Flights of Fancy

[Thadius Dhrin]

A few hours. Only a few hours had he spent sitting beneath the tree near the lake, the same tree he had layed beneath the night he had almost died...the second time. Small squares of mint green paper carefully, painstakingly, folded. The pile grew with every few minutes until there were exactly one hundred. A roughspun sack was unfolded, the folded paper placed with great care within it.

As he walked to the Remedium, one could not know how he knew to go there, he whistled softly, a serene smile on his features.

He nodded politely to the caregivers as he passed them, making his way toward a room, as if he belonged there. No one stopped him. No one even gave him a second glance. Afterall, he looked very much like a monk of the One God.

A pale hand, missing a finger, rested for a moment upon the door, confirming the occupant within. With great care the door was pressed open, as the cowl was drawn back from his features. Platinum locks spilled freely around him, dancing on the air as if teased by some unfelt wind.

She lay there, sleeping, as he had seen her so many times before. There was a time when the sight would have softened the heart of one Thadius Dhrin, made him question his resolve. This was no longer the case. The serene smile twisted into something ruined, something tainted with hate.

The bag was upended over the bed, sending tiny mint green swans spiraling down from above her. Each one had it's neck bent at a horrible angle, intentionally maimed. Each swan landed upon the bed, save one, which was rescued from the floor and set gently upon her chest. As he reached toward her it took great restraint not to draw the dagger from his robe and be done with it. But, no...this would wait. For the waiting, the learning, would make it so much sweeter.

The final swan seemed to hang in the air as Thadius turned to leave, fluttering down to tickle at the nose of one Ariane Carnath-Emory. Perhaps she would wake. Perhaps she would see the ghost of a man who once loved her more than life, slip from her room. Perhaps she would think it was no more than another dream.

If she took the time to do anything but burn the swans, she would find one words written carefully on each piece of paper. She already knew...but he knew she would not be able to resist. Each swan sang a simple song.

Believe....

[Carnath-Emory]

A few hours. Only a few hours, in the morning following her doomed attempt at meeting with Kerrak al'Nerun. Only a few hours, following the disaster that it had become -- and really, the attempt had been ill-advised to begin with. Just days before, after all, she'd slain Fawn Mourning; wicked little Fawn, who'd sunk a dagger so deeply into her chest that it had carved through flesh and vein and muscle alike. When the General had finally pulled it free of her, the blood had geysered. He'd carried her to the Rememdium then, as he would any soldier in his charge that had bled so freely. She'd been bandaged with some care, had been moved to a bed and advised to keep to it for some few days yet, that being the depth of the wound.

And she had. It is possible to exercise the mind, while confined to a bed; it is possible to exercise the limbs, as Coran D'zir had discovered, when he came to visit her small hospital room. And to educate her on the matter of Kerrak's recent state of mind. And to, convey her both there and back again, for their visit had lasted only an hour before furniture was flung, and swords drawn, and three mortal lives hung on a very precarious balance indeed.

It surprised no-one that it was a weakened woman that he'd returned to that Rememdium bed. One who surely should have expected that the draught given her to ease the wound's pain, would ease the mind's as well -- so that when she surrendered to rest, it was to sleep as if she'd been murdered.

If Thadius Dhrin had been less educated in the pleasures of anticipation, this might actually have become the case.


And hadn't he always come to her as she slept, during the years of their fervent war? During those vulnerable dreaming times; during those long hours when there was no silver to her skin, no fury to her eyes. Even in dreams, he'd visited her...

It's to this sight that she awakens, some hours after the fact: this blanket of subtle green -- the jade of his eyes; the searing mint that is his scent, that is the taste of him which burns her lips. It is this great lake of fragile swans, beginning and ending with the one perched upon the subtle curve of her chest. That is where her grey gaze must inevitably fix, and it's as frozen as the rest of her, wide and breathless and still, for it's in this instant -- awash in paper madness -- that Ariane Emory knows she is about to die.