The Alagaësian Mosaic
By Rey
Rating: Heavy-R
Warnings: graphic and disturbing thoughts and imagery (Do not read, if you are squimmish about blood and gore and thoughts of those.)
Genres: Character Study, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Spiritual, Supernatural
Timeline: aftermath of the Battle of the Burning Plains
Location: the Burning Plains
Characters: Angela, Arya, Elva, Eragon II, Gretta, Murtagh, Nasuada, Orrin, Saphira II, Solembum, Thorn
Point of View: First-Person Limited: Elva
Prompt: Red
Author's Notes: Firstly, a repeat of the above warning: Do not read if you are squimmish about blood and gore and thoughts of those. Secondly, this particular piece is meant to be a story-gift for , for all the encouragement and opinions and discussion times this author has provided me thus far. (Thank you so much, RF!) And last but not least, this piece was inspired by Echo Sackette's fanfiction work, Purple and Gold, which made me begin to fall in love with Elva. (I hope that I might spread the love now, at least by some small measure.)
2. The Outside of Blood
The ground was blackish and brownish and greenish and pockmarked with eternal fires which expelled noxious fumes.
The ground is fresh-red and smelling and tasting like blood and pockmarked with eternal fires which expell noxious fumes.
Red, fresh-red. They say it is blood, they say it is disgusting, they say it is horrifying, they say it is noisome. Many women shriek upon seeing it, and many men quail in silent dread – wondering if it will come out of their bodies next. Even Eragon was unnerved, when he visited this land just now.
But we cannot live without it.
And I cannot live without feeling and tasting and experiencing it intimately ever since Eragon's curse took my life away.
Red: It is only the surface, the outside of it, a mere colour.
It can turn black, can turn blue, can turn green, can turn yellow, or even transparent. – Blue … like Saphira.
But the inside is always the same: colourless, scentless, teeming with life, teeming with hope, filling up the flesh of a body like water in a rubber doll that Orrin gave me last week, which I then added with flour and bread-crums and stripped grain-stalks that I had requested from Gretta.
She – no, they – asked me: Gretta, Orrin, Nasuada, Angela, even Arya; as if my concerns were theirs to poke at.
But when they got what they wanted, they did not like it. Oh they didn't.
Gretta stared wide-eyed at me as if, for the first time ever, she realised that she had raised a monster, then fainted. Orrin excused himself hurriedly from my tent, and I could hear him puke outside. Nasuada stared dumbfounded at me with mouth agape like an idiot. Arya looked … un-elf-like, with all the emotions brimming and broiling in her eyes and twisting up her face. It is only Angela who only sighed and gave me a huge hug, weeping silently all the while.
Because I told them the truth: The skin – the rubber – was fine; the blood – the water – was fine; but I needed the flesh, and the bones as well.
Because flesh and blood always go together.
Flesh is saturated with blood, and blood is saturated with flesh.
And there is much of this pair of twins painting this sad land ….
But there were more, before it all dried up – half-way, at least – on the hot, fuming soil.
And I experienced it all, when they were torn out of those bodies.
I kneel by one large patch that is still wet and deep, put my hand into it, bring it to my nose and lips, scent it, taste it.
Different. Wrong.
Fleshy blood, bloody flesh, but there is also little particles of soil in it.
There is no dirt inside a body. – Now I wonder what that spiteful expression people like to spout out mean …. It is impossible for one's blood to be dirty when one is still alive and not torn up, after all; I have just proven it.
A hand grasps mine gently; a black handkerchief materialises into view, wipes at the red liquid on my bone-white skin, wipes it away, transfers it to the black cloth and makes the red turn black.
Tears – not my tears – replace it, and they are also wiped away.
I look up.
Angela's eyes meet mine: brown, warm, unjudging, unquestioning.
Unquestioning, yes. I like it.
I crave it, in fact.
Arya cajoled me with many words and many ploys, wanted me to talk.
Saphira simply grabbed me when I was walking and flew me round for a while in one huge blue clawed paw, wanted to daunt me into talking to her when Arya's tactics had met with failure. Eragon agreed to that treatment – that demon – but I kept my silence anyway.
Nasuada insisted that I talk. – Oh, how guilt-ridden she was! and I relished it as long as it lasted, which was not long at all, really.
Orrin was too unnerved with my new silence to approach me. – `Ah, good, that,` I thought. `relieving.`
Gretta smothered me, bribed me with my favourite foods, coaxed me with babyish concepts and words to talk, to sleep, to eat, to play. – `Hah! Play?!`
But neither Angela nor Solembum tried to make me talk, tried to talk to me, and I am grateful for the silence – the peace – they have given me.
They do not know – cannot possibly know, for sure – the extent of what the curse has put me under thus far, and they do not attempt to pretend – or assume – that they know.
I reach out my hands. She picks me up, cradles me gently, wraps me completely within the folds of her cape, and walks away.
I close my eyes. But red is still in my field of sight.
A different red now: red of scales, red of an entire sword, red in someone's consciousness, but not red on the outside – no, no, not the outside, not the superficial red of blood that can change easily, too easily.
I send her the image. She flinches, but still says nothing; repulsed by the image, but not by me, not by them also. Good.
Horse whinnying, horse trotting – galloping now – away; Solembum in cat-form purring and rubbing himself against my cape-covered back, Angela humming and wrapping me in a loose embrace with her arms ….
I do not know how long we are riding. I do not know where we are going; but the clusters of pains and concerns and miseries of the multitude soldiers of both the Varden and the Empire are receeding quickly from my mind, and I am glad of it regardless.
Solembum is contacting somebody with a spear of mental shout that manages to startle me a little, make me stir and shift. But Angela behaves as placid as before, and so I do not pay any mind to it. It is good for once to be detached from things, to be aware that their concerns are not mine.
But then the horse's pace is reduced to a trot, to a walk, and at last to a halt; and Solembum is jumping down, followed by Angela, and I am jolted a little as her boots touches the ground.
We have … arrived?
Red, red – inside-red, not outside-red, not superficial, not ephemeral.
I twist round in Angela's arms, look up at the man, look up at the dragon.
Not-superficial-red, not-ephemeral-red.
"What do you want from me, Witch? I'm sure you are not here to ask for blessings from me for that child?" Mocking, harsh, bitter – disappointed, pained, grieved.
Too much red. I cannot see him – them – any longer. Too much red, gagging them, choking them.
"Well, no, lad, of course not." The blunt, snippy, frank, barbed Angela; not the placid, thoughtful, quiet, helpful Angela. "She has gone through much because of someone else's so-called blessings after all. We won't add up to her misery, yes?"
"We meant you no harm. We still mean you no harm." Solembum, in his human form, sounding so close to where my legs are dangling helplessly, uselessly. "She wanted to meet with you, and so that is all that we ask of you. You promised us temporary truce, so we do in return."
Too much talking. Too much red. The red is spreading wider now, thickening, choking him, choking me, gagging us.
I kick and flail free from Angela's arms, dash blindly forward, collide with a pair of strong boot-clad legs smelling like battle, like blood-the-superficial-red, cling to them even as they falter, staggering.
"Well, pick her up, you dolt. She won't harm you. After all, she was the one who requested to meet with you – not in so many words too. Rather like when Nasuada visited you, eh?" Barbed Angela, sharply playful Angela. – Can you not please stop for a moment, stupid witch? Can you not see that he is drowning in red now? But oh no, I 'forget': nobody else can but me.
Gentle fingers, tender fingers, hesitant fingers: unaccustomed to children, unaccustomed to kindness, unaccustomed to closeness. But they touch me regardless, run briefly through my hair, run briefly down the sides of my face.
A big, rough nose nuzzles my back softly, then retreats.
Shaky-but-strong arms pick me up gingerly, press me in a loose embrace against a heaving chest.
I wind my arms around the rattling, contracting throat, the clammy, taut neck.
I bury my face into the side of the neck, bury myself – willingly this time – into the not-superficial-red.
I keen. He keens.
For the first time ever, I am not the 'empathic' one, but somebody else.
And they say he has no grain of empathy in his blackened soul ….
Why "grain" anyway? And his soul is red! Too red in fact; raw, not black.
But the not-superficial-red is receeding now: lightening, softening.
I lift up my head, press my cheek against the clammy and tear-wet wider, strong-boned cheek of my tender holder. At the same time, I lift myself up away from the not-superficial-red.
Which is now just a colour, superficial, like lilies and roses and orchids and blood and Nasuada's gown when she visited Murtagh for the first time.
No longer 'interesting' – and choking and gagging and too deeply red, too inherently red.
– Perhaps superficial, ephemeral red is better then, in some cases? – And the big, rough nose is nuzzling the back of my head and sending me a waft of warm air, as if agreeing with me ….
This proves it, then: They are all wrong: Nasuada, Eragon, Saphira, Orrin, Gretta, even Angela. Sometimes, I do not need prompting to help people, outside of how the curse works on me.
Because they, too, just mostly see and understand the surface, the outside.