Aerienne in Moonlight (Private)

[Aerienne Sarista]

Timestamp: Ninth Day, Fifth Cycle of Melora, Ninth Cycle, Midnight

Aerienne stood at the balcony of the towering solarium at the top of her palatial villa, staring out into the night. The luminous green eyes stared sightlessly over the snowy fields that stretched beyond her home to the iced-over Rhedrisa River and beyond. The warmth of her feathery wings, wrapped about her like a cloak, rendered her proof against the winter night's chill. The moonlight radiated through the windows, bathing her slender form. She had barred the door to the tower, expressing a wish to be alone this night.

She had reason to seek solitude. She needed to think.

So many voices. So much pain. So much loss. It is a part of me now. Her face, paler than the moonlight, tightened in empathic pain as she felt the roiling chaos within her. She felt her limbs tremble with "remembered" injuries. The pain of broken limbs, of sword wounds and arrow wounds, it all filled her. Her organs felt the pain of crushing, of filling with caustic smoke and burning ash. She felt it all.

And then she dismissed it.

It wasn't easy. The pressures and the pain tore at her, demanding to be acknowledged, to be given into. She could hear the voices inside her. Each one was as vivid and real as the next, each one representing a life lost. Each one tried to swallow her mind and soul into it. She could feel her own memories bleed into theirs, jumbling and mixing in unknowable patterns. I will not lose myself. I am Aerienne. I will stay strong. I have a responsibility to Fiabeth, to the Church, to the Gods, to the people, and to myself. I must stay strong and see it through. I must!

She wasn't aware of the passage of time. She only knew that time had passed when she opened her eyes and saw that the moon had shifted position. She smiled and released a deep breath. Finally. It was over. She would find her successor, and then she would...

The dim view of the boy lay in the flaming ruins of the house, blood streaming from his mouth and his pulped chest. He could see the despair wash over her. His little sister was only surviving member of her family now, ever since the Feeble Pox had taken their parents. He'd tried to look after her as best he could, but obviously, he couldn't do that anymore. As he lay where the house had fallen on him as they fled the meteor shower, he could see the raging hatred come into his crying sister's eyes as she held his hand. He saw her look to the sky and scream her defiance.

"If this is what the Gods are like, then feth the Gods! I'll make it on my own!"

The boy clenched his teeth, drawing his final breath to try to console his sister. Then the fumes from the burning city choked him, and he died.

Aeri looked down sadly at her clenched fist. The pain of her nails had broken her from the trance of being in the dying boy. She felt his sadness, and she felt her own. She felt for that poor girl who had renounced the Gods in her pain. She felt the echo of her despair inside herself. She knew that a part of her had certainly felt pain at the rejection of Diana and the silence of the other Gods. In the silence of the night there was a part of her that hotly questioned why she should be punished so. But as she looked over the late winter landscape now, she saw a world at peace. That peace was what was important. As her dear friend Llanwyn had told her, she had the opportunity now to help guide the Church in one last way, by choosing a good successor to help the people through the darkness. As she knelt in the moonlight, she prayed for the wisdom to make this one last choice, for the good of all. And for the first time since she was afflicted, she was able to pray with a whole heart, untroubled by the shadows of the past, hers and others. The shadows of winter and the brightenings of spring would bring what they would, but with the aid of the Gods she would make the right choice and do something to aid the Empire, now and in the future.