[flashback] wait and hope. (poison)

[Dor]

Timestamp: Winter 509 AV He worked too long and too hard to simply give up. It wasn't in his nature. The face of adversity wooed him. Sang a twisted siren song into his heart and into his mind. Failure never presented itself as an option. He embraced the devil, if that's what people wished to call it. This thirst for knowledge and with knowledge came power. Power to shape. To create. To make manifest the unbelievable. The unthinkable. Myth into reality. Sometimes he turned reality into myth. It came down to the same thing in the end. Knowledge. Secret, sacred, profane knowledge glittering at the heights lesser men only dreamed of, and that just barely. To say he was dissatisfied with his life, and thus his accomplishments, would have been far from the truth. If anything, he reveled in it. Delighted in it with childish pleasure. He would never let it go. He sat in a still-quiet room, tailor-style, on the thick carpet woven in curlicues of cinnabar and umber. Small rosettes in pale pink and subdued amber bloomed in the dark vines of thread. A lush landscape of design, wrought with hidden meanings, a story in their warp. Though he hadn't purchased it for the tales it might have told, but for the simple aesthetic value. It looked well on the honey oak floor polished to a shining gleam. It suited the carved pieces of dark hardwood crafted into an elegant desk and matched chair where he usually sat to write and catalog his thoughts and progress in his work. It licked against the edges of a chaise cushioned in pallid green velvet. The glass of the barrister bookcases, so tall and imposing, caught the colors at moments and they played along the leather bindings of rare books bought all across the world. Most of all he liked where the carpet ended. It stopped two inches short of a long filigree stand made of burnished steel. At the time of conception and then construction he searched for something more fitting. Glazed alabaster, perhaps. Or marble made into delicate finials and sweeps. However, he worried that the weight wouldn't hold with alabaster and marble was merely common. So he commissioned a well known metal sculptor and explained to him what he wished. A slim stand, six feet long standing two and a half feet high. He detailed the shape and the interwoven pieces he expected to see as one finished and complete piece. The sculptor who never in his life had been asked for such an extreme work of art took the project on. In part because of the man who asked him to fulfill this dream, but mostly because he realized this would be his lifework. And it was. The sculptor never made anything else again. All the vision and inspiration sank itself into this strange request. He mourned the loss, but the finished object ceded his wildest dreams. At least his final work, what he poured his soul into, could be given nothing less. It had everything. In the end, his life as well. The sculptor died six months after completion. His passing came with sadness in the artworld and people wondered what he did artistically in the last three years of his life. They would never see his final gift. Nor were they meant to. At the same time this metalwork was being constructed, the man who sat on the carpet employed another person to aid in this task. One of his gifts was realizing fully where his talents ended and another's began. This second artisan was known for her beautiful glass. Mouth blown, amazing one of a kind pieces in delicate colors that swirled and listed into each other. Each curving and sensual as if she caught the very essence of the Eternal Nymph, the True Woman in nothing more than melted sand. From her he asked for a slim box of opaline glass to be six feet long and one and half feet in depth. He specified that no colors were to be used save at the very edges and that he would like to be representing life. However she saw fit as he deemed her worthy enough to understand what he wished for. It was to be strong glass, but look fragile as a soap bubble. The glass blower pondered the puzzle of making something like this. She worked with various designs and finally discovered one her patron exclaimed over in true joy. She never met the sculptor, though she shared experiences with him. Six months after her beautiful cask, for she couldn't think of it as what it might have been, was finished, she left the world. The taxing event of creation wasted her away. Again the artworld mourned the passing of such a talented artist. Again none saw what her final piece had been, what took her soul in the two years she worked on it. Again, they were not meant to. But now he had this marvelous piece of art. This object which surpassed what he even dreamed could be. He picked the artists well and in his way congratulated them on a job well done. Their deaths were nothing more than the price which had to be paid. Because sitting on the undulating form of the steel and under the glass with its pale green arabesques was the true prize of his collection. The object of all objects. The altar where he worshipped. She slept under glass. Never in his life did he ever encounter something so beautiful as she was. Or, at least, he didn't believe he had. True, he collected countless women over the years. Blondes, redheads, brunettes in all manner of shapes and sizes from places in the world people never even heard of. But those compared very little to her. She was tall, though not as tall as the glass cocooning her. A few inches gave on either end. Slender limbs with fine bones underneath. He believed her bones to be hollow as when he lifted her for the first time she seemed to weigh next to nothing. He supposed he could have weighed her, but somehow in doing that it seemed wrong. Touching her skin was akin to running his fingers along satin of watered amber. Nearly a gleaming white, he thought so at first, until he saw her under better lighting. Palely colored, just enough to hint. Not the deep bronze or rusts that came with sun worship. Merely a gloriously warm undertone. As if sunlight dripped onto snow. At first he enjoyed to hold her still hand in his and trace along the breakable bones. Marveled at her sleek make while still retaining noticeable female assets. A welcoming curve of high breasts that made him think of young goddesses. A waist he could nearly span with his hands she was so slight, yet graceful hips followed down to legs that stretched endlessly until her toes. He stroked his hands over her in wonder and quiet awe. He dressed her in gossamer beaded with crystal that draped over her, revealing nothing and hinting at everything. He tried to remove the gold bracelets from her wrists, but they were welded closed and upon closer inspection (as he originally wanted to have her decked in silver and white) he saw they were carefully twisting vines. He simply changed the color of her gown to topaz. He delighted in twisting her blood-copper curls through his fingers. He read descriptions of hair like hers, heavy and silken, the kind men would climb up for a kiss or a witch might to punish. Waves and ringlets frothed in the way modern women tried to emulate and never fully accomplished. She made no sound at all when he ran an ivory comb through her shining locks. At those moments he imagined he held pieces of flickering flame or that someone's life spilled out across his palms. He often traced the gentle rise of her cheekbones, sculpted so delicate in their height that shadowed hollows were noticeable. They weren't sharp. None of her features were, save for the angled nature of her jaw which led him to believe she bore a strong personality somewhere under it all. Long lashes of smoked ember hid her eyes away and he never found it in himself to open them to see what color they might have been. Ink brush brows a bit darker than her fabulous curls arced. A slim nose, perfectly straight save for the most minor bit of a snub on the tip. As if the creating god gave her a playful tap. Her mouth was the sort meant to be kissed, possessed and plundered. He stroked his finger over the petal pink lips and smiled. And still, she slept. Most of the time he was content to just let her be. To leave hersleeping in enchantment or damnation as he didn't know which it mighthave been. Not that he cared for without that sorcerous sleep hewould never have found her. So he cared little that she never moved, never uttered a sigh, never laughed or wept. Perhaps she didn't evendream. He could only speculate in those areas. This was not to say he didn't intrude upon her peace. For he did.vShe merely acquiesced in compliant silence. For all of the detailed attention he gave to her, arranging her hair and clothing into luscious affairs, he found himself unable to help himself to her. She was warm with a slowly beating heart and shallow draws of breath. Warm with smooth skin hiding an athlete's muscles. Though he imagined she wasn't merely some long distance runner or such. She'd been made for grace. At those moments, when he found it too difficult to bear, he opened the glass and lifted her out. He would carry her to the chaise he placed in the room for this one singular purpose. With respect and adoration he removed her garments and folded them neatly to the side. Then he would trace his way across her body. Hands and mouth. Tasted the sweetness of her skin. Caught the drifting scent of applewood and autumn. Spent himself between her parted thighs as she slept on without rising to meet his passion or denying him. He tried to pleasure her, to give her something for the glory she gave to him, but the physical response was only that, physical and static. He would have sold his soul to hear her cry out and to feel her long fingered hands twine into his hair. But it had yet to happen. He believed and he hoped that one time it would. He would wake her like the prince with the briar rose princess. After, he washed her. Cleaned himself away from her. Used only the softest of cloths and towels. The finest milled soaps. The best washes to kept her hair radiant. Then he would dress her once again and return her to the glass bed he fashioned her out of a darkly tortured love. And in the wake of it all, he would come to sit tailor-style on the thick carpet on the glossy wooden floor where he would pray and pray and pray. Yet, still she slept. - - - Gravity had never been of much concern. The falcon had flung herself off an eyrie time had carved into the ceiling of the subterranean city to spiral down, seven deep and down, past glowing orbs of places called home by different souls strung from the roof of Kalinor. A mockingbird might have cried from the branches of a funeral oak somewhere hundreds of feet above, exasperated with the too swift sink of the winter sun. It left a lavender ribbon over the horizon and the rain dripped from the ears of glossy bannana leaves in a hundred shades of dying stars. Maybe somewhere pewter windchime clanked a grumble and the mockingbird quieted itself with a huff and a wing, spiraling over towards the forest's edge to find happier companionship. Pale light could have mingle with what moonlight might ome through storm clouds blowing away; and it could have slid over blue black feathers. But it didn't. It was raining up there, somewhere, and she had nothing to do with it. The hollow, the ache, seemed to whisper and swell. A ghost limb she was constantly turning towards in her sleep, reaching out with, grasping nothing like a cemetery of kisses with fire still to burn in her soul's tomb. As if the fruited boughs of power still burned, pecked at by the birds. Each drop felt like an arrow shot. The seconds were ticking down to witching hour and, somewhere, peck, peck went the birds. Drop, drop went the rain. Half-life, wraith woman. Foot on shore, foot in sea. Drip-peck-drop, darling.. Darling.. That was what her father cried somewhere, rolling over and over again at his wife and child's loss. But no ghosts bent from imagined tree branches or spun up the path. No memory to shape on the steps because they were gone. Cut out. All cut out. Ancestors, descendants. Family. Gone. It was like muted genocide and even the elements seemed to scream a little softer now, a little softer. It was raining, and she had nothing to do with it while diving through the gloom of the spider's web, circling the familiar stalactites until coming to a land upon edge of the Orchard Market upon the thick weave of a cerulean thread path. Wings caught light otherwise unknown the aphotic dim of this place, shifting unto glittering before undertaking reformation into a young woman. The draw string trousers and loose chemise previously dropped by curving claws was lifted while hawk's eyes in a girl's face peered out over the the patrons and wares. Clothing donned with no terrible haste, she blinked and tested the strength of her weight on the path before moving forward, setting out again into the only world she had ever known.

[Poison]

Sometimes he wondered if it was better to give up, to just let go, to lie down somewhere and simply wait until his life was over. Would he be able to do it? Would he be able to simply stop eating and drinking, to lie completely still, until his heart stopped beating and no more air was rushing through his lungs? He was almost tempted to try it, to see how far he could go, how much control he still had over his body, over his life, but in the end he was a coward, too much of a coward to simply die, to put a knife into his own heart or swallow a glass full of poison and brace himself for the pain that would almost certainly come. Maybe that was the source of all his problems. He was too weak, a coward, insufficient. Nothing he ever did seemed to satisfy them, his Web.

He had been ready to give it all, to do whatever it took. He had brought surrogates back from the surface for his brothers, strong women that should have given them beautiful, healthy children. When his wife had informed him that she would do what the Esterians did and give birth to her own child, he had approved, thinking that their child would be perfect and that the sacrifice would be well worth it, but something had gone wrong. The child, a daughter, had been weak, seemingly aging long before her time, with skin as thin as paper, fragile bones and a weak heart. His beloved wife had given her life, never knowing what kind of creature had killed her. He had remarried again, but his seed was weak, and no more children had been born.

Maybe that was why the surface world had such a draw for him, he mused as he readied himself for the day. It offered at least an illusion of freedom, a few moments of blissful oblivion, a way to temporarily separate himself from all the things that were wrong with his life. It seemed so vast. Sometimes he was convinced that it would stop if he only ran away far enough, that his daughter, his constantly complaining Web and Kalinor itself would stop existing if he only put enough distance between himself and his home. Sometimes he almost managed to feel alive up there, in the wilderness. It was dangerous there, but that didn’t matter. He needed the danger, needed to feel as if his life was constantly being threatened to at least be able to feel something.

On his travels he often brought things back from the surface, little souvenirs, little statues that he had created in order to remember the things he had seen. A while ago he had rented a stall at the Orchard Market from the Aconitum, aware that he needed a means to support himself and his child. Even though she was a constant reminder of his failure, his weakness, he couldn’t simply let her die. He had taken up Animation a while ago to fill his creations with life. Maybe, if he could not have children, this would be a way to leave something to those that came after him. So far he found his skill lacking though, imperfect, like everything about him. His creations were nothing more than glorified dolls, without a mind of their own, and his magic made those around him even more suspicious of him than they had previously been.

He was standing next to his stall at the edge of the Orchard Market, near where the Kelvic had landed and changed, like every day. He was a slender Symenestra man in his twenties, with golden eyes and snow white hair, a bit too thin and of rather average looks. Nobody would ever call him handsome. He was dressed in a silken robe. One of his creations, a little scarlet bird, was sitting on his shoulder, chirping loudly, and more of them filled his stall. There were birds, horses, proud Symenestra, blue Akalak, an Akvatari, even a miniature version of a glassbeak, all made of stone or wood, nearly perfect copies of the real things, but unlike them and the bird on his shoulder they did not live. The bird was the only success of his.

[Dor]

It took all of a heartbeat for the girl to be distracted from her errand. The terms of it, the intent and the timing twisted and vanished within her mind the moment black eyes followed the musical trail of chirping to catch upon the bird. Jaw slack and eerily still, she stared while the pale grace of Symenestra citizenry slipped and eddied around her. The gods knew she had never seen anything like that bird in the whole of her life. As the familiar pet of Duvalyon Hellebore, she garnered little attention from the local patrons of the Orchard Market and stepped light footed and fleet in and out of gloaming shadows until she came to a halt before the stall. Spare of height, she shoved up to tiptoe to gain a closer look, for the time being too absorbed in her investigation to do more than offer a blink to man upon whose shoulder the bird was perched.

[Poison]

Eyes in such bright a color that they resembled jewels widened as Dor approached. There was something about her that pulled the animator out of his sometimes overly melancholic thoughts and even brought a small smile that was at once confused and curious to his face. She was human – and female, just the right age for a surrogate, although there was something about her that he had never seen in them. Who was she – and why was she unaccompagnied? Didn’t she know that it was dangerous for somebody like her to walk through Kalinor alone?

There was something about her that seemed familiar to him ...

He furrowed his brow as he tried to remember, and then he realized what it was. The Purging, Hellebore, the pet. He had spent so much time pitying himself that he had been half blind to the things happening around him – although her name still escaped him. He carefully grasped the bird that sat on his shoulder and placed it on the table in front of him, among his other creations, worried that it would break if he moved too abruptly. The fragile little bird moved around a bit and ruffled its feathers, and then it chirped and looked at the new person.

„Is there anything that interests you?“ the animator asked. His voice was soft and gentle. There was an almost indifferent quality about it. He was not as abnormally cheerful and enthusiastic as people that wanted to make a sale often tended to be. „How about a Konti?“ He took the tiny figure of a pale woman with long white hair and scales and showed it to her. „Or a savage Myrian? I also have Akalaks and Jamoura ...“ He gestured towards the other figures in front of him.

Meanwhile the little bird hopped a bit closer, entirely unafraid of the unfamiliar person. Around them things at the Orchard Market went their usual course. Duvalyon Hellebore’s pet and the animator were a familiar enough sight that few people afforded them a second glance.

[Dor]

“It all interests me,” came the matter of fact confession in pitch perfect Symenos, a language where one’s voice wafted and whispered over the words when done correctly. They were audible cobwebs to clog the ears, she sometimes considered, to glitter and glisten before snaring. Honestly, she liked just about anything that glowed. Despite Duvalyon’s attempts to maintain a barrier by keeping her ignorant of Kalinor’s native tongue, she had managed to acquire fluency in it over time. This was primarily due to the fact that she listened, listened and watched everything and everyone nearly all of the time. Waiting. The vivid array of wares was studied, but it was chirping, red bird that had originally captured her attention to who her eyes kept returning. Finally, the corners of her mouth loosening into the palest of smiles, she slid a hand out to it. The tip of a finger delicately smudged against the edge of a wing feather. “Will you let it out?” She wanted to know of the animator.

[Poison]

„You speak our language well“, he remarked, surprised. If he closed his eyes, he would easily be able to pretend that he was facing a Symenestra woman and not the strange, seemingly human creature that she really was. „Did your ...“ He hesitated and wondered which word he should use to describe Old Hellebore’s son. He was her owner in every sense of the word, and she something comparable to a pet – a pet that could speak and take the form of a human – but it felt strange to him to say it out loud. „Did your caretaker teach you?“

As he waited for her answer, he watched the bird. The little creature that looked so much like a live bird seemed to wait, unsure of whether it could trust the woman, but then it came to a decision. It stood completely still and looked at her from out of beady black eyes. There was something strange about its gaze. While it moved like a bird and sang like a bird, its eyes were empty, bottomless pools, devoid of a soul.

It ruffled its feathers again, and then it chirped a little.

„Will I let it out?“ the animator repeated. „No, I cannot let it out. It wouldn’t know how to exist up there, in the wilderness, under the sky. It is not like other birds. It moves like them and sounds like them, but it isn’t really like them. It has never been in the company of other birds. It doesn’t know how to find food. They would not accept it. It would inevitably die. It is better off here, with me. Here at least it will have some kind of life.“

He could understand it so well. Like the bird before him he wanted nothing more than to escape sometimes, but just like it he wouldn’t be accepted up there. There was no place for him anywhere in the world, and there was his daughter to consider as well. She had always been fascinated by his creations. She had often asked him for a companion, a living doll.

He sighed, and then it occured to him that he had spoken of this artificial bird as if it were a living being. Did that mean that he was going mad, that he was losing his touch with reality further? He didn’t want to think about it.

„Would you like to hold it?“ he asked Dor. „Do you want to have it?“

[Dor]

The animator’s words were possessed of greater depth than had likely been intended. They left Dor staring at the Symenestra with eyes as dark as the crimson creature crafted from the fabric of nothing living. Her regard had a queer quality too, but she would have fiercely denied it was due to a similar lack of soul. The barest tips of Dor’s fingers slid down the animated bird’s feathers when it chirped again, wondering what difference there was in the lay of them. She blinked at long last, shaking her head and thus hair from her face. “Why is it different from other birds? What causes it to be so? Why must it die?” The questions came in the wake of that weighted silence to snap it with words. “Yes, I’d like to hold it. Have it?” The small fingers of one hand unfurled, palm towards the roof of the only world she had ever known. “I’ve no money.” Her mind whirled, continuing to spill the animator’s little speech around, curiosity pecking over every syllable. For reasons she had not the nature to bother examining, instinct constantly being a valid and immutable excuse, she cast her eyes across the other wares to offer, studying every foreign form she had seen illustrated in books or never at all. She was searching for something among them.

[Poison]

There was something strange about the way she looked at him, but the animator couldn’t decide what exactly it was. Was it simply the fact that she was something more than a simple human – or less than human? Did all of her kind have eyes like that, or was it only her, an oddity among her own race? He didn’t know. The animator hadn’t met a lot of Kelvics yet. Most of the unfortunate women that ended up in Kalinor were some kind of human. He didn’t even know which form she took when she was an animal.

As Dor’s fingers slid down the bird’s fathers, she could notice something unusual about it. While a normal bird’s feathers would have been warm to the touch, while she might even have felt its little heart beat, this bird was cold. It was as cold as the table on which it stood, as cold as the rocks that surrounded them. It didn’t breathe, and it didn’t have a beartbeat. Still, it moved, as if it were unaware of the fact that it wasn’t alive.

„Some would claim that it is not a bird at all“, he told her. He extended a slender hand that ended in black claws and touched the tiny animal, almost with a hint of sadness, of pity. „It was not born from an egg, but came into this world through different means. Some would even claim that it is not really alive. They, the other birds, would most likely kill it because it is the way it is.“

As she admitted that she didn’t have any money, he shrugged his shoulders, and then he gestured for her to extend her hand. If she complied, he would place the bird onto her palm, and it would raise its head and look up at her.

„Are you looking for something else?“ he asked as she noticed how she had begun to search his wares. There was a little cat as well, standing on its hinlegs as if it were pretending that it was human. There was a Nuit with a half rotten face, dressed in a long robe, a tiny creature made of clay, his version of a Pycon.

[Dor]

"Of course it's a bird," she looked back at the animator. When the bird was settled into her open hands, she curved her fingers protectively around it and drew it close. With an index finger, she smoothed the feathers on its head and chirped soft and warbling at it. It was not very good chirping, truth told, as falcons had not the throats to create real music. For them were sharp, piercing cries. "Why kill what is different? What harm would it do?" A shake of her head expressed her deep disgruntlement with this line of thinking. "I'm looking for something like looks like me," she confessed and with those words brought all the rest of them into brutally sharp focus.

[Poison]

„It is a bird“, the animator agreed and nodded his head. To him at least it was, even if its heart didn’t beat, and it had never drawn a single breath. „What makes a bird a bird after all?“ he asked, more himself than her. „To me it’s not the egg it comes from. If it has feathers, if it flies and sings like a bird, it is a bird, no matter how it was made. Don’t you agree?“

His gaze softened as he said this, and he looked at the little creature almost lovingly. Maybe he would fill all of Kalinor with birds like that one day, artificial birds that could exist in the endless underground caves, that didn’t need air to breathe and didn’t depend on food the way other birds did. Maybe the world would be a better place if there were more creatures like it that didn’t judge and had none of the usual prejudices.

As Dor chirped, the little bird cocked its head, and then it let out a single, high pitched sound as if it wanted to say something to her, as if it instinctively realized that it was facing another bird, a bird in human form. And then it lowered its beak and began to search her hand, as if it was secretly hoping for food.

„Some people – and some animals – kill things that are different, for nothing more than the fact they are different. It’s the way things are“, he answered. His thoughts went back to his child. The Symenestra disliked her because she was different. Some even claimed that she had been cursed by Viratas himself because of the disease she was suffering from.

„Something that looks like you?“ he asked and searched the figures on the table. Finally he picked the figure of a delicate, human girl and presented it to her. „What do you think? If I painted her a little differently, she would be like a miniature version of you, the way you look now. Would you like me to do that for you?“