Private Tales The Silence That Echoes

[Emelia Atchins]

The room was bathed in golden light, silent as the tomb it was.

Emelia sat on the single chair within, staring at the empty bed. Thick dust coated every surface, even the linens. Everything except the ratty old stuffed bear, faded brown fur and dull black bead eyes staring sightless across the gulf. A space as empty as her heart, although it did not ache in the same way. This place was a reflection of broken promises, unfulfilled dreams.

In the silence, she could hear the ghostly echoes of laughter and squeals of delight.

Gone.

She had never wanted this. It was never supposed to happen this way. But damn her traitorous heart if, for a handful of years, there had been some happiness. Maybe there had even been love there. There had certainly been the joy shared by raising the fruit of their union whether or not either had thought the road would lead here.

A threadbare toy sitting on an empty, disused bed.

What am I doing? Sitting and yearning in the velvet embrace of silence for an apparition cruel and fickle and beyond her comprehension. Languishing in the sweet and painful memory of not only the dead, but the living. How do I make it stop? How do I make him stop hurting me? Why did he stop...

She shook her head, scrubbed angrily at her face as a tear traced through the makeup that hid this morning's bruises.

Glass eyes, staring.

That was when it had all come undone. That was when she had lost control of what was left of her life. That was when she became a victim of her own circumstances. Bright red rage swam in the depths of her soul beneath the surface of sorrow. Was it anger or despair that made he reach out for a forbidden fruit? Their gifts have hooks in them.

A warning. One she was not heeding, lost in the desire for a way out. A way to make everything right again.

What am I doing? "What I have to," she whispered into the emptiness twinned in her soul. "Take this piece of my sorrow, Patron. Take it, that maybe..."

 

[Saang Lusce]

"You don't look so good, kitten."

Silence preceded the voice which preceded the man, ney, Patron, that appeared within the quiet room. He broke forth from the shadowed corner with the grace of a curtain blown open by a gentle breeze and moved through the dimness illuminated faintly as a nightdweller might be by a single candlestick. He brought warmth and with it a sense of lucid peace found often at the bottle of a flagon. It spread felt but unseen. Unobtrusive but impossible to escape.

On this day he arrived in the wardrobe of his station: black plated armor adorned by a red cape that fell short of the crimson blaze that marked his long hair. Here he hunched slightly within the smaller human confines, but filled the space with a quietude that respected the current state. All too familiar with the silence of chambers where aught there be laughter, the Patron of Broken Hearts slowly stepped around She Who Offered and moved to stand before her and bent to inspect the young girl.

"And who has called me to this broken home?"

 

[Emelia Atchins]

A startled gasp slipped from lips, hand raised to her throat as her head snapped to the source.

The fright lasted moments, melted away into nothing. In its place, an unfamiliar warmth washed over her. A glamour that she was defenseless against, and completely unprepared for. Her eyes glazed as it suffused her being bit by sullen bit.

The pain remained, but it was washed out. Someone else's to contend with and no longer hers. The solace of the bottle indeed. The promise of empty salvation.

Her hands folded in her lap as she looked at the ... words failed her. Something more than she was, beautiful and graceful in a way she could never be. His opening words stung like an open-handed slap; his question a command that could not be disobeyed.

"Emelia," she said promptly and guileless. Somewhere in her head, a part of her stirred uneasily.

 

[Saang Lusce]

She reminded him strongly of his sisters. Not just in her youth but in the way her life seemed so clearly etched across her entire being. Saang had never once needed the ability to read minds when he could drink in the emotions of others without a second thought. He could sense it all from her. The pain, the anger, the doubt, the hurt.

"Emelia," he echoed gently, and fae magic took that name and tethered it to him, "you may call me San Laang." With those words he offered the girl a soft smile as he straightened himself again (so much as the confines of the room would allow) and turned away from where she sat to the offering left for him upon the bed.

Meager in all rights. Most fae would have laughed and left with the girls name. Some may have just taken her as a pet for the bother, but he was not like most fae. The armored warrior moved carefully to the bed where he leaned to reach out with a blackened gauntlet that spent most of its days covered in the blood of his enemies. The metal fingers, rimmed with pointed scales like a dragon, gingerly plucked the ratty bear from its final place of rest.

The fae frowned as he examined the item, delicately running a scaled finger over its brow. Such a loss he intrinsically knew - could feel the devastation of it at his very core.

"I will cherish this as it once was before. Thank you, Emelia."

As he turned, the bear slipped under his cloak to be lost within the scarlet lengths, never to see its home again, "Now... why have you called for me this day, sweet kitten? What does your tender broken heart desire?"

 

[Emelia Atchins]

Something stirred, but the oppressive glamour did not allow it to stir too far. She reached out a hand for a moment before letting it fall back into her lap again. A piece of her son had just passed from the world she knew, another fragment lost. Something in her heart twisted painfully.

She steeled her resolve. She could survive Reph's fists. She could survive cutting a piece of her heart out and offering it to this beautiful, terrible and alluring creature.

Freedom, she wanted to say but did not. "I want what I cannot have, back," she said instead in a low whisper.

Happiness. Belonging, A family. Peace. Oh yes, she wanted those things too. "I don't want... to be weak anymore." I want to stop it. I want to fix what is broken.

I want vengeance. "They say..," she began and halted. Unsure if she should speak the legend and the myth to the focus of all of that mythos.

 

[Saang Lusce]

What she could not have back. Saang mused on those words, the life of her child immediately coming to mind. It was true, not even he could bring back that which had already passed on. Those particular skills were beyond his scope, though a fae would never admit to such shortcomings. No, a fae would bend truths until they rolled back on themselves all Oroboros. Fix her with a stand-in child and magic her mind to see what it wanted.

While he thrived on emotions, he did not revel in toying with them.

And emotions spilled off her in plenty - he could have drank from her all night and been sated for a moon if he were so gluttonous. Leave her a husk to be found by her family and peers, but that would not do to fulfill a wish for banished weakness now would it.

Quiet as the blade that made the final cut countless times over, the warrior reached his armored hand forward and gently knocked the knuckle of his pointer just under her chin. It was warm to the touch, not cold as metal of the mortals.

"What do they say..."

 

[Emelia Atchins]

Her breath caught in her throat, and she found herself paralyzed by his touch. Her eyes caught on the animate embers of his and she found herself trapped in the moment.

They offer gifts with barbs. Their pretty words are wrapped round hooks. The only way to win against them is to not play the game. Warning and admonitions from others that had come before her, scrawled in margins of books of myths and legends.

And then there were the beasts among their kind that feasted upon humanity. He didn't look like one of those, but looks could be deceiving. Look at her husband for a start, in fact.

She couldn't look away from the fire in his eyes, couldn't help a shiver up and down her spine. "They say you can grant a sliver of power to the powerless," she whispered. At a price too steep to pay. She crushed the voice in her head, the voice of reason.

 

[Saang Lusce]

There was a smile on his face and though it appeared entirely benign, there was certainly something foreboding about it. A candle was but an innocent flame to light the way, but it also had the potential for devastation.

"Is that what you want?" he asked her carefully, head tilting just slightly while the smile maintained as the sheen of a well-kept blade, "A sliver of my power?"

 

[Emelia Atchins]

She felt like she walked the edge of a knife. Had felt it since she started down the path on the whisper of myth.

"I do not want to be powerless anymore," she said. There was a slight tremor in her voice, a trace of fear overshadowing sorrow and anger. "I don't want to..," she began. She choked, a moment of emotion surging and ruthlessly being pushed back down. "I want my life back. It hasn't been mine since the... the accident," she added.

Interesting euphemism for Reph beating her son to death. Seeing it had broken something inside her. The irrational anger in the man that had once loved her had broken everything else.

And she couldn't leave. Didn't understand why she didn't just ... go.

"I want him to stop. I want them all to stop." She looked away as she said it. "I want a way to make them stop."

 

[Saang Lusce]

"You have no voice, little one," in a figurative manner, of course, the voice she used held no respect by those around her, "I can give you one. A voice fueled by the fire within me, to command your fate once a day. In return, I require the voice you lost so long ago."

 

[Emelia Atchins]

She drew back from him, looking through the corner of her eyes in his direction. As though he were the sun, too bright to behold directly.

"My... voice? My actual voice?" She was silent for an uncomfortable moment. Or a moment that might have been uncomfortable to her and her ilk: the mortal. "But... if that is so, then how can I speak to command? You speak in riddles!"

Which, if she had actually listened to the words spoken and read, she would have known was absolutely and utterly like the Fair Folk.

 

[Saang Lusce]

He did not shush her concerns but let them fly free in the face of his flickering eyes.

"Once a day," he began once she'd quieted in a gentle tone a father might use with a chyld when beginning a bedtime story, "the quiet kitten will be granted a roar that can drive her fate with but a simple command."

He drew his hand away from her, armored fingers splaying outwards as if to present her with something grand.

"She can watch as her tormentors cow before her mighty words ... neither King nor beast will be able to deny her."

Those same digits drew inwards then, capturing something unseen, "A voice is but a small payment for such tremendous power."

 

[Emelia Atchins]

Vengeance.

The words were a sweet song to her. One she would not admit aloud to desiring so desperately. The word freedom twined round it as well, a siren song that was absolutely irresistible.

But she could not hide the ugly truth behind her eyes from him. She didn't even know what an open book her emotions were, could scarcely comprehend a creature like him.

Your voice is all you have. The words of conscience and rationality fell on deaf ears. Words had failed her before, but it would be different this time. Of course it would be different this time!

"Yes," she whispered. There was an edge of hunger in the singular word. The buzz of his presence was not the sole thing numbing her better senses. The call of power sang to her. "No one listens anyway," she said. More to herself, as if convincing herself that the price was not too high.

 

[Saang Lusce]

Yes.

The fae's smile deepened and his eyes flickered brightly, fueled by the intensity of her desperation as it rolled off her in wave after wave after wave.

"Soon they will have no choice."

The finger that held her chin slowly drew away, dropping to the opposite forearm where it pulled back a layer of black dragonscale weave. Beneath it the exposed skin was fair and warm as an oven - a pulse of his heart thrummed like distant thunder. The Patron tipped the point of his scaled thumb against the soft tissue and pierced it deeply with the claw to draw blood to the surface. A liquid which glowed like molten fire.

"Open your mouth, little kitten," he commanded as he drew his hand up, a drip of amber scarlet delicately hanging from the claw tip, "and receive my blessing."

 

[Emelia Atchins]

Desire warred with fear. Fear held no sway here, though; she was chained to her envy and wrath as surely as a prisoner was chained to their cell wall. Neither had any choice.

A lie. She had made the choice when she had summoned San Laang to this place. She just hadn't settled the price of his arrival then. She knew now, and didn't care.

She watched in terrified fascination as he drew a bead of his own vitae, the warmth making sweat pop on her forehead and run between breast and shoulder blade. Probably - it was probably the heat, and not fear at all.

She opened her mouth before she had even registered the command. She would have been shocked to her core...except she wanted. Greed and desperation paired well together.

 

[Saang Lusce]

What a good little kitten...

Ting. Thumb tapped against the knuckle of pointer, the metal scales ringing once as the drop of blood landed upon her tongue and immediately suffused it with the heat of his power. She would feel it flow down the back of her mouth and into her throat, spreading like a sudden wave as if she'd down a large gulp of hot drink rather than a single drop.

One long breath in, it filled her lungs with the fire of will.

One slow, long exhale pushed a curious, golden, effervescent plume of smoke from her body. San Laang swirled his armored fingers through it, gently encouraging it towards him where he pursed his lips and sucked it in. The taste of her voice was mild, if not a bit sour, but it was his to savor as he pleased.

"Good," he purred back to her in her own voice, the flicker of his lantern eyes pinning while his smile broadened into something full of teeth. The Patron swallowed his fee and withdrew, rising once more to stand in the small space.

"Enjoy your new roar, my lioness," he said, the low and deep svelte of his own voice having returned, "but mind you do not enjoy it too much or you will find yourself ever deeper indebted to me."

 

[Emelia Atchins]

Scorching heat flowed, and she felt the world shift. There was a brief duality, a jarring sense of division. There and gone.

The power rolled through her flesh and bones like a wildfire, heating every part of her to the edge of bliss. Or pain; the distinction was hair fine at the best of times.

Her breath left her in a slow gust and she felt something pull away from her. Leave on the wind, fickle and fleeting.

She heard her own voice thrown back at her and blinked in shock. "...!" she said, or tried to say; it came out in a painful croak before fading into silence. Her eyes widened further.

A moment of panic rose within. How did she ask questions? She settled for mouthing the words 'what do you mean, indebted'. The reality of what it was she had given away only now really had started to settle in.

 

[Saang Lusce]

"Tit for tat, kitty cat," he replied, the glow of his eyes sharpening in mirth as he looked upon his new pet. She and Ceria would prove to be very entertaining to watch over in the coming years.

"Do not trouble yourself too much," a hand reached forth toward her face, the draconic plating and claws extending lightly to brush through the hanging strands of her hair by her jaw, "- there are far worse Masters in this world to tie oneself to... you run along and have fun now. The vengeance you seek is just a roar away."

He did not linger, but drifted back into the darker depths of the room from whence he came. Like a smoldering bonfire, the warmth of his presence dwindled as he carved his way through the curtain of darkness and stepped out of Emelia's life.

Almost like he'd never even been there.