After my experiences with Innovindil, after seeing the truth of friends lost and love never realized, I understand that I have only been half right.
"To be an elf is to find your distances of time. To be an elf is to live several shorter life spans." I have learned this to be true, but there is something more. To be an elf is to be alive, to experience the joy of the moment within the context of long-term desires. There must be more than distant hopes to sustain the joy of life.
Seize the moment and seize the day. Revel in the joy and fight all the harder against despair.
I had something so wonderful for the last years of my life. I had with me a woman whom I loved, and who was my best of friends. Someone who understood my every mood, and who accepted the bad with the good. Someone who did not judge, except in encouraging me to find my own answers. I found a safe place for my face in her thick hair. I found a reflection of my own soul in the light in her blue eyes. I found the last piece of this puzzle that is Drizzt Do'Urden in the fit of our bodies.
Then I lost her, lost it all.
And only in losing Catti-brie did I come to see the foolishness of my hesitance. I feared rejection. I feared disrupting that which we had. I feared the reactions of Bruenor and later, when he returned from the Abyss, of Wulfgar.
I feared and I feared and I feared, and that fear held back my actions, time and again.
How often do we all do this? How often do we allow often irrational fears to paralyze us in our movements. Not in battle, for me, for never have I shied from locking swords with a foe. But in love and in friendship, where, I know, the wounds can cut deeper than any blade.
Innovindil escaped the frost giant lair, and now I, too, am free. I will find her. I will find her and I will hold onto this new friendship we have forged, and if it becomes something more, I will not be paralyzed by fear.
Because when it is gone, when I lay at death's door or when she is taken from me by circumstance or by a monster, I will have no regrets.
That is the lesson of Shallows.
When first I saw Bruenor fall, when first I learned of the loss of my friends, I retreated into the shell of the Hunter, into the instinctual fury that denied pain. Innovindil and Tarathiel moved me past that destructive, self-destructive state, and now I understand that for me, the greatest tragedy of Shallows lies in the lost years that came before the fall.
I will not make that mistake again. The community remains above the self; the good of the future outweighs the immediate desires. But not so much, perhaps. There is a balance to be found, I know now, for utter selflessness can be as great a fault as utter selfishness, and a life of complete sacrifice, without joy, is, at the end, a lonely and empty existence.
– Drizzt Do'Urden
CHAPTER 26 INTO THE BREACH ONCE MORE
He knew that Innovindil had escaped, of course, but Drizzt could not deny his soaring heart one clear and calm afternoon, when he first spotted the large creature in the distance flying above the rocky plain. He put Sunrise into swift pursuit, and the pegasus, seeming no less excited than he, flew off after the target with all speed. Just a few seconds later, Drizzt knew that he, too, had been spotted, for his counterparts turned his way and Sunset's wings beat the air with no less fervor than those of Sunrise.
Soon after, both Drizzt and Innovindil confirmed that it was indeed the other. The two winged horses swooped by each other, circled, and came back. Neither rider controlled the mounts then, as Sunrise and Sunset flew through an aerial ballet, a dance of joy, weaving and diving side by side, separating with sudden swerving swoops and coming back together in a rush that left both Drizzt and Innovindil breathless.
Finally, they put down upon the stone, and the elf and the drow leaped from their seats and charged into each other's arms.
"I thought you lost to me!" Innovindil cried, burying her face in Drizzt's thick white hair.
Drizzt didn't answer, other than to hug her all the tighter. He never wanted to let go.
Innovindil put him out to arms' length, stared at him, shaking her head in disbelief, then crushed him back in her hug.
Beside them, Sunrise and Sunset pawed the ground and tossed their heads near to each other, then galloped off, leaping and bucking.
"And you rescued Sunrise," Innovindil breathed, again moving back from the drow—and when she did, Drizzt saw that her cheeks were streaked with tears.
"That's one way to explain it," he answered, deadpan.
Innovindil looked at him curiously.
"I have a tale to tell," Drizzt promised. "I have battled with King Obould."
"Then he is dead."
Drizzt's somber silence was all the answer he needed to give.
"I am surprised to find you out here," he said a moment later. "I would have thought that you would return to the Moonwood."
"I did, only to find that most of my people have marched across the river to the aid of Mithral Hall. The dwarves have broken out of the eastern gate, and have joined with Citadel Felbarr. Even now, they strengthen their defenses and have begun construction of a bridge across the River Surbrin to reconnect Mithral Hall to the other kingdoms of the Silver Marches."
"Good news," the drow remarked.
"Obould will not be easily expelled," Innovindil reminded him, and the drow nodded.
"You were flying south, then, to the eastern gate?" Drizzt asked.
"Not yet," Innovindil replied. "I have been scouting the lands. When I go before the assembly at Mithral Hall, I wish to give a complete accounting of Obould's movements here."
"And what you have seen is not promising."
"Obould will not be easily expelled," the elf said again.
"I have seen as much," said Drizzt. "Gerti Orelsdottr informed me that King Obould has sent a large contingent of orcs northeast along the Spine of the World to begin construction of a vast orc city that he will name Dark Arrow Keep."
"Gerti Orelsdottr?" Innovindil's jaw drooped open with disbelief as she spoke the name.
Drizzt grinned at her. "I told you I had a tale to tell."
The two moved to a quiet and sheltered spot and Drizzt did just that, detailing his good fortune in escaping the underground river and the surprising decisions of Gerti Orelsdottr.
"Guenhwyvar saved your life," Innovindil concluded, and Drizzt didn't disagree.
"And the frost giants showed surprising foresight," he added.
"This is good news for all the land," said Innovindil. "If the frost giants are abandoning Obould's cause, then he is far weaker."
Drizzt wasn't so certain of that estimation, given the level of construction on defensive fortifications he had witnessed in flying over the region. And he wasn't even certain that Gerti was truly abandoning Obould's cause. Abandoning Obould, yes, but the greater cause?
"Surely my people, the dwarves, and the humans will fare better against orcs alone than against orc ranks bolstered by frost giants," Innovindil said to the drow's doubting expression.
"True enough," Drizzt had to admit. "And perhaps this is but the beginning of the greater erosion of the invading army that we all believe will occur. Orc tribes, too, have rarely remained loyal to a single leader. Perhaps their nature will reveal itself in the form of battles across the mountaintops, orc fortress against orc fortress."