Agaethi Blodhren - Part 5
The Knucklebones (for @anhufflepuffhobbit from @problematic-maverick)
Rating: Probably G, check the warnings in case
Characters: Angela, OFC (Angela’s mother), OMC (Angela’s father, briefly), OMC (Oromis’ father, briefly), Oromis (briefly), Glaedr (briefly), Solembum (briefly), Vrael (mentioned), Evandar (mentioned)
Warnings: OC Death, slight angst
Summary: Angela’s early life (up to about age twenty). I would like to maybe expand on this in the future, if @anhufflepuffhobbit is amenable to it.
It was her mother who taught her to use the knucklebones.
She was four, maybe five when she first stumbled into her mother’s study while she was reading a future. As usual, her mother was sitting behind the desk, with a small smile veiled behind a more serious expression, hiding in the crinkles round her eyes. What was unusual was the tall man with long silver-white hair sitting in front of her.
“You are still willing?” she asked the man.
He gave only a gentle incline of his head, but that seemed to be enough for her, as she dropped something- several things, actually- from her hand. Three words slipped from her mother’s lips, each landing heavily. The power around them was clear, yet as she watched, she could still hear the gentle tinkling as seven pale objects settled on the hard wood of the desk.
Her soft gasp drew her mother’s gaze, and she frantically gestured to her to leave.
She hurried out and sat leaning against the corridor wall, her thoughts still tangled, the clink of the items still echoing in her mind. She was only interrupted by the creaking door opening to let the man and her mother out.
Leaping up, she looked straight into the man’s eyes and solemnly declared, “I like your hair.”
His eyes twinkled and he smiled, and replied just as seriously. “I like yours too. My name is Glídrin. May I ask yours?”
“Angela,” she stated. “My name is Angela.”
When she was eleven, her mother called her up to the study. Apprehension stirred in her gut, she had no idea what she’d done this time, but it had to be something big.
She climbed the smooth, polished steps up to the third floor slowly, dreading the scolding undoubtedly waiting at their top. But when she opened the hefty oaken door, she was greeted with one of her mother’s rare, openly soft smiles.
“You’ve always been interested in my knucklebones, haven’t you?” she started, and her eyes were pulled to the seven creamy-white cuboids arrayed on the desk. The smile widened. “Do you want to know how to use them?”
Of course she did. She sat down opposite her mother, and watched, enthralled, as her mother gathered the bones, closed her eyes. The shadows on her lips flickered slightly, before opening and, once again, freeing the three words. This time she concentrated on them.
Manin, Wyrda, Hugin. Memory, Fate, Thought.
The words remained in the air, even as it was fragmented by the chimes of the bones.
Her mother’s eyes met hers, even as she swept the bones off the table, concealing their predictions. “The words represent the past, the future, and the present. By taking the advice of the past, we can understand the possible paths of the future, and the bones channel these, so that we can know now what will happen later.” She must have seen the confusion in her eyes, because she offered the bones to her. “You will understand better when you try.”
She took them and summoned the words to her mind, envisioned them tumbling from her lips as the dice tumbled from her hands. “Manin, Wyrda, Hugin.”
There was no power behind them, and the bones clunked heavily on the surface. Something had gone wrong.
Her mother shook her head. “These words are your links to time, not just trinkets with little significance. Use them like they meansomething.”
She tried again, pouring all her concentration into the six syllables. “Manin! Wyrda! Hugin!”
Still nothing. The bones did not sing like they were meant to.
“You do not yet understand the passage of magic. Maybe I was wrong, and you are too young.” There was not despair or disappointment in her mother’s voice, only a calm acceptance.
“No, give me one last chance.”
She could picture the taken-aback look on her mother’s fine features- it had not been a question, but a statement- but she knew she could do this. Third time was the charmed, after all.
This time she did not concentrate on the words as she said them, but on them as a whole. On their meanings together.
Together they were Time, the essence of all things. She drew them together.
A burning heat built in her palms, and she let go of the dice in a panic. As her eyes flew open, - when had she closed them? – she noticed that their movements seemed slow and lazy, a relaxed, spiralling movement. A whole future was spread before her thoughts, in shards of fire and ice and soft-coloured light, ashes and stars and blood-red sunsets. The bones were her medium, and they followed her vision.
Clinking broke through the images, and she returned to the present. Both she and her mother stared at the bones.
“What do they mean?” she asked. Her mother did not answer.
“Angela!” called her father from below. Both started, and her mother shook her head.
“I do not like that name.”
“It is not the truth. It is not the name I gave to you.”
Suddenly angered, she stood up. “But it is still my name.”
“You are the last of your kind! You must take up the mantle.”
“No, I am not,” she snarled. “I am the only one of my kind. Your blood runs through me, but not just yours. Why should I not take the name that seems right to me?”
Angela walked out of the room.
“You have grown up too fast,” murmured her mother, but she could not hear her.
Smoke wound its way through the house, so thick Angela could not even gather the breath to scream. She knocked into several pieces of furniture, lurched into the door, fumbled with its handle, staggered outside. As soon as she was clear of the swirling, smouldering wreckage, she fell to her knees, gasping frenziedly for the thin air.
Seconds, minutes- hours? days?- later, a slender, soot-stained hand laid itself on her shoulder.
“Where is father?” she asked.
Tears streamed down her face, half from the smoke, half from the sorrow.
She cursed the fire that had taken half her heart.
The pair, mother and daughter, fled the burning carcass. Every time the younger stopped, the elder urged her on. They cannot catch us. They cannot catch us.
One week later, a week of aching feet and empty tear ducts, they stopped. The golden dragon eyed them curiously, a young elf with silver hair tied back mirroring his expression.
“Eka aí fricai,” said her mother, trying not to let exhaustion enter her voice. She presented a ring for the man to see. He nodded mutely, then turned to Angela.
“She is my daughter, she means you no harm.” assured her mother, almost frantically, but he did not heed her words.
A sharp blade poked at her mind.
The elf swayed back, clearly shocked.
“My mind is mine alone,” Angela asserted. “Do not try it.”
Another presence brushed gently against her barriers, and for a second she thought he had disregarded her advice, but it was a different signature. Tentatively, she let it in.
Forgive my Rider,thought the dragon. Oromis is rash, and, dare I say it, a little overprotective of me. He refuses to trust anyone without proof of their loyalty to peace. I am Glaedr.
It is… a pleasure to meet you, Glaedr.
Oromis was scowling at her. She smiled back. “I wouldn’t keep on like that. If you frown too much, your face gets frozen like that. Forever.”
He raised an eyebrow, but attempted to quickly and subtly rearrange his face into something more amenable. Angela tried to hide a laugh. Glaedr didn’t bother disguising his.
He sighed. “I suppose I have to take you to Vrael and Evandar now.”
“That would be best,” replied her mother. Both valiantly tried to ignore the giggling girl and dragon.
That was the first time Angela flew on a dragon. When she next did, several hundred years later, she remembered an old friend and, though she did not cry for him, she thought of him with sadness in her heart.
Her mother left Du Weldenvarden in the middle of the night, after four years of she and Angela staying there.
She did not take Angela with her.
Something cold buried itself in her heart then. In one desperate attempt to warm herself, she took the knucklebones left (accidentally or on purpose, she did not know) on the dresser and thought of Time.
Her hands blazed, and she looked into a pair of violet eyes. Scenes of flames and death reflected in the orbs. She thought she heard a scream.
When the scene cleared, the bones were still in her hands. A black cat with too-large canines and the same purple eyes as in the vision was sat in front of her.
Solembum. I heard you were leaving.
She hadn’t realised it before, but yes, she had been meaning to leave.
She shrugged, and left the treehouse, tucking the bones into her pocket.
It was rare for Ellesméra to be as empty as it was, even at night, but Angela used it to her advantage, wondering if she really could leave without anybody noticing.
Of course, her luck wasn’t that good.
An elf stepped into her path, one with silvery-white hair and twinkling grey eyes. He held a dagger out toward her.
“I had a dream,” he replied. “One day I am sure you will need this.”
She took the knife. It gleamed a soft red, even in the dark night.
“I’m afraid it only has one use left.”
She smiled up at him. “It only takes one stab to kill someone.”
He smiled back, but it quickly melted off his face. “Oromis will miss you.”
“I will miss him too. But perhaps we’ll meet again one day.”
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