Side tangent: A decade after the end of the story, Wyll and Meliahwyl return to Baldur's Gate to "settle down" (hardly, if Wyll inherits the Dukedom). I like to imagine that Meliahwyl uses her newfound political pull to push for more green spaces in the city. Not quite sure how this would work yet.

One day, Meliahwyl wakes herself up yelling and biting into her bedroll. It wakes Wyll up.

It takes his horror for her to start accepting that even the little monsters - the nameless, daily little traumas - can still constrict and poison the heart like pestilence.

Her nightmares aren't usually like Wyll's. There's no hellfire, no bloodshed, no monsters lurking in the dark. It's just birth family yelling and screaming and fighting. Loudness that can't be silenced and conflicts that can never be resolved.
It's...mundane. It's insignificant.

Wyll is rather perturbed when he learns about this: first about the sleep paralysis, then about the reoccurring dreams. His reaction forces Meliahwyl to confront how unideal her situation is.
In any case, he's there when she wakes up. She's both extremely grateful and a little embarrassed.

At the start of the story, Meliahwyl sticks to trance. She ventures back into sleep once she develops more trust in her compatriots and feels more in control of her environment.
The nightmares are relatively tame and frequent enough that she'll usually try to go back to sleep shortly after waking.

Meliahwyl is at her most vulnerable when knocked out of wild shape, so she's keen to receive swordsmanship training from Wyll, Lae'zel, and Jaheira during the story. It's not that she doesn't want to be optimized, but being well-rounded is more her style. And she can't heal if she's unconscious!

Direct combat with her staff, shield, and daggers or summoned swords are generally a last resort. Meliahwyl is a jack-of-all-trades who is designed to adapt to the field and heal, crowd control, or attack as necessary. Untransformed melee combat is by far her weakest skillset.

Oops - forgot to specify - the charm is a gift, of course! It's strung just long enough to be hung from any desired place, but not too large as to be cumbersome.

They should invent a pill that clears period brainfog. mindol