The Sun Rises on Dunáine

Bio:

TW: Blood, Murder, WWII, medical, parental abuse, parental murder, petrification, kidnaping, burning, knife, possessive

Sometimes you remember when dancing was a joy. The sun on your skin. Your toes in the warm grass. Spinning, Refracting, Free. You fool yourself into thinking your Father taught you the joy of dance at times. But that’s silly, because of course there had only ever been Her. 

001- Your Mother, Her Radiance as you always called her, what you remember most about her was her back. How straight it was, shoulders held with perfect squareness, as if the wings that adorned them only added to her regality. You don’t remember when afternoons spent dancing in the wild flowers turned into indoor lessons in nobility. Keep your spine straight. Don’t use that fork. Never meet their eyes but also never let them meet yours. And for the Realm’s sake stand up straight. 

She found you were more comfortable in her shadow than you ever were out of it. 

002- You didn’t always listen to her though…..Not at first. The flowers outside the wall called to you and though you’d never forsake corset or sun, you still danced at first….and that’s where you found her. Her Radiance disapproved of you being outside the grounds, they didn’t approve of your kind here she said, not the wings in your back or the skin on your face . But the flowers called for a partner in their dance with the sun and the wind, and your young heart was never quite able to refuse those two forces. So you felt your spine relax at times, your feet fall into familiar steps….and that’s when you met her. You could have danced with her forever, conducting the light and the flowers in your own ways. You fell together in ways that they never talked about in the stories, your naive heart whispered that you could keep her in this meadow forever if she would just let you, you think you might have whispered it to her to at some point when both of your were grass stained and panting. But she had only laughed at your foolishness, you think you might have laughed too….

003- The rules were getting stricter, the forces that opposed her Radiance and your Realm were growing stronger. You didn’t pay it as much mind as you should have, because if you had just been paying more attention, just been more vigilant, if you had stood up straight and kept your ear perked for the news Her Radiance whispered about in her council rooms — then maybe…. But she was gone. The love of your naive foolish heart dragged away by the hands of men that might have as soon burned you. 

You think you remember being inconsolable. You think you remember promising to make them hurt. You think maybe you asked your mother…

004- A decade of Reform. This Branch of your Family had not earned the glow for nothing. You practiced until your posture didn’t know how not to be perfect. Eye contact was reserved for only her Radiance, because she was the only one with the power to demand it. You kept your ear to the floor even when asked not to. Trust might have been the only thing more valuable than knowledge and you had yet to meet anyone who could afford it. 

004- If it wouldn’t have cost you everything, you might have sighed when Her Radiance died. But you wore the mantle now, the light shown only for you. You move the wall to include a meadow you remember someone was found of once, you never tell anyone how that little patch of Oleander got there, and no one ever questions it. Why would they? A lesser version of yourself might have wondered if you were deserving of the title, but why question yourself when you bear the title of the most powerful person you’ve ever known. 

005- You plant a lot of flowers in your first century as Radiance. You find you are just as unquestionable as the person who bore the title before you. You expand the walls of your garden again over the century and no one complains. You start making your own decisions a couple years in…and you find where some old reprimand must have been, but questions rarely are able to stand the scrutiny of the light.

006- You aren’t sure you like this new age of thought. It’s loud and chaotic but you find you are able to move more discreetly in non-fae society, even if it’s ever so slight. You almost don’t go  on that trip to Paris. You don’t like the courtier who invited you as much as they would like but for some reason you do. And in a hazy room, too full of smoke and men who talk about power as if they have ever had any, you see her. And she smells of clay and stone and heat and you don’t know how she doesn’t know she is the most perfect thing this age has ever produced. 

007- You almost soften when she promises to go back to Scotland with you and you falter when you doubt her, because not even you in your Radiance think you deserve her. But she whispers to you one night into your too long stay in this foreign place, her hair sprawled across your arm and chest, she whispers she wants to stay, that she wants your home to be the two of yours, ours. She glows in a way you never could.

008- The world darkens again in a way your light doesn’t always reach. And as the shadows start developing a language of their own, you also find that these shadows have hands that learn that while they cannot hurt you, they can hurt her….and they do. You hate the sight of her blood on your hands as assassins and guards are enveloped into a light they will never escape from. You can’t help her. She whispers words in a voice you should never hear again and you promise something you would have given her without a second thought in exchange for something you need almost as desperately. 

But words have meaning in this place, more than they even should and when her next breath comes uninterrupted by the pain of dying and the next walk you have through your thrown room features three new adornments. Well it just makes you smile at the wondrous nature of her, of You, and of your love. 

009- She lives with you, in your perfect place, uninterrupted by the outside world. A love like yours cannot be interrupted and in any case you now have the power not to let it. 

The land on which you’ve built your expansive garden is now littered with various stone features. The magic she has entrusted in you leaks from everywhere in you and grants you the power to keep her and the Realm safe. You can’t thank her enough. 

010- You don’t realize the fault of your gluttony until it’s too late. One night in bed your hand finds a place on her abdomen that’s too cold, much too cold. At first you blame your fingers and then you blame everyone your fingers can reach. She can’t be going, she can’t leave you. She promised to stay….she has to stay. 

It’s not till she’s lying on your chest in a way that you dared let yourself grow accustomed to that you realize she really has to go. You make her one more promise. Because you would promise that woman anything and you feel as her breath grows still in a way that’s so much more unnatural than what she deserves. And for a night you allow yourself to curl around her in a way you haven’t let your spine relax in centuries. 

011- You throw yourself into your court. You find strength in some of the people around you and in the garden she left you, the garden she’s let you propagate. The world is on fire and so are you…

012- You stare into the eyes of a young woman you can tell has wisdom beyond her years. You hate that she dares herself to make eye contact with you. She doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t deserve to be perceived. And just like that she isn’t anymore, you put her and her perceiving tongue in the center of your garden. Her eyes serve as a warning for those who cross you in a way Our other creations don’t, but the way her eyes follow you, is like she’s reminding you as well.

013- Despite wanting to shield yourself from everything, the world calls upon you to step up. When the night grows dark you do what you do best, you glow the brightest any Radiance has before. The Manor is opened for the one and only time it ever has been as a hospital. You call on your realm to assist the mortal and supernatural world in its turmoil, and you use the opportunity to learn. Learn all the ways you could have saved the few you held dear. You help and that’s when you meet him. 

014- you never wanted an heir, much to the other lights pleasure. And you know the moment he graces your halls that you would never condemn him to a life you yourself can’t remember asking for, but you also can’t help the familiar feeling of never wanting him to leave 

015- But you do. And you surprise yourself…and when you look at her, you think even she doesn’t believe what she can no longer possibly perceive. Because letting him go was one of the hardest things you’ve ever done. But he is his own little bit of radiance, you hope you told him that enough when he walks away, because you let him. 

016- Being alone isn’t new but when her power starts being more difficult to feel in your fingers, you think you light just actually lose it. Because her gift is the only thing that you think keeps you sane. You still have it….it might be sparing…but she’s still  there. 

You stand straight in the knowledge that they do fear you enough to not meet your eyes and assure yourself that the Radiance of Dawn has never shined so brightly as it has in you. 

Headcanons:

Alix glows with so much sunlight in her unglamoured form that it can physically hurt to look at her at times. She has wings like that of a heron which without her interference also often glow with sunlight and look like they are made of pure gold.

Beware Alix's garden. An avid plant lover in her early career bodies can be found buried in most parts of the garden including her mothers. The stone statues are also not to be trifled with for not even Alix knows how conscious or unconscious they might be

After the death of her secound love and her run in with the witch mentioned in 012, Alix often chooses to remain within the grounds of the manor and her gardens and sometimes finds herself prone to a particularly nasty paranoia