In Love's Wake
By: Shirszae Posted on: March 31, 2015
Lel came to with a start just as her hand shot upward to grasp something, only to close on a sense of loss and empty air. The instinct and the half-remember nightmare had haunted her all her life, yet it shamed her even now, alone as she was in the so-called Room of Eternal Autumn, in the Dancing Boar Inn of Cyrene.
She lingered in the mattress for a moment more, catching her breath and chasing still, grasping for the fading treads of a dream that would not bow down to her. At length she desisted, rose and draped a flimsy robe about her naked figure. The day before had been uncharacteristically hot, and she had fallen all too gladly into sleep. She thought the cold that now wracked her body blatantly unfair, however, even taking into consideration the famed unpredictability of Cyrenian weather.
"...Love is dead, Lel."
She shook her head, snapping out of her reverie as the wind howled out in the streets beyond. Striding out, she leaned against a lonesome corner as she lit a cigarette. For a moment she felt vulnerable, but she was not too worried about leaving behind her trusty blackjack. Even in the predawn gloom, it would be rather unusual for someone to come up-stairs who had no business to be about. Cyrene's stringent laws made sure of that. And yet, she knew plenty of potential customers that would be already milling in the taproom, downing drinks, waiting...
She considered...
"Lel?" A voice called out with mild uncertainty, spanning her for the second time out of her reverie. A fleeting grimace crossed her face, her arms uselessly drawing the tunic more firmly about her before she glanced in the voice's direction.
"Lel!" The voice called out again. It belonged to a young Tsol'aa of timid, furtive eyes but handsome features, whose fiery red hair was braided in a long ponytail. He was a good head taller than her, lean and effeminate despite the twin longswords help by a belt to his waist. His good lucks were unfortunately belied by the way he hunched over next to a window, out of laziness, or perhaps some desire to avoid attention.
Obviously, he did not mind hers.
"I heard you," she called back, annoyance and tiredness creeping into her voice at the same time she expelled a ring of smoke from her mouth.
"What do you want, Ivy?"
The Tsol'aa smiled with nervous, almost forced warmth in her general direction, but his gaze remained fixed a few inches off her own, "I actually did not expect you'd be awake until much later, Lel," he awkwardly explained by way of apology as he fumbled for something buried deep in the folds of his robes.
Lel said nothing more, and after a moment, the Tsol'aa produced a worn and badly abused sheet of rolled vellum that nonetheless been evidently examined more than once already. Ivy held it aloft and made to handle it to her, but hesitated at the last moment.
"Karmell insisted I give this to you," he said, unfurling it as if not trusting her to do so without ruining the inside. "Margoth sent it along his latest letter from Minos."
Inside was but the simple, crude sketch of a woman set against the backdrop of a long, thin tower portrayed in crude charcoal. Long, peppered hair and hollow amber eyes. Gaunt, aristocratic features cut by thin, unsmiling and uncoloured lips. And a proud, straight-backed bearing covered in unadorned plate to complete an ensemble only broken by a curious crystal pendant hung on her neck that seemed at odds with everything else. Below, just as roughly, a script read, "Aleska?"
Lel felt her vision swim, felt, impossibly, as if those deadened eyes shifted ever so slightly to regard her. The scroll fell from her trembling fingers and heard, more than felt, the sob that tumbled from her lips.
"When? Where?" She muttered in an unsteady thread of voice that barely made it to her own ears.
But the Tsol'aa now only smiled wistfully, as if such a question had been expected from the start, "Battle with the forces of the Mad Mage is- What are you doing!?"
The surprised Tsol'aa scrambled, raising his arms as, with frenzied fingers, Lel freed one of his scabbards before turning her back to him and storming away to her quarters, the robe barely clinging as she moved with long, awkward strides. The door slammed shut, the slam followed by what could only be described or thought of as a storm confined to a single room. Even from where he still stood, near the end of the hallway, he could hear and quite positively feel the sound of upturned and crashing furniture. He sighed, and did not move.
She came out about as abruptly as she had gone in, her steps a frenzied mess as she hurried to him in a suit of awkwardly fitted scalemail and produced a slip of ink-stained vellum.
"...What is this, Lel?" He asked, looking her up and down.
"My resignation from the CIJ," she replied, wild eyed, crouching to retrieve the sketch that had remained in the floor. She shoved it on her sack, passed a hand through her hair, then slowly stepped back, before turning and quite simply breaking into a run as she made for the stairs. Only to abruptly turn back and gaze out to him, her eyes almost as hollowed as those in the sketch he had studied a hundred times before deciding that yes, he had to show it to her. Almost as hollowed, yet at the same time so painfully brimming with hope.
"You will accompany me, yes?" She called, her voice shrill and shaky.
"Yes," he nodded, finally moving towards. He nodde without thinking, for he already knew how slim the hopes were, and he knew what she had not asked. That Aleska had joined forces with the Mad Mage of Minos fully intending to die.