names hold power & power generally lies in the hands of the one who possesses them. ever since she has set foot in the fae realm, she has known she would lose herself to the rhythm of anyone pronouncing her true name, for humans are so weak to the clinking syllables of their own identity. she knew she would follow whoever possessed that sound, because that sound was her, in a way so little things are. that is why, upon arrival, malborne gave her a new name, a fierce name, a name of consonants too harsh to pronounce, a name that would make her part of his world more than anything else. elise became ishtar & so the story went. [ 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚋𝚎 𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚍𝚘 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚢𝚘𝚞, 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚋𝚎 𝚑𝚞𝚛𝚝 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚊𝚗𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚋𝚎 𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚎𝚍 ] well, malborne was wrong ; simon did not possess her name & still found a way to commit both. ultimately, that is what makes her yield __ the realization of the dichotomy between her simon & whoever is standing before her. power of his name coursing through the sounds like a curse (how alastor means more than simon, how one lost his lively shine & the other grew up to be a man) it is a sad realization, which has the very same feeling as standing under the rain with denuded shoulders, water on angular collar bones before finding the soft curve of breasts ; the harshness of a confession, and the slow resignation. « if that is your wish, then you shall be named alastor. » in the prophet’s mouth, words often sound like they have been stolen from ancient scriptures : every term is bound to be a performative act or a magic spell. what she tells becomes reality without any gesture of the wrist, for she is more special than any ritual. her voice lacks intonation, nothing but pure power flowing from one word to the next : history being rewritten, the second thread of fate finally finding its hero. after comes a silence, a moment of mourning. (another, another, in a long list of deceased names … when will it cease ?)
there is no one waiting for ishtar : in fact, there has not been for a long time now. moments have passed excruciatingly slowly, each new day blending into the next one. each new dawn another punition, for it has to be witnessed alone. as a child, she used to sit on a cushion outside, hands plucking out grass, with malborne sipping his floral tea while telling her about his affairs of the day, as if she was a tiny adult interested in the on-going events of the kingdom. once a teen, he did not stop, hoping she would take his place as counsellor, for there was no one with such an acute understanding of fate and the stars as the girl who had been cursed to be their eternal witness. but malborne is gone and with him everyone she held dear : those who did not die ran away, and those who ran away want little to do with her. too loud is the magic of the human child (a scream, a wail !!) none of the soft melodies that the faes sing to lead you astray. perhaps that is why she has not left alastor already : she remembers companionship the same way one would remember the taste of a peach. sweet … exquisite, really, and yet gone too fast. truth be told, she is starving : she’d taste anything. yet the bitter realization comes every time __ none makes her as happy as this one had, and now that time has come & gone, she wonders if perhaps she did not invent how soft it was in her hands, and how good it tasted. so the girl stays, simple bystander, looking at the rotten peach of their childhood … thinking about how terrible, stupid & reckless it would be to sink her teeth into it, once again. [ 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚢𝚎𝚝, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚢𝚎𝚝 ! 𝚒𝚜 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝚊 𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚘𝚏 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 ? ]
there had been a lot of dreaming about becoming a gentler creature / she would be now incapable to point out when the goal became a fantasy. « i see why ___ may i remind you, i too had to run away from a home in which i would never fit. » he is a story she has dreamt into existence : if once upon a time they were deemed fever dreams, it is fairly evident now that the prophecy that drew her here is the same one that woke her up for months. perhaps the sorceress does not understand what made the boy she loved turn into the man she now faces. but she has seen it happen all the same. dreams & reality sewn back together in a grotesque picture she wants to turn away from. he opened the door to a new fate (one in which her absence is so loud there is no mistaking it for anything else) : maybe her anger is nothing but jealousy. his choice made it impossible for her to have any. « do you think that is why i resent you ? » eyes possess the curiosity of a doctor studying a wound ; gash of red under a bright light, while human hands hope to understand how flesh and muscles heal & rejoin as one. she often thinks about the similarities between the bodies & the people in them, all a wonderful complew work of synapses & muscles & bones. but she fears that perhaps she has been struck down one too many times (life goes on & you survive it as a mess of broken parts)
« i do not blame you for tricking fate. had the situation been different, i would be proud. » it is no confession, for she has always been quick to applaud any of his deeds. it did not matter to her that he was princely or magical ; she cared that he was kind, that he was there, that when he did something unthinkable, his eyes always found her first, pride shared in the collision of their stares. cannot she resent him for having forgotten this ___ her, oh so easily ? « i only care that when you left you did not look back. i … waited. for you. i thought that if truly you had escaped, you would have found a way to send a missive. » simon always found a way : there was a reason why he was the hero of all their little fantaisies. « everything fell apart once you were gone. i do not resent you for your freedom, i resent the price we had to pay for you to gain it. »
a step & they are too close ; a single point on a map that leads to nowhere. a moment in time, where names matter very little & stories matter even less. there is no point in telling them, for time has passed like waves on the shores, destroying any evidence of them existing. he is simon / alastor / something else entirely. she ishtar / elise / a proof of the past. she would like to tell him that his delusions were met with others, and that the whole kingdom shared his bated breath, hoping the child would not be crowned. but all she can think about is how, if offered the opportunity, she would not hesitate to plunge a sword into malya’s guts [justice paid in blood] ___ despite how, thinking about him, her hands would certainly halt before death could strike. she says none of those things. « if they were ready to steal away your childhood, what made you think they would not steal hers ? »
a shared breath ; her hand rises, and while he shudders she does not. she is marble, stoic & terrible, lost in the idea that her hand met flesh & did not go through the memory of this man. she had thought that perhaps, this was another dream / another trick, and that as always she would not reach him ; he would be gone as he always was & she would be alone as she always was. but he is here, warm under her touch, and that alone makes her want to scream. he is here, and no longer hers, a stranger asking for answers she does not possess. fingers trap her hand where it lies, eyes getting sadder every new moment of this slow, impossible dance they seem to be losing themselves in. « yet the child grew up, and you did not find your way back. » a coward’s choice seems indeed to make the man a coward. her touch is cold but her voice is colder ; an infinite winter he was not there to suffer in. « you would have known, then, that your sister took my father’s life, among others. » a pause, eyes close briefly. « i reckon not all of us could afford to be cowards to save our lives. »
you do not know that boy anymore : his childhood had turned into a corpse, the rotting leftovers of a better boy [ WOULD ALASTOR HAVE HELD THE WEIGHT WITH EAGER HANDS? --- a throne, a monarch, the world bowing before him as if he were worthy of such appreciation ]. he remembers every etiquette lesson, every hollow dancehall parting for their young prince, every friend kept from him beneath the horror of the crown. AND IN EVERY MEMORY STOOD A SINGLE LIGHT --- a child dragged free from another world, a girl who did not shy from him ( he supposes he loved her in that honey - sweet way that all children loved their first friend ; she had glowed beside him, a little hand to guide him forth, a sense of strength pulsing in her fingertips and landing in his chest --- the world had truly been theirs ). there would have been happiness without her, of course [ AND THERE HAD BEEN HAPPINESS AFTER HER, AN OVERFLOW OF IT, A LIFE REWRITTEN WITH ICHOR - STAINED HANDS ]. but there would have been little spirit, little triumph, without her by his side. A MEMORY SPRUNG FORTH FROM A HEAD THAT IS DAISY - DOWNED : two little children buried in the rose - bush arch, the walking gardens stretching around them in infinite bliss, his hand touching light at the soft roundness of her ears ( her hand reaching out with just as much cherry - sweetness to touch the point of his own, a moment spent revelling in their differences ). with her voice, the godliness of a confessor tainting his sins into something far worse, those memories feel flimsier than time itself --- HAD THEY REALLY EXISTED WITH SO MUCH LOVE BLOSSOMING INSIDE OF THEM? he was colder now ( it is so cold here ). ‘ you make it sound so utterly brutal when you say it. IT’S A HERO’S NAME, ISN’T IT? a sweet one --- a kind one, even. not one to be said with such [ ... ] coldness. ‘ how sad his voice had become in wishing for the sweet caress of his name upon her lips, to dull the brutality that had laced it.
he wonders about her life, how it could look now : these thoughts have plagued him before, the endless tale of ishtar playing in his mind ( he had willed happier futures for her and thought that would be enough --- to believe he could alter her life with enough wishful thinking, drown out the lilac - bloodied horrors that might have touched her ). BECAUSE IT WAS ISHTAR --- a girl who had walked with the fae and survived, the bubbling sweetness of a girl laid bare beneath the wandering gaze of hungry creatures [ their mouths were gaping open in a desperation for peach pit humanity, to devour this little human girl whole until nothing remained but the scraps --- HAD SHE FINALLY BEEN EATEN UP? ]. he had thought she would be married, whisked up in some romantic fancy with a gentleman of noble repute. of course, she would harbour a soft spot for the childhood haze that had been their friendship, a little part of her heart carved out just for him ( HOW LAUGHABLE TO THINK ABOUT NOW --- when his heart still held space for her and she had cut him off so entirely from her own ). perhaps she would have had children, or be seeing the world on grand adventures, or everything, or nothing --- a happy little life tucked away in some tiny village, far from anything that could hurt her. AND THE GRAND DELUSIONS, THE ONES THAT HAD FADED WITH AGE : that perhaps she was in trouble. nothing life - threatening, nothing that could truly cause her harm, but just the tiniest pinch of brutality to an otherwise happy life. AND HE WOULD RIDE IN, A KNIGHT IN STOLEN ARMOR, TO RESCUE THE PRETTY MAIDEN ( a tale stolen straight from their childhood fantasies, where alastor had still been the brave hero, where they had still been hungry to save each other ). these fantasies were hungry little things, all wide - eyed bliss half - fathomed between sleepy nights and drunken days ; they had required constant attention to maintain, to ensure his mind hadn’t slipped away into tales of her demise --- she had been a garden of roses and he had been little more than the attentive garderner, snipping away any thorns that might have caught her whole [ SUPPOSING THOSE THORNS ONLY PLAGUED HIS MIND! ]. but the truth hits with dire uncertainity, curling upon her tongue like a promise she was never meant to keep : your sister took my father’s life.
A TRAGEDY IN ONE ACT, STAINING HIS FACE. his brows draw together as if dragged by two needle - points ( confusion as a phase of amateur dramatics, replacing the soft breath of denial ). a last memory of malya : their father’s death had brought nightmares, ghoulish things swept in black, plaguing each child with its march of brutality [ alastor remembered his own well enough --- his father’s hand turning cold against his son’s dry palm, the vague sweat of death that turns everything clammy, eyes bleeding into grey as his father woke again, skeletal hands reaching out to find alastor’s young neck ]. his little sister’s face had been raw with redness, eyes glowing pink in that vulnerable starshine way, as if all her eyelashes had been bitten loose and all that remained was stinging tears. SHE HAD BEEN SO SMALL. childlike in her grief, crawling into alastor’s bed to weigh against his side, humid breath against her shoulder as she choked away her sobs. THEY HAD MADE A PROMISE NOT TO TALK ABOUT THEIR NIGHTMARES : he hadn’t wanted this little creature to believe him weak, no tears to be spared as she was cradled against him. but now he has no choice but to wander [ ... ] had their father been the only one to die that night? OR HAD PARTS OF MALYA BEEN STOLEN AWAY? --- and her brother’s disappearance following not too soon after, the brutal two - step of agony stomping against her throat. had she crawled into her sister’s bed afterwards? her mother’s? OR HAD MALYA LET GRIEF SWALLOW HER WHOLE? he admits there is too much kindness in the image --- searching even now for some excuse, some justification, as if that would soothe ishtar’s heart ( HER POOR HEART, BROKEN, RAGGED ; he gathers her in his arms before he can stop himself, an act of love that is childhood - tainted, bringing her close to him ). his nose finds her ear, pressed against the top of it, and his sigh is lemon - warm and touched with a mourning that comes far too late.
HIS HAND TOUCHES LIGHT AT THE SPACE BETWEEN HER SHOULDERS ( if she had been a fae, this is the lovely place where wings would have sprouted ). ‘ ishtar. ‘ his voice is wet, the tears follow before they can stop themselves --- how silly it was for him to weep for her grief, her loss, when he could barely weep for his own. EVEN NOW, HIS FATHER’S FACE IS A BLURRED IMAGE [ he had been little more than a ghost even before death had swallowed him whole, a man trapped in his castle and pretending that it was freedom by another name ]. his fingers spread wide, hoping to soothe away at her --- she is a marble statue and he wishes to chip away at her, if only for a little. SELFISH BEAST : she owes him nothing and yet he is still desperate to provide comfort. ‘ i hadn’t even supposed that, i hadn’t even thought for a second that she would [ ... ] did she hurt you at all, ishtar? ‘
