Private Tales Sighing Shadows by the Light of the Moons

A private roleplay only for those invited by the first writer
A slow, stupid smile crept across the mage’s scruffy features and he tapped the side of his nose. When did he suddenly get so lucky? This visiting blue blood wanted him to give her a tour.

“A little night time adventure? Careful, I’ve heard there are burglars out there. Hang on, I’ve got you.”

He waved his hand and muttered an incantation. Narrowing his eyes, he willed his thoughts to take form, gave them life, and in a moment a slightly translucent version of Ciana stood next to the real one. There was something slightly off about the copy. He couldn’t be quite sure. Maybe the eyes a touch too big, or the hands too small. It wasn’t a one for one copy, but close enough. Galen gestured toward the bed and not-Ciana walked over and got into it, slipping under the covers.

Quite pleased with his work, Galen looked at the real Ciana.

“What? It’s in case someone comes in to check on you. It should last us a few hours. Not the first time I’ve had to leave a doppelgänger behind. Usually it’s of me though.”

Leaving the books behind, Galen went to the open shutters and waited for her to join him. He produced two white dove feathers from his coat, then mischievously tickled under her nose with one before he handed it over. Eyes twinkling, Galen nodded toward the window.

“Come on, witch. It’s time to infuriate your stepmother. That’s what they’re best for, I hear. Go ahead. Jump out when you’re ready. I bound an enchantment to the feather. You’ll land soft as one. Just don’t try it on anything higher or it won’t work.”

He made a face, imagining them leaping off the belltower.

Ciana
 
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Ciana’s lips curved into a grin, though her eyes narrowed in mock reproach at his joke about burglars. Har, har. But as he began his incantation, her smile softened into wonder. It still felt illegal somehow, just to watch him wield magic so openly, and yet she couldn't hide her fascination..

Her eyes widened as the shimmering double took shape beside her. She stumbled back until her hip bumped the vanity with a soft thud, a little gasp escaping.

“Why, it’s… me?” Her head tilted in disbelief, and the doppelgänger mirrored the gesture perfectly.

She wrapped her arms around her ribs as she watched the strange version of her walk across the room and slip into her bed. A shiver rolled over her back. “Gracious, that’s unnerving…”

Casting off her robe, she crossed the room and pulled a fine dove-grey cloak around her shoulders, lifting the hood. With the soft swish of fabric she joined him at the window, every movement as tentative as it was eager.

“I don’t think I can—” she started, only to be interrupted by the feather brushing under her nose. She gave a startled laugh, huffing and rubbing at the itch with her sleeve. “Menace.” she muttered. Still, she accepted the feather, holding it between two fingers to study it.

When he called her witch her breath caught, then released as a small smile curved across her lips. “That’s a dangerous word to use where I’m from…” she murmured, though there was a spark of mischief in her eyes.

But then came his ridiculous suggestion, and her smile gave way to wide-eyed disbelief.

“Jump!?...” she blinked at him, clutching the feather tighter as her stomach flipped at the very idea. “I think I’d rather take the stairs…”
 
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“No,” he insisted, shooing her forward, wielding his feather like a rapier. “Easier to get caught sneaking out the front door. Never use the front door. Or stairs.”

He frowned.

“Stairs have a way of creaking loud when you least want them to.”

Gods, her laugh reminded him of those little silver wind chimes at that tinker’s shop on the east market. And the way her eyes seemed to light up at the mention of scandal and mischief. As if she enjoyed it. What was he getting himself into?

A night on the city, apparently.

“You aren’t afraid of a little jump are you? Go on. Here, we can jump together.”

Wrapping an arm around her waist, he marched them forward onto the lip of the window and proceed to count.

“One, two - hold on - three.”

Before she could protest further, he stepped off.

Air. Wind. Weightlessness.

Ciana
 
Her eyes went wide as his arm slid around her waist and suddenly she found herself teetering on the ledge with nothing but cobblestones below.

“Wait- Galen, I don’t think-!” she squeaked, clutching his sleeve.

But then there was no more thinking. He counted to three and stepped, and the ground rushed up to meet them. Her stomach swooped, her hood flew back, and for one impossible heartbeat she was certain they’d both smash into cold stone. But then- lightness. The wind roared in her ears and she found herself gliding rather than falling, drifting to earth like a feather caught in a summer breeze. Her slippers touched the street with barely a whisper.

Ciana staggered a step, gasped, and then let out a breathless laugh that broke into giddy giggles. “Oh! Oh my goodness!” she pressed a hand to her pounding heart, blue eyes bright as stars. “That was--...” she laughed again, shaking her head, “I cannot believe you just--...”

Words failed, but exhilaration shone through every flush of her cheeks.

Impulsively, she caught his hand, fingers curling around his without hesitation this time. “Come on,” she grinned, tugging him away from the manor’s looming shadow.

She pulled him into a run, her cloak billowing behind her as they slipped through the gates and out into the lamplit streets of Elbion, her laughter trailing in their wake.
 
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Well. What a change of circumstances a few days brought about. Just three days ago, Galen stood on the verge of defaulting his loans and being beaten into a pulp by some Valkyr and Sons thugs, then his corpse resurrected under contract to go marauding for the Thronebreakers. Now here he found himself led through the streets of Elbion at dusk by a devastatingly beautiful Allirian noblewoman.

A thrill of exhilaration raced through him as they raced way from the manor, their fingers intertwined. He found he could not stop grinning. Probably looked a thrice-damned, absurd idiot. Being close to her like this, hearing her laughter. It felt electric. Like when he finally got the hang of a spell and saw his conjuration come racing forth. Gods. Why couldn't he feel this way all the time?

They quickly reached the end of the nearby bridge and passed through an alley, then started toward another. Galen pulled her up short.

"Alright, your ladyship, slow down. Can't go racing off into every darkened corner. You trying to scandalize me?" He squinted at her, mockingly.

Of course, if they ever did get caught and they realized who she was, then he might be done for... oh his student status with the college of mages might save him. Maybe. Only maybe. They couldn't afford to hang all their mage students. Even the ones who snuck about with a noblewoman. He would definitely be beaten, though, and Galen preferred to avoid the feel of a blackjack cracking his ribcage.

"Here, you ever seen a night market before? It should just be getting started," He led her in the direction of the merchant district, closer to port. Hardly anyone was out roaming the streets who didn't also have a collar turned up like Galen, or a hood like Ciana.

Galen didn't let go of her hand at first, even when they slowed walking. He uh. Well. He kind of liked it, truth be told. And if she did too, then what's all the fuss about. Supposed it would be more gentlemanly if he offered her his arm. So he did just that, elbow poking toward her.

"Madame," he said with an incline of the head, then led her in the direction of all the pretty lights, visible even from this distance. By the time they arrived, the sun had truly sunk beneath the horizon and the shadows grew long from the moons and the stars.

They could hear them before they rounded the corner, the hubbub of the night market, then as they came around all the lights shone on display. Regular lamps. Candles. And blobs of floating magical light that just sat there like glowing orbs. Beneath and around the light were two rows of tents, stretching on either side of the cobblestone thoroughfare. Merchants and peddlers and tinkerers and all sorts hawked their wares from beneath the tents. There was even a tavern or three still open, a bit further down, if she felt inclined for a drink.

Here in the night market, most of the wares had a more... unseemly tinge to them. Instead of common produce, they sold tinctures and concoctions. One old crone tried to grab him by the arm, talking about an ointment to make him rut like a wild bull. Galen tore his arm away, blushing furiously and stammering.

"Oh look, a fire breather," Galen pointed to a little stage with a man twirling a torch. A small crowd surrounded the stage, properly gasping when he held the torch to his lips and blew out a sudden gout of fire into the night air.

"Just like you. Should ask if he's got any tips," Galen chuckled.

Ciana
 
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Ciana froze, her eyes wide, appalled.

Scandalise you?” she repeated, scandalised herself, ready to apologise profusely for her behaviour, until she caught the crooked grin tugging at his mouth. Her heart stumbled, then steadied. Gods, she really was a fool. She exhaled, shaking her head, the smile slipping back, softer this time. “Sorry. I’m just… alive, I suppose.”

The words surprised her. But it was true. For the first time in years she wasn’t bone-weary, wasn’t waiting for the next collapse and premature death. For once her body didn’t feel like a cage. She felt free, perhaps a little dangerously so. This was a new life.

She steadied her pace, let herself breathe. And when he mentioned the night market, something childlike flickered across her face. “No… I haven’t been to a market since I was a child.” Her voice laced with wonder, as if markets themselves were a memory out of reach.

When his hand finally slipped from hers, she felt the absence immediately, like being dropped into cold water. Then he offered his arm instead, gentlemanly. Ciana flushed hot, her stomach twisting. Oh, Saints—what had she been thinking, clutching him like some tavern wench? Some back-alley Sally! She swallowed, murmuring, “I’m sorry…” before giving him a shy, crooked smile and slipping her hand into the crook of his arm. Proper. Decorous.

Then, there was light.

"Wondrous..." she whispered.

The market spilled open before her like a story come to life, every flickering lamp and orb of conjured glow reflected in her wide eyes. The colours, the voices, the scents, clove smoke, fried foods, sharp herbs, all of it wrapped around her. She slowed as though to drink it in, gaze darting from one strange stall to another, unable to decide what to marvel at first.

Ciana blinked in shock as a hunched old woman caught Galen’s sleeve and said something about rutting bulls. Her cheeks went crimson, her throat cleared with an awkward little cough as she looked away very quickly, feigning sudden fascination with a rack of glass bottles that glimmered like stars.

Mercifully, Galen steered her on. Ciana stopped to watch the fire breather, her lips parting as the man exhaled a plume of flame into the night. The crowd gasped. So did she, her brows arching. “Gracious, no… I couldn’t do that.” Her voice was hushed, awed.
 
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“You sure?” Galen raised an eyebrow, rubbing at his cheek right where she’d kissed him, “I’d disagree.”

Another roar of flame into the night cast the two of them in an orange glow and he watched her, smiling at the way her amazement and awe of the moment shone in her eyes and her expression. What did they call that? That shade her skin was? So white, like snow. Porcelain. Yes, that was it. Like porcelain.

He stood there with her for a moment, soaking in the fire breather’s pageantry. Easy to forget the adventure of life, what when you were being pursued by bankers and mercenaries and such.

They wandered on down the street and found a hedgewizard shooting orbs into the street that cascaded with a scintillating array of colors, impossible shades of greens and blues and yellows and reds and more that Galen didn’t even know the names of in all their shades. He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Still feeling alive?”

Galen paused at a simple table behind which sat an elderly orc woman, hair braided and festooned with bone fetishes. He looked at the table and saw it strewn with bones and wooden cards. A chill crept through him.

“Fortunes, dearies?” Cried the orc, lifting up her head to reveal clouded, sightless eyes.

The young man took a step back, his sense of adventure stumbling somewhat.

“I… I don’t know.”

Ciana
 
Ciana gasped, clapping softly as the fire breather bent flame to his will, her laughter spilling just as brightly into the night. When the wizard sent colourful orbs floating through the air, she tipped her head back, eyes wide, lips parted in wonder, the glow refracting in her irises.

"Beautiful.." she whispered.

At Galen’s whisper her head turned toward him, the smile that curved her lips nearly uncontainable. Oh yes… very much so. And... also a little rebellious, but my father and stepmother shall never hear of this…” she chuckled, though her voice carried a conspiratorial hush, as though the very shadows might betray her secret. Then she blinked, elaborating, That is, the magic, of course. Every one of these people would be locked in a sanitorium or worse for such tricks.

The laugh that followed was mirthless and brittle as thin glass and the truth was just as sharp in her chest, that had the Professor not brought her here, she might well have shared such a fate.

Her gaze dropped then to the orc woman, her bones and tokens scattered across the table. Fortune telling. The words alone made her stomach flutter with equal parts fear and fascination. A woman who claimed to glimpse what lay ahead. Saints, what she wouldn’t give to know what her life could look like now.

Ciana hesitated. Then, with a breath that steeled and trembled all at once, she slipped a hand into her cloak, fingers brushing cool metal. She drew out a small silver coin and dropped it into the woman’s waiting palm.

“Oh… why not.” Her words were light, but her pulse thundered as she watched the sightless eyes of the seer.
 
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The orc woman cackled and stuffed the coin into a purse on the table, then she swept up some of the bones in her hands and shook them vigorously.

A sense of unease stole through Galen and he felt the noise of the crowd grow oppressive for a moment, but his eyes were transfixed.

Mumbling some incantation, the orc tossed the bones on the table and Galen’s eyes widened. He saw now how they lay, each yellow bit of ossified relic carved with some obscure lettering in orcish tongue. He looked from them to his hand. They were knuckle bones.

“Hmmm. Oh yes, oh yes,” muttered the orc, who then began sorting the wooden cards based upon what her sightless eyes saw in the bone. With sudden violence she flipped over a card and slammed it onto the table.

“Hah! The Paramours. How sweet, how sweet. Hmm but what’s this.” Another card. “The Priest reversed. Mmm. Defiance of tradition. Dangerous, child.”

She flipped over a third.

“The Rook! Ahhh. Suffering and pain. But… what’s this?”

A fourth, the sun in radiance carved deep and painted onto the wooden card.

“The Sun… My, my. Is it reversed? Hmm. Strange. I cannot tell.”

Galen didn’t like this at all. He’d always hated divination and oracles. Knowing your future seemed like a terrible thing to him.

“What’s it mean?” He asked, unable to help himself.

“She travels a road in defiance of tradition, with a partner perhaps, but there will be upheaval ahead, terrible upheaval. It could end in joy, or it could end in loss. Fate balanced on a razor’s edge of choices.”

Galen scowled, sounded like a load of nonsense to him. “Uh. Thanks.” He eyed Ciana.

Ciana
 
Ciana’s nose wrinkled at the sight of the bones, her lips parting in faint distaste. Garish little things, carved and yellowed with age. And yet she leaned forward despite herself, pulled in by the strangeness of it, until the orc’s hand came slamming down. She jumped, startled, clutching instinctively at Galen’s sleeve, her fingers curling tight as her breath caught with a quiet "Goodness.."

Paramours. Her blue eyes slid toward him, unamused, as though he had planted that word there himself. But the rest… the rest she drank in, her expression shifting like clouds across a moon. Curiosity. Fascination. Unease. Then something darker, quiet as dread.

Defiance of tradition. Dangerous. Her throat tightened. Surely the woman could only mean this - her magic, her presence in a city where it was celebrated instead of condemned. What else could it mean?

Pain and suffering… Ciana swallowed hard. That part she knew already, deep down in her marrow, though she prayed Galen’s solution meant it was finally behind her. And the Sun, of all things, the Sun. She wanted to laugh bitterly. Her most hated enemy, her cruellest gaoler, her curse.

But then he spoke of upheaval and choices and joy and loss and she frowned, offering a half smile in thanks to the orc woman, her hand lingered on Galen’s sleeve a heartbeat longer than necessary. Tugging gently, she turned him away from the stall, from those clouded eyes that still clung to her with eerie attention.

Well… now I have more questions than I do answers. She forced a laugh under her breath, casual as she could make it..

“My father says it’s all nonsense, fortune telling. One stopped by a festival when I was a child and told him he’d grow gills and live in a pond if he didn’t stop drinking so much brandy.” She smiled faintly at the memory, though her gaze slid back toward the seer, still watching, still waiting. A shiver traced her spine.

Her attempt at levity faltered as she looked back at Galen. “Are you sure you don’t want her to read yours? It can’t be worse than, 'pain and suffering and terrible upheaval and loss', can it?” she said, mimicking the orc's old and cracked voice.

The impression earned a quiet huff of laughter from her own lips, but it dissolved quickly. Her frown returned, her brows knitting together. Goodness, that does sound miserable, doesn’t it? She blinked, lips pressing thin, as though admitting aloud what had already wormed its way under her skin.
 
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“Look, these seers…” he lowered his voice, conscious of the sightless eyes somehow boring into his back, “They’re all hacks, ok? Your father’s right about that at least. I mean, what did she even tell you really, if you think about it? That you might find someone, that your life might be difficult and it could end happy or it could end sad - I mean come on, anyone could have said that.”

He snorted, shaking his head, “And don’t get me started on the defying traditions part. Everyone at the night market is defying tradition, being rebellious, just by being here. I just… I wouldn’t read too much into it. You know? They can’t dictate your fate.”

Glowing lights reflected in his ocean-dark eyes as he stared into her eyes. The haggard lines of his face from too little sleep and too much worry softened just a bit.

He took both of her hands in his and held them up in between them. Overhead, another bubble of wobbling colors burst into a hundred smaller orbs. Galen’s eyes followed them for a moment, smiling, then came back down to her haughty yet slightly nervous and doubly curious face. And those wide eyes that started to draw him in again.

Uh oh.

“I… I just think you should remember you control your destiny. No matter what a blind orc lady or your stepmother or any of them say.”

Ciana
 
Ciana nodded as he spoke, lips parted faintly, drinking him in like water in a drought. At first his words reached her, firm, grounding, meant to reassure. He was always doing that, wasn’t he? Always trying to knit her back together. Giving back her little box back when he could’ve stolen it. Talking her down from spiralling and potentially catastrophic panic attack when she’d been sure she’d burn the world down around her. Pouring over books, chasing solutions for her sickness..

Her head tilted. He was still talking, still stringing those rough, earnest words together, but she found herself half-lost. Mesmerised by her own realisations.

How sweet, the orc had said. A strange thing, to think of herself entangled in sweetness. And yet, Galen was sweet, wasn’t he? Infuriating, irreverent, reckless. But sweet. And handsome too, in that haphazard, roguish way that no doubt scandalised her stepmother just by existing.

Then came the words that broke the world open. Words no one had ever said to her before. Words no priest, no father, no governess would ever dream of. You control your destiny.

Her breath caught, her pulse stuttered. Untraditional was far too mild a word. It was heresy. It was freedom.

Her gaze lingered on his eyes for a long moment, betraying her. Dark blue, like a flame that burned cold instead of hot, searing all the same.

“Can’t possibly think of what choices she means…” she murmured, voice almost too soft to hear, her eyes flicking from his to the shape of his mouth as if it were some puzzle to be solved. Wonder sat heavy in her chest, bright and dangerous.