#memory asks

Rhianlin can't/won't let herself forgert Meneldir. :)

Everything about Meneldir. His help, his past, his regret, his death. The hours of conversation she spent trying to get the tinist hint of a smile from him. The things he taught her about woodsmanship and tracking. How much he cared about hte other Rangers despte being on the outs with most of them. Him complimenting her cooking. Making him flower crowns he would wear for maximum of five (5) minutes, but she appreciated him humoring her.

Just, everything about him. He was her friend and she wants to remember him.

(Memory asks)

Most of his memories from childhood are rather unpleasant and Kien would soon try to forget them if he could. There are few memories he is rather fond of however, and that's thanks to his older sister Sahja. She was six years older than him and the third oldest sibling in their immediate family and for some reason, she had a soft spot for him.

One memory Kien recalls fondly is the day Sahja snuck out with him to find a rumored cave of crystal the older siblings spoke about. It could only be seen at night because of the way the crystals glowed but sometimes dragons would roam too closely to it and prevented anyone from approaching. Kien was seven at the time and since he was seen as the outcast, no one cared what he did with his time but Sahja was thirteen and part of the night hunts so she had to be back before nightfall to avoid getting caught. They had spent the majority of the day looking for it with no luck but Kien remembered how much fun it was to be with his sister with no one else there to chastise them spending time together—even if the search resulted in nothing, it was a day Kien could feel like himself thanks to his sister. The daylight was quickly fading into nightfall and they began to head back but that’s when they had found the cave. The crystals were indeed glowing just as they heard and it seemed the entire cave was made of crystal—still one of the most beautiful sights Kien had ever seen to this day. They ended up spending the entire night there admiring the crystals and trying to stay hidden from the dragons but it was one of the most fun days Kien had in a while. When they returned home at daybreak, Sahja got in trouble for missing the hunt but she always told Kien it was worth it.

That cave soon became their secret spot for many moons after—Kien would go there often when things got worse with his brother just to escape and Sahja always found him there to cheer him up. When Kien was finally ready to sneak off and leave Meracydia for good, Sahja crafted him a good luck charm necklace with one of the crystals from that cave as the pendant. He still wears the necklace to this day as a way to keep his sister close to him and always remember how she made his childhood a little more easier to bare. Maybe one day he’ll get a chance to see her again and thank her properly for just how much that day meant to him.

Nabi doesn’t get angry often or easily. But whenever she thinks back to the time beneath the mountain, there are specific memories that pits her insides with a burning sense of indignation.

When Elam Grave first brought Nabi to see Anchor after he had been forced to fight in the underground fighting pits, Anchor had been brutally injured, his lung pierced, and his body battered and bruised from both the fight and the abuse the place dished out onto its fighters.

Nabi was expected to heal him, so that he could fight again the next day. At the time, she was horrified, guilt-ridden, and overcome with dismay at his state of being. He had been forced into this position because of her, after all. And fight after fight, they gave Anchor no reprieve. He was to stay alive to fight again, all for the amusement of others.

Nabi tries not to think back on those times, but remembering how gaunt he had looked, and how many times he was near death before those that controlled the pits would allow him to be healed, so he could go through the same thing over again, disgust and anger starts to roil within her gut even to this day. 

It is because of that entire ordeal, she is especially protective of Anchor now, and emotions will rise easily when he is in any danger or he places himself between her and any peril. She has vowed never to let him suffer like that again.

“When I was a little girl my parents and I lived in a pretty nice apartment. Mama gardened to de-stress, and with no yard she set up some plants on our balcony. I used to love coming home from school or choir to look at the plants and butterflies. I sometimes wonder if thats what sparked my love of flowers?” 

Hoooo boy this has taken me a while to get to (I’ve had some asks sitting around much longer though!) but I’ve finally done it; all these questions (from the memory prompt list from way back) fit together really nicely to be used in a single bit of writing! So here we have it; I’ve covered ‘a memory of their father’, ‘a memory of their mother’ and ‘a hazy memory’ all in one, plus covered some ground I’ve been meaning to get out in story format for a while.

Memories; ~2,000 words total, with a couple more pics under the cut!

“Do ye’ remember anything from before you were adopted?”

Ahuska wasn’t quite sure when the conversation had tipped toward childhood reminiscing, but even then the question that silver-furred Ralsko asked caught her a little off guard. She rocked back in Crow’s lap, basking in the glow of the bonfire as she considered her answer.

“Not… really. Even my earliest memories of my buire are pretty hazy, and things before that… stars, I’m not even sure if what I ‘remember’ are actual real things, or just pictures I picked up from somewhere and have held onto. I remember watching these little animals high up in the trees, tiny things with huge bushy tails and tufted ears. I was mad excited to see them, and I think someone was holding my hand. I’ve never seen a creature quite like them, definitely not on Dxun and not that I can recall on Concord or Mandalore, so I’m pretty sure that’s from when I was really small. And then there’s the ‘animal soup’, hah.”

“Animal soup?” Ralsko was the one who said it aloud, but the query was clearly on the tongues of everyone else gathered and listening. Ahuska smirked. “Yeah, Animal Soup. I know I had it some time, I don’t remember anything around it. Where I was, who I was with, no idea. I just remember this big warm bowl, mostly broth, but it was full of… animals. Like, tiny little dumpling things, all shaped like different animals. It was probably just some… quick, cheap food, something easy on a rainy day, but it’s stuck in my head and I know I worked it up to be some incredible dish. I kept asking my buire to make me ‘animal soup’ and they could never understand what I meant. Not nerf bone soup, not nuna noodle soup, nothing that used actual animals as ingredients. Everything they tried was wrong, and I’d get so mad, haha. I think we eventually sorted out what I was talking about but they never did manage to find or make an ‘animal soup’ that lived up to that hazy baby memory of mine.”

“Cute,” came Crow’s murmured, sleepy voice behind her, accompanied by a gentle tug as he started to fiddle with her ears. The glow of the fire was warm and bright, keeping the chill air comfortable for all who sat within its reach. Kip stepped forward to toss an extra log onto the blaze, her powerful Annoo-dat physique making child’s play of what would take the average being considerable effort to haul, and sending up a spiraling plume of sparks into the night sky as a result.

“So what’s the story with your Bothan parents then? If that fellow down in that mansion we shot up were your pa—“ The broad shouldered reptilian began asking, all four arms akimbo as she stretched tall to bask in the bonfire’s heat.

“That shabuir was not a parent,” Ahuska cut her off swiftly, her tone only blunt because of the uncomfortable memory. She felt Crow’s hand squeeze over her shoulder, and with it, a measure of reassurance. “I don’t give an osik about bloodline or who fethed who to make me happen. He didn’t raise me, he didn’t want me…”

A soft cough from off in the shadows gave pause to Ahuska’s tirade, and hers were among the dozen or so sets of eyes that turned toward its source.

Ahuska sighed, and waved a hand disarmingly. “It’s fine, Ulfran, it’s fine. You don’t have to go all… wrapped up in your Jedi guilt nonsense, I don’t blame you for what Hadrex had you do any more.” And it was true. She might not have felt any particular fondness for the man, but her original hostility toward him, for the part he’d played in her kidnapping and delivery to her blood relatives on Bothawui, had gradually worn away. The patient way he worked with Nela, and the obvious comfort Lyrisal took from his presence, made good headway towards amends.

“That’s… not quite it,” the Jedi shook his head, his pale eyes reflecting even more strangely in the firelight than usual. A faint smile tweaked at his beard, though the creases in his brow deepened. “I… I’m afraid there are some details I’ve been privy to that I… I frankly should have shared with you much, much sooner than this.”

Ahuska tensed, blinking toward him. “Uh…”

There was a ripple amongst all the others present, blatant curiosity warring with a vague sensation that they perhaps shouldn’t pay too close attention to the turn in conversation.

“It’s good news, I swear,” Ulfran reassured. “For you see, when Hadrex had ordered a DNA scan from you, he also ordered me to ensure that the results said exactly what he required. The papers were falsified, Ahuska. You’re no more related to the Kor’Var household than you are to… well, me, for want of better comparison.”

It didn’t quite knock the wind out of her, but Ahuska was plainly stunned, and all were silent as they watched for her reaction. She sat very still, eyes half-narrowed but gaze not fixed on anyone or anything. Silently, she processed the fact, before very slowly inclining her head in such a way that even though she was resting on the ground, far lower than Ulfran’s perch, she managed to look down her snout at him. “You faked my blood results.  I wasn’t even related to that arsehole.” She spoke very slowly, processing the new information. “He wasn’t my family. None of them… for all that he put me through, Hadrex was never even related to me through blood!?”

“Not in any way,” Ulfran confirmed tentatively as those sky blue eyes turned his way, sharp and critical.

She stared, her expression hard, lips pursed, ears quivering in that way they did whenever she was feeling particularly tense. She felt Crow’s hand come to rest on her hip, but he didn’t speak… nobody spoke, until she finally exhaled and let herself fall back against him again. “Good,” she stated, simply. “Good. Never wanted to know who my blood relatives were before all that osik, and that hasn’t changed now. To hell with House Kor’Var.”

“I’ll drink to that,” came Crow’s voice behind her, with another tweak of her ear.

“To hell with Bothawui,” added Ralsko, her dappled grey fur rippling sharply along her cheeks.

Laks, beside her, and one of the few present who actually held a mug in his hands, lifted it into the air on behalf of all of them. “To hell with Bothawui.”

“To hell with the Empire!”

“To hell with the SIS.”

“To hell with that damned war…”

Everyone began to chime in, with their own personal gripes against the galaxy, increasingly loud and boisterous with their additions such that only the Bothans present, with their particularly good ears, picked up on Ulfran’s quiet murmur. “To hell with the Order.”

“To hell with going to bed when I’m told… HEY! OW!” If Nela thought she was going to get away with throwing that in there, she quickly realised she was sorely mistaken when Crow lobbed a chunk of firewood at her.

“Go to bed!”

“No!”

“Don’t make me shoot you…!”

“MUM DID YOU HEAR THAT.”

“I’m pretty sure I just heard a young member of Clan Crow disrespecting her buir, yes…!”

“I bet you disrespected your buir all the time when you were little!” Nela’s retort earned a scoff of incredulous laughter from at least half the beings present, though the teen’s cheeky smirk suggested that she didn’t actually believe her own words either.

“Pshhh. I was an absolute angel of an ad’ika,” Ahuska huffed. “I mean… hang on, hang on.” She shifted in Crow’s lap, to the sound of his disgruntled protests, something about wriggling around when he’d been perfectly comfortable, and managed to extract her wallet from a back pocket. Not that she actually kept any loose credits in it half the time, mind; its contents were far more precious than that. She leafed through an assortment of carefully folded flimsi, plucking out one that had clearly been carried around for years, the edges all softened and worn, the colour faded, but the printed image still clear enough.

Ahuska stared at it while Crow peered over her shoulder, and her expression became very far-away. When it looked as though she was never going to actually pass it along, Nela scrambled over from her side of the bonfire and tugged it out of the Bothan’s fingers, immediately ducking back out of reach and trusting in the fact that Ahuska would be too reluctant to leave her husband’s lap to make an attempt to grab it back. Nela thought right.

“Ohmystars you’re so cuuuute…!” the half-Twi’lek gushed.

Laks, Ralsko, Kip and Titus, even Ulfran shuffled over from his perch to have a look, and some shifting movement in the shadows might have been Lyrisal, craning her neck to see.

“I’m six, there. When I was pretty much the same height as my buir’ika and, buir’nuvhu could still pick me up with one arm…” ‘Little mum’ and ‘Pink mum’, the terms young Ahuska had used to differentiate between her parents, the latter of course referring to Jinn, her Zeltron mother, while the former was for the diminutive Chadra-fan, Santha. In the image being shared, Jinn had her wife lifted up and perched on her left arm, while a tiny Ahuska mirrored the pose on her right. “That was my first trip to Concord Dawn, I think. We were there for about a week but honestly, I mostly remember that day in the woods. I begged that we head out there as the sun was coming up, and we saw wild reyr, a whole family of real wild reyr! Also found saberwolf tracks, I swear they were even if buir’ika didn’t beli—“

“Excuse me,” Laks’ rich baritone gently interrupted, and when Ahuska fell silent and stared his way, he went on. “But you say you are six years, in this picture? That is… that is very wrong! Here, this little Bothan…” the burly Bothan man poked at Ahuska’s giggling printed face. “…she is at least eight. Maybe nine years, if she is a little slow to hit growth spurt.”

“Tall ones often take a wee bit longer to get there, aye,” Ralsko nodded her agreement, grinning at the picture. “I mean, ye’ got the curve in the ears there, so if ye’ haven’t hit ninth birthday yet it can’t be far off…”

“Noooo… no way,” Ahuska breathed in utter disbelief, still staring toward the pair of Bothan Deserters.

“I’m afraid it’s so,” Laks dared to curve his lips into a smirk, at the same moment Ahuska felt a little jab in the ribs.

“Got a couple of birthdays to catch up on there, do we, old timer?” Crow teased gently.

“Nah, nonono, nayc, I’m…”

“Two, three years older than you thought you were?”

“No, they’re kidding, right? You’re all just ribbing…?” she turned her big blue eyes beseechingly toward Laks.

Unfortunately, the eyes that met her in return were unapologetically earnest, if still very entertained. “Keth had a small boy of his own, shall we fetch him and have him bring the baby holos? You will see for yourself how we Bothans mature…”

“Shab!” Ahuska cursed in resignation, throwing her hands into the air.

“So how old are you now?” Nela piped up again, and didn’t at all quail under the sharp glare Ahuska short her. It was hard to take her Bothan buir seriously when her father’s face was grinning manically from ear to ear right behind her.

“Thirty… two,” Ahuska whispered sullenly.

“So thirty-three, probably, you mean?” Crow cackled.

“THIRTY TWO. And a half. STARS, ULFRAN, GET ME A DAMNED DRINK.”

“Pardon?”

“YOU HEARD ME. In the space of one conversation you lot have managed to re-orphan me and age me three years, get me a stars-damned drink so I can handle the next fethin’ bomb that’s gonna be dropped on me. What next, Crow’s actually an Alderaanian noble and we’re third in line for the crown? Yeesh. Make it a strong one.”

---

“Honestly,” Val said, with a withering roll of her eyes over the rim of her glass, “You’re not my type. I don’t know what you are; I like pretty, sad-eyed boys in mage robes, not… whatever in hell you two are all about.”

The blonde diviner gave a dismissive wave of her fingers towards the motley pair in front of her - a gangly, violet-haired elf and his grey-bearded dwarven companion - then turned to the side and made as if to converse with one of the other bar patrons.  The Recluse was crowded that warm, late summer evening, but not with anyone terribly interesting - mostly off-duty guards and adventurers returned from the Broken Isles who were eager to share their stories of demons and portals and other things she’d already seen through the eyes of scrying mirrors and orbs.  It was heaps better than the Slaughtered Lamb, though, and less expensive than drinking back home in Dalaran.

Val had almost forgotten about the two men less than half an hour later, and was laughing over the antics of some gnome with a lute when a tap on her shoulder gave her a start.  She turned, only to come face to clavicle with someone blue. Indigo blue, with shoulder-length violet hair. A look upwards presented her with the single most smug expression she’d ever seen on another creature, human or otherwise.

They - the elf and the dwarf - were back.  They… were wearing lacy white dresses, ill-fitted, with dirty hems and petals strewn among their tulle-decorated skirts.  “Eh?” the elf asked, waggling his long eyebrows.

Wedding dresses?  The diviner unsuccessfully stifled a laugh, then set down her mug.  “What the -”

“Y’said y’liked - Malorne, how’d y’put it - ‘pretty, sad boys in dresses’...”

“I did not!” Val bristled, still fighting laughter despite feeling the need to correct him.

“We’re pretty sad, an’ we’re in dresses…”  The elf raised his eyebrows once more in an expression somewhere between ‘gotcha’ and ‘come hither’. “So - who’re you takin’ th’first turn with?”

The diviner stared up at him, at an utter loss for words.  After several long seconds of bordering-on-awkward silence, she picked up her mug, drained the remainder of the apple lambic within in, and said, “Well.  I’ve got just the thing for this, believe it or not.”

Her newfound ‘friend’s” smirk grew.  “Yeah? What’s th-?”

It was the fastest teleport she’d ever cast in her life.  The clay token in the shape of the tall, Dalaran spire hit the floor as the second half of ‘that’ came out of the crass man’s mouth, and she stepped through without a glance back.  With a reminder to never, ever drink in Stormwind again, Val stepped through the public portal in the large, colonnaded room and breathed a sigh of relief. Elves - they were never worth the trouble.

Part two for @queen-scribbles‘ prompts! Lenn gets a ficlet too, and that means I can’t do less for Anselm in turn, now can I? ;-)

6. A turning point in their life

“What do you think you’re going to do, elf? Knife me?”

Lenneth isn’t seriously considering it. For one thing, it’s not even the sort of knife for killing someone, she guesses, having never really had occasion to learn the difference. It’s small, for the delicate work of carving details into Dad’s fanciest clocks – she was trying to finish one, just now, hoping her skill can match up to his, hoping the customer who asked him for the embellishments will still want it now, three months after he died. Hoping they won’t notice the nicks where her hand slipped, those times she thought of his hands starting what she now tries to finish.

No one would probably believe her hand just slipped if the knife ended up in the landlord. Besides, a big, portly aumaua like him? No wonder he sneers at her little knife.

She does her best to keep all this from her face as she stares him down in the doorway, even when Tully’s whimper of hunger from behind her, and the tremor in Briella’s voice as she shushes him, remind her of the seriousness of the moment.

She puts on a brave smile, sticking her chin out, still staring the landlord down. “Just finishing up a commission. Takes time to do it right, but I’m almost there, and then we’ll have your rent –”

He sighs. “Last season’s rent, maybe. You know I can’t keep giving you kids more time.” He almost looks sorry. “It’ll be my own kids going hungry if I don’t let the place to someone who can afford it. You’ll have to find somewhere else.”

“But where are we supposed to go?” Lenneth wails, and then regrets it, for Tully’s sharp cry echoes her own.

The landlord shifts uncomfortably. “You got some other family to take you in, maybe? Back wherever your parents came from?”

If she does, Lenneth never heard either of her parents speak of them. She wouldn’t know where to start. And if they can’t pay rent, how are they supposed to pay for passage to go looking for this phantom family? If they even exist, they aren’t in Rauatai, she knows that much for sure. Dad wandered here from the Vailian Republics, Mom from the Living Lands – and Lenneth thinks that’s about as far apart in the world as a soul can get, anyway, so what if they pick the wrong direction and end up homeless on the far side of the world?

Well. At least they’d be seeing the far side of the world, then. She’s seen about enough of this harbor town and its giant people, who tolerated her elven parents well enough when they were useful, but who could care less now about a handful of elven orphans.

When she has no answer for him about their hypothetical distant relatives, the landlord reluctantly offers, “Or you might see if the inn’d have work for you. You’re…a resourceful lass. And the lot of you are small enough to make do with room and board for one, eh?” He chuckles. It falls flat. Lenneth was distracted (rather pleasantly) for a moment, thinking of seeing the far side of the world, but she can feel Bree’s glare from here and knows the landlord is getting the full force of it.

Not a bad time for negotiations, then. She holds up a finger of the hand not wielding the knife. “One more month,” she demands. “You know we’re doing our best to earn rent money. I’m in the middle of a dozen jobs Dad…left behind,” she reminds him, waving a hand around the cluttered room. She learned a fair bit about tinkering – and all the other odd jobs that sometimes found their way to their father – in the year since Mom died, but there was still so much she was figuring out, and now she has to do that all on her own, without pestering Dad to show her how to do it when he got too moody with missing Mom to do the jobs himself. They’ve gotten by like that for a year, but now… “Give me a month to finish those up and get paid. Then you get a little more of these last months’ rent before you kick us out, and we don’t have to lug so much of this with us to some room and board for one, eh?”

His eyes narrow with calculation as he glances from one project to the next in her working-and-living space. “One week,” he counters. “The sooner I have paying tenants in here again, the better.”

“Two weeks? Please?” Lenneth shifts to pleading, and shifts her stance out of the doorway where she’d stood as if to keep him out of their sanctum, turns to the side just enough for him to see Briella clutching their baby brother in her arms. “I’ve got my sister and brother to look after. And I’ve got to find work and somewhere else for us to stay, same time as I’m finishing up these jobs. Two weeks.”

The landlord braces himself as if to stick to his guns and turn them out on the streets this very minute, but Tully sniffles and Lenneth sees the aumaua’s expression soften. “Two weeks,” he sighs. “No more. I’m sorry, lass. I really am.”

And then it’s him who is out on the street, but only to march back to his own warm home, for which he owes no one rent. Lenneth closes the door and leans back against it with a sigh, content for a moment to soak in the illusion of security while they still have it.

“Lenni?” her sister asks, creeping closer with the baby tucked against her shoulder. “What’ll we do? It won’t be enough, even when you finish all this…this junk,” she frowns at the clutter on the table, “it won’t pay enough to rent another place either, will it?”

“Don’t you worry,” Lenneth says, and she barely has to crouch to gather them both in a hug; Bree’s managed a bit of a growth spurt since the baby was born, even with all of them getting by on half-rations most days, and she’ll catch up to Lenneth soon; probably even, because the universe is not fair, surpass her. But for now she’s still a girl little enough to need a parent’s protection, and lacking that, a sister’s will have to do.