“The goal is to move all of your pieces home,” Imrae explained, pointing to a heap of lightly colored glass beads on the board. Damien’s mother was way too excited about this game. The board was made out of some sort of black stone and had a series of swallow wells carved into it, forming the outline of a cross. Four larger wells filled out the corners of the cross, and there was one well in the center.
“You can capture all the pieces in a well if you have a piece of your color there,” Imrae continued, demonstrating the move by picking up a well full of beads and plopping each one down in a subsequent well. “Or you can recruit.” She took a bead out of the cup in front of her and placed it in an empty well. “There’s more rules than that, but you’ll pick it up as we go. Just follow the markings on the board.” She slid a cup of light yellow beads towards Alex. He picked one up, feeling the small bumps coating its surface where smaller blobs of glass had been pressed into the larger form. He glanced at Damien, who was carefully counting all of his light purple pieces. Damien turned to him and smiled.
“She’s never going to let you leave now. It’s more fun with four players, but Abi usually has to be bribed to join.”
“Baelara says it’s a game about spiders. The beads are really their eggs and you’re moving them to a cave to hatch and eat everything,” Abigail chimed in from her seat across the table. The room they were sitting in seemed to be half dining room half everything room. One wall held a cabinet full of various craft supplies, sheet music, and a bowl of half finished reeds. Wait… were those double reeds? As his eyes wandered further he found his answer in the form of a dulcian resting in a half opened case.
“Baelara,” Imrae said, rather defensively, “only says that because she lost to me. Fifty seven times in a row.”
“Yeah, yeah. And I don’t want to lose that many times. I play against Damien and Dad because I win.” Abigail's taunts earned her an eye roll from her brother. She just went back to drawing on a large piece of poster board.
“Now, Imrae, you kept track of fifty seven losses? I didn't take you as one to hold a grudge,” Alex teased. Vieran chuckled as he began placing pieces on the board, resulting in a playful shove from his wife.
“Abi, what are you working on that's so important that you'd condemn my friend to a life sentence of [Drow mancala]?” Damien asked while taking his turn after Imrae.
Abigail held up an impressive yet crudely made poster. “A fashion show,” she said, waving her free hand in a dramatic arc. “You’re coming, right? It’s tomorrow.”
“I guess I can? I have a meeting with Dr. Edwards, now that he’s officially my advisor.”
“Good. Tickets are 5 copper. Oh, Alex, you should come, too!”
“Five copper? You’re charging me five copper to come to your fashion show?” Damien was flabbergasted.
“Well, you’re quite the entrepreneur, it seems,” Alex smiled.
“Don’t encourage her. This is extortion.”
“Thank you, Alex,” Abigail said, pointedly ignoring Damien. “I’ll give you the family discount. Three copper for you.”
“I don’t even get the family discount??” Damien turned to Alex. “She’s, what, in her sixties and probably makes more than the two of us combined.”
“The woes of subsisting on a stipend and clergical salary,” Alex lamented. As he placed his own pieces on the board, he found that he could go to the center well and skip half of the board. That couldn’t be right, could it? He placed them there and no one protested. Maybe he just had beginner's luck. He was enjoying this.
“Damien, how is this Dr. Edwards? I remember you were hoping to speak with a few other professors?” Vieran asked, pointedly avoiding the center well with his pieces. Imrae leaned over the board, counting wells leading to the center before deciding to capture some of Vieran’s pieces instead.
“He seems fine. Good, I suppose. His work is a bit outdated, in my opinion, but he has ample funding and assured me our timelines would align.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “That’s a far kinder explanation of the situation than you told me. Pardon my elvish, but before we left your dear son was ranting about ‘those fucking racist high elven assholes’ who keep Silverymoon ‘under a regressive ideological regime so vile you’d think it was 14th century.’”
“I did not say that,” Damien protested. “Well, I didn’t say it like that.”
“Damien Simmyns, I am shocked at your behavior,” his mother chided, though the smile in her eyes tipped Alex off to what was coming next. “You should know better than to try to defend racist high elven assholes in this household.”
“I– I wasn’t depending them,” Damien said, flustered. “I was trying to remain civil.” He looked down at the board, counting pieces in his mind. Eventually he smiled maliciously and moved pieces towards the center, where he deposited a small handful of purple beads. “And I’m taking the house, as revenge.”
“What does that mean?” Alex looked from Damien to the others, fearing for his tiny heap of beads.
“That means,” Damien continued as he picked the yellow beads out of the center, “I’m kicking you out of the center. All of these go back in your cup.”
“Hey! You didn’t tell me that rule.”
“I’m telling you now. Participatory education.” He dumped the yellow beads into Alex’s cup.
“This is why I avoid the house,” Vieran explained. “Too risky.”
“I claim unfair advantage,” Alex continued in a faux argument. “Obviously, it was too dark in here for me to see the danger lurking three well back–”
“OH, gods, our apologies, Alex. I didn’t even think about that. You must be half blind in here.” Imrae stood up and began casting.
“No, no I was joking–” Alex tried to protest but was too late. Several bright floating lights hovered in the air, causing him, Damien, and Abigail to all yelp at the sudden change in brightness. Vieran had somehow managed to put on sunglasses before the spell was fully cast.
“Wait, Alex, why are you having a reaction? Your eyes are watering more than mine,” Damien shielded his squinting eyes from the sudden onslaught of light to look over at his friend.
“I cast Darkvision in the temple before we left,” Alex admitted. Damien looked baffled, but Imrae just laughed as she dismissed the magical lights.
“Now that’s a new one,” she said. “Don’t worry dear, we can always light the room instead of wasting your arcane resources.”
“Next you’ll walk in speaking better undercommon than me, saying you cast Tongues just for the occasion,” Damien said.
“Hey, now that’s an idea,” Alex teased. “I have been trying to learn that spell.”
“When I invited you over I didn’t expect you to replace me,” Damien complained.
“Speaking of replacements, I’m taking the house,” Imrae declared, dumping a large amount of purple beads into her son’s hands and filling the well with her own red pieces.
“There was no hope of me winning anyways. It was worth kicking Alex out.” He leaned back and crossed his arms in satisfaction.
“Son, if you don’t think this Dr. Edwards is a good fit, why not transfer elsewhere before committing?” Vieran asked. He had a habit of lingering on topics. “There are a few good schools in Waterdeep.”
Damien frowned a bit. “That’s so far away. I don’t really want to leave Silverymoon. Not right now, at least. You all are here and so are my friends.” He glanced over to Alex. “I can still transfer if it doesn’t end up working out.” This seemed to appease his father, who was quietly amassing a small fortune of glass beads in his home well.
Soon, Damien was out, beads captured primarily by Alex and his mother. Imrae’s focus on removing her son from the game let her own pieces be captured by Vieran, who methodically kept amassing beads in his home well. Alex’s luck couldn’t keep up against centuries of practice, though, and soon Vieran had wiped his color from the board.
“Well done for your first time,” Vieran said. “Unfortunately, the winner is dictated by who holds the most beads in their home well.” He glanced at Imrae’s similarly sized – and mostly purple – hoard. “And usually that is where my victory falters.” The two counted off, and to the Vieran’s surprise he had won by two pieces.
“Would you like to play again? One of us can sit out if Abigail would finally like to join us,” Imrae said to Alex.
“I appreciate it, but I should probably get going before it’s too late. My mother refuses to go to sleep before I’m home.”
“Oh, you should bring her sometime!” Imrae continued.
“You just want more people to play [Drow mancala] with,” Damien grumbled.
“That would be lovely, but she’s not in the best of health. I’m not sure if she could take the trip for just the afternoon,” Alex explained.
“Perhaps we will have to meet her for lunch sometime,” Vieran said. “I believe we should be in the city in the coming weeks.” He pulled out a long bifold calendar and began to check the dates.
“I would appreciate that greatly. She was spending a lot of time with our neighbor, a bit of a younger woman with two kids, but they recently moved after she remarried. I fear she might be lonely now that they’re on the other side of town.”
Damien was already putting on his coat, knowing that left to Alex’s own devices he would linger at least another hour.
“Are you sure you two will be alright walking?” Imrae questioned.
“Yes, mother, it’s not too late, and we rode over.”
“Ooo, maybe after the fashion show I should make a bike rental service,” Abigail said, finally finished with her signs.
“Most of the bicycles I’ve seen in the city would fall apart the moment they hit the soft dirt,” Damien said with a laugh.
“Hmmmm, we’ll see,” Abigail said. Her next scheme seemed to be hatched before the current one was even completed.
It was a rather long walk, depending on how quickly one took it. But the path was pleasant and the air was clear. Alex knew people could run it within the hour, but when Damien slowed to look up at the stars, he knew they’d take much longer.
“Mystra has the stars and Eilistraee has the moon. It’s kind of poetic, isn’t it?”
“My mother says the same thing about Selûne,” Alex replied. “You know, darkvision really makes the sky pop.”
“I suppose it does… Alex, you’ll tell me if there’s anything I can do to help, yes? And you really don’t have to come over tomorrow.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll let you know. If I have time I might go to Abi’s little fashion show. It sounds like it will err on the side of drama.”
Damien rolled his eyes. “You have no idea. She keeps reading those ridiculous Adventures of Jarlaxle comics. Unfortunately, I think you’d love how awful they are.”
“And why is that? I expect you to bring me a copy now.”
“Where to start… The way they describe the use of magic items is all wrong, they somehow managed to make him look, in my sister’s words, ‘super hot and shredded’ while removing all of his outlandish outfits and replacing them with the most generic Sword Coast street fashion, and the historical accuracy… Gods, Alex, there was an issue that implied he slept with Drizzt’s father.”
Alex laughed. “Since when are you a Jarlaxle fan? If I didn’t know you better I’d say you were using your sister as a shield.” He knew this would fluster Damien, who stammered and flushed as if on queue.
“I’m not a fan, I simply care about historical accuracy. Some of the things in that series border on libel.”
“The historical accuracy of fashionable outfits and who slept with who. Your father should be proud you’re following in his footsteps as a true historian.”
Damien rolled his eyes again. “I don’t have to sneak them from Abigail, you know. Then you’ll have to pay the obscene resell price for the twin dragon issue.”
“Who says I’ll buy them if you refuse?”
It was Damien’s turn to take a jab, his mouth twisting into a grin. “Alex, I just described a series of exquisitely bad taste, wherein the protagonist sleeps with the father of my childhood hero then proceeds to flirt with twin dragons. My sister has to actively hide the more provocative issues from my parents. I’m surprised you aren’t running back to visit the bookstore.”
❖❖❖
Damien poked his head through the door of his department’s auditorium. He was fairly sure Alex would be here. They usually sent him to seminars they deemed relevant to the church's resources.
He scanned the tiered seating. There weren't too many people in attendance, but he almost missed Alex’s blonde head. He wasn't expecting him to be in the back few rows.
Damien quietly entered, letting the door softly latch behind him. He shuffled behind Alex’s seat, sitting on the inside of the row. He removed a satchel from his shoulder and laid it across the table in front of him, then turned to quietly greet Alex…
Who looked… Worried? Distressed? He had never been good at reading people.
“Are you alright?” He whispered.
“It’s my mom. She’s sick again.” Alex looked down to his notes, where he had been absently scribbling circles.
“Same as before?” Concern crept into his voice.
Alex compressed his lips and shook his head. “I don’t know, Damien… It doesn’t seem good this time…”
“Then why are you here? You should be with her.” Damien said, drawing in his brow.
“I was scheduled… And… I don't know…”
“Alex, you need to go home.”
Alex hesitated, looking out towards the front.
“Listen to me, all I’m doing right now is grading papers anyways. I’ll stay and take notes on anything relevant. You and I both know the temple’s presence at these is largely a formality anyways. Go be with her.”
Alex nodded and left. He didn’t even take his notebook.
In the evening, Damien made his way to Alex’s flat. It was a taller building, where the doors of each unit faced the outside world. Each level had a narrow covered walkway that wrapped around the building. He climbed up a flight of stairs, turned to the right, and found the door at the end of the walkway. He softly knocked. No response. He tried the door. Locked.
Damien sighed and knelt down, reaching through the slots in the railing. His fingers felt cold metal as he grasped a spare key held in place by a precariously glued magnet. A few moments later he had let himself in.
The flat was dark, but that didn't bother him. To his right was a small kitchen and straight ahead a sitting room. There were two doors at the end he knew led to Alex’s and his mother’s bedrooms. The far wall across from him held a window letting in bright moonlight. Alex’s mother had a series of plants in various degrees of decay placed along the windowsill. She didn’t exactly have a green thumb, but that didn’t stop her from trying to grow every seed she found.
Damien crossed over to the sitting room and sat on the sofa. He took out the papers he was grading from his bag and got back to work, waiting. Eventually, Alex came out of his mother’s room, closing the door behind him. He paused for a moment when he noticed Damien, who was setting down the stack of papers.
“She’s… I cast Gentle Repose on her.” He crossed the small room and sat down beside Damien, running his hands across his face.
“Gods... I'm sorry Alex.” Seeing tears begin to run down his friend’s face, he reached into his bag and found a handkerchief. He silently offered it in the palm of his hand, resting the back of it against Alex’s knee.
Alex took the handkerchief in one hand and tightly gripped Damien’s hand with the other as he began to grieve in earnest. The sobs erupted from his chest, and he slumped to the side, strewn across Damien’s lap in a way he imagined couldn’t be comfortable for the taller man. Damien gently laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder, tearing up a bit himself.
There were no words of comfort for the living. No elegies for the wake. Death is part of living.
❖❖❖
Alex sat at a table in the corner of the teashop. Before him was a half empty cup of peach green tea. The hot beverage was making him sweat, so had slowed down to infrequent sips.
That's what he told himself, anyways.
Of all days for Damien to be late… It wasn't exactly uncommon, but Alex's nerves couldn't take it anymore. He had finally worked up the courage to ask, to prod, to reveal. To make plain that his love of his friends extended beyond the usual. To explain the intoxicating warmth and fondness he felt when they were together.
And hope that maybe he had felt that warmth, too?
The door to the teashop swung open, and Damien stalked in, beelining directly to their usual table. He looked pissed.
“Sorry I’m late. My meeting with Dr. Edwards went late, and I had to drop by the admin office.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. The shop owner brought out a cup of mushroom and dandelion root tea, with milk and sweetener added, of course, and left it on the table for Damien. It was the closest thing the shop had to coffee, and he ordered it so routinely they didn’t even bother to take his order anymore.
Alex thanked the shop owner then turned to his friend. “I take it something happened?” Of all the days for Damien to be in a foul mood… Well, maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. He could cheer his friend up and then ask.
Damien reached into his satchel and pulled out a book, which he then slid over towards Alex. He read the title, Arcane Teaching Methods: a Revision, and then saw the author. Oh, that was not good.
“Something happened, alright. This is an outrageous breach of ethics. Alex, not only did he steal my work– my research– he had the audacity to manipulate it to support his own backward views.”
Alex flipped through the book, glancing at some of the tables. The flowery language and expert formatting was almost enough to mask the sloppy scholarship. “And I take it you confronted him?”
“Yeah. Told him I’d report him to the administration. He claimed that since it was his classes, he was entitled to using the data. Then he practically dared me to try to report him.”
“His classes? When he hasn’t even audited one in years?” Alex said. Unfortunately, he had suspected Damien’s advisor was dubious at best for a while now.
“The worst part is… He was right about one thing: if I do manage to have him reprimanded, it would only hurt my own studies. I doubt I could find another advisor in the Conclave, let alone the Lady’s College, in my field. Or at least not one that would take me on.”
“Transferring is still an option…” The words sliced Alex’s heart even as he said them.
Damien hesitated. “My father is visiting Waterdeep later this year. Perhaps if I go with him, I could speak with a few of the faculty…” He sounded as dismal about the prospect as Alex felt.
“It’s a fun city,” Alex said, trying to lighten the mood. “And it would only be temporary– I mean, if you don’t want to stay there.”
“Mmhmm… Sorry for storming in like this. I just– I don’t know what to do.” He sighed. “I presume you’re doing well?”
“Oh, yes,” Alex lied. “I’m doing fantastic.”