#i'm so sorry to anyone who reads these tags. ik they're excessive.

[oflolth]

" that's alright, " says istvan. he watches lex curiously for a moment, struck not by his admission that he'd forgotten, but by the manner in which it was delivered. he focuses on the wrong thing, perhaps: lex has apparently slept well, and istvan, pleased by this, is content to move on.

breakfast is started. istvan feels a vague sense of unease, though he can't identify its source - and when he sits down and busies himself with fire and food, he finds he still can't piece it together.

" i think, " he says, brow furrowed, and then his mouth shuts, and ' i think, ' which was supposed to have some follow up, just sits there as a statement all its own.

he goes away for a moment, within himself, as he cooks. he realizes he doesn't like the grove. in it, he had felt the shadow of menzoberranzan. kagha in particular had unsettled him, but the rest, even the tieflings... the way they had looked at him.

brave to go around without hiding your heritage, one had said. as if istvan does not work every day to hide it. his braids are as gone as home is. the former, he may one day grow back. as for the latter - no going back. the way is shut.

he serves breakfast, and is privately glad he was too dead to get up earlier in the day. glad he was left behind. glad, too, that lex is the one who stayed with him. he finds himself smiling at lex, and then realizes he may need to come up with a reason to justify that smile. it falters. " your eyes look- good? " he blurts out, and then wonders where in the hells that comment came from. not that lex's eyes don't look good - whether or not they do is besides the point. why can't he hold his tongue?

lex was far less certain than istvan,   but he dropped it for the other man's sake.  he was curious what it was that drove him to drop such a thing so swiftly,  if it was forgiveness or something else entirely.  the wizard wasn't sure if he ought to admire or protest it.

he watched the warrior move past,  a little concern lingering still in his verdant eyes.  his gaze was searching,  watchful,  ensuring the other man wasn't too weak to fall in his attempts at standing and moving.  he wasn't,  mercifully.  lex relaxed a bit.  he was worried now what in the hells astarion was going to do about his meals for the future,   but the wizard could keep it to himself for now.   

“you know,”   the wizard said in response,   “if you did,   i already forgot.”   because he was losing his fucking mind.  the more time he spent on this plane,   the more he was losing his fucking mind.  the thought hit him like a sword hilt to the face.   it was absolutely mad,  and yet somehow it felt even less absurd than reviving a man who had just been drained to death by a vampire who walked in the sun.  “but,   yeah,   well enough.”   not as good as a dead man,   but pretty good.  he slept pretty soundly for a man a little unused to sleeping outside.   he went to the slab of rock where the rest had been eating earlier,  relieved when he found a couple of leftover honeyed buns squirreled away in a basket.  “wish they'd waited for us,  but i think everyone else went to trade with the grove.”   lae'zel had been adamant about getting more arrows.