"I say it's time for a celebration. Are you with me?"
Falerin's attention, drifting aimlessly as he sat on the rocks by the water, was abruptly caught by a bottle, shoved right in front of his face.
"Arkhen's Hoard. Well, I think it is. The thing about found liquor is that the labels always seem to go missing." The bottle gets pushed into Falerin's hands, and Gale settled down on the rock beside him with a long sigh. "Tell you what: you get the honor of the first drink."
"So you can be sure it's good?" Falerin asked with a wry smile. He pops open the cork—seems like it's already been opened and examined—and takes a drink. He pulls it away, squinting as he looked over it.
"Well?"
"…I have no idea what Arkhen's Hoard tastes like." Falerin passed it back, a little smile on his face. "But it's good."
"Then that's good enough for me. In these circumstances, anyway." Gale took a long drink, then passed the bottle back as he looked up overhead.
"So…what are we celebrating, exactly?" Falerin asked, tapping a nail against the bottle.
"Well, it's another day past without sprouting tentacles! That's good enough cause for celebration for me. Especially because we should have long since been reduced to a life of cephalopodic horrors." He wiggled his fingers in front of his mouth for emphasis, making the half-drow laugh.
"All right, all right. I'll drink to that," Falerin said, and so he did. He grew thoughtful, though, as he passed the bottle back. He often did, really; seemed his head was in the clouds more often than not. Not a bad trait, as far as companions went. If anything, it made Gale's conversations with him all the more valuable.
"Copper for your thoughts?" he chanced.
Falerin's eyes fixed on him: one dark, and one a bright, nearly luminescent purple. The latter wasn't an unusual color for drow, but there was something…strange in it. Otherworldly. Like someone else—well, a non-tadpole someone—was looking at him through it. Warlocks often bore marks from their patrons, but that didn't make them any less unsettling…or fascinating, depending on who you asked.
"You were really upset when Nettie poisoned me," he said after a moment. "I've been meaning to ask why."
"Is that…not what friends do?" Gale asked, brows furrowing as he held the bottle to his lips. "Do let me know. It may be hard to believe with my charm and wit, but I'm a bit out of practice."
"So am I," Falerin said with a laugh.
"Ah, see, I knew you were a kindred spirit." The wizard let out a sigh, looking up. "Do you ever just…click with someone? Where you meet, and chat, and it's like you've known each other all your life? Granted, maybe it's some form of…trauma bonding, but…" He held the bottle out to Falerin, who took a quick drink before passing it back. "In that moment, when that druid poisoned you, I realized just how devastating it'd be to lose a friend like you so soon after meeting." He shook his head. "But that's likely just the ramblings of a very lonely, very stressed man. Change the subject, would you?"
Falerin gave a little smile, warm and understanding, then rubbed his knee. "Guess how old I am."
"If you're having me guess, my answer's not going to be right," Gale shot back, passing the bottle.
Falerin smiled, swirling the wine. "I'm sick, too," he said quietly. "My heart doesn't work properly; I wasn't supposed to make it to twenty-five. I did, I think through sheer spite, and I wanted to keep living. Initially, I turned to magic, but ultimately, I went to the fey." He shrugged. "My patron…liked me, for whatever reason. Took me to her court and kept me there. I don't know if she thought of me as a…a pet or a plaything or what, but I was comfortable, and my illness was halted."
Gale regarded him for a moment. "So why leave?"
Falerin chewed his lip. "My illness was halted. I wasn't cured." He looked up at Gale. "I don't expect you to know what it's like, but…being in a place of such beauty, full of immortals who don't know what it's like to be sick, and feeling the…rot, the poison of your own mortality in your veins—it's maddening."
Gale's eyes darted away. "I might know that better than you think," he said quietly.
Falerin took a long drink, then passed it back. "So I asked to leave. My patron agreed—a lot more easily than I thought she would. She offered to give me power, to give me enough fey magic to not only survive, but thrive—for a time, anyway—in exchange for my right eye." He tapped just below it, purple blazing in the dying light. "She wanted to see my adventures, because she knew I'd have them." He shook his head, puffing out a laugh. "Obviously, she was right." He dragged his heel through the dirt. "I thought I'd just been away for ten years. Turns out it was a hundred. My mother, my friends, my mentor…all gone. I was just trying to get my bearings when the nautiloid picked me up."
Gale was quiet, looking off somewhere very distant. "For a time, you said. Do you know how long?"
Falerin shrugged. "With the fey magic in me? I'd guess about a decade." His brow furrowed. "I feel…stronger, with the tadpole. Even more than I did in the Feywild. But it seems a shitty deal to keep living just to end up a Mind Flayer."
"I couldn't agree more," Gale said, tipping the bottle in a one-sided toast. "Tell you what. You're already helping me with my condition. I'll do whatever I can to help with yours." He gave a grim smile. "If we both survive, obviously. But…I hope we do."
Falerin gave him a wide smile, taking the bottle from him. "I'll drink to that."
