The Lost Remain Lost (Closed)

[Malvoitre]

Winter. Cycle 1. Era Vx. Time unknown.

All journeys need their end. Fate's children, cast about in her tireless current, dream only of the soft beds they abandoned. For Uriel, that small cozy room hid somewhere deep in the forests of Silrosia. Long had been his journey. He wanted only to sit in the cluttered library of Annun Dae and write something of it. The tale he could spin...lost loves, abandoned gods, memories long forgotten resurfacing...perhaps he would order a elf-sized tome to contain it all.

And yet it had all led to simply the journey home. The sprite held tight to the silvery hairs of a timberwolf's back. His long-time companion, Liera, loped through familiar ground as Uriel slept, groping in the darkness behind his eyelids for some sense of the past. A heavy white fox fur kept his small body warm in these opening moments of winter, its hood cowled deep to shadow his face.

The sprite would have slept, eternally perhaps, were it not for the bothered whine of his wolf.

His eyes flicked open. He saw only mist.

"Feth," he said in a deadpan voice. Then his mouth took the shape of a wry smile.

"Not finished with me yet, are you?" he asked no one in particular. "Fine then."

With a flick of his wings, he rose off the wolf and landed in front of her. Slowly he walked forward, bidding the animal to follow. Getting lost was inevitable, but then, he had been gone so long, perhaps he had nothing to go home to anyway.

"I never really believed it existed," he told his wolf. "The past is as unshaped as the future. Dreams. Only dreams."

[Amaranth]

Dreams -- when the softly shifting sands of time slow into a final standstill and all is shrouded in mist and mystery... How can anyone know what is real? What is false? All that once was in the city of Silrosia was no more. The past had been forgotten, long ignored and left to its dusty fate within tomes set within half-used bookcases. Something had to be done. They had to remember. They had to remember...

Why.

Like gauze, translucent, shifting, the Veil settled upon the forests of Silrosia -- fondly called Syl'rosya by their elven inhabitants -- until all was shrouded in a world of silver and emerald. The twin moons of Telath cut through the fog in shivering bursts of sapphire, painting the scene in swipes of pulsing color that molded itself to the trees. Those ancient trees... they remembered. They remembered and accepted the turn of events without question, welcoming the return of the Veil like the longed for embrace of a former lover.

And all was as it should be -- the forests, varied and different, united into a singularity beneath the rising suns that burned at the edges of the Veil and yet did not cause it to dissipate, untainted and uncompromised... it just... was.

[Malvoitre]

Wisps of smoke and haze danced about his forest home, moving yet revealing nothing. Malvoitre smiled at the thought...how pointless it all seemed. The trees hid themselves in the thick cloud, the air cold and wet against his small face. He looked up at the moons where they shown, shining like two giant eyes upon him. The trees wanted to be left alone. He could sense that. But the moons...how they marveled at his perplexity. The sprite sighed. He would humor them, he supposed.

Was it a forgetful fog? The trees seemed to think so, dreaming away their borders, bending together into giant entangled masses that stopped his progress every few steps. He too seemed to forget where he moved, every few steps looking identical to the last. Perhaps the sprite was struggling through some eternal circle. Perhaps that was all that life entailed, circular patterns running into themselves. The trees agreed. They had forgotten how to stand alone.

He was alone. No other sprite existed in the Veil for him to join with and the forest wanted nothing to do with him. So he walked on, ignoring his spritely wings, forgotten by his race and now the world.

Malvoitre looked up at the moons again. He crossed his eyes until the two became one in his vision. "Exactly so," he whispered to nothing in particular. "Exactly so."

[Amaranth]

But Malvoitre wasn't completely forgotten.

A wind, soft and teasing, caressed against his spritely wings and ruffled his hair. While the forests and even his own people might have seemed to have forsaken him, the Veil had not. Not yet. As the twin moons watched from overhead, the Veil drew the sprite deeper and deeper into its hold, the mists swirling about him to the point that the paths no longer made sense and the ways he once knew through his home were forgotten. He was a wanderer, lost and alone... alone save for the trees and the eternal mist. And the moons, of course.

And the wind. That breeze that had started out as nothing more than a friendly reminder, a comforting tease, had begun to increase in intensity slowly the farther he walked. With each footfall upon the springy undergrowth, the wind shushed around his wings, tugging upon the sprite until finally, it lifted him a full foot from the ground, turning him full circle before depositing the sprite upon the earth once more. Even so, the wind didn't let up. Instead, it only blew harder, swirling around Mal until it encased him in a whirling vortex, blurring the forest around him into a flickering swirl of silver and emerald, of sapphire and burning black.

[Malvoitre]

How easy it all seemed to allow the ebb and flow of wind to decide his direction. He could feel the strange force of nature pulling at the strings of fate like some master of the marionette. Malvoitre danced for the wind's pleasure, wondering whether the blurring forest would enjoy the show. Perhaps the little sprite should struggle against the current. Perhaps he should take the strings back and pull them him self. It didn't seem to matter. Let the wind guide him for a while. Maybe it would do a better job.

Already life seemed more beautiful. The steady blend of everything, dissolving it all into brilliant flashes of moving color, how different the world appeared to the wind. He wondered what it would be like to blow across Aelyria, dancing among its trees and cities, watching as they all faded into one another until everything was the same as everything else. A comforting thought, an eternal cure to loneliness.

[Amaranth]

Around and around in a blurring circle the wind carried him, twisting him, manipulating him to the point that it seemed as though he was a part of the wind. He was no longer himself, a sprite, a person in his own right -- he was a thing, an it, a nothing and yet a something. Faster and faster the wind became, wilder, more dangerous -- dangerous to the point that it threatened to throw him into the trees that were nothing more than emerald and silver blurs inches from his face. The branches swiped at his limbs, sending stinging scratches across his skin, drawing miniscule droplets of blood that beaded upon his flesh. It was a small pain, but it was a pain nonetheless.

Should he continue in his dance? Should he rebel? It was Mal's decision, and it was one that seemed to have some consequences weighing in the balance...

... For at that moment, everything seemed to slow, and yet the sprite knew that he was still madly spinning. But to his eyes, he could see everything in startling clarity... and what he could see was a looming trunk growing closer and closer by the second, threatening to crush his delicate frame on impact.