It has been so long since I've felt moved to write, so I have to give a massive THANK YOU to Larian Studios for the blessing that is Baldur's Gate 3!
My Tav, Rauva, is a surface Drow who has a large and loving family in Baldur's Gate. I have so much headcanon left to write, so expect more as I have time to commit it to writing.
The Chionthar doesn't stop flowing on its trudge to the sea, even in the dead of winter. As it winds to its end, though, a thin layer of ice forms on the banks, daring children to come and test their nerve. Some of them know better than to trust the rime-coated sheets that line the banks. The ones that don't, only make that mistake once.
Even before tadpole had died screaming behind her eyes, condemning her back into the shadows, Rauva had liked winter over any other season. The biting wind was a small price to pay for longer nights. Even the lower angle of the winter light felt less oppressive than the proud summer sun. Even covered from neck to ankle, the height of the day had always been too much for Rauva to bear.
In that, the arrival of the tadpole had been a blessing in disguise. She didn't trust the lack of discomfort in the high spring sun the day she had fallen from the nautiloid, dashing to blessed shade as soon as she had woken, dazed, and gotten her bearings. She'd waited days for it to come, only to find, again and again, gentle warmth playing across her face and uncovered skin. The days marched further and further toward the solstice, the warmth of spring becoming the heat of summer. Rauva grew more daring in answer, bathing in the newfound warmth any chance she got. She'd wondered what her human half-siblings would think to see so much of her skin without sun hives on it, or that she didn't flee half-blind to the closest shade if she had forgotten her shade glasses at home. She'd wondered often how they were doing at all, whether they were even still alive.
It was not long after this revelation that she had begun her sunrise vigil, rising before the rest of the party was even tossing fitfully awake. It was in the third or fourth of these quiet moments that she'd first heard the soft padding of Astarion's steps toward the same vantage point, overlooking the cliff rise to the Sword Sea. She had looked in his direction and smiled, a gentle welcome. Every morning after, he joined her at that vantage point, until chance demanded their travel to darker places; first, the Underdark, and later, the lands where the Shadow Curse held court. Places that she might have preferred to stay, before the tadpole had radically changed her life.
That Astarion more often than not occupied the same space every morning didn't occur to her until weeks after he had tasted her blood for the first time. Then, she had thought it was proximity to her that he desired, until she woke from their first intimate night together to find him basking in the early morning light. His love affair with the sun felt like the only thing they'd had in common, for a time. In the beginning, he'd bristled at the smallest kindnesses and scoffed when she'd insisted on helping people that clearly couldn't help themselves. He opened, slowly, in the spaces where they watched the sunrise. His quiet heart came further forward as they pressed on in their journey, watching the curious entertainment of a Drow woman playing the hero for what seemed like the first time in her life.
Occasionally, he'd even played along. Humoring her, then appreciating her, then - impossibly - loving her.
She thought now that the final betrayal of the tadpole's magic, whatever it was, had been harder on Astarion than on her. In the hours after she first felt the withering tadpole in her head, she prayed to any god that would listen that the magic, whatever it was, would hold. Even when Astarion's skin had begun to blister and crack, Rauva had been sure that she would be fine, that she'd be able to live the rest of her days out in the sun. He had dashed, weeping, to the shelter of the shadowed alley near the dock where they'd won the day. She'd run to follow, sheltering him as best she could with the shade from her cloak.
The dream snapped in two when she peeked her head out from their shelter, only for the early morning rays to blind her. She'd met gods and fought others. None of them had deigned to listen. Even knowing that hives and blurred vision were easier to live with than literal burning, she'd wept along side her lover at the loss. There'd be no more color in the world for him, except that of fond recall. She could, at least, grin and bear the suffering as a trade.
She'd introduced her standbys to him, one at a time. A good parasol, shade glasses, and covered skin allowed him to tolerate the evening twilight and the predawn gloaming. The prolonged blue hours of winter became their twice daily quiet, a dark and shadowed wake now instead of a sunlit christening. The shift in her sleeping habits had surprised her family, but they became used to evening meals by firefly light with their dusk-skinned daughter and her pale lover. He'd bloomed as he allowed himself to grow closer to them. All the while, they'd kept the gloaming as their own private quiet, a small thing they'd shared and likely always would.
His gentle hand on hers stirred her from her thoughts. They sat together on the precipice of a bridge overlooking the Chionthar, their bridge, and he smiled. It had been a slow night with hardly any action - those muscling in on the power vacuum in Baldur's Gate were beginning to realize that their lives were a poor trade for the promise of power, and that two elven ghosts - shadow and moonlight - seemed to guard the Lower City at night even as Harpers worked the streets by day.
She turned her hand over to squeeze in answer. His pale skin was cold to the touch - it always was, this many hours from his last meal, but she'd have warmth enough for them both. She always would.
The blue of the morning gloaming began its reluctant shift towards the red. A shuffle, then, as Astarion shifted position to place his feet on the cobbles of their bridge. He drew the hood of his cloak, took one last squinting look at the rising sun, and smiled again at Rauva - his sunlight, now. Rauva smiled back, then followed suit, opening her parasol in a smooth motion. Together, they turned their feet toward the ruins of his old master's palace, where a candlelit dinner at dawn awaited.