The Lewd Lyre was normally such a busy, bustling environment. Carah had grown so accustomed to the frantic pace of the place, always so alive with activity, and the feeling some days of wanting to pull her hair out for lack of enough hours in the day to keep up with all of the minutiae of keeping it a warm, inviting, and safe space for the people and adventurers of the city to come in for an evening of relative peace for themselves that the sensation within these walls tonight was alien to her.
She had been away for coming up on two moons now, and despite the hearths and sconces crackling with the inviting glow of warm fires, tonight it felt eerily abandoned. Empty.
Cold. Pacing slowly in the garden atrium, between the doors flanking her that would provide her an egress, and the archway that led into the bar itself, she wrung her hands together, head down, wearing a trail in the fine red rug beneath her worn leather travelling boots. Her mind was tumbling end over end, caught in a churning whirlpool of thoughts she kept buried, locked away. This place had been her home for years now, since not long after she'd arrived on the shores of Baldur's Gate, washed up and malnourished, determined to start again. It had been her safe haven, her rock in a stormy sea. But had it...?
She had not truly noticed until now. But the vast stone hall tonight felt like a cave. An opulently decorated one, perhaps... but a hollow in cold stone all the same. What was worse, she wasn't even sure she felt anything about it. It just...
was.
She stopped her pacing, turning her head to look through the archway into the empty bar. Joy's movement behind the counter drew her eye at first, but as she slowly pushed her hair from her brow with her fingertips, they moved to the curtain leading to the alcove off to the left, and lingered there.
"Miss Carah...?" a reverberant baritone voice called to her, startling her out of her thoughts. She wasn't aware of how much time had passed, but judging from the concerned look that the armored guard captain was giving her, it had been a while.
She smiled back at him, faintly, her shoulders dropping a little as she shook her head with an imperceptible movement. "Sorry, Halgard," she responded, waving a hand. "Just... thinking, I guess."
Halgard didn't hesitate before nodding and standing back at attention with a single thump of his halberd, seemingly satisfied with her answer. A pang of guilt washed over her in that moment. She hadn't told him yet. She hadn't really told much of
anyone with House Darius. Looking down at her feet and wringing her hands together once more, she took a breath, and walked to the curtain, taking more and more care to quiet her footfalls the closer she drew.
Pulling back the curtain, she peeked inside, noting the two figures huddled on the couches before the fireplace, breathing steadily. She waited a few seconds before entering, and tiptoeing once again to quietly sit on the edge of the coffee table between them, folding her hands in her lap to watch them sleep.
Oth was curled up into a ball, his tall figure somehow crammed entirely onto once side of the sofa, the blanket into which she had previously tucked him hugged tightly to his chin. "Peaceful" was perhaps the wrong word to describe him, but there was an air of calm about the lanky elf that Carah didn't think she had ever seen in him before. His concave chest was rising and falling, unlabored, his eyes relatively still rather than darting this way and that beneath his lids. On the other sofa, beneath a thick padding of no fewer than three heavy blankets, Teris the fire gensai slumbered, lying on his back. And on his lips... a content smile.
It was infectious. A soft, fond smile played at the corners of Carah's own mouth, and she reached over to pull one of the corners that had fallen away from him back between him and the cushions with a gentle hand, running her fingers down the side of his face as she withdrew it. This poor man, the lonely, tormented gensai had known a war within unlike any other she'd known. The both of them were weakened from their ordeal two days prior, so much so that it was a wonder either of them were alive. And here he was, sleeping peacefully for the first time since she'd met him, and
smiling.
She knew in her heart -- she had said so to him -- that it was
because of him that she still could have this moment, and not one of mourning. Facing what either of them had faced alone would surely have destroyed them. Teris had known loneliness and isolation for as long as his memory served. Sure, she had tried for so long to be the friend to him that he had needed, but she hadn't always done well in that regard. If anything, he had more than one reason to hate her. To hate Oth. Or any number of others who had let their own personal struggles prevent them from reaching out to him,
truly reaching him, and keep him on his lone rock in hostile waters.
And yet... he remained. He was here. He had done something selfless, knowing full well the risks to himself, the chance he was taking, for the love of someone dear to him.
A tear ran down her cheek, and she wiped it off, stubbornly, looking away with a quivering breath to the fire. Her mind raced with a thousand unwelcome thoughts she fought off one by one, stuffing them back into the recesses of her memory where she kept all of the other parts of her she never wanted to surface again. The resentment, the anger, the fear... Teris knew all of these, too. And here he was.
Sniffing once, she looked back to the dreaming gensai again, and smiled again, softly, despite the rivulets of melancholy tears running freely down her cheeks. She'd often told him that he was stronger than he believed he was, and she had never before believed it as much as she did in this moment.
This was what it meant to love. This was what it meant to forgive, to sacrifice, to go all in for someone close to you even when it could take everything you had. Her face contorted, and she lowered her gaze to her lap, covering her mouth and closing her eyes as she fought back a sob.
She had seen that look of peace on Sabyn's face, too.
Teris loved his friends. And despite his own fear and isolation, no matter how lost and adrift he was, there was always room in his heart for another. No matter how small the bit of driftwood he clung to in the ocean of life was, he never turned away a hand reaching for help.
It was long past time she redoubled her efforts to make sure he knew it had not gone unnoticed... and to follow the example he had set for her all this time. This house was but a building. These
people...
...they were her life.
Cold hearts break
Beneath the strain
But mine fills up in pouring rain
Feels like drowning
In icy seas
Surrounded by boats with no place for me
All tangled up
In my heartstrings
I try to play this melody
Was never meant to be alone
Was never meant to be alone
Let me in from this storm
There's no place to make you warm
On locked doors I keep pounding
"Please," I scream, "I think I'm drowning!"
Let me in, let me in
Let me in...
In the cold
I keep on swimming
Boats drift by with huddled figures
Shoulder to shoulder
They keep from freezing
Making it all just look so easy
All tangled up
In my heartstrings
I try to play this melody
Was never meant to be alone
Was never meant to be alone
Let me in from this storm
There's no place to make you warm
On locked doors I keep pounding
"Please," I scream, "I think I'm drowning!"
Let me in, let me in
Let me in...
Beneath the dark
Something calls to me
I hear a voice whispering softly
But I'm still drowning
I'm treading fasster
But another figure is in the water
A plank of wood
It drifts on by
So I'm racing towards it, and there I lie
I'm reaching out
For this stranger
I'll make room for them despite the danger
We were never meant to be alone
We were never meant to be alone
We were never meant to be alone
We were never meant to be alone
Let them in from this storm!
There's a place to keep them warm!
On locked doors they kept pounding
"Please," I scream, "I think I'm drowning!"
So I let them in, let them in
Let them in...