Family and Fae

Log Info

• Title: Family and Fae

• Emitter: Ravenstongue

• Characters: Ravenstongue, Rune

• Place: Ravenstongue and Telamon's house

Lupecyll-Atlon house, afternoon.

The recently renovated house on a certain street within the University District is quiet today. The cloudy hot day probably has something to do with it--not even the mages who are capable of casting spells on themselves to reduce the adverse effects of the elements want to be out here overly long.

Yet inside the house, there's a special guest. A certain debonair gentleman, his skin a light-gray that could be mistaken for that of a mul'niessa man, sits in his rocking chair in the living room, knitting away at what looks to be a rather complicated shawl made of finely-spun silk yarn... which is a feat considering his monstrously taloned hands. Cor'lana sets down a tray containing a teapot and a couple of plates of cheese and crackers. "Thank goodness Pothy's asleep in the study," she comments, "or he'd have harassed me the entire time while I was in the kitchen. Would you like anything, Grandfather?"

"Just a cup of tea for now, my dear," Grandfather rumbles over the edge of his knitting. He's remarkably fast, too. "It's nice to return to the material plane after such time away, although I didn't expect it to be this... blazingly hot."

"It'll get colder again soon," Cor'lana comments as she pours a cup of tea. She walks over to Grandfather and holds out a cup of tea for him, the joy on her face perhaps the most genuine it's been in months.

It has been a trying few days for Rune. The encounter with her mother/not-mother along with insights into Harkashan's own strange bond with other-worldly beings has left a fair share of emotional turmoil. Adding on top of that was a very tense near-death experience which has had her little more than required rest.

Stepping up to the door of the newly renovated house, Rune takes a deep breath before lightly rapping her knuckles on the door. The half-elf looks a bit haggard, despite her best attempts at trying to right herself. Her skin has a pallor to it and there is a hint of a glazed film over one eye surrounded by a bruising around it. One might think she'd been in one hell of a fight, except... there's no obvious signs of injury.

As she waits, Rune flicks her thumb against the edge of her mother's locket, easily slipping into her usual anxious, worrying at it.

The knock comes at the door as Cor'lana holds the tea out for Grandfather to take, and the two blink. "I'll get that," Grandfather replies, rising up from his rocking chair and putting the knitting down.

"I--what if it's..." Marsward? He's dead. Cor'lana's protests are silenced with a little sigh as she watches Grandfather, a stubborn old man in some respects, glide over to the front door.

Which he opens, and the man is dressed in the same open-chested robe and mantle of feathers as when Rune met him in his home in Quelynos. His violet eyes peer down at Rune in a flash of recognition, and a warm smile perks up on his lips. "Ahh! Miss Leirune. Cor'lana is home if you're here to see her."

And then he looks at her and narrows his eyes. "Is all well?" he asks more quietly. "You look like something's been following you. Do you need it taken care of?" The fae man's voice is a low and dangerous little rumble.

"Rune?" comes Cor'lana's voice from within the house, and she pokes her head around Grandfather. "Come on in. We were just having a catch-up. Grandfather hasn't been here for months and he's just now seeing the place for the first time after it's been redone."

There are moments when Rune is caught off-guard enough that she cannot quite steel her expression. Seeing the door opened by a very attractive elven man with an open-chested robe has her staring briefly at the man's chest in completely unabashed attraction before she manages to blink and look up towards his face... which doesn't help in that regard at all.

"Uh." It takes a moment for her brain to restart and form coherent language again. "Yes. Yes, I'm here to see Cor'lana." She confirms, all too quick to bob her head forward, hair falling across her face as he offers the Fey being a bow. "I hadn't meant to interrupt your visit."

When she stands back up to her full height again, it is to look between the two briefly. "I'm alright, or... I will be soon enough. Harkashan's had me on rest for the past few days but I'm bored out of my mind." She murmurs. "Apparently, phase spider venom doesn't agree with me, or anyone really..." Her lip quirks, "I just happen to look worse for wear from it than most normal people." As if... she weren't normal.

"Anyways, that's not why I am here, but... I appreciate the concern." Rune smiles softly, but tries not to stare the Fey man as she is invited in.

Thankfully, if Grandfather notices Rune's failure to form coherent thought, he doesn't comment on it. He's a gentleman in addition to being blessed with beauty. An unfair combination, really. "It isn't an interruption at all," he says, although there's still a mote of worry in his violet eyes upon the explanation that Rune gives. "Come on in and let us see if perhaps the joys of good company can't do something to salve your wounded soul, then."

He strides back in and takes a seat back in his rocking chair, sitting down and taking up his knitting again. Cor'lana, in the meantime, pours another cup of tea. "This one's yours if you'd like it, Rune," she offers. "I'm sorry to hear about the phase spiders. There's cheese and crackers if you'd like some, too. Please take a seat wherever you'd like. Pothy's asleep in the study at the moment."

Cor'lana herself takes a seat on the couch. "What brings you here today? Maybe both Grandfather and I can help?"

An incline of her head is the only thanks that Rune gives as she follows the pair and eventually settles on the couch just a little away from Cor'lana, accepting the tea and rubbing it between her hands slightly as if she were trying to warm them. Warm them... despite the fact that it is hot as the hells outside.

"I owe Elisabeth my life. If she didn't have the right spells to deal with the venom, I wouldn't be sitting here right now. Harkashan's in a right foul mood about it, too. He doesn't really like the idea of me nearly dying... again." Even so, Rune seems to be taking it in good humor, at least as much as is possible.

"Maybe it's good fortune that you're here, actually. I've got a bit of an update on my strange Fey situation." Her eyes look to Cor'lana, then to Grandfather, lingering just a bit too long before looking away again, down into her tea.

"I'm probably going to butcher explaining this, but... I talked to my mother." Her thumb plays at the edge of the cup, "Except she wasn't really my mother. They weren't. They were echoes. Other possibilities of who my mother would have been." Rune's brows furrow. "Something like that. It's... pretty confusing."

"Your mother?" Cor'lana asks, raising a brow. "Except..."

Then there's a light in her eyes. "You know. I've experienced something sort of similar. I've spoken to an 'echo' of my own mother--a tiny part of her left behind inside of Pothy. I know that sounds strange, and it is. It has to do with my magic bloodline, but..."

She thinks. "Magic is weird like that. Time is weird and not fully linear. Telamon and I recently dealt with a magic circle set into Alexandria's sewer system by someone who had gone back in time and put it there. It's..."

Cor'lana gestures to Grandfather's knitting. "Say you take a ball of yarn. And you go and you twist it all up onto itself, creating multiple knots, to the point where it's not a straight line anymore but loops upon loops upon loops--if you're careful, you can unwind it back to the way it should be. But if you're not--the only way you can deal with the knots is to cut them out."

Rune quiets for a time as Cor'lana conveys her own experiences with the strangeness of time in Ea. Her eyes look up from the tea to the ball of yarn, lips pressed together as she processes the metaphor.

"Up until recently, I always thought about time as something that is a linear path, always moving forward." A shake of her head is telling that Rune no longer sees it that way. "Slixvah and Harkashan, they said it is some sort of time loop. Like all these versions of her are stuck, always looking for a way to escape it, but they're trapped. The only one that ever escaped was my mother and look where that got her."

Now, Rune takes a sip of the tea, trying not to let her own thoughts and feelings be consumed by the past. "They said that the Golden Fate lost her partner. Her mate. That they've been trying to find a way to make solve her grief and loss." Again, her brows draw together as she looks to Cor'lana, "They think that the reason my mother escaped to have me, was that I'll be able to find a solution. A way to save them, and the Golden Fate."

However, Rune's expression is one of helplessness. As if she weren't sure how one is supposed to bring back those who are lost, or save a god-like being.

Cor'lana looks thoughtful. "Well, it's true that this is... Incredibly heady stuff. The sort of thing that you might never dream of interacting with normally. I know that when I dealt with... everything to do with Caracoroth, I was a much less powerful adventurer at the start of when all of it was happening."

She looks at Grandfather. "Do you have any ideas?"

Grandfather looks thoughtful, pausing in his knitting. "Well, it sounds to me--your mother has a lot of confidence in you. I certainly do in my own children. My descendants are wonderful people who are capable of taking on everything that the world offers--they just need a nudge in the right direction, and a way to go forward."

He peers at Rune. "Do you know where the Golden Fate's home lies? I would imagine that's the next direction. Perhaps a meeting with the woman herself."

"I don't know if this is the sort of thing I'm strong enough to handle alone, even if I've become stronger these past few months." Rune replies, but there is that subtle quirk at the corner of her lips, "Thankfully, I have friends I can depend on. We're stronger together." This, from someone who had isolated herself for nearly a year after her ressurection. Oh how so much has changed.

Her eyes follow over to Grandfather, but the reaction isn't as strong this time. Perhaps being in his presence more allows her to get used to simply existing in the same breathing space as the Fey being.

"That's the thing. None of them were my mother. They don't have her memories, they never knew me." And this, this seems to cause Rune some measure of pain. She looks down again, her eyes glassing over slightly before she wipes at the edge of one with her palm. "Just feels all kinds of fucked that her fate is already sealed and nothing I do to help them is going to bring her back."

Her closes her eyes then, sighing to herself. "But not helping them would make me a person she wouldn't want me to be." And that, may have to be reason enough. Taking a slow, deep breath to keep those tears from spilling over, Rune shakes her head, "I don't know any more than I did before. Golden Sands, maybe? There's this... blue butterfly Fey that we met who seems to know something, but... I can't exactly just summon her to ask questions."

Cor'lana frowns, and she reaches out with her hand, putting it onto Rune's arm gently. "If there's one thing that I've learned, Rune," she says, "a person often thinks that their fate is sealed--and it just might be if they allow themselves to think that. Sometimes you have to think out of the box. Sometimes you have to use what you have but in ways you never thought of before. That locket of yours... I think it might be helpful in that regard. You haven't fully unlocked its mysteries yet."

The topic of the blue butterfly fey, however--that causes Grandfather to still entirely in his knitting, putting it down in his lap. He looks up at Rune. "I, ah."

He coughs. "Could you describe this individual to me? The descriptor alone is ringing a bell."

A quick dart of Rune's eyes follows that touch, but that loss lingers depsite her best attempts at trying to keep those feelings tamped down. Instead, all Rune offers is a whisper, "I was there when she died, Lana..." And yet, there is no will to argue the point.

Instead, Rune's hand wraps around the locket, fingers toying at the edges as she had done so many times before. It is both comfort, pain, and memory all rolled up into one.

And then... Grandfather speaks of familiarity with the blue butterfly. This drags Rune out of her thoughts and drags her attention back to him. "Most of the time, she appears as a blue and black iridescent butterfly." Her eyes close, trying to think back to those times that she had seen that other form. "But we've seen her look not unlike yourself. Elven features, rainbow-colored eyes, and hair the same color as her wings."

"That would be a..." Grandfather looks bashful, an expression that's fully out of place on him. "That would be someone I know. A... one-time paramour of mine, in fact. From long before I knew the woman who would become my wife."

There's a beat of silence from Cor'lana, her eyes moving to her Grandfather with an expression of sheer and total shock. After a moment, she manages: "What?"

And then she shakes her head. "I mean--what is her name?"

"Glasina," Alud'rigan replies. "She is what is known among my people as a leanan sidhe--a beautiful patron of the arts, a muse who inspires stories. Glasina is keenly interested in writers and poets."

He peers at Rune. "She is a little unusual on account of the wings, however. She was born with those. It's why she is known as the Blue-Winged Muse. A lovely but somewhat flighty individual. I can arrange a meeting if you'd like, Leirune."

There seems to be less surprise on Rune's features. Not that she had expected him to know the butterfly that had pulled their asses out of the fire more than once now, but that two beings of unfathomable beauty might have once shared company with one another. "Well, you both have that same unearthly beauty. I can imagine it's hard not to be swayed by it."

Looking between the two, Rune seems almost amused by Cor'lana's response, but the shift in her expression doesn't linger for long. "I suppose that makes sense, though. My mother was a writer of songs and teller of stories. It's why I've always loved them. So... maybe that's why she's trying to help." And yet, her shoulder lifts in an uncertain half-shrug.

"If it wouldn't be a burden to you. She does seem to know more than she lets on, and has been helping us along the way. The only problem is... we already owe her more than our fair share of favors."

Grandfather grins a little widely, which really just enhances Rune's whole point about unearthly beauty. Although... That smile is a little disconcerting in that the canine teeth are just a little too long. "Your words are lovely, Leirune," he says. "I just don't like to talk over-much about my past paramours. It's not gentlemanly, you see, and... Well, poor Cor'lana is in the room."

"I'm not a child, I can understand you had a life before Grandmother Lana'lel," Cor'lana replies with a little sigh. "It's just surprising, is all."

Grandfather looks to Rune. "So--if you want her help, and not owe her another favor on top of what you have with her--her audience can be bought by devoting a piece of writing to her. A story of your own, perhaps." His eyes twinkle a little. "Just make sure it's your own original creation or telling. She won't like it if you copy down something from somewhere else."

Perhaps it is because Rune's own partner is draconic, but the fanged teeth do not seem to bother has it might someone else. She just tilts her head at those more inhuman features, giving a nod of acknowledgement. Even so, that ghost of a smile forms again at the banter back and forth between the two. It's a familial thing that she has been missing for a very long time.

"Something... of my own creation." Rune repeats the words, her expression shifting again to one of concentration and focus. "I've never..." It's obvious, in that moment, that she has never felt able to step out of her mother's shadow and lean into all of the things that the woman had taught her.

"I'll try." She seems to steel herself at least that much.

Cor'lana seems actually quite delighted by the notion. "Maybe we could write it together?" she asks, looking at Rune with a fervor in her violet eyes that she typically reserves for when fits of poetry come over her. "Or you can write it and I can be your editor? Either one works for me."

Grandfather laughs a little as Cor'lana's enthusiasm suddenly comes out in full force. "I think between the two of you, you can manage to come up with something pleasing for Glasina indeed."

The idea of having help does take some of the pressure off of Rune as her eyes brighten a little. "Yes. I think together we could definitely come up with something." Setting the cup of tea down, she adds, "I'm pretty decent with music, so maybe we could work on a song." That uncertainty is still there. The signs that Rune has never followed those kind of passions because she never felt good enough.

It's hard for that enthusiasm not to sneak through a little, though. "I should... let Harkashan know I'll be here a while. Otherwise, he'll probably start to worry." Pushing herself to her feet, "I'll let him know where I am, and then come back. Give you two more time to visit without me."

Because Rune does know that she is interrupting family time, and this gives them more of a chance to have that.

"Go ahead and let Harkashan know, and then come right back, yes?" Cor'lana smiles brightly, finally picking up her teacup and raising it to her lips for a small sip. "But don't feel the need to give us too much space. Grandfather's the sort of fellow who's happy when I'm happy--and I'm happy when I have friends and other family over."

Her violet eyes twinkle a little for the remark, and Grandfather chuckles. "It is true," he says. "But we also should take care that Leirune not worry those closest to her, too. Go on, child, do what you must."

He takes up his knitting again and keeps going, not missing a single stitch even as fast as he's going. "And send along my greetings as well. It's only polite."