The Despair

Sakkara's eyes guttered with suspicion at first - still frazzled, weak and not entirely at her wits. (Was this real?) Her hands clawed at the ground. Feeling the earth beneath her finger tips brought her some reassurance. She sniffed the air, immediately scenting the ocean and land. More reassurance. Finally, the druid sat up entirely and casted her eyes about for any familiar or troubling sights. Nothing. More or less now reassured that this was reality and she was briefly safe, Sakkara gazed back at the stranger and angled her head. With some of her wits regained, she looked inquisitive.

There was something about this one that he recognised it, however, it wasn't Lyklor who knew her, but Pythius. They were one and the same, but some memories were older than the others, and this, this was distinctly Pythius. "I'm Lyklor, this is Renie. We saw you in the sea." he left out the fact that it would have been impossible to find her if she hadn't lost all hope of being rescued. "Take your time, you almost drowned," he could already tell that she was latching back onto hope now that she was safe. Not many stayed in despair for long; it was the bottom they tried to climb out of, and it was a softer place than most thought.

“I don’t know, maybe that you won’t,” she leveraged against him from a place of anger that Lyklor did not seem inclined to even try. That he did not deem her worthy of effort, only of retreat. She had refused many lessons Fyren had tried to teach her, but if there was one that suddenly stuck out to her it was this: she was not so small and bereft of potential that she was not worthy of continued attempts. She set her jaw, shaking her head at him as he explained his lack of hope, his endless well of despair, his incapabilities. “No. No, I won’t understand it. Because I won’t try, just like you won’t.” Her nails dug into the soft flesh of her palm her hands were so tightly clenched, and she found she wanted Lyklor to feel every bit as upset about this as she did. “I won’t understand, but I will always blame you for this. I will always be angry with you for this. So go despair over that,” she muttered quietly. She swallowed hard, trying to choke back the words she knew would wound deeper, instead saying, “You may think I can’t handle this, or understand this, or that I’m incapable. But there is one thing I do know: and it’s when a mind is made up. You’ve made me feel pathetic enough asking you to try. Dragons don’t beg.”

Why did it feel like doing the right thing here was so wrong? He was saving her, right? Her life would be full of grey with him around. He didn't want to be selfish when it came to her. If one knew they could prevent another's despair, why wouldn't they try to prevent it? He thought that this was the biggest display of affection he could show. There were no words that could fall from his lips that could remedy this, no look he could portray for her to understand that this wasn't easy for him either. He took her words in, but there was no sadness or anger upon his face. "I'm sorry, but this is how it has to be." She was right, dragons don't beg, they were too prideful for that, and what was despair if not a lack of pride, a sense of self. He didn't reach out for her as she left; he just stood there and watched as he let the best thing in his life slipped through his fingers. Eventually, he changed to his true form and slipped away into the darkness where he belonged.

Her shoulders lift in a graceful shrug and she had no personal investment if they did or did not end up with the special someone that they cared for, she sold herself to the highest bidder, she was far from a romantic even if she saw the beauty in the wild world around her. "Then that's your answer." He was lucky that the other choose to hold on, something had to give eventually though. "Connecting with someone can't be one-sided, no one wants to convince you to choose them, they might fear losing you but everyone wants to be wanted, everyone wants to be desired and if you're ready to walk away, they won't chase forever." A sad smile touched her lips. "I bet they saw something good in you though, something between you worth fighting for, that's why they saw the trouble and potential heartbreak as worth it."

Why was he disappointed with that answer? Around Talisa, all he could think about was hurting her, making her life miserable. But without her, he felt like part of him was missing. Life was dull, grey once again. The lines between Lyklor and Pythius were so blurred that they were one entity, the elvhen's pain of losing his family at Aventia was now the spirits. Despair's corruption was now the bards. There was no one without the other. "I don't lack for want; it is actually the most concerning part." he couldn't help but be in the vicious cycle of thinking. It made him wonder if the daemonfey of pride he had met had a similar problem, though Lyklor did feel somewhat pathetic next to the other. "I wonder what she saw."

"It ends or it doesn't." It's a simple truth and there was no way around it. "The choice is yours, you can either go through life not really letting anyone in or caring about them or you can take a chance that a connection could lead to something good." Words that were hypocritical as she had built a life of comfort on sleeping with married men and playing a game of performance and seduction, playing at pretend care and affection while feeling nothing at all. "People are amazing at resilience, wounds that you never thought could heal eventually grow scar tissue and the mind has the ability to forget what was once the most sharpest pain. It is a powerful feeling what you thought would kill you once upon a time is now only a dull ache."

"Everything ends." Like everything has a beginning, it has an end before it all repeats again. Everything they did was pointless because it was all going to happen again. "I don't deserve anything good." It was easy for the other to give such broad statements about the subject without knowing his circumstances. Would she say the same if she knew he was a despair daemonfey? "My wounds won't heal over or fade over time." his nature made it almost impossible for that to happen; it made him want to sit and fester in them.

"The heart and the head don't always work in tandem; it's not always a choice about who worms their way into your heart and carves out a spot for themselves. Great pleasure can be found when you give in to your heart's desire, and there is excitement in ignoring the wise choice and going for what you truly want." Her lips quirk upwards, and she misses the days when she used to ruminate about the path ahead, about the desire that she stifled to seem unattached. "Do you fancy yourself as being no good?" Her eyebrow lifted in curiosity, and her face held no judgment.

"What if you can only fixate on how tragically it will end? What if it wasn't worth it at the end?" he meant, what if he would disappoint her, he didn't believe he could bring her happiness or excitement. "Fancy? No, I know I am. I'm no knight in shining armour, let's put it that way," he said it with the utmost seriousness. He believed wholeheartedly that a daemon of despair was no good for anyone.

How was Talisa supposed to know what she deserved? She had only so recently started to engage and move as an active participant and force in her own life so recently her answer would have been that she deserved nothing at all. She had earned nothing. But under Solon’s guiding hand, wasn’t that the point of truly living? To see what was possible, what there was to be earned, endured, and enjoyed? She could come up with no answer she saw as reasonable and her shoulders jutted upward dramatically in a shrug. “I feel like we deserve to at least try to figure it out for ourselves,” she tried to argue. A moment later, she was visibly flustered, not necessarily because of Lyklor but because of the secrets that still existed between them. “No, not you, and not here, just…” She sighed heavily at the realization he must not know their fates had aligned in Aetheron far earlier than either of them realized. 

"Find out what? That I can't be more than the aspect that rules me? That somehow a dragon and a despair daemonfey could make it work?" He had already done to much to her kind to subject her to him also. What was worse, letting this play out knowing the result or the thought of missing out on what they could experience together? Was he prepared to take the risk that he maybe their downfall?

“I suppose names do not, but they often do,” Seris responded after some thought. Names were significant things, she felt, especially in Elvhen. Or perhaps that had been unique to her branch. But if Lyklor did not care or did not know the meaning of his own name, it was not a matter she cared to push. “Mine roughly comes out to one who speaks for the trees, or for nature. I am from Varda’s Cavern, so… rather fitting if not a bit predictable, wouldn’t you say?” She smiled slightly, but it was a rueful expression. “I’m not too busy to help a new face, but if you prefer to move on alone…” she stepped out of the barn and laid out the path to the best place to put down his name for service. “If you struggle to find it, then make your way back here, and I will assist you. Stay well, Lyklor.” 

Why did it feel like the other could see right through him? Through this game of him pretending he was normal. But maybe that was the paranoia of him being found out. The fear that he would be chased away from civilised society if they were discovered. "I guess it is since you can talk to animals." Even if his name did hold meaning it wasn't like he could ask his family about it. "Thank you for the offer, but I should move alone." If she spent more time around him, her suspicions may grow, and he didn't want to answer any questions she may have to prove them suspicions right or wrong. "I will." His face was strained as he tried to say goodbye to the other without being rude.

Date: The Dreadnought had exploded, maybe 3 days after that Location: Some coast, somewhere... Characters: @despairlyklor & @sakkarathekeeper Notes: Canon Keeper savior now, ty Lyklor <3

Lyklor was no dragon, nor a captain of a ship. But he did have his own power and Renie. He might have been able to move faster in his other form, but those they were out there to rescue wouldn't have received a daemonfey trying to help them. So his elven power and his Pegasus it was.

Lily's hand curved around the base of her cup and she felt the warmth of the hot chocolate as it travelled past her lips and warmed her chest as she drank. It was a comfort to have as she got ready to return to her place at the Court and the life of performance that awaited her. She was trained in the art of seduction and could recognize what the title special friend could be referring too. "Take care of that special friend of yours, the good things in life can be fleeting if one doesn't honor the space they hold." She's shared a night with too many that have forsaken their intimate bonds.

"You seem to know a lot about special friends. Maybe you could help me understand something. Why would someone stay in something that is only going to hurt them in the long run? Why would they choose that when they could have anyone and not have those problems?" Lyklor didn't have anyone he could turn to and ask for advice, the advice of a stranger would have to do.

“It isn’t up to you to decide what I deserve,” she shot back at him, broody and petulant as ever. She narrowed her eyes at him when he mentioned how he never acted the right way, but the truth of the matter was her actions were a coping mechanism. It was hard to let people become close to her, to risk letting them see the lack of substance beneath the surface. If that was what this was, she wished Lyklor–Pythius–whoever this was would merely say as much. That much she could understand. “I’m tired of people telling me who I should be with, and who I should be for them. That is what is suffocating. I’m not some plaything you or anyone else just gets to drop into some fae tale or put into a box!” All Talisa knew was performance, and it had come back to ruin her tenuous strings tied to Taravell in spades. But she had feelings. She had desires of her own. 

“And what do you deserve? Cause all I can go off is what you say and so far the picture you have painted doesn’t look like me. I can’t read your mind.” She wanted romance, to swoon over another’s actions. Someone with wealth, who could spoil her. She should want someone who is going to fill her life with joy, not make it jaded. “When have I told you to be something your not? I appreciate who you are so don’t lump me with the lot you’re talking about. Play thing?” He shook his head at the notion as it was absurd to think as the other as a play toy for others.

Lyklor missed the fact that ugly and unlovable were one and the same in Talisa’s mind, but she would let it slide. It certainly wasn’t meant to be the sticking point of their current conversation. “Well, there was a third party in their scenario,” Talisa pointed out, clinging to a relatively minor detail in the analogy that Lyklor attempted to make. Her point might have done little aside from pointing out her general lack of knowledge of daemonfey. 

Grabbing a mug from where they sat in the rustic kitchen by the fire pit, she poured them a cup of hot chocolate and passed it over, a drink that had been made with rich cocoa from Eterna. "I hope you enjoy." a sweet smile on her lips, she had enjoyed taking care of the children who were scared and to try to comfort during times of distraught. "Do you live here?" It was different than her life of comfort at Court, she had work at the Harmonium to get back too but as a wild druid, she missed being in the woods.

Instinctively, Lyklor sniffed the drink before bringing it to his lips like he would somehow be able to tell if the drink was off. He hadn't had such a drink before, so smelling it was honestly a little odd. Using his power to move a cold breeze of air across the top of the drink, he then drank from it, and even a despair daemonfey could tell how such a drink would provide comfort. "No. I came with a special friend." He wasn't sure what to call Talisa just yet but she was important to him.

A doubtful look crossed Talisa’s features when Lyklor implored her that the question was relevant. The last time she had seen the stage play or leafed through her copy of the written script she did not come across any passages or lines that involved dragons. And if this wasn’t about her–well, that was impossible. The air was suddenly thick and strange between them and he pressed her with additional questions. Talisa began to lose faith in Lyklor’s belief in her reading comprehension. “Because he was ugly,” she stated plainly. “And probably because he was her cousin. But they wrote that part out of the stage performance.” Her arms remained crossed in a protective measure but Lyklor almost certainly knew her well enough to know that ugly meant not good enough, and she did not want to verbalize the mere phrase of rejection as Talisa could not stomach the idea of not earning the approval of most others. 

"Because he thought he was unlovable, that if his love saw him it would ruin what they had. Is that vastly different from us?" her stubbornness about Lyklor wanted to talk about the play first was getting in the way of what he was trying to say to her. "The fact that you are a dragon changes nothing for me. I didn't spend time with you just because you are an elf. Or because you're beautiful. I spend my time in this world with you because of your heart." Maybe if he put it as plainly as that she would stop being awkward and listen to his words.