Infatuation & Immolation

[Seva 624]

Infatuation & Immolation

PENNED ON THE 11TH OF HARREN’S FOLLY, 1869

 

Yet another missive penned under the watchful eye and careful hand of the Matriarch Darcheviede. As she heard news of her once lover, she sent forth this farewell, out into the blue that he might find it. For though she wishes yet to rebuild her House, marriage comes fleeting to lovers forgotten.

 

 

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To the one I thought dead, I bid thee farewell.

 

My path has ever been darkened by that which stirs at the road’s edge. Beasts and men, entwined until neither recognizable, stalk about my journey. They bite and snap as I begin to stray, and push me back onto the path that I have chosen for myself. Over time those who walk with me stray too far. Beckoned instead of balking at the bite of the beast, their forms stretch as they fall by the wayside, becoming yet more demons who wish to cast aside my ambitions.

 

Ambitions are all that I have left. I clutch my single hand to my breast, feeling that fire deep within. A slumbering flame, ever raging, fills my spirit in bursts so violent I feel as if I might be thrown down, the flames of ruin engulfing my being just to cast a little more light onto those who walk in the dark beyond my path. In these moments I wonder, would such a sacrifice, immolating myself upon the fires of my own spirit, finally give them reason to fear me instead?

 

I am a pyre, built upon my family’s legacy. A torch doused in oil. A forge filled with coals.

 

If I had become what you wished, I would surely have burned.

 

I remember those days well. Somber reflections of what could have been. You, an elegant man, discovering me among the back roads of our jewel of a city. I did not know who or what you were. A noble? A peasant? A Hero from some distant history when the land yet forged such beings? It didn’t matter. You cupped my cheek, supported my arm. You made me feel as if your presence alone could banish the specters among my thoughts. Your hands running through my hair, sweet words, of how it glowed in the sunshine. For a time I settled. I didn’t need anything else. My family a long forgotten memory.

 

You guided me, down an offshoot of my path. A quiet little village, far from the bickering of the Nobles in Providence. Your hands, your words, your thoughts. They lured me in, captured the heart that lay buried beneath the crimson cage of wildfyre that held it. People often ask me why I haven’t looked for a cure to my arm, lost to the fickle nature of my own birth. I can hardly manage the real answer, that you made me feel as if I didn’t need to. That you made my single arm feel as if it was enough.

 

This story would seem somber and heartfelt, had it been written before today. The war against my brothers and sisters weighed heavy on my mind. It weighed even heavier when I returned to find you gone. I fought myself in that conflict. My knuckles bloodied as they gripped a blade in hand, my throat torn from my shouts against the coming tide. On that battlefield I felt my fires within, once doused by civility, burning anew. Immolation my only concern, I threw myself onto the field for you. I would have died, just to strip those that took you from me of their last moments in this world.

 

But I was foolish. I know that now. As I worked quietly in the offices of Foreign Affairs, my hand gripped so tight against the pen that the blade felt almost nostalgic, I learned of your end. For it was no end at all. The torn apart home. The lack of valuables. The clearly wrought signs of banditry and violence. All a single deceit. In those early days of the war, I had urged you to await my return to our home. At the time when I had returned, the war had taken so much of my mind that I had no reason to deny what I saw before me. That you had been taken, likely killed by the men of the false emperor.

 

These revelations that had at the time been self evident, urged me forward onto my path. Forced me to confront my own lethargy. In that, I thank you. My thanks is already spent, however. I can give you no more. I gave you all that I could before. My everything. Only now as I retake my House, rebuild my reputation among the corpse of my Uncle’s, find a place among the people of the State, do I know what you did.

 

You left me, as if my love was nothing, to pursue the favor of your false emperor.

 

I hope your simple estate on his pestilent lands serves you well in my absence.

 

I know now that love is not meant for women like me. Though I yearn to rebuild my House, to bear children and foster the next great generation of Darcheviedes, I fear that I am inept. I am a creature built from fire. My hand cannot hold one softly, instead it grips and it tears until naught is left but ash. I should have known you were a Demon, stalking not at my side, but beyond my path. I should know that my path is mine alone, it seems. Though I would welcome a companion to yet help guide me through the dark, I fear that I may never find one who would wish to entreat with such a beast as me.

 

For now I shall dedicate myself to my work. At least these pages, marked fresh with the scent of ink, will not leave once my words grace their touch.

 

A STIFLED FIRE YET BEARS HOT COALS,

 

Orelia Irina Darcheviede,  

Matriarch of House Darcheviede