#sideplots

“I am... and -always- will be a monster in your eyes won’t I?”

“That depends child... are you talking to me? Or are you speaking to your -shade-...?”

“........ I don’t know who I am talking to anymore...”

While he’s certainly doing better after the events from “Burning” Jacques still has a long way to go before he’s fully recovered. It’s simply a matter of tracking him down and hoping that he is in a mood to listen and talk at this point.

Segments from “Burning” include: “Come home please!” - Conclusion (To be potentially continued In-Game) “Snap out of it you idiot…” 

How many times had she dreamed of the shifting sands in Tanaris, of the desert king she shared her bed with. And each time, she always stood ten paces across from him- a breeze that moved the coarse sand against her skin. It was like glass.

Eilithe awoke before anyone else that morning- creeping down the hall to wake Karkah. In her hand she carried a bow, identical to the one on her back meant for the girl. It was not because she was his daughter that Eilithe cared for her-- it was because of the code. And under any other circumstance, she might’ve hated the girl-- hated her for not being hers. Yet, there was nothing that tied Karkah to this place. She bore no love for her father and certainly none for Eilithe.

“Do you know how to shoot this?” Eilithe asked, when she handed over the bow.

“Better than you.”

She was six the first time her mother took her along, seven before she’d actually take her first shot- and with Karkah a year behind that. All elves should know what to do with a bow. 

They were an hour into the jungle- wordless, but nearly at their destination. Carting the girl into the trees, Eilithe had selected a cluster of boars. Various sizes, with one male being particularly large. 

Karkah’s first shot ended in a painful miss-fire- the string snapping on the girl’s face. The was a mirror, almost exactly, of Eilithe’s own first experiences with hunting- and so with a salve on the girl’s eye, she went to whispering instructions. 

“Put your thumb to your cheek, the gap will protect your face.” Then ready. Aim. Karkah loosed the arrow with accuracy that was either luck or natural skill. Straight through the heart. 

And in that moment, Eilithe felt something she knew she ought not. She was proud of the girl.

The other side of hunting was the gritty part-- the part Karkah was new two, but equally not bothered by. Eilithe showed each cut- and the way to grip the hide and rip it back away from the meat that was for eating. 

“Do you know the tale of Omen?” Karkah asked.

The beast that protected the Mirage- the thing that Eilonwy was certain was embodied in Kurel. “I know a version of it.” She answered, encouraging the girl to tell her own. 

“Mai would say that The Omen was sculpted from rock and sand and bone and blood by the terrible desert king. The Omen was not man, but loa, made by man. The terrible king gave him long swords for arms, that he used to flay the wandering warriors of his enemies... like this boar. And would post them on the borders of tribes with their heads cut off as warning. She said his head was skull of a stag; his face made of bone with great horn spires.”

A pause came in Eilithe’s thinking-- how close was this Omen to the beast in her own shadow.

"And a belt made of finger bones, stolen from his kills. She said he lived on the blood drink of children who forget to leave offerings to their Dahji and the chittering sound in the night air, was the jingle of teeth he wrote around his ankles. Warning you he was coming. I asked once if she seen him, because tale is that no man survives the terrible king's harbinger. But someone had to see. To know. Otherwise, story is just lie."

By the time the story was finished, Eilithe was certain. If she was going to raise the girl- she needed to understand. Understand, or do it on her own terms. 

Nothing was ever gained or lost from Kurel An’Diel without a wager attached to it. Not his time. Not his affections, And certainly not information. 

She warmed him up with food.Then it was the gentle rub of her thumbs into his shoulder--gentle kisses on his cheek. A reminder that she needed Karakh to trust her or nothing would ever get done.

"I came to gauge how much I'll have to put out to hear more of the desert." She removed her cigarette from her lips and placed a kiss  just below his ear.  "It's been some time-- since you told me a story."

He adjusted himself so that he could comfortably sit her on the table in front of him. “Sit here. Facin' me. An' grab tha' deck of cards  in the far corner." His fingers shuffled the cards before he explained.  "For every hand you win. You ge' one question. For every hand you lose, you remove one item of clothing. When you have nothin' lef' to be removed. Your story is over."

And so began their game of twenty one. 

First, she won.  "Tell me of the man that created the Omen." A man she knew was called Vishak. A man she knew was Kurel’s own father. 

His answer gave her nothing-- nothing that would help Karkah. 

Second, she won again.

"What are the rites and rituals for Tanari, particularly girl?"

He told her of the Fire Maiden- who, from all the Blades would select only one- to which she would offer a crown of bramble and be brought into womanhood that night. A story Eilithe had heard once already.

"That's the only one you remember, isn't it?" She grinned at him, "You would remember that one." 

He grinned.

The third, she lost.

“Do i' slowly. So I can hear every fiber.” 

Her top was the first item surrendered. Slid forward into his lap, she peeled the fabric as though it had been pasted to her skin.

Fourth, she lost again. Though then came the less exciting removal of her foot wraps.

Fifth, she won- much to the handsy Kurel’s bemusement.

  "So if this awful king made the thing-- the thing that doesn't seem to be what I understood it to be, The Omen. Why the ritual, that Kelliann began and Mavas completed?" Was the question she gave- in between kisses up and down his throat. 

"Kelliann only used the moniker. You're tryin' to bridge two lifetimes, that have very little relation. Ritual was her finger wigglin'. I ain't go' those answers to why."

So he was not the Omen. Not the one that Karkah knew.  Still, she pushed Kurel- like she always did- with the kisses and her fingers twisting in the laces of her pants. 

"I just want to understand where you both came from, what I can use to relate to her and teach her. Like you said." She didn't ask for another round of cards, too focused on undoing his pants. "The only way I know her is through you at this point."

Impatient with her, Kurel ended their game by lifting her onto the table and discarding cloth that separated them. When he spoke it was against her lips, antagonize to the point of forcefulness.

"Kelliann didn't wan' her raised as Mirage." He growled. "So she absconded with her. Back to Uldum. Back to her own people. You want to teach her, create new relations. Stop tryin' to fit yourself into the life she knows. That life gone. Dead. So fit her into the life you have; you pity her." Kurel grinned against her lips as the wrap of his arms around her held her up against him. "An' she's been usin' tha' to con you."

He was right-- and she hated when he was right. Kelliann had taken Karkah from Kurel in much the same way that Threshad was taken from her. At the end of the game, she was left with the sound of his buckle coming undone, and the warmth of his hands grabbing at her. "Then I will raise her as Shal'Thera but you know what that means.”

It meant at the end she’d be more Duskbringer than An’Diel. It meant she would her hers. Theirs, at best.

And there began the reset of old scores and transgressions, passed between the two of them. Of arguments, petty or otherwise heartbreaking. A reset of their cycle, the loop of Anger, to Rage, to unhinged Passion, then Contentment. The consummation of that cycle was on prefaced with a string of words from her Tanari lover, uttered into her jawline.

"It's the safes' thing for her."