Black Sheep [PK]

[chaoscorvus 34]

Nalia didn’t like the rain. It was one of the few things she remembered as her condition worsened, and she lost all notion of what was. Yet, that night, as she drifted to sleep, she couldn’t help but feel comforted by the patter outside her window.

 

She would not awaken the following morning.

 

 

 

Few belongings would lay scattered about her room.

 

A basket, half full of stickers.

 

A broken pocket watch, affixed to golden chain.

 

Various artworks, all drawn in charcoal on white paper. A set of four would stand out, each identical in composition:

• A depiction in perfect realism of a black sheep standing alone in an empty field as storm clouds stir overhead. On the back, signed and dated - Nalia Vourkehardt, 11th of Malin’s Welcome, SA 277
• The same scene, in less detail. The lines that make up the piece appear shaky, as does the signature on the back - Nalia Vourkehardt, 6th of Sun’s Smile, SA 279
• The same scene, with odd perspective and uncanny proportions. The date and signature are messily scrawled - Nalia Vourkehardt, 3rd of Deep Cold, SA 280
• Several dark splotches across the page. If not for the context of the previous pictures, it would be nigh impossible to determine what it was made to represent. The work is not signed.

 

Spoiler

to the vourkehardts, and all who i had the pleasure of meeting as nalia: thank you for the roleplay <3

 

[NoxIndigo 106]

Past far-off felds and foreign hills, an aged apothecary turned timeless eyes toward the slow-rising bright of dawn. He sighed for weariness, then urged on his ceaseless steed.

The long road lulled, yet the ride stayed rest; and in vigil were the sleepless thoughts to keep him company.

"I held true my promise. Yet it would have been better had I not."

"It was unfair of me, that I should come and leave again."

"She is happier without me."

"Gods, she is so much like Mother."

"She is happier without me."

"She is happier without me."

So he told himself.

───────────────────────────────────────────

“Are you tired yet, Nalia?” Amon stifled a yawn of his own, eager to see his sister finally to bed. Contrasted with the harshness of winter dark, the hearth before them seemed all the more comforting.

“Nein…” the girl muttered into her brother’s arm. Much to Amon's distress, her resolve had not quite been arrested by the warmth of the quilt lain across her shoulders.

“If I tell you a story, might then you go to bed?” 

“Story?” Nalia shifted ever so, striving against what weariness she held. “Deal.” 

With a sigh, Amon’s gaze tilted to regard Nalia’s features, then turned again to the faint flicker of hearth-light. His eyes fell closed, and he strived to recall. “It ist ein sad story, but ein true one.

About Mutter.

About Anna.

Anna was lost.

Where was her mother? Where was her father?”

───────────────────────────────────────────

“I’m so sorry.”

 

 

Edited May 13 by NoxIndigo

[jihsoo 746]

Two flames, flickered. Just the two of them alone.

 

Safiyaa was the younger sister of Amon.
Amon was the older brother of Safiyaa.

 

And then came Nalia.
And then, came, Nalia.

 

Two had become three.

 

Safiyaa never thought she could have a younger sibling. The idea of such never crossed her mind; the timing of meeting Nalia, let alone seeing her, was rare. Her time with her siblings occurred scarcely, as the call for duty drew her toward Formindon; to the family that she had formed underneath stone-clad ceilings, braced between their safehold of walls. Though when she did see them, they were always warm, welcoming, as if the coldness of space had not shifted the relationships that interlinked them back to one person, their mother. It was fond.

 

Fond, despite hairs between the three shifting from blondes, oranges, and brunettes, shifting to ivory.

The scent of onions, reeking, a recall to how Nalia desperately wished for ginger hair.

 

Fond, as the scent of sweet pine, as a basket of stickers, tagged with their grandfather's name, Baldric, had slowly emptied from being plastered onto kin's faces - Vourkehardts finding their faces, covered in brilliant shapes and colours of apples, stars, horses alike. That basket was no longer Safiyaa's. It was Nalia's. It was theirs.

 

Fond, despite eyes growing weary and tired. Hiding behind masquerade masks, still able to spot one another in a crowd of shifting faces. Sharing a drink or two, speaking words on how one or the other has been, and the news of a seventh child, her future nephew, yet to come.

 

Fond, as the distance that steadily grew, and yet still promises of arms wrapping one another, murmuring comfort despite the pains of grief and loss. Of longing, of missing their eldest brother. Of missing their mother.

 

---

 

Fiddling with an apple seed, betwixt her freckled and marred - burnt hands, Safiyaa settled between the brambled crook of the lemon and apple tree, entangled, as she eyed the forest that sat beneath the hill, where the two entwined trees sat. She cradled in between a moment of solitude, of respite, despite what cacophonic songs of nature wailed melodically in her ears.

 

Looking between her granddaughters, who had steadily grown up together, the nature of their siblinghood. Recalling the innocence of her children's relationships, their banter, their joys and laughter, and bonds together, a weighted feeling ached in her chest.

 

"Ahki. Okht. How long has it been?"

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ApetheticOrange96 92]

r

[confusedjester 811]

A woman long lost to time opened her arms to embrace her very youngest in the Skies.