#mayday52022

Khaeris had never learned patience. She had gotten better about waiting, but she was not patient. There was a difference. She had waited for clarity. She had waited for answers. She waited for her lover’s safe return. She waited for results. She waited on payment. There were things she had given up waiting on and things she was still waiting on years later. Waiting for Pollux was hard. He had been home for weeks now, but he still wasn’t fully home. Waiting for her own emotions to thin enough to be pliable was also hard. She didn’t like to be so brittle. Waiting to push through fear to confidence felt impossible. Water. Relationships. Time. These were battles she fought over and over and over. These felt like ferris wheels, not roads. Movement didn’t always mean forward. Patience was all around her. Pollux seemed unmoved by much; time and space apart a little foreign to him. His mind was in the Here and the Now. Pyraelia had Experiments and Seasons to look forward to seeing. Ahuatli was patient with Lessons and Love, open and a light to all. Khaeris felt the lack in herself. Had seen the lack of patience shatter things around her. Seen it ruin delicate hearts and scald spirits. She felt the press of ‘hurry, hurry!’ on the back of her legs and the thrum of ‘lets go!’ in her pulse. No, she had never learned patience.

@daily-writing-challengege

Word Count: 723 Summary: Reth deals with the fallout of some emotions. Warnings: None

@daily-writing-challenge @raevenbehindthemuse because I'm terrible. <3

Rethea finished bundling things into her pack, taking a moment to look out the window of her inn room. Since it seemed dark enough, she trudged down the stairs, through the main room, and out into the coolness of a Kul Tiran night. She found a free spot on the road that didn’t seem particularly flammable and then summoned Empress, who came into the world with a rear and an annoyed snort. She soothed her fel horse for a moment, focusing on the feel of her fur and the heat beneath her fingers.

“Ready?” She asked once Empress had acclimated to her new spot.

The horse didn’t respond, so she mounted up and got them going, up the coast, to a spot that she’d been avoiding for weeks.

Once the beach came into view, Reth slid off Empress, holding onto her pack for dear life. She stared down the beach at the water, and was briefly overcome by the voices.

Back to make another mistake?

He didn’t care. He just wanted to fuck.

Who would want to be near you? You know what you are. Frigid monster.

Reth squeezed her eyes closed and took a few deep breaths. He had cared. She had part of a geode and many good memories to remind herself of that. But what she didn’t understand was why he was gone.

If he’d told her, she would have accepted it. She was his boss, but she was a person, and….

Light, had she done something wrong?

Reth stepped away from Empress, dropping her pack hard to the ground. That off, she hauled her robes over her head, leaving her in a loose shirt and her underwear. She shivered; it was a lot colder than it had been the last time she was here. But there was a remedy for that, wasn’t there?

She let her illusions drop, idly inspecting one hand as it went cold and deeply voidblue. On this skin, her painted nails glistened like stars. But as the warmth faded from her skin, so did the need to shiver. So in this newfound comfort, she rummaged in her pack and pulled out a bag.

Once it was in hand, she began walking into the water, casting a spell as it hit her waist. She kept going until she was completely submerged, eyes closed, well aware that the water around her was glowing as she disturbed the plankton. She knew how pretty it was, here. She knew how the plankton shimmered when they were disturbed. 

She didn’t need to see it again.

Once she was deep enough in the water for her hair to be truly furious, writhing like she was some sort of naga, she opened the bag in her hands. Star Moss flowers immediately floated free, striving for the surface of the water around her. Her fingers felt through the bag, making sure that every single one of the dozens of blossoms she’d collected were free.

That done, she cast the bag aside, and let her eyes open, watching the blossoms struggle through the water. Some reached the surface, and some became saturated just beneath the water’s edge.

Reth closed her eyes again, ignoring the sting of the salt, taking a deep, magical breath.

And then she called down all the fire she had within her.

Her eyes opened, and she watched the water around her hiss into steam, the plankton within it popping out of existence, dulling the luminescence of the water. The water began to boil, and she shifted her attention to keeping herself from being damaged as one by one, the Star Moss around her withered and turned to ash.

Soon, the water was dull, dark, and slightly too warm, full of flecks of petals. She swam to the surface and took a deep breath, letting her hair free from the water it hated so very much.

This is what you do to everything, hissed one of the voices in her head.

TW: Stolen Child

Months of planning.

Months of taking meetings, new contacts, and disappointment.

But now, now they were so close Valanthriell could taste it, the final weeks were ahead and everything was falling into place.

Until...

Valanthriell had made a decent home in the apartment she was renting, nothing to the scale the former Noble craved but it would serve for now. Surveillance on the Shadowfel Estate was 24/7, watching and waiting, Valanthriell was spending a fortune at this point but it was well worth it in her mind.

The sun had long since set, Valanthriell's night was winding down as she sat at her desk by the fire, enjoying a glass of red wine as she went back over the plan in her mind.

A knock at the door brought forth a sigh as she rose from the desk and made her way to the to answer, opening it to see her Freelancer Mitharious on the other side.

"Ah, Mitharios. Come in, care for a drink?" Valanthriell offered with a relaxed smile as Mitharious followed her inside, removing his hat but shaking his head.

"No, I'll pass this time." Mitharios took in a deep breath, releasing it slowly before speaking again. "But you might want something stronger than wine. I have news."

Valanthriell stopped dead in her tracks, turning to look at the man with concern written on her features. "What is it?" She asked, taking the final steps to the bar cart and pouring a few fingers of bourbon. "Speak."

"We received word an hour ago that the situation has changed."

"Changed how Mitharios?" Valanthriell's tone conveyed rising irritation, taking a sip of the drink and feeling it's deep burn.

"Fealia Shadowfel has taken up a new appointment and will be in near-constant motion for the next few months, the house has been reduced to minimal staff and she has taken two-thirds of the Estate Guard with her. At this point, the operation is on hold, unless you mean to do this as two separate moves."

Valanthriell stood motionless at the cart, her hands visibly shaking as she processed the news. Everything had changed, their window had slammed shut for an unknown amount of time, her revenge had to wait even longer, if they did this separately and one moment passed in incorrect time they would fail the other, Valanthriell knew this.

So many emotions swelled within Valanthriell, sorrow and disappointed making way for rage. Within a blink of an eye this emotions burst to the surface and the glass of bourbon went sailing across the room, crashing into the fire and causing a burst of flame.

"That bitch, that infernal fucking cunt continues to rise while I am stuck in limbo AGAIN!!" Valanthriell shouted, her hands griping the bar cart and overturning it with a loud crash as alcohol spilled across the floor.

Mitharios stood motionless, this shady figure, this man who had committed many a violent crime and several heinous murders, who had spent his life in the Underbelly, was terrified of Valanthriell. He had seen first hand the terror of her unbridled rage and so Mitharios expected to be forcing her out of the building engulfed in fel fire; though this expectation was high and concern for his own safety was drumming in his heart beat, Mitharios appeared stoic. "Boss, if you lead one team and I lead the other, I believe we can time it right." Mitharios confident they could pull it off, their combine planning and skill would make it fairly simple on his mind.

"No!" Valanthriell snarled. "If there is a slip up, even for a second then both plans will go tits up!" The hard clicks of Valanthriell's heels against the marble floor matched the throm of Mitharios' heart as she rapidly approached him, coming to stand inches from his face, her eyes burning with firey rage. "Know before you speak Mitharios. The fact is Fealia has measures in place, she knows I will never let her actions stand, and cunning betrayal is the fucking Shadowfel trademark!"

Mitharios didn't look her in the eye, instead keeping his gaze forward and absorbing the information as she relays it.

"I would stake my life that if there is an alert at either location the vaults will be become inaccessible and that bitch will move underground with MY CHILD!" A rage so deep Valanthriell let slip a secret she had told no one, her care for holding this so close to the chest gone.

In that moment Mitharios turned his dark eyes to hers, nodding once in understanding. "I will put my best traker on them, they will not take a step that we do not know about." He spoke on a calm and assuring tone.

The fire in Valanthriell's eyes remained although her breath steadied. "I want to know the second they are returning to the estate. We will strike no matter what crew we have ready." Although her speach was calmer, the tone dripped with venom.

"Consider it done." Mitharios responded, returning the fedora to his head. "Oh, does the name Aleora mean anything to you?" He posed the question, hoping she might fill in the gaps.

"Not that I am aware of, why?" Valanthriell began walking back to the shattered bottles while shaking her head.

"Not exactly sure yet, but it's popped up in our digging about your family. If we find any information we'll get it to you, of course." With that Mitharios tipped his hat and was out the door, leaving Valanthriell to deal with her abiding rage.

Word Count: 500 Summary: Indy processes her emotions with her fists, in a flashback, because it’s okay now Warnings: Bar fight?

@daily-writing-challenge @asharinhun (for Arlyn) Also Cay for brief character loaning.

Over the past few months since Blix had gone missing, Indraste had been getting kicked out of more and more bars. For some, it was for starting fights. For others, it was for winning them with little effort. So she was branching out a bit, exploring the bars in Boralus. If she stumbled across her missing brother during one of these encounters, so much the better, but mostly she wanted to punch. She wanted to smell blood. And that wasn’t bad, because she could always heal everyone afterwards, right?

Nothing she did stuck. Nothing she did stuck. Now was the time to embrace that, while she waited in this horrible limbo.

So she found a bar with an underground brawling ring, and even though free-for-alls weren’t her usual source of entertainment, well… It was better than the fight she’d been in with the half-troll who probably hated her. The people there had used weapons. Here, it would just be fists. Or, well… she planned to use knees, so….

Indy was easily at least a head taller than everyone else in the ring, and she waded into it without shame, socking everyone who came close to her. A smaller human, who moved like she was used to these sorts of fights, had darted in, and Indy had grabbed her by both ears and sent her knee careening into the other woman’s eye. She fell away, and Indy focused on the taller members of the madness, lasting until the round was called.

She had a split lip and bruised ribs, but that didn’t stop her from moving to the bar as other contestants filed away. Even though she had her flask, she asked for a drink, because she didn’t want to be kicked out for supplying her own alcohol.

A tiny Kul Tiran hopped onto the chair next to her. Her physique suggested that she could take care of herself, but her black eye countered that other people did, too. Indy had a brief vision of grabbing her head and slamming it into her knee, and had a drink.

“You did good tonight!” said the human at her left. Her eye was swollen completely shut.

Indy stared at her eye. “Yeah? We’ve never met.”

But they had, and she knew. Indy took a few minutes to meet this person that she’d abused in the ring, and then felt like the worst sort of healer for indulging in these sorts of fights.

Eventually, she convinced Arlyn to let Indy heal her. But even as she did, a feeling that came from her core suggested that this wasn’t something healers did.

….But who better to beat the shit out of somebody than the person who could fix it afterwards?

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Slow deep breath.

"It'll be okay..."

Slow deep breath.

"Someone will find you soon."

Slower deep breath.

"I'll be okay..."

Slower more shallow breath.

"They'll find me. "