Private Tales Things We Lost In The Flames

A private roleplay only for those invited by the first writer
Twang. Twang. Twang.

The sound of the elven bows at the archery range echoed in the trees around the outskirts of Fal'Addas. Gerard watched with almost childlike awe at the display of both marksmanship and synchronization, as the elves shot not only more accurately, but in unison, their movements almost indiscernible from the other. He wondered if they could maintain this level of cohesion even in the duress of combat, for he knew that the elves saw far less fighting than he had, despite the massive difference in years lived. Not that he was proud of all that killing.

He'd come here almost daily to watch them shoot. It continued to fascinate them, and he'd tried so hard to encapsulate what he was seeing in the small journal he carried, even though he felt his pen strokes fell short of capturing the elegance on display with elven marksmanship. He was waiting for his turn to shoot with them, but the elves insisted that he not break their concentration when practicing like this, and as such, he'd been forced to be content just watching.

He hadn't told Teagan, though. She'd said she'd given up on the bow for now due to what happened with the guild hall; ironically, the loss of his previous work on an archery manual only made Gerard's work on the project more feverish than before. It was an almost consuming obsession, to the point where he hadn't thought at all about what Teagan was doing during this time.

Satisfied once the archery practice was done for the day, Gerard headed back to the loft they'd rented here from the elves and sat down, and began writing again, still pushing aside the thoughts of the horrors they'd seen after the destruction of the guildhall...

Teagan Monroe
 
It was dark before Teagan finally made her way back to their rented home. She was covered in dirt from laying on the ground and her hair was a mess in its braid. She had a hard time caring though. It was hard to care about much of anything when you just saw the charred remains of your men and your home. Everytime she closed her eyes.

Teagan opened the door to the loft and stepped inside. Gerard was writing when she entered and she stayed quiet as she passed him to go take a bath. At one point, she would have invited him to join her but they had barely touched each other in the past months.

She missed his touch but at the same time she wanted nothing to do with it. It was their fault they were here. They should've been home. They just had to spend time together though and now they were here while so many were dead.

Teagan settled into the bath and it wasn't long before she was crying. That was the other thing she did a lot now.
 
Gerard hadn't missed Teagan's entrance, at least not in terms of what he heard and saw, but his mind was fixated on a single detail he wanted to include in his writing that he just could not seem to put words to. After a few minutes, he thought he'd go and ask Teagan for some help with it--after all, she was as much a master archer as he was, and he'd grown somewhat weary of the Elves' fairly flowery descriptions of most of the things he wanted to write about. So he went to her, book and pen in hand, leaning back against the doorway as he spoke to her, hardly noticing she was in the tub.

"Say, Teagan, I'm stuck trying to write this word, or, rather a description for something," he said. "How would you describe the way the feathers of the fletching feel in your fingers when you're about to shoot? I just can't seem to think of the right way to say it."

He looked up at the ceiling. The crafted wooden architecture looked alien and natural at the same time; he wondered now if anything the elves did with wood was so strangely artistic.

"Have any ideas?" he asked.

Teagan Monroe
 
Teagan looked up when Gerard entered and she just stared at the wall when he asked his question. She hadn't touched a bow in so long and she wished to stop being reminded of the thing she once loved so much.

"Death," she said quietly before turning back to look at him with red rimmed eyes. "Death and destruction..." She repeated and drug a wet hand down her face.

"Ask the elves. You seem to love watching them so much..." You spend more time watching them than giving a fuck about me...She kept those words to herself. They didn't need to be said.

Gerard Montefort
 
It wasn't the first time since the fire Teagan's mood had been quite so impeccably dour; yet he didn't know how else he should ask. It really was everything that they had lost--not just their fame and wealth, but also their friends and legacy. Well, then again, maybe that last one remained to be seen. Gerard was going to write this book if it killed him.

He furrowed his brow at Teagan's response. It seemed she was still stuck there, staring at the charred corpses and remains of their guildhall. He wondered if she remembered the Lindwurm chase and their escape from that situation--how they'd found love on that mountain and if the memories had been tainted by the carnage they'd witnessed upon returning home.

Of course, these thoughts were exactly why he was more focused on writing his book.

"No, I don't think that's quite right..." he said. "They're soft and rigid at the same time, the fletching. Very fragile, yet, so important to making sure the arrow flies true. And nothing else matters for an arrow, I think, than flying straight. You know, that's inspired me--I should dedicate a section to talking about why it's not just the bow that matters, or the shooter, but the arrow itself. You won't be doing any kind of good archery with broken arrows, that's for sure."

It dawned on him that she'd realized he was spending time shooting with the elves.

"I think there's a lot to learn from the elves... and I know you said you weren't interested in doing archery anymore. But it's not something I can just give up when my love of archery is why I was ever guildmaster in the first place. There is joy and satisfaction to be had in pursuing that art, and giving that up would be the same as giving up on life itself."

He gave her another, more understanding look, knowing his words might sting given how he'd phrased it, but was unapologetic. He really couldn't give it up. Not now, not after losing everything. It was all he had left.

Teagan Monroe
 
"Just go," she growled at him and ducked under the water. She could just drown herself and then he could stay with him precious elves forever. He wouldn't be dragged down by her anymore. Or maybe she should just leave and find someplace to start over. She could get better with a sword and be a mercenary. Something. She wasn't helping things by being here.

That's when she decided her next move. She would leave. Gerard needed to move on without her. He couldn't still love her. He barely acknowledged her existence anymore. He wouldn't miss her. Everything would be better.

She would leave once he fell asleep.

Gerard Montefort
 
Gerard awoke the following morning to find his bed was yet again empty. Well, it wasn't too much of a surprise--Teagan would often go on her walks, after all. He performed his morning rituals, made food, and went to watch the elves perform archery again, then came back home to write again. Only, as the hour grew later and darkness eventually set in, he began to worry as Teagan still hadn't returned home. Suddenly fearful, he took to the streets to see if she were perhaps at a local bar or some other place, hoping in his mind that the truth was far less nefarious than his initial concerns...
 
Teagan had packed a small bag and slipped out quietly once Gerard had fallen asleep. She didn't stop anywhere as she headed in a direction he hadn't explored yet. She would find a city eventually and that would be her new home.

She was doing pretty good during the daylight hours but as the sun went down and the chill of night came out, she started to regret her lack of extra clothing. She had packed a jacket that she put on as she continued her walk.

She had no idea how far she had gone by the time she stopped to eat some jerky. Once that was done, she was off again.

The uneven, dark ground got the best of her as she felt her foot sink into a hole. Before she could pull it out, she tripped forward and tried to catch herself but that failed. Instead, her head collided with a boulder and the world went dark.
 
  • Scared
Reactions: Gerard Montefort
After a sense of worry and panic began to set in, Gerard went to seek aid from some of the elves, who, upon hearing his plight, agreed to help him search for his missing love. By this point in their trip he was decently well-known among the elves for his own skill with a bow, which had surpassed some of their younger archers, a feat noteworthy among even the masters of the bow themselves. He knew that the road ahead would be treacherous for him considering he did not know the Falwood like he knew the Allirian Reach, and searching for Teagan would be a nightmare on his own.

He rode together with the elven patrolmen and even with their expert help, it would be some time before they would eventually find the trail of the former Officer of the Troop. Once they did, it took them only a little longer until they found Teagan's unconscious body. It was a flurry of emotions for Gerard, who simultaneously wanted to rush to her side, but also knew she needed to be handled by the elves, who would take her back to be cared for in Fal'Addas.

For a while, elven healers had to take care of her. He didn't know how long they would take, and went to drink a little bit to relax his nerves. However, this also gave him some courage, and as the sun came up and he still hadn't slept, he insisted he go in to see Teagan again. He entered her room in the hospital, where he wondered what he would find--would she be awake? Had she even survived...?

He had to know.
 
Teagan was awake but she was just staring blankly out the window. Her head was still wrapped and there was untouched food on a table nearby. She had a pounding headache and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and go back to sleep. The elves had told her that she was not allowed to. Not yet. They needed to make she was no longer bleeding internally. She didn't ask from where...she guessed her head.

That was also the reason she couldn't remember anything apparently.

Not her name. They said it was Teagan Monroe. Not her age. They said it was twenty-nine. Not what she did for a living. They were cagey on that answer for her. Someone named Gerard would come answer more questions.

Who the fuck was Gerard? She had no idea.
 
  • Nervous
Reactions: Gerard Montefort
Gerard waited in a designated seating area inside the elven hospital as he awaited word of Teagan's condition. Who knows how long she had been out there? Moreover, why was she out there in the first place? He wondered if maybe it was intentional, like an animal who no longer saw itself as fit for purpose, and simply decided it was time to stop surviving, stop living, and go curl up somewhere to die. Maybe she hadn't intended to hit her head on a rock, but if that hadn't happened, where would she be?

He finally got word back from the doctors. It seemed Teagan was finally waking up, so he gathered up his things, including the book he'd been working on silently. It was the writing that was keeping him going, really--for if Teagan were gone, then he truly wouldn't have anything else. So it was with some trepidation that he entered the room set aside for her. He'd done this more times than he cared to remember with his comrades, but with Teagan, there was a new uncertainty as to her status given their romantic involvement. He slowly entered, as if he were expecting some sort of danger within the quiet hospital's walls.

"Hey," he said, softly and knowingly. "How are you holding up, Teagan?"
 
Teagan looked up when she heard her name...well what she had been told was her name...and the fact that this stranger called her that meant it was probably correct. Her blue eyes studied him. He was a human like her so she wondered if this was the Gerard that the elves had mentioned.

"Fine, I suppose. I am just tired and they said I couldn't sleep. It's very frustrating." She wondered if she sounded as tired and frustrated as she felt.

"Are you Gerard?" She asked in a quieter voice. She felt like she was supposed to know him but she didn't. She didn't recognize the man with the dark hair and sad blue eyes.

She didn't recognize the man she was in love with.
 
Her initial response seemed promising--she still seemed like the Teagan he'd come to know over the years. Which was to say, her grumpy attitude was a welcome sight, and he hoped the damage she'd sustained was only physical. These hopes would be dashed, however, as she asked a question which simultaneously horrified him and made him feel ill, his stomach doing flips inside him as she asked such a simple question.

"I... yes, I am Gerard." Her vacant expression and the quizzical way she'd asked had him fearing for the worst. The elven doctors hadn't spoken anything of this, and he wondered just how bad the damage really was.

"Teagan... if you don't remember me... well, what do you remember? Do you know who you are? Why you're here? Who you used to be?"

His sudden barrage of questioning was uncontrollable as the panic started settling in that there was a very real possibility that Teagan, the love of his life, no longer knew who he even was... or who she was, either.
 
The elves hadn't told him that she couldn't remember anything. His face said it all. They were close. She could tell that. He looked like he was going to be sick before he found the words to answer her question. At least she knew one person now...well...two counting herself.

"I don't remember anything," she said as a few tears fell from her eyes. She had been trying so hard not to cry but she couldn't keep it in any longer. She was frustrated with the situation, she had a headache, and she had zero idea who she was.

My name is Teagan. I am twenty-nine. I am close to this Gerard somehow.

"Who are you to me?" She asked and looked back out the window. She couldn't stand to see the pain that would no doubt flicker across his face at this question.
 
Her new question confirmed the worst possible situation had happened: she'd lost everything, in terms of her memory. He was now alone in the world, with no guild and with no lover. Neither were taken by battle, but by accidents and the malice of others. He suppressed tears as he continued their conversation; having been through so many battles, it felt for him that there was nothing left to feel, even with this newest tragedy, only an endless cycle of loss.

"Me? Well... I am Gerard. I'm an archer, and let's just say we were close." He didn't elaborate on any details, not wanting to overwhelm her in this state. "I know you don't remember anything, but I'll help you until such time that you do. Most of your friends are back in Alliria. We were here in Fal'Addas on a trip together. For now, I think we should give you a few more days in the hospital. In the meantime, I'll keep you company."

He offered a gentle smile. Her mind was now clean of all the things plaguing her, at last. If only she hadn't paid such a high price for it.
 
Teagan's fingers twitched as Gerard answered her question. She had so many follow questions already and she was extremely grateful when he said that he would keep her company. She finally looked back over at Gerard and nodded towards the chair that was near the bed.

"Sit, please. I have more questions," she said with a small smile.

"Am...was...I an archer too? You said we were close...how close?" She bit her bottom lip at that question. Were they married? She really hated this whole thing. "Why did we come here?"

It was hard to just trust this man but he was the only human here so she didn't think she had much of a choice.
 
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