Did I love, SpellSong?
Excuse me. You'll have to give a moment to stop laughing.
Did I love, SpellSong?
Of course I loved Riven, and SpellSong and the Silver Queen of Eden.
But that was never enough for her. You had to hate her, too. Either that or you weren't good enough. You were just playing a game if you didn't hate her. Then you were just dead in her eyes, if she wasn't done with your body by then as it was.
Quick killer that one.
I'm not sure even she has her tally. The girl could probably just burn the world up if she wanted. Can't say I'm surprised knowing who's seeds she comes from. She like to be a bomb when she finally decides to go off.
The hospital? The earth quake? Buildings?
Are you kidding those things barely take anything out of her. According to calculation by three people it would take her between 12 and 14 minutes to destroy the entire planet Earth if that was her wish. She could be god. Goddess, excuse me. Except she'd never take it. She searches for something, that one. She always has, always will. And she'll run form it when she finds it.
But she searches.
If you know her, you can see it on first sight.
I saw it.
Praise Hecate, she was a vision that first day. A child with a blade of steel, covered in dust and grit, her eyes dark with intent. Her hair bound behind her and those clothes that clung and swum around her body in just the right places. So a child, and so much the woman waiting to be born from that child. And I'll never forget the sound her backbone made when it snapped, or the sound of her body slamming into the ground, her breath caught in her chest.
Free.
She died there. Atleast I think she did. She won't really tell me if she did. But I swear I heard her last heart beat, or atleast I thought I did. And how she awoke, eyes fogged with confusion and rest, except they glowed now, a different color than they had been on the field. Incased in the blue field was her skin, and she attracted and repulsed. I was a monster in her eyes. If only she knew what she'd become. I was a kitten in comparison.
But wasn't that what I always was for her?
Oh, she ran. But never hard enough, never far enough. She had trapped me with the first breath she'd taken walking out of that gate. I was the bastard in her eyes. She was free if she could just kill me. She'd be free. Be able to keep her knowledge, weapons, and friends. Her life. Her lost and innocent being inside that had been so raped. Yes, raped. I doubt she'll repeat that word to anyone.
I think she's closed off the world of her life before when she passed for dead on the battle ground in Valhallara and awoke in my room. Not her mothers death, or her birthday, her family, her brother or her father. The rape incident. The time when she found her aunt and uncle dead even though they'd tucked her in and kissed her forehead the night before.
I suppose she felt she deserved what the sailors did...and the training she went through at Valhallara. She's never answered me save a look when I asked if the reason she truly came to that place was to die and those eyes, those dark beautiful eyes, I know. She'll lie to a priest even, but she can't lie to me. She simply wanted to be next, to have her turn when the pain stopped. Everyone had been stripped away from her life, and all she wanted....all this poor, pain plagued, quiet child wanted was her turn to not feel the hurt anymore.
Oh, I did her a good service. I ripped her pity party from herself, like I would do so many of her safe holds.
Then I forged for her a New World. This open ground for her to learn on. Riven, beautiful Riven...she would have been like a daughter, but things just never stayed that way. She went in and out of my jobs, my council -though she rarely listened to me-, and my life for a few years. Wiser than her years, she seems so old when you speak to the real mind and heart under all that glamour and heartlessness.
And when you get there.....you're supposed to hold on as tight as you can, because no one is there. Save a small lonely child seeking the release from pain still. Patric, her brother, couldn't. Nor could her sister or her lover, that stupid Cajun. She gave him years and he still left her fly away.
And me? I could never cage her. She caged me....with that first breath. The first time I heard her, saw her smile....watched tears trickle down her face slowly as she cried out in anguish against the world. I would never hold her where she didn't want to be, never force her to do something she wouldn't like to. I taught her everything she wanted.....from stealing to killing and to worse, surviving that way for long periods of time. Years.
Like she trusts me. She has need of me sometimes, my gifts for her.
But she trusts no one for long. She entrusted herself to three men in her life, and they all couldn't save her from herself. And we all three know that in our own ways we have failed her, as does she in her heart feel we have failed her by not being able to heal all the hurts that hide.
Patric, who couldn't love her beyond that of a brother. Remy, who couldn't see beyond telling her she could be redeemed and deserved love. And me....who couldn't get beyond that second true fight we had and the moment she turned away out of hurt and anger.
Riven was never taught forgiveness...but somehow SpellSong was. Riven never knew it, never thought about it and never needed it. SpellSong hung in the balance judging you on if you were worthy. I don't know what changed her in those years. They claimed her dead at the beginning of a trio of years.....and later after that trio I saw her again.
She was different. Yes, beautiful and deadly, with a grace in stilled in her that I had never seen in all the years I had known her. Suddenly there this woman who would contemplate life and love and kill without a seconds hesitation, and then stood there looking like she regretted it. Who had taught her to regret? For it surely wasn't I.
To regret, to forgive, to flee instead of fight. These things she showed suddenly when I saw her again. She won't tell me what happened to teach her these things, though I asked a multitude of time while we lived in Eden together as friends or lovers or allies or enemies as time would give us. She never said, rather than respond she usually left my presence and in the later years ignored me.
The most I ever learned was she went away. On a long trip, far, far away. And she only told me this when she became obsessed with retrieving a special book. She'd accept no company to retrieve it, saying this was her job.....duty....giri. Where had my child lover who ran around laughing at death and provoking the world gone?
And how was this new person just as beguiling, just as intriguing and intoxicating?
I'll never know. She's never talking about it with me or anywhere within my hearing.
But yes.....yes, I do love, Casse.
And I did kill the sailors though she knows it not.
Excuse me. You'll have to give a moment to stop laughing.
Did I love, SpellSong?
Of course I loved Riven, and SpellSong and the Silver Queen of Eden.
But that was never enough for her. You had to hate her, too. Either that or you weren't good enough. You were just playing a game if you didn't hate her. Then you were just dead in her eyes, if she wasn't done with your body by then as it was.
Quick killer that one.
I'm not sure even she has her tally. The girl could probably just burn the world up if she wanted. Can't say I'm surprised knowing who's seeds she comes from. She like to be a bomb when she finally decides to go off.
The hospital? The earth quake? Buildings?
Are you kidding those things barely take anything out of her. According to calculation by three people it would take her between 12 and 14 minutes to destroy the entire planet Earth if that was her wish. She could be god. Goddess, excuse me. Except she'd never take it. She searches for something, that one. She always has, always will. And she'll run form it when she finds it.
But she searches.
If you know her, you can see it on first sight.
I saw it.
Praise Hecate, she was a vision that first day. A child with a blade of steel, covered in dust and grit, her eyes dark with intent. Her hair bound behind her and those clothes that clung and swum around her body in just the right places. So a child, and so much the woman waiting to be born from that child. And I'll never forget the sound her backbone made when it snapped, or the sound of her body slamming into the ground, her breath caught in her chest.
Free.
She died there. Atleast I think she did. She won't really tell me if she did. But I swear I heard her last heart beat, or atleast I thought I did. And how she awoke, eyes fogged with confusion and rest, except they glowed now, a different color than they had been on the field. Incased in the blue field was her skin, and she attracted and repulsed. I was a monster in her eyes. If only she knew what she'd become. I was a kitten in comparison.
But wasn't that what I always was for her?
Oh, she ran. But never hard enough, never far enough. She had trapped me with the first breath she'd taken walking out of that gate. I was the bastard in her eyes. She was free if she could just kill me. She'd be free. Be able to keep her knowledge, weapons, and friends. Her life. Her lost and innocent being inside that had been so raped. Yes, raped. I doubt she'll repeat that word to anyone.
I think she's closed off the world of her life before when she passed for dead on the battle ground in Valhallara and awoke in my room. Not her mothers death, or her birthday, her family, her brother or her father. The rape incident. The time when she found her aunt and uncle dead even though they'd tucked her in and kissed her forehead the night before.
I suppose she felt she deserved what the sailors did...and the training she went through at Valhallara. She's never answered me save a look when I asked if the reason she truly came to that place was to die and those eyes, those dark beautiful eyes, I know. She'll lie to a priest even, but she can't lie to me. She simply wanted to be next, to have her turn when the pain stopped. Everyone had been stripped away from her life, and all she wanted....all this poor, pain plagued, quiet child wanted was her turn to not feel the hurt anymore.
Oh, I did her a good service. I ripped her pity party from herself, like I would do so many of her safe holds.
Then I forged for her a New World. This open ground for her to learn on. Riven, beautiful Riven...she would have been like a daughter, but things just never stayed that way. She went in and out of my jobs, my council -though she rarely listened to me-, and my life for a few years. Wiser than her years, she seems so old when you speak to the real mind and heart under all that glamour and heartlessness.
And when you get there.....you're supposed to hold on as tight as you can, because no one is there. Save a small lonely child seeking the release from pain still. Patric, her brother, couldn't. Nor could her sister or her lover, that stupid Cajun. She gave him years and he still left her fly away.
And me? I could never cage her. She caged me....with that first breath. The first time I heard her, saw her smile....watched tears trickle down her face slowly as she cried out in anguish against the world. I would never hold her where she didn't want to be, never force her to do something she wouldn't like to. I taught her everything she wanted.....from stealing to killing and to worse, surviving that way for long periods of time. Years.
Like she trusts me. She has need of me sometimes, my gifts for her.
But she trusts no one for long. She entrusted herself to three men in her life, and they all couldn't save her from herself. And we all three know that in our own ways we have failed her, as does she in her heart feel we have failed her by not being able to heal all the hurts that hide.
Patric, who couldn't love her beyond that of a brother. Remy, who couldn't see beyond telling her she could be redeemed and deserved love. And me....who couldn't get beyond that second true fight we had and the moment she turned away out of hurt and anger.
Riven was never taught forgiveness...but somehow SpellSong was. Riven never knew it, never thought about it and never needed it. SpellSong hung in the balance judging you on if you were worthy. I don't know what changed her in those years. They claimed her dead at the beginning of a trio of years.....and later after that trio I saw her again.
She was different. Yes, beautiful and deadly, with a grace in stilled in her that I had never seen in all the years I had known her. Suddenly there this woman who would contemplate life and love and kill without a seconds hesitation, and then stood there looking like she regretted it. Who had taught her to regret? For it surely wasn't I.
To regret, to forgive, to flee instead of fight. These things she showed suddenly when I saw her again. She won't tell me what happened to teach her these things, though I asked a multitude of time while we lived in Eden together as friends or lovers or allies or enemies as time would give us. She never said, rather than respond she usually left my presence and in the later years ignored me.
The most I ever learned was she went away. On a long trip, far, far away. And she only told me this when she became obsessed with retrieving a special book. She'd accept no company to retrieve it, saying this was her job.....duty....giri. Where had my child lover who ran around laughing at death and provoking the world gone?
And how was this new person just as beguiling, just as intriguing and intoxicating?
I'll never know. She's never talking about it with me or anywhere within my hearing.
But yes.....yes, I do love, Casse.
And I did kill the sailors though she knows it not.
