The Last Fox

[KannAllyEnd 12]

Ante'vuln paces; it's becoming a habit. The calluses on the backs of her feet are growing raw, though ancient wounds can no longer blister nor burst. A hundred years of pacing in high heeled shoes have taught Ante'vuln a great many things. It is in these sessions of restless pacing that she does her best thinking. These shoes have seen revelation in their day.

-Well, not these in particular. These are relatively new, as it were--a gift from a relative, sent as a wedding present. And luxe gift at that, indeed, for the shoes are made of fine rustic silk, and encrusted with stones. Done in a rare shade of teal-blue, the footwear is regal in its rich color and glittering accent. It is also graceful, trim and high as it ought--only one with good breeding could walk in these shoes with dignity. Ante'vuln possesses that, and perhaps, she thinks, this is what the shoes are really meant for. Not as a congratulatory token...but instead a reminder. A elaborate nudge, to remember how she got her calluses.

She shakes her head. As if she could forget.

The strap around her left ankle slips a millimeter. Ante'vuln fails to notice the shift, lost to her thoughts as she clacks along her stone foray. But a few more lengths, and she feels slick wetness, coating the back of her foot. Ah yes. They may cause skin to toughen, but even the old ones bleed.

My bones itch. My blood irritates them as it flows along, sweeping through my veins as it pumps uselessly inside my frame. This hearth does nothing to warm the chill that lurks inside my chest. The mantle piece is no place to set my troubles.

Useless, I say. My City lies in disrepute. Larihei and a thousand leagues of Mali'aheral boil with rage in my very body, aching at the sight of the filth. The betrayal. The decay in this tomb I've built my home within.

Never can there be peace in such times. The burden of living a thousand years is to see the world rebuild itself, and forget you. In all truth, it would forget me no matter what I did. But I do not worry for myself.

I will not watch all I love disappear like falling water. The rain soaks beneath the soil, and I shall bring it springing forth once more.

Haelun'or must awaken, and if I shall dull my lungs and throat shouting in her ear, so be it. The Sleeping City arisen, for substance-less dreams do not satisfy the Ancestors. My son shall not grow old within a crypt. My husband did not choose a docile woman to sit and mend his clothing.

By the purity of her silver witness, and as Larihei's heir--a child of the Mali'aheral:

My blood is calling, and it shall be answered.

[KannAllyEnd 12]

((Ahh. Below is just some background doodling. Thought I'd post it, because I enjoyed writing it, and it gives quite a bit of personal insight into this character, for those that find pleasure in looking through such things. So, this is just in case anyone is interested, I suppose.))

Ante’vuln remembers the first time she fell in love. She thinks falling is an odd way to describe that feeling. Mostly because, it wasn’t that much like falling at-all. It was more like waking up, and realizing that she was no longer in the same place she’d fallen asleep. That disorienting, slightly terrifying realization that everything was different, and nothing was the way she’d expected it to be. She’d spent the next months--Ancestors, she’d spend the next years--in various states utter terror. The issue resolved itself soon enough, however. Ante’vuln had watched Esmer walk down the aisle to meet her husband, and all those years evaporated in a puff of broken dreams and dashed hopes.

Ah well, Ante’vuln thinks to herself, what had she expected from the woman who’d twisted her gut into knots? Better treatment for her heart? Love makes fools of all, even those of us without the courage to admit to it. Ante’vuln truly didn’t feel better, for having been humiliated in privacy. But her saving sense of Mali’aheral pride, handed down through haughty generations of silver-blooded Llumcelias, had kept her shredded dignity a crucial secret. The day Ante’vuln left Laurelin was the day she’d put her aching heart to sleep.

She needn’t have bothered, as it turned out. Her heart hadn’t ended up with much more than a nap.

The second time had been different. She hadn’t even known Ellir, not really. It’d been more like a revelation, seeing her for the first time. This was a bit unfair, in retrospect. Ante’vuln hadn’t known, until that moment, that feelings could have physical impact. But this time, love had hit her like a ton of rocks dropping from above.

In the end, it had gone over as well as one would expect from such a scenario. Feelings are dropped on one’s head, and she tends to be squashed. Ante’vuln in fact, had debated in a painful daze afterward, whether Ellir had regarded her so much as an annoying mosquito, buzzing about her head, or just a rather distasteful wart. There were interesting arguments for both sides. On the one hand, Ante’vuln certainly felt like a swatted insect, with her insides smeared on her outsides. But equally compelling was the idea that Ellir found her unpleasant enough to simply ignore, so that others might not judge Ante’vuln’s affections as an infectious blight upon the other’s fair complexion.

Though, Ante’vuln had learned an important lesson that day. Hearts were stupid, heedless creatures, and that hers in particular, was a bit of a masochist.

Ante’vuln’s limited and traumatizing experience with love, however, did not answer her current questions. So far, she’d known what it was to long, to dream, and to have hope hang her by a noose and dangle her over the very flame of her own desires. It may sound an unpleasant way to describe the phenomena of love, but Ante’vuln wasn’t truly jaded to it. Only wary, as one becomes with a dog who has bitten her time and time again. You’d hardly blame her for expecting the creature to sink its teeth on the next occasion. Ante’vuln was an elf who subscribed to the idea that life worked in patterns, logical and systematic. She only had to watch long enough in order to discover what those patterns might be.

In a hundred years, Ante’vuln thought she had love fairly figured. If it were a pattern, it went like this: Hope, Despair, Hope, Despair, Hope, Hope, Resolution. The resolution being her heart a bloodied, spattered mess on the bottom of some woman’s shoe.

But none of this, answered The Arthane Question.

In particular, the question of his smile.

The first thing of note was that it wasn’t an attractive smile. Much unlike Esmer, who had dazzled her once with pearlescent white teeth and luminous grey eyes--Ante’vuln had been understandably smitten. She’d hardly questioned it. Of course she’d been enraptured; it would have been more unnatural not to have been!

Ellir’s smile, in another way entirely, had awakened something in Ante’vuln that had refused to be put back to sleep. The errant toss of Ellir’s head, the confident, unshakeable quality of her manner spoke to all of Ante’vuln’s own insecurities. Afterall, Ante’vuln had never felt quite at home in the world. Perhaps, when Ellir smiled at her with so much pride, she fathomed that there was a place for her afterall. The mere idea of it had been intoxicating, a revelry Ante’vuln had pursued with blind fervor until it collapsed under the weight of unforgiving reality. ...The reality of Ellir’s indifference to her, as it were. It had been a rather disillusioning moment.

But Arthane Lazul was no dazzler. Ante’vuln was sure no-one would ever think to describe him that way. In honesty, when she had first met him, she had found it difficult not to stare at him, for the elf looked as if he’d been chewed and spit out. Half his face was gruesomely burnt, rendering a permanent sneer of one side of his mouth. Even when he smiled (she’d only seen it once, in response to something Lucion had said), the burnt corner of his lips had remained mostly frozen, lending a charred cynicism to the expression--a constant smirk, as if he were leering at the world. His eye, the dead one, looked on indifferently, never moving or blinking or shifting from its fixed course ahead. Its dull, whitish retina stared into the abyss, and Ante’vuln wondered nonsensically, if Arthane saw the future as he looked on with his dead eye, occurring before him. And she wondered, if that future were so depressing and bleak as to cause the permanent look of displeasure on one side of the elf’s tortured face.

Arthane wasn’t inspiring or charming, either. In fact, he said hardly anything at all, and when he did speak, it was in a gruff manner, as if his voice were loathe in its use. If Ellir had inspired hope, Arthane inspired pity, and discomfort.

...And fascination. Ante’vuln could not even begin to deny that she found Arthane to be interesting, even if it were morbidly so. She curbed her instinct to stare openly at him out of courtesy, for she had been sure he was used to such treatment and felt a sense of injustice that he should be victim to these instances of unflattering gawkery. But all the same, she watched him--discreetly. For at least, out of the corner of her eye, she couldn’t seem to look away from him.

But when he’d smile at her, directly at her for the first time, it had been another matter entirely.

Ante’vuln’s heart had done something it never had before.

It had flipped over. Not raced. Not stopped. But performed a strange, acrobatic trick in her very ribcage that made her wonder if her heart was about to stop functioning at all.

Now she wonders if it might not have been a fluke. For it is not at all an isolated incident. And she doesn’t seem to be dying, so it’s not a sign that her heart’s simply choosing a confusing moment to fail her.

No, indeed. This was not at all the pattern love had followed in Ante’vuln’s short years. Perhaps a century was not enough time to learn about love after all.

[Thu'um 530]

(Fantastic, I can't wait for more! :))

[Lynesse {Celia/Jazzy} 398]

Another reason why the High Elven community is so great.

Extremely well written, I'm interested in reading more.

[KannAllyEnd 12]

((Okay, any readers. These next -two- posts are pure angst of the most blatant variety. So, there is your warning.))

A column of elves files silently through the center of the open-air polis. Their somber gray robes are the color of ashes. Ante’vuln wears blue in sheer defiance. She almost regrets it now, as the eyes turn to her first, before flicking away.

The plucking of soft lute strings begins, and the murmur of voices in a low chant reverberates over the gathering. Elves join hands, an interlocked crowd of bowed heads as they hum, and mumble words in ancient Elvish, buzzing together in a deep rumble. The march reaches a small, silver tree in the center of a courtyard. The branches shudder slightly in a breeze; so does Ante’vuln. According to tradition, Larihei’s white trees are planted at the birth of an elf, and chopped down to use as a pyre upon her death. This one has had only a few hundred years to grow. The axe in Ante’vuln’s hand trembles as she draws near, and rumbling ceases.

A small jar of ashes already rests at the foot of the tree. It will only be a representational burning today.

Ante’vuln pushes her hood back to her shoulders. Raising the axe in hand, she swings it, landing the sharp side deep into the trunk of the tree. Her eyes flutter shut for a moment, the impact ringing in her body. She struggles to breathe against the shock, fighting to do anything but burst into tears. Her hands twitch around the tool’s handle, and she abruptly yanks the wedged blade from the bark. She strikes again, and again--the sound of hacking punctuating the silence. Splinters fly from the tree’s assaulted side, and Ante’vuln fails to notice the long scratch a passing-by bit of projectile wood leaves on her cheek.

She ceases, at long last, shoulders heaving, and she steps backward. The small gathering watches intently as the tree wavers, upright but upheld by only a few centimeters of substance. A stray wind rustles through the branches, and it falls, crashing backward and filing quiet with sound.

Ante’vuln watches with the rest of the gathering. The tree’s creaking descent signals the lute’s playing to pick up once more. The elves begin to murmur, and Vuln simply stares at the fallen trunk, the axe falling from her hand with a quiet thump to the floor.

The elves who had filed behind Ante’vuln now move around her. They walk around, and quickly begin to chop the tree into pieces, stacking branches and segments of wood atop each other in a large triangular formation on the ground. From the group of Mali’aheral standing around them, a few approach now. They bring more objects, that are added to the pile. A few journals, a gown, a collection of letters, a pair of shoes, a hairbrush--these too, join the growing pile of tinder at the front of the gathering. Ante’vuln recognizes most of these items, can imagine them back in their proper places in Esmer’s manor. She watches these things placed amongst the kindling, and then she blinks, suddenly unable to remember how to move her body.

The workers accomplish their task rather efficiently. In what seems like no time to Ante’vuln, the white tree is reduced to firewood, and Esmer’s belongings are piled in the midst of it. Someone ticks of a flint, and a single spark flies downward before it catches on the wood. Smoke immediately begins to curling out from the stack--greenery sending billows of white into the skies. The elves melt into a singular gathering, except for Ante’vuln, who still cannot fathom how to move out of the way.

“Esmer,” she whispers quietly, the name tasting odd as she struggles to catch herself, speaking it. The wood begins to crackle, a dry and empty sound much like her gasping voice. Ante’vuln places a hand on her throat. The elves continue to chant as the fire leaps higher. She blinks some more, swaying on her feet as the flames turn fabric, pages, and tinder into smoky blackness, curling away into ash before her very eyes. Someone pulls her into the crowd. She doesn’t feel herself drawing back, isn’t aware of anything but the heat on her face and the smoke in her lungs.

The last time, she hadn’t even tried to say goodbye to Esmer. She’d known that she couldn’t.

She watches the fire growing higher, orange light gleaming in her eyes. Someone says something; Ante’vuln hears Esmer’s name in it, and turns around as if to check to see if she might be there. There is nothing, only elves dressed in funeral garb, and Ante’vuln whirls back to face the pyre once again. Her fingers press into the sides of her face, and Ante’vuln can’t breathe; she can’t breathe.

And suddenly, she is screaming. Nails digging into her cheeks, her vision fades, graying at the edges, shouting cries choked out of her to mix with the burning air. The sound is drowned out by the violent crackling and spluttering of the fire, the tinny picking of the lute, the droning chant. Ante’vuln’s body is hollow, her face pointed upward. Someone grips her elbow; someone kneels at her side. She shrieks wordlessly, mouth agape and head jerking back and forth. The sky turns overhead, dizzy and blue--the same color as Ante’vulns cloak that now mixes with the mud below.

“Esmer! Esmer!”

Ante’vuln looks frantically, unseeingly about to the piteous, horrified faces around her. She cannot keep track of the swirling bodies, the eyes and faces and funeral-grey cloaks. Her voice strains--she has ceased hearing herself, tears pouring down her cheeks as she claws at the ground. A few pat at her back, speaking uselessly soothing things that do not register with the shrieking elf on her knees. The rest give her a small berth, stepping away and creating a ring of space around her.

Somewhere, Ante’vuln thinks she can hear birds, and two small elves laughing, sitting in the branches of a funeral tree before it ever hit the ground. That was a century ago, and she can hear it all now, ringing in her ears with the softening chants that are only just beginning fade, as the smoldering flame dies down.

All is quiet. Ante’vuln is quiet. The elves begin to disperse, but she remains. As she rises, she notices her cloak, now muddy brown and flecked with ash. She supposes that she’s dressed for a funeral after all.

[KannAllyEnd 12]

((Cross posted from a long-ended competition it was formerly entered in.))

"Tell me again, how it's going to be?"

Ante'vuln lays, nestled against Arthane's shoulder, just under his chin. Already, she's become unused to sleeping without his familiar warmth against her side, his familiar scent filling her nose with each breath--Ante'vuln doesn't even know if she could sleep at all, without Arthane anymore. She doesn't tell him of course, but secretly, even on the nights where he is away traveling, she goes to bed cradling his old coat in her arms. She buries her face in the tattered material, just inhaling, breathing him and imagining he is still there with her-- on those nights when her husband is out of the City, it is the only way she finds peace.

Now, her fingers play across the lacing of his undershirt, and she listens to the rumble of his voice, words nearly indistinct as she presses her ear right up to his chest. His murmuring heartbeat is loud and visceral, thumping steadily. She loves that sound. Arthane's heartbeat is the most calming noise in the world, better than the chatter of crickets, the roll of the ocean, or call of a nightingale. To the rhythm of this heartbeat--Ante'vuln is sure she could sleep a hundred years, utterly content to never move at all, so long as he were there, holding her close enough to hear his heart thumping in her ear.

"Again, mayilu?" he chuckles, his large fingers running through her hair, which is splayed over the pillow. She nods fervently, clutching him closer, before pulling her head up to look at him. Making her green eyes large, she begs in a childish voice:

"Just once more? Please?"

He sighs, a happy noise, and drops a kiss on her forehead. "Very well," he agrees, and strokes the back of her head. She grins, and settles contently down against the sturdy expanse of his upper forearm. As he begins to speak, one of her hands slips reflexively down to stroke over her stomach. It has only faintly begun to protrude. The slightly rounded surface of her belly is warm under her hand as she runs a finger tenderly against the tiny bump. Her dress hides it well during the day, but Ante'vuln can feel how her figure is changing, becoming a bit softer and round each day.

"We're going to be so happy," Arthane promises, his voice a surge of certainty, "we'll raise our child right here in this home. We'll teach him to read in the parlor. He’ll take his first steps right here. We'll put him to bed each night, and tell him stories. We'll raise him, until he finds a wife of his own...and then, Ante'vuln...we'll be grandparents. And no grandchildren will ever be so loved."

Ante’vuln’s toes curl, and she closes her eyes, already imagining all he is telling her. Secretly, she hopes it really is a boy, and that he is exactly like Arthane. And that he is only a little bit of her, but only the good parts. She wants her child to be perfect, just like Arthane is—and he will be, of course he will be. When Arthane tells it like that, there is nothing Ante’vuln is more assured of. They’ll be the happiest—the best parents in the world.

She thinks to herself that she’d like to give her son a pair of golden boots. So that every step he takes, he’ll be touching precious metal. His world will be insulated, with value. This value will protect even his toes from the touch of filth. Gold is an insult in Mali’aheral culture, and her son will step upon the generations of impurity. In his glittering, golden boots, hers and Arthane’s son will walk above the world.

Arthane kisses her then, lips descending tenderly to the top of her head, as his hand reaches over to press against the rounding of her stomach.

“Sweet dreams, little one,” he murmurs quietly, “Maln loves you, already.”

And it seems as if her very heart bursts, when Ante’vuln catches the very faintest glimmer of tears on her husband’s usually stoic face.

After a time, Ante’vuln’s eyes begin to drift shut as she rests against Arthane’s chest. He wraps his arms around her, a weight that keeps her safe, warm and secure through the night. His slowing breath eases her into dreaming. She’s there within moments: an oar-less rowboat, drifting lazily out to sea.

[[ ]]

She wakes up screaming.

Arthane quickly shakes her, eye frantically roaming her face as he grips her arms, hard. Ante’vuln’s body is wracked with tremors, and sticky tears streak her cheeks. The room is hot, sweltering, and she can’t understand why it’s suddenly so warm. It’s almost swampy, suffocating, and her forehead is covered in a clammy sweat.

“Mayilu, are you all right?” Arthane’s worry causes his voice to heighten, his hands cupping her cheeks as he seeks to meet her wheeling eyes. When he does, and their gazes lock, she sees the fear in his expression, and deep in her chest, she feels it too.

“I…I…” she can’t formulate words. She’s still half-lost in a nightmare, body shaking in revolt. Sweat pours down her back, and the air feels hard to breathe. She grabs onto Arthane’s shoulder to steady herself.

Arthane touches her forehead with gentle fingers, and his eyes become large. She’s nauseous, teeth chattering, and Arthane grows solemn as he pulls his hand away, resting it under her jaw.

“Ante’vuln, you’re burning up,” he says, a terrified whisper.

She opens her mouth to speak, but just then, Arthane’s panic-ridden gaze falls to her pale hand, resting on his shoulder.

It is covered in blood.

He tosses the blankets back, and it is everywhere. Red, red smeared between the sheets, so much red that Ante’vuln feels dizzy. Arthane immediately scoops her into his arms, lifting her from the gory bedspread, and she feels a warm trickle down the side of her leg.

“You…you’re bleeding!” His voice is hoarse, disbelieving, but Ante’vuln clambers to the floor, stomach heaving in revolt as she tumbles to the bedside. She throws up, noisily, tears leaking down her cheeks and her shoulders quaking, harsh sobs tear through the animal retching sounds issuing from her mouth.

Arthane leans over quickly, worried hands tracing down her spine for token comfort. Ante’vuln shakes her head, no. No. No. NO.

Because it’s not her blood. Would that it were; she feels as if she’s bleeding, as if she’s bleeding from every pore as she realizes, realizes—Ancestors, Larihei—please. Please. Let it be her blood.

But it’s not her blood. She knows it, knows it so deeply that the knowledge threatens to choke her, cut off all her air. It’s her son’s. Her unborn son’s blood, violent and red between sheets, soaking through the bed she and Arthane had been dreaming in only moments ago. Her son’s blood, painting the mattress spread with horrifying red, and staining her skin with rust-scented crimson, painting her hands like a murder scene. She heaves again, and trembles and trembles and trembles.

And when Arthane and Ante’vuln meet eyes once again, it is with a gaze so heavy, it wears boots made of gold as it sinks to the bottom of the sea.

[Knox213 10]

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