Kallian - A Murder of Crows

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Kilaana
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Re: Kallian - A Murder of Crows

Postby Kilaana » Tue Dec 08, 2015 11:31 pm

Celith Galiner: Of Kin

They share a fire, and a simple supper of drink and bread. The younger Elf's face, with its shallow, clean lines ending in a narrow chin, lacks the broader angles of another older one that comes to her mind. The dark hazel eyes watch her in a similar manner, however - dispassionate, detached. She wondered if he knew about the dimple that appeared in the corner of his mouth when he frowned or smiled.

"But you are one of the People." He was talking. "What you are, is not wrong. The People is merely a word, a term...it is the meaning they hold that matter and you are not without it."

Kallian smiles her familiar, carefree smile. "What meaning is that?"

"A life - spent watching others pass by, the gift of Time, given to understand the world around you." Celith has difficulty deciding which language to use this time, beginning to speak at first in Elven, then switching two words in, into Common, the language the older Elf sitting across from him favoured.

Her soft laugh rings out in the empty tavern. It carries an edge of sarcasm.


"Do you not think I already possess such?" She answers in Elven, harshly. "I have little use for the joy you spoke of anyway."

"I do not understand." He frowns, sadness creeping into his tone, and there was that dimple again. She promised herself that one of these days she would bring herself to tell him. Usually so taciturn, Celith seemed almost earnest in his questions now. "You would spend your time without it, by choice? Or turn it away...or do you feel it is out of grasp?"

The glow from the firelight illuminates her eyes to a brilliant quicksilver-grey as she turns to gaze into the flames. "These temporary distractions are enough for me. All joy is short-lived, anyway."

It struck her then, that it was quite the first time she'd really noticed the younger Elf display any sort of emotion openly. It was more evident in his eyes, all things considered. "You have never felt a joy that could last for you?"

She turns the fullness of her cold grey gaze on him then.

"I'm not sure any joy could last for me, and I'm afraid I have hardly a reason to seek it out." She stares at him, holding his silence a moment longer. "Do not feel pity for me, nor sorrow. I know what I am, and what I can do. What manner of things could be so alien this far in my decade? Nothing truly surprises me anymore, subjectively speaking."

He stares the gaze down for a time, then turns to the fire and murmurs, "I would see you search for joy instead of spending another day alive turning yourself to things you are not familiar with. Your body will be parted from you one day, but you will not end there."

She merely smiles, for an End is a sweet, sweet thought to linger upon.
“Violence is the mark of the amateur.” ― Garrett, Thief: The Dark Project

Kallian | Delorwyn Lle'quellas | Wilhemina Alencar | Zalika Maszim Zartusht
Cedric Lesàre


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Kilaana
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Re: Kallian - A Murder of Crows

Postby Kilaana » Tue Dec 08, 2015 11:36 pm

Of Morality

She sits alone tonight, by a fire, her head rested upon one hand. The Ranger had departed before long, leaving behind a male scent of old leathers and the musk of the wilds.

The hour slips by, and then another. She does not move from her spot, gazing wide-eyed into the flames, willing away the same memories that return to her mind in solitary moments like these. She has lost track of the times she has tried to dissimilate this occurence - in the end it was best to simply set them aside, as though they belonged to an entirely separate entity altogether, and not herself.


"Why?"

His question echoes in her head mercilessly. There, it unfurls itself and roars about like a demon she is powerless to stamp out, twisting it out of its virginal context in which it was asked by Aryen, and forming itself into nightmarish shapes. She stares harder at the flames, but the battle is not won tonight.

Lowering her head onto folded arms, where none may see her face, the elf surrenders to emotions no words can describe.
“Violence is the mark of the amateur.” ― Garrett, Thief: The Dark Project

Kallian | Delorwyn Lle'quellas | Wilhemina Alencar | Zalika Maszim Zartusht
Cedric Lesàre


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Kilaana
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Re: Kallian - A Murder of Crows

Postby Kilaana » Tue Dec 08, 2015 11:38 pm

By a Thread

Past midnight, the Crowning Glory is nearly empty of its revelry save for a couple of off-duty guards who remain behind to take advantage of their hard-earned leave. She passes them by on her way to the stairs, but they are inebriated and pay the elf no mind. At this hour, the tavern is bathed in shadows where the few remaining candles are lit in anticipation of the last trickling of customers. In the light, her deep, purplish dyed locks mark her as even more of an outsider among men when they care to look; in the shadows, the hair blends almost seamlessly.

The room is all hers this night, but briefly Kallian wonders if she could have saved the last few coppers for a wiser choice. The sentiment is soon cast aside however, for she is not one to dwell on such trivialities. She feels a slight weariness that comes with being awake for more than a twentyday filled with physical activity, but exhaustion is far from her mind. Instead, she finds a space on the worn mattress and busies herself with cleaning the mechanism on her crossbow, listening to the sounds of drink and laughter downstairs.

Presently, there is another sound, alien yet familiar, like that of metal scraping against an old wooden floor. She reaches for the knife she keeps under the pillow, and pads silently from the bed, her eyes seeking out those who would dare intrude her moment of respite. In monochrome, the seductive form of a mirror's edge beckons from a corner. Perhaps it was nothing, after all.

Then she is naked before its darkened glass, the blade glinting in the moonlight. Relief floods her senses as she affirms its unspoiled metal in the reflection, and so she turns her gaze upon her own bare form. The inked tattoos, once more vibrant red in a distant past, have settled into a deep brown. They curve downwards from their central origin point between her breasts, trailing a straight line down the muscled torso and parting ways as they approach both hips. The design continues its spiralling descent down, intricate like lace, where it ends its function to tease the eye to varying intentions. It is distinctly different in both form and purpose, from the second set of tattoos that run the length of her left arm. Even the largest scar that cuts across the taut abdomen seems like a hard-won prize tonight instead of a persistent reminder of failure. She looks upon her seasoned form, and is proud of what she sees. She is her own entity.

The reflection shimmers, and she wonders if it is finally a call for reverie, even as the form in the mirror begins to shift-shape into that of a man. He is much taller than she; with an unkempt appearance, pale blue eyes and tanned from time spent outdoors. He looks back at her without a smile, almost accusingly, and all she can remember is the white-hot blaze of angry desperation that blares like a siren in her mind. She smells the scent of old leather and male musk, but she cannot fathom why he is here in this room or what she has done to earn his ire when she recalls they had parted ways amicably enough before.

Now it is an Elf, turned sideways as if to depart. She recognizes him well for the feather he wears in his dark hair and the youthful lines to his jaw. Gripping a longbow in one hand, he looks as though he might leave at any moment, into the distance where an Elder awaits by a tree beside a taller woman bedecked in a helm of antlers. She feels her heart leap, and wants to follow - to have a piece of their tranquility, but the younger Elf only turns to regard her with a look of deep disappointment, and she falls back in dismay and despair.

Laughter echoes from somewhere behind. Still that enclasping blackness, like a curtain. But she would recognize that blonde hair anywhere, its azure eyes like the seas he has sailed upon. Much taller than the first, pleasing to the senses. He is still laughing, amused at something another blonde has said. Laughing....at her? She could not understand this anomaly. Had she not tried hard enough to be congenial? The yellow-orange hues of the woman's garb seem altogether too bright in this darkness, radiating an energy that robs her the comfort of her shadows. She feels her impatience rise at the dull throb forming in her head.

A figure emerges from the shadows with a goblet of wine and an invitation to a chess game. Her frustration reaches its peak, so she opens her mouth to refuse, and the Sunite stops in his approach, a look of consternation on his face. The warmth that encircles him like an aura subsides, before fading swiftly like a creature retreating to tend its wounds.


"Kallian...!"

She spins around at the call of her name. The wizard hastens over to her, pointing gaily at something she cannot see. He is red-faced with excitement, lips moving a mile a minute as if to tell her of some discovery, but there is only silence. She feels like clawing at her ears - what is wrong with her?

Then he stops, a look of horror creeping all over his round innocent face. He is trembling, pointing at something, at her. Her hand feels wet, slippery - the way it feels when there is a fresh kill. She does not need to look to know. The blackness moves, and it reaches out, taking twisting shapes until she hears the voice of her nemesis more than she sees him.

It is by pure animal instinct that she turns, bringing the knife across and over in single sweep that would open a jugular.

The blade slices the pillow, its stuffing spilling out onto the sheets harmlessly.
“Violence is the mark of the amateur.” ― Garrett, Thief: The Dark Project

Kallian | Delorwyn Lle'quellas | Wilhemina Alencar | Zalika Maszim Zartusht
Cedric Lesàre


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Kilaana
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Re: Kallian - A Murder of Crows

Postby Kilaana » Tue Dec 08, 2015 11:40 pm

Of Morality - Once More

"Do you think I am - a good, person?"

The journey back towards the City seemed to stretch into an eternity. She felt unusually weary, despite often going for several days without rest that it would not affect her thus. She passes by two men and their donkey saddled down with goods, their conversation droning in her ears even at this distance a quarter of a mile back the way she came.

"Do you think I am a good person?"

The Ranger's question interrupts her drifting thoughts like a phantom in its relentless pursuit. She crosses the rippled pattern cast on the dirt path by the canopy of trees overhead. Black and white, dark and light. Her eyes move ahead along the well-travelled road, but all she can see is the scattering of old, old blood.

Her footsteps move involuntarily more to the left - into the deeper shade of trees that line the tradeway, allowing the shadows their cold embrace once more.

"Are you?"
“Violence is the mark of the amateur.” ― Garrett, Thief: The Dark Project

Kallian | Delorwyn Lle'quellas | Wilhemina Alencar | Zalika Maszim Zartusht
Cedric Lesàre


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Kilaana
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Re: Kallian - A Murder of Crows

Postby Kilaana » Tue Mar 31, 2020 1:05 am

The rain had not ceased since the evening before, large sheets of it cascading off the tiled rooftops onto the City's deserted streets below. It wasn't unusual weather for this time of year, for winter's frost had given way to melting Spring, and for days it had grown unbearably warm without even a trace of a wind until it culminated into a seemingly endless downpour.

The Elf sat in the shadow of an ancient chimney, a small bundle of black huddled against wet stone. Soaked to the ends of her gloved fingers, she seemed neither to notice nor care her predicament in the elements. An eagle's feather, once proud and straight, now clutched dishevelled and missing portions of its vane between those same fingers, where that gift once held its place at the end of her braided hair. She remembered the eagle that the feather came from, and that eagle's master - Celith. Its master, her love. For a sweet, brief time, he had brought her close to that peace she had long sought, until his abrupt departure at Aerdrie Faenya's call. There had been few parting words; merely a cold fire and the Dark, she had woken up to.

What was love? she asked the night. What need was there for such affections, other than the songs and tales that it left behind? For at the end, there would only be nothing but the Dark. That was how it had always been, and always would be.

She allowed herself one last look at Karura's feather, before closing her fingers around it, crushing away the memory. It joined the rain upon the slick streets, several storeys below.

Hunger returned to her then. This time, she took a different route through the rooftops towards the Sailor's Star in search of supper.
“Violence is the mark of the amateur.” ― Garrett, Thief: The Dark Project

Kallian | Delorwyn Lle'quellas | Wilhemina Alencar | Zalika Maszim Zartusht
Cedric Lesàre



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