Belov's Accounts

[1HoneyDragon]

Eight crows flit through open air as the stars blink out with the rising sun.

[OOC Preface:]

Spoiler

Hello! This is a "storytelling journal" of sorts for my character Mova "Ma" Belov.
It'll detail bits and pieces of information that feed into Ma's backstory, her current day
to day living, and other such materials. However, it'll also include more in depth feelings
about roleplay experiences that occurred. Things that seem "magical" are not, unless
I have tagged an ET/LT member in them! These are really just how the character is
built to perceive and believe in her surroundings.

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[1HoneyDragon]

The sun burns like ashes in the shadows of the mountain.

The Readings of the Tide Master

Spoiler

The first card to fall, The Empress. Upright. Glimmering in the light of the Korner’s candles. Her face is veiled and her throne is velvet, red. Her eyes peer out as a spectral gleam of gold beneath black, nigh unnoticeable to the unknowing eye.

But Ma knew them. She knew them like the air in her lungs and the beat of her heart in her ears in the first hours of dawn. The Empress. She was a mother, divine femininity that did not have its place here in the sun washed shadow of Zadh-Nadrozz. Her nurturing hands spoke of the Tide Master’s past. Her beauty breathed its life into these fields of golden grass, its provision of abundance. The means to begin the path forward.

The second card fell, Two of Staves. Upright. The badlands around her thrive within this card. The face of an orc stares up at them, his hands wrapped around two tree branches, lifting them above his head.

The Tide Master’s present was promising. He was taking risks and making plans. These were the first steps to something more. Something with promise to burn with a thousand fires of greatness. The hope blooms in the cards, only to wither in her throat. Her expression soured.

The third and final card fell. The Star, falling, planting itself onto the wooden surface at her hand. It stares, Reversed, with unwavering golden eyes as a woman draws water from a pool of red. Her mother had once told her it was wine, but in this moment, it was blood of the fallen, as grim stars blink in gilded rhythm in the flickering lights of the candles of the Korner.

Hopelessness. Despair. Failure. The future was bleak, for now. The stars can be shifted just as the tide can be deferred. There was hope yet, for advisory words and a guiding hand to pull the strings from the tapestry of the Tide Master’s fate. He did not concern himself with the future. Muscles. Brute strength. Confidence. None of these were in short supply in this beating heart that thrums to the beat of war drums before her.

The fear of softness was unfound, if perhaps lost on the Tide Master, in her eyes. Ma offers her words in quiet breath and she bows her head in mournful respect when he excuses himself from the glimmering, flickering light of the Korner. The sun washed grasses welcome her as a dream when she finds herself once more guided by the winds, homeward bound.

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[1HoneyDragon]

Her eyes well with tears of a memory, long since forgotten.

Unfamiliar Leaves

Spoiler

The winds blew leaves across the path, a stalling of time in that very sudden moment in which she closed her eyes. To listen. To feel. To be. In the hushed whispers of the winds in the leaves, she was reminded of her own very mortal shell. The breeze tugs at platinum spools beneath the shade of tall oaks, almost inviting her to become a piece of their shadow.

Old bones nurtured these woods, older things yet still roam their shadows.

The thought echoed singularly in her mind, her eyes opening as sunlight broke the crowns of trees older than her. They’d always been older than her, and would remain older than her, even when reduced to stumps. Even when burned away and split apart. They would always remain as old bones of what was and a testament of what will be.

A resounding reminder of her mortality, and the mortality of those around her. All paths lead to quiet fate, left alone in the dark, to simper and weep and curse the failings of one’s life not lived to the extent one wished to live it. Years came and they went, uncaring. Unfeeling. The winds did not call again, stilling in their gusts as she stood amongst the trees.

They yearned for her voice. Her touch. The leaves were unfamiliar to her, here in the Heartlands. They were not a memory of an old friend, lingering with their voices. They were strangers in the dark, with knives and teeth and perhaps much more to them then they wished her to see. The breeze tugs, just lightly at the feather adorned in her wild spools of platinum. A tease, childish and wanting.

Unfamiliar leaves make one the bones of the forest, ensnared in roots and thorns and enwreathed in holly and clover. The call of the wilds is unheeded in these unfamiliar, foreign trees. The woods of Magnia Attia were familiar like a heartbeat and the caress of hands and to them, she might one day return to return bones to where they must belong.

In the holly and the clover, the bones do remain, and to them they will return.

The voice was familiar to her now, whispering in the winds. A macabre reminder that all fate ends in the inevitable grasp of silence and rest. For a moment, a desire to close her eyes beneath the roots of the pines fills her heart. It was not yet time to lay to that rest. The mortal heart had yet time left to beat. It had time left to learn. For now, familiar firs are declined, despite the greetings of the roots.

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[1HoneyDragon]

It is said that the Maker makes his mark when he intends to.

Noble City, Righteous Crown

Spoiler

The cards are shuffled, absently. Steadily. A habit of time and practice. Her gaze does not follow their backs as her fingers guide them. The King of Swords drifts from her deck, face up and Upright. His face reveals a crowned king, holding aloft sword and orb as a victorious man.

Magnia Attia was somewhere she knew, but this was an odd guidance that might only be explained by the Maker’s fingers knocking cards from her deck. Here sat before her, across from her, enthralled in her readings, was a man of high standing. A king unburdened by the weight of his crown.

The King of Swords himself sat before her. Reasonable. Disciplined. Virtuous standing in his morality and in his integrity. He stared at her, all the while enthralled. A woman he’d just met and here he asks her to read cards again, on the day he is wedded. She did not decline or agree- the cards were fickle. They could be cruel, with fated strings reaching to bind the hand that serves. The fate strings bind the hand that reaches to know them, as her own hands were bound now.

Magnia Attia. An accursed place that echoes its silence. Her mind slips, in brief, recalling shadows moving on the walls. The sounds of things in the wood. The howling. The screaming. It was the wind. The wind always screamed like that, from time to time. She had lived with it her whole life up until that point. Yet, here sat a King, telling her of demons that lurked there.

Odd things lingered there, and will linger there, always.

She was back, in the moment, face to face with humanity’s King. The walls of cities were both blessing and curse. Safety and imprisonment. They became the bars of a cage when the gates were sealed, when the people within did not prosper. The lack of a guiding hand caused a city to become the birdcage, where all one could do not but flit and sing in quiet desperation. That was why Magnia Attia had been preferred. Why her mother, and her mother before her, had lived their lives there.

For once, she felt weary. Her gaze forlorn as she observes the countenance of the king. Drinking whiskey- the finest, he claims. She did not drink. Alcohol was a vice she did not indulge, unless it was wine. Bittersweet as it could be. She was quiet, then, lingering there in her thoughts, in the man’s presence.

Four days before he stood before the light and vowed his soul to someone he adored. That very concept intrigued her. To adore. To love. To vow. She comes back into the waking world, bowing her head to the King who’d graced her with his time. It was then she did excuse herself, as the waking world threatened to shut her out again. She could hear the wind calling her and she had much to ruminate upon now.

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[1HoneyDragon]

The gentlest hands can pull the strongest threads of fate.

The Lamb to become the Lion

Spoiler

He was a shy man, barely above his eighteenth winter. His voice shook with the fragile fear found only in youth. Yet his heart radiates a warmth to rival even the hearth. His kindness, she notes, spills like rain in his wake and despite his fragile voice and the tripping over his words as stones in his road, she smiles upon him. The sun smiles upon them both at that table.

He was first to ask of the cards as her fingers trace their edges, carding through them. An extension of her person and her voice, her connection with the world. This gilded second in which she might feel the distant dissonance of the world come to silence as a fortune is laid before her. She does not draw, as the Maker’s hand guides the cards from her folding.

The Queen of Wands fell, sliding almost into his seat at the table in the shade of the church’s steeple. Yet it halts, with an upright face turned to the world, and to him. A woman veiled in her burial garb, crowned by flowers that glimmer with the slightest hues of scarlet ink that edge the dark lines. Her boney, ring laden fingers wrap the haft of young yew, still vibrant with life and spring’s first leaves. It was almost a thyrsus, but it was not the stave of a wine-drunk heathen, but instead one who had lived to create.

The shy youth was lamb, to become lion, when his heart beats to the rhythm he would be meant to follow, one day. In time, she was sure, his confidence would come, for his compassion and optimism were already quite vibrant. He would be charismatic, when that self assurance came, she assured him. The lamb, who held the key to becoming a lion- he was so close.

They spoke then, of voices. Voices in the world, of the world- They came in many shapes. The tracks left by man, by beast, were voices of their passing. Voices telling of where they’d been, and where they might be going. She spoke of the self’s hidden voice, the way the heart and the mind spoke apart from each other, and assured him in time he might find his own.

The alignment of the hidden voice with the outer voice, his second key in life. She spoke freely, spoke kindly, and turned away his offer of payment. His kindness rains in gentle words, compliments of her wisdom and her youthfulness. A surprise, to say the least. He held promise, she kept this in her heart, and let him carry on speaking of his goals. The goals for now, at the very least. He was clever and she silently praised him.

Lambs among lions and wolves among men, what faces lie within these walls?

The quiet voice whispered then, an echo. A question. Her face softens, nonetheless, as she continues to smile. The question would answer itself and she need not respond to such, not when the truth would lay itself bare at her feet. In time, at least.

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[1HoneyDragon]

It seemed the Deceiver came as everything she wanted to find.​

Twilight after a Golden Moon

Spoiler

The Moon had fallen between them, with waters turned to her hand. A Reversal. The woman was anxious. She’d just said as much. A woman, like her, to soon become an Empress. A wife. Someone’s beloved, who’s soul spoke volumes of his worthiness. There was an assurance there. A ceremony as public as her’s, there was bound to be fear. There was bound to be anxiety.

There is hope and promise in the Moon’s gilded reflection upon still, black waters, as a thousand stars glimmer in the night sky. A thousand wishes, a thousand promises. The future was bright as a million candles burned in the eaves of the Cathedral. It would not be long now for the beginning of a new chapter.

She did not share these words with her, too quickly whisked away at the tolling of the bells. She wanted to share them, and perhaps in time, she would. But for now, a time of prayer had begun, the words of the Maker recited aloud for all to harken. It was time for something else, for different thoughts. They spoke on Mortius, a Sentinel, to those lingering in the pews. Only for a call to be made.

The sermon is cut short and the halls are left empty, incense still burning and perfuming the air. Her anger burns in the winds and a distant dissonance fills her thoughts as it boils over in her lungs, scorching her throat. The words rise and they fall, never dripping from her tongue as a venom, but the thoughts still linger.

The Deceiver lives in these hearts, vile drum beats heard amongst the trees.

A singular thought echoed as she watched the flighted creature knocked from its perch. Only a fiend who lives with the malice of Dolus awakened in their hearts would thrust innocent feathers from its world for a ‘trick’, and so she seethed with all the rage afforded to her. To harm the gifts of the Maker as if one’s hand was his was a grievous crime, in her eyes.

The bitter taste of boiled hatred rose in her throat as a bile. Was the gift of the winds really as sought after as she hopes, or would these pale fiends of the silvered spires be an undoing for her? For her people? For now, though, she would watch, and she would note. The sound of the hushed murmurings of the entourage was deafening, every beat of her heart an ounce of madness dripping into her overflowing cup.

 

[1HoneyDragon]

Maker, did your pasture find a new lamb, tonight?

Blood on the Hangman’s Knot

Spoiler

There was a somber sourness that filled the air of the little farmhouse as her hands pulled the kettle from the fire. Her shoulders slumped, the light in the hearth reflecting off the brass buttons of the wool tailcoat slung over the chair. She’d unpinned the stays, unpinned her hair and platinum curls spilled like fog. The singular red feather sat, unattended, upon the table.

The death of a bloodline marked her hands- was it guilt or sorrow she felt most? Was it his plea that blemished her skin, or his desire to be redeemed of something… so preventable? Her eyes watch the embers, fingers clutching the warm pottery, feeling their heat through the layered wool gloves.

There was blood on the hangman’s knot, glinting in the moonlight. An attractor of the carrion birds, warding against the snakes that lay in wait in the grass. The ravens settled in their droves at her doorstep, where the basket of acorns had once dried. She did not chide them or frighten them as she watched through the sill of her kitchen window, the dim light of the hearth at her back, flickering in the spools of platinum.

Perhaps, it was not so bad to die when the crimes became too many. She did not believe in recovery when the mistake had been so painstakingly woven into resentment and lies. He bayed like a hound and spoke a name on his dying breath. The name printed itself in her heart, a memory not her own. A love that ached like the moon ached for the stars when they went out.

She pitied him, more anything. The human condition of morality and passion was a blessing as much as it was a curse. It leads to chaos. It leads to order in all of that chaos that was sown. She prayed for fairer weather, for clear skies and gleaming rays of sun. The clouds were gray, nary a sliver of gold cast through the windows of the courthouse as she heard a once-lord’s plea.

Even the best intention paves the downfall of man, staining them with sin.

The wind had blown through the open window, quietly snuffing out the candles and the meager embers in the hearth. It whispers in her ears and she closes her eyes. She listens to it, ruminating on its utterance. This was not her place to mourn or fret further, her hands reaching to draw the shutters of the window closed.

The sky is blackened, briefly, by the wings of ravens as the Justiciar bade the wind and the stars goodnight.

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