A Half-Painted Sky

[Demented_Delila 1122]

She could see through his eyes as those final, fateful words were spoken. She almost could not feel his touch, his fingers pressed to her forehead. Standards stood upright, scarlet banners fluttering in the wind, radiant silver stars spattered in blood. The world seemed to stretch on around her on a wartorn field- and there was the armored being, angelic radiance washing the world around him.

 

She came back abruptly, every ounce of her being seemingly torn to shreds, then knitted back together all in an instant. Her lungs ceased to move, burning as she tried to breathe. A fire had been set in her chest and it was not one to be quelled by water. . . Her eyes well, not because she had begun to weep, but it truly felt as if she was dying in those moments. 

 

The world came back into view, the warmth of candles washing over her as she felt the cold radiating from the rain-struck windowpane. She was alive. Her heart was still beating and her lungs seemed to realize this at last. She could draw breath. His hand retracts from her face, watchful eyes  filled with concern for the newly blessed.

 

“...what was that? In the- all of those …” She trailed off, her words a whisper barely audible above the rain as it strikes the windowpane of the third floor bedroom. She could see the ever burning flames of the ashwood tree in the churchyard. An un-suffocating light, nare to be snuffed by the pouring rains of the Barrow Marches.

 

“Malchediael fights a war, somewhere, I saw it myself when I received my blessing.”

 

The memories of that night play over and over again in her head as she rests in the quiet home she had come to make. A mercy to have such silence, without the suffocating notion of nosey neighbors. Her eyes remained closed, her head pressed into her pillows as she sprawled across the bed. She listened to the rain, listening to its pattering against the roof, listening to it tap against the windowpane of her third floor bedroom.

 

Her mind drifts, her hands folding over her stomach, fingers folded together. She considers the war and the history she was now brought into. The First War, the Golden Weapons, and Malchediael’s freedom. His freedom, his blessings. They were all a notion of what was yet to come. The skies had been shattered, Balian had burned- but all had not been lost.

 

For the first time in many years, Dele felt peace- she’d forgotten the feeling, after all this time. Yet, she had come to relish it again over the past months. The Barrow Marches were no silver-gilt cage, begging her to feign ignorance and arrogance. The Barrow Marches, for all its isolation, was not a place isolated from other people. She did not dread the open barrows, or the creature that lived up on the hill. She held no fear and in such, she found peace.  

 

Still yet her mind wanders. Had each Templar seen the fight that Malchediael fought, seeming whole worlds away from them? Malchediael’s return was before many of their times, but Feanor had witnessed it. So too had her daughters. They had seen the aengul rally the heavens to their aid, blessing the unblessed so that they might drive back the Inferi scourge. Perhaps the Creator was merciful, afterall.

 

There was reason to have hope for the sunrise in the morrow, when the sun had already begun to set on Almaris. Balian burned and Cloudbreaker fell… but the sun was still setting. Her eyes drift across the half finished mural that she had begun to adorn her ceiling with. A twilight sun, half adorned with golden streaks and the outline of silver stars. She’d not had a moment yet to finish it, but she’d finish it soon.

 

And yet… she thinks of the field of red banners, of the radiant aengul clad in his plate. And yet she wonders if the Creator still had goodwill left for his creations. In time, perhaps, the answers would come to pass. Of a war not yet fought, of a thousand red banners tilted to the sky, of a father’s goodwill. Her eyes flutter close once more.

 

Sleep came easier in the absence of fear as the elf came to rest once more beneath a half-painted sky and the rain that drummed against the roof overhead. 

Spoiler

Hiya! Welcome to my author's note! This isn't particularly important or implicative of anything, just some characterization for my character Dele.

She's just a funky elf sometimes with too much time to think about god, mercy, and the future.