The Illness of Emalyne

[amyselia 2962]

Spoiler

This is a roleplay post intended to recharacterize my character’s narrative for my storytelling purposes. Please do not metagame this information, but if you’re interested in encountering it, do come roleplay with me. <3

 

The Illness of

 

 

The Countess of Emalyne

( art by 28idle )

 

       Within the cavernous cysts below the lower forests of Veletz, the Countess of Emalyne had finished to spin a broth of remedial liquids, the boiling spine of its kettle red-hot by means of the hearthfire wherefrom it had been unearthed seconds before. Her freed hand raised a silver ladle to her cheek, clicking 3 times against the spot where the bone of the jaw met the neck- an action of habit -and lowering to chance a whiff of the steaming mixture.

 

She could feel the illness evaporating from her for just this moment, when the heat consumed her aspects and drowned the morbidity pervading her. The burning scent of her skin’s grip ‘round the ladle’s handle did not deter, as the stones of her health desired livening warmth. After years of sitting in ill-begotten flaccidity, heat was all she could feel on this earth. The sunlight had begun to hurt, yet the cloak of the fire within these dark caves instead healed. She had sworn to several that, at times, the flicker of moonlight against her cheek mixed with the kiss of a burning candle radiating beneath her index finger charmed her mind to lucidity.

 

Hans had searched far for medicines to soothe the endless fainting spells & drying coughs, as well as the affectations of the head, the clamping of the stomach, the reddening & grating of the skin. . . all failed, only serving to amplify the weakness of Suzana’s aging humors. With each child it worsened; her contamination capitulated with Janek, who was born bleeding uncontrollably from the nose, as so often the Countess did in the black of night.

 

In a night of mind-numbing tremors that left her of poor psyche & rationale, Suzana’s ailing body was compelled to tremble its way through the trees of the alderswood. She came upon the cave where she now stood, alone with bodily sweats acting as the water of her eyes. The lit fire within had called to her, and sans the hesitancy that a person with a fear of death might inhabit, the Countess had strode forth to discover it untended by any. Seeking desperate repose, she descended to the unkindness of the cave ground, and later awoke to find her pain numbed. Persisting on the curative properties of this specific pyre, Suzana had begun to return to the subterrane dwelling on each midnight since, should sickness not immobilize her entirely. Thus, she dubbed this cave the wielkapli (great giver).

 

1937

 

       On every night whence she made the journey up the Eagle’s Peak, the Lady Suzecht would endeavor to collect twigs and fallen branches in her leather satchel to fuel the wielkapli’s bonfire, that which had become her foremost confidante. However, these wee articles were soon exchanged for more sacrificial items: a nest of beetles, a hummingbird’s egg. . . futile life would be surrendered as ember in exchange for her recovery. Most recently, she’d had her guardsman heft a cauldron of silver to erect above it as a pot from which to incense meltwax balms from the critters she’d plunder from the canopies.

 

Yet when it became known to her that it had not been only her life that had been robbed of its early delights, the orange, blue, and scarlet of that inferno grew cold to her. The Lady hungered for a heat like fever. How to achieve it, she could not gather, but from this day forth, she would begin to boil & brew until such a solution was found to her.

 

Sleet fingers dripped with the blood of a pig, falling like droplets of rain to hiss as they hit the foam.

 

[persz 89]

Hans, albeit obliviously, pays little mind to her newfound habits, his interest piqued merely at the more wiccan practices, although he brushed it off as the likings of apothecaries, the ilk of materia medica. He was merely elated that a pause in her relentless ailment had manifested, if only temporarily. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, her well-being appeared to have stumbled upon a brief interlude of solace.

[zuziee 4004]

Little to the Countesses knowledge, a faint whisper followed her steps across the alderswood. Misyachna glared and gargled with hate. Her dead, cold, eyes stuck between the trees.