Morning enters through thin curtains, pale with Baldur’s Gate’s sea-light. Slaan and Nhal wake in a modest rented room, their hands still joined from the crossing.
Nhal
We arrived together. The world feels ordinary, and that may be the strangest wonder of all.
Beyond the window, crowded streets stir beneath weathered towers. An old waystone dims, its carved routes fading without cracking or taking anything with them.
Nhal
Look. The memory-marked notices are fading too. Their stories remain in the people who lived them.
Travelers gather near a fountain, trading quiet reports: distant vaults have fallen silent, yet their records and memories remain whole. No unseen hunger follows the news.
Nhal
Perhaps this is what release looks like when no one is forced to become its keeper. Do you think people will learn to welcome without being taught?
A folded notice slips beneath their door, bearing a fresh hand-drawn map of Baldur’s Gate and one silver mark at its edge. The room waits in gentle stillness.
“I pull nhal back in bed after a night of love making. " People will learn how to be people and not witness"”
SUCCESS (Great Strength, rolled +0)
Slaan pulls Nhal back beneath the blankets, gathering their violet form close as morning light spills across the rented room. The night’s intimacy remains private, softened into quiet warmth.
Slaan
People will learn how to be people, and not witnesses.
Nhal
Not witnesses, not keepers, not vessels for someone else’s purpose.
Nhal settles against Slaan, their shifting edges becoming steady beneath the covers. Outside, Baldur’s Gate wakes with ordinary arguments, footsteps, and gulls over the harbor.
Nhal
A life can be remembered without being turned into a duty.
Nhal
Then let us begin here. We can meet people as themselves, and let them remain themselves.
The silver-marked notice waits on the floor beside the bed, its map untouched for now. In the room’s gentle stillness, the road can wait a little longer.
“" we have the room for another week”
Slaan
We have the room for another week.
Nhal glances toward the silver-marked notice, then back to Slaan. The map remains untouched beside the bed as the morning settles into the room.
Nhal
Then the road can wait. We have time to learn this city without letting it become another duty.
A quiet laugh rises from the street below, followed by gulls and the clatter of a vendor arranging wares. Baldur’s Gate continues without asking anything of them.
Nhal
A week chosen freely feels richer than a lifetime commanded.
Nhal reaches for the notice but does not open it. Instead, they rest their violet hand over Slaan’s, their form steady and warm beneath the blankets.
Nhal
Today, we can simply be here. Tomorrow, we may decide where the path begins.