From Esoteria, She Became
Featuring: Fiadh ( @fiadh-aich ) & Wrest
Locale/Time: Western Tower of the Library of Destarin / Wrest's Personal Quarters @ 8PM
The tower had been uninhabitable when he discovered it. Up a dangerous, spiraling staircase with only the light from shuttered or crumbling arrowloops to go by, piled to the collapsing rafters with erroneous scrolls, rotten tomes, and dilapidated furnishings. It was obviously once a private office with accompanying ( if humble ) living quarters which had turned, over the course of however many centuries, into a store-room, then a dumping ground, and eventually a hazard to anyone who ventured into it. Wrest saw its potential right away. When the shutters were taken down, the view of Destarin was far-reaching and spectacular. When the dust was swept away, the floors polished, and the beams replaced, it resembled a cozy, livable space. After several years of his diligent attention and many more of his settling in, it had become his very own, private, comfortable haven.
Along the curling walls were high shelves, packed to the max with his most precious books, enchanted tools, rare and suspect artifacts, and even a specimen jar or two. Painted tapestries hung above his desk, detailing the expanse of The Twelfth World he'd charted, and angled out the largest window was a telescope in a state of disrepair; one of his many incomplete, pending projects. The space was never neat. In fact, it often looked like a hurricane of unbidden energy had cycled through it, but it was secluded enough without being remote that Wrest was able to focus on his work and even manage an accomplishment here and there without disappearing into himself.
It was reflective of his very polarizing moods: mania & despair. The empty whiskey bottles and cracked mirrors streaked with suspect powders told the story of how he tried, very poorly, to mitigate the effects of them without blowing himself or the city he loved away in an astral-charged mushroom cloud.
The hours had gotten away from him. In fact, he'd totally forgotten the date he'd set with Fiadh. It was only because of his sincere interest in her predicament that he found himself swallowed up by research on the topic of the strange, azure markings that glowed just beneath the veil of her skin. Without that fixation anchoring his focus, he would have been completely empty-handed when she showed up at his door. Still, he never invited anyone to his quarters, so the knock nearly threw him off the windowsill where he'd been so precariously perched — reading, as it were. Last he'd looked up, it had been bright afternoon sun streaking through his rooms. Now, it was twilight. No wonder his eyes were exhausted. Reading by the light of the moon would soon blind him.
❝ Just a moment, ❞ he called, setting his book aside. On his way to answer, he lit candles and switched on arcane lanterns as he passed them. The juxtaposition of warm fire light and the cool blue emitted by the lamps was strange but comforting to him. It felt almost like the astral realm. Opening the door, he pushed his hair back from his face. ❝ I might have forgotten when we agreed to meet. ❞ A shite greeting but honest. ❝ Uh, come in. But no judging. I'm a sorcerer with no one to answer to but himself. ❞ It was his only excuse.
Summary: Fiadh ponders... herself, Chtugha, and life.
(A/N: Chtugha belongs to the delightful @kiingslaycr! Go check them out for more info about him.
Killjoy, if you're reading this, your playlist, and especially the first song, gave me ideas to write... so I hope you enjoy this story. ❤️)
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He isn't like absolutely anything I've seen before.
Horror floods my veins like coldness seeping from the very first snowflakes right into the core of the earth, the ice’s white coat choking the earth in its grip.
I might be able to traipse through time. He's the only one who can alter it.
I might be able to press past events into my memory. He can rewrite the course of time.
I might be a traveller – but he is time itself.
What's brought us together is nothing but a stray word fallen from my lips. What business does he have with someone like me? We're not even the same species. He's a time lord. I only found out I was a merrow after tumbling through time and space and falling into the year when my grandfather was my age; when I woke up, a mermaid was trying to steal something from my pocket. I tried to swim after her, and I caught up within seconds, snatching back what seemed to be a small pocket watch. No ordinary human could swim that fast... and human feet and hands have no webs. There had to only be one explanation.
I’m not like anyone I’ve ever met before. Which is weird. Don’t people usually have friends? I’ve never let anyone close enough into the world of perfect sense and order I made in my head. They wouldn’t understand. Nobody would know how serious I was when time after time I kept telling people I wanted to be a mariner when I grew up. A marine engineer, a biologist, a sailor – anything that would bring me close to the sea, have me stay in touch with it for longer than just a few weeks every summer. If I'm not near water… Well, no, I don't go mad. But I feel weird, like a fish on a sofa.
Cthugha isn't like anyone I've met before, either. There's nothing strange or unusual in a world like mine; I've learned to accept everything for what it is. I wake up in 1688, and, sure thing, there are pirates in places I don't expect them to come from – and somehow they mistake me for my grandfather, someone who has now taken my place. I turn around, there’s a whole Rifter in front of me, and my world violently crashes into his. Two hearts, two mythologies, two towns with two sets of rules. And yet, he feels more familiar than anyone has felt for a while.
Cthugha is the first person that has made me think about life, about myself, about fate, about how entangled with everyone else's my existence truly is. Before meeting him, I've been unable to truly trust anyone or talk with them without getting frustrated at how they think halfway through the conversation. I don't trust the stars, unless it's to find out my location. I don't trust any stones, unless it's to bring me victory over someone chasing me for something my grandpa’s done. However, I trust Cthugha. Even if I'll likely never make sense of how and why the world has been made to be, and how he has come to play such a role in keeping it glued together. Even if he ends up becoming my demise in the future.
We'll all die in the end. Except him. It's of no use wasting my time being as angry as I have been. I live in a wonderful city, I can afford to travel and, in a way, I earn my bread with it, I have nice parents and I got to keep my passion and interest for the sea and marine life and turn it into my job. Why am I so mad, then? I never thought betrayal could sting as powerfully as it did, and yet here we are. And I had to learn the entire truth about the lives my hero – my grandfather – has taken. So that's how legends are made, with lots and lots of blood. And the only thing I'm certain about is that this strange man from another world and kind is the sole source of trust I can have right now. What if the rest of my family have also killed people, stolen gold, taken torches to villages and cities like life is nothing but a movie?
I shut my eyes. Tight, tighter, the tightest, like the iron grip the horror still has on my body. I have no idea what I'm scared of. I can trust him, right? For now Chtugha has shown me he's worth every second of trust I have given him, and more. I can trust him. I can't trust my family. If my parents have hid away what my grandfather has done and who he has been, if they never told me what lies my grandmother has had to spin and how much blood she has had to shed herself – if she's even the person they have been telling me she is – then how should I be sure I am who I am? Am I really Fiadh? They never told me I was a mermaid.
And yet here we are. I've seen people swimming in the sea. Their feet don't show any webs when they slide into the water, they don't suddenly start moving almost as quickly as sound.
Maybe I should give myself some credit, too. They've been doing that to keep me safe. If little me was as crazy as my grownup self is being right now, my story would have been far shorter. I would have ended up never seeing my thirties. I could have been born somewhere else, far away from the sea. Hell, I could have turned out to hate water, and who knows? I could have become an excellent mountain climber, or a geologist. I turned out alright.
But is alright enough? Will it ever be enough? Will alright ever be just enough for Cthugha – will it ever be enough for anyone who decides to spare me some time and sit next to me on the bridge of life and watch the stars with me? Am I enough? I'm overthinking it, I know. But I can't help it. I'm not angry because I like the feeling; it's one of the most burning feelings, stealing my strength away and leaving me powerless. The world has always been enormous, endless, and I've always felt like nothing but a tiny drop in its ocean. Who am I, and what the hell does it matter that I have suddenly changed timelines?
This shouldn't even be the way it is. Time travel is impossible.
Then again, the Queen believed in six impossible things before breakfast, so she told Alice when Alice ended up in Wonderland. If a fictional character can believe in the impossible, why can't I? And then, who knows. I'm the most real only for myself, and nobody will see what I've seen, or be exactly where I've been with all the dust from his previous travels like I have. It's only right to keep on living. It's never made any sense, life, and I give up seeking it.
I'm only going to be for myself from now on, and for everyone else for my sake. If it wasn't for them, I'd never have started out living in this life as I know it – as all of us know it today.
