#hartfallen

[athaeda]

Miss Athaeda Hartfell

Done by the amazing @Foxy_Trot on VGen. I couldn't be more pleased.

[athaeda]

The Nature of Mutation

Long speculated, it has been, amongst my newfound kin: The nature of our affliction with regards to its physical manifestations. The variety of visible alterations to the body is greater than that of every other magical suffusion we as a civilization have yet encountered. Which isn't to say that sufficient magical enrichment of other kinds cannot produce physiological changes, only that I have not observed such. Barring, of course, the Lightforged; whose metallic augmentation does not, by my mind, equate to the flesh and blood changes the Ren'dorei display.

So I must question, what is it the makes the void different? How does it interact with the body and mind that creates such violently differential results in those who have been made to harbor it? The answer, insofar as I can see it, must be madness. But madness is not an affliction of magic. Madness isn't something that can be corrected with humble potions, a healers stitch, or even the touch of a priest. Madness is emotional inherently and the void's connection to it, I speculate from observation of myself and my brothers and sisters, suggests that perhaps the nothing that creeps at the edges of reality is not nothing. It is feeling.

Consider, if you will, the stoic nature of the light. The forced peace maintained by the naaru, shattered after millennia in a void born transition of chaos and rage. Does this not reflect the emotional outbursts experienced by many when finally allowed to feel something they have previously been made to swallow? Consider the ways in which genuine emotion is often punished. Silence yourself. Patience, prudence, politeness. Don't be rash, we are often told.

What if the magic in your blood is inherently rash? What if it demands you make manifest the things you run from?

I have observed, in the years since the expedition, a multitude of mutations. In that observation I have begun to draw parallels and now put forward that the void does not, truly, change us. It simply makes us more of whatever we already were. It forces outward that which we kept within. The madness that lives in each of us. Our most extreme natures twisted into something we must contend with bodily.

A man who was enthralled with promiscuity, consumed by his lack of impulse control and failures in loyalty, developed additional eyes as a result of the blessing. There's a phrase I've heard spoken, "I only have eyes for you." The truth of his nature, the metaphorical parallel to his peril, made visible to all.

A woman who found her talent as a gossip. Unable to keep a single word of confidence before the affliction. She now possesses many more mouths. Across her limbs and core. They mutter without end. She's had to stitch them closed to keep them quiet. No one tells her secrets anymore.

Another, a social climber. A greed driven hanger-on. Desperate for wealth and renown, now sports more literal suckers across the palms and fingers. Left to much more literally cling to anything so unlucky as to be placed in their hands.

Someone with too much pride baring a musculature so swollen and overblown that no one draws near enough to feed their ego anymore.

This is but one theory. Inconclusive. I will continue to watch.

[athaeda]

The level of freckliness needed to be increased. I have solved the problem.

[athaeda]

DWC - Day 1 - Reunion/Afterlife

Athaeda had come back to Ashenvale. This forest was a bittersweet place. She was born here, under the darkened canopy, in the back of a wagon and spent much of her early life among these trees. A strange, mostly high elven, girl with wild strawberry curls stood out against all the deeper shades of lavender. She had to laugh a little, her lips curling upwards into a sad smile at the thought, after the change she didn’t stand out in the same way. She carried a basket and a bottle of wine and had taken the bells out of her hair, something that almost never happened. “Grandmother...” She spoke in a soft tone as she approached the moonwell. “Grandmother, I need you.” Aeda knew that wisps didn’t have to stay in one place. She knew her grandmother’s ghost could be anywhere but she held hope close to her heart. 

Athaeda settled herself and the basket she carried down into the grass beside the well. Quickly, she set up her little picnic. Two plates, two stemless wine glasses. She was slow and deliberate as she poured wine and served sandwiches. An old tune rose to the surface of her mind and she began to sing softly. They had always sung together. Seemingly at the sound of her voice, soft and sweet, a wisp appeared. A tiny blue ball of swirling magic that bore the vague impression of a feminine face at its helm, distorted as if being viewed through rain-streaked windows. Atheada didn’t noticed it at first, too wrapped up in the song and her own memories to register the quiet humming that accompanied it. “Grandmother?” She asked, colored brightly with excitement, “I had hoped I’d still find you here. I know it’s been such a long time but I have wonderful news.” The wisp swirled itself around Athaeda, tickling the tips of her ears with its death-cold tail. The gesture drew a giggle from the void elf, comfort washing over her like a welcome rain after drought. “I’ve fallen in love, grandmother.” The wisp stopped the dizzying dance it was conducting around Athaeda’s head of wild curls and went to hover quietly opposite her, It watched her, seemingly, awaiting the girl’s elaboration. She looked nervous, a bashful smile drawing out the dimple on the left side of her face, and took a sip from her wine glass in an effort to curb her enthusiasm.  “Well, he’s human,” She explained, but her grandmother’s own lover had been human, “And he’s such a kind soul. He walks in the red, it’s true, but so do most people anymore... He has two shadows but he’s already shown me why. He trusts me and I him and I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy.” The more Athaeda spoke the more excited she got, her voice increasing in pitch as she jabbered on like a schoolgirl.Then she stopped very suddenly, her face falling as she remember why exactly it was she had really come seeking advice. “Grandmother, he sends me letters. He’s been away for a year now. At war. Before he left he declared his intentions to wed me. I know. I know we don’t marry. I told him such, I promise but... he persisted. He promised me he would do whatever was required to change my mind.” Very quickly, and quite contrary to her usual temperament, Athaeda picked up her wine glass and swallowed its contents in a pair of large gulps. “Grandmother, his last letter was months ago.”  Athaeda smiled because she always smiled, even as the tears welled in her eyes and her shoulders broke in the release of a sob. “He’s not coming back, is he?...”  The wisp could offer her nothing, she couldn’t even be sure it was the person she was looking for. It just sat there, low hum occupying the airspace that remained when Aeda’s voice gave out, and then departing as quickly as it had come.  Athaeda watched the orb of blue light disappear back into the wood and she openly wept. “None of them are...” @daily-writing-challenge

[athaeda]

A Candle in Another Light

((This is told from the perspective of Helna, a succubus who is part of what Athaeda refers to as her “Unusual Little Family”))  Helna watched as the figure of the gentleman, if you could still call him that after what she’d heard, departed into the shadows of Duskwood. Her hooves, heavy as they were, made little sound against the soft darkened grass. The shimmer of fel magic dissipated and she was no longer cloaked in invisibility, unconcerned with remaining hidden now that the male had left.

“Sweetling?.. Little Aeda-bell...?” She mustered her sweetest tone which lingered low and heady; she was still a succubus. She frowned-disgusted at a puddle of recent sick by the door and waved a hand at the sharply dressed imp as he went about trying to clean it. Dropping to a half kneel and careful not to dirty herself; she spoke to her fellow fiend, flat-questioning and stern. “She is still inside? And whole?”

Gelkin, the imp in question, looked extremely displeased with his task and was made all the more-so by the interruption which would only slow him down. 

“Yes, yes. The miss is fine. Very sad. Yes, very sad. But fine.” He retorted quick and sharp in his small and shrill voice. He made to re-busy himself with the cleaning, nodding curtly in a dismissal of the larger demoness. 

That answer was satisfying enough for Helna that she felt confident walking into the shack. Its cozy fabric-lined walls, the smell of roses and sage, the cramped-closeness of everything inside the tiny one-room home made it feel more as a nest than a house. The elven woman was there. She was only a girl in the eyes of the towering demoness and a foolish girl at that, nearly a thousand years she’d spent defending this family. She’d watched, waited, and fought on their behalf. She’d obeyed commands from those lesser than her and it ripped through her with a bitterness she couldn’t express from within her old-summoned binds. She wore too many bells, Helna considered, as she often did. It made her all the more difficult to guard when she sounded like a wind-chime wandering among the trees. Quickly, as was her way in most things, she disregarded her own distaste for the girl’s decisions and set about her set task: The sworn and bound defense of this little damned thing. The girl sat in a pile of pillows, strewn across the floor, that had been tucked neatly into her basket-bed when Helna had left. What a weak and wretched thing she appeared to be; she’d wrapped herself in her blanket and lay curled on her side clinging tightly to a pillow as if the object had some comfort to offer her. Helna could only sigh, rolling her eyes with full knowledge that the girl would not look up and witness such scorn. “Athaeda-bell…” Helna spoke to the meek and whimpering creature who was her charge. Her voice was as kind as she could make it, in consequence, one who was listening might mistake it for a lover’s address. “You’ve made a mess, sweetling. Tell me, what happened?” It wasn’t a question that needed asking but Athaeda didn’t know that and Helna had been commanded to keep certain secrets. “Did the male upset you? Shall I go hunting for him?” She quite liked that thought as she spoke it. It had, after all, been so very long since that other poor boy had experienced her remorseless touch. She licked her lips at the thought and was unable to withhold her darkly-low chuckle as the elf gave her a look of concerned displeasure. 

“Don’t, Helna. Please… Not now.” Athaeda answered rather than addressing the query, tucking herself further into her own arms. 

The succubus refrained from rolling her eyes but the wave of lusting-fire that rippled through her core forced itself out in a huffed breath. “Athaeda… I’ve told you. I’ve told you every time you’ve brought a male home that they cannot be trusted. I’ve told you and your mother tried to tell you. Sweetling; foolish girl… When will you listen?” Her kind words remained but there was a razored warning-edge in them now.

 “What did you tell him? Something to kill his desire for you, certainly?” Helna had precious few chances to exercise her spite and did so with little reservation. “Did you inform him that you’ve been tainted? That you are no sweet maid but a ruined thing? Is that what repulsed him so? Made himself sick at the thought of you? I must say I’m impressed. I did not think you so skilled in the art revulsion, my little Aeda-bell!” She let the venom roll gleefully from her tongue, growing in enthusiasm as she prodded at the little elf in her suffering. 

Athaeda turned her gaze toward the succubus but kept her lying position in the space that had so recently been occupied by two rather than one. 

“Helna, must you always?..” The elf’s void-touched eyes looked little more than weary though tears clung, unshed, to her water-lines. “It wasn’t me that made him sick… and it’s cruel of you to say so.” 

Helna raised a naturally sculpted eyebrow at Athaeda and her red-painted pout twisted itself into a knowing-vicious smirk. Her tone shifted as well, lifting from it’s lover’s tenderness to one of mockery. “Well, I can hope, can’t I? That at least one of them will have some sense before I have to remove them? You surely won’t. Pleading-lonesome thing that you are, little sweetling. Do you think he saw it? The weakness in you? The reason I had to whisk you away, lest the lynx catch you and do all the worse for your attack on him?” There was blood in the water now, Helna knew. She’d struck a nerve and the elf would be in ruin for the rest of the night if she left it there. 

It saddened her that she couldn’t do exactly that, bound to her charge as she was, she took a breath and softened. Old magic kept her from being anything more than simply mean for meanness sake but if she was honest she did not despise the girl so. Rather, she found her slight nature and tender bearing bothersome to her own task and wished to see it dispelled. It was her thinking the best way to go about that was to break her of it, it would have to work eventually. 

Helna lowered herself down onto the dirt-packed floor and sat across from the teary eyed elf. Upward she brought her arms, gesturing for the girl to draw near. “You know I only say these things for fear of you. You are my responsibility, Aeda-bell. So, I ask again, must I hunt him? I could bring you whatever of him you wished to keep. Perhaps one of his eyes? You seemed very fond of them. Or.. Something else?” She tried very hard to refrain from laughing, it was a dark bit of humor and she enjoyed it thoroughly at Athaeda’s expense. 

“That isn’t funny…” Athaeda shook her head and while she did sit up and begin piling pillows back into their rightful place, she did not go to the monstrous feminine creature who was family to her. She kept the old blanket over her shoulders and stared at the succubus.

Helna felt slightly proud of her for that. There had been a time when the woman would’ve come to her. Would have laid against her as surely as she laid against her own mother. She made no motion to comfort her then, she was growing. It was slow, painfully so for the demoness, but it was happening. Perhaps this one would hurt her in the right ways. The ways the first had not. It was an interesting musing in the mind of the succubus. Perhaps this pair would be more entertaining to watch. Still, if pressed, she would do her duty. She always had. They all had.

“Will you rest tonight, sweetling?” She spoke calmly. “Or shall I have Gelkin light the incense and begin brewing your restful blend?”

Athaeda shook her head and her response was only a whisper. “I do not know that I will sleep. I do not know that I would welcome the dreams. No, I’ll be on my own tonight. You do as you will.”

“Very well. Goodnight, Athaeda. If sleep finds you, may it be a better lover than your newly scorned friend.” She rose up onto her hooves and left the shack without hesitating for anything more.

[athaeda]

hi! you popped up randomly on my dash but i figured i'd throw an ask you're way :)

how about #3 for the OC ask game?

((Hi there! 💜 Thank you so much and welcome to my little corner!

Athaeda's relationship with her childhood is complicated. So I'm going to break this up into a couple parts.~

If she could really, truly change something? Without limitation? She would make her mother a kinder person. Amaryl was a stone of a woman and deeply unforgiving of her daughter's sensitive nature.

If she could tell her younger self something? "Keep going. It won't always be like this. I know you're scared and I can't tell you that it gets easier. But it gets different. And it's worth it."))

[athaeda]

Letter To A Dead Man

Rhys was dead. He had been for years now. The mirror of herself. The reflection of her monster. The restless ship for whom she had served as lighthouse, and the lantern that had illuminated her own path forward. The man she had loved.

Athaeda sat in a desk chair, her legs pulled up to sit crisscross in the seat, void-silver orbs scanned the room around her before falling back on the open, blank page in front of her. This wasn't her journal. The ancient book that held not only her own memories but those of her ancestors going back for twelve generations of bastard daughters. This was his. All that was left of him. A book he had left in her possession, half filled with his personal research notes and musings on the void, the other half empty.

It felt as if the book was staring back at her, waiting, listening the way he used to. The pen in her hand felt heavy. She could feel the memory of his eyes on her, the way he used to search her for every hidden truth she wasn't yet prepared to unearth. Invasive, yes, but always gentle. Surgeon's hands. Careful.

The words flowed from her hand just as quiet tears from her eyes.

"Rhys,

You said I wouldn't lose you if I said no. I still believe you. I don't think you knew, when the carriage door closed and I watched you leave, that it was the last time you would ever lay eyes on me. It's a strange thing, isn't it? We decided that night that however much I loved you, and you me, it wasn't right. You wished me luck in finding him; a man whose approval I would seek in equal measure to his quest for my own, because you would never be him.

Light and shadows, forgive me, I wish you had been. I've tried to carry on, you understand. I think you would be pleased with some of the progress I've made. Prouder still that I accomplished it in your absence, without your encouragement, but as I sit alone I wonder what the point of any of it is. I spent my small years dreaming of love. I don't think I ever told you that, although you might've guessed. That I wanted to be different from my mother, and her mother, and her mother. That I wanted someone to stay. I thought love was the problem. Its absence. That I and my mother and back had all been children of passion rather than care.

But then you happened. And I felt love. And with it pain, confusion, fear. But still love. At the end of everything, always love. It still didn't matter. You still had to go.

I speak to others about you in the past tense now. I try to keep you out of my thoughts but sometimes it just doesn't work. Stars help me, I miss you. Even the parts that bothered me. The self righteous tone you would put on when you chastised my self flagellation. The smug little smirk you wore when arguing with your sister. I miss you. I miss you and I've been trying so hard to imagine that I don't because no one wants to deal with a weeping woman.

It's you I'm learning from. Even now. Your notes, your ideas, your experiments. I'm going to keep going. I promise.

-Your lighthouse."

[athaeda]

A Broken Chain; Freedom is Lonely

It had happened. Awake and aware, eyes like stars looked towards the horizon. So much had changed. Memories lost and others found. A chain forged across generations had been sundered much as the world had been at its creation. But this newfound freedom... Is it to be taken alone? To what end? What is the purpose of wings if one takes to the sky in solitude? She had ever been wary of heights. The breaker of binds had done so only to leave her? Perhaps mother was right... All love is temporary. Even the kind which saves you.