Sep 6, 2017
Commission for Willowstead!
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Commission for Willowstead!
"There will be those who have forgotten. And when they remember, they will regret it."
Scars
She had many of them, nearly all earned recently. The old ones were hidden, easily forgotten about and kept safe from the eyes of any who might try to show concern. She didn't trust anyone enough to not hurt her later, anymore. She found a mirror on the side of the road in the Trade District and brought it to her tree, nestling it up in the branches. So it was, in the fading light of sunset, she looked over her near-naked body with tired amber eyes. A dark finger traced over chocolate skin, the clearest sign of her muddled lineage that she knew nothing about. The first scar lay on her lower back. Raised, bumpy, pale skin shone like a beacon on her lower back just above the curve of her rear, a burn wound in the crest of some long-forgotten house beneath a seared-in, elven rune. To anyone who could read Thalassian, the rune said simply, "Worthless". It was her mark. The permanent reminder of her first love, her first battle with abuse. The brand was the first. Her eyes closed and she slid down against the side of the tree, burying her head in her hands. She'd mastered crying without tears, sobbing without making a sound, a long time ago when chained up and beaten on a regular basis by the same elf who gifted her the brand. So she sat there, dozing to the casual observer but trapped in her own misery. The worst scars were not on her body.
"Things are looking up," she says aloud to herself, kept company only by the echo of her voice in the forest. Her eyes, a bright amber only faintly dulled by the darkness, flick momentarily up to the glimmering stars above. "And now I get to wait for it all to crash down again," the Gilnean mutters with an exhausted sigh. Another sleepless night.
A cool breeze shifted through the trees and sent Aelza's fiery mane of hair cascading away from face and eyes, allowing the midday sunlight to pierce through. She groaned and turned, nestled in her hand-grown hammock of vines above the forest floor. A sharp pain in her stomach that turned to gnawing soreness was what ended up making her wake up. Her throat felt dry and cracked, as well, and she would've cried had her body been able to spare the water. Six days, she had lain there in her slumber and sorrow, unmoving and dreaming only of a different life than what she had. Alone, without allies or friends. She had been, for all intents and purposes, prepared to die up in that tree. But it was her most stubborn quality. She couldn't do anything about her willpower, her ability to persevere, her talent for standing back up even when a strong person would have opted to stay down. And so, on the sixth day, on death's doorstep, she slipped from her hammock and crawled to her pack. She dug out her canteen and took a sip of the lukewarm water. Aelza Willowstead would not let the world win today.
Oi've been in my own personal hell my entire fuckin' LIFE, and all anyone seems to be able t' think about is how BLOODY OFFENDED they are when Oi can't care about all of THEM the way NO ONE cares about -ME-.
Aelza, on her outburst last night. (Spoken to a stranger, of all people).
Nightmares
Tonight, the terror was simple. Aelza's screams, muffled in a practiced motion by her arm as she awoke, shook her multiple times that sleepless night. But every dream was the same. A symphony of laughter and taunting and vitriol, shouts and jeers and cackles. Aelza's hand was extended, clawing desperately for someone's. Some moments, most frequently, the hand was Melliene's, recognizable only because like so many others, the Gilnean had spent a lot of time staring at it and memorizing every intricacy of it. Sometimes the hand belonged to Radela, or to Caroline, but no matter what she did the hand kept -PULLING AWAY-. She tried and tried and begged, screaming and begging to be touched and told she was loved, for only her hand to be held, foreign fingers to occupy the empty space between her own. But every time, the shrill sound of mocking laughter filled her ears. "You're pathetic," said Melliene in a bard's sing-song cadence. "A waste, really," said Radela, quiet and sharp in the way she'd always spoken when scolding her. "Miserable and grotesque. Look at how desperate they are to avoid you," said Hanita with her gentle, taunting grace. And when she awoke the last time, with the sun over the horizon and ready for a new day, all she felt was emptiness and fear. The sobbing and curling into a ball did nothing - it was her body hiding from herself. But she was alone. Alone, alone, alone, alone. [mentions: roseofpyrewood tanari-sun radish-radicchio]
Protest
The wedding was tonight. Melliene’s wedding.
Aelza glanced down at her biceps and gave them an absent flex, wondering if she could knock the shitstain part out of Deo’s brain and make the rest of him okay if she just punched his temple hard enough. It wasn’t much, but it was a plan even if she had no intention of even being AT the wedding to do it. She didn’t have a dress and she didn’t have the heart to sit there in silence and watch.
She told herself it went beyond her own feelings for Melliene, and it did, but with every image that flashed through her mind of the dancer and bard, smiling with her newborn child, Aelza was there besides her. Smiling with her, something she’d been doing far too infrequently these days. The images didn’t always include child either. Sometime she was there feeling the kick of an excited baby on her cheek through Mel’s stomach, or dancing with her in a field - where, she was never certain - after her pregnancy was over.
But, at the end of the day and after tonight probably forever, they were just that. Images. Dreams. She couldn’t go to the wedding of her friend, because it wasn’t a wedding. It was an act and a dangerous one that Aelza knew she wouldn’t be able to keep silent about if she went. She’d stand up and yell, she’d stab someone, throw something... it wouldn’t end well. She’d risk hurting Mel’s feelings to not hurt her permanently.
It still never sat right with her. With every image of her and Melliene laughing, dancing, drinking that floated into her mind, there were two of a dagger through her neck or her heart, poison being slipping into a drink, sheets wrapped tightly around her delicate neck, always with Deo behind them giving that same predatory, charming smile to Aelza as she watched in her nightmares, helpless and screaming.
Killing Deo - he suspected nothing, it would be a relatively easy task to run him through with a broadsword at a bar - would be an easy task. But she couldn’t. And it was killing her, instead.
Mentions: roseofpyrewood deo-black