Blood on My Name - 16/08/24 - Calla Prim
Aug 16, 2024 0:19:09 GMT
Riah, Andy D, and 1 more like this
Post by dee on Aug 16, 2024 0:19:09 GMT
There’s a rock just outside of Daring Heights. Pulled up from the earth in a different time, placed to warm through daylight and cool slowly with the setting sun.
Calla sits upon it. As she has many times. She is, after all, the one who put it there. Proof that she’s capable of simple joy and poetry, if rarely. She swings her legs, enjoys the warmth in the fading day, and stares down into Daring Rift.
Twice, she’s had a conversation with the Cantors of the Court of Harmony. Twice, their words have lodged deep within her skin.
“You have to take a step back, and let things happen”
A sentiment she understands, but finds hard to accept. Even more so when Corellon, god of all elves, steps in just to knock her back.
“It’s not your place”
“It’s foolish”
She’s been pushed around by gods and demons and everything in between her entire life. A century and change of dancing on the strings of others. When she came to the Dawnlands she lived in fear of her family coming up out of the Rift to reclaim her. But it was never going to happen. It was their plan to have her run. A line played out on a reel, only to snap and hold her in place at the ordained time.
Now she sits here, that plan thwarted. Free, for some measure of that word. Only by the grace of events she had near no part in at all: Dead; Letting things happen; A turn of the wheel without her hands upon it. A month has passed since. She is nigh recovered. And this is what she gets when her fingers once again find a spoke.
“You have to take a step back”.
“It’s foolish to think that Stone is silent”.
She thinks of Yinmaris’, “Are you done?” and the echo of her own reply in that moment: “Are any of us ever done?”
She hears, still, a thousand voices screaming in terror: entombed, ablaze, abandoned. The heat and the rage and the fear of it as the Court of Stone becomes a flaming grave.
Calla sits on the rock, takes a deep breath, and calms herself. Pulls gentle heat into her bones.
Maybe it will be easier to hear the Stone without a Mountain in her heart, but there is no way she can sit with this and just exist.
Maybe it will be easier without the blood pounding in her ears. Without fury in every vein. She has so, so much to be angry about.
A sour smile spreads on her face as she stares into the Rift. She has been so focussed on the necessary end that she has, not once, stopped to consider what it’s built upon. It has been all maze, no foundation.
She nods to herself. Looks longer at the place she walked out of to be here. And it is not what the Cantor meant, but it will have to do in this moment. She will have to take a step back. Back into the Rift. Back home. It is not what Corellon meant, but maybe she should take her place, and go back to being the thing she was made for.
Then, when it’s burnt out on those that made it, she can let some fragment of her anger go.
And, like Yin, feel some other thing.
Calla sits upon it. As she has many times. She is, after all, the one who put it there. Proof that she’s capable of simple joy and poetry, if rarely. She swings her legs, enjoys the warmth in the fading day, and stares down into Daring Rift.
Twice, she’s had a conversation with the Cantors of the Court of Harmony. Twice, their words have lodged deep within her skin.
“You have to take a step back, and let things happen”
A sentiment she understands, but finds hard to accept. Even more so when Corellon, god of all elves, steps in just to knock her back.
“It’s not your place”
“It’s foolish”
She’s been pushed around by gods and demons and everything in between her entire life. A century and change of dancing on the strings of others. When she came to the Dawnlands she lived in fear of her family coming up out of the Rift to reclaim her. But it was never going to happen. It was their plan to have her run. A line played out on a reel, only to snap and hold her in place at the ordained time.
Now she sits here, that plan thwarted. Free, for some measure of that word. Only by the grace of events she had near no part in at all: Dead; Letting things happen; A turn of the wheel without her hands upon it. A month has passed since. She is nigh recovered. And this is what she gets when her fingers once again find a spoke.
“You have to take a step back”.
“It’s foolish to think that Stone is silent”.
She thinks of Yinmaris’, “Are you done?” and the echo of her own reply in that moment: “Are any of us ever done?”
She hears, still, a thousand voices screaming in terror: entombed, ablaze, abandoned. The heat and the rage and the fear of it as the Court of Stone becomes a flaming grave.
Calla sits on the rock, takes a deep breath, and calms herself. Pulls gentle heat into her bones.
Maybe it will be easier to hear the Stone without a Mountain in her heart, but there is no way she can sit with this and just exist.
Maybe it will be easier without the blood pounding in her ears. Without fury in every vein. She has so, so much to be angry about.
A sour smile spreads on her face as she stares into the Rift. She has been so focussed on the necessary end that she has, not once, stopped to consider what it’s built upon. It has been all maze, no foundation.
She nods to herself. Looks longer at the place she walked out of to be here. And it is not what the Cantor meant, but it will have to do in this moment. She will have to take a step back. Back into the Rift. Back home. It is not what Corellon meant, but maybe she should take her place, and go back to being the thing she was made for.
Then, when it’s burnt out on those that made it, she can let some fragment of her anger go.
And, like Yin, feel some other thing.
