❝ you felt ice cold when i touched you. ❞
It's different, being able to reach out to Fiyero as a flesh and blood person. Not that illithids weren't warm blooded, but in the Astral Prism, he was simply an illusion. The golden paladin was someone constructed from the ideals of many, and he certainly didn't look like the person the tiefling had dreamed up. No, now he wore the face of an adventurer well known to the Sword Coast- a relic of the past, of halcyon days.
Even the city that bore his name had become something far more sinister.
Spirale was different- of course it was. In Spirale, a wish had been granted- it was not his own. He's constantly reminded of it whenever he catches his reflection. Tousled brown hair and blue-green eyes and a charming smile- Ansur loved him like this. That's why it hurt so badly. It was not the search for a cure so much as it was that he felt the deep loss of the bronze dragon's love.
He sought companionship elsewhere, then. Belynne had been a good companion. She hadn't shared a bond with him like Ansur, but then again, who could? Ah, how could he have known that there would be others in the future who he would yearn for; each in their own ways.
He had great respect for the strength of Karlach and Lae'zel. He admired Astarion for his cleverness, Gale for his ambition, Wyll for his heroism. And Fiyero- Fiyero was the one he hadn't expected. He loved Fiyero for how she embodied freedom. Freedom and love that he could no longer understand like real people did-
Many a time, he wanted to ask what it was like to feel that sort of freedom. To be so certain and confident in his own being- like Fiyero, who never wanted to be anything other than what she was.
While he had urged her to open up to the illithid powers, he knew deep down that she would not. She would never want to change, and if he was honest with himself, the more he met her in her dreams, the less he wanted her to change. He liked her, as much as an illithid could like anyone, as a tiefling. As a bard. His first love had always been freedom, after all.
You felt ice cold when I touched you, she says, softly and in awe. He stares at her hands in his. It's strange, not being able to reach into her mind, to know exactly what she's thinking- but as they are, such a thing would be too deep, too intimate. Too fast, because how could he really open up like that? Especially now- ❝ A dream is fleeting, often impossible to grasp- I cannot say I am surprised- ❞
❝ You have always been warm, yet what I felt in our dreams pales in comparison to this. ❞ There's a sadness in his tone, or perhaps a form of longing. He doesn't know what to name it, the feeling, because illithids didn't describe what they felt- they showed it, sensed it, surrounded themselves and their thralls in the vast depths of a nameless thing. Balduran hadn't felt like a real person did in far too long. ❝ I hope I am warmer now. ❞
Like a real person. Teach me to feel like real people do.