#odelyn versai

[many-voices]

The Hermit in Reverse: When has your character felt the most alone?

Efren gives Shiloh a sheepish look.  To every question of hers, he offers such serious replies, and this will be no different.  “After my father’s will was read. When he gave everything to his widow ( @odelynv ) instead of me.  Stripped me of my birthright, my legacy, the company…” 

He smiles slightly, mirthlessly.  “And she kept it. And offered me a job there. A job at the company that bore my name.” 

“I have never felt so small as in that moment, and that’s in a lifetime of being told to be small.”

( @efren-sorenze )

[efren-sorenze]

Love & Sorrow

The stationery bears a simple, elegant logo of a half-unrolled bolt of cloth, and in a restrained font beneath reads, “Braga Fine Cloth.”  By contrast, the handwriting below is spiky and sharp, far more hurried and less controlled than the script in which Efren usually writes his letters.

Dear Odelyn,

What words can I offer you, except that I’m sorry, beyond sorry, for ever having hurt you.  That arm, that injury -- I have nightmares still, with my face imposed on Father’s like a misty mask.  I am sorry.  No words are sufficient.

And what I said in the Brandstorm -- what I think I said in the Brandstorm -- that too is true, and insufficient.  Odelyn, you have to know, you have to realize how ardently I care for you, and how stupid I’ve been in burying it beneath anger and resentment.  You protected yourself when I couldn’t. You supported yourself when you had no idea if I could or would. 

I build the business.  I give you time.  Space.  I won’t storm you with letters, I won’t storm you at all.  I won’t pretend I know what you want, or if you want it from me.  But the words stand:  I’m sorry, and I love you.  What you make of them is entirely in your hands, but I couldn’t not say them and live with myself.

Whatever choice you make, whenever or if you choose to see me, Odelyn.  Odelyn.  My anger is gone entirely.  I only wish you joy.

Efren

@odelynv

[many-voices]

Situation: Efren receives an invite for Odelyn's wedding.

(( Oh right, I still have asks.  DARK ANGSTY ASKS.))

The paper caught fire with ease.  His old schoolmasters at Alcara would have been both disappointed and unsurprised by how quickly the flame sparked after he read the words.

He couldn’t even be angry, not at her.  He hoped this new husband provided the kindness his father had not.  Efren had no doubt the new husband would add to Odelyn’s riches, since that’s what she seemed to want from the commitment.

He flicked the burning paper into the nearby fireplace and walked on numb legs over to his new desk at his uncle’s Lion’s Arch office.  You need a serious office, his uncle had said.  So you look like a man of means.  Look like.  Only ‘look like,’ because he was not, and if he had been, maybe she wouldn’t have found this new patron.  This new owner.

He set his palms flat on the desk and deepened his breathing in a futile search for control.  When the temperature in the room seemed to fade, when his mouth tasted the Arch’s salt-laden humidity instead of a desert’s fierce heat, he slowly straightened and lifted his hands from the desk.  Two handprints scorched the wood.

When he barked his new assistant’s name, she peered warily into the room. “Send my stepmother my regrets,” he rasped.  “I believe I am busy that day.”

( @odelynv )

[many-voices]

V- Vengeance - have they ever wanted vengeance on someone (Efren)

His father.  Without a doubt, his father.  The man who sent him away to Alscara rather than deal with the hot-headed young elementalist.  The man who married Odelyn and then brutalized her body and heart.  The man who chose, even after death, to deny Efren his birthright.

For a while, he wanted vengeance on @odelynv as well – after all, she took his coin, his inheritance, and ran with it.  But alongside his infatuation with his father’s very young widow, how could Efren begrudge her a comfortable happiness after all that was done to her?

These days, he knows where he stands.  His father Javier is dead.  Odelyn doesn’t love him, but left a crack open in that doorway.  Elona is full of weavers and spinners whose products he can peddle in Kryta.  Even his magic develops, weaving together air and water, fire and earth, in a cavalcade of power even he can’t imagine.

He’s coming in to his own now, and though he still has bloody dreams of revenge, they’re fewer.  These days, he’s actually beginning to look ahead.

( @efren-sorenze )

[many-voices]

💭 Odelyn

“My father, fool that he was, thought he could dress her like a doll, command obedience like a doll, toss her broken in the corner like a doll when she wasn’t pleasing.  And she’d yield to all of it.  But…”  Efren shakes his head stubbornly. “No.  That doesn’t mean she’s not strong.  It means she was patient and she was smart.  She turned a few years of misery into a life of ease.  She’s stronger than you think.”

[encyclopedia-faceclaimia]

Name:  Versai, Odelyn Player:  Mekarah.9834 Tumblr:  odelynv.tumblr.com Active:  Yes Main:  Yes Faceclaim:  Alejandra Alonso

[many-voices]

for dreams, assuming i understand the prompt: how about aia waltzing through hamish's subconscious? or odelyn through efren's? whoever you wish to torture.

(oh how you know me. <3 let’s torture.)

Fresh, crisp linen.  That’s where he always imagines her, and so here she is. Her dress is a delicate eggshell confection; her hair is unbound and graced by the late Zephyr sun.

She doesn’t sprawl languidly, not his Odelyn - even in rest, there’s something self-contained about her, a tiny piece of her not meant to be touched.  He supposes it should bother him, but it impresses him instead: even battered by his family or subtly shamed by her own, she found refuge within herself and built the walls both beautifully and high.

The smile that greets him is gentle.  The arm reaching out to him is long and pale.  “I was reading,” she says.  The book in Efren’s arms is a weighty one, and he recognizes it from its pedestal in the old estate library.  Her fingernail taps a drawing.  “Look.”

The family tree branches back and back.  Her voice sounds at his ear.  “Did you really think I’d want my name to show up twice?”  Impossibly, her voice moves to his other ear while her lips still brush against the first.  “Who loves his father’s wife?”  Together, in both ears:  “Unnatural.”

She twists onto his lap and begins to unbutton that delicate dress.  Beyond is another layer and another, buttons and dresses, eggshell and ivory and cream, until a bundle of bound twigs drops onto fresh, crisp linen and the sun dips down and away.

( @odelynv - what would she dream about him? )

( cross-posted to @efren-sorenze )

[many-voices]

[Efren] A Letter

( @odelynv )

Dearest Odelyn,

It was so lovely to see you at the summer house, and I’m a terrible friend for not writing promptly to tell you how thrilled I was with your presence.  I’m sorry for the awkwardness that ensued, especially between you and Mr. Sorenze!  You may note a bit of distance in my words now, and for good reason -- Efren was meant to be my betrothed, and now -- Odie, you have to help me!

It’s just -- well, it’s all sort of awful.  He refused Father’s assumption of his debts, that you know.  He tried to gain my hand anyway, but Father’s ever so stubborn, and not the sort at all to budge once he’s dug in his heels.  But then, as an even worse calamity, Father says he began receiving reports that Efren is looking into us.  Our family.  

Why would he do that?  It’s ridiculous.  We’re one of the oldest families in Ascalon, high in trades for centuries!  Mother and I say we’ve nothing to hide, and to just talk to Efren, but Father says it’s galling and dishonorable to be examined, and he has a mind to call the Seraph down on Efren for ...well, I don’t know if there’s a thing one could accuse him of doing, but it’s unpleasant, and every day Father hates him more, and it’s just terrible.

I should just cut him free, but I fear he’d sink without our good coin, and we did have an understanding, him and I.  Won’t you speak to him, dearest Odelyn? Dearest, finest Odelyn?  All he has to do is just bend a little!  Just a little!  He’ll have everything he’s ever wanted, and all he has to do is bend!

Your dearest friend, in great desperation,

Jennet Cauley