Saturday. December 14, 2019
Baronial Manor of Seaside
Alouette, gentille alouette
Alouette, je te plumerai
Victory still crashed through him like the waves upon the shore. Their roar was so close. The taste of salt in the air was thick and cloying. It threatened to wash away the flavor of Lucas from his tongue. The sun had yet to rise, still several hours off from breaching the horizon, and Salvador had time to kill. Too much of it these days. While the world slept, he prowled through the night, hunting ghosts and memories. They lead him here, to this mansion by the sea.
Residue from recently extinguished wards still clung to the borders of the property. Salvador could taste the fading traces of those, too, as he stepped onto the circular path of cobblestones leading to the door. The sound of laughing children disturbed his fingertips as he let himself in. Rachael’s ghost still walked the halls, through this very elaborate foyer. He scowled at the flickering sight of it, until he blinked, taking his hand from the door, and it was gone.
There was an overall hastily abandoned feel to the place. It had been lived in, for a time. The magical protections that had once been placed may have been swept away, like dust under a rug, beaten out in a breeze, but it was not so easy to erase the memories. Houses had memories. Old ones, like this one, had far too many. He had to look deep and far to find the ones that came before them, to dredge up the ones that contained him. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to. They haunted him well enough without having to go looking for them. Some skeletons should stay buried.
Strange to think he had been a boy then, the last time he had walked these halls. What had he seemed? Seventeen? Eighteen? The weight of a decade finally fell down on his shoulders, for the first time. It was hard to imagine he had survived for so long. Hard to accept the reality for a creature who had been told since his inception that he shouldn’t have even been. And yet, here he was.
Sunrise would come soon. The reminder. A rise of another day against all odds. Here he was.
The 39th holder of the 10th baronial ring. He slipped it from his pocket and balanced it in the palm of his hand. Such a simple thing, but full of such history. The tide of whispers pouring from its metal threatened to drown him. This was not an object he had any intention of wearing. It was just too much. Far too many hands had worn it before him, and he had no desire to leave traces of himself behind as well. Not much, at any rate.
Salvador stepped over to the decorative table at the base of the expansive staircase. Someone had put out a pot of poinsettas. The warmth of activity still permeated the air. Someone took care of the place between barons, that was for sure. Tracing his finger in a circle on the wood grain produced no dust, but it did leave behind a speckled bowl crafted of red tinted hoarfrost. He nestled the ring in the bowl’s belly and turned his finger in a circular motion over it, crafting a protective, spherical, crystalline cage. The color fit the decor of the season, making it likely to blend in. Should he still be here for the spring he might have to think of something else, but for now this would do.
From there he gave himself a personal tour of the estate, moving through the quiet, darkened rooms and allowing himself the dredging up of memories. There were fond ones as well as foul ones. The better ones were those of he and Skid training together in the yard. It was honestly the only length of time he had spent here. He had never lived in the manor, and made no plans to do so now. At least the caretaker wouldn’t have to clean up after the likes of him. Maybe the furniture would collect dust after all.
Eventually he came upon the room he had been looking for. This one with its trophies and display cases. This one with the long black box standing as a center piece on a table in the middle of the room. The lid was up, putting the dimly glowing glaive on display for all who entered the room to see. He was the only one at this hour.
“Ah,” he said to it, approaching the display. “Here you are.” As if reconnecting with an old friend, or perhaps a lover, he caressed the length of the pole with his fingertips. The enchantment seemed to hum under his touch. “Remember me?” he asked the weapon. And it seemed to answer him with a pulse like a heartbeat.
Yes, it said. Yes.
As well it should. He had been the first to use it, after all, those many years ago.
“What am I to do with you?” he wondered.
Nothing, he thought. Nothing.
Turning from the glaive in its box, he exited the room. The moment he entered the hall, he started to hum, an old, foreign nursery rhyme. That very one. He dragged the sound of it down the corridors and the stairs, letting it sink into the walls to create a haunting of his very own before he took his leave.
There was a sunrise to catch.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Alouette, gentille alouette
Alouette, je te plumerai
echoes of history
Moderator: Delahada
-
Delahada
- Expert Adventurer
- Deputy Director of Dickery
- Posts: 915
- Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2009 6:07 pm
- Location: Rhydin City
- Contact:
you again
Saturday. September 26, 2020.
Baronial Manor of Seaside
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.*
It was as if he had never left. The halls of Seaside Manor were layered thick with an emptiness. Not dust, oh no. The caretaker did their job well and made sure everything was spic and span for the rotation of barons who found themselves walking these floors. For twenty-one days the property had endured a certain vacancy, and for nearly seventy before that, too. Had that girl even bothered to live here? He felt no trace of her, not a scent nor a vision.
Not that Salvador had made much use of it himself. Even when he held the title before, the Spaniard had hardly visited this place at all. There were too many ghosts to contend with, too many memories that were not his own. Even with the sea crashing against the cliffs below and stirring salt spray up into the air, the things that had been still lingered. It was going to take a lifetime to scrub them out completely. Time was something he had in abundance these days, but how much?
Autumn was fresh and new. The madness was creeping in on him, as it always did, but he could survive a while longer. This morning was crawling toward the fourth day. The day before he had unleashed much of the blood rage that boiled in his veins, allowing him to be more level headed, and he felt this was largely the cause for his victory. If he had gone into the tournament too bloodthirsty, too mad, would he have done so well?
Then again, something had shifted. Salvador had noticed it that day before when he tumbled into the Inn and accosted Rhys with riddles and temptation. The food was the first sign. The smell of it did not make him feel like puking, as he was used to. A desire to experiment was lurking in the back of his mind, but it could wait.
Now it was time to reacquaint himself with an old friend that he was starting to feel truly belonged to him. Seaside Manor. Not necessarily a home away from home so much as a vassal once again under his control. This place lived and breathed, and he could feel it groan a reluctant welcome to him.
Salvador did not sleep, not this time of year. Though he no longer felt so repelled by normal food, he still detected the unwavering, constant hunger that drove him. The aching and unwinding, the devastation of every cell in his body, needing replaced. It made him restless and incapable of sleeping.
After leaving his one recent, constant companion in one of the manor’s many rooms to dream away the aches of his own victory, Salvador got to wandering. The roar and mumble of the crowd from hours ago was finally starting to come back, conjured by the crash of not so distant waves against the cliffs below. Cajsa’s words, in particular echoed loudest in his memory.
“Yeah, I think Sal really does want Seaside back! The man is on a tear tonight!”
Early on he had taken out some of his toughest opponents. That nameless man he had bested in the other tournament, just barely. Ebon, who had actually made him sweat and bleed, a lot. A fine coating of red dust still stuck to his skin, but no longer the tatters of his shirt. That had been discarded hours ago. Though he had hardly heard them in the moment, the memory of people calling his name from the crowd washed into his awareness now. Maggie and Conner.
“Damn, Sal is on fire!”
“Salvador is on fire tonight!”
Fire, on fire. That was the one part of this victory that was missing. His Fire.
He was ice, didn’t they know? The flames in his hearth had diminished months ago. There were only coals now, and they weren’t even hot. What they had witnessed had not been an inferno, but the cold and calculated determination of a cruel creature who ate hearts because he no longer had one of his own. He was a glacier, and he had ground the competition under his icy boot.
Once again he found himself standing in the wide mouth of the manor’s front foyer. From the pocket of his wrecked leather pants, he withdrew a wadded up rag and rested it on his palm. Unfolding the edges revealed the 10th Baronial Ring. Even though he did not touch it, he could feel the cold metal pulsing with awareness.
You again, the simple band seemed to say.
“Me again,” he answered. Whether replying to his imagination brought on by encroaching madness or a real living thing, he did not know. There was no one near enough to judge him and say. Upstairs his gatito was sleeping. Downstairs, the caretaker. Only the walls listened to him now, and they strained their ears to do so, eager to gather up his secrets.
Just like the last time, there was a clear glass vase with an assortment of seasonal flowers arranged waiting for him on the foyer front table. Sunflowers and roses, lilies and daises. A little note card was propped against the base, welcoming the new baron back. Or, well, returning baron.
Salvador drew a circle in front of the vase on the polished wood with just the tip of his finger and lifted it in turning spiral pattern from there. Frost spread and reached up toward his rising finger, forming a shape of a crystalline cage. He carefully placed the ring in its belly before closing the latticed sphere all the way up.
Just like last time, he had no intention of actually wearing the ring. Here, it would stay safe, until again someone came to take it from him.
With this task complete, he tipped back his head to look up at the high vaulted ceiling. The Glaive of Seaside was up there again, in the trophy room, waiting for someone new to take it up. Who would it be this time?
This was something that Salvador had to think on. In the meantime, he had an ocean to visit and a sunrise to catch.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
_______________________________
( *Sonnet 73, William Shakespeare. )
Baronial Manor of Seaside
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.*
It was as if he had never left. The halls of Seaside Manor were layered thick with an emptiness. Not dust, oh no. The caretaker did their job well and made sure everything was spic and span for the rotation of barons who found themselves walking these floors. For twenty-one days the property had endured a certain vacancy, and for nearly seventy before that, too. Had that girl even bothered to live here? He felt no trace of her, not a scent nor a vision.
Not that Salvador had made much use of it himself. Even when he held the title before, the Spaniard had hardly visited this place at all. There were too many ghosts to contend with, too many memories that were not his own. Even with the sea crashing against the cliffs below and stirring salt spray up into the air, the things that had been still lingered. It was going to take a lifetime to scrub them out completely. Time was something he had in abundance these days, but how much?
Autumn was fresh and new. The madness was creeping in on him, as it always did, but he could survive a while longer. This morning was crawling toward the fourth day. The day before he had unleashed much of the blood rage that boiled in his veins, allowing him to be more level headed, and he felt this was largely the cause for his victory. If he had gone into the tournament too bloodthirsty, too mad, would he have done so well?
Then again, something had shifted. Salvador had noticed it that day before when he tumbled into the Inn and accosted Rhys with riddles and temptation. The food was the first sign. The smell of it did not make him feel like puking, as he was used to. A desire to experiment was lurking in the back of his mind, but it could wait.
Now it was time to reacquaint himself with an old friend that he was starting to feel truly belonged to him. Seaside Manor. Not necessarily a home away from home so much as a vassal once again under his control. This place lived and breathed, and he could feel it groan a reluctant welcome to him.
Salvador did not sleep, not this time of year. Though he no longer felt so repelled by normal food, he still detected the unwavering, constant hunger that drove him. The aching and unwinding, the devastation of every cell in his body, needing replaced. It made him restless and incapable of sleeping.
After leaving his one recent, constant companion in one of the manor’s many rooms to dream away the aches of his own victory, Salvador got to wandering. The roar and mumble of the crowd from hours ago was finally starting to come back, conjured by the crash of not so distant waves against the cliffs below. Cajsa’s words, in particular echoed loudest in his memory.
“Yeah, I think Sal really does want Seaside back! The man is on a tear tonight!”
Early on he had taken out some of his toughest opponents. That nameless man he had bested in the other tournament, just barely. Ebon, who had actually made him sweat and bleed, a lot. A fine coating of red dust still stuck to his skin, but no longer the tatters of his shirt. That had been discarded hours ago. Though he had hardly heard them in the moment, the memory of people calling his name from the crowd washed into his awareness now. Maggie and Conner.
“Damn, Sal is on fire!”
“Salvador is on fire tonight!”
Fire, on fire. That was the one part of this victory that was missing. His Fire.
He was ice, didn’t they know? The flames in his hearth had diminished months ago. There were only coals now, and they weren’t even hot. What they had witnessed had not been an inferno, but the cold and calculated determination of a cruel creature who ate hearts because he no longer had one of his own. He was a glacier, and he had ground the competition under his icy boot.
Once again he found himself standing in the wide mouth of the manor’s front foyer. From the pocket of his wrecked leather pants, he withdrew a wadded up rag and rested it on his palm. Unfolding the edges revealed the 10th Baronial Ring. Even though he did not touch it, he could feel the cold metal pulsing with awareness.
You again, the simple band seemed to say.
“Me again,” he answered. Whether replying to his imagination brought on by encroaching madness or a real living thing, he did not know. There was no one near enough to judge him and say. Upstairs his gatito was sleeping. Downstairs, the caretaker. Only the walls listened to him now, and they strained their ears to do so, eager to gather up his secrets.
Just like the last time, there was a clear glass vase with an assortment of seasonal flowers arranged waiting for him on the foyer front table. Sunflowers and roses, lilies and daises. A little note card was propped against the base, welcoming the new baron back. Or, well, returning baron.
Salvador drew a circle in front of the vase on the polished wood with just the tip of his finger and lifted it in turning spiral pattern from there. Frost spread and reached up toward his rising finger, forming a shape of a crystalline cage. He carefully placed the ring in its belly before closing the latticed sphere all the way up.
Just like last time, he had no intention of actually wearing the ring. Here, it would stay safe, until again someone came to take it from him.
With this task complete, he tipped back his head to look up at the high vaulted ceiling. The Glaive of Seaside was up there again, in the trophy room, waiting for someone new to take it up. Who would it be this time?
This was something that Salvador had to think on. In the meantime, he had an ocean to visit and a sunrise to catch.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
_______________________________
( *Sonnet 73, William Shakespeare. )
-
Delahada
- Expert Adventurer
- Deputy Director of Dickery
- Posts: 915
- Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2009 6:07 pm
- Location: Rhydin City
- Contact:
maybe one last time
Saturday. March 20, 2021.
Baronial Manor of Seaside+
The sky was still dark when Salvador stirred from his dreams. Whatever they were, he forgot them as soon as conscious awareness trickled in. Salt was the first flavor on his tongue, the scent on the air; the salt of the sea mixing with the coppery tang of blood. Beside him, a slim, warm body murmured in his sleep and rolled over. Salvador smiled and turned to press his nose to his gatito’s hair. Sugar, sex and cat magic clung to the skin of his scalp, familiar.
Something stirred in his heart, needle sharp, a sensation even more intimate than the caress of fingers that had painted his skin last night. The tick of the clock against the wall thundered in his ears, seconds turning ominous and closing in around him. Turning the other way, he checked the time.
Five AM. Hours yet before sunrise, but She was waking. He could feel Her; he always could.
Salvador rose carefully from the bed, tucking a pillow into the place where he had been. His gatito mumbled a wordless protest in his sleep. He combed his fingertips through the young man’s hair, a hopefully soothing gesture. Stay, he thought. Stay asleep. I’ll be back soon.
Which bedroom was it this time they had claimed for themselves? There were so many here at Seaside Manor, and they tended to blur together. In the time he had held the ring, caged in its crystal sphere, they had investigated and utilized them all. Unlike the first time, when he had left the halls empty and alone, this time they had left their ghosts in every single room. This time, he had someone who eagerly shared his enthusiasm for the sports and joyfully celebrated every victory with him. This time, it was different.
Having found his way out onto the terrace, Salvador stood and watched the surf roil in the dark, far below. The rumble and crash of the waves had become a constant in his life. Maybe he had become too comfortable with these surroundings. Maybe the night before was the very last he’d spend within these walls. He found himself feeling reluctant to leave, even for a few hours, for this most sacred ritual that he participated in every year.
Tick, tick, tick.
Time was slowing to a crawl. Even the waves thundering against the cliffs slowed their rushing pulse. Salvador closed his eyes and took one last deep breath of the salty sea air.
He felt the shift even before he opened his eyes. The exhale he released was too warm for this place he found himself transported to. The atmosphere was too deafeningly quiet compared to the cacophony of the surf he had left behind. And yet the surroundings were even more soothing to him than any other place in all of creation.
He had been made here.
A shift of his stance disturbed the debris at his feet. The hollow rattle of bones interrupted the otherwise dreadful silence and echoed hauntingly into the distance. All around him was a landscape of stripped clean skeletons of all species in a radius that seemed miles wide. A thin silver haze hugged the ground. To his left was a large boulder, split clean in half. The flat face of it was etched with words written in an ancient, archaic language. He didn’t need to read them to know what they said.
Even here, far from the furthest reaches of civilization, at the End of All Things, standing within the wasteland of his mother’s sanctuary, Salvador could hear the labored ticking of a distant clock. Maybe it was a figment of his imagination, a ghost of things that were, but he could feel it, which was strange because time had no meaning here.
There came a point, though, in which a cold flux of Power pulsed through the atmosphere. The silver fog thickened, coiling more tightly around his feet. Ribbons of mist slithered and crawled up the face and slope of the monument in the center of the Grove. All of this rising Power slid and piled to a focal point, taking on a feminine shape that in the end solidified into the form of a woman.
She was dark of hair and eyes. Thick black strands were woven into a single, neat braid that hung along the length of her spine. She wore only a plain white dress without sleeves, and sat with her legs tucked to her side, hands clasped together in her lap. Sunrise was yet hours away, but she seemed alight with her own personal glow.
“Salvador,” She said softly. Hers was a quiet voice, a trait he had acquired from her. She did not need to shout to be heard. Hers was a voice that commanded attention without having to be raised.
“Madre,” he answered her respectfully.
Years past he would have snarled at her, like the petulant child he had once been. Time had tempered him, sharpened his edges. Though comparatively he was still so very young, he had aged and matured considerably. Now he bent his head to her, hand to chest in the semblance of a bow.
“Much has changed,” She remarked with certainty. About you, sighed a gentle breeze. A suggestion of copper chimes lifted between them. Older. Wiser.
Well, it was his birthday. He wasn’t entirely sure about that second part, but he managed to gift her with the faintest smile when he looked up at her, nodding.
“And much is the same,” he countered simply.
“You are still a Baron.” She knew. His mother always knew; everything. She had told him once that her Winter dreams were a window into his life. He never had to catch her up on the things she had missed while sleeping. She woke knowing, and that made things easier, especially for him. Salvador never got along well with words, with speaking.
“Yes.” That was the simple answer. “Since I won it back,” he elaborated, “in September.”
“You worry tonight you might lose it again.” She was so precise, brutal with her honesty. She offered him no sympathy, no warm embrace. She only sat and watched him, statue still and cold as the grave.
“Yes,” he answered. There was no denying it. Though it bothered him to feel this way, to feel anything about something so trivial. He turned away from her with a frown and searched the far away horizon for some cause of his disquiet.
“Still you are a child.”
Those words made him flinch, more inside than out. Gritting his teeth, he clamped down on the violent upsurge of words that wanted to rise, which was itself evidence of his growth. Years ago he would have voiced his outrage. The fuck does that mean? A small fury lit in the rust of his irises when he turned again to look at her.
“You are already a King, my son. What need have you for a little toy house that sits on the sea?”
She was right of course, damn her. He was being sentimental. Someone was threatening to smash his trophy and take it away from him. Maybe he didn’t deserve to have it any longer. Maybe it had run its course. He should accept that and move on. After all, he had more important matters to attend to. The vacation could only last so long, and the games were getting tiresome anyway.
“I don’t need it,” he found himself growling.
“We fae are selfish creatures,” said his Mother.
Salvador snorted and turned away again. Ain’t that the fucking truth. If he were being honest with himself, he would admit to being greedy. He had Matadero, his own personal domain. Its borders were always stretching, reaching outward to gather up more for itself, especially since his ascension this time last year. That waking had been momentous, and very few had been able to see him for the man he had become. Those were rare, loyal souls whom he clung to and protected fiercely.
Wanting to keep Seaside was something completely other than a need, however. It was a spiteful want with a dash of ambition. He had nothing to prove by holding onto it for so long. People were already singing his accolades, but just one more victory, especially this one, against an opponent whose face he’d really like to bash into a wall, would be fucking nice.
A cool touch of fingers sliding into his palm startled him out of a lovely, violent daydream. He looked sharply aside to discover his Mother now standing on his left. He had not felt her approach, never heard her move. She had simply been there and was now even more simply here, gathering his larger hand into her own.
“Come,” She said to him. She was looking upon the horizon that had blindly held his attention a moment before and now tucked the fingers of her other hand against the crook of his elbow. “Walk with me.”
On bare feet, she took a step. Reaching across himself, he settled his cool fingers over hers at his elbow and stepped with her. In the next blink, the hush and sigh of the waves lapping against the shore flooded his ears. The slip from one dimension to the next had been made with such ease.
Arm in arm, Salvador walked with his Mother along the shore of the Sea. If this was to be the last day, he thought, it had started off well. A good night’s sleep. No arguments. No bitterness nor resentment. It was quite an honor, he felt now, to be the son of She Who Tends the Dead. Untouchable.
Once they were within sight of the Baronial Manor, they stopped and stood to admire it together from a picturesque distance. This was an auspicious day for a challenge. The first of Spring. The Vernal Equinox. His birthday.
“They cannot take this from you,” Faye said, after a time.
“No,” he agreed.
Salvador knew she did not mean that he would not lose the barony. She was not an oracle and could not predict the future, but for the one certainty that was her domain. Neither of them were so egotistical as to think that he was undefeatable. The memories of his time here would never leave. Not from his own mind nor from the very foundations of the Manor itself. And the history books would always bear his name.
“Tonight will be a new beginning,” she said to him. “One way or another.”
This sure optimism was so new, coming from his Mother. Her words filled his heart with warmth, and he felt himself begin to smile. Calm and clarity washed over him, but he could think of nothing to say. The best he could manage to express the gratitude he felt for her quiet support was a flex of his fingertips against her knuckles.
Faye pulled away from him, but turned to lift up onto her tiptoes so that she could bestow a ghost of a kiss on his cheek. He bent a little to make it easier for her, and closed his eyes. Her parting words were a phantom whisper, pulled away by the ocean tide. She fell apart on the sigh of a breeze, vanishing as if she had never been there at all.
The crown suits you, my son.
Sunlight stretched its fingers up over the horizon and reached for the sea. Salvador opened his eyes to welcome the light, alone. Not long after the sun began to warm the sands of the beach, a figure approached from the direction of the Manor. He turned to watch his gatito close in on him, and turned over his hands to receive his touch once he was near.
“Lindo, lindo,” Salvador greeted him.
The young man he called gatito smiled warmly, and lifted up to the balls of his feet to kiss his jaw. “Mon roi,,” he said sweetly. They squeezed each other’s hands, and Salvador watched as the young man looked around, curious and searching. Maybe he tasted the lingering traces of his mother’s magic on the breeze. Maybe he looked disappointed not to meet her.
“Come,” Salvador said, pulling away. As he stepped around the gatito, he tucked an arm around his back to guide him along, back toward the manor. “Let’s have breakfast.”
Here, he thought. Maybe one last time.
Baronial Manor of Seaside+
The sky was still dark when Salvador stirred from his dreams. Whatever they were, he forgot them as soon as conscious awareness trickled in. Salt was the first flavor on his tongue, the scent on the air; the salt of the sea mixing with the coppery tang of blood. Beside him, a slim, warm body murmured in his sleep and rolled over. Salvador smiled and turned to press his nose to his gatito’s hair. Sugar, sex and cat magic clung to the skin of his scalp, familiar.
Something stirred in his heart, needle sharp, a sensation even more intimate than the caress of fingers that had painted his skin last night. The tick of the clock against the wall thundered in his ears, seconds turning ominous and closing in around him. Turning the other way, he checked the time.
Five AM. Hours yet before sunrise, but She was waking. He could feel Her; he always could.
Salvador rose carefully from the bed, tucking a pillow into the place where he had been. His gatito mumbled a wordless protest in his sleep. He combed his fingertips through the young man’s hair, a hopefully soothing gesture. Stay, he thought. Stay asleep. I’ll be back soon.
Which bedroom was it this time they had claimed for themselves? There were so many here at Seaside Manor, and they tended to blur together. In the time he had held the ring, caged in its crystal sphere, they had investigated and utilized them all. Unlike the first time, when he had left the halls empty and alone, this time they had left their ghosts in every single room. This time, he had someone who eagerly shared his enthusiasm for the sports and joyfully celebrated every victory with him. This time, it was different.
Having found his way out onto the terrace, Salvador stood and watched the surf roil in the dark, far below. The rumble and crash of the waves had become a constant in his life. Maybe he had become too comfortable with these surroundings. Maybe the night before was the very last he’d spend within these walls. He found himself feeling reluctant to leave, even for a few hours, for this most sacred ritual that he participated in every year.
Tick, tick, tick.
Time was slowing to a crawl. Even the waves thundering against the cliffs slowed their rushing pulse. Salvador closed his eyes and took one last deep breath of the salty sea air.
He felt the shift even before he opened his eyes. The exhale he released was too warm for this place he found himself transported to. The atmosphere was too deafeningly quiet compared to the cacophony of the surf he had left behind. And yet the surroundings were even more soothing to him than any other place in all of creation.
He had been made here.
A shift of his stance disturbed the debris at his feet. The hollow rattle of bones interrupted the otherwise dreadful silence and echoed hauntingly into the distance. All around him was a landscape of stripped clean skeletons of all species in a radius that seemed miles wide. A thin silver haze hugged the ground. To his left was a large boulder, split clean in half. The flat face of it was etched with words written in an ancient, archaic language. He didn’t need to read them to know what they said.
Even here, far from the furthest reaches of civilization, at the End of All Things, standing within the wasteland of his mother’s sanctuary, Salvador could hear the labored ticking of a distant clock. Maybe it was a figment of his imagination, a ghost of things that were, but he could feel it, which was strange because time had no meaning here.
There came a point, though, in which a cold flux of Power pulsed through the atmosphere. The silver fog thickened, coiling more tightly around his feet. Ribbons of mist slithered and crawled up the face and slope of the monument in the center of the Grove. All of this rising Power slid and piled to a focal point, taking on a feminine shape that in the end solidified into the form of a woman.
She was dark of hair and eyes. Thick black strands were woven into a single, neat braid that hung along the length of her spine. She wore only a plain white dress without sleeves, and sat with her legs tucked to her side, hands clasped together in her lap. Sunrise was yet hours away, but she seemed alight with her own personal glow.
“Salvador,” She said softly. Hers was a quiet voice, a trait he had acquired from her. She did not need to shout to be heard. Hers was a voice that commanded attention without having to be raised.
“Madre,” he answered her respectfully.
Years past he would have snarled at her, like the petulant child he had once been. Time had tempered him, sharpened his edges. Though comparatively he was still so very young, he had aged and matured considerably. Now he bent his head to her, hand to chest in the semblance of a bow.
“Much has changed,” She remarked with certainty. About you, sighed a gentle breeze. A suggestion of copper chimes lifted between them. Older. Wiser.
Well, it was his birthday. He wasn’t entirely sure about that second part, but he managed to gift her with the faintest smile when he looked up at her, nodding.
“And much is the same,” he countered simply.
“You are still a Baron.” She knew. His mother always knew; everything. She had told him once that her Winter dreams were a window into his life. He never had to catch her up on the things she had missed while sleeping. She woke knowing, and that made things easier, especially for him. Salvador never got along well with words, with speaking.
“Yes.” That was the simple answer. “Since I won it back,” he elaborated, “in September.”
“You worry tonight you might lose it again.” She was so precise, brutal with her honesty. She offered him no sympathy, no warm embrace. She only sat and watched him, statue still and cold as the grave.
“Yes,” he answered. There was no denying it. Though it bothered him to feel this way, to feel anything about something so trivial. He turned away from her with a frown and searched the far away horizon for some cause of his disquiet.
“Still you are a child.”
Those words made him flinch, more inside than out. Gritting his teeth, he clamped down on the violent upsurge of words that wanted to rise, which was itself evidence of his growth. Years ago he would have voiced his outrage. The fuck does that mean? A small fury lit in the rust of his irises when he turned again to look at her.
“You are already a King, my son. What need have you for a little toy house that sits on the sea?”
She was right of course, damn her. He was being sentimental. Someone was threatening to smash his trophy and take it away from him. Maybe he didn’t deserve to have it any longer. Maybe it had run its course. He should accept that and move on. After all, he had more important matters to attend to. The vacation could only last so long, and the games were getting tiresome anyway.
“I don’t need it,” he found himself growling.
“We fae are selfish creatures,” said his Mother.
Salvador snorted and turned away again. Ain’t that the fucking truth. If he were being honest with himself, he would admit to being greedy. He had Matadero, his own personal domain. Its borders were always stretching, reaching outward to gather up more for itself, especially since his ascension this time last year. That waking had been momentous, and very few had been able to see him for the man he had become. Those were rare, loyal souls whom he clung to and protected fiercely.
Wanting to keep Seaside was something completely other than a need, however. It was a spiteful want with a dash of ambition. He had nothing to prove by holding onto it for so long. People were already singing his accolades, but just one more victory, especially this one, against an opponent whose face he’d really like to bash into a wall, would be fucking nice.
A cool touch of fingers sliding into his palm startled him out of a lovely, violent daydream. He looked sharply aside to discover his Mother now standing on his left. He had not felt her approach, never heard her move. She had simply been there and was now even more simply here, gathering his larger hand into her own.
“Come,” She said to him. She was looking upon the horizon that had blindly held his attention a moment before and now tucked the fingers of her other hand against the crook of his elbow. “Walk with me.”
On bare feet, she took a step. Reaching across himself, he settled his cool fingers over hers at his elbow and stepped with her. In the next blink, the hush and sigh of the waves lapping against the shore flooded his ears. The slip from one dimension to the next had been made with such ease.
Arm in arm, Salvador walked with his Mother along the shore of the Sea. If this was to be the last day, he thought, it had started off well. A good night’s sleep. No arguments. No bitterness nor resentment. It was quite an honor, he felt now, to be the son of She Who Tends the Dead. Untouchable.
Once they were within sight of the Baronial Manor, they stopped and stood to admire it together from a picturesque distance. This was an auspicious day for a challenge. The first of Spring. The Vernal Equinox. His birthday.
“They cannot take this from you,” Faye said, after a time.
“No,” he agreed.
Salvador knew she did not mean that he would not lose the barony. She was not an oracle and could not predict the future, but for the one certainty that was her domain. Neither of them were so egotistical as to think that he was undefeatable. The memories of his time here would never leave. Not from his own mind nor from the very foundations of the Manor itself. And the history books would always bear his name.
“Tonight will be a new beginning,” she said to him. “One way or another.”
This sure optimism was so new, coming from his Mother. Her words filled his heart with warmth, and he felt himself begin to smile. Calm and clarity washed over him, but he could think of nothing to say. The best he could manage to express the gratitude he felt for her quiet support was a flex of his fingertips against her knuckles.
Faye pulled away from him, but turned to lift up onto her tiptoes so that she could bestow a ghost of a kiss on his cheek. He bent a little to make it easier for her, and closed his eyes. Her parting words were a phantom whisper, pulled away by the ocean tide. She fell apart on the sigh of a breeze, vanishing as if she had never been there at all.
The crown suits you, my son.
Sunlight stretched its fingers up over the horizon and reached for the sea. Salvador opened his eyes to welcome the light, alone. Not long after the sun began to warm the sands of the beach, a figure approached from the direction of the Manor. He turned to watch his gatito close in on him, and turned over his hands to receive his touch once he was near.
“Lindo, lindo,” Salvador greeted him.
The young man he called gatito smiled warmly, and lifted up to the balls of his feet to kiss his jaw. “Mon roi,,” he said sweetly. They squeezed each other’s hands, and Salvador watched as the young man looked around, curious and searching. Maybe he tasted the lingering traces of his mother’s magic on the breeze. Maybe he looked disappointed not to meet her.
“Come,” Salvador said, pulling away. As he stepped around the gatito, he tucked an arm around his back to guide him along, back toward the manor. “Let’s have breakfast.”
Here, he thought. Maybe one last time.
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