TFWW Challenge (Chapter 3)
Those lips. They are the first things I see in the moonlight. It streams into the room, covering everything it touches with a pale milky hue, including my face which stares back at me in the reflection of the mirror. I can’t help but continue to look.
These lips are stained blue now from the overindulgence of my blackened drink. They look bruised, or dead. There is no more pink in them left and I cannot remember what they looked like when there was any. The memories are long gone. I touch the flesh tentatively, reminding myself that I am due for another goblet of shade of the evening.
But my eyes do not falter.
Rather, they move upward, to the patch that stretches across my face. My left eye. Hidden from the world so that no one can look upon it. There was once a time that it glared on any man foolish to cross my path but now… now it is concealed. The rumors that add to it are endless. Anyone who stares at the crow’s eye will go mad, just like Aeron, they all whisper. The fear growing in the hearts of everyone who looks on me is laughable enough, but the uncertainty that the hidden eye harbors? I could not ask for a better intimidator.
The moon colors my skin in its radiance, but it is unmistakably tanned and salted. Days on the Silence have made it this way. Days in exile made it this way. With no choice but to roam the open seas, I had seen with my own eyes countless lands and people, all who I forced to bow to my will.
I stroke my beard, longer now than I have it normally. It follows my jawline; that jaw which is thick like my brothers’. We all share the same, strong jaw, passed down by our father. That is the only thing we share.
“Well, that and wives…” I muse to myself, memories of Victarion’s late wife invading my thoughts.
Lastly, I look at my right eye, the piercing blue iris gazing right back at me. It is stark in the moonshine, but in the day’s light it can silence any man or woman. My cruelty wells there, showing my true nature to those who do not know me. Behind it, however, my plans are never revealed.
Black hair falls into my face and I brush it aside. The night grows later but I cannot rest. Sleep will not find me tonight. Visions haunt my dreams and only the drink will soothe my panics. Another cup, another night. My plans must not be interfered with; all the variables must be seen.
I tear myself away from the mirror and reach for my goblet.
