Old Employees, New Friends (IC)

There is nothing as sad as a festival ground the day after closing. It's the silence, worst of all...no more laughter, no more squawking chickens being chased by cursing adventurers astride otherworldly mounts...just the vague, muted clatter of all manner of entertainments being boxed away and carted off until next year. Even the smell is depressing, as the lingering aromas of deep-fried batter and cheap perfumes give way to the stink of hay, both pre- and post-digestion. I can't imagine why anyone would go there unless they were in the carting business.

I am not in the carting business. I am a general of Neverwinter, one whose heroic footmen regularly assault the spellplagued horrors of the Chasm District with spell, sword, and siege engine; I am the killer of many hundreds, perhaps thousands of direct threats to the lives of innocents all over the Sword Coast North; I am, last listed but always first in my heart, a cleric of Sune, Lady Firehair, paragon of love and beauty to whom I have pledged my life since Her church rescued me from life on the streets of far Marsember. My name is Myles. I might have saved your life at some point. I save a lot of people: It's my job.

So why was I there that day, the day after the closing of the Midsummer Festival?

I wasn't sure at first. I am a cleric of Sune, after all, and I spent more than half of my time at the festival helping and healing others rather than chasing Fireblossom Flowers or trolls or chickens or one pretty young adventurer or another. It only made sense that I should pitch in with the clean-up...but that was not really why I was there. As I wandered down the lane from the city gate onto the nearly-abandoned fairgrounds and turned right at the first farmhouse, I began to understand my motives in coming. A wagon passed me, headed back into the city, full of barrels and trunks and jostling passengers, and I panicked a little and searched the tired, happy faces...and I finally understood my motives in coming back.

I wanted, I needed her to stay.

A moment's thought summoned Amarth, my Inferno Nightmare, and a moment later we were blazing through the now-empty fields that had yielded so many Fireblossoms and attracted so many two-legged rats...sorry, kobolds... to the consternation of the carnival. I arrived at my destination in mere minutes: The lovely farmhouse that had been the center of the swirling violence between kobold flower-sniffers and intrepid adventurers determined to steal every last blossom from whomever.

Even as I approached another wagon pulled away from the building to follow the first, and a third was being loaded with all manner of magical, alchemical, and mundane equipment. To their credit, the Sunite carnival-folk were just as unimpressed at the sight of my Nightmare as are the common folk of Neverwinter: I was greeted by smiles and waves, delivered by odd arms not carrying a cook-pot full of arcane crystals or a wicker hamper jangling with poorly-secured cutlery.

I sought out an older tiefling gentleman I had seen running errands for the acolytes. "Sir...your name is Parthos, correct?" He nodded genially and heaved the box in his arms up onto the wagon. "Are the acolytes packed up and gone yet?" I nodded towards the house with what I hoped was casual urgency.

"Oh, yes, my lord...Most left with the High Priestess and her procession at sundown yesterday. There's but a few left to supervise this last clean-up." My hopes were dashed and resurrected during the course of his laconic statement, and this Parthos proved himself a better observer than I had suspected as he continued. "The Lady Ambera is upstairs packing the more delicate tools. Would've thought she'd be done much earlier, but..." His voice trailed away into a knowing smile. "You go find her, my lord Myles."

I did not stay to watch the exact trajectory of the silver piece I launched in his direction, nor did I hear aught but the very beginning of what might have been thankful astonishment. I was busy bounding in the house and up the stairs, dodging Sunite acolytes and servants and aides and the boxes and bags they carried. I pray that I am forgiven for any trodden-upon feet or bruised shoulders that encountered my clumsy, headlong rush: Certain possibilities growing more and more possible by the moment were taking up most of my field of vision, you see.

One last sack-bearing mover dodged, one last doorway poorly negotiated, and then there she was. Ambera had been recommended to me by the High Priestess of Sune on the first day of the festival as one with particular skill in the alchemical arts. I hired her as my Festival alchemy assistant on the spot and she performed amazingly: She "cooked" so many Hero's Feasts for me that I could start every morning with one from now until the beginning of next year's Midsummer Festival.

Let me tell you about her hair.

There is a simple joy in sitting out under the night sky on a warm evening and watching a camp-fire burn down, dwindle, and go out. There is a color to the embers, a red so deep that it is almost not red anymore, a subtle, sultry heat rather than a color. One can sometimes see that shade a short while after sundown as the sun shines up on the bottoms of clouds of just the right shape and density. It is a smoky, rosy glow, the dying of the light and a promise of night's velvety softness to come. I hope you can picture that color, the hue that my inadequate words have only partially and poorly pictured...because the beauty, the sheer awesome beauty of it only just begins to describe Ambera's hair.

I digress. I could go on about her hair, her smile, the way she bites her finger when she's thinking, the cute curses that she learned from her moon elf grandfather and mispronounces horribly...I am a cleric of Sune, and prone to be distracted by such things.

She smiled to see me, her face smudged endearingly with the grime of her exertions. "My lord Myles...I was wondering if you would come to see me off. Would you give me a hand with the altar pieces?" Her tone was too casual, and her body language betrayed annoyance and anxiety: I notice these things, everywhere and all of the time. I glanced around as I picked up a handful of tapers to pack away, and certain truths became evident.

Do not be cruel, man. You love this woman, and you will not be cruel.

"I have something for you." I tried to smile without seeming silly. I put the candles down, reached in to one of my Bags of Holding...it helps so much to be able to carry half the world on one's hip...and produced a single Fireblossom Flower. "Do you think we can do anything with this?"

She smiled and leaned forward to take the large, delicate blossom with which nearly every adventurer within fifty miles of Neverwinter should be intimately familiar, and she shook her head sadly. "The time is over, my lord...the magical laws of similarity and contagion decree that the power of Lady Firehair to give meaning to the petals is past until next summer."

"I wasn't talking about the flower. I was talking about us." I catch her eyes with mine and do not look away.

Neither does she. Have I mentioned her eyes?

"My life is with the festival, which moves south to warmer climes ahead of the storms and snows of the Sword Coast North", Ambera says with little conviction. "Five years I have brought the love of Sune via the festival to so many in need. What would you have me do?"

"I know you don't want to leave." I needed to be plain, even blunt, but as kind as possible. "How many times have you packed and unpacked this room? How many more times were you going to polish the silver and re-fold the linens? I am so very sorry that I did not come sooner, Ambera...my love." My hand reached out to cup hers as she held Sune's holy flower out in front of herself, and I moved just a little closer to her. "In this city the winter will never come. The festival of Lady Firehair will pass, but here it will always be Sune's season, and do you know why?"

Ambera blinked away tears, smiled, and nodded, her voice a hoarse whisper. "Yes."

"Yes." I echoed that word, that most perfect and beautiful of words. We know that primordial fire sleeps deep within the land and warms the Neverwinter River to the point that, for up to twenty miles north and south of its flow, the temperature never drops below freezing. This we know...but we believe that love keeps the winter at a distance. None, not even the gods, can know the future, but with love and hope as our guides, we need not fear it.