House Clearing with Glint and Sorrel

Written with the eloquent pen of Youki and following an as yet unwritten up adventure where Glint made a promise he kept

Sorrel sits on the cobblestones in the last of the evening Sun, warming her back against the brickwork as she toys idly with a crescent moon pendant around her neck. She is gazing up at the sky but there’s a tension to her that speaks of watchful awareness. It would take someone who understood what it is to be always alert to spot this, someone who might be wary of being followed or spotted or rumbled.

“So, that’s the house, huh?” Glint sidles up to her. If there is an antithesis to awareness he is it. The wizard is solely focused on not showing that he’s looking at his friend instead of the house, trying to assess her mood without being too obvious about it.

Sorrel turns and eyes Glint with as much restraint as she can muster. His presence is important to her, and she appreciates the time he has put aside for a job that will hurt his back and gain him nothing. This is a gesture she will remember.

“Yep. Cute place. Make someone very happy,” she gives a half smile. “Thank you,” she nods and rises to her feet with a nimble grace, turning, pulling a key from her belt and unlocking the door in a single move. Then she hesitates. “After you…?”

Glint nods awkwardly and steps into the empty house. It feels emptier as they step inside: the white walls and small boxes containing knickknacks and decorations here and there create a feeling of a life left behind.

The wizard shivers and squashes the desire to conjure a single painting on the wall, a cute lamp - something to remind that this is a home, not just a building with four walls and a roof. It couldn’t be further away from the opulently decorated mansion he grew up in, and he’s never expected to miss that, but this is austere to a point of being desolate. Glint sighs and looks around the living room they are currently in. He takes off his cloak and rolls his sleeves up to his elbows.

“Alright… where do you need me?”

Sorrel is still standing on the doorstep. The kitchen, Sylvia’s domain, greets those who enter, and it is so filled with ghosts she could reach out and touch them.

“I….” She pauses, unused to expressing need. But she has fought beside and been saved by this complex wizard who wears his power almost uneasily. “I don’t want to do this alone,” she says eventually. “The silence, the memories. There’s not much to do. Secure the place, store Sylvia’s most precious things in the strong room and pick up the last of my weapons. But perhaps light and noise and music and distractions… I’ve seen you conjure wonders, Glint. Could you make this feel less like a wake?”

She looks around the room briefly. “And also, I guess the kitchen table probably doesn’t need to be deployed as a barricade anymore.”

Glint gives a sad nod and says: “There’s a lullaby my nan sang to me when I was young. I’ve always found it very… hopeful. Just… let me do something,” he tenderly reaches out an ungloved hand towards Sorrel’s head.

The ranger is uneasy at first, but eventually the need to make this place look decent wins over. As the red fiery fingers touch her temple, it is as if glasses are put over her eyes.

She blinks once, twice, and sees the rooms anew.

The house no longer appears abandoned. Why did furniture wrapped up in sheets summon in Sorrel’s mind a gross similitude of a wake? No, it is merely being coddled like a young child getting tucked in for the night.

Yes, the house is not put to rest, it is put to bed, perhaps to awaken someday soon should Silvia return – if she has not passed beyond that grey curtain that closes behind all of us in final reckoning.

The bright daylight migrates into the light of the moon: not cold - comforting. The shadows cast by the furniture and boxes grow, become more textured. But they aren’t threatening, they are instead enticing, promising: as if reaching into one Sorrel would find a long-lost beloved trinket.

The air of the house is no longer stifled, but fresh with evening dew. Small flickers of light glance off reflective surfaces like fireflies dancing in the forest. A sweet song in Allessis’s voice flows from room to room, threading the house together, encouraging it to go to sleep in anticipation of a new dawn:

Lay by my side, and we'll sail away,
Off to the shores of another day…

“Better?” Glint whispers at her side.

Though Sorrel has never heard the song before she somehow knows every word, could sing every note:

And Sorrel is a child again, cleaning her parents’ house after another night alone - her father off securing new treasures to sell eager sailors and her mother working a coastal trader for a few weeks. Or something like that. Their stories were always vague. And yet, she would glow in the warmth of their smiles when they did return and the house was scrubbed clean, with everything tidied away.

She would make games of it, greeting the furniture like old friends and escorting them to comfortable corners or seeing if she could mop the floor without setting her feet on the ground.

Up we will float as we close our eyes,
Stars all around us like fireflies

And then she was in the Feywild, that first time, the ceremony, with the kindly bard Faust, as the lights danced around them and the darkness from the lake was vanquished.

Just me and you drifting through the skies,

And it seemed as if Glint was dancing with her. Glint, who had held back her bow as they hunted Alan Shearer, saving the raptors escaped from the Beastlands from death, who had secured her promise not to kill the wyrms of Kul'Goran, who had saved the sugar plum fairy from the rat king, and who had saved her mind when she was falling by offering her the succubus Nanna's hand...

Not a thought Not a care
Resting safe and sound
With each other there

Glint sees the ever-present crease on her brow disappear and smiles, content, his own fiery eyes glowing with warmth. There is weariness in them that Sorrel can see easily.

This Glint has done more than protecting - he helped Celina kill a dragon that killed her husband, held back an entire fortress of Gith, and evaporated a githyanki commander that killed Sylvia. He’s grown more accustomed to violence, just as Sorrel has. But that time, back in a day, when they both were innocent and happy, hadn’t disappeared, was not erased by what came after, and it is now with them: with as little a sound of a song, a turn of the head, the slightest shift in perspective.

Goodnight
Sleep tight,
We're gonna be all right

And as Sorrel closes the door behind her, locking it with a heavy key and turning to face the quiet street, she meets Glints eyes. She feels the peace he has given her, the number of times she has held her arrow back, negotiated not attacked, and she sees the pain that killing has caused him.

She feels his magic drift away and understands how he has saved her and for a minute she is breathless with awe and gratitude. All the mercy of the gods and the gifts of angels and the legends of the heroes melt away around the kindness of this wizard's heart.

She realises she is weeping. Softly, the tears fall, a release not a body wracking sob. She reaches into her backpack and pulls out a twisted yew wand which she smiles at briefly.

"I can't count the number of times you have saved me," she says softly. "And I am ashamed to say that, sometimes, I didn't notice until afterwards. I don't offer this as payment or a favour in return, but as something that may perhaps help you in the future as I can see how your own path is changing since we met. It will help some spells, not all. And I'm afraid, those spells will... well, they will kill. I don't mean to offend but there is little else I can give you that you do not already have - my friendship, my gratitude and my promise that if you ever need me I will come."

Glint smiles softly. He carefully raises his hand and drags his thumb, soft and uncalloused, across her cheek, prestidigitating her tears away. There is a pang of guilt in his heart as he sees Sorrel so full of gratitude.

Just as with Root, he’s sure that he’s receiving affections by a mere incident of being a single decent person in someone’s life, and secretly wishes for more decent and deserving people to appear in the ranger’s life to be on the receiving end of this gratitude. For one’s life must be truly hard if a magic trick from an ex-criminal is enough to provide relief. But that is just another reason for him to stay in her life while he is still needed: if someone is needed to this extent, he’ll be that person even if he doesn’t think himself worthy.

“Sorrel, really, you shower me with gifts,” he says, awkwardly attempting to lift the mood. “Look at me, went into someone’s empty house and came back with a magical artefact! As they say among Zakharan safecrackers - still got it,” he winks and is relieved to see Sorrel crack a small smile in response. “It’s a beautiful gift, but…” he says almost automatically, already feeling the jealous tug of his spell book. “I’m currently very limited in what I can use in my spell casting. Got a really opinionated book from Shadowfell that I hope to teach about personal space one day,” he taps the wispy folio strapped to his belt. “If you know anyone else who needs it - pray, give it to them. If not, I would gladly receive it to give to mentees and students to practice magic with. I’m sure young people wouldn’t say no to feeling more powerful than they usually are, they like the sparkles so much,” he says with another fond smiles, remembering the kobold kids they’ve both met down the well.

Sorrel shrugs. "You will find a better use for this than me. And I only shower you with gifts because you... well..." she suddenly finds the sky incredible interesting and stares up at it for a while. Just long enough to bite back the hint of a break in her voice.

"Because you are very kind to me..." she examined the cobbles at her feet in silence just to make sure her voice was steady. "Which is not, in my personal experience, common." Despite herself she could feel gruffness stealing into her throat. "So anyway, it’s yours."

Then she gives in, flings her arms around Glints neck and whispers "thank you my friend."

She steps back, blushes, seems to be counting the cobblestones and starts backing away. "I gotta go do this thing... I should...”

There’s another pause.

“Please don't tell anyone I wept."