After dinner, there was the hot tub. After the hot tub, there was dancing.
Jester had been the one to suggest dancing, which did not surprise Essek. What did surprise him was Caleb, who readily offered her his hand and swept her into the middle of the room as Beau and Fjord pushed furniture against the walls to make a dance floor. Yasha fetched a macabre harp, and Jester summoned her duplicate to play at the tiny pink piano that materialized in the corner.
It was plain to Essek that the Nein were in especially high spirits tonight. They laughed loudly, they spoke candidly, most of them drank freely – Essek couldn't remember if he was on his third or fourth or maybe fifth glass of wine. He sipped at his glass now, watching them all cavort around the room to the freewheeling music.
It was easily the most unique dinner party Essek had ever attended.
As he watched them dance, his eyes were continuously drawn back to Caleb. While most of the Nein shimmied and swayed solo with little coordination and less inhibition, Caleb arced across the floor in elegant steps, first with Jester, then Veth, then Caduceus. He had abandoned his usual slouch and was standing tall, shoulders back and neck held high as he led his dance partners smoothly around the room. This was Caleb as Essek had never seen him before.
“Essek! You gotta get out there too!” Jester threw herself down onto the seat next to him.
“Oh, I'm afraid I'm not much of a dancer.”
“What kind of dances do they do in the Dynasty? Are they, like, super duper cool? You gotta show us!” Jester continued as if he hadn't said anything.
Essek blanched at the idea of demonstrating traditional Dynasty dances. All of the Nein's dances were being done standing up; there was no way he was going to get on the floor and start...writhing.
“I would need to drink quite a bit more wine for that to happen,” he replied.
“Essek.” Essek looked up to see Caleb, face flushed and smiling, extending a hand to him. “May I have this dance?”
“I-I don't know the steps. And I'm not a skilled dancer,” Essek stammered, clutching his drink.
Caduceus sat down on the other side of Jester. “I don't know the steps either, but I think I did pretty well out there. Caleb is a good partner. He really knows what he’s doing.”
“Yeah! Caleb is, like, so good, and he totally doesn't care when you step on his feet or whatever,” Jester chimed in.
Essek looked at them then back at the proffered hand.
“Just one dance. I promise it's easier than it looks.”
This evening had already been an exercise in stepping out of his comfort zone, and they were all tipsy after all… Gathering his meager courage, Essek downed the rest of his wine, handed the empty glass to Jester, and took Caleb's hand.
He flushed with embarrassment as Caleb pulled him into the middle of the room. Now that he was standing, he could more clearly feel the effects of the wine.
“Drop the levitation. You can't float for this.”
Essek blinked at Caleb’s assertive tone. Had Caleb ever commanded him like this before? He released the spell, now needing to tilt his head up to meet Caleb's eyes.
Caleb smiled, raised their joined hands, and wrapped his other arm around Essek to place a firm hand on his back. Essek let out a small, involuntary gasp as Caleb pulled them together.
“Put your other hand on my shoulder. Ja, like that. Now watch – you're going to match my steps, starting with your right foot.”
He looked down at their feet as Caleb began counting.
“My apologies, I'm really not coordinated enough for this,” he said, lowering his hand from Caleb's shoulder.
“You're doing great. Let's continue.”
Essek highly doubted he was doing great, but he brought his hand back up and doubled his focus on his feet as Caleb began counting again. His steps were hesitant and lacked any semblance of finesse, but he managed not to trod on Caleb again.
“Now do it without looking at your feet. Look at me.”
Essek looked up at Caleb, momentarily struck by the blue of his eyes. “I'll step on you again,” he protested faintly.
“Maybe, maybe not. I'll live either way. Just pay attention to my body. That will give you cues on your steps.”
How could he pay attention to anything but Caleb's body, with them so close together? Essek thought, suddenly feeling light-headed.
Caleb adjusted his palm against Essek's back and began again. Essek could see what he meant: subtle pressure from Caleb's hands guided him through the steps. When Caleb stepped forward, the press of his weight prompted Essek to move backwards. When Caleb moved back, his firm hand brought Essek with him.
“Good! Now we will do it for real.”
“Wait—”
Caleb drew Essek across the floor, as Essek stumbled and tried to re-find his steps.
“Don't overthink it.” Caleb looked directly into his eyes and smiled. “We're just having fun.”
He really hadn't ever been so commanding before, had he? Essek took a deep breath and tried to let his feet move automatically, to let himself be pushed and pulled around the dance floor. It was easier than he expected: Caleb led with such confidence that Essek became malleable under his steadfast hand. Even if Essek's footwork was inelegant and occasionally stumbling, Caleb's assured motions smoothed over the missteps.
They whirled around the room, making wide circles around their dancing friends. Caleb's eyes remained locked on Essek's, and Essek found it impossible to look away. He found himself getting caught up in the turns and spins, smiling as Caleb guided him through with an easy press to his back.
The music came to a close, and the dance was over as quickly as it began. Caleb released the hand around Essek's back and dropped into a small bow, still holding the other.
“Oh! That was it?”
“We can keep dancing if you'd like,” Caleb offered, and Essek was surprised to find that he wanted to say yes.
“Perhaps. I think I need to sit for a bit first.”
Essek's heart was racing more than it should have been for the level of exertion. As a new song started up, he returned to his seat, where Jester handed back his wine glass.
“Here's your drink, Essek! I topped it off for you.”
Topped it off, indeed. The wine was nearly to the brim now. Essek took a deep sip, his eyes still on Caleb who was inviting Yasha to join him for the next dance. His head spun, and he couldn’t tell if it was from the wine, or dancing, or—
I think a surprising amount of writers don’t realize that tragedies are supposed to be cathartic. They’re intended to result in a purging of emotion, a luxurious cry; the sorrow caused by a great tragedy is akin to fear caused by a good horror movie – it’s a “safe” sorrow, one that is actually satisfying to the audience. It can still be beautiful! It’s isn’t supposed to just be salting the earth so nothing can grow.
But that’s how you get grimdark: writers who don’t realize that they’re supposed to be doing something with the audience instead of to the audience.
#i once heard a lecture where someone said that the great appeal of tragedy is to see terrible things happen to people you’re supposed to#empathize with and see yourself in#and that the catharsis comes from seeing someone’s life go horribly wrong and still have the author hold your hand and tell you#‘this story mattered. even though it had a sad ending it still mattered. even if you don’t succeed your attempts matter’#grimdark tells you that the world sucks and nothing you do matters#well-written tragedy tells you that sometimes the world sucks but everything you do matters so so much#your story is still worth telling even if you never achieve that happy ending#or if you lose it along the way#people have inherent value and their stories deserve to be told no matter if they turn out okay or not#and in a reality that has no concept of ‘fair’ that shit just hits good man!!! feels good!!!!! it’s COMFORTING
there is a disk. it is 12 inches in diameter, it is made of copper, plated with gold. there is an inscription— “To the makers of music – all worlds, all times” on its surface. it lies on the space probe, Voyager 1, launched in 1977, to explore interstellar space beyond our solar system.
it contains human existence.
116 images— the sun, the location of our solar system, mathematical and physical unit definitions, and our planets, including a blue and swirling white sphere simply labelled “Home.” it contains images of human dna, of our atoms, their structure, the way they divide, our anatomy, our conception, our birth.
it does not contain an image of war. nor of disease, nor poverty, nor crime, religion, or ideology.
it does contain a father looking lovingly at his daughter. it does contain the picture of a tree toad in a gentle hand, of a woman eating a grape at a supermarket.
the remainder of the disk is audio. a 90-minute selection of music from all over the world, sounds, and greetings. there are greetings in 55 different languages, one akkadian, spoken in sumer about six thousand years ago, and one wu, a modern chinese dialect. the greetings call out to a friend. it wishes them well. it asks them if they have eaten yet.
but it contains other sounds too. it holds the sound of rain, of thunder, of a volcano and an earthquake. it holds the sound of mud pots and trains. it holds the sound of a mother kissing her child.
with little to erode it in space, the golden record would probably outlast all human creation. it will be 40,000 years before it approaches another planetary system. if it does, it cannot find intelligent life. intelligent life will have to find it, retrieve it from where it floats silent and small through space. we still don’t know if they would understand it.
in 7.5 billion years, the evolution of the sun would burn the earth up, and we would not exist any longer, but the voyager would fly on, bearing a memory.
bearing a disk with a little inscription etched by hand on its surface.
Thought of the day: what if part of the worship traditions of the Luxon are a capella choral singing and chanting? Could you imagine the look on Caleb's face when on a particularly sunny day, in a fit of nostalgia, Essek starts singing hymns in Undercommon (maybe even Celestial?) in a soft tenor?
One night in the Tower--after some very good luck in Aeor and celebratory trost and Lionett wine, perhaps--Caleb asks Essek about it, and he gets embarrassed and blushes, hedging a bit. Until Caleb starts to sing a Zemnian folk song in a crisp, clear baritone.
They spend a few hours teaching each other the favorite songs of their childhood and sing them together in harmony.
I'm working on those fic chapters, I promise! But... I'm also working on a long essek Winter's Crest thing because I mean look at him. Look at all those feeties!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Let Sleeping Elves Lie Is now complete!
Rating: T
Chapter 14 of 14, An Excerpt:
Jumping out of order here for a sec to promo the completion (🥳).
Slight CW for some implied but definitely not described past narcissistic abuses, and Essek is rather rude to his mother (because of said past abuses).
This is the hard/sad part, but they do make progress. It was getting a bit too long for Tumblr, so check the fic for some nice resolution. Essek gets that mom hug that we all deep down know we need from time to time, even if there's a lot of baggage and work to do.
"What are you doing, Dierta?" Essek's voice is cold and detached, his diplomatic training kicking in after the initial shock of her presence. But every muscle in Essek's body is tense, stiff. His facial muscles, especially, are pulled taut around his clenched jaw.
She cuts her eyes away momentarily and makes a little huff that Caleb wishes he didn't recognize. "Essek. Why must you call me that?"
Essek growls. It's so quiet that Caleb thinks he must be the only one to hear it, save for elves and their phenomenal hearing. Dierta reacts to it as if it were the sting of a tiny bee. And then the little growl turns into snarled words. "You know why. As far as I am concerned, I have no mother."
Dierta's eyes leave Essek's and instead study the sand below. She sniffles.
Essek rolls his eyes.
Caleb watches without speaking, but pulls Essek's hands into his own. Silent support. 'I am here.'
"Essek… I… I came to apologize. I know there's no reason for you to accept it. I have been cruel to you too often, since the beginning." She pauses, looks up from the soft sand-grit to her son. "I will not make excuses for my behavior, though I have been tempted to try. But the truth is… there is no excuse."
Essek lifts his chin as he inhales. His posture straightens. "No, there isn't." He knows this is true. She doesn't deserve his forgiveness. That is something for him to give, if he chooses, and her manipulation won't ever make that happen, not if he can keep from letting it get to him again. He feels a little tug on his hands, a gentle press, just enough to remind him that Caleb is there. His anger calms just a touch.
She nods with her mouth in a frown, eyes turning low again, as if counting the grains of sand. "When I heard about the investigation, that they all but knew it was you, I… reevaluated many things about my life and about the way you were raised. I blamed myself for it." She looks up to wait for her son's reaction.
Essek's top lip raises into a sneer. "Oh, of course it's all about you. Your guilt."
Dierta reaches up to swipe an escaping tear with her index finger as she returns her gaze to the ground.
Essek inhales through gritted teeth to keep from barking a humorless laugh. He's seen this before, this crying. This oh woe is me. He's seen it from her. He's seen it from Adeen. It's a control tactic, a victim reversal, and he's not going to fall for it again.
Caleb gives Essek's hands another squeeze. Another reminder to breathe, another quiet token of his support.
"No. It's not about me. I'm merely trying to make a point. I… I came here to apologize, yes. But I also came here to tell you that those things I've been working on the last few years, to try to unlearn countless centuries of bad habits? Well, my son… I am trying to do better." She looks up at him, her eyes flickering with flecks of red from the nearest orb of Ruidis, it's superheated blue rising with red and it looks like they would burn. But even with burning fire, they are surprisingly soft and open.
Essek pulls his mouth into the tightest line he can make it. He sees how well her face forms into a look of sincerity, but she has practiced these tricks for centuries… perhaps millennia. He doesn't buy it. "Well if that is true, then you will have your work cut out for you to prove it to me. I will not be fooled into accepting a false pretense ever again."
Deirta nods, it's solemn and soft. Her eyes look sincere, and Essek starts to break, just a little bit. He wonders if maybe, just maybe… this time she might mean it.
Her eyes continue their fiery dance as her words, in accented low soprano, billow out quiet and humble. "It has been a lot to work through, will be a lot to work through, and I can't say I won't make mistakes, but I want to try. I want to be in your life again--yours and Caleb's--to whatever degree you will allow me. I know I don't deserve it, but I want to try to earn that back. For all of my mistakes, unforgivable as some of them were, and for all the things that I've told you that you weren't or could never be, I never stopped loving you. And now, you've proven to me that I was wrong about so many of those assumptions. You are so much more than I ever could have imagined. The Luxon is proud of you. Both of you. The Umavis know what you two accomplished outside of this particular existence."
Essek's eyes burn. "Oh, I see. I wasn't good enough for you until I became something to your Luxon."
Dierta pulls her lips tight and shakes her head. "That was… poor phrasing. I just wanted to tell you I was proud of you."
Essek's jaw is clenched so tight the words have to squeeze through teeth to be heard. "Then say that. Say that you're proud, not your god."
Her eye contact falters, she looks off to the side. "Oh." A quiet word that means a lot. Her silence makes Essek think she might be considering information she had never thought to include in her mind, so self-absorbed as it is. She looks up. "I am proud of you. Truly. And I… knew I was wrong well before The Luxon showed us. I knew it when I thought you were a traitor. I know it still."
Essek stands there silently, not daring to say anything further, lest he lose his composure entirely. He breathes in time to the ocean.
In… The waves break at the peak, tumble down in a ripple and surge toward the shore.
Hold… They lap at the sand as little birds run, tiny morsels plucked from the packed foreshore at the last second before the foamy saltwater can sweep them from their feet.
Out… The foam recedes back into the depths, now black as pitch and even too far away for his drow eyes to make out their form.
Essek is pulled from his breaths by a new pair of hands on his shoulders. He knows their owner by their grip, how familiar they are yet how foreign after such a long absence. The other guests have already departed, but he was waiting for them, his brother was waiting for them to be sure they were alright.
Verin squeezes Essek's lean deltoids before he rounds into his view. He takes a long look at his brother before turning to Dierta. "Mother… could you not have picked a better time to have this conversation?"
Dierta looks at where her feet would be if she could see them underneath her elongated robes. She sighs. "I suppose I could have." She chews on her lip. It's uncharacteristic for her to be so humble, both elves think. She nods, still sucking at the flesh of her inner mouth. "I suppose I am just as selfish as ever. I wanted to be here for this, and I did not even think about the grief it would cause you on such an important day."
Essek's hands tense and ball into fists. But Caleb pulls him closer, pries those dusk-violet fingers apart carefully, pressing them like flowers into the book of his own.
"No, you didn't think." Essek's eyes narrow into shards as he flings those razor-edged words to her through them. But they cut him too, a knife-bladed boomerang on its return trip. The cut stings. Is he bleeding? No… it's too salty to be blood.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Let Sleeping Elves Lie
Rating: T
Chapter 2, An Excerpt:
"WHAT DO YOU WANT?" The being asks, and Essek cannot comprehend how they do not already know.
Essek huffs a chuckle. "What do I want? To remove myself from this game entirely. I do not want to live in this cycle of rebirth. I do not want my life magically extended any longer. I want to be free to choose my soul's own destiny upon my death. I do not care for this realm, I do not care for other elves, and I, especially, do not care for you. Whoever you are. Corellon I suppose?"
And now the ground is quaking and magma spews all around him, splashes onto his robes, flames lick his ankles, but he remains still. Corellon's unbridled anger overflows at the target of their ire, and all Essek does is stand there with his arms crossed and head held high in defiance.
"Your tactics are not working." Essek calls out. "I would like to leave now. My soul is unwilling. But you already knew that, didn't you?"
And now a screech rips through the land, no doubt audible to every creature in the entire plane.
And with the same suddenness that the being's happiness turned to rage, everything cools to a dull and lifeless gray. "Fine. I give up on this one. Enjoy the rest of your shortened earthly existence."
critical recap said shadowgast dancing canon, so have a sketch from the alternate episode 91 where it happened after a few more glasses of wine and some extra-good persuasion rolls
jbbartram-illu
andulkaphoto
annaxmalina
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
kaledo-art
