A veneer of silver clouds covered the skies over the eternally vibrant fields and forests, casting a much-subdued glow of daylight over the grand mansion, despite the fact that it was near-midday. The dark-haired mage took meandering steps, her boots not making much sound at all as her tall figure traipsed the grounds of the estate. There was, however, one direction that she seemed pulled to, almost magnetically, without even thinking about it.

Aranya's fingertips brushed over the carved stone of Lady Thorne's grave. She was alone for the moment. No one would know that she had wandered here, unless they had already been watching her. She knelt to the ground, staring at the memorial as if she yearned to divine the past and future from it, but could not.

"What was it like to be you?" Her voice was low and soft, mindful of the surrounding silence, speaking as one does when they don't wish to wake someone else close by to them. She looked directly at the grave when she spoke, as though she could somehow look directly into the departed woman's eyes.

Aranya glanced back over her shoulder at the high windows and halls of the castle, knowing that somewhere within was the lord of these lands. "You loved him," she said, taking a seat on the ground next to the grave. "What did you see when you saw him?" The arcanist was not so naive to think that she was conversing with the woman for whom the stone marker stood, but for once, mere starlight was not enough for the thoughts on her mind, and this was the closest she would ever have to being in the lady's company.

"All his faults, all his flaws. You still accepted him and you loved him..." She trailed off, falling into thoughtful silence for a minute. Then a smile blossomed over her mouth, a twinkle lighting up her already fel-lit eyes. "Does it make me like you, then, that I love your son that much?"

Another thoughtful look crossed the arcanist's eyes, though her smile stayed in place this time. "He's never hidden himself from me. He's always been frank and honest about who and what he is, and others are to take him or leave him as that," she said. "He doesn't care about their approval, it's not his goal to please them," she explained, as if the mother of the man in question might not already know.

Aranya looked directly at the lady's grave again. "Would it make you laugh to know how I found his cockiness so oddly endearing?" she asked, the bright twinkle back in her eyes. "I still do. He makes me smile, in so many ways. He doesn't even have to try, but he does so anyway, and there's another reason in itself."

Another question that she might never gain an answer to entered into her mind. "Did his father love you that much?" Aranya asked. "Would he have ripped the sun out of the sky and put it in a box if he thought it would make you happy? Did he accept you as completely as you accepted him?" Her hand went up to the necklace that Rhovin had given her for her birthday. "As your son accepts me..." She trailed off again, lost in questions and wishing she could somehow find the answers on her own - but doing so would trespass on something that she dared not touch.

"If you could see me, if you could hear me, what would you say to me? What could you tell me?" She looked at the mansion again. "How come it's so easy for you and I to love such men?"

Her gazed returned its regard to the memorial. "I've seen and done amazing things, been as far as the edges of other worlds," said Aranya. "But I've never found anyone or anything like him," she said, speaking specifically of Rhovin again. "I've kept coming back ever since I came to terms with knowing that I loved him..." The mage fell silent again, her heart suddenly caught in her throat. "I always will," she near-whispered, and stood up.

"That's not a promise, my lady, it's a fact," the elf-woman admitted to her non-present hostess. "I have no choice. My heart won't allow me to do any less." Aranya turned to go. "I don't think yours did, either."

Author's notes

Originally written Apr 29, 2015. It doesn't really have a set time-frame, but it seems likely that it would have happened just a little bit before Aranya goes to the Vermilion Redoubt and comes back having learned that she'll be having Rhovin's child. (Also, inadvertent Shadowlands foreshadowing?)