#emblyn

Waidwen doesn’t dream often anymore. Eothas keeps most of the nightmare away, and normal dreams he’s never been good at remembering. But sometimes… sometimes he’ll dream like he never has before. He sees people, buildings, places that look alien to him. Strange structures built of adra, copper and marble, clothes that look like nothing he’s ever seen. Those dreams feel strange. They’ll stay with him, refusing to vanish into oblivion, and instead burying themselves into his mind until he thinks it’s been real.

It isn’t unpleasant per se, it doesn’t hurt, and they are never awful things, just ordinary people doing ordinary things while looking strange. But then… There are other dreams as well. They have the same backdrop, the same odd buildings and clothes, but they are focused on a person, an elven woman.  She has jet black hair that’s spilling over her shoulders hardly ever contained, delicate features, and pale green eyes. Her clothes are usually far more ornate than most of the other people he sees, but sometimes they are more practical, and she looks younger.

In the beginning he didn’t care much. He’s asked Eothas about the dreams once, but the god seemed honestly surprised, and so Waidwen hasn’t asked again. But the woman keeps appearing, and with every appearance her picture becomes a little bit more tainted with emotions that he knows aren’t his. Most of all it is a familiar fondness, one he’s come to cherish quietly. It is thankfulness, though for what Waidwen doesn’t know. But it is also sadness. A deep underlying sadness, that becomes more and more prevalent with each night.

Waidwen doesn’t know this woman, but by now he is sure that Eothas once has. And though he has never seen how her story ended, he has the impression it wasn’t good. He has yet to ask Eothas about her, and for once it isn’t because he fears retribution, but because he doesn’t want to hurt someone with his words.

But something has to be done, both for his own sanity and Eothas’…

 “You want me to draw a woman from your description?” Waidwen can feel Mani’s doubting glare and regrets nothing.

“Yep.” Two gazes meet, one unapologetic, the other annoyed, and both unrelenting.

“First of all, why me? I’m certain there a number of artists who would jump at each other’s throats for a commission from you, and also why can’t you just bring her around? I can’t imagine anyone would be shy about the Divine King wanting a portrait of them.”

“Because I’m pretty sure she’s dead.” Mani starts and Waidwen grins. It seems like he’s won that round.

“Why do you want a picture from a dead woman? And why don’t you know if she’s dead?” The appalled tone of the question serves only to amuse Waidwen even further, though the question itself causes Waidwen’s feeling of victory to fade somewhat again. He frowns. It is certainly a fair question, but not one easily answered.

It takes many words and minutes, some disbelieving stares from Mani, and a lot of general confusion, but in the end Mani agrees. They spend some from their schedules scraped together hours sitting in Waidwen’s chambers for privacy, Mani sitting at the desk over a piece of parchment, and Waidwen crouched on a chair behind him, always glancing over his shoulder. Most of the time is spent in silence, the quiet only interrupted by Waidwen’s descriptions and Mani’s occasional complaints about having to work with only vague notions.

The result is better than Waidwen expected. Though it is colourless, it lookes almost identical to the woman in his dreams, draped in her more ornate attire and gazing serenely out of the picture. It is captivating in its beauty, and Waidwen finds himself staring at it. Somewhere at the edge of his consciousness he hears something that sounds suspiciously like grumbling about how he shouldn’t act so surprised, but when he can finally tear himself away from the picture Mani is already gone.

That causes him a slight bit of guilt, but it isn’t like Mani is just going to vanish from now on. He’ll make sure to thank him later.

Treating the delicate parchment as careful as possible, he sticks it in a pocket and pulls over a dark cloak, that will hide him better in the slowly falling darkness than his usual clothes. He doesn’t worry about being stopped too much, he doesn’t even intend to leave the property, and so leaves it open to avoid seeming too suspicious.

His soft soles make hardly a sound on stone floor of the halls and later the ground of the courtyard, and so he quickly makes his way to the other side of the complex, far in back of the vast gardens within the wall. There, right at the wall, is a tiny little chapel, hardly more than a hut really, with crumbling walls and a leaking roof. He found it not long after the coup, when he was overwhelmed by all the people and fled to the solitude of the garden. It already looked abandoned for a few years at that point, and so it became his secret refuge. He’s done a little work repairing it, but time isn’t really on his side, and so he hasn’t made much progress. But it’s enough for this purpose.

Carefully he pushes inside, taking care not to accidentally break the door in the process. Inside he gently puts the picture down on the tiny altar, leaning it against the back wall. He grabs one of the candles from the side, puts it down in front of the picture, and lights it, careful not to damage the picture behind it. The candles he hasn’t brought himself, they just simply appeared there one day, which made him quite paranoid for a while about who had discovered his little nook. Since nothing  has happened since then, and the little chapel has yet to be swarmed with servants insisting that they clean it up for him, his guess is that it had been Broder who found it, and that he deemed it safe enough.

Once he’s prepared the little memorial, he sits down on the floor in front of it, takes a deep breath, and pokes the entity in the back of his head, that has yet to react to his latest plot, either busy with something else or too confused about it.

It seems to be the former option, as Eothas inched closer to the surface of Waidwen’s consciousness and surprise filteres through. Surprise, confusion, sadness, and after that a spark of thankfulness.

I wasn’t aware you’d seen that much. I apologize.

“It wasn’t all that much, but I can guess what happened.” They share the silence for a while, the only light being the flickering candle, and a soft shimmer from himself. The dim light lets the dark strokes on the parchment seem even harsher against the light backdrop and the flickering makes her seem almost alive.

“Do you want to tell me about her?” Hesitation is the immediate response, but the feeling quickly softens as the candle burns a little brighter.