And So, He Went.

[Mithradites 1168]

 

The city of Tahn'siol stood silent, and foreboding. The recent funeral of the beloved newly-weds, had left a distinct hollowness in many of the pure-blood high elves. Save for, seemingly, Sohaer Lucion Sullas. 

 

And so, there he was.

 

 

 

Alone upon a bench, looking out from the city upon the setting sun. The darkening orange of the sky was something he was attempting to form upon canvas. It would be obvious to the casual observer that he was no artist, but painting was considered a calming experience by many. He found it mostly the opposite. The colours seemed to smudge far too easily, and they mixed poorly. The sun in his image looked as if it were weeping, and was not a perfect circle as he has sought to make. The experience was deeply frustrating.

 

He placed his brush down upon a small table beside himself, and sat in silence, glowering at the woefully inaccurate picture he had formed. Why was it, that he could not create the landscape as he desired? The colours were relatively similar, but his drawings could not match reality. What was, otherwise, the point of such works if not to replicate beauty? Not that Lucion had ever considered it beautiful to begin with. 

 

Though this thought seemed to linger with him--what was beauty to himself?

His people? His late wife? His children? What inspired the greater workers of easel and brush to make that which so many others considered majestic?

Where was this "awe" that had taken his people? His world was a series of instigations and reactions that followed a singular logical path to their inevitable conclusion. Such as it was with Lelien. Such as it was with Eleron. Such as it was with his Celia, his Thelmaras, his Aerandir, and his Arynia. These things surprised him, of course, and their end certainly upset him, but he never felt that "hollowness" that all the mali'aheral around him were privy to. 

 

And so he sat--thinking of this void in his understanding of the world.

 

The sun had now passed below the horizon, and darkness began to descend upon the city. The lights in the towers began to lose their glow--the citizenry choosing an early slumber.

 

Lucion looked up towards the brightening stars, and he counted the constellations he knew. He was not moved by the sight--not bewildered, or curious of something he could not grasp with his hands, or measure with his instruments. They drifted purposelessly through the sky until the light of the sun returned. An inefficient use of their light.

 

He looked back to his painting, and watched his creation continue to dribble down the canvas, and the portrait warped further into a multicoloured mush. But he sat in his chair regardless, and stared as the paint dripped to the ground.

 

He could not be hollow like his compatriots, when he was already empty. There was something deeply broken within himself, and he did not understand how to repair it.

 

He needed a place to think, away from the distractions of his city. He pulled himself up from his chair, and slowly walked towards the gate. He took nothing with him--not his myriad of notebooks, his uncountable number of schematics, his innumerable mechanical devices, or any of the fouler discoveries that he kept from his people. He did not hold himself straight, or flatten his robes. He left no note, and no words.

 

And so, he went.

 

[CosmicWhaleShark 2488]

 His children?

 

On the outskirts of the Fringe within the expansive forests, a figure wanders through the trees. Tall and thin, as the the sun beats down within a clearing, it lifts its head to the sky.

 

The Lich takes a moment to pause, looking around the forest's clearing in silence. Hollow and empty, in more ways than the average person. A quality shared, it seems.

 

It continues its journey in silence, lost within its memories of what was, and its imagination of what wasn't.

[Birdwhisperer 1174]

Moved to the Great Library. It shall be sorted into appropriate category shortly.