05: A memory that your character wishes to erase
The flames seem to eataway at the walls, and they make Seren cower in her corner, wrap her armstightly around her lithe frame. She’s frightened, in a way in which she can’t rememberever having been before. How can rock burn? It takes her a full minute ofpondering to realize that it’s not the rocks that burn – it’s the decorationson the wall, the tapestries, the paintings, the wooden appliques. Then, in hermind, Crysanthe’s smiling face appears – for just a moment, before the imagecontorts, and the figure parts her lips in a soundless scream, and, all of asudden, Seren is up on her feet, because she needs to find her best friend. Shecan’t let her alone in this blazing inferno.
When she rushes pastthe double doors (wooden, flaming, so hot that she feels her cheeks bitten bythe flames she passes by), she can hear the shouts of the soldiers that seem tohave swallowed the castle, but she doesn’t stop. She runs, and runs, towardsthe teyrn’s apartments, hoping that there was where she’d be able to findCrysanthe. But she isn’t there, and, after searching all of the rooms, all shecan find is the bodies of Oriana and Oren – Crysanthe’s sister-in-law and hernephew, stabbed to death.
She turns around, bilerising up in her throat, but she doesn’t pause, doesn’t allow herself to besick. She starts running again, aimlessly this time, until she’s abruptly draggedto the halt by the sound of a woman’s scream, a voice so familiar to her thattears jerk out of her eyes before she can even see her mother’s face. But she’stoo late. Much too late, and life is pouring out of Lanaya’s body quicker thanshe’d ever be able to charm back in. Youfailed her, Seren. Like always.
08: Something that makes your character laugh
Many things – almost everything, really. She’s learned earlythat laughter can prevent people from asking questions, because, really, who’sgoing to think that a child who laughs all the time could be sad, ortraumatized in any way? With Seren, laughter is almost as good as words,because she’s got a different kind of laughter for everything – she can biteand heal and warm with it just as well as she can with spells. But she can’tcome through with it, not really, she’s never been very good at being trueabout the things she doesn’t want tolaugh about.