Chapter Text
There’s a bird singing, somewhere to her right. Its song is not particularly pleasant, a desperate thrill to attract a mate, she supposes. It lacks rhythm, musicality. It’s unfamiliar, but not unknown. She hasn’t heard anything like it in a long time. The air smells wet, but fresh, and slightly salty, too.
The soil she walks on is mostly rocks and wet moss. The sun shines through the holes in the cave’s ceiling, reflecting off of the rivulets of water running down the jagged walls and vegetation. She can hear the river, not so far. She hadn’t really paid attention to it, last time she was there, but right now, it’s all she focuses on.
She had been there, in this very place, years ago. She was in a nightmare, back then. She didn’t know how important that day would be, how much it would change her life, for the better, not the worse. As she walks through the calcified, overgrown ruins of the mindflayer ship that crashed into the coast with her on board, she recalls the chaos that followed.
There, where the small streams of water all gather into a puddle and run to the Chionthar, she remembers two eyes of gold, piercing through her mind, as a dying ghaik spent the last of its vital energy trying to get her close enough to feed on her brain. She remembers the whistling, pathetic whine that left its throat as she bashed its horrendous skull in with her foot. She remembers the disgusting, yet victorious feeling of its blood on her leg, seeping behind her shin guards. The pride that filled her chest, as she walked out of that wreck alive, when that thing didn’t.
She hasn’t forgotten the fear, either.
She recognizes the jagged rock that crushed the ghaik’s body. Erosion and moss have rounded it, softened its edges, but it still stands in the middle of the mere, proud, over its drowned kill. She ponders for a moment the idea of wading through the green water, just to see if she could find a piece of the skeleton. By curiosity, only. With a brief glance to the cloth wrapped around her leather boots, she decides against it. It will take too long to dry.
It only takes her a few minutes of walking through the moss and foliage to reach the beach. The water looks calm, small waves coming to die at her feet fill her with the kind of serenity she’s not felt in a long time. The wind carries an earthy smell and a little aftertaste of seafood. Though nowhere as pungent and burning as the last time she stood there.
Almost unconsciously, her feet take her on the same journey she had. She goes by a door, that she now knows leads to an old temple of Jergal. Through the ruins again, towards a path going uphill. That’s where she knows Tav, Shadowheart and Astarion found Gale, stuck in the portal she sees is still faintly glowing. They’ve recounted that story many times, probably exaggerating a few of the details for the sake of a few laughs. Tav did the same, when she recounted saving her ass from two tieflings and a (stupid and obvious) trap that left her hanging in a cage for hours . At first, nobody laughed, but over the course of their little adventure, her companions had learned that she wouldn’t dare hurt them, despite the mean glances she cast their way as they howled at the bard’s horrendously inaccurate retelling of the events.
The traces of her presence there have long disappeared. The trap hasn’t even been repaired, though she assumes there’s no need for it nowadays. There shouldn’t be any goblin army left around these parts. She’s pretty certain her party tore through the last one well enough to give a lesson to any future goblins planning an invasion.
She wonders if the Grove is still there, as she approaches the scene of their first encounter with the druids at a leisure pace. The greenery hasn’t changed much. The path is well traveled, though, from here to the beach. She assumes it’s a way more popular destination, without the threat of a crashed ship or a goblin army.
As soon as she steps around that small hill, she catches a glimpse of the door to the grove. The first sign of civilization they caught back then, besides the corpses of fishermen and the band of ruin looters. It’s overgrown, still, but the leaves don’t do much in the way of hiding more than they do decorating, now. She can even see the pulley, and a young blonde human clad in leaves and bark sitting not too far from it. He hasn’t noticed her yet.
“Oy!!” She screams, and silently delights in the way the young man jumps and his carving tool and barely shaped wooden sculpture both slip from his hands and fall to the ground. “Could you open the door?” she pauses, then remembers an old friend’s lesson on faerunian courtesy. “Please,” she adds, reluctantly.
The young lad gets up and walks closer, squinting to make out her features. “I don’t know you, what’s your business here?” he yells back. He’s got a thick accent, and she can barely make out his common. Or maybe she’s just really, really out of practice.
“I’m here to see an old friend. Does the druid Halsin still live here?” she asks.
Friend might be an overstatement. She hasn’t seen the man in a long time, though she cannot tell how long exactly, really, since she’s been running in the Astral Plane. She could have portaled close to Baldur’s Gate, she knows. She justified it by telling herself she just wanted to retrace her steps. Nostalgia, all that. In reality, she knows it’s a little more complicated. Halsin is also the most likely to still be alive, since he was a druid, and well into his 3rd century the last time they saw each other. Maybe that was it. Maybe she was afraid to find that she’d spent too long fighting her war, and all her companions had passed.
“He does,” the man hesitates after a moment. “Who’s asking?”
“Lae’zel of Creche Kliir,” she grumbles, irritated. Were all the istik on this plane so distrustful? “We’ve battled side by side for this place, and for this realm. Now, will you open this door?”
He disappears for a moment, and she feels the irritation rising. She could just jump over that damned wall and give the boy a lesson, if she was half as bold as she was the first time she stood here. Fortunately, what she lost in brashness, she gained in power. If her younger self had a fraction the talents she gained the last few years, that grove probably wouldn't open its gates to her at all today.
She hears him shout on the other side of the door, then someone yells an answer, and he runs back into view to strain himself on the pulley.
As the door grinds open with a whine that is too familiar, Lae’zel is greeted by the sight of a red-haired druid she’d almost forgotten.
“Lae’zel,” Kagha greets her with a smile. She looks older, wiser than she remembers. The slash she sustained on her left cheek when they battled shadow druids down in that grove has healed, now just a slightly tan line running from cheekbone to throat. “It’s been so long. Come in, please. Halsin is down in the hollow, he will be happy to see you.”