Shades Of Madness

[Sjira]

(Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2012 1:55 pm )

The Reflection

The day before had been anything but expected when the Cloaked One walked in. He had a way about him in that entrance, in his gait that reminded S'jira of Lord Travanix, as if he had led and dominated others before that day and had no plans of changing.

Something else drew her attention to the stranger. Something in his features was familiar, but she could not place it. In the beginning, she suspected that he followed her into the kitchen to speak with her because she had stared too long. But she would come to learn that this was not the case at all.

In the kitchen, he was too familiar with her. His smiles were dangerous and on the verge of being cruel. Again and again, his face was familiar to her eyes but nuances of tone and uttered words of command derailed her more than once to remind her of Master Gracus. All the while they had been in the inn's kitchen, he did not touch her but in every way he affected her. From worry and fear to a longing to know the one who was before her. None of it made any sense. He was a familiar stranger and a friendly enemy.

Talks turned from needs and desires to peace and pain. All the while, he knew who she was by his obtrusive and too-familiar proximity but S'jira could not be sure. His face was unmarked. His voice and ways were too dark. All to the shadowed underside of a rock that most people never had the intention of turning over to take a look to see what lay beneath. Someone or something had turned that proverbial rock over.

As she was still trying to figure out who he might be, what exactly he wanted from her, he disappeared. Much of what he had said was true. That was not right either. All that he had said was true, but she hadn't come to terms with it yet. At one point, before the Cloaked One had disappeared, his voice had raised. And by the time he was gone, Toby had peeked into the kitchen.

Surely, she must have looked ridiculous and hysterical by the time he found her there, upset and in tears with none in the kitchen to have caused it. The small one had no idea if Toby had seen or heard anything. That any of it had happened had left her a wreck. Talk of weeping alone and a heart full of pain. She knew she hid nothing well, so when pains hit her she simply could not hide or veil such things away -- but how could he possibly know of the weeping?

Fire. Water. Earth. Before he left, he spoke of this. Of happiness and dancing again. No matter how dangerous he had been, no matter the warning in her heart, she could not help but wonder what he could offer that could bring that about again. She had striven for it. Suffered for it. And even brought inadvertent suffering to another because of it all. If it could be stopped, there was a quiet, low level of want to see to it.

She thought on where he might mean to find all these things, to find him in an area with them. The markets had a fountain, braziers, and earth. Her home to the north had the stream, the bank, and a place for a fire. Even the docks, though some would not consider it. The seas met with land there and the fishermen and dockworkers kept crude braziers and torches lit there at all hours.

Fear was within her heart pounding within her breast as she entered into the area familiar to her, but didn't dare to venture there but rarely after the sun went down and the moons had risen. The statue of the Lost Sailor had been touched without remembering that she did so. She passed the shops and the seedy, rough-wayed pub and other holes in the way places without a look towards them.

And among the shadows, the small one found him there.

Again, when he revealed his face to her, her pulse quickened and she stared. How could be that someone could be so like another? Perhaps a magical being? Perhaps she was in a dream-state and had not woken from the nightmare. S'jira had almost touched his face to see if he was real, for something that should have marred it was lacking. Instead she had touched his arm and found it...very different than she expected.
He was tangible.

Talk was that he would come when he was called for or needed. But a heart did not even know if she wanted this. Her heart still warned her that there was danger. Something was amiss and yet she could not part fully from it.

Again, he was gone as if the wind had stolen him away. Did he go to present himself to someone else? He had spoken of it. For what purpose? Was he to bring them to the edge of madness, too? She knew who he was, but couldn't be. He was similar to him, but would never be fully the one for whose name she guessed he might possess.

The small one found that as he disappeared, he had taken her home. Not to the inn, but to the place that brought her the most peace, besides that of the Glen. Her simple house that stood amongst the woods, beyond RhyDin city's northern walls, stood dormant. The hearth was not light and no candles were aflame. She had not been home since before dawn that day.

Tears filled her gaze and she moved towards her home's door. She pushed it open and shoved it closed. The new binding on the door, the one that Kruger had made for her, was used to secure the door. Then she saw to shutting all of the windows and fastening the inside shutters. Surely she did it to bar against the cold that was coming.

She then stood in the middle of the large area that was a gathering room to her right with a chair and the hearth, and the kitchen to her left with its table and chairs. Knees wanted to give out and hit the stones below, but she was already shivering. A fire within the hearth was seen to before she settled to the pelts before it. Still in her cloak that Katt had gifted her the year before, she pulled the blankets off of the nearby chair and lay herself down before the fire.

Shades of madness were finally upon her with the reflection of one that should not exist merely because she needed him. Was that not how it was? Was that not what she understood from the Cloaked One's lips. She curled herself in deeper to the pelts, cloak, and blankets.

Rest was needed, all the same. There was work to do the next day and her head was pounding with the swirling of mad thoughts within it. Sleep would not come for hours and when it did, she was not aware of it. Peace and pain.


Dawning

She dreamt too long of things of a hunting, of leather and bells, of forges and fishing. The gods were cruel to allow her tender dreaming and memories that lifted her heart. All of it in the wake of the day before.

By the time S'jira woke, the day was half over. There was no point in going to the docks by that hour since the work with the fish for that day was over. She stumbled ungracefully through her home when she had gained a weary footing. Washing and a change of her dress from the white linen to simpler brown meant for work and she pulled her boots on. Long lengths of her dark brown hair, still wet from bathing, were almost black when she was pulling it back with a strip of leather.

She would do no true work that day. It was her intention, at least. Distraction was too steep and she instead sought her way to the shoreline of the river that cut the great city into two uneven halves on the back of Trygg.

There in areas that were not built up, she roamed upon horseback. Where the forest grew thick and then gave way to open land until she had gone farther than she had in the handful of years of being in RhyDin. She lay her small form down against Trygg's neck and mane while they stood in the middle of one of the meadows, and closed her eyes to listen to the birds and breeze there. She would return to the city soon, but for that while, she did nothing more than enjoy the lands and what it held since her mind and soul were in desperate need of its vistas and more.