By Amber Michelle K.
myaru@etherealvoid.net

Notes: An old story, last modified 11/20/2003; I meant to finish it, but looking at it now, I don't think I will. There are ideas here that can be used for another story that I fully intend to finish.

This is a series of scenes that take place at different times in the life Luc and Sarah shared together. They alternate between Luc's contemplation and scenes that involve dialog, interaction, et cetera. It begins with her childhood and ends with their death at the ceremonial ruins.

I had an idea and I was inspired, so I tried to finish as quickly as possible and get all of the ideas down. As a result, there's at least one scene that's mostly dialog and lacks description, and the last scene is not what I'd like it to be. This is all unedited, of course, so the sentences might be convoluted, repetitive, or tell more than show.

It was morning, or he thought it was. The sky was still dark, the only light peeking through the curtains starlight, the moon long set. The quilt was drawn up to his chin because winter nights were cold even in a tower protected by magical wards. It must have had some hidden meaning to his sleeping mind, for nightmares had not plagued him that night in the long, endless march they usually did, but the cold wasn't so abnormal that he thought it would make a difference.

So what /was/ different?

It was a bundle of warmth pressed against his left side, and the reason the quilt was pulled slightly down, disturbed in a way he couldn't have done himself. He didn't move in his sleep very much. It was living and breathing, tossing occasionally as if caught in its own dreams, but otherwise quiet aside from the deep, somewhat labored breaths of someone not getting quite enough oxygen.

If little girls always did this, perhaps Luc wouldn't know. It was hard to decide whether he disliked it or not, and he was not in any condition to send her back to her room with a spell just yet. Sleep and teleportation were a pair that had potentially disasterous consequences in the hands of the wrong person. More than one mage had spliced himself trying to cast in a drunken stupor, which wasn't far removed from half-sleep if one really thought on the matter. Finding himself sharing his bed was slightly off-putting; harming the child for her presumption was far more distasteful.

It would shock some people to hear him say that. He didn't care, but it came to mind anyway and he wished it wouldn't. He wished, sometimes, that he'd never met any of them.

Except those two. Maybe those two.

What to do with her. Pick her up maybe, and take her to her room; she was small and light, hardly as heavy as the thickest tome on his shelf. He doesn't know what she would do if she woke up to ask questions. She was getting braver that way, willing now to speak to him when in the beginning she had kept her peace. Out of fear. People feared his sharp tongue, but Luc had never found himself feared simply by association.

She recognized his face, he thought; perhaps she had seen his brother. It was unlikely, maybe. It simply seemed sometimes that the reach of his... infringements was so far spread they could never be escaped.

Those thoughts were useless. They didn't tell him what to do with her.

He propped himself up on an elbow and lifted the quilt just enough to see the outlines of her pale face. She moved immediately, curling into a ball in truth, and pressed the pale oval into his side with a shiver. Delicate hands pulled his shirt taut against his shoulders.

She had a name, and that was all he knew. A name and a rune.

...

"What am I supposed to /do/ with her? She won't even sleep in the room we gave her. She kicks in her sleep and I can't get any /rest/."

"Have a little patience, Luc. Try to fill her time with study, and maybe she will grow accustomed to our life here."

"And what about my study?"

"I'm sure it will do you good to expand your horizons." Cool like a still lake.

"Why me? You would be better suited to her. She needs a mother."

"You brought her home, young one. She is your responsibility."

Like a pet? "I can just as easily leave her with someone who cares."

"And they will not understand her. The priests will take her back. You will doom her."

He threw a look over his shoulder, but there was no satisfaction of seeing his glare hit home in an opposing pair of eyes. Only cold, serene marble.

The echo of footsteps was his only accompaniment as he left the Seeing CHamber and went downstairs.

...

At ten she was no better, sleeping in her room more often, perhaps, but still she found her way beneath his covers on stormy nights, or in the darnkess of normal, crying and unable to speak. The nightmares plagued her too, like a swarm of locusts in a perpetual cloud over her bed. She slept peacefully now like a life-sized doll in a frilly nightgown with her cornsilk hair. There were pillows propped againt the headboard meant just for her, that wouldn't have been there years ago, when he still enjoyed the priviledge of sleeping alone in his own bed.

It was hers too. There was a scent about her that clung to the sheets, even when she let a night or two pass before running in again on the wings of terror, something of wildflowers and pine, and maybe a hint of salt. The gardens, the sea, and the dust of books assigned for her education, all things familiar and even, dare he say, precious to him. The garden for its peace, the sea for its volatile nature, the books for their welcoming embrace. The howling of the wind over the sea was in her icicle eyes.

Her pale arm was hardly long enough to coil around his waist. She was too thin and too pale, shaking with cold in the winter chill that seeped through the window and through the cracks in the stone walls to caress them with icy fingers. He pulled the quilt up to his own shoulders, nearly over her head, and felt her relax at his side like magic, melting in the warmth like ice.

She was too old for this, but he couldn't bring himself to tell her it was best to remain in her own room. They were of a kind it sometimes seemed, children of the runes, and victims of whisperings best put to death. There were signs of it on her young face some mornings, of sleep lost, always after nights alone. She was too young for such a tired, hopeless look.

He couldn't say he slept best alone, when he slept at all. Sometimes it felt as if the vitality of his rune was all that animated his limbs, and then inevitably he would realize it was true, and wonder why it did not bother to exert its consciousness as well. What was he, but a pretender? Without the rune there would be nothing to fill his empty vessel. What would come of her if he lost it?

She would be alone.

...

Buy her something, the seeress said. What on earth he was supposed to buy was beyond him. They had everything they needed already. How pointless.

"Sarah!" More forceful, volumous than usually necessary. Perhaps it would startle her. She seemed determined to get ahead of herself and the crowd was a press between himself and her swaying pale hair. She turned when she reached a shop window and raised her hand to wave when the people between them were too tall to see over. He followed that beacon to find her at a storefront he rarely visited.

"What can I buy?" She was eager, eyes alight as if faced with the prospect of learning a new spell. It seemed just slightly ludicrous.

"Whatever you like." He thought he might regret those words.

Sarah simply bounded through the door and he followed more sedately, looking around with faint distaste. It was a store meant for frivolous things, in his estimation, full of items like clips, scarves, even dresses, all decorated rather gaudily, in his opinion, meant to catch the eye. They were slightly more tolerable once he turned to the interior of the store, something of a relief in light of what he told her a few minutes ago.

His gaze settled on her quite still in front of a display, and as he approached it with an appraising eye, it seemed his uneasiness was right. Sarah was always a quiet and observant girl, and he wouldn't think anything of it, but for the careful, reverant way she drew her hands over the folds. More expensive than a mere trinket, yet slightly more practical. She certainly had an eye for causing trouble.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Her hand fell away, but he could tell her gaze lingered on the dress a few seconds more before she turned away from it and walked among the shelves, fingering through bins of barettes and things that looked a good deal more managable. At least she had common sense enough to aim a little lower.

Perhaps it was what convinced him to put away his misgivings and approach the counter, glancing back now and again to make sure she was lost among the racks. He had the feeling Leknaat meant him to buy more than a ribbon or barette, and seeing the shine in her eyes when she caressed that skirt, it seemed clear what he was supposed to do. Leknaat had not told him to spend a fortune on her, but... something she wants. An idea that, perhaps, money isn't everything.

The clerk was ready for him before he was even within hearing range. How grating.

"I would like to purchase the dress in that display over there."

...

It wasn't the wintery chill that kept him awake these nights so much as the sound of soft breathing near his ear, and the negligable yet noticable weight of an arm draped over his chest. She was taller now, perhaps even a little taller than he was, and when she sought refuge from her nightmares and clung to him in her sleep, her breaths always left a warm, moist spot in the same place beneath his ear, because she always held him in the same way. Her hair had a mind of its own, tickling his skin if he tried to shift.

He wasn't one to move much in sleep. She had a habit of remaining still until he shifted, and it seemed she was always ready to accomodate. The least she could do, maybe, for never quite allowing him to have his bed to himself again. She was a little old to be rocked to sleep now, but it seemed she found her peace there.

Ten years. It had been ten years since he had any peace. Sometimes it would visit him, on nights when he could devote his concentration to counting each rise and fall of her chest, or the strands of her hair splayed over the pillows. Pale as moonlight, long after the moon herself had set.

Peace left when she did. Which one of them was the cursed child?

Ten years since his first glimpse of her fey little eyes. They were fluid, not like the crystal in the temple but like a smooth, placid lake, a mirror in which he could see himself if he looked hard enough. She was very solemn now unless they left the tower, always obedient, quiet, and mindful of his needs. He doubted his own care for Leknaat had ever been so thorough. The adage about one's deeds returning in force was an untruth, or surely she would have left and sought employment from someone more willing to give her what she so desperately needed, that praise, that attention.

But the temple might take her. He could not allow that. They never had any right to her. She was safe with him, though he often wondered how she found her professed happiness. Her secret had not yet revealed itself to him.

He had patience, but not forever. Children would always grow and change. She was not the same person he recalled of ten years ago, and in ten years more, she would not be the person he knew today. Even he changed with time within, but never without. She would be young for a time, but it would fade like the moon, and return to dust.

And the dust would take his peace, and she would be gone.

...

She was supposed to leave.

"Why didn't you leave? Sarah..."

Death was an inevitability in life for everyone but himself and the people he hated. Her impending death was always something on the horizon, a shadow that became his shield. But that was the horizon; the future, not a reality of the present. It was always supposed to be far away, unreachable, unthinkable. One should live a full life first, and she followed in his footsteps. Why?

"I won't leave you."

It was hard to say anything, and hard not to. He lifted his hand to touch her cheek, choked by inexplicable pressure until he couldn't have said a word to save his life. Words were no longer enough for his, but they should be enough to save hers. Why then could he not speak?

Don't leave me alone.

"They only wanted me for my power. They never saw anything else. There was something about you that I felt even then, and I couldn't say no. You knew me. I was happy."

I don't want to be left alone again.

"How do you know I wasn't the same?"

"You wanted to send me away. I remember."

It would be easier to breathe dust. Again he could not speak, and his eyes grew hot, and he didn't understand /why/. They prickled and blurred and he was staring up at a Sarah separated from him by a sheen of light, the thin membrane of the surface of a lake. He saw it in her eyes too, a wash of tears that swam over her crystal irises and spilled like rain from the sky.

He never meant for her to know that. It would hurt her, and there had never been any point to that. He shook his head, but it was the truth, one he could no longer understand. He didn't want her to go, he wanted her to /stay/.

Why did I ever want to send you away?

"Please don't make me leave. I won't leave you alone."

He couldn't hold his hand up anymore, but she held it for him, cradled against her cheek as if it were some kind of treasure. Tears made her skin slippery. He couldn't say it. He couldn't see her anymore, blinded, choked by the tears. It was something he had never felt before outside of his dreams. Real tears creeping away from his eyes, into his hair. She leaned down and released his hand, only to catch him in an embrace that lifted his head from her lap and washed him in the scent of wildflowers. Cornsilk hair drifted down to brush his face.

He wanted to lift his arms to hold on to her, but they were like weights, hardly even felt, as though they had become leaden. The weight in his chest didn't stop him from speaking, but he wanted to be selfish, and let her have that wish. She didn't deserve such a deception. There were many things she didn't deserve, many that she did. None of them had been his to give. But he wanted to.

He should have taken the chances while he had them.

"Do you want to stay with me?" Finally, something. Cowardly, hopeful, when there was no hope. The shaking could have been the altar or her embrace, or his own weakness.

"Always." Her voice was thick, edged with crying. It had been years since he last made her cry. It was like seeing an illusions shattered now, that calm, cold exterior becoming something soft that he remembered with a wistfulness that he rarely felt.

Those days were gone. Like the garden losing its color with winter, it all drained away until there was nothing but the dark. He felt himself returned to the stone, her frail arms still tightly clasped around him, and the warm weight of her body curled up beside him. Her head found his shoulder and her face turned into his neck.

Her breathing was a soft, warm rhythm over his ear broken by coughs and shuddering breaths, slower, and slower. Her hair tickled his cheek where it stuck to his tears. There was no starlight but he could see it as well as if he had been able to open his eyes and see her by the light of the sky, the way she always slept when she fled to him with nightmares. Each brush of air was more precious than the last, a treasure that grew more valuable when one knew it would soon disappear.

"Thank you." He couldn't tell if he said it, or if it was simply in his mind, another desire that would never be fulfilled.

"Why?" It was so weak, felt more than heard.

His eyes were wet. The soulless didn't cry. "You gave me..."

"You had it already."

There. Right there, holding him, and breathing over his ear.

--------------------

I still really like this idea, even though the writing needs a lot of editing. My perception of Luc's character has also changed since writing this, so it's slightly inaccurate. The last few lines are probably confusing; the missing word is 'soul.' 'Love' would also work well, but I was already skirting the line. ^^