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Wind rolls like waves over the grassy knoll Nocturne and Shadowheart recline on, tickling their noses as it passes by. Its softer touch is a pleasant change from the earlier rainstorm—a storm harsh enough to crack an old oak by their camp and heavy enough to flood their tent and soak them through. But all that is left in its wake at this late hour are dewy ground; the aromas of petrichor, dampened pine, and heady earth; and a thin layer of clouds lingering in the air above, thin enough that the moon can peek through every now and again with its entourage of stars.
It still stuns Nocturne how endless the outside world seems, having been sheltered from it for so long. Once upon a time, she gazed like this at the stalactites in their hideaway and felt she was staring at something just as infinite. How peculiar such a thought seems to her now.
Beside her, Shadowheart shifts, stretching her joints with a subdued groan. Her silver hair is black at the roots as she lets the natural color grow back in. She's not quite Sharran but not quite Selûnite either, inching away from both sister goddesses more and more as time flows on.
They lay in the grass together, a pair of adventurers alone in this stretch of the world, further away from Baldur's Gate than their cloister ever allowed Nocturne to go. Its hold on her was tight around her neck. So caught was she that she sought a new cloister after Shadowheart and her companions destroyed the first, her leash tugged by her own hand to a new nest of Shar's faithful.
Now, it is a much gentler hand that glides over Shadowheart's cheek, Nocturne's nail pulling at the corner of her mouth as it passes by. She moves down her neck, across her chest, over her waist before turning around at the hip to trail back up. An idle touch—a touch for the sake of touching, without asking for anything in return yet receiving it all the same. Shadowheart's own fingers reach out to dance over the infernal ridges of her waist, her verdant eyes closed in the tranquility of the silence.
“So,” Nocturne says, a smile curling across her face as she pops the soundless bubble around them, “Jenevelle, huh?”
A sharp laugh leaves Shadowheart's lips. “No. Just… no.” She moves closer without thinking, as though beckoned by her lover's voice, using Nocturne's waist as an anchor. “Shadowheart is more me, don't you think?”
“It's not really about what I think,” she points out.
“Mm.” Shadowheart sighs thoughtfully and looks up at the sky above, her eyes freckled with starlight. “Jenevelle, whoever she is or was or could have been, is not me. Shadowheart is the life I've lived.” Her brow is pinched. The tension in her face falls away as her gaze finds Nocturne's.
“With a heart in shadow,” Nocturne supplies.
Her touch follows Shadowheart's arm, trailing down, seeking her hand, finding, incidentally, the scar of the wound inflicted on her by Shar. It has long since healed by now, the Dark Lady's hold on her severed according to her parents’ wishes. Over time, the grief of losing Arnell and Emmeline—and with them, a chance at family—has settled as well, healed over into a scar bearing the name of the life Shadowheart could have lived.
Nocturne squeezes her lover's hand. She thinks of her own name, a clear allusion to the Nightsinger. Yet there's no pain when she thinks it, not like with her old name. Only peace.
“I know what you mean,” she says after a moment of quiet. “My name, too… Nocturne is the life I've lived, and the life I'll continue living.”
As soon as she met Shadowheart that first time as initiates in their cloister, she had found her presence comfortable. Easy. The way a home should feel. Opening up to her has always felt the same as talking to herself. So when she speaks now, baring herself to the night air, she does so as naturally as breathing.
“It was hard for the longest time to find myself in that broken, vulnerable girl that I was in the cloister. I always felt that only Shar could see me as the woman I was.”
“That's what they told you,” Shadowheart says. She's gotten even closer than before, practically curling against Nocturne's front.
“Give your old self to Shar,” Nocturne recalls. “Lose who you once were. Kill your name. Be remade in Shar's image. But I don't need Shar to be who I am. I'm not a Nocturne for Shar. At least not anymore. Maybe I once was. Now I'm… a Nocturne for me.”
A soft giggle brushes against her throat.
“Don't laugh,” she scolds, letting out her own chuckle.
“No, I like that,” Shadowheart says. “A Nocturne for you. It's sweet. I'm happy for you.”
Nocturne smiles, bubbling with warmth. “I'm happy for me, too. For the both of us.”
The tiefling leans in, crossing what little space there is left between the two of them to press her lips against Shadowheart's. They have shared so many first kisses together, but she likes these ones more—the kisses both of them have lost count of. As exciting as messy, clumsy, nerve-wracking first kisses are, it's nice to have something stable for once, something she knows won't be gone in the morning, stolen away by Sharran hands.
“I love you,” Nocturne breathes into Shadowheart's mouth. “I really love you.”
As her lips sing for Shadowheart, her name sings for the nights in the cloister when the two of them stole away from the rest of the acolytes to be together, as friends and as lovers, finding home in each other when their house tightened like a noose around their necks.
For the nights when Shadowheart forgot her, forgot everything, and for the nights Nocturne reminded her.
For the nights alone when she screamed and she wept and she felt and she loved.
For the night she ran away from Shar for good, panicked and battered but free.
For the night she found Shadowheart again, like finding spring after a life in winter.
For nights like tonight, spent beneath the stars without a care in the world and with the woman she loves in her arms.
And for many, many nights to come, as boundless before her as the stars above.