Well, it's been a while! I do have a good excuse, though - what I thought was a bit of stress-induced illness turned out to be something completely different - I was pregnant (and very happy about it ^^D). It did, however, put a major crimp on my writing - I suffered with dreadful morning sickness all the way through my pregnancy, meaning that writing was the last thing on my mind. Still, I am now the proud mother of a beautiful baby girl (7 and a half months old at time of writing), so all the sickness was definitely worth it. Only problem now is that babies are also not really conducive to concentration... I just can't win! That doesn't mean the urge to write is not there - it is, and it's as strong as ever - and so whilst I am trying to re-immerse myself back into my old stories, I decided last night to write some hideously overblown and vaguely melancholic claptrap based around everyone's favourite Baldur's Gate drow, Solaufein.

This is not in any way connected to Weimerfein - it's not that I don't like Weimerfein (he was, after all, the first mod I played and ultimately the mod that got me modding in the first place, so he holds a dear place in my heart), but simply that I would rather write about my own interpretation of Solaufein than someone else's... It's simply pure self-indulgence on my part.

This isn't really anything - just a collection of musings that Sola might have had upon reaching the surface. I have also taken a bit of artistic license (as I am wont to do - sorry, rabid canon-ists, but I don't swing that way! ;p) with regards to him looking for the PC. Since this is more of an exersize in descriptive writing rather than a proper story as such, whether I write any more for this, or indeed expand on it in the future, I don't know... but since I never say never, who knows?

Take care and much love,

Ely

xx

I Prefer The Night...

It may come as a surprise, but the first thing that struck me as I left the darkness of my former home was not the blinding light of the incandescent orb that hung motionless in the never-ending sky, but rather the ever-present noise.

After the near silent depths of my former Underdark home – a place where I had survived rather than lived for more than two centuries – the surface world is alight with sound, from the softest sigh of the wind as it caresses vivid green robes of trees that have trodden the well-worn path of life even longer than I, to the thundering roar of the sea as it crashes into the white cliffs of the coast, cascading down as a river of liquid diamond. Sometimes, this cacophony causes me to clutch at my head, desperate in my search for a comforting silence... but most of the time, I find myself simply sitting upon the emerald grass, taking in the alien aural landscape around me, marvelling that nature is indeed capable of such a glorious symphony.

It has been nigh on two months since I fled Ust Natha; two months since I met the female that would change my life forever. Quite why I deigned to facilitate her seemingly insane plan to topple the matriarchy of my home city, I do not know – had it failed, I would surely have been hunted without mercy (in fact, I am still expecting such a pursual, given time; as soon as Ust Natha finds its deplorable feet once again, someone will notice my absence and it will not be too long before the fanatical priestesses of the Spider Queen realise that it was indeed I that was involved in the plot to bring down House Despana), but despite this, there was something... something I cannot quite define that drew me to that unremarkable female who called herself Veldrin and her small party of misfits and spurred me on to help her. Whether the urge – nay, the compulsion – to help her came from within or from the Dark Maiden Herself, I cannot quite say... maybe it was a strange combination of both; both my desire to find a way out of the dark and Her desire to test my faith in Her blessed ways and allow me to at last gaze upon Her moon. Whatever it was, whatever the true reasoning, it has been worth it. For the first time in my life, I feel... free.

It is not all sweetness and light, however. Sometimes, when the sounds of the forest all around me, and the unfamiliar gruntings of the rivvil that live in the village near to where I have wandered to, and the local darthirii, so pale that they resemble ghosts to me, patrol outside their hidden lands, the agitation upon their faces plain, I perversely yearn for the comforting darkness and silence of the caves of my Underdark home once more.

The Underdark... Ussta ssin'urn, sreenath Har'oloth, with her crystal-studded caverns, each one filled with crooked, tooth-like stalactites and their corresponding brethren, stalagmites, so that even the shallowest of hollows resembles the maw of some mighty dragon; where pillow-lavas, testament to some massive, ancient eruption, slump lazily over one another, hiding small, olive-green jewels of olivine and peridot in their folds like a dancer, once young and nubile, now old and gone to seed still wearing the gems of her trade that now rest in the pits and rolls of her once taut and smooth skin; where danger in the form of rockfalls, concealed precipices and steep-sided pools of inky-black water, as cold a Cania, is an ever-present threat... and where the drow, my people, live and thrive. We are the undisputed rulers of this beautiful, hostile land; oh, indeed, such creatures as the Illithid and the Eye Tyrants – even the strange and alien Aboleth – may think they can lay claim to this coveted title, but we, the Ilithyrii, know the truth, for it is the Dark Elves and the Dark Elves alone that walk the perilous paths of the Underdark unmolested and unscathed, their proud silver heads held high as all those around them tremble.

Well, until now, that is.

o0o

She called herself Sai. Even though Eilistraee, the Dark Maiden of my heart, allowed me a glimpse of her true form beneath the drow veil she wore so easily, her name had been a complete mystery to me. Sai. A weapon.

With hindsight, it seems strangely apt.

Later

The stars are out now; jewels upon a velvet blanket, winking at me, seducing me with their distant, cold smiles. I think I like the night the best. It is then that I can lay back and see without squinting; although the sun – such an insignificant, almost insolent name for that life-giving eye surfacers take so readily for granted – is a blessed sight for one reborn such as I, its light still pains me, causing me to retreat into the darkest reaches of the forest to seek shelter from its luminous radiance. Much to my initial alarm, where the sun has caressed my skin, it has begun to blister... but now I welcome this as a sign of my acclimatisation to this strange realm, for as soon as the dead skin sloughs off, as painful as it is, new skin, skin that is able to withstand the fiery kiss of the sunlight, is revealed. I am hoping that my eyes will be similarly blessed, given time... but until then, it is the night that I like the best.

It took me nearly two whole tendays to find my way to the surface. This was not down to an unfamiliarity of the pathways that led there – we of Ust Natha have, after all, waged war with the darthir for what seems like aeons, meaning that I am not innocent of the crime of spilling surface elf blood many times over – but because I had to spend a lot of my time hiding in shadows, waiting for much depleted patrols to pass by, or backtracking when it became clear that even I could not pass some of the fortified choke-points my former comrades held fast. There were times when I doubted my actions; more than once did I consider slinking back to Ust Natha, where I might just be able to use the chaos Sai's visit had wreaked upon my people as a cover to reintegrate myself back into their society with the minimal of fuss, but I knew deep down to my very core that this would have been a mistake... I cannot pretend any longer. To live under the yoke of the Spider Queen for one second longer, to once again be an unwilling instrument from which her insidious poison is spread, is something I cannot even contemplate, let alone allow to happen willingly. People might consider my decision to leave my home a difficult one, but in actuality, it is the easier of the two choices... especially if you consider what Lloth's clergy would do to me if they found me. Then there is the simple fact that one can only live a lie for so long before it consumes their very soul – something I fear was already beginning to happen to me.

It is now that my thoughts inevitably turn to Phaere.

Phaere... even her name sounds soft to me. Once upon a time, she was almost gentle, our feelings for each other the only pure thing in an impure world. The Handmaidens saw to the end of that. It was then that I realised just how corrupt – how wrong – our society had become; when love, wholesome and unselfish, is seen as a sin, something to be discouraged and corrected rather than nurtured and celebrated. The night they took her, I am not too ashamed to say that I wept, mourning the one thing in my life that made me – made us – feel alive. Once the Handmaidens, those foul parodies of the sacred feminine, had finished with her, there was nothing of my Phaere left; just a cold, soulless husk, capable only of sadistic brutality and cruelty that wore her beautiful face like a mask. For me, the Phaere I knew was dead, years before her actual, physical demise. She died the night she was taken from my arms, replaced with a doppelgänger constructed of pure malice.

I still cannot find it in my heart to truly hate her, however. How can I, when I can still feel her gentle fingers caressing my face, still feel the silk of her hair slip softly over my body, still smell the clean, spicy scent of her ebon skin? There was a purity there... something almost divine in the way our souls seem to match – or so I thought. Even after they took her, I entertained desperate fantasies that they would never be able to break her, that she would laugh in their faces and spit in their eyes, all the while declaring that our love was the one thing that would sustain her and keep her strong.

How wrong I was.

I still blame myself, even though I do not know what I could have done to keep her safe. It was naïve of us, I suppose, to think that Matron Ardulace would not keep a close eye upon her daughter's relationship with a lowly male; her interference was, with hindsight, inevitable. I suppose we could have been more discreet, although how, considering the lengths we went to to hide the true nature of our union, is something that still baffles me to this very day...

But listen to me, wallowing in maudlin thoughts when I should be basking in the joy of Eilistraee's moon. Such musings are, after all, futile; the past is the past, and Phaere is dead for real now, not just dead in my heart.

Even so, I do wonder sometimes... What if. What if. It is a question that haunts me, and I fear will haunt me forever more, despite everything.

o0o

I have tarried too long here; it is nearing the dawn now. The sky is changing colour, her soft black night attire slowly being replaced first by a purple robe shot with the barest hints of orange, then by a glorious gown of red, gold and pink, only to finally settle upon her favourite of her day-wardrobe, a bright dress of purest blue, powdered with the occasional wisp of cloud. When the sun rises high, it is then that I sleep; I am still recovering the ancient elven ability to trance, lost so long ago to my people as punishment for their goddesses transgressions against Corellon, granted once again by the Dark Maiden as a reward for turning to the light and away from evil ways. That is something else I wonder about... maybe my inability to trance fully reflects the state of my soul in some way. If that is the case, I have some way to go before I am the creature I wish to be; as much as I try to pretend this isn't the case, there is a hatred in my heart that must be expunged in some way, as a poisoned wound must be drained before it can heal again.

Maybe this is why I search for her. She, who gave the courage at last to leave Ust Natha for good and seek my own fortune upon the surface, as unforgiving as it is for one such as I. She, of whom I have only had the barest of glimpses. She, whose compassion seemingly knows no bounds.

Sai.

I have no doubt; she haunts me. During my waking hours, I find myself dwelling upon her nature, trying to puzzle through her behaviour and motivations. At night, the few scant dreams I am blessed with are full of chimeras and hybrids, all of them culminating in parades of female drow with human heads. She is, I will admit, a conundrum to me; an enigma that draws my curiosity as a moth to a flame.

I have discovered through some discreet questioning that she is currently making her way to Athkatla; as long as I take pains to cover my true heritage, hand over gold without complaint when it is asked for and keep my tone friendly and vaguely subservient, the local inhabitants of the small villages dotted in and around the forests and vales of Amn are quite forthcoming with information. If I ever do find her, this is something I will endeavour to warn her about – far too many people are taking in interest in what she is doing, and I fear that will spell trouble for her given time. However, for the moment, I will gratefully use this information to find her and offer her my sword and, ultimately, my fealty.

It is the least I can do, considering all she has already done for me.