Act 1: Promise me... (Pre-Veil & GF'd)

[Quenthalus]

...that you will Cherish this Tarnished Offering

TS: Spring; Immanis 1st

"Why do I do this?" His clenched hands wrung around a sliver of wood, body shaking terribly on bended knee, and his throat weak from wretch and ablaze from passing fluid. Built from tears and held up by gasping sadness, salty rivers flowed, but only upon his lips. The stream where he rested, that could not even provide solace became a mirror, and in its reflection he saw-- then felt nothing. Even if he wanted to glimpse into the laughing cascade of water flowing through serene pools, it was a pallid image held therein, doomed to be blurred by the tragedy clouding over his gaze.
"Please, just be good to yourself, cousin..." Her gentle hands attempted to soothe the hurt from his soul, but with compassionate fingertips that have caressed the jackals kiss, they too must heed the presence of dusk resonate in the vibrations beneath his electric skin. He trembled with the hurt, but her practiced hand seemed to search out the black source, chasing it across the valley of his spirit till he could feel again. "You cut yourself, Quenthalus." Both their eyes descended the path that a red line had traced down the summit of his knuckles, to criss-cross his forearm with crimson caligraphy and settle into a pool at his foot.
The water in the stream took it away.
His grip on the sliver of wood loosened, and was eventually released by the encouragement from the she elf seated beside. Wearily he looked at the stick, holding it beneath a lance of moonlight, where more detail shone that it had been carefully carved from an evergreen yew shrub, being no more than ten inches long. The wound in his palm came from a neatly wrapped coil of silver and brass wires that ended in a black tourmaline stone, still whet from the red of Quenthalus' life.
"Did you make that?" Her voice crept from around a guarded wall, still deciding whether to stay; to invest in what seemed like an unfolding of chaotic emotions.
He wiped away some of the tears from his eyes, then swallowed hard and nodded. His breathing was labored, everything a force to be overcome - at war, a body that resisted the will, and the will was still slave to the spirit. Spirits could be so fragile and glass-like, held in a delicate balance of breath. "I tried to fix it." He rotated the piece of carving in his grasp, slowly, so that the she elf could better see. The countless knots in the wood had been accentuated by his tightly woven braidwork, and the grain that was visible had been so tenderly kissed away as to have been shaven down by the wind. He was no master woodworker, but there had been a mastery of expression in his efforts. She did not understand right away what he meant by 'fix it', not until she more closely examined the silver and brass wire bloom that paraded a midnight hued stone atop it. The way it had been wrapped, she soon realized was to serve as a fastener. It appeared upon astute inspection that the carving had been splintered through the center-- as if it had been broken in half at one point-- then artfully mended with great emphasis put on the centerpiece. "Did she like it?" Her doesong dared to tempt the crash of the sea, but with the sigh of an infant he responded, "I never gave her the finished piece. I ruined it before I left, and when I came to bring it back, it was too late to do so."
Her gaze softened, and the reflex to pull herself back and find her own ground subsided.
"What did her tribes elder say to you once, about sitting on the ground?" They danced through the cross-roads of conversation, blindly skipping forward with no backpeddling from the need to speak and comfort one another. Her eyes pleaded what her deceptively playful words could not reveal or digress to. Even this little bit of dialog was enough that maybe they could get back to the Clan Keep and try to sleep a few more candlemarks before the suns returned.
Misdirected by the smoke screen, he wandered down a memory, dusting it free of the willow-webs, then offering it to his kith, "He said the tribe always camped, and always sat in circles. When you sit with others you sit in a circle, even if there is two of you, because all things move in cycles, so the spirit of the circle cannot be broken by distances between those sitting across each other." Her hand touched his, and in silent consent she agreed with the logic. He did not respond, but looked into her eyes, and no longer into the darkness of a mist-filled forest.
"We called him Wild Thrush, and when he had come out of the Great Mountains to stay in the pine barrens of Silverwood, he lived most of the time in a dome-shaped shelter that was set amongst the scrub oak and pine, far off to the side of a main tribe-used trail. There he often sat and smoked, or made things, and mostly meditated on the passage of life. I called it the passing, and he would call it the moving of life, but we seldom saw him do much moving." They both laughed, and she could tell he was feeling better, opening up like an open-heart should.
"Oh, he could move, as sure as the crow casts a shadow. If he was moving and active, chances are nobody would ever see him in action; he wouldn't have had it that way. Sometimes my friend Jhanlariel and I would visit him, and as often as not, we'd find him sitting on a simple reed mat he wove, or on the bare ground." She tilted her head curiously, showing that she understood, but still wanted to know why.
"Wild Thrush liked sitting on the ground, and he always encouraged us to do the same. He said the ground gave off unseen powers, and that we could feel them if we stayed close to it and did not wear too many clothes." Quen glanced to his barefeet, and made a show of digging his toes into the ground, so she might do the same with him. They sat, knees hugged tight to their chest, and through the quietus of earliest morning waited for the purple haze to burn away into a radiant new brightening where spirits were free to glide. "Be good to yourself, Quenthalus. Just be good to you." Quenthalus let the hurt acquiesce to her siren-narcolypsis-song, and there she cast him to slumber in the cradle of her arm, and promised him a dream where his lost Willow swayed with full branches, in eternal bloom.

"Stop your nightmares of winter, faery boy..."

[Quenthalus]

Shadow of The Suns

...autumn and the sweet mist of coming-winter bled cool waters in the face of blazing torrent. The heat seemed unbearable at first, but the need for vindication, and an obession to break the opressive shackles by drawing on the strength of shame and the conviction of guilt had melted away all reserve. Blanketed by ebony across the glistening lilac; like a shroud cocooned around in gossamar and silk fields, their black shadow scythed through the Restwood as an eldrich harvest from ages past. They were a vorpal shadow made from accurate tendrils and venomous incisors, each numbed by the seretonin of war. In grey hands mortality quivered unmistakably, playing a dance over the dew drenched brush and through the stray dappled branch. Their featherfall steps were so unlike the advances of honesty, but how they flowed upon the ground as their highborne kith of the suns, moons, and stars do. In a whirlwind waltz of death the black school came, and with the calm of a shark and the patience of a chopping block the first bramble and moonflower walls tumbled down. Edges that have kissed a thousand red teardrops rent the Whisper Haunts asunder, dashing a hundred-fold fates in one phantom swoop of the fellblade. Angry spirits had united the roar of the tempest with the singing of the nightengale.

The intensity keeps moving the will forward, and through those crystalline pools a glimpse of shadows breaks across the mirrored pane of a schola house window. He can see it, but the momentum leaves him paralyzed with a fear that none of this can ever stop. No matter what the feeling of hope leaves within him, the world around still continues to burn and the flames rise up from inside, making everyone at union with the fire, and so very far away from the entirety of being whole. Nobody can see the bars, but they all feel the cage. No bars ever gave way like a wall of moonflower, so with the resilience of a breeze they fell to the weight of his chaos. The tables of knowledge were overturned, and scriptures of every thought, ideas that screamed to have life, an hourglass counting the days that fall from the flower one petal at a time, a dream waiting for reality, a feeling lacking form, and longing without expression-- all took refuge with the refuse where they thought the winter of war would not think to seek them in the valley of sleepers.

Black fingers clutched the torch of genocide in the palms of a spotless white mind. His dark eyes could see red and could not discern her dance. Did the wind blow or the roar of the fire lift her angel arms to reach for the night? Cutting through every last doubt, he broke the silence of this macbre encounter and killed, killed, killed all their worries away...

TS: Early; The Following Brightening

Folds wrapped him in cortortions, holding fast till the slits of early dawn came through the woven willow frames of the clan keeps quarter house windows. Quenthalus gasped for that light, still wrestling from the coils of a nightmare-filled sleep. He cursed the day he had given his mind the luxury of a regret; tempted by blame to imagine how it might have happened. He tried to recollect the fading embers of her face, still finding it difficult to see her sunflower smile during the wakeful candlemarks, but how vivid she was in his dreams. The door to his room opened and in came his cousin, still dressed down in midnight robes and a soft gown of turqoiuse. She sat beside him, but neither of the two regarded one another. He turned slowly to embrace her from an upright sitting posture, then let a maelstrom of green dreadlocks swoop down like a lions mane. Her hands instinctively found the kinks and knots; a precursor to that tell-tale hum of an old elven lullaby. Quenthalus folded the blankets into knots-- nearly shaking and grimacing all the while-- even beneath her touch.
She recoiled softly, but quickly.
"Did you have another dream?" She folded herself and cupped both hands in her lap, becoming quite a statue.
"I'm tired of being haunted by the ghosts of love. What is -loves- feeling if you can't be free from this sickness?" The words came from pursed lips, barely audible above a hiss, but contained of volumes. She couldn't make sense of it either way, but leaned close, trying to demonstrate her willingness to hear.
"I don't know why I let myself see it. I missed her so much--. They wouldn't even let me see her grave." His nerves were crumbling, leaving him bereft of those necessary words. The struggle was in his face, and trust, or a lack thereof, left him determined but directionless. The walls felt tight in Syl'rosya.
"What did you see?" She pleaded, but wasn't really sure if her probing would lead her somewhere with solid ground to stand on.
"I saw them poison the forest with the shadow of their passing, and find our schola, Ariadne. You -know- what happened to our schola!" He threw himself back into his bed, propped by the headrest, but forceful enough to slame the backboard into the wall. She jumped and edged away. How quickly he blamed her for addressing what he prefered to dwell upon.
"Don't yell-- please." She felt herself ready to express more but refused to feed fire with fire. Her course was always clear to her.
"I'm sorry." The ebon hue in his gaze hid behind the winter of his pale lids. Their silence persisted quietly for several moments, then she leaned close and nudged him, startling Quen with the playful gesture, yet he was desperate enough to unravel his mind from the dreary visions he tormented himself with and recieve her kindness.
"You don't have to talk about it, cousin. I hear you speak." He felt as if she had projected more confidence on him than he deserved. She might not have understood where he was coming from.
"I once let my mind imagine what had happened-- that night-- what had happened at the schola, and it has since cursed me with nightmares. I blamed myself for leaving; her own kin called me selfish for eschewing our love with my indecision. Now I sometimes dream that I am in Vysstichi skin," swallowing hard to bring forth the tempest brewing hard, he continued, but all the while watched a strange admiration in his cousins eyes for him. She smiled and he felt unnerved, but pressed forward.
"...it has haunted me ever since I tortured myself with the notion of her suffering." She suddenly shook her head and he forced himself to stare into the wall, unable to face her bewildered gaze. He thought he saw a streak of disappointment on her face from out of the corner of his eye.
"Why would you do that to yourself?" Her mouth still seemed unable to close itself, passing an exasperated sigh upon hearing this.
"I failed all of this. I am just as much a monster with my blindness." He started but her hands leapt up to take his.
"No you didn't, you were looking for yoursel----." Her grasp was broken by his withdrawl.
"I influenced her to let me leave, and fed into her hope that I might find what I was looking for in Centripax. It was as good as saying that what we had would never be enough. We derailed our lives, and still there was something unfinished and beautiful that I wanted to make right. I felt like I had seen it! I felt like I knew what the next course of action was to take! I could have been at peace and found her again. I would have come home and opened myself to something. I was missing the passage of life her people often struggled to show me. How easy loving life comes to the wild elf. I did not share with her what was going on in my heart. I couldn't have. I barely know myself. I know so very little of my past, and I feel a love coupled with indifference for my own race. Your father and I barely speak. I don't feel like I belong. I don't even know why I care." His tone came so rigid and unbreakable. Through his self-punishment he spoke with a measured calm.
"You fed into the hope because you yourself had those hopes! Atar Fae`nyor doesn't know how to live with you and still live in the Shadow of his brother, your father. Centripax was something more for your dreams than my fathers wishes for you to forget your past. You have to find what owns your passions and you will belong to something. It's difficult to belong to something and offer nothing of yourself through that bond. Everyone here feels like you belong, but you. You have come close to convincing some of the family of this silly notion." Ariadne was rising in volume and stature now.
"To influence the one you love is to give them your soul! They cannot think their -own- thoughts or feel with their natural passions. Besides, Acumin was destroyed by the Vysstichi. My home was burned and I crawled through the smoke of the burning Dolwood for brightenings. It was in vain from the beginning. I lost everything. When I returned from Acumin her family would not even let me see her scattered memories, that had been lain at the foot of our life tree. It is in the Silverwood, where those not of the wild elves seldom traverse. I lost everything all at once," he ended, crumbling pitifully to his side, where the sun did not shine on those vexed features.
"I am tired of this life--. I should just go." Ariadne narrowed her eyes this time.
"Maybe she was right." Licking the venom from her parched lips.
"Right about what?!" He snapped coldly.
"Maybe you were just running from something instead of searching for something." He literally came alive to that statement but was rendered paralyzed at the tongue. It was a suitable cue for Ariadne to simply rise up and leave since the fates afforded her that sovereign right.

[Quenthalus]

Somebody's Not Coming Home Tonight

TS: Immanis 2nd; Later in The Evening

"Yes-- good. Now step again-again-again. Excellent."
The two of them were like leaves in fall. Quenthalus' felt-soft touch with round, sweeping curves, like the elm leaf, swayed lazy revolutions about the quickened vitality of this little jagged hawthorne leaf, named Nhoun. Both of the elves floated over the wood planks of the treehome den with easy grace, but as the isolations in their movements grew more complex, the slower their waltz became.
Chessentan fancied these instances, piping his whistle in neat chirps. His foot bounced off the planks time and time again; keeping rhythm and creating it, too.
The segment of sound was bleeding into another.
Both dancers felt the crux was nigh at hand.
"Remember, hold; it must cascade. Let fall with your arms coming gently down." Quenthalus' whisper-willow tone goaded young Nhoun ever further.
Together they relivated on toe-tips, arms arced wide to create the vision of a crescent moon; slowly, carefully turning it inverse as they dipped toward Telath. But as the surface calmed, still, not all was peaceful amidst the ocean. Nhoun bobbed, then wavered- just a little- on tinsel toes. Quenthalus watched the shorter tree sway right, then a hard left, holding his breath just as his peer-in-grace lost all balance for the dance.
Quenthalus dismounted easy, his left leg gently lowering to support a straight, almost feline stance of pure grace.
Nhoun was composed. He didn't fall, rather he improvised with a leap, settling into a new stance. His slender little arms like vines; fingers like leaves, plucked the air, and with a stags prance he quickly claimed the floor.
Quenthalus floated off to the side like a ghost, with only the forest-rustle of his evening robe to herald such quietus.
Chessentan was taught never to stop; to accept the mistakes, alterations, and oddities of dance and music as natural progression. To the uncommon, but delicate motions of Nhoun he played a soft, tirelessly groping dirge that secretly longed to burst.
The ephemeral winds danced in the den, and Nhoun had to quickly join the flow. His arms reached skywards.
Chessentans flute transcended from a birds chirp to a bubbling siren.
The dancers both possessed syncopation, so Quenthalus could only wonder on the fringe of this seelie circle.
"What have you hidden, little friend?" Quenthalus murmured softly.
Nhoun did not glance up to the eldest of the three elves, but then Quenthalus never intended for the young dancer to hear.
The elf child floated left, feinted right, then lept up abruptly and spouted laughter in the older elfs face.
Chessentan scarcely missed a rhythm, elevating the tempo, and tapping his foot to every second count.
The little treehome on the western edge of the clan Corranyr tree ring buzzed with life. The spring breeze added a gentle hum and longing, dragging Chessentans flute down to the wooded pass below.
Nhoun was still beautifully bounding.
Wiggled knees, liquid rolls to his arms, and all served with a tribal swagger.
Quenthalus bit his lip and smuggled a snicker past his easy smile. Truly, Nhoun was good he thought.
He appeared to be thoroughly enjoying himself; a borderline half laugh clouded over by the onset of dancers trance.
Soon Nhoun was twirling, arms wide to the wild, so Quenthalus found his niche, and was circling the fairest dancer - swept in embelished revolutions - whilst little Nhoun twirled toward grace. Peace wore few faces, but as always, moments like these were worth their weight in gold.
Chessentan hailed the last pipe from his flute, but the wrap of the door drowned it with deep bass. The three of them canted their heads alertly. The wrap came once more, punctuated by a series of deliberate pauses that took Quenthalus to a living forest where the trees moved. He heard that pattern of knocks before. It was coded. It made his heart creep up in his throat.
"What's wrong, Quenthalus?" Nhoun asked softly.
"It's nothing." He jerked back to reality and quickly adjusted his robes. "I think we've done enough dancing for tonight young ones. To Lunistices with you, now."
The door flung open to greet a casual flamboyance carried in by Taladinn Elamori. With a deft slash of his gloved digits the newly arrived elf made a series of hand jestures to Quenthalus, then gave the older elf a quiet nod.
"-You're- one of the Elder Circle?" Young Nhouns eyes widened with awe, quickly gaining him a stern and dismissing glance from Quenthalus.
"Don't use those gestures around here, please." Quenthalus watched the two young elven boys leave, then quietly shut and locked the door behind them.
"You might've forgotten the location of Kard en i'Teleralonael, but don't tell me your heritage has slipped you, too." Taladinn was dry with his humor, but Quenthalus gave him a tolerant gaze that bordered on darkening. "Besides, the Elder Circle of Natura, and some of the cell here in Syl'rosya do not represent that bloody lie from so many patterns ago. The times have changed." Through a raven-gaze Taladinn gauged at Quen's expression, holding a curious glint in his eye while he studied the retired dancer and teacher.
"Have you found anything?" Quenthalus looked hopeful for a moment, breaking the silence by circling around the den to stir the fire and prepare a pot of tea.
"Nothing yet, dear friend. I really fear that that information is lost to the siege of Natura." He threw off a dashing black wide-brimmed hat, revealing a swell of chestnut curls. Unshouldering his cloak, he slunk into the first available chair at the table.
There was something unusual that Taladinn took due note of: trailing his eyes, he saw articles had been closed away, wrapped, folded and tucked behind the activity of life. There was a silent emptiness permeating the quarters.
"You have wrapped all your pottery?" The chair creaked as he leaned forward. His dark eyes settled on a small bowl that had some mishappen features and a slight lean to it.
"I remember when you first made that," Quenthalus was silent all the while that Taladinn spoke. The pottery reminded him of the first time Wisteria and he had dug along the Laughingwater streams, near Yavie'mela Falls. They made the clay from their own diggings. They were best at movement when inspiration was the spark to drive them. He wondered if his love of academics somehow ruined that spontineity. Did he analyze too much? He returned to the table with a tray hosting two lily-shaped tea cups, leaf-shaped saucers holding those, and a steaming kettle of lavender and chamomile.
"Syl'rosya is drifting from me." He neatly siezed the kettle and slowly began to serve them both-- Taladinn first, then himself-- before settling the kettle back and taking his lily up to toast.
"Perhaps you are drifting out of Syl'rosya, or perhaps courage is simply drifting out of our race. Maybe we were never really meant to have it. The Aelyrians have etched themselves into the memory of the world. The surface of this realm won't soon forget." Taladinn responded.
"I believe that if one elf were to live out their lives fully-- give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream-- I believe we would gain such a fresh impulse of joy, forget the maladies of this feudalism and return to a Trelorean Ideal; no, something finer, somethinger richer than Trelore." Quenthalus sat his lily down, countering with a smooth song of words.
"But the bravest elf among us is afraid of himself. Every impulse we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons the body." It seemed as if Taladinn were implicating his close friend without saying much more than a vague sentence.
"They say the great events of the world take place in the mind, Taladinn. It is in the mind, and only in the mind, that the great fears of this world take place, also." Quenthalus said, owning up to it. He had been called to come forth with his soul before Taladinn. It was the least he could do for a friend.