Black Is The Color of My True Love's... [private]

[Anora Eventide]

Near Darkening, 12 of Kalendryas, Winter, PF XV

A cruel combination of snow and sleet paved the streets of Vortex, crunching and slipping beneath the tread of its ambivalent citizenry. This unkind cold was commonplace as the moons, awe inspiring but easily forgotten.
Anora looked a raven pacing over the winter ground as she waited outside the doors of the library. She wore a black habit over her gray gown. The habit was snug about her torso, fastened up the center and lined in black fur, possibly a wolf's. It showed from her high collar and her cuffed sleeves.

Darkening was settling its haunches on the horizon, and only torchlight protected by eaves illuminated those who passed. The woman floated between light and mottled dark, reckless when immersed in her element. Eyes plucked from a portrait would occasionally deflect the glare from the silver streets and alarm a passerby. The winter light fell so perfectly into her eyes, vain stars unafraid of whatever the darkening could produce.

Anora breathed momentarily into her gloved hands, more to bide the time then warm her fingers. She adored this merciless cold, and would not cover her face or black hair before it. It would be akin to wearing gloves into a lover's bed.

[Dimitri Wladisyaw]

Dimitri rarely travelled on horse within his city. He liked to be seen as first among equals among his people though he considered himself higher than this. He wore a great dark cloak lined with warg fur with a collar that went above his head and framed it against the setting sun. The attire under it consisted of his armour and a white cravta tightly higging the skin below the armour, a pair of dark military boots finished his ensemble.

Around him walked a number of his personal guards, white owls emblazoned on their sheilds and spears held aloft. He wanted to be noticed after all. His great purple cloak with his family insignia attached to his coat also aided him in this regard. He felt safe in the city now, there was nothing the Thane could do to him, and the Empire would not risk it now.

He spied Anora a little way off and smile gently, he felt the cold air on his lips and it tickled his teeth as he smiled. Silently he closed his mouth and quickened his pace a little as light snow began to fall about him.

"Serale songbird." He said as he moved through the snow that now was beginning to make visibility difficult. In a moment his hand was in hers and he was continuing to walk making sure she came along. In a moment one of the guards had a great parasol up blocking the snow from falling on thw two of them.

As he walked he spoke slowly and carefully, "You look very pretty today, how was work?"

[Anora Eventide]

Dimitri's small retinue came swaying from the shadow, led by the dreadbear. There was a slim thorn of pleasure in her at the sight. First meetings after absence had a particular sweetness. Though others presented with the same scene would return to the library, Anora met hands with Dimitri and chastely kissed his cheek.
"Serale, my good Duke. And thank you."

They fell into pattern, meeting easily in the dark.
"Work was enjoyable. The only noteworthy occasion this cycle has been a few visitors sanctioned by the Thane to copy tomes of necromantic arts." A subdued smile colored her dry response, "A trace curious, if I do say."
Her voice was replaced with the crystalline crunch of snow beneath many boots, and she looked beyond the jagged teeth of the city's roofs and steeples. Introspection was a common mood for her, always heightened by some degree of calculation. Words and plans passed through locks and sieves before finding sound.
Breaking her elegant reticence she released a guarded concern.
"You called me 'songbird', a pretty enough term, but it recalls more of my sister than I. It makes me think of her. She has possessed my mind of late." Anora briefly wilted under a melancholy cloud.
"She was so sad this harvest. It troubles me greatly, especially when she should have been at the height of her glory. I have thought on it these past few cycles and the idea rots my bones."
A keener glance was raised to her fiancé, but her tone was still hushed as the snowfall.
"She knew of my new arts, Dimitri, and my sister's, my own, eyes looked on me unkindly."
There was no temper in her expression, only that daunting emptiness, fathomless as winter sky.
"Did you whisper them to her some darkening she spent here?"
Instead of falling away, she rested her head against him, asking quietly, "Why would you do such a thing?"

[Dimitri Wladisyaw]

"Your sister is a bird Anora, she flies high above us in such joy the like of which we cannot know, but she walks on our plane and is sad for she does not know how to face the world we walk in." He continued to walk with her squeezing her hand lightly as he began to fashion a silky response to bind and suffocate her suspicions.

"Your sister and I spoke when she visited Vortex, she told me that the two of us would never make a couple, that she and Venn represented the ideal in love and serenity." He stopped walking and slipped his hand from hers, his hands rested on her hips keeping her still before him as they so often did. His great blue eyes stared into hers as he explained the situation, "I was angry I confess, I knew she could never see the power of my love, she could never tell of your growing affection towards me. She told me you and her would ever be together, I told her of your new skills to favour her somehow, to remove her from her deluded fantasies of the past."

He paused, "I speak strongly for a reason Anora, you will always be the girl running among the vines of Cloudkiss, but you have grown since then, you are a flower blossomed in my presence and your place now is by my side, she cannot see and telling her of your arts dented her visions slightly, it allowed her to see the link we shared."

He paused and smiled kindly, "Do you forgive me for this Anora, as you have forgiven worse in the past?"

[Anora Eventide]

"So it is true. She knows and from your mouth. All in a fit of pride."

Anora twisted the fingers of one of her gloved hands, but there was no alteration in the arch of her brow or the shape of her lips. In the fresh blanket of silence the wringing of her hands ceased.
The pulse of the living did not grace Anora, now. The fur lining her habit was the only organic touch as she rapidly sank into herself. She looked forward but navigated the world with some mysterious sixth sense, as her eyes transmuted into marble, sapphire and onyx.

"I once asked two things of you," a voice like incense, fit for prayers and cathedrals, "Honor me and do not ruin my sister's happiness. Simple hopes."
Her touch finally departed his. She looked at him without any sign of her cool temper or graceful fondness. It was an expression reserved for her mirror, without regard for anything but herself.

"Why fracture her visions? They were a balm to my relentless configurations, unlike anything another could bring, borne of the same mingling of blood and ground. It has stolen nothing from you."
Anora whispered to Dimitri, not in any show of emotion, but to avoid being overheard by the entourage.
"Hurting her was like striking your child because you believed your wife might love it more than you."

Withdrawing, Anora looked into the pretty veil of snow. Her mind became a scale, weighing what she had loss and won. Loss and its voracious child, loneliness, had overtaken their quarry and circled the weakened thing. Avrie would not even look at her on her wedding day, bound in her own pain. Her twin has found solace in gypsies, and newly found relations, things that had no claim on her history until the last few patterns. Anora had spread herself under her twin, a heartbeat at her feet, but had no power to curry grace.

On the turn of a moment, Anora could fall on him, wrapping slender arms about his shoulders or plunge her wintry fingers into his heart. There was no discerning with Anora, she was perhaps as mercurial as her fiancé when wounded.

[Dimitri Wladisyaw]

He watched her as she slipped away, unlike previous occasions he was filled with a certain confidence. Behind his masked look of sadness placed on his visage carefully like a mask he viewed her as too far his now to wade back to her old life. He was confident she would return to him, perhaps over so and began to weave words that would reel her back into his arms.

"Your sister blames me for much Anora, she seeks her own ruin in the arms of wandering gypsies and in the clouds which look so solid no? But they are light and come apart like snow in your hands." He paused and nodded, "I am real, she sees me as a monster of memories past, a great glutton ready to eat at her constructed world of fancy, I take you Anora, she think I am to take natura, a city I feel nothing for." He shrugged his shoulders, "The Empire blames my city for much ill, I find myself blamed for much, I am an easy target and perhaps my temper escapes me too."

He cast his eyes upon her and took a step away from the parasol into the snow he approach her, white snowflakes were trapped in his now long hair that came about his face and covered some scarring, a style he thought she would appreciate.

For a moment he appeared hurt and genuinely so and he spoke in reproachement to her for perhaps the first time, he jutted a finger at her and his voice became cold like the glaciers of the mountain passes, "I would never strike my own child Anora, never." When he was angry his voice rose and became great filled with rage, his voice now was soft but as solid as obsidian and would not be turned by any rhetorical parry, "I would never strike you nor any other thing I hold dear, to do this is unforgivable, I had hoped you would have gleaned at least that aspect of my character." He did not feel he had much right to hold any moral highground but perhaps here he felt he had a chance.

"This argument is one you must consider Anora, and I will not let you catch cold in the open snow, come to me.." He paused and held out his hand and with genuine sorrow said softly, "Please."

[Anora Eventide]

(OOC: So sorry, luv!)

Gradually an instinct made her hand raise to seize at his proffered grasp, to let herself grow weary against him. Isolated from Avrie, she had little pleasure left apart from him.

Then the willing hand stopped, a faltering bridge between them. It retraced its motions and fell to her side.
"No."
Anora was a creature of cause and effect, looking three moves ahead at the ramifications of action and reaction. A lever had been pulled and she was compelled to play out the motion.

"This broken promise is… disconcerting."

The world could flummox and shift so quickly, seemingly on a whim to one with unsteady focus, but Anora tried to survey the landscape of her life right to the horizon. A bruise like pain in her gut scolded her for falling out of perfect vigilance of late.

"It comes like some test to my own resolve."
Doubting her word had to have consequence, or her vows were thin and tinny, or such were the conclusions her mind churned. Her hand made a fist over her stomach and then opened, some will was being snuffed quite forcefully, though her face was mute.
"Such hopes I had over you."

Her hands circled her own neck until a fine chain was caught between her fingers. The necklace was drawn out, its garnet pendant, his signet, had rested near her fractured heart, an odd show of sentiment. The ring seemed to throb in her hand, it had drawn from her faint heartbeats. Anora looked at it, her eyes absorbed in its deep color.
"Remaining with you would show me weak under my own principles."

It was a verdict that made Anora wary, understanding some aspect of Dimitri's capacities. In juxtaposition to this caution, a portion of her believed in Dimitri's pledge of protection. A bright, sad thing inhabited her, moving through her limbs like blood and electric pulses. She wanted him to be true. Her experiences under his touch were strange warm scenes in the odd diorama of the last era. Perhaps love lurked, allowing her to blunt the edges of his behavior. Partial acceptation had been a sweet ambrosia between them.

"I do not know your character fully, but I knew it had been deferential to me."

Intractable winter cocooned her when she turned her glance away, "Until this juncture."
Fathoming the frustration's source was like choking, and she spoke with more frankness then she preferred.
"I am unhappy to be tried when I wanted to trust... I do not love easily, and I have invested what little I have in you. Why have you forced my hand away?"

[Dimitri Wladisyaw]

The snow fell a little more heavily, furious snowflakes gliding to the earth and creating a thin snowy layer on the cobbled street. Dimitri let his hands go to his face as she spoke. He carefully massaged his temples and rubbed at his eyes, it was going to be an argument of many layers across many different locations, he could see that now.

"You adress me like one of my tutors of old, with such high hopes and testing your resolve indeed." He let a smile creep to his lips, "I am no pupil Anora nor am I clay you can mould into a being that will never dissapoint you or betray you in small ways. No man can offer you eternal stability, you must grasp any happy moments life throws at you."

He let his arms come down and revealed his face again, he dropped his hands into his cloak and stepped towards her again letting snowflakes make his hair wet and his face glisten.

"Your force yourself away Morwen, you glide away into the mist and you look for an excuse to do so. Are you afraid?" He asked the question and then pressed on, "you create distance and you alone can close it, you must question yourself, why do you seek to leave me?" He smiled carefully and took a glove to the marks on his neck, in the snow smells were lesser and Dimitri was not tortured by them, he could smell her scent, it wafted softly among the snowflakes.

He did not turn or even extend a hand, he merely stood watching her, like the bear he professed on occasion to be his head cocked to one side and had it been possible perhaps his ears would have pricked, he smiled ruefully for a moment and awaited her next move.

[Anora Eventide]

"Why do I seek to leave?"
Anora closed her mouth, sampling the array of responses that came to her tongue. Her mind settled on one reply, wrapped in a chilling calm.
"Because you have broken one of only two requests that were exceedingly important to me, and hence shown little regard for my wishes."
The warm signet was pressed into Dimitri's hand, feeling like some portion of her heart. She had carved him a selection of that finite thing and now was watching it be wasted in the snow. A grave pity.

Her voice was quiet with a pretty melancholy and she could not remove her hand from resting on his yet.
"I did not ask eternal stability, only that you would show grace to my inclinations. One of them being that I bring no obstacle to Avrie's joy. My association with you has changed her, I know not how, but she limps where I would see her stride."

She considered her hand as it held aloft the dreadbear's paw. This touch had become a movement in the meticulously structured symphony of her days. It was... dear to her. Perilously so. She had not fathomed this connection would stretch beyond suitability, or even that the suitability would wind into grayer deeper similarities.

And then she let go, mercilessly severing her limb from where it would sometimes be caught. At the brink of pleasure, Anora could still behave with unkind precision to her person. There was no doubt as to what held the whip and reins over her will.
"I will fetch what I came to Vortex with last summer and depart."

[Dimitri Wladisyaw]

"You.....you cannot leave me Anora." He did not say the words forcefully rather he told them to himself, a promise his own tongue would not break. He considered the nature of their relationship in that moment, the looming spectre of Avrie ever watching over and tipping the toe into the fragile waters of their relationship, she would ever dispise Dimitri and would ever see her sister free.

"Dont you see how dear you are to me? Dont you see how far I have changed as Avrie has, as she had slowed I have risen, she does not move slower due to my influence she moves like that for you depart her life as you eventually must." He dropped to his knees before her and the hands that flopped into the snow were almost like those of a child.

"If you want her to be happy Anora, if you value her joy above all others then all you can do is tether yourself to her side, travel with roving bands of gypsies and play songs around the campfire, marry a dusky skinned minstrel and live the life she so craves, this is what will make her happy." He paused, "But I make you happy, I see such in your eyes and I cannot understand the sacrifice you make." He stopped and spoke again quickly, "I will never speak with her again, I shall forget her presence if you will stay, she will have no ill interaction with me and you can maintain a relationship free of my influence."

He smiled up at her sadly, "There is but one thing more powerful than my pride in my heritage and that is my beating heart, I cannot relinquish that which I hold most dear."

[Anora Eventide]

The panorama Dimitri drew from the air of gypsies and roving amidst jumbled song and chaotic whims brought a delicate pallor of fear. It would make Avrie happy to see her sister immersed in the wild pulse and glittering bangles of the Air'riela, as if their excess of feeling would bleed into Anora and make her well again.
But voracious gypsies had cauterized Anora's spirit to begin with, leaving a ghastly stump she had tried to cover with graces and duties. Their prolonged company conjured a deeply wound dread. Her memory was still pristine even if her emotional response was lacking.

"You may be right about Avrie. But there was no malice in her wishes for me," The phrase degraded into a whisper, "Even if such an existence secretly sickens me."

Anora lifted her face to the darkening again, finding solace in the pitiless cold. Her spirit could keep time with this force. It was as grand as human sentiment, but attainable for her.

"Your ability to gladden me is double edged. The same capacity allows for you to work harm."
She did not enjoy the duality in his access to her intimate corridors.

He was still kneeling before her, like months before when she promised the rest of her breath to be drawn in his company. It had been a sweet fiction then, that the misshapen souls could cling together.
She wondered at what his attending soldiers would think of their leader on his knees. Even now, she was cautious for his reputation and discreetly gestured for him to stand.

"Ill work has been done, and ceasing to aggravate her pain now will not undo it." Her eyes coolly dissected his expression, "Even if you intend to keep this promise unlike the last."

Allowing herself a parting glass, Anora drew close to him. A hum could conjure between their bodies, the draw of the moon and the tide, each force raking invisible hands over the other. His spiced scent had dampened since Jaedaxia, and hers was only what lingered in gentle soaps and permeated the fabric of her clothes.
"You churn the water I must swim in to a tempest and marvel that I am cross over drowning."

Anora placed a hand on his heart, as if her alabaster touch could dull the will and pride that overwhelmed his endeavors. Here stood a man so driven by his passions he would defy undead and boast to feral beasts. Like she told Nessani, there was peril in zeal without discretion.

She gazed at where her hand rested, nothing flickered on her face. Only the passing snow altered her visage. Seemingly insensible to grief and pain, like the snow at the city's edge, she folded indifference about herself.

After a time, some recollection unfurled and her eyes believed in some capacity to indulge him, to love him as best she knew. Her eyes were beautiful to behold, priestess like in devotion. How long had it been since someone looked on him lovingly? Since his presence was desired for more than immediate gratification?

Amidst this, she was still able to force consequence into her reply. A brief tryst could bear broken vows, but longevity stretched small harms into monstrosities.

"You may hold me dear," the entrancing spirit dimmed, tempered by the mind, "But not as dear as your own will, as actions have shown. I have scant proof otherwise."

Anora stepped back, unifying the scattered aspects of herself into the dark pillar of her person.
"Therefore, I feel obligated to go. Something as base as self-preservation encourages me."

[Dimitri Wladisyaw]

"What do I really know of love?" He spoke as though to himself, and stood carefully allowing himself a hand to push up from the snow. He had cast himself before all he wished for and had been turned away. He did not blame her, rather he blamed himself in a way for the horrible chains of attatchment he had forged in his desolute mind.

He carefully took the ring that had been placed into his hand, slowly he slid it back onto his finger, allowing it to mingle with the many other ornaments on his digits. How clear and wonderful they looked, a rich orbit about his hand.

She was near to him then, what did she intend? Some sort of final gratification, a delightful boast of her hold over him or was this too a ritual bred from the knee upwards and forced into the girl. He murmered words too soft for his men to hear and almost stolen by the wind, "Perhaps we are both too selfish..." he smiled, a forced smile that looked out of place on his face, Dimitri was honest and allowed his passion to speak but now he blotted out emotion and presented what was perhaps his bravest face.

He lifted his head and looked to the heavens for a time, "I have chased you for leagues Anora, across philosophies and musings too deep for my fragile mind to fathom, and I am spent at last." He smiled, "If you wish you may go, my broken promise resting with your broken vows in returning my ring, my people will accompany you away from this place that evidently causes you such distress."

"If you ever wish to visit then do feel free, is there anything else I can do for you?" He smiled rather like a vizier speaking to a queen, a question with no real substance behind it.

[Anora Eventide]

So that was it. The ring and all it was absorbed into him again, like nothing had changed. It did not seem so severe as she had feared it would be. That enduring hollowness swam a little deeper, but nothing she could not bear. She was Morwen, the sister, daughter who bore all heavy, thorny, bloody things that they would allow her to remove from their hands. Her odd penance owed to all things that were good and hence not her.


"And I did not venture far or submit to different temperaments?" she spoke softly to her hands, "We both gave something of ourselves. I will not call us entirely selfish."
But she could not absorb what she had lost. The gypsy curse made her affection finite and it would stay pinned on this man whether he was before or behind her.

She drew a breath at his plain request, all gentlemanly and precise. The air in her mouth seemed especially sharp.
The pretty little automaton began to whir into each command. She nodded politely and murmured what might have been thanks. Then off came the gloves as she daintily pulled on the fingers.

"You could not give me a concrete proof of what I want to believe," she tugged at the silvery band on her finger that marked her as his, "No more than this, I suppose."
The little circle was held between her fingers, extended halfway between them as she stared at it. Then it was in his hand and she secreted her gloves in some space on her person. Her smooth voice began to detail the mechanics of her departure.
"May I take Erathar for the journey? I can return him in time. My apol…"
A quirk in the cadence, but Anora was unsure what made her stutter. She began again, but found her voice shrunk as she searched for it. While Anora was struck with confusion, it was painfully obvious to Dimitri what was transpiring. An impossible sheen of tears slipped from the woman's eyes, though her metallic mind did not fathom the action. Her face did not contort with the sadness that her baser instincts imposed on her.
"I-- I apologize. It is a headache I think- from poor library light."
She felt flush and a trifle embarrassed at her inability to form a reply as neat as Dimitri. Her hand raised to cool her cheek, but sprung away. Curious, Anora rubbed the salty liquid between her fingers. Dazed Anora wondered what made the snow so warm on her cheek.

And then she acknowledged this impossible reaction. Her eyes blinked with stun, sending a new stream down her cheeks. She looked up at Dimitri, as if he could explain this mildly frightening reaction.

[Dimitri Wladisyaw]

He took the ring and matter-of-factly placed it into a pocket in his great robe, another smile, carefully planted on his face greeted it. His facade was being formed brick by invisible brick and the heartache that welled inside him was rapidly being disbeleived by even Dimitri, he could almost taste the salty blood of a murdered whore in his harem and the delicious freedom a life without Anora would bring.

Then she suprised him, the funny little machine that whirred and creaked with all manner of etiquette and good graces produced not for the first time something altogether human and strange. He smiled, this time not falsely but kindly, it was not pity but a sort of humble affection.

He closed the distance between them and retained his smile, carefully he drew her body into his, no argument would be made, his arms would be forceful and move like the great north winds that raked Vortex each season, she would find herself embraced into his warmth, a warmth that dried tears and chased away fears into the still and distant night.

"All you ever need remember Anora is that I will love you will all my heart forever and wherever you find yourself." He smiled and pressed a kiss against her head finding the smell too powerful for his enchanted sense but he forced his way through it.

"You need not forgive me, and you may discard my words Anora, I shall never tire of chasing you, I shall be the dusk chasing the dawn for an eternity." He squeezed her slightly, "Do not forgive me now, but do not leave this city yet, Vortex is a home for you, it holds you more warmly than I ever can."

[Anora Eventide]

Regret was a rare feeling as it required an attachment to something. Loss meant nothing without initial desire. Held so, Anora immediately regretted her resolve to apply cause and effect.
Her troublesome thoughts always moved to eras later, thinking on the progression and maturity of incidents. Would she regret remaining even more?

Avrie allowed a space for happiness with Dimitri, but insisted it was not adoration but control that was his banner over Anora. Yet in this instant there seemed to be no difference, new promises that could gain him nothing fell in her hair. Was it to cause her pain at this parting? To wound her enough to keep her still?

Did it matter?

It all expressed a desire to keep her near, when others shunned her cold company. Her body fell against his, savoring this last warmth of acceptance.

Two eras ago, she would have willingly married a brat from the vines. She would have ignored her young man's idiocies and busied herself with hearth and finances. The future was frustrating in how it would not align with even the best laid plans. Kicked and drawn into this scene, she chanced upon a degree of contentment, like one tripped over broken cobblestone.
Ambition, even darker ones, and cunning was rewarded here, coaxed as something admirable in a lady. She felt such peace in his acceptance and felt echoes of redemption in the idea that she dilluted some of his violent inclinations. But this peace cost her. In diluting him, she had warped the pristine picture of herself. Was it a fair trade?

She pulled away, gradually.

"I will st- st-" her throat constricted around the word and she bit her lip as punishment for her inability to speak clearly. A long wavering intake of breath fueled her next attempt.
"Stay until the end of the month, before I leave for Prime and Zinn'Sunn."

In truth, she needed the crowns her job pro