#fairenthe

[renrael-wra]

Maroon 5 - Unkiss Me Lyrics

[gloamingdawn]

Journal Entry

Fourth month, fifth day - Noblegarden (what is this holiday? Who's idea was it?) Listed my half of the apartment up for rent in the paper. Mailed Fair two months rent to cover. I can’t do this anymore. It’s too quiet. Too empty. My muscles feel like they’re going to snap with how tight they’ve been. I’ve never enjoyed big living spaces.  I’m going to start looking for a smaller place tomorrow. Everything’s still mostly in boxes.  I’ve been on my own for a long time. That’s when I’m at my best.  Sat on the porch with Renrael for a while and just talked about everything. That was nice. After Feywren, he deserves someone who’s willing to give him the time of day. 

[gloamingdawn]

Small Steps

Sweat rolled down her muscled back each time she brought the hammer down on the test-piece of iron she'd been handed to practice on. The jarring wail of the head colliding with and shaping the red-hot rod was startling at first, the sound sharp in her ears like a spike being driven in over and over. After a while it became familiar. The comforting sound of jingling bridles of the destriers in the Silver Hand camp, Helion's rolling laugh, the wind whistling through the trees.

It'd been a long time since she'd worked at a forge. Camp smiths had taught her a little during the Second War. Horses needed shoes, armor needed minor repairs, blades had to be forged. To a lesser extent they had made farm tools to replace what had been lost for the Farmers who needed it most. Her attempts now were clumsy, and they felt it. A little misshapen spoon, a few badly deformed and utterly unusable horseshoes. Aris, the apprentice whose forge she was sharing (and who was about Fairenthe's age) laughed at each poorly wrought piece. To his credit, he offered advice on how to change technique before she could box him around the ears.

She'd watch the black soot that banded her arms where the thick leather gloves couldn't reach cloud the water in her bath. Fair rarely came back at the end of the day, and if she did come back Lyn was often already asleep; the guard’s prerogative was her own, and she was an adult and could make her own choices. It made the big apartment devastatingly quiet, though, and incredibly uncomfortable.

Perhaps moving in together had been a mistake. Lyn had never liked big living spaces. It opened up the potential of too much clutter and sentiment. She and Helion had owned a small house where they lived when they weren't dealing with military matters far flung from their little niche in the forest. It had been destroyed, rolled over by hoards of undead and their gruesome wagons on Menethil's trek to the Sunwell. Ysirien, lanky, beautiful Ysirien, hadn't wanted permanence and she settled for tents and inn rooms. They just lived, and moved, and fought, and lived. To be alone in a big apartment with three rooms and two bathrooms and second floor with a sun-room rankled more than she cared to admit. The shriek of the metal and hiss of the water as it rose to an instant boil drowned out Aris’ sniggering as she quenched her latest failure. She’d hammered a rod mostly flat, one side a little thicker than the other. The Apprentice leaned forward on the chair he was straddling and quieted his mirth, “Ai, well,” he said in his lilting southern Thalassian, “It’d do as a knife. Not a pretty one, but it’d do. S’pose it doesn’t need to be pretty if it’s going to be stuck in things or people, eh?” It would be a knife. She’d have to work on it more tomorrow after her arm stopped screaming at her, but at least she could make something with a purpose.

[gloamingdawn]

Post

It wasn't getting any easier. I had too much time on my hands. Too much time to think. Too much time to sit and dwell and be weak. Everything was stagnant.  I'd almost snapped tonight. Fair saw too much, honestly. "Is everything alright, Lyn? You seem different tonight." It was a simple enough question. Everyone always placates when asked that, nobody wants to cause worry. I'm not alright. I haven't been for a long time. I've never been a liar, though, and while that may be, that doesn't mean I have to tell the whole truth.  All it took was a flash of heat from a suddenly spawned elemental and I was back. Like a giant hook had been set in my belly and twisted. Ears ringing, everything around me faded. Nothing but me and my traitorous mind. It's never been waking visions. I've seen some fighters come back from combat with those, they'll shout and try and fight back. Some just... Watch things that aren't there. Not me. I know it's all in my head, I just can't reconcile it with the present. So there's nothing but the ringing and remembering. My shoulders bunch tighter, the muscles well past knotted from how often it's happened. Abs clench to ward off a piercing spear. A chill rolls down my spine.  If you lock up in the street, I think, what happens when you're working again?  I know the answer to that. Stubborn as I am I know I'll ignore it. I'll throw myself back into work because I have to get back on that horse. Because if I don't, I know I might not. I still feel cold and it's been hours. My stomach rolls. My damaged knuckles twinge and flare with pain; it's the only thing that helped. Current hurt would always cancel out past hurt. Self-destructive? Abso-fuckin-lutely, but it worked. This wasn't the first time I'd wrecked them out on a post in the training yard. It wouldn't be the last. 

I need to be okay again. Have to be. There are no alternatives in this.