Halsin made quick work of burping her, his large hand able to get even the most stubborn of burps out. When she had finally stopped he rubbed her back and gently rocked Camellia back and forth. Aramiya knew he had no offspring of his own, but Halsin picked up the role of father with skills of a man who had fathered hundreds of children. It was possible he could have helped raise many children, those in the Western Heartlands if he was the only healer in the budding village.

Carefully getting up Aramiya joined them near the fire and smiled at Halsin, running a loving hand over her daughter's head. "If it was a cruel joke of Mystra to get me back to you, it was Oak Father's blessing Thaniel found me in that grove. I can feel the bit of magic he gave me to restore my druid abilities. I also faintly heard him refer to Camma as his new friend." She gave a faint laugh.

"I swear he knows us better than ourselves."

When Cameilla was finally asleep in his arms he carefully put her back in the bassinet and took Aramiya's hands in his. Opening the back door to the cabin he lead her outside to a small bench he had built himself. They sat for a few minutes in silence while he watched Aramiya sway her feet in the longer grasses. Nature seemed to calm her mind and her spirit, though he knew it would be a bit of time before she would be back to that woman he had fell for on the road to the Shadowcursed lands they now sat in. She, who when he first met her, had been covered in goblin and knoll viscera.

"Aramiya," he took her hand closest to him.

"Please do not make me go back to him or to tell him I am here." *

Halsin squeezed her hand hard. "I would never think of forcing you to do that. Especially not with wounds so fresh."

"Thank you," she returned the squeeze. Her gaze turned to dusk settling on the glade as she watched the fireflies blink in and out. "Halsin, I want to be able to do something in nature. To relearn what it is to be a druid. I didn't think almost 20 years out of nature could cause me to forget, but it has. Circing that tower and dealing with the ins and outs of his lessons, its like something turned off inside."

Halsin knew that feeling, the only difference is he hid behind the walls of a Grove ascending to Archdruid after the Shadowcurse swallowed entire sections of nature. Their path's were alike in all the wrong ways. It wasn't love that caused him despair, it was love that got him out of it. He hoped that for her sake love and Nature could get her out.

"Aramiya," he started again, this time she didn't cut him off. "Please stay here as long as you need, you are both welcome in my home." Halsin contemplated his next words and chose them carefully. "About what we spoke about inside, you needn't tell me more than that for now, but the feelings you hold for me still," as he was about to say it an uncertain laugh came over him. "Well, I've still felt about you. Knowing you were happy in that tower granted me a little peace to not come to WaterDeep and bring you to the wilderness. And now knowing the truth? I should have scooped you up that night half a year after Baldur's Gate and taken you away and never let you go.

"Each hug you gave me felt like an unspoken song, only now do I know what you were trying to say." He brought himself closer to her, their knees touching, hers in-between his. "I'm not sure why the Oak Father brought you to me again, but I will be there for you through your own shadow as you were there for me in mine. Whatever comes after that," he gestured grandly to the glade, "Silvanus guide us to wherever our hearts lie, whether that be together or as companions only." Again Halsin gripped her chin and kissed her deeply, using the kiss to fill in the words he could not say.

She returned it earnestly, her body wanting the safety of his embrace and if she was honest a bit more. As she leaned forward an ache coursed through her reminding her she had just birthed a child in the glade they were sitting in only a few weeks before. Aramiya broke the kiss and attempted to rest her forehead on his, but he was at least a head taller than her on the bench, if not more. She settled for placing her hands on his chest and looking at him in the eyes.