Another ficlet about my Tav
Apr. 26th, 2026 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missizzyI finished this little narrative prelude this morning, right before I started streaming.
In those final hours, before the nautiloid ship first appeared over Baldur's Gate, Sara Tully was, for the most part, outside of the city. She has spent the morning there, as she usually did, checking her traps, gathering the useful harvestable plants, shooting down those small animals and she could easily get that had something she could sell. Stylin' Horst has very much appreciated all the potion ingredients she'd gotten for him, or so he'd assured her, but, he'd then added, he really needed more mergrass as fast as possible, and was willing to pay extra if she got it to him that day. So the afternoon saw her heading out again.
For a century and a half Sara had trod the roads and streets of the Gate's Lower City, as well as the paths and of Rivington just outside the outer gate, as well as the trails she'd worn through the woodlands just beyond. Some of Rivington's inhabitants waved at her as she called past, called greetings she easily returned. Nowadays, for the majority of them, she was someone they'd seen passing by their houses for their entire lives. She knew only some of their names, but has memories of more of them back when they were children playing around her, calling out comments about how she was a little big for an elf.
Sara was, indeed, not exactly what most people pictured when it came to elves. She was a little taller, and a little broader, certainly. While not particularly tan, she wasn't particularly pale either, and she also found most people didn't expect the freckles. There were even some idiots who demanded to know why she had lines on her face, now, although others realized that did happen to elves eventually. She would, after all, be 280 years old, come the next summer solstice. (She didn't know exactly when she'd been born, but she knew it had been around them, and she'd taken to giving that as her birthday.)
They didn't expect the nose and eyebrow piercings, either. There had been a time Sara had told people why the piercings were so important to her, even what her grandmother had said to her when she'd done them. But the last person who'd known her story in that kind of detail had died the previous year.
Still, her ears were pointed, her arms looked a little more slender than a human's might, and her brown hair, which currently gleamed almost red in the sunlight, carried a certain wispishness to it. Sara had carefully brushed it out and put it in its currently fancy pony tail that morning, and she would do it again in the evening, when she took her sponge to wipe sweat, grime, or anything else from her skin. She wasn't generally fussy when it came to her looks, but maybe she was, a little, when it came to her hair.
Even if she was probably going to get it messy this afternoon. Mergrass, after all, grew most near the river, and if she found enough as quickly as she likely would, there'd be time for a dip.
Sara actually lived near the Chionthar now, in the Lower City; she woke to the din at the docks in the morning. But out here the river was more peaceful, at least in between the passing of the ships that sailed it. The mud at its banks squished not entirely unpleasantly beneath her well-worn leather boots as she filled her bag with the valuable plant. She knew enough about brewing, now, to even identify the specimens more suited to it. She picked selectively as she walked from clump to clump, her eyes also peeled for more valuable plants she could also quickly grab.
It took her an hour or so to fill her bag. As she tied it up, she looked around to make a quick check of exactly where she was. Wyrm's Crossing was still visible behind her, but Rivington had become a blur.
Was she near the old spot? It had been long enough ago it was hard for her to remember exactly where they'd been anymore. Not too many decades ago, she still would've thought that inconceivable, that she could forget any detail at all of her wedding day. There were details that were more vivid than ever in her memory from it. She remembered Adelie's small halfling hands hands in hers, her voice as the two of them had spoken the words Sara knew her parents had once spoken to each other, and her mother's parents before them. Originally they hadn't been marriage vows, exactly, but they'd been close enough for the purpose.
There were memories all along this riverbank, of course. She had met Kathryne Margrove, Shanda Pluqois, and Adelie Tully shortly after they'd all first entered the Lower City, but they'd all four of them spent time out here together. The other three of them had first taught Shanda to swim here, one hot summer's day. That image, too, popped into Sara's head as she put her bag and pack down, unstrapped from her back the axe she always carried outside the city, pulled off her clothes and boots, and eased herself into the water.
It was cold water today, of course, it being so late in the year. Her old friends would've retreated from it fast, but Sara didn't mind, not for a few minutes, at least. She had once struggled not to freeze to death while hiding in a snow-covered barn. A very long time ago, when she was maybe a bit sturdier physically-but much worse off, mentally.
Although as well as the cold, there was something in the water that didn't quite feel right. Sara had heard whispers at the dock, as well, that there seemed to be some new oily substance in the water. The fishermen were getting worried. Maria Haws had even talked about some of her fish being unsellable, when she'd visited Sara a couple of days ago. Sara made a mental note to ask her for an update on that, next time she dropped by.
She wasn't yet sure when she would, though she was sure if she didn't, one of her cousins would. Her most common visitor, Niegel Haws, had explained it to her very frankly, how all their lives, those of Kathryne's descendants who'd realized they'd likely live to see her other two old friends die had worried for how she could cope when they did. "We've known how you are," he'd said, "with your heart too big for your own good. And then we saw how you were when Adelie died, and, well." Since Shanda's funeral they'd been keeping close watch over her. Maybe even thinking she'd run off again the way she had when being in the city without her late wife had felt like too much.
She'd come back after six years, more able to handle the memories, then. Though sometimes she thought they haunted her more than ever nowadays. Especially after the one time she had fallen in love since then had gone so badly. She suspected another reason Kathryne's descendants were so concerned for her stemmed from that whole incident where she'd chased Jack through the marketplace, begging him to take her back, not yet realizing his leaving her after only three years was the only kindness he would ever do by her.
He hadn't been wrong, maybe, when he told her there was so much she didn't know, and couldn't hope to understand. Oh, she knew what she had to know. Certainly she knew the reality of life in the Lower City, and similar. She knew how to read and write well enough to keep in touch with her brothers elsewhere in Faerun. And she knew she how to make her way through wild terrain, how to survive in the woods, and how to hunt and trap and harvest.
And she knew how to fight, how to defend. Not that she ever wanted to again, but she still knew how. Her grandmother had even told her once she could be a leader among her people, and maybe she would've been, had things gone differently. But she had never been one, and she certainly didn't think she'd be one now.
She couldn't be one here, in the world she now lived in. Not when she knew little that more educated people knew, or how the richer and more powerful parts of the world around her worked, or anything else more sophisticated like that.
It was all right, she thought. Someone in this world had to focus on the grunt work.
Sara shivered as she emerged from the river, and more as she hastily dried herself with the ragged towel in her pack. She longed for warm water. Maybe it might even be worth it to warm some over her brazier, but there was the cost of the coal to consider. Maybe just enough to wash her hair?
She took a slight detour on her way back to check her traps, and found she'd caught a squirrel. Not worth much in coin, unfortunately, but she could stew the meat for her dinner that night. With the extra coin from the mergrass, she could even buy some herbs to stew with it.
It would be a good night, she thought. After dinner she could go for a drink in the Blushing Mermaid. Even if there wasn't anyone there she was that close to anymore, she'd find people there she knew, and she liked, and she could share a drink and a song with. Maybe even someone she could take back home. That wouldn't give her what she most wanted from sex, perhaps, but it might still be worth it for the warmth and the pleasure, and to not wake up alone the next morning.
It took her longer than it should've to pry the tiny body free of the trap, and the sun was starting to set as she approached Wyrm's Crossing. The gate might even be closed, and if certain people were on guard, she thought, she might try to just sneak in the side way she'd long used when she wanted to avoid dealing with them.
Even in the fading light, she could see the outline of the city as it came back into shape. That always made her heart rise. She loved this city. It even felt a little strange, now, that she'd once found it so alien and unsettling a place, so unlike where she'd grown up. It was the only place during her adult life that she'd called home, the only one where she'd been truly happy.
It even made her heart warm when she first caught some of the more unpleasant smells of the areas around Rivington, such as the tanner whom she sometimes sold her wares to, or the yard where that old woman whom she'd given a piggy back ride to once still worked dying fabrics. She passed two people washing clothes in the Chionthar, and waved back when one of them waved at her.
She was just getting to the outskirts to Rivington proper when she first heard the bell.
It had been so long since the alarm bell of Baldur's Gate had been sounded that for the first moment or so, Sara was actually confused, as to why such a sound should suddenly drown out the sounds of the livestock grazing nearby or the rush of the river. Then more distant memories kicked in, from longer ago than many people here could remember. For a moment, she looked around, eyes and ears now sharp, the way they now usually only were when she was hunting. From that, she saw nothing besides people jumping up or running out of their houses, and heard nothing but general shouting and confusion.
Then the wind hit, gusts of it more ferocious than anything she had ever felt outside of a storm, and she looked up.
What she saw in the sky then was not anything she could identify, not really like anything she had ever seen in her long life. It seemed like some kind of flying vessel, or possibly some kind of great flying sea creature in it's shape and great rounded shell and long limbs. She had looked up just in time to see the bell tower crumble from a blow by one of them.
Sara broke into a run. She didn't even know what she could do about such a big, powerful thing, with her mere axe and old warrior's skills. But this was her home, now, and she would defend it with her life.
She would always wonder, afterwards, what would have happened, if she had been only a little slower, and had not come within its range.
In those final hours, before the nautiloid ship first appeared over Baldur's Gate, Sara Tully was, for the most part, outside of the city. She has spent the morning there, as she usually did, checking her traps, gathering the useful harvestable plants, shooting down those small animals and she could easily get that had something she could sell. Stylin' Horst has very much appreciated all the potion ingredients she'd gotten for him, or so he'd assured her, but, he'd then added, he really needed more mergrass as fast as possible, and was willing to pay extra if she got it to him that day. So the afternoon saw her heading out again.
For a century and a half Sara had trod the roads and streets of the Gate's Lower City, as well as the paths and of Rivington just outside the outer gate, as well as the trails she'd worn through the woodlands just beyond. Some of Rivington's inhabitants waved at her as she called past, called greetings she easily returned. Nowadays, for the majority of them, she was someone they'd seen passing by their houses for their entire lives. She knew only some of their names, but has memories of more of them back when they were children playing around her, calling out comments about how she was a little big for an elf.
Sara was, indeed, not exactly what most people pictured when it came to elves. She was a little taller, and a little broader, certainly. While not particularly tan, she wasn't particularly pale either, and she also found most people didn't expect the freckles. There were even some idiots who demanded to know why she had lines on her face, now, although others realized that did happen to elves eventually. She would, after all, be 280 years old, come the next summer solstice. (She didn't know exactly when she'd been born, but she knew it had been around them, and she'd taken to giving that as her birthday.)
They didn't expect the nose and eyebrow piercings, either. There had been a time Sara had told people why the piercings were so important to her, even what her grandmother had said to her when she'd done them. But the last person who'd known her story in that kind of detail had died the previous year.
Still, her ears were pointed, her arms looked a little more slender than a human's might, and her brown hair, which currently gleamed almost red in the sunlight, carried a certain wispishness to it. Sara had carefully brushed it out and put it in its currently fancy pony tail that morning, and she would do it again in the evening, when she took her sponge to wipe sweat, grime, or anything else from her skin. She wasn't generally fussy when it came to her looks, but maybe she was, a little, when it came to her hair.
Even if she was probably going to get it messy this afternoon. Mergrass, after all, grew most near the river, and if she found enough as quickly as she likely would, there'd be time for a dip.
Sara actually lived near the Chionthar now, in the Lower City; she woke to the din at the docks in the morning. But out here the river was more peaceful, at least in between the passing of the ships that sailed it. The mud at its banks squished not entirely unpleasantly beneath her well-worn leather boots as she filled her bag with the valuable plant. She knew enough about brewing, now, to even identify the specimens more suited to it. She picked selectively as she walked from clump to clump, her eyes also peeled for more valuable plants she could also quickly grab.
It took her an hour or so to fill her bag. As she tied it up, she looked around to make a quick check of exactly where she was. Wyrm's Crossing was still visible behind her, but Rivington had become a blur.
Was she near the old spot? It had been long enough ago it was hard for her to remember exactly where they'd been anymore. Not too many decades ago, she still would've thought that inconceivable, that she could forget any detail at all of her wedding day. There were details that were more vivid than ever in her memory from it. She remembered Adelie's small halfling hands hands in hers, her voice as the two of them had spoken the words Sara knew her parents had once spoken to each other, and her mother's parents before them. Originally they hadn't been marriage vows, exactly, but they'd been close enough for the purpose.
There were memories all along this riverbank, of course. She had met Kathryne Margrove, Shanda Pluqois, and Adelie Tully shortly after they'd all first entered the Lower City, but they'd all four of them spent time out here together. The other three of them had first taught Shanda to swim here, one hot summer's day. That image, too, popped into Sara's head as she put her bag and pack down, unstrapped from her back the axe she always carried outside the city, pulled off her clothes and boots, and eased herself into the water.
It was cold water today, of course, it being so late in the year. Her old friends would've retreated from it fast, but Sara didn't mind, not for a few minutes, at least. She had once struggled not to freeze to death while hiding in a snow-covered barn. A very long time ago, when she was maybe a bit sturdier physically-but much worse off, mentally.
Although as well as the cold, there was something in the water that didn't quite feel right. Sara had heard whispers at the dock, as well, that there seemed to be some new oily substance in the water. The fishermen were getting worried. Maria Haws had even talked about some of her fish being unsellable, when she'd visited Sara a couple of days ago. Sara made a mental note to ask her for an update on that, next time she dropped by.
She wasn't yet sure when she would, though she was sure if she didn't, one of her cousins would. Her most common visitor, Niegel Haws, had explained it to her very frankly, how all their lives, those of Kathryne's descendants who'd realized they'd likely live to see her other two old friends die had worried for how she could cope when they did. "We've known how you are," he'd said, "with your heart too big for your own good. And then we saw how you were when Adelie died, and, well." Since Shanda's funeral they'd been keeping close watch over her. Maybe even thinking she'd run off again the way she had when being in the city without her late wife had felt like too much.
She'd come back after six years, more able to handle the memories, then. Though sometimes she thought they haunted her more than ever nowadays. Especially after the one time she had fallen in love since then had gone so badly. She suspected another reason Kathryne's descendants were so concerned for her stemmed from that whole incident where she'd chased Jack through the marketplace, begging him to take her back, not yet realizing his leaving her after only three years was the only kindness he would ever do by her.
He hadn't been wrong, maybe, when he told her there was so much she didn't know, and couldn't hope to understand. Oh, she knew what she had to know. Certainly she knew the reality of life in the Lower City, and similar. She knew how to read and write well enough to keep in touch with her brothers elsewhere in Faerun. And she knew she how to make her way through wild terrain, how to survive in the woods, and how to hunt and trap and harvest.
And she knew how to fight, how to defend. Not that she ever wanted to again, but she still knew how. Her grandmother had even told her once she could be a leader among her people, and maybe she would've been, had things gone differently. But she had never been one, and she certainly didn't think she'd be one now.
She couldn't be one here, in the world she now lived in. Not when she knew little that more educated people knew, or how the richer and more powerful parts of the world around her worked, or anything else more sophisticated like that.
It was all right, she thought. Someone in this world had to focus on the grunt work.
Sara shivered as she emerged from the river, and more as she hastily dried herself with the ragged towel in her pack. She longed for warm water. Maybe it might even be worth it to warm some over her brazier, but there was the cost of the coal to consider. Maybe just enough to wash her hair?
She took a slight detour on her way back to check her traps, and found she'd caught a squirrel. Not worth much in coin, unfortunately, but she could stew the meat for her dinner that night. With the extra coin from the mergrass, she could even buy some herbs to stew with it.
It would be a good night, she thought. After dinner she could go for a drink in the Blushing Mermaid. Even if there wasn't anyone there she was that close to anymore, she'd find people there she knew, and she liked, and she could share a drink and a song with. Maybe even someone she could take back home. That wouldn't give her what she most wanted from sex, perhaps, but it might still be worth it for the warmth and the pleasure, and to not wake up alone the next morning.
It took her longer than it should've to pry the tiny body free of the trap, and the sun was starting to set as she approached Wyrm's Crossing. The gate might even be closed, and if certain people were on guard, she thought, she might try to just sneak in the side way she'd long used when she wanted to avoid dealing with them.
Even in the fading light, she could see the outline of the city as it came back into shape. That always made her heart rise. She loved this city. It even felt a little strange, now, that she'd once found it so alien and unsettling a place, so unlike where she'd grown up. It was the only place during her adult life that she'd called home, the only one where she'd been truly happy.
It even made her heart warm when she first caught some of the more unpleasant smells of the areas around Rivington, such as the tanner whom she sometimes sold her wares to, or the yard where that old woman whom she'd given a piggy back ride to once still worked dying fabrics. She passed two people washing clothes in the Chionthar, and waved back when one of them waved at her.
She was just getting to the outskirts to Rivington proper when she first heard the bell.
It had been so long since the alarm bell of Baldur's Gate had been sounded that for the first moment or so, Sara was actually confused, as to why such a sound should suddenly drown out the sounds of the livestock grazing nearby or the rush of the river. Then more distant memories kicked in, from longer ago than many people here could remember. For a moment, she looked around, eyes and ears now sharp, the way they now usually only were when she was hunting. From that, she saw nothing besides people jumping up or running out of their houses, and heard nothing but general shouting and confusion.
Then the wind hit, gusts of it more ferocious than anything she had ever felt outside of a storm, and she looked up.
What she saw in the sky then was not anything she could identify, not really like anything she had ever seen in her long life. It seemed like some kind of flying vessel, or possibly some kind of great flying sea creature in it's shape and great rounded shell and long limbs. She had looked up just in time to see the bell tower crumble from a blow by one of them.
Sara broke into a run. She didn't even know what she could do about such a big, powerful thing, with her mere axe and old warrior's skills. But this was her home, now, and she would defend it with her life.
She would always wonder, afterwards, what would have happened, if she had been only a little slower, and had not come within its range.
