disclaimer: all characters/places belong to their respective owners. Palieth is mine.
i: The Yawning Portal.
The city is full of ghosts.
Everywhere I look there are shadows of people— gaunt faces stare out from behind boarded windows. The shops are dark and lightless. There are no children on the streets. Ghosts. I am familiar with ghosts, but cities like Waterdeep are not their usual haunts. Grim shapes take form and definition in the gloom should you look long enough. All the traces and turns and odd bumps begin to look like bodies: the twist of an elbow here, the unnatural break of a knee there. Under one of the lanternposts I see the rotting carcass of what could have been a goblin in this life, green and shining with decay, the crows picking at the last of its eyes.
Waterdeep is besieged.
The Yawning Portal is not much different from the streets, and though there are fires burning in every hearth in the long hall and the smell of food coming from the kitchens, there is no cheer here.
Men and women and children of every shape and size and race huddle on the floor next to each other, sitting on any available surface, wrapped in makeshift blankets, eating from small bowls. A small human girl watches me from the arms of her mother as I shut the door behind me. There is water in my ears, on my hair, dripping down to my shoulders through the folds of my cloak. It's cold. It's stirring. The city is sleeping under a haze of dread, and the rain is the only clean thing here. I wonder why I always answer summons. Many a thing would be so much easier if I did not not have a care.
"Nobility is good, little one, but the good and the foolish have often been one and the same," Father would say.
The journey has been a blur— one inn to the other, hands, faces, names I cannot remember. A girl helps me with my things. Pretty, fair-haired, bright-eyed. Young. So young. She introduces herself as the innkeeper's daughter, but I barely hear her. There is something sleeping below this inn, and the dread crawls the walls like lice. She says she'll show me to my room, and I wonder why I will have a bed tonight when all the refugees of the Yawning Portal will be making the floor their mattress.
My room smells like cedar and fir, and I will never get used to the ache of knowing that the skin and bone of sleeping dryads is used to build these places from the bottom upward. But it is no different from the way the Uthgardt people that raise their tents from hide and tusks, no different from taking a life on a hunt and thanking the gods for their providence while your kill turns golden and fit to eat over the fire. Death is just one more compromise. It is as natural as breathing.
"I hope you enjoy your stay," the girl says nervously as I lower my pack to the floor. "As much as you can, anyhow."
What must I look like to her, drenched, tired, worn by one too many an adventure? It is odd to see admiration in anyone's eyes, especially those of the young. One day she will realize that life is not a song. The bards are too merciful in their epics.
She seems mortified when I look at her next. "Forgive me, My Lady, I should not have spoken out of turn."
"You have not spoken out of turn, or wrongly," I tell her, already prepared to resign for the night. Formalities have never been my strength. "Thank you for the room. I am certain to rest well here."
"O-oh, well," she stutters, and fiddles with the hem of her tunic, "thank you, My Lady! I will bother you no longer. Goodnight."
I press a gold coin into her palm before she goes and shut the door in her horrified face. The room settles into quietude and the hammering of my heart slows, the blows softening inside my breast.
Peace at last.
