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Named characters in this one-shot are original characters belonging to my friends and not to be used without their consent.
I look up at the stars and I think about a lot of things. Things that I never say. Things that I never write down. Things that only the stars may ever know, if stars were to know anything. I've been telling them my secrets ever since I was a girl, my head too full of thoughts, ideas, and dreams to let me sleep, when they were my only company.
Tonight they shine on a little blonde, pointy-eared head, snuggled down on a big, soft pillow, dreaming away her life and filling mine with a kind of purpose that I never would have thought for myself otherwise. I watch her eyes moving underneath their lids and I wonder what she dreams of. My little Valéria.
I stand at the open window, leaning on its generously sized frame. The starlight glitters on a chain of trinkets that I wear around my wrist, the one that doesn't have the emblem of the phoenix inked underneath my skin. I wear it only to be festive, really. Charms and bracelets are a common gift between friends and lovers this time of year, though I've never liked their tendency to catch on things whenever I wear them. There's a red bloodthistle flower from Althaea, a raven's feather from Opheron, an apexis crystal shard from Rongar, a wolf's tooth from Dorogan, an enchanted rune from Shad'ara, and others. Every few links down the chain holds some token of affection and forget-me-not from someone.
Even a tiny shadowed orb that shimmers with the chaotic colors of the Nether when I peer into it, from Vethoreas. My archnemesis and my debtor, of all people.
I had wondered aloud at the peculiarity of the nathrezim warlock giving me such a gift for this occasion. He had laughed in that dark, deep voice of his and said, "Do not confuse favor for genuine affection, my dear." Fair point that he had there. Dreadlords are capable of admiration, respect, camaraderie amongst their brothers, but ultimately they only feel concern for their self-interest and whatever means they get their claws on to achieve it. They feel no love for each other or for their pawns.
Love...
I can teach you many things, Valéria. I can instruct you in the making of wonders of enchantment. I can show you how to hit someone with your fist or cut them with a blade to such effect that they'll be in fear for their lives. I can even teach you how to hit a clear high note when you sing.
But I can only tell you what I know about love.
People go their whole lives wishing for it, searching for it, but love is a wily thing. You don't find it, it finds you. It likes to creep up and get you just when you're not looking and don't see it coming. It has no mercy when it hits you, and it leaves you reeling, shaking, unable to catch your breath. You feel its force go all the way to your bones, and you don't hit solid ground when it knocks you off your feet, you go falling headlong into infinity. You never even know what's hit you until it's too late, and by then you're already gone.
You may wonder, "Why would anyone want that? It sounds so scary!" It is. It's terrifying. And there's no defense against it.
But you see, it isn't until you're falling that you learn what it is to fly.
Someone lights up your world, makes even your darkest days brighter when you see them or hear from them, makes you smile just by being around, and then you realize what it means to you, just to see them smile back at you. You come to realize how your world would be diminished for not having them in it. You realize that if they were gone, some part of you would be gone with them, and you would feel it missing.
You'll see and hear much in your life, Valéria, but you have to be careful what you actually listen to. You'll hear the same old stories with their happy endings, and you'll think that's how life should be. But it's not easy. Nothing really worth having ever is. The story is never truly "over." The storms of the world won't stay quiet just for you and yours, they'll blow you apart if you let them. If even one of you is holding on, but the other lets go - or doesn't even reach out - what's to stop you from drifting apart then? What holds you together? Happiness is something that you work at.
... I hope that love finds you someday. I hope that you live in every wild minute of it. I hope that you come to understand for yourself how it is the most incomparably exquisite agony that anyone can survive, and that you won't run from it. You'll have doubts. You'll make mistakes. I hope that you make enough mistakes to learn and grow, but I hope that you'll regret none of them.
Life, even ageless lives, such as ours, is far too short to hold regrets.
"But you don't even hear me saying any of this..." murmured Aranya. "And even if you did, you wouldn't understand."
The tall figure of the Thalassian sorceress stood silhouetted by the window in shadow and moonlight, her luminescent green eyes burning like fel stars in the dark. Her gaze shifted from the heavens above over to the little bed where little Valéria lay, soft, thick blankets pulled up to the young elf-child's chin, her face a complete mask of sleeping serenity and innocence, lost to the world of the waking for the world in her mind.
As usual, the arcanist's true confidants this night had only been the celestial spheres outside, ever the audience to her hopes, fears, all the thoughts that were most deeply prevalent on her mind.
Aranya padded away from the window, as softly as her boots would allow, and knelt down by the little girl's bedside. She smiled warmly, brushing aside some blonde strands of hair away from the child's face, her charm bracelet catching on a few of them. "Never regret love, Valéria," she whispered, and gently planted a kiss on her forehead.
The dark-haired woman continued to smile as she quietly invoked a spell. Tiny sparks of light kindled to life in the air just around her and flickered like stars in the dark room. They swirled and converged on the form of the elf sorceress, and when at last they dispersed, Aranya Ver'Sarn disappeared from the room with them.
She would be gone for the whole night.