Disclaimer: It's Wizards of the Coast and R.A Salvatore's sandbox, I'm simply destroying the sandcastles
Title: Mielikki's Grove
Author: Jade-Max
Genre: Drama, Angst
Timeframe: Alternate Universe - but somewhere post The Pirate King
Summary: Catti-brie arrives in Mielikki's grove and is welcomed by an unexpected inhabitant...
Mielikki's Grove
A sweet smelling breeze woke her, the unexpected shift from what had once been to what now was, snapping her eyes open with pre-natural awareness. The grass beneath her back was soft, supple, but the caring hands of her husband were markedly absent; and she had been certain it was his arms she'd last felt about her - she'd have known them anywhere.
"Drizzt?"
No answer was forthcoming and she pushed herself up on her elbows, noting that the overwhelming pain of her injuries seemed to have vanished - as had her robes, spell components, armor, bow and quiver. Instead, she was clad in brown leggings and a green shift, flattering colors on her any day of the week, with supple kid slippers in place of her boots. .
She frowned, pushing to her feet and looked around the grove.
"Welcome."
Spinning towards the but musical tones, her hands dropped instinctively to her hip searching for sword or pouch, but came up empty.
Laughter, soft and low - and obviously male - flowed around her. "T'was my first reaction too, Catti-brie Do'Urden; but there are no weapons welcome here."
Blue eyes searched the boughs of the trees surrounding the small glade where she'd woken and fell on a shadowed figure sitting on one of the higher branches. The man's slight frame and stature declared him to be an elf - or very short and thin human - and one, she guessed by his appearance, who wouldn't have been much taller than her Drizzt.
"Few call me that correctly on the first try," she said in response, focusing on the fact that this stranger knew her name. "Who are you to say it so easily?"
"Someone who's been awaiting this meeting with both anticipation and dread; I had thought it to be many years in your future."
"What do you mean - and where's Drizzt?"
"A place you can no longer follow - or rather, you've passed to a place he can not yet follow."
"I've passed..." the moments before she'd awoken in the grove came back to her and she knew with every fiber of her being what had happened. "I am dead."
It wasn't a question.
"As much as I," confirmed the figure, dropping through the branches to land lightly before her.
To her credit, Catti-brie only crossed her arms over her chest and arched an eyebrow, as if to ask if she should be impressed. The elf, for he was indeed an elf, had the same color skin as her husband; the same heritage.
Drow.
"Am I supposed to be impressed?" she asked mildly, noting that the elf looked vaguely familiar. Older than her husband by several centuries, and she was certain she'd never met him, but he looked familiar none-the-less. "Or perhaps run screaming? If you've been waiting to meet me, you know I've no fear of your race; that you called me by name shows you know I married one."
"Indeed," the stranger smirked. He was dressed similarly to her, except all in black, and he too was unarmed. "Drizzt chose well in taking you as his wife - I only wish I'd lived long enough to travel with him to the surface."
"To see the... who are you?"
With a courtly bow, the drow flashed her a smile she recognized instantly as a mirror to that of her husband and knew the answer the moment before he spoke. "Zaknafein Do'Urden, at your service."
Catti-brie's posture relaxed immediately and a smiled crossed her face. "Drizzt father."
"The same."
"You look good for someone who died in a pool of acid."
"I was dead long before that," he returned dryly. "The same could be said for you - daughter."
Catti-brie's hand went to her stomach, the pain of the spear that had sliced through her back and severed her spine already a distant and fading memory. The skin was unblemished and whole under her finger tips. Her last clear memory had been Drizzt's arms coming around her, begging her to hold on - not to leave him yet. But she hadn't been able to; her time had come. Her response was subdued. "'Tis true."
"He'll survive," Zaknafein assured her, correctly guessing the direction of her thoughts. "He always does."
"I know." The reality she found herself in - being dead - was still too much and just the thought of Drizzt's last pain-filled visage made her want to cry. Looking around, Catti-brie perused their surroundings and changed the subject. "What is this place?"
"It is known to those who pass through it as Mielikki's Grove." Zak said as he strode forward to join her in the center. "It's a place for those who wait for those not yet dead to join them."
"And ye've been waiting for Drizzt all this time?"
"And will continue to wait for many years;" he confirmed. "Of course, I've your company now to pass the time."
"For all the good it will do," Catti-brie returned. "He will live a good long time."
"Perhaps. Few drow die of old age and he has chosen a path that is dangerous; for all his skill, my son is not infallible or invincible."
"Though he'd like to think it."
Zaknafein chuckled. "I see he's not changed as much as I'd believed."
"And yet more than most can see," turning away, Catti-brie felt a pang at leaving her beloved ranger when he'd needed her most. "I shouldn't be here."
"Where else would you go to wait for him?"
"You misunderstand; I shouldn't be dead."
"Neither should I," was the gentle reminder. "We don't get to choose our time, Catti-brie."
"You did."
"To save Drizzt, yes - but had there been another way I would have taken it. It was not an easy choice to leave him alone in Malice's house. That he found the strength to leave where I did not has always been a point of pride with me."
"And with him." She sighed. "Is there nothing more to do here than speak with one another."
"Tiring of my company already?"
"No; but after centuries of sharing the same stories, don't you think we'd get a might bit tired?"
Zaknafein laughed, the rich sound slightly rusty. "Perhaps. Time does not pass for us the same as it will for him. Come; look."
Curious, Catti-brie followed Zaknafein to a shadowed section of the grove where a flat, crystalline pool shimmered with power.
"Mielikki's gift," he explained, crouching low.
Catti-brie joined him, mimicking his movements as he extended a hand over the edge of the pool but didn't touch it. Immediately the surface shifted and an image leapt into sharp focus. Catti-brie let out an anguished sound as Drizzt appeared; his shoulders were bowed by grief and he stood over her funeral pyre!
"Drizzt!"
Zaknafein's hand darted out to grab hers before she could touch the pool's surface, well understanding her desire, but also knowing he was here as much waiting for his son, as a guide for her. "You mustn't touch it."
"But..."
He shook his head and for a moment she could understand where her husband had come by his determination; there was no compromise in Zaknafein's expression. Her gaze quickly dropped back to the scene unfolding before her.
In silence, they watched the scene unfold, her adopted father, Bruenor Battlehammer, appearing in the scene to stand beside the elf as a torch was handed down the line. Drizzt accepted it, his expression as stoic as always, but for the lines of moisture tracing down his face. As they watched, he stepped forward into the rushes surrounding her body and dropped the torch at his feet.
The inferno was almost immediate, dry tinder catching the flames and racing around the less heavy of the bushels within moments. They licked at Catti-brie's body, and the sense of unease she felt watching the display intensified as heat seemed to sweep over her; there was something very unnerving about watching one's own funeral.
No sound accompanied the images but there was no mistaking the way Drizzt, who'd been through much, collapsed to his knees in the flames which didn't - couldn't - burn him thanks to one of the scimitars he carried, even now, on his hips. One hand splayed across her cheek, barely touching it, as the flames intensified - and he bent, his lips by her ear.
His voice resounded in her mind, as if he were beside her, choked by guilt and grief. It should have been me, Cat.
It was the images his words evoked that made her freeze. The spear, thrown at Drizzt's back; the surety of her conviction he'd never be able to turn away in time - and her split second reaction. Knocking into him, driving him aside as the barbed tip tore through her back and out her stomach; pain radiating from the wound so intense she couldn't cry out even as her legs buckled, going numb beneath her.
Drizzt's strong arms catching her, his desperate demand to know why and his pleading with her to stay with him... and the peace she'd felt knowing he was safe. The feel of his face under her finger tips; the feel of his lips as he kissed her, his own touch insistent and desperate. She'd never seen him so desperate before... and then darkness...
Goodbye, my love.
If she'd been able to breathe, that breath would have been knocked from her lungs with the sheer intensity of the grief behind of his words and Drizzt pulled back in the image to look down into her face. The feel of his lips brushing hers was a tangible thing as his image kissed her one last time before pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. Bruenor caught him as he stumbled out of the flames, the drow's characteristic grace gone under the weight of his grief and Catti-brie could watch no more. Turning away with a strangled cry, she frantically searched for a way to escape her reality but the trees and meadow offered no exit.
"Why show me this?" she demanded, rounding on Drizzt's father and keeping her gaze averted from the pool. "I canna... the thought..."
"I know." Pushing to his feet, the older drow regarded her sympathetically. "It's been three days since your death, Catti-brie."
"Impossible!"
"Not for a goddess."
"Goddess or not, I don't understand how three days have slipped by in the shot time I've been talking to you."
"Time flows differently here; faster or slower," explained Zaknafein patiently. "It has no more meaning than what we place on it."
"Is that how ye've kept from going crazy?"
"Days and years can pass in a heartbeat, or in the time they take mortals."
"I don't understand."
Zaknafein shrugged. "Neither do I; it is simply how things are."
"I'll no' be watchin' that pool if that is what I'm to feel... to see - Drizzt... I canna..."
"You will - in time," he corrected her softly, turning back towards his previous perch and striding towards it. "The pain doesn't last for nearly as long as you would think, Catti-brie Do'Urden. Your curiosity will draw you to watch, as mine did, for your pride in my son is no less than my own."
"And the grief of separation?"
"Passes in time," reaching up, Zak hauled himself to a low branch. "His will pass before yours."
"Drizzt loves me," she shot back hotly, "he won't move on so-"
"He," the cold edge of Zaknafein's voice sliced through her anger, "has to get on with the business of living. He'll miss you, mourn you, grieve for you - but he will continue to live, Catti-brie. It's either move forward or die with you. What would you have him do?"
Even before his last question, both of them knew her answer; but Catti-brie had needed to hear it asked. She no longer had tears to shed, though she truly wished she did, for she felt the need from the bottom of her toes. Yet, she couldn't... so she instead threw her head towards the sky and let out a cry that echoed through the grove.
With it went her frustration, her grief and denial; she had no choice but to accept that this was her fate and Drizzt's lay many years before him. He would carry on without her because he had no choice.
"That's what I thought."
fin
