Warnings: Sexual Themes/Acts - Alcohol/Substance Use - Eludes to Traumatic Past / SA. Forced Servitude.. probably others that I'm forgetting.
The pirate lay on his back, staring up at Beledar as it shifted dark. The night had been a strange sort of wicked to him, he'd meant to take a dip in for the sake of a drink, and possibly a touch of flirting.. but what he had seen...
He couldn't stay. Not for the full show, not for the dancing afterwards. No, he'd nearly instantly shadow-stepped back to Dornogol, picking up a few things from his ship along the shore. A change of clothes, a large bottle from his personal stock... and a cigar box. These ones free of the poison that he knew those he had grown close to would scream at him for... these ones designed for one thing alone... make him forget who he was for a while... He'd traveled away from the town, along the rocky cliffs that overlooked the valley. Far out of the reach of Kobyss, of Nerubians... and even the Arathi or their other guests. Tucked up into an alcove, he stared at what amounted to the sky, removing the patch from his scarred eye, bright sapphire shining out next to it's jade twin. Popping open the cork on the bottle of whiskey, he poured himself a glass, swirling it, before setting it aside to pluck out a cigar with a dark purple wrap, smelling heavily of the opiates he used to oh so favor, along with a heavy currant undertone.
Lighting the cigar, he took a deep drink from his glass... then raised the strongly scented object to his lips, Inhaling, sharply, before leaning back, glass in one hand, and cigar in the other, allowing his eyes to drift closed.
~*~
"Professor Duskember, so glad you could make it. Dining will be at eight in the Great Hall, followed by a Ball shortly after, which will last most of the night. This evening's entertainment will be provided by the Therandian Quartet, and my dear collection of hosts and hostesses."
A figure comes into view in the haze of darkness, always the same bright smile, that so many warmed to, that sent a chill through to Jarethius's Core. A single gesture from the nobleman and he felt himself stepping forwards, offering a low, sweeping bow to the older gentleman as he was introduced.
"Jarethius here will see to your every need during your stay, Professor. I assure you he is one of my -best-. Well trained and eager to please."
Bowing at the waist, mismatched eyes met, and held the magister before him's gaze. The man looked to be an older elf, though not quite fully past his prime, he was beginning to show sign at the edges of his eyes. He had a kind face. From experience he knew that could be either good... or far more sinsiter than he dared think about. For now, he simply smiled, and with all the practice and precision he could muster, he slipped into the role required of him. "It is a pleasure to serve you this eve."
~*~
The memory was a dull ache amidst the haze, another drink, another deep draw on his cigar... The crack of a whip, the show he had run from.. and back to the memory...chasing the dragon to forget the present...
~*~
"Tell me about yourself, Jarethius..." The pair was walking through the large gardens of his master's estate, slow, calculated movements as the music played on within. The mage was looking at him with such a curious expression, he spoke in turn. "You have much potential beyond whatever this is, you know."
"I am not certain what there is to tell, Sir. My name is Jarethius, though I have been referred to by many other things. I am trained in the use of swords, pistols, and on occasion bows. Daggers, too, come with ease. I am skilled in court etiquette and sentry work. I have been a body guard, a taste-tester, and of course, as with tonight, an escort." He paused in a particularly floral archway, the roses, black with crimson tips along their petals, towering around them. His voice lowered as he shook his head, a hint of reddened marks shining just above the collar of his shirt as his hair swayed, before he pulled it back over the marks. "I am in my place, Sir. I know this well. But I thank you, for the compliment." He had to make a good impression. It had been drilled into him that morning. This was the professor his master wanted to teach his children. Make a good impression. Don't swive it up. Make him pleased before the business dealings... or suffer the consequences of failure.
~*~
Jarethius shifted on his back, his gaze slowly opening once more to stare at the shadow-clad crystal in the cavern's ceiling. The opiates were doing their job... and he was sinking further into the memory, the cross-fading haze taking him after denying himself for weeks.
~*~
He trembled as fingertips brushed across the lattice-work of red marks, some entirely too fresh, upon his back, his eyes squeezing shut as the mage spoke quietly. "I could heal these for you... I've dabbled in the priestly arts, and alchemy both, in my day...Though with that potential for darker magics that's inside you.. it might hurt you..."
"They don't bother me. Pain and pleasure... they are both.. attention." He lied, quickly, without thinking, as he turned to face the magister, slipping to his knees beside the bench upon which they sat, his hands sliding to rest lightly on silken robe clad thighs. "And... Please forgive me.. I do not wish to correct you Sir, but.. you are mistaken. I have no magical ability, trained or otherwise. My brother .. My brother received all of the ability of our line... and all of the privilege.. it.. It is why I serve. All that I am.. is a man.. The man you see before you.. who wishes to please you." His voice was soft, but strong, his gaze never looking away, not once. training keeping the mask heavily in place. This was his life now, and he was good at it.. if the professor would just stop digging and let him show him. Then, his master would be pleased.
~*~
Jareth groaned, arching slightly as the memories took a turn.. the pirate's breath catching as he envisioned hands upon skin, far less scarred then, save for his back.. the shadows around him moving, as he lay in the alcove, mimicking motions echoing in his drugged, hazy, half-dream.
~*~
"Down the side hall, back of the garden. He keeps me away from the others because of my prior status." The admission was quiet as he led the magister through the halls. Few along their journey bore similar marks, indeed, it seemed as if only Jareth held such 'gifts'... was he the only one the man struck? There was little time to express that question as Jareth led the man into his room. There was a large, round bed in the center, curtains hanging from the ceiling, barely hiding the chains that also hung there, the edges of the comforter hiding the ones that came out from under the bed. In the next room, left viewable from the bed, was the bath, a large number that one had to step down into, and a small porcelain toilet beside it, all viewable from anywhere in the room. To the casual observer, the idea of this room would be clear. If someone was in this room with the young man, they would see anything and everything he tried to do. It was an over glorified prison cell.
"Do they chain you to the bed when you sleep?"
"Not when I sleep, No."
~*~
The shadows removed what was left of his cigar and the drink from his hands, setting them to the side, before drawing the pirate's hands above his head, pinning them there as his memory played out the sensation of chains being wrapped around his wrists, the sensation of soft pillows beneath his form, legs splayed akimbo and pinned as....
Another low groan left him as his half lidded gaze stared into the open air above his form, hands bound, magic doing what those hands did not, raking and clawing, biting.. all without leaving marks, the *sensation* enough to send him into a wicked spiral as various figures appeared in that hazy vision... Recent faces seen.. The gentle touch mingled with wicked strikes, his breath catching again as he arched, a particular face clouding his drug-addled mind as the shadows brought that peak he sought... before collapsing back against the stone with a low growl.
Laying, panting for breath, he hissed as Beledar began to shift to light and the darkness fled once more. Sitting up, he grumbled. He'd never get that with him... Lucien... The boy was too gentle.. too sweet.. an open heart and a helper's nature... and the kind of aggression that was so hard wired into Jarethius at this point was something so very few could give. He sighed. He was going to have to clean up and sober up before he could return to that inn room. Lucien didn't like the smell.
But for now....
He peered to the side at the rest of that bottle.
For now, another drink.
Magolor's ears perked up at the sound of the other's voice. Looking up from his desk and the paperwork he was working on, he greeted the newcomer with a smile.
"Hello hello, and welcome to Merry Magoland! Home to the very best theme park games in the universe!"
"I assure you, all of the attractions here are completely safe, with only a 2.285% chance of death!"
The sound of an exploding bomb went off in the distance, coming from one of the attractions.
"Totally harmless!!"
The mage clapped his hands together, his grin (...did it feel this sinister a minute ago?) never faltering in the slightest.
"Go on, now! Check out anything and everything that catches your eye! And if you'd like to purchase some fun masks, talk to the Waddle Dee vendor running that cart on your left!"
Ah, this person had said they wanted to say 'hi' to everyone, right?
"Oh, and if you're looking for any of my friends, I'm sure they're still here having a blast playing my games, hehe!" Perhaps even literally!
When I dream about the fragmented memories I have about my past they collide with each other to form strange things.I know the dreams aren’t real, but the me in the dream continues on heedless.
There are no faces but mine in these dreams. No colour to them save for shades of black, white, and grey. No sound either, but I react in the dream as if it was It is a patchy landscape.
In the dream I was sitting atop rubble watching a sea of grass as the wind blew. The grass flowed like water beneath the wind’s gentle caress and I had, for a moment, peace. The me in the dream heard noise and so I turned to greet a person I could not see. It wa as their very image had been torn out of my dream. Like a piece of paper torn out.
I remember putting a finger to my lips. I am certain I asked if they came to find me. They spoke but the me in the dream just chuckled and asked them not to tell ‘our favourite healer’. I realised then that the me in the dream had bandages wrapped around their abdomen. I could feel the trickle of blood as it creeped between stitches. What injured me to that point I do not know. A fall? Emergency field surgery?
In the dream I complained I could not sleep with the medicine the healer had given me- it gave me nightmares and sleeping was difficult. My companion responded and I gave my most charming smile despite the pain.
I promised them a song and a song I gave, playing my lyre despite the pain. I remember seeing the grass flow like water. The companion that had come up to turned and further down the hill another companion came up. Their face scratched out but the dream self that was me winced. The healer, I think.
The dream was peaceful enough. But it wasn’t me. I dreamed another when that one faded away. It was a birthday party. So many excited faces, so many streamers hanging wherever they could be tacked on. There was a conjured animal covered in fur. It felt like it could have been real, and not just a strange dream. Though the memory of that drips through my fingers like water and I have lost most of it.
I write it down now, hoping to find some sort of connection between the scraps of memory. But are any of them real? My mentor was real, but I feel like I’ve still lost a lot of that as the curse had ‘fed’ throughout the decade since we parted.
There’s a scene in a play called ‘Lost among the Waves’ where the amnesiac character screams to the sky and demands to know who he was, what he was.
I think about it sometimes. But more often, I think that, to me, it doesn’t matter. I am not dead. Why do I even make room in my mind for such nonsense? Even if I regained who I was, am I hoping I feel something more? Or less? These notes are nothing more than the notes of a cursed elf who has been far luckier than they deserve to be.
Strange thoughts come with strange dreams, I suppose.
Before this place was the winery it is today - before it was an opera house, even - it was just a bare expanse of tidepools and sandbar. A little higher up, maybe a few trees and grasses to keep the entire island from washing out with the tide.
Until one day, a pair of brothers rowed over from the mainland. The eldest was called Merlgeiss, and his younger brother: Keltanth.
They'd heard there was a fortune, you see, buried somewhere on the dunes. And so they'd brought supplies and shovels, and a dream they'd packed for themselves in the bottom of their rucksacks, of becoming wealthy men.
So when they hit ground, they made camp, and got up at first light with their shovels to dig. And dig they did, from sunrise to sunset. For sennights at a time, until their hands were cracked and blistered and their backs stiff and stooped. And at night, they ate hardtack and the freshwater they caught with the rain, and in the morning they began again.
They never found the pirate's buried hoard that had brought them there. Not in gold and jewels, at least. But they dug in the earth, and they turned over the sand all through the winter until the loam underneath began to show.
And in the spring, they readied their shovels again, only to stop as they saw something winding through the soil that wasn't seagrass or the roots of a tree.
Just a wild La Noscean grape vine, struggling for the sun. The seeds washed in by the sea, or carried there by some bird.
They knew then that, with some work, they'd found something just as good as gold.
It was several more long seasons of toiling before anything came of it. One single vine that turned into two, and three, and at last rows of them, green and purple in the sunlight. The first harvest, pressed and crushed and storedin the first barrel that's said to have been fashioned from the planks of the rowboat that had first carried them to the shore.
And when they decanted that first bottle, they knew that this had to be the treasure they had come seeking.
In the years before the Calamity, the two brothers' vintages were widely known up and down the coast. Pirate lords and rich merchants alike paid well to have bottles in their larders. The famous culinarians in the city competed to invent dishes to pair with them. And the brothers' made enough fortune that they could bring in workers to till the fields, and builders to build casks as well as buildings to house everyone. Before long, they had more money than they could count by themselves.
But as their fortune and fame grew, it seemed to eat away at the simple camaraderie that had brought them here in the first place. That which had seen them through all those days and nights of hardship eroded just as a seacoast will if it has nothing planted in it to keep it fast.
The workers would say, later, how they'd heard the pair quarreling late at night. Their raised voices constantly bickering about something - about the money, the business and what to do with it. The most anyone could report was that they disagreed about the place's future. One of them wanted to sell it and settle to an easy life. The other thought they were only at the beginning of what they could gain.
Unfortunately, the argument never resolved itself. One morning, the workers who rose early found the body of the eldest brother, Merlgeiss, lying on the sand, half-carried out by the tide. His body bore the marks of a violent struggle. The crabs and the gulls had already started to move in.
Not a day later, the Yellowjackets picked up Kelthanth, the younger brother, wearing his elder brother's jacket, trying to book passage out of Wineport with nothing but gil in his luggage. Whatever happened, he refused to say, but his guilt was plain to anyone looking. He went to the hangman without breathing a word as to why.
It wasn't so long after that that the Calamity washed the entire place out to sea. The rich earth was re-settled in the years afterwards. An opera house, and then, by some grand coincidence, another vineyard broke ground.
But it's said still that Merlgeiss' spirit is restless still, and wanders up and down the coast and in through the grapevines. And sometimes, even into the house itself, as if ceaselessly searching for that treasure he'd had and lost. Or at the very least, a glass of wine for his parched soul.
So: if you happen to wander through the winery late at night and find something out of place - let’s say a wine glass that someone seems to have forgotten. The staff seem to have neglected to pick it up.
I just heard the hull grinded into the shore, bags and crates tossed before we had even stopped moving. I thought we were headed to another port but for some reason we landed here. I’m worried. I know I shouldn’t have taken the contract just like you said but I wanted needed to do something. I couldn’t sit there any longer waiting for word that anything had changed.. That anyone had come home. Maybe we will find someone here. I don’t know ⚫ what to write anymore. I wish there was some trace of you, something to know if I should still keep holding on to hope. I miss you dad. - K
I’m doing well with my studies and learning a lot. The weather, well I could use a pair of lighter clothes if you can manage to send it. Between the humid air and heat in the kitchen I keep melting faster than my chocolate. Oh, speaking of which I learned to create another interesting treat that might be a decent seller back home. If you drag melted chocolate over top of one another and add in other things like candy, nuts, sprinkles, fruit, honestly anything on top it makes for a really simple way to use up extras and people here will buy it as gifts. I’m sure others back home might buy something like that if they have a little extra coin. I’ll try and send some the next time I write. I miss you ma. - B
He hasn't settled for hours now, constantly pacing and watching. He seems agitated, more than normal but still unlikely to be a threat to the tribe. I’m fine to watch him alone, call the other off. And avoid sending anyone else this way after that, his senses are still heightened and.. Just leave me to keep watch. Likely just needs time for it to run out of his system and I’m sure he will be fine by morning. Promise me to keep the other safe until I return, I’m sorry to have left you like I did but I couldn’t risk anything more happening. I’m sorry S, I’ll explain in the morning. Please don’t be mad. - W’K
[Muse Monday!] Hi, Mahala! Not to dig up potential drama and pain, but let’s say the ritual you were planning way back when you first came to your family’s estate worked. Would you have found the answers you were looking for, do you think? Or is what happened instead far more . . . enlightening? 8)
It seems I will get some of the answers I was looking for, albeit from a different route. Instead of gaining clarity from my mother, who I'm learning lied quite a bit while she was alive, I'm discovering that family is more than blood. I'm not sure she would have been honest had I summoned her. She'd had 25 years to tell me the truth, but hadn't. I'm not sure death would have helped her loosen her tongue.
It seems that Vollrath *lowers eyes and blushes before clearing throat* for all his dominant and stubborn ways, did save me from more than one thing that night. The world he brought me into isn't a safe one, but I feel completely safe with him. Elmar and Baldur are growing on me too. *chuckles softly with an affectionate smile* Although, next to Vol, the biggest thing I've gained is Balor. Maybe I wasn't the one meant to get healing and closure that night. *soft smile* Maybe I was the one meant to bridge the gap and mend the rift between brothers in a way they couldn't do themselves.
In the end, even with all that is to come because of meeting Vollrath, I prefer this way. I will have my truth. I will have family. And I know that the three who stand at my side will never betray me. That is more than I can say for any that ever resided in the Codona mansion. *warm smile*
