in Rona's voice staggered as she cut Val off, just a touch too sharply to be casual. “It’s a little more involved than that, actually.”
Frowning, Val stole a glance down, and the peculiar tightness at the corners of Rona’s smile suddenly brought the memory of the conversation in the mine - with Sarula’s arms still wrapped around Rona’s weary shoulders and a too-casual shrug from Ianry - screaming back like a train car.
“Oh, Rona,” she said softly. Rona didn’t look up, just pursed her lips and stared fixedly at the floor. “Rona, love, you know I don’t think that’s all you do, right? Look, I might be an idiot, but even I know it takes work to pull miracles out of your ass on a regular basis. I just don’t understand the shape of it, hey? And I...” She hesitated. “And I would like to, if you can stand a few more stupid questions.”
Rona said nothing for a long moment, turning the vine absently in one hand. Then she sighed, and wilted like a breath suddenly exhaled.
“I know,” she said softly. “Sorry. Here, come sit with me.”
Val thanked Fharlanghn later for the distinct lack of witnesses to the way she nearly fell over herself getting off of the bed, and Rona, for her part, kindly avoided snickering.
“It’s not miracles so much as knowing what you’re trying to do,” she said once Val had settled across from her, hands folded in her lap like an attentive school child. She twirled the vine in her hand so it arched over her knuckles and held it out, gesturing to the tiny auburn seeds still tangled in twine around its surface. “Seeds are a plant’s life: they’re the first thing it needs to grow. So if I want vines to suddenly start growing out of the ground, and to wrap themselves around someone...”
She slowly threaded the vine back around her palm and made a big show of pulling it taught. Val hummed.
“It’s like a tether, then,” she said, with tentative understanding. “It sort of...makes a path from you to what you’re trying to control, yeah?”
“Exactly,” said Rona, and Val warmed at the brightness in her smile. “The components of a spell are just the vessel that you pour your intent into. That’s what makes magic happen. Not just ‘sticking things together.’”
She shot Val a pointed look, and nudged her playfully with a toe when she winced.
“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Val grumbled, making a big show of huffing and folding her arms. “I don’t even know what I’m doing, much less anyone else. I wasn’t born with magic.”
“I wasn’t either,” said Rona. Val raised an eyebrow. “What? Most people aren’t. Some of us give up everything just to learn.”
The current of heat burning under the last few words was difficult to miss, as was the way Rona’s eyes strayed to the door that Ianry had left through barely ten minutes prior. Val said nothing for a long moment, then slowly shifted closer.
“Everything, huh?” she asked. Rona’s shoulders sagged.
“My family didn’t exactly approve of the whole ‘running off to go play with magic plants’ business,” she said quietly. “And once I decided to go after my mentor…”
She trailed off, shrugging, and Val found that she could only nod. The few words of comfort she had suddenly felt achingly hollow in her ears; how could she even pretend that she understood losing a family that way, which left behind a looming shadow of unknowns that only grew with distance? She thought of her father, and all of the moments she had spent missing him, and she held them tighter still.
Eventually though, after a long muster of silence, Val rolled onto her knees, pushed some of the satchels aside, and shuffled over to where Rona was leaned against the wall. She only hesitated a moment before pressing an arm against hers.
“I don’t think Ianry meant any harm by what he said,” she said finally, “but it wasn’t fair anyway. You’re...you’re amazing Rona, in a hundred more ways than just what you can do with some thread and vines, but because of that, too. You’ve clearly worked your ass off to be as good as you are. You know, occasional misdirected ice knives aside.”
That earned her a chuckle, small but genuine, and Val felt her heart quicken as Rona slid sideways along the wall and rested a shoulder back against hers.
“That probably won’t happen again,” she said, with a thin smile. Val grinned.
“Wouldn’t matter even if it did, love. Accidents happen to all of us. But that doesn’t change the fact that you could set the ground around me on fire, and I’d trust that you’d put it out before anyone got hurt. You’re a damn fine druid Rona, but I admire your dedication to doing right even more.”
“Me?” Rona sat forward with the reddening cheeks and sudden, righteous indignation of someone whose only response to a compliment was to return it. “What about you? I've spent the last few months watching you fling yourself between us and every kind of monster that Cinderfells can dream up. I expect that I’ll spend the next few months doing the same thing. You want to talk to me about dedication? Protecting people is so natural to you, a god came down to help you do it!” She huffed and folded her arms over her chest. “No one has ever thought to ask why I like you, Val. You know why? It's because they haven’t needed to. Knowing you makes the reason plain enough.”
This time, the heat surging upwards bypassed Val’s neck completely and shot straight to her ears, which felt suddenly like they matched Amon’s in their shade.
“Well,” she said, when sense and her full grasp of Common finally returned, “now that’s hardly fair. See, I was under the distinct impression that I was complimenting you.”
Rona’s lips curled into a wry smile, her cheeks their own delightful shade of rose. “Funny how a conversation works, huh?”
They both buckled into a laugh, and whatever coy hesitation had been putting distance between them suddenly vanished like a mist in morning sun. Rona sank further against Val’s arm once she had collected herself, and leaned her head onto her shoulder.
“I should clean all of this up,” she said after a moment, gesturing to the piled satchels around them. “With any luck, we’re not going to be needing to burn a bunch of spells in the next few days anyway.”
“Don’t be so sure,” said Val, grinning. “We have a rather permanent history of getting ourselves into all manner of trouble. In fact, you might even need a whole other bag of…” She paused and grabbed the nearest satchel. “Acorns?”
Rona giggled. “I use those more for making friends with squirrels than for magic, if I’m honest.”
“Of course,” said Val, with a good-natured roll of her eyes as she let the satchel fall. “What I mean is, I still have plenty more stupid questions about magic, and I’m not so terrible at finding useful things in the woods. Mostly Sendran woods, to be fair, and mostly in the south, but I haven’t almost eaten poisonous berries since I was eight, which isn’t horrible when you think about it -”
“I was actually planning on gathering some things to bring Rosie back today,” Rona cut in, pulling away to grin up at her. “If you wanted to come along…?”
Val practically jumped to her feet, snatching her shield from where it was leaned against the bedside and slinging it onto her back. “Please. I’m already sick of this room, this inn and this whole bloody city. Let’s let it fend for itself for a little while, hey?”
“A date, then,” Rona agreed, grinning as she stood and then leaning forward to nudge Val with an elbow. “And maybe I’ll even let you hold the basket.”
