January 15
Not one to indulge in the sweets that were sold at the book store, T merely came on a hunch. He'd arrived a little past seven on the hour and had spent every moment since filing through the tomes that were lined up in the shelves on the wooden cases. Some dusty, some musky but all the same in the end. Fruitless was his search for that land he'd heard of, the land he could remember but the land that had shaped him into who he was, and more precisely who he was not. He'd found a thicker binding, an aged brown leather that merely wore a golden inset house symbol instead of any words of decoration. He'd followed the lines as they lay on the pages, he'd traced the quill's dance from word to word, mouthing the old script as a child might learning cursive for the first time. He'd not bothered himself with the language for quite some time now, years? Decades? He spoke it well enough, he received it more than well enough however his penmanship had suffered through the ages. He preferred the tongue of man upon his diary, maybe in the case he should fall one battle the men would take it and drink and laugh at his thoughts, or his treasures all the same.
He became lost in the texts, one after the other, gently placing them along the tables and the bean bags and the couches and chairs alike. Piles he'd gone through and he'd not even dented half. What was he looking for?
Rayvinn sat sipping her tea, heavy with the honey and cream, and perused the stack of books upon her table. Forgoing her typical lounge upon a bean bag, she did have the same reading material as per the norm; nearly always something regarding the Earth realm. It fascinated her and terrified her: a land with no elves? How could such a place exist...how could it survive? Ever the arrogant regarding the ways her people could effect even the general well being of a planet. She looked up from her current tome and called out to T'alathian, wherever he was. "It says here that this leader would torture and murder the members of his army and elite force for disobeying. Perhaps I should adapt this style of leading. What say you?" She wasn't sincere in her veiled threat to do so, merely wanted to poke the bear.
A flip of the page and he could hear a thousand different voices reading the lines back to him. His hazel eyes skittered across each stroke like a slide and was hooked from word to word, thought to thought. A scene of dancing flames had been summoned by the way the words licked and leapt at the vacant space between them, hungry, growing and trying to overcome the docile nature of the papyrus they were engraved on for all of time. Her words snapped him back and he looked up, at her on the beanbag chair.
"I don't suppose any form of torture could be worse for one's back than those insufferable devices that devour you while you sit." He bent his well shaped cheeks with a smile and mocking of her choice of seat, but no harm no foul as he began to draw closer to the stacks upon stacks of literature left about. "Though I have yet to be incarcerated within one of their, 'Iron Maidens'. Please, give me fair warning before you adopt their primitive tactics. I much prefer the carrot myself beforethe stick." He gently closed the one he had been pilfering ideas from with a sigh.
"You truly are a barbarian if you think a simple chair is a torture device. You sit astride a saddle for countless hours a day and don't complain of chafing. Such an odd elf, you are." She had managed to gain his attention from the rather broodish mood he had succumbed to for the past couple of days. She hadn't yet been able to decipher the cause but she was growing more concerned by the day. Rayvinn had no intention of torturing anyone, and T'alathian--being the one that had set her free from Lialin's camp after three months of especially horrendous torture, should have realized that.
"You prefer the carrot, do you? Do you fancy yourself a cute little bunny now, General?" Her eyes filled with genuine mirth, she rather enjoyed their bantering, and she even stuck out her tongue at him. Quite childish, really. Finally, hearing him sigh, she pointed to the book he held. "What're you pretending to read there?"
His mouth opened and he rose an index hinting at a chastising nature before his eyes rolled up, looking to either side of the air while it became painfully evident he had nothing in his come back tank. His finger curled down as his eyes returned to her and he set the book back down upon the growing cityscape. "One I do for practical travel the other I did once, as a mistake, and never again!" He spoke on the matter quite firmly as he looked around at the vacant seats, noting they were all beanbags. Irony truly, he looked almost grumpy before he abandoned the firm grip of the now and subjected himself to the squishy chair. Oh how it perturbed him as he assumed his languid yet frigid seat, feeling unsafe as though it would swallow him down the rabbit hole at any moment.
"I do not claim to be either of those things mind you.." The tongue had him sticking his thumbs in his ears and wiggling his fingers back, completely mature, you can trust him with your entire army as he crossed his eyes before crossing his arms at his chest, taking on the thinking persona once more as he literally lobbed the book to her. "Just another ornament for old kings to scratch their scrotums with." He tilted his head back and looked to the ceiling. "Do you remember the day you came of age? When the world finally collided with how you imagined it?" He looked over to her from the seat, no longer seeming to suffer from his beanbag-itis. "I received a letter in the mail and... I'm going to have to travel."
I Will Not Die
Moderators: Talathian, Kenzi, Rayvinn
The day she came of age. Her jaw set and her gaze hardened into a stare right through him. Not because she was angry at him so much as because some injustices caused wounds that would never heal. Her gaze focused after quite some minutes and she blinked as she looked at him, though the wall within those eyes has surely just grown. "I recall the day I became of age quite well. It was when my father sold me to Lialin for his father's kingdom." Of course what she called being sold for a kingdom, her father the King called an arranged marriage that would be mutually beneficial to both kingdoms. Her voice had been terse and her words clipped and the topic was quickly tossed aside, just as her own freedoms had been on the day of which they spoke.
Her brows furrowed as she took in his words, digested them fully. A lump was swallowed as she attempted to compose herself, sitting upon a proper chair herself instead of a beanbag such as he sat, she pressed her back against the unforgiving rigidity of the wood. "You are leaving." Spoken very simply as she attempted once more to swallow the emotion from her voice.
A woman young in the lives that they and their forefathers had lived was never quite brought to silence as he had suddenly summoned upon the room of aging scriptures. Not a fine feeling, no he quite felt like he should call a hearse for what he had simply unfurled yet he would not move an inch, by breaths or by muscles. He merely listened to the distant metronome within a wall-mounted clock as they sat, engorged within the thick breaths of air between them, littered with the stale smell of old air twisting with the nether of fine leather and pages contained for centuries. Were it not for the way his eyes dried and he needed to resuscitate them, he could have been confirmed dead by the vacancy of movements. An ocean lay between them now, one that threatened to cast him overboard and sink him into the depths, fighting and screaming and clawing but he was not a sailor, nor could he survive such tides should he be swallowed whole. At her gulp, an audible presence, he parted his lips, but shut them once more at her simple words, simple in count, more painful than a thousand arrows on contact. It took every fiber of his self not to defer to his old self, the one of jovial crass jests, the one of shallow petty sarcastic insults with dry humor to distract and take away from the blunt reality of their world. He could not rely on his old self any longer, this was a time he'd called for for that very reason. A time where he must be up front.
"My past has sank in the sands of time. I come from a people and a land that has sank with it. It's name, long forgotten. T'alnatharial." A word he had prayed she had never heard prior and would never again. "A kingdom of proud elves that dabbled in philosophies of man, dabbled in all things wondrous and pretty but were only good at one thing alone. You know what that is by now." The blood on his hands was enough for any other's lifetime, perhaps not her in her own eyes, since she carried a burden he could not imagine, but he was not about to play around with the hypotheticals that she wore on her shoulders, not now, never. "Not all things died on that night. One did not." He stuck his hand within his chest and set out the letter folded. On top of it he rose and crossed to a single leather bound book, thinner than the most, not quite a novel, but depthful enough. It was a crimson shell with gold leaf pages wound in gold fabric. He walked over and set it atop the letter. "My diary. I will entrust it to you upon my leaving. You will find all of the answers you might be looking for."
Her brows furrowed as she took in his words, digested them fully. A lump was swallowed as she attempted to compose herself, sitting upon a proper chair herself instead of a beanbag such as he sat, she pressed her back against the unforgiving rigidity of the wood. "You are leaving." Spoken very simply as she attempted once more to swallow the emotion from her voice.
A woman young in the lives that they and their forefathers had lived was never quite brought to silence as he had suddenly summoned upon the room of aging scriptures. Not a fine feeling, no he quite felt like he should call a hearse for what he had simply unfurled yet he would not move an inch, by breaths or by muscles. He merely listened to the distant metronome within a wall-mounted clock as they sat, engorged within the thick breaths of air between them, littered with the stale smell of old air twisting with the nether of fine leather and pages contained for centuries. Were it not for the way his eyes dried and he needed to resuscitate them, he could have been confirmed dead by the vacancy of movements. An ocean lay between them now, one that threatened to cast him overboard and sink him into the depths, fighting and screaming and clawing but he was not a sailor, nor could he survive such tides should he be swallowed whole. At her gulp, an audible presence, he parted his lips, but shut them once more at her simple words, simple in count, more painful than a thousand arrows on contact. It took every fiber of his self not to defer to his old self, the one of jovial crass jests, the one of shallow petty sarcastic insults with dry humor to distract and take away from the blunt reality of their world. He could not rely on his old self any longer, this was a time he'd called for for that very reason. A time where he must be up front.
"My past has sank in the sands of time. I come from a people and a land that has sank with it. It's name, long forgotten. T'alnatharial." A word he had prayed she had never heard prior and would never again. "A kingdom of proud elves that dabbled in philosophies of man, dabbled in all things wondrous and pretty but were only good at one thing alone. You know what that is by now." The blood on his hands was enough for any other's lifetime, perhaps not her in her own eyes, since she carried a burden he could not imagine, but he was not about to play around with the hypotheticals that she wore on her shoulders, not now, never. "Not all things died on that night. One did not." He stuck his hand within his chest and set out the letter folded. On top of it he rose and crossed to a single leather bound book, thinner than the most, not quite a novel, but depthful enough. It was a crimson shell with gold leaf pages wound in gold fabric. He walked over and set it atop the letter. "My diary. I will entrust it to you upon my leaving. You will find all of the answers you might be looking for."
Her throat was thick with emotion resulting from the knowledge that he would be leaving as well as the demons of the past rising up to claim her consciousness of present for a few torturous moments. Yes, she knew what his people excelled at and it took all of the will power the queen held within her now trembling frame not to turn a gaze of utter hatred upon her general for the sins of his father. She had battled the night prior, there were dozens of cuts of varying sizes littering her face, scalp, hands, and legs but it was the words T'alathian spoke that drained her and filled her with pain.
"What did not die?" Her eyes closed, a poor choice really as the slaughter of her people became so much more visible against the black backdrop of her eyelids; it was cinematic. She was raw and burning inside in ways that she had not experienced in so long, to the point that the masochistic elfess needed an external pain to balance so that her fractured mind didn't further disentigrate beneath this stressor. Some evil remained of what had helped cause the loss of her entire bloodline and T'alathian was leaving in order to right a wrong.
Her heart broke finally and with the onslaught of emotion that could no longer be held back by the dam of her noble birth and courtly training, the tears sprang into her her eyes as she accepted the letter and diary. He wouldn't give her this diary if he had any intention of returning. She knew of the elf's pride and she respected him far too much to order him to stay, for that may be the first order he would not be able to obey. Why would she dishonor him in such a way? Thin shoulders shuddered violently as she tucked her chin in order to prevent him from seeing her shame, her tears.
He had stood on his own two feet for a majority of his life but the way those four words left her breaths while she struggled to maintain her own nearly toppled him over like a tumbleweed in the wind. His neck arched as he tilted his head back, fighting the urge to turn to her and envelop her within his embrace. No, that would not be the proper thing, the manly thing to do. He could feel the gaze of the company behind him, snickering at him should he do it, knowing that it was a sign of weakness. He took a breath, so raw and out of place that it no doubt made the entire scenario harder to breathe, as though they had been sharing an oxygen tank at the bottom of an ocean.
"A ghost from then. And it is back and it knows I did not die either." The answers did lay within the letter, within the Mercenary's Word. Dare he speak more on it? Dare he make this any more challenging than it already needed to be? He choked on the thick strangulation on his throat and failed, he failed as his own safeguards began to fail. The first were his words, the second were his eyes but the tertiary allowed a painful line of salt to drag down his face, though he'd turned from her at this point.
He was not an honorable man. He had lost that edge a long, long time ago but he forsake everything that he knew as he turned and stepped silently to her, his eyes far too blinded by the welling pools of fire in them to see clearly, only knowing her clothes from her skin from her hair as he put his hands behind her head and kissed the top of her head before straightening out. The company would be guffawing, his hair was a mess, though salvaged well enough by a shave and some newly found tight braids, but he was content for the first time in his life. He was T'alathian and these were the characteristics and memories that made him so. "No man can kill me on this planet or any other. I will return to you, my queen." He turned then and began heading for the door.
It was no man that wanted him dead and that fact alone drove his heart into a cold place, his palms a dead sweat and his left arm, just below his shoulder, a wound burned from phantom days. A spear point had torn through the muscle before on a brisk night in the desert below the moonlight from that same woman that wished to take his life now. He was afraid for the first time in his life, for now he had something to lose, he had everything to lose. But he could not show that now, even if she could see through his act. "I will not die."
"What did not die?" Her eyes closed, a poor choice really as the slaughter of her people became so much more visible against the black backdrop of her eyelids; it was cinematic. She was raw and burning inside in ways that she had not experienced in so long, to the point that the masochistic elfess needed an external pain to balance so that her fractured mind didn't further disentigrate beneath this stressor. Some evil remained of what had helped cause the loss of her entire bloodline and T'alathian was leaving in order to right a wrong.
Her heart broke finally and with the onslaught of emotion that could no longer be held back by the dam of her noble birth and courtly training, the tears sprang into her her eyes as she accepted the letter and diary. He wouldn't give her this diary if he had any intention of returning. She knew of the elf's pride and she respected him far too much to order him to stay, for that may be the first order he would not be able to obey. Why would she dishonor him in such a way? Thin shoulders shuddered violently as she tucked her chin in order to prevent him from seeing her shame, her tears.
He had stood on his own two feet for a majority of his life but the way those four words left her breaths while she struggled to maintain her own nearly toppled him over like a tumbleweed in the wind. His neck arched as he tilted his head back, fighting the urge to turn to her and envelop her within his embrace. No, that would not be the proper thing, the manly thing to do. He could feel the gaze of the company behind him, snickering at him should he do it, knowing that it was a sign of weakness. He took a breath, so raw and out of place that it no doubt made the entire scenario harder to breathe, as though they had been sharing an oxygen tank at the bottom of an ocean.
"A ghost from then. And it is back and it knows I did not die either." The answers did lay within the letter, within the Mercenary's Word. Dare he speak more on it? Dare he make this any more challenging than it already needed to be? He choked on the thick strangulation on his throat and failed, he failed as his own safeguards began to fail. The first were his words, the second were his eyes but the tertiary allowed a painful line of salt to drag down his face, though he'd turned from her at this point.
He was not an honorable man. He had lost that edge a long, long time ago but he forsake everything that he knew as he turned and stepped silently to her, his eyes far too blinded by the welling pools of fire in them to see clearly, only knowing her clothes from her skin from her hair as he put his hands behind her head and kissed the top of her head before straightening out. The company would be guffawing, his hair was a mess, though salvaged well enough by a shave and some newly found tight braids, but he was content for the first time in his life. He was T'alathian and these were the characteristics and memories that made him so. "No man can kill me on this planet or any other. I will return to you, my queen." He turned then and began heading for the door.
It was no man that wanted him dead and that fact alone drove his heart into a cold place, his palms a dead sweat and his left arm, just below his shoulder, a wound burned from phantom days. A spear point had torn through the muscle before on a brisk night in the desert below the moonlight from that same woman that wished to take his life now. He was afraid for the first time in his life, for now he had something to lose, he had everything to lose. But he could not show that now, even if she could see through his act. "I will not die."
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