Reborn

[Siofra]

Spring 1st, 511 AV, First Bell As soon as her body hit the water, she was aware. Her eyes shot open to murky darkness, her mouth parted to release a bubble of stingy air, and her bones immediately felt the bite of the recently winter-chilled water. Shivers would begin to wrack her body, pain would lance through her chest as her ribs would ache at the shivering and another, much smaller bubble of air passed her lips in shock at the pain. The pain. For a long time, she had forgotten the pain. The dry ache of it. Now, as she fought to the surface, weak from the cold and from her new birth, memory had returned to her. Dim, confused memories of the slip of a blade between ribs, the hot fountain of blood, the slow numb of death. She had died. Once. And had gone somewhere else before being pulled away to the beautiful place, the place that, for all that she could see, was gone. Indigo eyes flitted around, fearful, from beneath long strands of grey-blue hair. White horns, paler than even the white moon that overpowered the sky , swept from her oddly shaded locks. Puffs of chilled air past white lips and her skin shimmered a subtle, luminescent silver. Like the water around her. She had remembered the place she had come from. The breathtaking beauty of her home. Her companions, wieghtless like air and as powerful as a mouintain’s rage. She remembered them. They weren’t here. It was cold here, and dark. For a moment she felt she had fallen into a dark god’s realm for some careless word she had muttered. Was this supposed to be a test? Was she going to be offered to Lhex? Tales of the reincarnation cycle she had been saved from had swept like wildfire through the Ukalas. An old crone cruelly plotting lives in a tower of stone built in the endless hourglass of Time supposedly presided over the lives of the mortals, and where she had long ago been saved from that fate she feared she had finally been captured and was about to be judged, or she had been judged and was born. Fighting to keep afloat, kicking and flailing, thoughts of death and returning to her home flitted through her mind. Death was very possible. Death was most likely ascertained. It was hard to swim, to keep afloat. It was hard to fight for air when you were surrounded by water. Where was that grinning crone? Was he torturing her? And why was he here, watching her? For she had just seen him, his pale face so distant and cold. Beautiful in his dark, romantic way. Heartbreakingly wounded, scarred, illuminated by Syna’s golden radiance. Leth was watching her flail and fight, unmoving and uncaring to her plight. Or unable to tear his eye away. Was he watching her in fear? Amusement? Shock? He wasn’t here, trying to save her. She once again broke the surface of the water, and this time she understood where she was and why Leth was so distant. She was there. On a place far worse than any torture-chamber Lhex could come up with. Memories of her last time flitted through her mind. Her death, a thousand times over. In the jaws of a snake. A knife in the ribs. The Plague. Fire and magic. A spider’s gentle kiss. Her deaths, all of them born upon this place, this hell. She fought her way to the nearest piece of land she could see. Cliffs climbed up like a tower to Leth, and while she would have loved to climb it she couldn’t. She was weak. Weaker than all of her former lives put together. She ached to return, to go to where she belonged but didn’t dare try to die. Her thoughts were sporadic, they made no sense, but deep within she began to grow angry with what she realized she had become. One of them. The Godless. She wouldn’t succumb to their hatreds, though. She wouldn’t let her form freeze forever in defiance of him, the one who watched her now from far away where she couldn’t touch. It hurt, so much. Cold air on her skin. It chilled her as she clambered to the nearest shelf in the rocky wall. Desperation urged her on. Fear for freezing in the water and sinking to a grave, never resting until she reached the bottom of the bottomless pit of despairing death. She didn’t want to die in the water that had so cruelly given her consciousness after snagging her from the sky. Anger rippled through her as she slumped against that rocky wall, her bare body shimmering as though a thousand tiny moons were crawling just under her skin. Water began to dry, freezing on her. Her breathing was ragged, her eyelids heavy. She saw the blanket of sleep, death, unconsciousness, tickling its way over her eyes. Black-red. Red-black. Not the beautiful colour of Leth but the colour of blood in the night water. Her eyes shot open. She couldn’t, wouldn’t sleep. It would catch her if she slept. The water would take her, make itself red with her blood. Her thoughts trembled in the fear of drowing in her sleep, in Death. She knew what she was now. Godless but Godloved. Dead and alive. She recognized her body as that which she wore when she was with him, far away in his realm among her beautiful brethren. She knew enough of herself to see her form had diminished in beauty. Her skin was uglier than it ever had been. Her body was unfamiliar and heavy, awkward like a newborn colt. Heavy with fatigue from her swimming, water trickling out of the corner of her lips from where she had inhaled it and now, realizing it was there making it difficult to breath, she coughed what little was in there. She felt so weak and tired. Climbing had left her body scraped and bruised, her head pounded from the confusion of her thoughts. She wished it were a dream.

[Siofra]

Dawn roused her from her stupor. It wasn't the light that roused her, it was the shimmer of light playing across her skin, spreading along her body in a kaleidoscope of colours she had no names for. Where it faded her skin was light tan, her limbs thicker and livelier. Her hair shifted from the pale colour it was to a darker shade. Her face changed, she imagined that she could feel it. With the disappearance of her heavenly patron, her form diminished. In Syna's light she was human and contemptious. She was unlovely and boring, very unlike the marble facade she wore during the evening. She realized that she was cursed in this life, cursed to revel in the normalcy of it. It would be boring. It would be bland. Terrible. Horrible. She didn’t want a life like this, but yet as much as she knew she would detest it she couldn’t bring herself to end it and possibly lose forever the face that Leth had seen fit to gift her with. The beautiful form that was hers at night maybe would forever be bland in comparison to the form she had once born in the divine realm far up in the Ukalas, but she couldn’t allow it to be lost. After all, that old man in his house could write her into fate as something far worse than what she was now. Her eyes, the now nearly black emerald orbs, lidded lazily. Her thoughts were beginning to slow. Order was assuming itself over the chaos that had run so rampant. She was beginning to realize she would need a few things if she planned to survive, other than the help of a sailor before she froze out here. Already the cold was biting at her bones again, even with Syna’s radiance beginning to warm the rocks. She needed a name. She’d find one.