The hike back down to Moonhaven was uneventful. Boringly so. She hadn't got a wink of sleep last night & her eyelids felt like bricks. Quick, she needed some tunes to keep her awake! She started humming a tune, an oldie but a goodie, before breaking into singing shortly after.
"We're on a road to nowhere; Come on inside; Takin' that road to nowhere; We'll take that ride."
Followed by;
"I've paid my dues; Time after Time; I've done my sentence; But committed no crime."
"Were you a bard back on Earth?" Gale threw over his shoulder at her.
What a compliment! She'd only ever been told she sounded like a strangled cat from her ex!
"No. I inflicted pain on others & got paid for it. Beauty is pain, after all."
"That …. actually explains a lot." He paused. "Have you ever heard of Loviatar, perchance?"
"Yes, Gale. No, Gale, I'm not a subscriber. I can show you what I mean through the taddies, if you wan…"
"No, no, that won't be necessary" he hastily cut her off.
"You know … you can always cut the que… I'm sure Lae'zel won't mind if you use this quiet opportunity to go question her on Quantum Physics …."
His face brightened considerably as he agreed, hurrying off to pick the giths brains. Excellent, step one of Operation Get Gale Laid was in full swing!
"For someone in denial, you're quick to be setting other's up" Shadowheart, now next in line, commented to the bush she was currently passing by.
"De Nial is a river in Egypt, my good cleric. How's all those little secrets of yours going, by the way? Lonely? Would they like some company?"
Shadowheart dropped back instantly to fall in beside Belle.
"Hint at that again & I won't' hold back." She threatened, fingering the little dagger she kept in her belt loop. Yay, Shadowheart was looking for a scrap!
"Fisty cuffs? Bitching back & forth? Am I to take Lae'zels' place on your hit list?"
Shadowheart peered at Belle closely from the side. Then, slowly, a smile flitted onto her face.
"I see. Did you think setting a boundary would scare him off?"
Yes, yes, she did. Was she taking it out on the others? Never! (Absolutely she was!) And had Shadowheart been eavesdropping? She was beginning to suspect that nothing was sacred with this group.
"I don't know what you're talking about" she said, prissily.
"How come you're so mouthy with beings you shouldn't be, but can't say what you want with people closer to you?"
Alright, that backfired big time.
"I have a death-wish. You should move back into position now. There could be enemies out there everywhere, surrounding us right now!"
The cleric smirked.
"That's a poor attempt at deflection."
"Why do you want to know when you won't even share anything about yourself?" Belle demanded, turning the tables on her.
Shadowheart considered this for a moment.
"You're right. Fair enough. A secret for a secret."
No, wait, that's not what she'd meant!
"This artefact" she carefully dug it out of her belt & held it up for them to both look at in googly-eyed awe, "was a mission that I was sent on to retrieve. Now that I have retrieved it, I need to get it back to Baldur's Gate."
She re-pocketed it quickly, then looked expectantly at Belle. What in the shit was she to say to that?
"Um, I haven't had sex in nearly a decade?"
The half-elves' eyes nearly dropped from her head.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You heard me. Not my choice. I was married to someone who wasn't into the more intimate parts of a relationship…"
"Why didn't you go get yourself other partners?"
"What? You don't do that when your married!"
"Sure you do, heaps of couples do it all the time."
"They're not meant to!"
Something clicked then for the cleric.
"Oh, my goddess, you're loyal! How adorably sweet of you! And utterly stupid." She lowered her voice.
"Why don't you bed Astarion? He's basically begging you to, & you could do much, much worse. Besides, it doesn't have to be anything other than a bit of fun with him."
Belle was staring at the little goth as if she'd never seen her before. Was everyone reading the room but her?
"I …. can't. I … like him…. too much…." The truth fell from her lips despite her trying to hold it back.
"Well well well, two secrets for the price of one." She smiled darkly at Belle, patted her on the cheek & drifted back up the line to where she belonged. Shadowheart, Belle concluded, was a master manipulator.
"Thou finally admitted to liking him" Withers popped in, making his unwanted self observable & proving her point from earlier.
"I am so not in the mood for you right now" she snapped at him. "Why are you so interested in people's love lives, or lack thereof, anyway?"
"The red string of fate is always a fascinating one to observe when it manifests."
"Don't… just don't. Just because I admitted to something that's only hypothetical means in no way anything will or even should eventuate from it."
"The seeds have been planted, little Earthling. It's too late to stop the sprouting process now." He seemed kinda sad saying that to her. And, little Earthling? She was forming pet names left, right & centre.
"You're still not going to tell me anything, are you?" she asked him, not expecting an answer.
"Not about what thou art asking. But thou mayest ask one that has been formulating in that brain for quite some time now; from even before arriving here."
What in the sweet Jesus was he talking about?
"Please explain." She looked at him blankly.
"It is on the nature of the Rite itself."
Her frown cleared as she realised what he was getting at.
"Noooo, really? And you'll give me an answer?"
"Yes."
Holy dog balls, this one really had been bugging her for the longest time now!
"Why isn't there a Rite of Divine Ascension?"
Belle was all about duality, & it had occurred to her one night that the Rite, being profane in nature, might have attributed to Astarion's more devilish turns of personality & loss of humanity. Sure, the sacrifice of seven thousand souls would have definitely contributed to that, but she felt there was something more going on there.
"Because, there is no one god who will willingly craft one. Not for vampires. It is not worth it to them; due to the nature of the corrupted soul living too long inside the one body paused in time, once that soul passes, it no longer belongs to any god & ends up in the Wall of the Faithless."
"Isn't there a god of the undead who'd be willing to do it?"
"No."
"Really? I thought there were gods for everything?"
"The current one is on his way out. It leaves us with a demon who possess the Portfolio of Undeath, stolen eons ago. Needless to say, if he offered one, that would also be a Profane Ascension."
Oh. There went her half-baked plans for later of encouraging some god somewhere to craft one for her.
"It doesn't mean a new god could not be created who may entertain the thought."
Oh? She looked up at him hopefully, waiting for more.
Nothing more came.
"See this?" she told him, holding out her band of grey hairs sprouting from the widow's peak on her forehead. "You're the cause of this!"