#ankalei

Durotar's red rock earth had probably never been comfortable in life. She couldn't say it was comfortable in undeath either, but then it certainly felt like most things weren't. Or she just wondered if she was capable of feeling at all. Wasn't the first time she'd contemplated that. Nowadays, it was less contemplation and more acceptance.

What a lonely, lonely place the world was. Existing in it and yet that was all she could do. She thought about the Order, how she'd considered returning to Quel'Danas simply to throw herself in the Sunwell and undergo the great bathing of the Light that her brethren had. She'd considered doing it before. Months before. Even before Zaihne had persuaded her to join him on the expedition.

Certainly, she'd helped out with their things. No different than she had in Durotar every time she performed monster population control or escort missions. She didn't get any feeling out of it, though. It was fine for what it was, but that was all it was. She didn't know if she felt that way because she didn't really believed she felt at all. All she did was go through the motions. Once again, muscle memory at its finest.

How many times had she laid there outside of her dilapidated makeshift home doing the same exact thing? Ankalei had lost count. There was no point in going home anymore. No point in going anywhere. No place to be. No place she really wanted to be. No place she was exactly needed. Certain she couldn't have felt it even if she had wants.

She was in the same place she had been. Nothing had changed except the date on a calendar. Every day was the same. Every night was the same. Maybe she should have thrown herself in the Sunwell. Maybe then she'd at least feel something except the hollow memory of what she thought was feeling.

Time had stopped for her and all she wanted was for it to continue. To go somewhere. To do something. Even her end, she suspected, was better than going through another day like the present one.

It was all the same. Ankalei wondered if there had ever been a point and she suspected the path was long since over and she was travelling through a barren nothingness. Somehow that felt fitting.

She was a barren nothingness, too.

Would have been if it weren’t for the knotting apprehension that was eating and chewing and consuming Laeynna’s insides. Was it noticeable? Probably not. She had, for years, become accustomed to simply holding everything inside of herself. That had, of course, done terrible things to her. Everyone else did too, though, didn’t they? Wasn’t that just a normal thing people did? Bottle everything up, never let it out, just slowly and slowly grow more resigned and angry and upset. She was almost positive that was virtuallythe definition of being one of their kind. She’d always had such a grim way of looking at it all, though.

Peridot gaze carefully flicked to her right just in time to watch fishing line and lure hit the surface of the water. The sound she heard first, breaking into her self-perceived silence, and she watched as ripples started small and grew larger and larger. People were like that a little, weren’t they? Like ripples. They all started as a singular, individual piece on the playboard in the cosmologically vast thing called ‘life’ and over time and circumstance, that piece became more than it was.

Today, you are more than you were yesterday, and thus for you, my love continues to grow. Tomorrow, you will be more than you are today and thus for you, my love shall continue to grow.

The words echoed between her ears and though she tried to ignore it, she felt the cold stab of her worry, wrapped into a single grand mass. Its clutches pressed along the small of her back, like sharp fingers that grappled along her. Pulling, pulling, pulling. Where was it going to take her? She didn’t want to see. The flutter of panic began to rise from her insides. The intensity of her breath, which had been nothing at all, suddenly shifted—quickening and just as sharp as the touch had been.

“I can’t imagine you invited me out here to just stand around in silence.” There was the telltale adjust of her posture and the soft leathers she was donning on the very dark morning. “On the other hand, it’s you we’re talking about, so that might be your intention after all.”

“Sorry—” Laeynna’s response was almost immediate. It felt practically like a muscle memory, words sitting on the tip of her tongue. Yet, it was stupid to think that ‘sorry’ was going to fix anything. Especially when it came to her life’s reflection. All of the feelings that had begun to swell to something she wouldn’t be able to control were hastily wrapped up and shoved further deep into the darkest parts of her person. “Of course I did not invite you along to say… nothing. I just… I have not known what to say. I keep thinking about it. For days now before this one, I went through all of the words I could use and none of them feel right. I thought perhaps I could practise what I wanted to convey, but even that—”

“It’d be really impersonal if you did that,” her sister chimed in, a hint of amusement in her thin voice. “I get it. I do. But instead of trying to be perfect, why don’t you just… I don’t know. Be you. It doesn’t have to be an art piece. It doesn’t have to be grand. It doesn’t even have to make that perfect sense that you seem to be obsessed with. You’re not being evaluated, Laeynna. Not everyone is going to do that. Maybe relax a little.” Ankalei lifted a hand and she gestured out to the lake in front of them, crystal blue clear water that they could see right down to the bottom of, teeming with fish. “The fish are definitely relaxed. Do your best fish impression.”

The characteristic gentle furrow of her brow ensued and Laeynna looked between her twin and the water indicated. “...Glub… glub?” she asked somewhat dumbly as her lips scrunched up into what she imagined a fish mouth’s might have.

She was rewarded with a laugh and it echoed in the quiet otherwise around them. “That’s pretty good, actually. ‘Glub glub’ indeed.” Grinning, with the same hand, Ankalei motioned for her to continue. “Humour’s a pretty good start. Use that energy. It’ll help you get out everything that you feel like you need to get out. And—” As she looked over to Laeynna, her blue eyes found her counterpart’s with ease. “If it’s too hard, don’t rehash it.”

Laeynna simply stared at her for a moment or two, the similar dumbfounded expression drawn across her fae-like features. Then she moved her gaze back onto where her fishing line met the water, untouched by the lake’s plethora of denizens. An idle thought rolled around in the back of her mind about having brought the wrong bait, but it was merely a moment before it was replaced with the matter at hand. Drawing in a deep breath, her thoughts still spun, continuing to wonder where she should begin. Yet Ankalei’s reminder had been needed. 

She wasn’t being evaluated. Not everyone was going to do that. She didn’t always need to stand on ceremony or expect the worst of others. Like so many of her other habits, it was going to be another difficult one to overcome.

The same breath released and Laeynna struggled to find her voice, a gentle little waver in her tone, as if she hadn’t quite committed herself to the words just yet. “I took everything from you.”

“Laeynna—”

“Please,” the dark-haired elf began. “Let me say this in my way. It is the only way I know how to.” From the corner of her eye, she could see her sister wearing a somehow softer, gentler pull of her expression. If she was distracted from her thoughts too much, she wondered if she’d still have the courage to continue. “I… took everything from you. I wish… I wish I knew why I did it. I have spent years thinking and thinking and thinking about it. It is not something I can undo. I wish that I could, Ankalei. There are… so many things I would... if I could… go back and do differently. But there is nothing in my life I regret more than what I did to you. I wish that I could give you my life.”

She shook her head, shaken breath falling out of her, and she could just scarcely feel the gentle tremor in her arms, as if the weight of her fishing pole was daring to become too much for her to endure. It was not… grand or over the top. As her sister had said, maybe it didn’t need to be. Maybe all that was needed was for her to be straight forward and honest. Both of them could go over everything with a fine-tooth comb, but what good would that really do? That was then and this was now.

Her sister was quiet, undoubtedly thinking in her own way about how to approach the matter. Perhaps surprised, even, that Laeynna had been willing to take the sisterly advice she’d gotten. Still housing that gentle smile, however, there was sincerity, a warmth of older days, and a sadness all combined into one, showing that even a curve of the mouth was not always as simple as it appeared to be. Nothing in life seemed to be, really. Complexities abound.

“I know,” Ankalei finally began, her weight shifting from one foot to the other, causing the moist dirt beneath her boots to adjust as well. “I know that you regret it. I know… that things have changed a lot. For both of us. And I know that you worry. Not just about what happened that day or how I’m handling it, but about everything.” When she looked over to Laeynna, she shook her head, “You don’t need to worry so much. Unless you’ve got a miniature member of the Bronze that you’re carrying around in your stuff—highly unlikely—you don’t need to get caught up in trying to revisit the past.”

Her hand lifted, covered in ashen colour, damaged nails from normal wear and tear and her poor habits when she lived, and she gestured around them. The forest, in its perpetual autumn, was beautiful. Trees of plated gold and licking flames of orange and red, creating canopies that looked as royal as the growing reconstruction of their fair city.

“We all want to do things differently,” she continued, then. “All of us. We can’t and we begrudgingly accept that. Because we can’t, it’s important to do the best within our ability each day.” As she began to reel in her line, her chin dipped. “None of us can live in the past. We shouldn’t. The present and the future are in front of us. Maybe not the way we envisioned, but that doesn’t make it any less worthy a present and future to experience. You get what I’m saying, Laeynna?”

Laeynna watched her sister finish retrieving her line. As Ankalei set down her pole, nice and orderly, she gestured to her twin and it didn’t take long for her to pick up the hint. Following in suit, she accepted their loss of fish with what elegance she could, and in the minutes that came after, her pole sat with the other. She joined Ankalei in the grass not far from the lakeshore and as they sat, Ankalei offered her lap, guiding her sister’s head of sable hair to it.

As Ankalei began to carefully card her fingers through the ends of dark hair, Laeynna felt a soft little lump form in her throat, something she tried to swallow down, though it did nothing and she was unsurprised. “...I do,” she agreed. “I have been living in the past for a long time. For so long that sometimes… I forgot what it was like to live in the present.”

“I know,” Ankalei reassured her with the same gentle smile. “Sometimes I’m like that, too. For a long time I thought the only place for me in the world was the Order. Thought if I couldn’t make it there, there wasn’t a point to anything. But uh… that’s not really true. You know that guy, from the clinic. Shit—what’s his name. Veilos? I don’t even call him that.”

“Veilos Dai'goa.”

“That’s the one. Right.” Ankalei carefully shifted the way Laeynna’s hair framed her face in its overabundance of waves and… well. Length, in general. It practically drowned her lap as she was really looking at it. “I don’t remember the exact wording he used, but there was a night a bunch of us were sitting in one of the city’s taverns. All around a table. Well—most of us anyway. He brought up a good point. That in my case, I don’t have to be just a soldier. Wasn’t just him, either. Everyone there had good guidance.”

A pause ensued where ordinarily a breath might have been taken. Ankalei emulated the sensation, but even Laeynna knew that it was only an emulation. Something to make her seem like she was one of the living. Maybe habitual or a subconscious reaction made by the company she kept.

Laeynna nodded slowly as she looked up to her sister, “I… noticed that. I mean, that they are…” Awkwardly she paused and then she smiled somewhat sheepishly, light and subdued, as if she was afraid to let it become anything more. “They are good people. I like them a lot.”

“...Hm. Look at that,” her twin looked fond then. “You admitting that you like people.” In a way, her tone had betrayed just a tint of jest, but then, there was a subtle shift in her expression to something a touch more serious. Thoughtful. “I don’t think you realise it, but you’ve changed since you met them. The clinic. The bakery. I’ve been watching you for a long time. You aren’t the same person. You’re more than you were.”

Laeynna felt uncertain then. Conflicted. Not because of the notion that her sister had been looking after her, but because as ever when something like praise entered the situation, she didn’t know how to handle it. Instinct told her to refuse, to shove it elsewhere, and perhaps to pretend she’d never heard it to begin with. Compliments about her person were still difficult to hear and just as difficult to accept.

“...Mayhaps,” she finally agreed with a quiet little sigh. It wasn’t exactly acceptance, but it was something like it. Better than nothing considering she had often protested otherwise or used less than shining words to describe her person.

“Bet you’re wishing Andy was here, huh? He’d probably lighten everything up with some of that humour of his.”

Even as Ankalei’s face broke into a grin, Laeynna’s expression nearly darkened. She tried so hard to avoid him coming up into conversation. Just days before, Junarra had shown to the bakery dressed as him and Laeynna had felt so emotionally conflicted that in one moment, she wanted to laugh because the notion was so incredibly sweet and then in the same breath, she’d nearly burst into tears. For all she wanted to answer, she couldn’t bring herself to use words to do so. Instead, her gaze moved off of the twin who leaned over her and back onto the surface of the lake, thinking it was so much more still than her insides were.

“Yeah… That’s what I thought,” Ankalei observed with a slow nod. “When’s he coming back?”

Laeynna shook her head, “I hardly know. He—” For a moment, they stopped in her throat, trapped by that lump that had formed their previously. Was it her imagination or had it grown? “He has not written me since he left. I write to him and receive nothing. Does he even get my letters? Does he even want to?” He wouldn’t have abandoned Rags and that she knew. Did it mean, then, that something had happened? Maybe he’d realised in his absence away just how unworthy she was of him. Maybe he’d realised in their time apart that he hadn’t loved her. Or he’d simply fallen out of love with her. Out of sight, out of mind, no? Her hands lifted and as she felt her expression contort and twist, she covered her face to hide behind.

“Hey, hey—” Ankalei stopped fiddling with her hair and she reached down to touch her sister’s hands. “Hey, it’s okay. Come here. It’s okay.” Helping guide Laeynna up from where she withdrew into her proverbial shell, she pulled her twin into her arms and embraced her tightly.

I miss him so much. The entire world feels dark without him here.

Every time he got mentioned, she was afraid she’d start crying. She felt like she kept lying, though in reality, she didn’t have the answers. Didn’t know how long he was going to be gone for. Didn’t know how he was doing. Didn’t know if he’d gotten himself into danger. Didn’t know if he’d come back in one piece. And the more time she spent thinking about it, which she did plenty of in her solitude, the more she worried and the more she expected the worst.

“I’m sorry—” she murmured into her sister’s shoulder.

Ankalei shook her head, carefully, soothingly drawing a hand up and down Laeynna’s back. “No, no,” she began. “Don’t do that. It’s not a weakness to show feelings, Laeynna.” Resting her forehead to her twin’s temple, she dropped the volume of her voice. “He’s gonna come back. I don’t know the guy well, but if you’d seen the guy I saw when he found out you were missing, you’d get it. He’s not going to let anything stand between the two of you. He’d claw his way back to you if he had to.”

Whether she knew that or not, Laeynna had to wonder. Had Ankalei seen something in him that she hadn’t? Something that she, perhaps, had been blind to? Something she’d been unwilling to let herself see? She wanted to believe Ankalei was right. Her heart wanted to believe it with such a ferocity that she almost couldn’t contain herself. But… what if she was wrong? What if she suddenly developed hope and the worst came to pass?

…She didn’t want to think like that.

As Ankalei drew back, she studied her sister carefully, taking in every feature. Guiding some of that dark hair back behind long, graceful ears, her own resolve strengthened, perhaps. Maybe in recognition that Laeynna needed someone to be her supportive tower. The role of the older twin. Ankalei had been made for that.

“I think…” she began, words betraying a depth of thought that had likely lingered and welled for some time. “Do you remember when we were younger, there was something you wanted to do. Before you got caught up in Dad’s things. Do you remember, Laeynna?” Fingertips gently bunched up tresses of dark hair and the focus of her stare sought recognition. “Remember that. The person you wanted to be.”

Held so securely by her sister, Laeynna knew what Ankalei spoke of. She’d never really discussed it at length. In fact, she’d only made mention of it once or twice and such moments had been brief.

Laeynna began to shake her head, “I… I would not even know where to begin. I am much too old to begin—”

“No. I won’t accept that,” Ankalei broke in, not giving her twin a chance to protest. “You shouldn’t either. Find a tutor. Someone you can learn from. Start reading about it. Start practising. Start studying. It’ll give you something to do.”

Freeing a heavy sigh that did nothing to relieve the weight atop her chest and her shoulders, Laeynna shook her head. “No. I… That time has passed. That possibility ended years ago. I made that impossible.”

Ankalei’s hands carefully dropped from the round face of her counterpart’s and to her shoulders. The touch there gentle until it wasn’t. She gripped, perhaps tighter than she’d meant to. Just enough for Laeynna to feel the ache in how she was held. “I didn’t die to watch you wither away, Laeynna.” With just enough force as if she could jostle her sister’s poorer thoughts out of her, Ankalei carefully shook her. “Just because you don’t want to see it doesn’t mean others can’t. Or that they won’t. I…” 

For some moments, she quieted, as if considering her approach. Then she found herself shaking her head. “Zaihne didn’t give me the details about what happened down there. But he did tell me it was serious. Based on the stories given by the others the expedition recovered, I can take a guess and I’m probably not far off the mark.” Looking her sister over again with scrutinising eye, Ankalei rested a hand along the curve of her neck, thumb passing over the throat. “I want to tell you to get looked at. That you need help. That you can’t keep trying to do everything alone. And it’s fine if you don’t want me to be involved. But if you feel like you took everything from me, the closest thing I have to having anything is you. You’re what I have left. It’s your responsibility to make sure it stays that way.”

Laeynna met her sister’s severe expression, somehow sharp and gentle at the same time, and she wallowed in muted thought. Perhaps she’d never considered it before, the idea that if Ankalei felt like she had so little, she still had her sister. She still had her life’s reflection. Regardless of how things had come to be as they were in the prominent present, they still had one another. Despite the way Laeynna had deliberately built a wall between them, no amount of running could save her from the truth. Ankalei was an animated representation of so many of her regrets, but in that same body, there was an undeniable validity to her sister’s claims. She hadn’t been the same since the City of Threads.

Dropping her glowing gaze onto her hands that somehow seemed more frail than she even knew herself to be, her insides swirled with uncertainty and a desire for the same strength and resolve that her twin wielded. She didn’t have to be Ankalei. She never had to be. She could get away with just being herself, as long as she allowed it. The only person who had stood in her way was herself.

…But how was she to begin? It all felt so daunting.

“It’s okay to be scared,” she heard her sister say. “And it’s okay not to know. But it’s not okay for you to lock yourself in this prison you’ve made.” When Ankalei took her hands, Laeynna lifted her gaze again, words on the very tip of her tongue, more protests, but she wasn’t given the opportunity to say them. Not when Ankalei continued in that authoritative voice. “You’re a botanist, Laeynna, but you’re not a flower. You’re not an experiment. You’re not a poison. Not to me. Not to Mom and Dad. Not to your friends. Not to Andy. You’re so much more than that. Than all of that.”

The sum of all of her parts, good and bad, and more.

“So you owe it to yourself more than anyone else,” Ankalei kept her trained focus with a short little nod.

“Open a book and start there. Everything else will fall into place.”

“Hey, thanks,” she said, tossing a small satchel of jingling coins to the orc who’d brought it to her. 

Mahk had been doing that as long as Ankalei had been living in Durotar. As far as she was aware, anyway. Sometimes she brought him food from the local inn. Sometimes drink. She didn’t think it was really his way of making a living, that courier kind of business, as she’d never seen him deliver it to anyone else. Maybe she was special.

His voice came out, low and gruff, a little scratchy, but accented by that amusement he always seemed to hold whenever he was talking with her. “It’s nothin’. You look real happy to be gettin’ it. That from a boyfriend. Girlfriend. Thing?”

It was the kind of just-innocent-enough question that Ankalei erupted into tinny, thin laughter. “Oh, no. No, no.” She shook her head at him, choosing not to go into it any further beyond that. “My sister.” With a free hand, she gestured in the direction of the sea that separated one continent from the other. “She’s clear on the other side. Lives in the city of our people.”

Where she might have expected him to ask why she wasn’t also there, that never came up and she was pleasantly surprised with his follow up. “Huh. That’s real nice of her. Sendin’ you presents and all.” And then— “Well. If she’s ever on this side of things, you be sure to bring her ‘round. You’re a real fuzzy peach, so I’m guessin’ any sister of yours is gonna be the same.”

Ankalei started to laugh again and as Mahk turned to go, she lifted a hand and waved him off. “Have a good one, Mahk! Let’s get some strider ribs later, eh?” When he began to fade from view, she had already begun to drop her gaze onto the parcel she’d received. She didn’t think Laeynna would ever describe herself as a ‘fuzzy peach.’ Grinning toothily, she shook her head. 

No. Not in this lifetime. Probably not in another one either.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

She’d tried to keep her home a little more orderly, though Ankalei still didn’t really see the point in it. She wasn’t entertaining company. She wasn’t really doing much there except occasionally stopping by. It sure seemed like the kind of place that was really only there for a moment’s convenience. Ankalei tried to imagine what it might be like to actually settle down somewhere and truly live in a place. She’d spent over a century just travelling. As if to say just because her time stopped didn’t mean that the rest of the world did. If anything, maybe because her time had stopped, it seemed so much more important to focus on the rest of the world’s time.

Or maybe that was an excuse. She was real good at that. Always making excuses just so she didn’t have to think about anything that caused her even the slightest bit of discomfort. She wouldn’t run from any of it, but maybe pretending it wasn’t there wasn’t the most constructive way to handle it either.

A little amused, by her own general situation and specific set of circumstances, she found herself issuing a sigh. Or at least, mimicking the motions of one. To the rest of the world that was exactly what it would have looked like. To her, it was a muscle memory that apparently had been engrained.

With some care, she broke into the parcel Mahk had brought to her and after a first moment’s peek inside, she paused. “Ohhhh…” she began aloud. “Woman, you did way too much.” But that was her sister’s staple, wasn’t it. Always going above and beyond. Doing way more than was ever asked for or necessary. Like she was constantly trying to make up for this, that, and the other thing. And yet, that was a part of Laeynna’s charm.

She barked out a small little laugh that seemed to ricochet and bounce off of the simple, drab walls. The skirt itself was beautiful. A simple little thing. Just based on appearance and estimation, Ankalei suspected some of the longer trails of flowers were going to drop about to her knee. Maybe just below that. It was a cheery little thing. Maybe a little too full of life for someone like Ankalei, but it really was what she’d wanted.

And then some.

Holding it up to herself, she tried to imagine herself in it and after tipping her head back and forth, knowing she struggled to see it, she opted for holding it up to the corseted breastplate that had been made for her. Ankalei hadn’t really known Dame Ty’linde at all, but she’d heard the name from locals to the north who seemed to hold her wares in high regard and she’d known once she’d received that, there was a good reason for the positive feedback. It certainly didn’t look unconventional, but… 

Well. Maybe that was the point. Taking something unconventional, making it have the appearance of it. Of course, she was just security, so she doubted very much anyone was going to be asking her about her outfit. If she’d had the ability to just go in her regular wear, she wouldn’t have worn anything of particular significance anyway. Wanting to respect the theme—Anything But Clothes—she couldn’t be too surprised that the moment she’d gone to others for help, they made her things that were very decisively not her at all.

It was all a little much, honestly. A little too feminine. A little too pretty. A little too spectacular. She’d have to put in the effort to make a quick getaway whenever she had the opportunity.

Hanging her skirt by where she’d put her corset of melted glass and porcelain and the rest of her broken platewear pieces and other like things, Ankalei slid into onto a stool, and for some moments she took it all in, wondering idly what the others were doing. What they’d be wearing. How little was Ryland going to wear, or Dicenne, for that matter? What amazing outfit was Nahilvi going to show up in? She could only picture it with the gentle furrow of a pale, pale brow.

The night before had been an interesting one. Enjoyable. Thought-provoking. Unsent letters. The very notion was worthy of consideration. Nahilvi had mentioned that all people had things that went unsaid. Things they’d wished they’d given voice to. That was the point behind unsent letters. Concepts and feelings and ideas that were born into being, but withered away over time. Circumstance. Cowardice. Any number of reasons for why such things became unspoken and remained little more than momentary companions that lived in one’s mind with only other thoughts as cohorts.

She had so many things in her own life, when she’d been living, that went unsaid. Some of them had been terribly angry, bitter, awful things. Some of them had been intimately wrapped in the emotional embrace of vengeance. Some of them had been awfully soft things that had begged forgiveness, compassion, and understanding. Ankalei definitely had her own slew of unsent letters, the types that would likely never see the light the day. Words that would never exactly find ink and parchment. Words that lingered up in her head before they were planted in a wooden box and locked up.

There’s no need for them now, Ankalei thought as she stepped in front of the full-body mirror in her run-down sitting room, just as dust-bunny conquered as every other room was. 

No knick-knacks, really. Some books here and there. Mostly armour pieces. Jewellery settings and gemstones littered here, there, and everywhere. Geodes. Metallic wires and shaping tools. 

She examined herself, the sickly ashen colour of her skin. Once it had been pink in hue. Darker than her life’s reflection. Vibrant. Saturated. Rich. It was a wonder pieces of her just weren’t falling off. Blonde and silver hair fell out of the messy way she’d had it pulled up the night before. Ankalei had, in the late hours of the night, made way back across the water to her dirty place in Durotar, in dry air and unpleasant climate. She didn’t need to sleep anymore, in the same way she didn’t need to eat or drink. She found herself a little amused. She’d gotten a drink the night before. It had tasted… Well. Fine. But she couldn’t get drunk anymore. At least, not really in the same way. Ankalei could have found herself in the bottom of her cups time and again, but it wouldn’t have mattered. It was all just a way of making herself seem somewhat normal, knowing she wasn’t. Knowing she never would be.

But no one there had seemed to notice. Or cared, even. Kind of the way Zaihne didn’t care. It had been nice to be treated as… a person. She thought about the translucent flower that had been tucked into her hair. Unbefitting her. She wasn’t a beautiful creature. She wasn’t alive. She wasn’t dead. She was, and could only be, Ankalei. Still just a shell of who she once had been. Still unable to resume a life she’d once wanted to have. Not good for anything except swinging her mace.

Her gaze flickered over to it, ice and blue and empty, just like the rest of her felt. When she felt things, kindness, compassion, were they truly feelings she experienced? Or were they the memories of what she recollected they felt like? Had she only been emulating those experiences? Were her smiles real or were they practised things based on a past that had been torn out of her hands? Ankalei hated thinking about it. It got too complicated and profound and philosophical for her. It was best to leave that to academic minds. A scholar, she was not, and the thought of spending her presumably infinite years left with her nose in a book seemed… 

Well. It seemed boring as hell.

Lifting a hand into her hair, she shook it about, messy and all over the place. She wore it up so often that whenever she wasn’t, it just waved and waved and waved, ringlets that assaulted neck and shoulders, not daring to go any longer than that, usually. As if it too, had been suspended in time. She wore an amused expression at the notion that yet again, she’d been mistaken for her sister. It was hard not to find it funny. By appearance, they looked so similar. Even sounded similar if one ignored how sometimes tinny Ankalei sounded, like she tried to feign inflection, but struggled to do so convincingly. She and Laeynna, though they had their similarities, the differences felt and seemed so much more intense.

Laeynna was, in truth, all soft things. Soft and delicate and fragile. A poor constitution. Unfit for war and battle. Not incapable of wielding a weapon, but so frail that she was more likely to crumble into pieces with a well-placed hit. Like she was little more than soft marble and stone. And she’d always been like that. Ankalei had never considered herself superior, but there was no doubting all of the strength Laeynna had lacked, her twin sister had held instead. It was much paying witness to her sister’s weaknesses that made Ankalei want to play the role of guard so much.

…Had it not been the duty of an older sibling to guard the other? The times between their births had been minimal, but Ankalei had been first. The moment she knew that was the moment she wanted to take on that role. To protect her younger twin from the things that would try to do her harm. And at a point, to protect her from herself. She’d tried to. That had failed tremendously. Ankalei had blamed herself for a time. If she’d been more observant. If she’d not been so quiet. If she’d been more inclined to defend her sister. If, if, if. So many ifs. Maybe none of them would have mattered.

She couldn’t do anything but laugh when she and Laeynna were mistaken for one another. The only downside that really potentially came with that was taking responsibility for anything Laeynna might have done, but even that felt like it didn’t matter much. How much did she care what people thought of her? She knew what she was already. And it wasn’t like her feelings could get hurt. Assuming she had any. Ankalei couldn’t be certain and it was part of that deep kind of thinking she wanted to avoid if she could. When it came to the varied expressions she’d received, however—Fiorenze, the companion of hers who had left somewhat abruptly but not disguised her surprise, Nahilvi, maybe even Dicenne—she wondered what the real surprise was. Was it that Laeynna had kept so much of her life a secret that no one knew about Ankalei? Was it that no one could imagine Laeynna even having siblings? Was it that Ankalei was somehow more personable?

Laughing to herself, a little hollow but seemingly sincere, she stretched her arms above her head. It was all funny. The mistaken identity. The notion of performing anything other than a poorly-constructed shit pile of something Ankalei might have attempted to call ‘art.’ But even as she thought it, she could have sworn that there was the smallest sliver of an ache. Her heart? Or once where it had beat. It was still there, of course, but she wasn’t sure she had a pulse. If she did, she couldn’t feel it. In the same dusty Durotar abode, small and simple and meagre, she held a memory. A violin of rosewood with loose strings, having been left untuned for years. She’d touched it once or twice since she’d became what and who she was in the present. She didn’t think she had the capacity to make anything sound beautiful any longer. In younger years when she had blue sky eyes, the notes that had come were deep and bright, a little fuzzy, and sometimes it had felt like music and concept blended together.

Sometimes she thought her fingertips itched with the desire to press on strings and hold to frets. To test the rapid vibrato in the power of her fingers. Sometimes, Ankalei thought she could still be that person, but that was a fever dream. She’d found a sense of welcoming the night before, a taste of something she’d thought filled her with a memory of light and airy sensation.

Unsent letters.

Yes, indeed. She had so many of her own. Words that would not be spoken. Feelings that would never be performed. Things that belonged to a woman she could never be again. But as she smiled, it felt okay. It felt fine to be who and what she was. She could let others be all she couldn’t and more. If the world thrived around her, then Ankalei was convinced that in a way, through sheer association, maybe she could pretend she was thriving as well.

Another day, another copper for thought.