I’m quasi-active in the sense that I posted something so I’ll likely check in a few days to see if anyone’s seen it, so, here’s a thing as well if anyone’s interested. I’ll reply during what limited span I’m looking at tumblr again
Closer to five centuries than anything, and it’s taken me this long to learn lights are the only way to stay sane.
You get deep enough in the woods, the canopy’s leaves twine thick. Not jungle-thick, mind, but knotted up enough to where you’re never quite drenched in sun so much as drowning in shade, no matter the time of day. Come nightfall, it gets darker than a smuggler’s hold three decks deep. Light’s something you gotta climb or leave to find, and most days it’s damn hard to find the time.
So- lights. A lantern, with wicks made off a spool of cotton I pass time braiding. Few torches, vine-bound sticks holding a couple stones I carved some runes in. Campfire’s a classic, of course.
Conjured fire, sometimes. Not as often as- nevermind.
Lights. Right. They’re like, bindings, see? Lose yourself in the forest, just look for the light when you remember where you are. Wake up sweating, warmth off the flames gives you a reason beyond bad reminders. Life starts, you know, slipping again- they’re something to watch, occupy your mind by. Lights are alive, dimming, flaring, dancing with the wind- but they’re static, even if the shape’s dynamic.
I’m, uh. Rambling again. Old habits.
I guess what I’m saying is, lights fill a space, no matter how dark or empty it might seem. We all spend our lives chasing one or another, drawn by the heat, the novelty, maybe just the color. Sometimes it’s a light we find- sometimes it’s one we’re trying to stoke within ourselves. But we’re always looking for one to ooh and aah over, right? Something to fill the space.
Fires have always fascinated me. They’ve marked nearly every moment of my long life- from Darkmoon and battlefields, to each stray cigarette and clandestine craving. Even Quel’thalas, rest her flagging soul, was something fascinating to watch go up in flames. I wouldn’t say as much to any of my kin, not so soon, when our ears still ring with screams and the marching din of the undead. But still- the flames took our city and changed it, more than anything else could have. For all that’s remained the same in our corrupted culture, you can’t call us the same race we were before Arthas. Sin’dorei- forged in flame, bound by blood, birthed with the promise to spill the match of every drop spilled.
I thought I could follow that flame all my life, but a decade hasn’t even thrice passed and I’m already burnt to cinders, striving to stay more than ash. Hopping from flame to flame, it fills you with feeling, makes you feel alive even when the whole world’s fighting not to die. One spark extinguished, another catches your eye, on and on ‘till exhaustion feels like calm.
But that’s not true, is it? Or I wouldn’t be here. Writing thoughts just so I can look at something else in the night, keep from going blind staring into firelight. Navel-gazing, I suppose, but hey- what’s new?
Good question.
Nothing. Not that I know of, at least. I suppose I’m pulling a page off Freckles’ playbook- life’s cycles got too familiar, fighting just turned to more effort rewarded with more dead friends, world seemed like it was about to end. So I made for the woods, packed a blade and a few good books and followed the nearest babbling brook. Soon I was deep enough the city sounds couldn’t be found- then things went silent as I got through the Ghostlands, gods-damned ancestors seeming to screech at me through the chill in the air. Then the leaves changed, and the animals came back- eventually things got quiet rather than silent. Hadn’t seen a road since the last lunar cycle, so I settled down, sort of. Broke some branches, matted some moss over my head, found a boulder smooth enough to sit on.
And that’s it. I wake up, sit, flick a flint for a fire. Strip to my smallclothes and sit in the stream, washing my scars and my one set of clothes, more tattered by the day. Push myself physically, some way or another- abandoning the daily training would be giving up too much of myself, I think, and if life’s taught me one thing it’s that this world will always force me to lift a blade again. Remembered what Father taught me about fishing. Liked that part- been a while since I could think of him and smile.
The old ways, making me feel like an old man. No gray in me, mind- but. Well. For all my talk of flames, life’s journey is really just looking for something new in yourself. And I know myself. The ins, the outs, the ups and downs, spirals and diagonals. So, learning who I am? Done. Check. Learning who I want to be? Been there, done that. Tried, failed, tried again, triumphed, faded, failed. Seen the whole cycle, so, check. What’s left? Learning to live with myself? Crock of shit if I’ve ever heard one. Nobody lives with themselves, they just sign a renter’s lease and stick around ‘till the landlord’s had their fill.
We live too long, elves. There’s only so much you can see before it all starts feeling like a dream. Face it- the lives we lead just aren’t natural. Gods, look at me- I’ve already died once, yet here I am, puttering around a forest like a Construct that’s lost its programming. We live lifespans meant for the divines, without the clarity of purpose, too stubborn and curious for an existence of service.
I’m not suicidal or anything, don’t get me wrong. Whatever lies beyond, I’m in no hurry towards, not anymore. But this life? Day after day, dalliances and drudgery, death around us and some strange kind of chained delirium within? It’s a dance I no longer understand the steps to- and so, there’s nothing to do but step off the stage.
I’m not mindless, not melancholy- no more than normal, at least. I just can’t keep trying to control a story that feels like it’s done being told. Magic feels muted- maybe my call no longer sings as sweet to the arcane deeps. It does come, flows freely- for all my woes, I’ve still got a fire to summon. Just feels like it’s pouring through a conduit I can’t quite close.
I think about writing to friends, lovers, reaching back to the familiar. Something stops me. Maybe I don’t want to know which funerals I missed, or maybe I’m just trying not to make contact because it’ll feel like a promise of return, and we’d both know that to be a trick. It’s old hat- no performer’s interesting when you’ve got their routine down pat.
I suppose I’m just waiting. Letting my soul settle some, where it can. There’s parts that’ll always kick and catch- guilts, if not regrets, smiles I’ll always miss, memories time only fills with more meaning. Pieces of a puzzle I can’t quite complete- but if that’s my life, I’ll live it in peace.
Maybe that’ll be enough, if whatever war’s raging out beyond this wilderness doesn’t end the world first. Until then?
Ich wünsche Dir zum Geburtstag allet beste der Welt. Bleib jesund und munter und einfach so wie Du bist!!! Dit würde mir reichen. :D Genieße deinen großen Tag Jongee!!!
Terese Nielsen | facebook | twitter | deviantart
dictate of heliod
nyx-fleece ram
call of the conclave
mother of runes
plea for guidance
force of will
swords to plowshares
akroma, angel of fury
enter the infinite
Rumor has it that a kitten has made its way onto the Arlandria.
It all started with Ravenmist Port.
He’d pulled into the coast of that old human kingdom, Gilneas, expecting a stench of sodden dog and Alliance gryphons screaming from on high. Instead there’d only been the incessant rain and odd warmth of the realm’s architecture, built as if to entice the eye with broad windows glowing by open hearths. That fit a lot of Gilneans to him- miserable and wretched, powered on by a furnace whose flames leapt from the loss of those familiar windows, and the warmth they once ensured.
The Arlandria’d been tucked into her docks three days now, and he was starting to get restless- the repairs were being handled more competently than Quel’thalas, and Faerthurin was beginning to think he was barking orders just to feel useful. So he’d succumbed to the best pastime of any port- drinking.
It was well near the brook of dawn when he stumbled into his quarters, throwing the door open so hard that it’s knob deepened a dent in the wall. The floorboards groaned beneath him as he pulled himself inside, one foot dragging after the other, a lone bead of liquor dripping from the bottle dangling in his fingers. He let out a drunken, aimless grunt, like a bear warning prey out of its den- and that’s when he saw it. Not a Worgen assassin or some Gilnean hound waiting to tear out his throat- of all things, some sort of furry feline. ‘Cat’, as he knew it in Common.
A little puffball of black, in fact, no bigger than the toe of his boot- curled up right past the foot of his broad bed, as if the wood had been built simply for its comfort. Faerthurin blinked and watched one of its ears twitch in delayed reaction to his entrance- then growled out a curse that made the kitten’s head lift up, blinking back with a small, near-silent stretch of its jaws.
“Oh no, don’t think so y’lil fucker.” He muttered, stooping down and dropping his bottle with a dull thud. The kitten started as it found itself pinched up by the scruff and lifted up, up, up- so far it’s near the ceiling, illusioned as a starscape that must’ve seemed endlessly vast to its tiny eyes. Faerthurin turned to stomp out, bracing for cries and whimpers that never came- until his step crosses the doorway.
The helpless, squealing plea that erupted from the furball could’ve melted Arthas’ cold heart, but that wasn’t what caught the warmage dead in his tracks. It was the thing’s eyes, blue like the vibrant arcane that his race had once been known by, staring up into a field of brilliant light that it couldn’t bear to be driven from. Faerthurin followed its gaze to the illusions above, semiconsciously matching constellations to their current position on the water- and then, as he always did, lost himself in their endless, silent possibility.
“Nngh.”
He thudded to his bed and tossed the kitten into its crimson-sheeted depths, before sitting hard at the foot, tugging off his boots with small successive grunts of difficulty. Once he was free to stop pacing and start sleeping, he shifted back and let himself be swallowed in the sparse few pillows he allowed, ready to rest and forget the beast even as it waddled over to hit against his chest.
“Away.” He grumbles out, pawing the cat off and curling tighter against his arm. The thing’s insatiable, though, squeezing between his biceps like a snake through canyon cracks. Faer huffs out a ponderous, rasping sigh and begins to sing another of his arcane litanies, lifting one hand to twitch and twine his fingers in time with the magic and its rhymes.
As if popping out from the Shadowlands, a mouse appears, coat white as snow- all the better to stand out amid the sheets. Idle, aimless twitchings from his hand send the illusion skittering over the sheets, capturing the kitten’s attention near instantly. A moment more, and he feels the thing trouncing and flopping all over his legs, so minutely ferocious he fears it might break itself in the mock battle.
The moment after that, the jig is up- as Faerthurin’s eyes shutter closed, the kitten’s go wide, latching upon the rhythmic dance of his digits. Just as old ghosts begin to rise and sing the elf into sleep, it pounces, barreling his hand into the pillow with a surprised cry of absolute, joyous victory.
The warmage cracks one eye and watches it bite and claw at his hand, feeling only faint pressures and pokes as it tears at tissue long since turned to scar.
That’ll do, he decides, finally letting the drink drag him to sleep.
Yet more reasons Lor’themar Theron is a terrifying creature and far more metal than any orc and yet isn’t all that involved in Legion and that annoys me because he:
. Was tortured by being effectively gutted and having a hand shoved into the wound and yet still didn’t give away information during the ordeal and somehow even managed to fight back in spite of that.
. Had his eye gouged out and still kept on fighting and wasn’t even all that bothered, because by his logic; “I close that eye anyway when I’m shooting. U just made me mad is all.”
. Literally shot a guy and blew him up with a super charged arcane shot made with a runestone that he carved in his office. Oh, and he also killed that dude while he was on FUCKING FIRE.
(Did I mention all three points I’ve mentioned happened in the same short story?)
I will keep pointing out the fact that he threw a park bench about ten feet into the air with seemingly no effort and he wields a two handed great sword in one and will blow you up into tiny, ickle, llittle giblets with the basic hunter ability: [Arcane Shot].
A year on, I totally forgot to mention that the runestone? That was an ancient, powerful warding stone used originally as a barrier to keep enemies out of Silvermoon, but it failed. He straight up took an ancient as balls, powerful elven artifact and carved it into an arrow to shoot a guy. In his office. During his free time.
And he shot that guy, while our regently murder-dad was ON FIRE.
Give him something cool to do in BFA, Blizzard. Come on, he could defend Silvermoon completely by himself and … given his penchant for protecting his people? He probably would. And somehow just annihilate the battlefield by using his hookah on his desk as a make-shift, Gilligan’s isle grenade.
(oh yeah because people asked, it’s Blood of the Highborne, a short story you can find in the Paragon’s collection on Amazon <3 Liadrin’s in it too and she is also a badass. Rightly so, it’s HER STORY D:<)
The Ramblings of Faerthurin Lantis @lantisthepreyingmantis - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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