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rosieofcorona · 4 months

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A Summoning

ANGELS, I've returned to serve you domestic fluff with a side of holiday mischief. Professor! Gale and Dad! Gale are everything to me so I have wrapped them both up in this story with a little bow on top. Also on AO3 if you prefer. As always, thank you for reading. 💕

Winter brings many things to Waterdeep– the sort of darkness that seeps into every corner of the city, the sort of snow that falls as heavy as a shroud. It brings a season’s worth of holidays, and with them, all their customs, all their visitors called home from every region of Faerun. It bring gifts and songs and lanterns, lit and hung in every window, their light shining off the snow like grounded stars.

Best of all, winter brings them Arabella.

In the girl’s first year at Blackstaff, Tav insisted Gale invite her home at Midwinter break. After all, she'd pointed out, Gale knew firsthand what it was like to be alone in the dormitories when the other students had gone home. It would be better, they’d decided, to have her stay with them in the tower, where they could spoil her and cook for her and help her with her schoolwork.

And so it was.

That first Midwinter came and went, and so did Fey Day and Fleetswake and Midsummer, Stoneshar and Last Sheaf and Feast of the Moon. Every holiday they invited her, and every holiday she came.

By the time Midwinter arrived again, there was no discussion at all. Arabella simply appeared at their door on the last day of school, and was welcomed in just before dinner.

For the most part, her visits brim over with happiness. Gale teaches her the rules of lanceboard and all his favorite recipes, and Tav reads to her and shows her how to pluck out a tune on a lyre. When Tara and Morena come for tea, they tell her stories about Gale’s childhood that turn him varying shades of red, depending on how often he has scolded Arabella for similar behaviors. There is no shortage of laughter or mischief or very late nights, which means also no shortage of noise.

In the mornings, Gale rises ahead of the girls, gathers all his students’ papers and heads to the library to work in uninterrupted silence. If he is lucky, he can get through a good deal of marking before he starts to miss the tower, all its chaos and its company.

No luck today.

He’s only been there for an hour when a family passes by the nearest window, a flock of children shepherded by their parents. They all take turns at catching snowflakes, huge and fluffy, on their tongues, and fall apart in fits of laughter when they miss.

They grin and wave at Gale when they see him, their cheeks flushed and bright with cold, and he waves back, and packs his things, and goes home early.

*********

The tower seems, at first, exactly as he’d left it– silent, sleeping– But they must be up by now, he thinks. It’s late enough.

He might expect them in the solar or the kitchen or the parlor, warming up before the fireplace or hovering over a lanceboard, but there’s no seems to be no sign of them, no sound of them at all.

It is too quiet.

Gale takes the stairs two at a time and makes a beeline down the corridor to their chambers, worry rising in his chest. He nearly rushes past his study when a faint exchange of words drifts through the door, followed by a commotion– a flutter of paper, a rush of footsteps, something dragged across the floor.

He’s almost startled when he reaches for the handle and it opens. Tav is standing at the threshold, bright as ever, smiling wide.

Gale catches sight of Arabella in the background closing a book, setting it back down on his desk with a little thump . Its cover– or what he glimpses– looks familiar somehow, like something he’d studied long ago and has since forgotten. The memory hasn’t fully formed when Tav interrupts it, her lips pressed to his in her usual greeting. She tastes like holiday sweets, like honey cake and mint, like tradition and family and home.

“Hello, darling,” she says. “You’re home early.”

“Hello, you.”

The lingering taste of her is nearly enough to distract from his growing suspicion, but there’s something off about the room that he can’t quite place, something mischievous in the way she’s leaning against the doorframe, shifting her body, tilting her head to obscure his view.

“Am I interrupting?”

“Of course not,” she assures him, in a tone so light and easy it’s almost convincing. “Arabella and I have just been reviewing some of her lessons, isn’t that right?”

“Yep!” Arabella agrees, too enthusiastically for schoolwork. The girl comes to stand next to Tav in the doorway, her hands clasped politely before her. The picture of a well-behaved child.

He is certain they are up to something now.

“And which lessons might those be?”

They stumble over their answers, the words colliding, knocking heads.

“Evocation,” answers Tav, while Arabella says, “Illusion.”

A guilty look, quick as a hummingbird, flits between them and disappears.

Gale raises an eyebrow. “Care to try again?”

“Well,” Arabella swallows, “I was saying you’ve been teaching our class about familiars, and how you got Tara, and–”

“Hang on,” Gale interrupts, a realization creeping over him. He points past them to the desk, to the text that she had dropped when Tav opened the door. “Is that my book?”

“I think you’ll find they’re all your books, darling,” Tav says quickly. “Don’t worry, we’ll put them back–”

But it’s too late.

With a flick of his hand, Gale passes through them like mist and reappears in the room beside his desk. He flips open the front cover– Advanced Summoning, stamped in gilded letters– and turns to a bookmarked page of detailed instruction, his own notes scribbled in the margins in a child’s hand.

“You certainly will put this back,” he says firmly, facing Arabella. “This is magic beyond your years.”

“But you were younger than me when you summoned Tara!”

“‘Younger than I,’ and– nevermind – you're right, but that was very different.”

Arabella wrinkles her nose indignantly. “How?”

“Well first of all, I didn’t need someone else’s private notes to do it. Now, if you’d like a book on familiars, I have a more appropriate one you can borrow–”He is moving in long strides toward the bookshelves on the opposite wall, crossing over the rug that’s been moved– It’s been moved? – to half-cover the summoning circle and–

Wait .

“Have–” he sputters, lifting his shoe off the chalky runes drawn on the hardwood. “Have you made a summoning circle ? In my study?”

“Well, not just me,” the girl protests. “Tav helped!”

“I did,” she cringes lightly, when Gale whips around to look at her. “I couldn’t let her do it on her own.”

“My love, she shouldn’t be doing it at all. This,” he says, turning back to Arabella, “Is complex and dangerous magic. One mistake and you might summon a pit fiend rather than a tressym.” “A very small pit fiend,” says Tav under her breath, but on seeing Gale’s scowl, adds, “Sorry.”

“ Gods,” he groans, dropping his face into his hands. “What am I going to do with the two of you?”

“Help us!” Arabella grins. “We were nearly done anyway.”

“We could use your expertise,” Tav murmurs, drawing close. “You’re the only one who’s done this before.”

He feels her soft hands on his, prying them from his eyes so gently that he almost forgives them right then and there.

“Pleeeease?” Arabella draws out the word like a sustained note. “I won’t ask for anything else all Midwinter.”

“Where on earth are you going to keep it, Arabella? They’ll never allow it in the dormitories, believe me.” The girls look first at each other, then back to Gale. “No,” he says firmly. “Absolutely not. It cannot live here.” “But I’m here all the time anyway!” Arabella protests. “I promise I’ll take good care of it. Besides, you’re always telling me I need to be more responsible.”

Gale sighs until it feels like all the air has left his body.

“And summoning a familiar is going to make you more responsible?” The child shrugs. “It might.”

It is all he can do not to laugh at that, at all of it, at the great karmic joke playing out in front of him. This must be what his mother felt like, all those many years ago. He thinks of writing her his most sincere apology.

After a great deal more sighing and shaking his head, Gale bends and tugs the rug away to reveal the extent of their work. He examines it deliberately, walking around and around, head bent, arms crossed, brow furrowed.

“Your runes are wrong,” he says at last. “Here,” he points, “and here. Let me show you.”

Arabella listens closely as he guides her through the process, far more closely than she listens in his class. She draws new runes in a steady hand, pausing each time for affirmation, and when she finishes Gale’s eyes are full of pride.

“The incantation now,” he nods, and stands and brushes the chalk from his knees.

He moves out of the circle entirely as Arabella takes the center, her command of the words unwavering and true. But for a long and silent moment, nothing happens. She looks from the circle to the book to Gale and back, her disappointment only tempered by confusion.

Then comes a sound like distant lightning, and a sizzling, crackling energy that makes the hair on all their arms stand up on end. A sphere of light appears above them, tears like parchment down the middle, and something tiny, something living tumbles straight into her arms. She nearly drops the book to catch it– a ball of fur with fledgling wings– and when she turns her eyes are bright with tears, a joy Gale still remembers.

#gale x tav #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #gale x fem! tav #professor dekarios #arabella bg3 #gale fluff #holiday fluff #domestic fluff #arabella being a regular in gale & tav's home is everything to me #my fic

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