Finality
Click.
The latch snapped into place with a finality that made her wince, soft features twisting with the motion and lips pulling back to reveal her teeth. Yet the irony was not lost on the woman as she gazed about the Manor that for so long had been her home.
No, it was not lost on her at all.
Exhaling gently, she stepped back from the trunk and with a nod to the men she had hired to help her, they strode forward to pick it up with grunts. It was the last of her painting supplies, her brushes, the canvases that she had yet to bring to life with color, and then her easel. Easily folded, compartmentalized, just as she had done with everything else of the life she was leaving behind.
Analyse Blood -- no, Emberbloom -- moved across the room easily towards the double paned windows of the upstairs to peer outside across the grounds. Lyra and the younger wolf pup had already been moved from the stables where now only Sori'thas' Hawkstriders remained. The Greenhouse had been emptied of its contents weeks ago as she had slowly and painstakingly prepared the plants for the move.
It had taken her multiple trips, lengthy hours, and back aching devotion to move them singularly and make sure they survived the move from the top of the line greenhouse to their new home in the quaint hand made greenhouse at her new residence. Some had been hearty, surviving and thriving in their new environ. Others... others had not. Either they had been unable to be moved without them dying, or, they had been able to and had simply not taken to the new soil, to the different locale, and they had perished, wilting, and slowly fading away into nothing more than crinkled leaves, flakey and brittle.
Much like their marriage.
Biting at her lip as she stared down at the sprawling grounds, the Sin'dorei shut her eyes to it. This would no longer be the view that tingled her senses, sparked her motivation. No. She would no longer find inspiration in sunsets or the stars from here.
There was so much to be said about what had happened between the two of them -- the distance that had grown as one had grown restless and the other had flourished. When Sori'thas had chosen to move from an active military life to one of politics, Analyse had not thought anything of it. Just as she had not thought it would be that difficult to transition from serving on the front lines to serving as a trainer for the incoming Blood Knights, but yet...
The idea had first come to mind when her husband -- ex-husband -- had mentioned growing tired of risking limb and life, that he wanted to settle. He felt there was more that he could do than what he was accomplishing within the ranks of a squadron, and she had agreed with him. He had a way with words, an energy about himself that drew people in when he believed so fiercely in something, and so she had supported the decision. Whole-heartedly. But they would have been separated for weeks at a time if not months, and so she had deliberated.
It had seemed perfect.
Politics for him and training for her - well, guiding the young ones was the more proper way of putting it, she supposed. Yet it hadn't been perfect. Just because it had made sense in her mind didn't mean that it had worked that way in reality.
What Analyse had failed to take into consideration was emotions and the motivation behind why she did what she did.
She had always been the type of Sin'dorei that strove to be better than the day before. A challenge was presented and she sought to conquer it, to climb to a height that no one believed she would be capable of reaching. Being in Silvermoon proper, guiding the Initiates and the Adepts that had come to her for tutelage -- it wasn't the same. Instead, she was the guiding force behind them seeking to reach new and grander heights, but she herself was stagnant.
Her pond had grown stagnant and covered in a fine layer of mildew, and she was ready to shed it, to carve herself a tributary from which she might escape by.
Another exhale, a soft breath that fogged over the window, and then she leaned forward to rest her forehead against the pane.
Yes, there was a finality to it, but it was a finality that was needed.
The restlessness had spurred her to recklessness and the recklessness had led her down a road that was dark and twisted. One in which he could not follow and she did not allow him to nor invite him to. She had sought something to make her feel alive and at the end of the trail, it had not been something she had found, but someone.
Melo'sondre. Fiery and fierce, blunt and sarcastic, but encompassed in a haughty exterior of glaring eyes and petulant lips, there had been a heart of warmth and an embrace warmer still. A challenge coated in dripping sarcastic and a brutalistic realism that had painted the world in harsher colors than what Analyse had been able to see prior. Her presence had become regular during her days, and it had led to evenings spent with a wine bottle by a river. But those wine bottles had led to mistakes, and those mistakes had led her further down the twisting path.
She closed her eyes to the grounds below her, and the Blood Knight turned from the window with a snarl at the memories that still waltzed across the back of her eyelids and through her mind's eye with no consideration for her feelings. They stung, even now, months later, a year later, they still hurt.
As much as it had hurt to see his eyes when he'd caught them.
There had been no coming back from that. They had tried, oh, they had tried. She had stayed in a separate room from him, and they had talked, but the talking led to accusations, and the accusations led to yelling and the yelling had led to them leaving, one in tears and the other in anger, but both hurt and torn. It had gone on for months, a neverending struggle to try and bring themselves back to where they once were, to learn to forgive, but not to forget, to learn to love one another again. But it was hard to forgive, hard to forget, hard to love, when there was no trust to be had between the two of them.
It had been two months ago that they had been sitting at the dinner table, each with their attention focused on their plates, and a pregnant, tension filled silence had stretched between the pair. Forks had scraped against porcelain, the noise grating to Analyse's ears and causing them to shudder each time the twines had struck the green caste plateware. Finally, as she had pushed bits of potato to the edge, the silence was broken.
"Why are we doing this?"
It had not been her who had spoken, but him. He who had taken her back when she was pleading, begging, crying, a sorry state for the proud woman to have been reduced to. He who had said that they could overcome this, that they would make it through together, and she who had agreed willingly. He who had once smiled at her so gently, who's eyes had shown with love, but now glowed dully whenever he laid them on her. There was a permanent etch to the center of his forehead - and it was a twist of the knife in her gut every time she spotted it, for it was something that had only appeared after.
Raising her head, her face was blank, features carved in placid neutrality, and there was no quiver to her voice, no emotion, there was no rawness as that had long since cauterized itself shut. "I have no idea."
It had been the opening they needed though, and when they had sat down to speak in his office, for once, there had been no yelling. There had been no tears. There had been pain, but it was a pain that came from realizing that this door was struggling to shut only because they stood in the way. The midnight hour had long since come and gone by the time they had bade one another good night, but they were both lighter for it - for the first time in moons, there had been a light, a smidgeon of hope, a chance.
He had allowed her the time she needed to make arrangements. It had been a trial, finding an ample amount of land for several greenhouses and a modest home, and for the right price. Analyse only had what she had saved to spend, meager wages, and no help otherwise. She had refused to take any of the Bloodwing money as that would be the last thing she left him to remember her by.
No, she had needed to do this on her own -- and she had.
Blowing out a long breath, she steeled her shoulders, pitching them back and raising her chin. It was with purposeful strides that she had moved to the door of her former bedroom, gripping the handle and stepping into the hallway. Only once did she look back, her eyes roving the room that had been her sanctuary for five long years, and then they fell to the letter inscribed with her ex-husband's name upon the envelope. It stood out in stark contrast to the reds and golds of the room, the pristine white of it bold against the crimson background of the chair it sat upon.
With a final squeezing ache of her heart, she turned her back and released the door, moving down the hallway and towards the exit. The echo of her footsteps faded long before the slamming of the door as a chapter closed in both of their lives, and a new one opened.