Ok, these are unorganised and edited and here so I can refer to them without the bother of word.
M- Mother in the Year 096ish (peace finding truth). Her Mother’s stuff has been written in part)
N- what part on her has been written? was it just something written and we didn't know where it went or am i forgetting something or something else entirely? please fill in gap of understanding here.
M-It was a part without a place, some of it in hand written notes some of it was actually in that little notebook I have, you know, the spiral bound drawing one... Anyway, I don’t know that I have the stuff on hand right now so I’ll get back to you on that but I’ll reply to the rest now... if I can
In the Year 070 Ehlia or “Lia” was born. Ehlia is 26 years older than Mikael and 20 years younger than Rustovich.
N- i didn't realise that she was so old. i pictured her 2 or 3 years older than danae. or is that another descendant? also, are we counting in 'years' or is there another name that we are eventually going to use? we don't have to start using it now, i jus thought i'd ask since it sounded so wrong to me when i just wrote year. sorry. moving along.
M- I have an answer for this too...I think, I thought of it last night in my dreams so I guess it wasn’t really me thinking of it but it was thought and comes through me... which does pose some difficulty in translation... I think you were seeing it as Danae sees it all, I don’t believe that Lia is actually able to suppress what talent she has in her and that it is shown through her weird skill at the renegade’s art... or something like that, you know, what we were talking about with Mikael’s magical ability? So she can appear younger-ish Well, that isn’t all, I’m not sure how it works yet but I know that Lia was around when Mikael was about... what was it? Just before Danae arrives? but I also know that she was about with young Danae and you’re right, she wasn’t much older... I’m so confused It’s like she’s lived two lives, She lived a whole life with the renegades and then somehow went on to live another whole life after than and not a “midlife crisis” type deal... she’s actually young again, like she has a chance to re-do her life... I don’t get it...
Oh and I used “Years” because you did and I couldn’t think of a better word...If we do think of a better words I’m sure we’ll change butuntil then...
N- oh, and about the time line, do you think you would be able to write down the 'lia' parts in italics so that i have a clearer idea of how this part of the story meshes with the rest?
M- I’ll do that when I get the chance, when I get a full idea, it’s so much easier with you sitting next to me while I talk and draw, I’ve never been so overwhelmed by Elyniah through pictures, you’re always there to help, it’s weird.
N- i have a curious sudden urge to write, and no full understanding. you know the feeling. how does between 11pm and 2/3am sound?
M- Well, tonight, (2am Tuesday morning for me) may not be the best... I’ll see what I can do, sign into msn for a time, if I’m on it’ll say I’m away, if I’m not on it won’t say anything, if I’m goingto be on at all it will say it from around 12 pm my time to around 3 am my time unless you show too...
N- ooh, and have you read the stuff about the winged people from the tribe that gets danae from the clerics to laithlyn??? it's new and it might mesh in with what you've found. in fact, it does mesh. lots and lots, i just don't know how yet and you have most of the info (again). oh, and camael is the second son of the winged (i've called them Ikari) who delivers danae. interesting, eh?
M- I’ve got it, filed it and chaptered it into the rest... I liked it and there name... Ikari is a good name...
M- “I understand the need for monastic orders and such, but leaving the fate of Elyniah in the hands of soft palmed virgin boys is not something I am about to do. This country needs someone to do the real work, arguing century old misprinting will do naught but waste time.”
N- i'm sorry, could i have a bit of context for this bit? and when did you write it?
M- Sorry, I wrote all of it like I was talking to you about it and forgot that without you talking back I need to add a few details... you know how whenever we had a picture there would always be some little snippet of things they’d say, like the conversations from the first bits, the way we got nearly everything at the start, well, this was like an echo of that method. I was writing aboutLia and it just kinda sprouted on the page before my eyes... She said it as she was in the monastery thing after her parents died... Ooohh!! I think I got it now... what they were trying to tell me in my crazy dreams I think that for all intents and purposes Lia’s life stopped when she did the renegade thing, like it was part of the prophesy that she would do all this and as a compensation of what would happen because of the renegades they gave her her life back after she was done.
At this time she forms a group that becomes known as the ‘renegades’ with a compatriot she meets there, Sian. Sian came from a family very caught up in the “dirty dealings” of the government and the commoners. She teaches Lia about the underworld of Elyniah and they become very close...
N- not trying to be uncouth, but it was just something i picked up on in that last sentence; how close, and if 'that' close, how much of it do we bring into the story?
M- Well, I didn’t really think about how much we’d bring, I don’t even really know what they have/do/feel/think I figured that as with anything, Elyniah would basically write herself.
“Bound by blood, bound by truth, bound by love. Ever, always, now.”
- Almost a direct quote from some Elyniah notes I have in my collection.
N- again, context would be a greatly appreciated tool here.
M- again it was a quote from previous pages in one of my vis diaries... relevant to the fact that they were close... get it? It was a quote that is from an unwritten scene about them but I don’t really know about it yet...
A renegade visits the training institute and recognizes Mikael as the guardian causing a scene... another bit that will fill the gaps in some of our stuff.
N- is it possible at one stage that he gets approached by one of them to join? it just fits in so well with so many parts of his grown up life before danae. even kind of after wards when he doesn't quite remember who he is, it still fits because a lot of time passes and he gets a lot of 'help' along the way that has yet been unexplored.
M- It is very possible, in fact, that works very well... yes, I like it it has that “right” felling...
Does Danae actually enter the area of destruction? if she does it would make a whole lot of sense... I'm pretty sure I've seen something where she's walking through the image of the battle, like it's playing on repeat and she, after getting past the "I can't deal with this" goes on to learn from it. She has a tent out there... it's kind of desert like terrain and she's written up maps and battle plans and everything from the time, she sees what they planned (bad and good) she sees what worked, she sees what happened to the people who were fighting. She also sees and has to deal with the magical side of things.
N- err, which battle exactly? time and context? you know, i'm thinking that maybe we should color code that timeline when it gets put up into writing.com. do you know how to put things in color? *sigh*
M- The battlefield that was in the area that no one goes but that Rustovich sent his troops and they got all possessed and stuff... The big one of the magical battle that led to the social phobia about magic... and I do know how to colour text but it takes sooooooo long!!
N- oh, and i totally get the minstrel. it actually makes clear a lot of things because before there have been gaps in conversation between us and songs and folk tales that have gone ignored but this idea helps. glad it's finally made its way to us after all.
Ok, I did say it was for the bits you needed help with but it's really what I need help with
I have this mangled horrid mess that is Danae's time being imprisoned and I can't fix it and it's confusing me and I don't even know if I have all the stuff here and argh!!!!
{i}I don't exactly understand what you need help with. So far as I can see, it's just like any other area that hasn't had a lot of stuff written into it, but merely an outline of where the scenes to come around meant to be written between...? It looks like pretty much all the stuff I know of though, if that helps at all... no, I guess it doesn't... It's just a mangled mess that will be fixed up when the rest of the scenes and a proper time perception come to mind.{/i}
It was more that things didn't really make sense in it all but you're probably right, I just didn't know how to organize it as there isn't much sense yet.. sorry to bother you...
July 3 2003 – Nicole to Moana
Okay, I see and understand your outburst, however at the same time, it had brought what I came here to write into even better focus.
You said that Mikael was supposed to bring what happened to Danae into better focus later on, right? Well, you are right. You just don't want to be if your outburst is anything to go by. However, by that outburst, I also know that you've already seen what's coming.
Remember Sirus's son? The one who was appointed as the new Head of the First House under guardianship of two men appointed each from the Second and Third Houses around half way through Mikael's first book? Yeah, well guess who's about to make a secondary appearance in this big gap that we have in Danae's first book?
You got it. He's back, and all grown up too. Remember, he's younger than Mikael, he was about four to six when he was appointed into the house, at which stage Mikael was all but packed to go to his warrior school; so about 10?
So if Mikael is around 28 at the start of this book, then Serus' son should be able 24 or maybe a little younger - could be made to be 21 if we wanted to keep the legal ages the same as we have here, but not essential if it doesn't work, obviously.
It would be around this time that he is decreed to be able to look after the First House on his own. The other two men go back to their own lives and where applicable, families.
We should probably give him a name at his stage, but then, you know what we are both like with names. Put them off and put them off until absolutely nothing else can be done, and THEN name them. Never before.
Okay, so what we need to figure out next is; what is the reasoning for this obviously needed refocus on this character? For starters, most of Danae’s story is told in the Third House boundaries, but if towards the war, the other two Houses are just mentioned from nowhere, it will not work, so obviously it starts as a tie in, but again, going back to what you said, Serus’ son is needed as a tie back from Mikael’s life that will make Danae’s story more understandable. So then, what is it?
Okay, for starters, Sai is much older than Lia. Second, certain parts of that song either started off as part of a code between them so that nobody could pretend to be them and get the other unaware, or it later became a code for the same as well as distinctly personal reasons between them. Much more than that, I can’t quite get into. Without context between them, there is not much I can read into from one disjointed scene, just as no person coming in to see the way the two of us act with one another now, without any explaining background of how it got to be that way, could understand at all the way it feels between us, all the time.
thing number 3: i have an obsession with elayne's life at the moment. you might have realised with all the elayne centric stuff that i have been writing lately in the second part of the story. elayne with the clerics. elayne giving birth. elayne with her lover; all things we already were aware of, but things never actually quite fully fleshed out. and i just figured out why. not only because there is a lot that ties into every winged person we have seen so far, but also because it runs a parallel to your lia and renegade stuff.
to make this more clear, i'm breaking this up to different paragraphs even though this is not an additional 'thing'. elayne and the winged people/lia and the renegades. through lia and her mum and elayne and danae, we are covering exactly the same amounts of time and they will probably proove to be inseparable as soon as we flesh them both out properly, as we are currently doing without even needing this conscious acknowledgement of what we are doing. however, it is there and we have a stated plan of action. doesn't that all seem so much clearer to you now? i'm glad
(we just keep on saying that we have to address this part, but we keep on not, so here’s a little bit more in the mix, and maybe it will make us actually do something about what was already there. Page 230-264)
From Part One of Danae’s Legacy:
After an emotional Welcome Day, it had been the devil’s own job to get Danae to quiet down enough to put her into the room that would now be her bedroom. That too had taken a bit of getting used to. The fact that her bedroom was not this strange place, it was in Laithlyn’s estate. And where was Laithlyn, she had asked over and again. He was supposed to be reading her bedtime stories. They were halfway through one about a lamb and a rabbit and the moment, she had informed Mikael. But that wasn’t her favorite one. No, the one where the full moon shines down on the little orphan girl’s face was her favorite. Her and Laithlyn had read that one many times together.
(remember the song? I think that traces back to here)
When finally, Danae had been convinced that it was indeed bedtime and Laithlyn would not be coming to her, tears had quickly welled up in her eyes. But why? she had asked piteously. Didn’t he love her anymore? Mikael wiped a hand over his eyes in remembrance. He was a warrior, not equipped for such situations.
But these were the situations given over to him, he was reminded, as the sounds of Danae’s wretched weeping caught his ear from the room across the hall from where he sat with his snifter. He was torn between sorrow and annoyance over her noise, not even aware of which emotion he should react with.
She was safe here, in this new home that nobody else had the way to find, with people who were willing to take her into their lives and their hearts, no matter what danger might come along with her presence. Why couldn’t the child be happy with that alone? These were kind and loving people here. Her beloved Laithlyn had been sure to make sure of that!
However, he wasn’t Laithlyn. And none of the others here were Candice.
Mikael knew that she missed them. Hell, it was normal to miss those that life carried you past. He sure as hell missed Araliah, but nobody saw him bawling about it, did they? No, there were just some things that he was sure only a girl child could get away with.
From the beginning, he had not wanted this charge, this responsibility that would take him across the sea from those he knew and cared about, let alone the life that he had loved and made for himself all these years. But because of that life, that carried with it a sense of duty and obligation, he found himself tied without say to this baggage that wept a water well of tears into her bed, honor dictating that he ‘make the best of it’.
Although there were an infinite number of rooms in the house that he could have moved to to block out Danae’s crying, Mikael resolutely remained where he was, taking another draught of the brew in his cup. He quite openly had no idea what he was doing here, apart from ensuring that no danger came to his new charge. However, as far as he could see, the only danger lay in her drowning in her own self pity, which still left him at a loss over what he was supposed to do about anything. Her emotional state and other needs and wants were what the lady servants were here for, wasn’t it?
However, they weren’t the ones sitting in this room listening to her weeping. Not that that did him one wit of good. Was he expected just to walk into her room and try to comfort her himself? Araliah had never needed comforting of that sort. He wasn’t even sure that he knew how to comfort another person. Let alone a girl child. A weeping girl child.
(okay, I’m sorry about the emphasis on the weeping and the girl child bit. That last bit was overkill because I realised it myself and wanted to make a joke of it. Is this really where his problem with all of this lies at this point?)
Now, if she had been one of his men, that would have been a different story. Mikael would have known exactly how to handle the situation then. It would have been an easy matter of ‘get used to things as they were right from the start. No exceptions’. That way meant the avoidance of problems and disappointments later on.
But what if he somehow broke her emotionally by acting that way to her? Was it better to ease her in now and disappoint her later when his ‘special treatment’ of her didn’t continue. Because he wouldn’t have the time to keep something like that up for long, of that he was certain. He had no intention of going through this same fiasco every night.
Still indecisive, he stood up to refill his glass, closing the door and his mind firmly to those thoughts on his way back. Then he settled himself back into his high-backed chair, set to brood to the sound of the child’s desolate, plaintive cries.
Merge these two next into one....one is mine, one is Nicole’s...
* * * * *
Danae woke up with a start, wide eyed and wide awake in an instant, looking around the room she found herself in, wondering exactly where it was that this was. Pushing aside the blankets haphazardly, Danae’s small feet landed on the polished floorboards next to her bed, before moving across to find the soft warmth of the bedside rug that she found to also be next to her bed.
Sitting on the side of her bed in this manner, Danae’s eyes scanned over this new room, taking it all in warily. There was a bedside table next to her bed, and beyond that, on the same wall, was a glass door that led out into a narrow area outside, which, as far as she could see, was not on the lowest level of the house.
As she got up and walked into the adjoining part of her room, where the was another window, with a sill she could sit in a watch what went on beneath her, as well as a couple of book shelves, a wooden trunk and various other items that she recognized as her own, Danae was able to remember this house as she had seen it that morning through mostly sleep filled eyes.
However, as she was far from mostly asleep now, it seemed the perfect time to explore!
* * * * *
The smell of warm honey and fresh bread woke Danae and she lay within the warm covers of her bed, stretching and moving slowly, waiting to fully awake. Curiously she looked about the room, everything was so bright and pretty. Stone walls rose higher than she could see from beneath her canopied bed, tapestries hung on the walls. Images of ladies, knights, fairies and kings surrounded her. She looked at them until her stomach grumbled loudly and she turned, the blankets twisting about her small frame, to see what there was to eat. Beside her bed was food, lots of yummy food; a small, fresh crunchy loaf of bread, a bowl of still warm porridge with a liberal coating of honey and fruit. Her eyes widened and her hand shot out from the covers to grab a plum, a real, fresh plum! She smiled as she bit through the sour skin to the soft, juicy flesh beneath, dripping on the bedclothes. Once the plum was gone she started on the rest of the meal, doing it fair justice as she sat, feet swinging off the edge of the bed and crumbs falling around her. Once done, she pushed the covers off with sticky fingers and started to explore the room further.
(this just after the full moon howling scene that was the first we ever wrote – Mikael and Danae. Oh, and for the record, I’ve only taken relevant scenes from the whole thing. Always make sure to check with the current original so we don’t save over things like I have way too many times!)
The cave mouth was situated far from popular residence. Even the part of it that was above ground was hardly visible to anyone going past. For Emanual, astride of his tanned gelding, it was the tall, lanky elm that stood to guard at the right of the mouth that he looked out for. With the cave’s camouflaged location, it had seemed the perfect place to lay out their residence.
Then they had stepped inside.
Ground level was nothing special. The ceiling of the habitat had roots of grass, trees and other remote plant types overhanging. It was not overly dark, for something buried from most sunlight. Further in, the cave split to differing sectors.
The right was the living quarters. These Emanual, Janual and Dendrite shared. The left had been kept as the meal area as it was not so dusty. Little dirt fell from the ceiling and walls onto the food.
It was the passage leading straight ahead that had shocked and elated this small band. Following along this passage lead in a downwards direction, a level beneath the ground. Yet it was connected. From these areas below, it was impossible to throw sound to the listening ear. It was the perfect holding for captives or prisoners. Of which Emanual planned on at least a few. A whole row of inverted caves was created within the larger cave level.
In the time they’d been residing there, the group had established bars for the ‘safekeeping’ of any others who may happen along to ‘visit’ them down there. It worked out well, for as it happened, they had planned for many little ‘visits’ down stairs.
(have a little look for the other person already in one of these cages, caught and held between these scenes. She is one that they later make an ‘example’ of in front of Danae to show her how her decisions will impact upon others’ lives, and the beginning of the games they would play on her)
*
the two times that they attempted to take Danae, second time succeeding, years apart but much in between, especially with them and their plans.
* * * * *
The lamp burned in Danae’s bedroom, right next to her bed, even though she lay in her bed, settled and sound asleep, as she had been for hours now. What had started out as a childish fear and wish to not be alone had development into the insecurity of a child not quite yet bordering on adolescence. She found some amount of comfort in the fire next to her bed, and so Mikael indulged her.
A man sat unidentified in the corner of her room, squatting on top of the chest that she kept by her door, staring steadily at her, trying to figure out the inside workings of such a childish, yet intricate mind. His chin rested thoughtfully on his hand, the only movement in the room apart from the ticking second hand of Danae’s clock being the man’s regular blinking.
Having apparently figured out what he had set out to, the man suddenly made the move to stand up, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the young girl child as he crossed the floorboards in her room to the carpeted covered section of where she laid. He stood again motionlessly next to the bed for a time, moving a hand back and forth in front of the flame, watching as the shadow of it crossed over her face, time and time again.
Her eyes twitched in her sleep, and she gave a delicate sniff before turning over away from the light. Instantly, however, her eyes clicked open and fixed with something akin to fear on her intruder.
“Shhh,” he whispered, with a finger over his mouth.
“Mikael,” she mouthed, her vocal cords not yet working. “Mika…”
The cry was abruptly cut off as a grimy hand came down over her mouth.
“Now then, didn’t I just warn you about calling out?” the man asked her chidingly. “Could it be that you didn’t understand me? I must remember to be more clear next time.”
Her eyes, wide and full of expression, locked tightly into his, not quite knowing what to make of this, apart from knowing that there was definitely something untoward about a strange man being in her room in the middle of the night, holding a silencing hand over her mouth.
“There now, that’s better, isn’t it?” the man continued at her silence. “It’s not so fearful after all. You should know that I’m not going to hurt you. Oh no, you’re far too special for anything so mundane as that!”
Confusion now registered in her eyes, as she asked him questions with them that she knew she couldn’t possibly ask with her mouth.
“But no, it can’t be…could it?” the man said in sudden amazement. “Could it be that you’re truly unaware of how very important you are? That no one has ever told you?”
Danae would have shrugged, her oblivion to her own power now proven, as the strange man let out a low chuckle.
“Well, I must say that that comes as a surprise. No, I definitely didn’t expect that coming,” the man said, “Tell me, what do you know about yourself, about your part? If I was to take my hand away from your face now, would you promise not to scream?”
Danae nodded slightly. With the way that his hand was positioned over her face, it was becoming difficult to draw in the required amount of air into her lungs. Anything to get it off sounded alluring right then.
“Well then, now it just comes down to whether I can trust you,” the man said contemplatively. “I can trust you, can’t I?”
Danae nodded, more vigorously this time.
“Well then, considering that you’ve been such a docile child this long, I guess I’ll have to trust you, especially if I want to get any information out of you, won’t I?” the mane said, followed by slowly, hesitantly beginning to draw his hand away from her face.
The first thing she did once she was freed was to stretch the muscles in her neck. However, she realised that she was not really freed by any means when she looked down to see that the strange man’s other hand tightly encircled her wrist.
“What do you want from me?” Danae asked, exerting a great amount of control to ensure that her voice didn’t quiver.
“My dear girl, I want what everybody wants from you,” the man said. “Don’t you already know? Your energy and power is like an elixir. Everybody wants it. Even your dear protector, Mikael.”
“No,” Danae whispered, “That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” the man asked, trailing a hand down the side of Danae’s face. She whimpered softly. “Now, now. There’ll be none of that. Don’t you want to be a good girl?”
Danae’s jaw worked for a moment, before she decided to throw all caution to the winds and screamed out with all her might, “Mikael!”
Once again, the hand was clamped down, this time much more roughly, over her face.
“Foolish girl!” the man hissed right into her face, “Don’t you know what’s good for you? I’ve got a good mind to take you now, after you’ve gone and damned well alerted my presence here!”
The man gritted his teeth, pulling Danae with him in his attempts to stand up, this task made all the more difficult by the blankets being tucked in around her. He was not given time to do any more than this, for only moment later, the door burst open, Mikael standing in the doorway, clad only in breeches and his sword.
“Back away,” he said in a soft, deadly tone.
“Ah, Mikael. At last we meet. I have heard so much about you,” the man said, literally dripping with insincerity.
“Back away from her. Now,” Mikael said, advancing closer to him, his sword pointed out in front of him, at the ready. “I won’t ask you again.”
“Oh, is that right?” the man asked. “Tell me truthfully, Mikael. Do you honestly think you can keep her? Just between the two of us, mind. What on earth would make you think yourself capable to guard such an important instrument as this one? Why, you haven’t even told her anything so that she may defend herself. Pretty slack, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask,” Mikael said darkly.
“Really? Oh, so sorry. My mistake.” The man quickly surveyed his surroundings and swiftly surmised that the only way that he was going to get out of here was the same way that he had gotten in. “You know, it really is too bad that I’ve got to go, but you know how it is, don’t you Mikael? People to see, places to be. But I’m sure that we’ll be seeing one another again real soon. In fact, you can count on it.”
Without waiting for a reply, the man suddenly turned for the door, jumping out of it, and in plain sight, disappearing as he began to fall.
“Mikael?” Danae said, quaveringly, bringing Mikael’s attention to her once more. Hurriedly, he went over to her, dropping the sword onto the floor on his way over to taking her in his arms and rocking her back and forth. “Who was that man, who was he?” Danae wanted to know.
“Hush now, it’s okay baby. I’ll make it okay. Hush for now,” Mikael said soothingly, while ticking over in his mind just how he would hold himself to his word.
*
(she starts writing a journal/story, just before the group steals her in the night, at around 12 years of age. I’ve been able to get two separate bits, but not the middle. Umm, here’s the first bit:)
“There was a girl. She was a beautiful girl, full of love and with grey, sparkling eyes and a lovely smile and dark, flowing hair. No, no, not that, light, curling hair that cascaded all the way down her back. It was beautiful, just like the rest of her. And everyone loved her. Not because she was so pretty, but because she was so nice, to everyone who was around her; which wasn’t many people in actual fact, for as long as the girl could remember, she had remained trapped within the boundaries of a lovely castle, so she had only ever seen the other people living within the castle with her.”
Danae dipped her fountain pen into the bottle of ink beside her, turning the page over and continuing in her writing.
“Although it sounded marvellous to live inside of a castle, the girl was sad. She was given everything that she could ever want for, that she knew and was grateful for, but the one thing that she really wanted, remained still elusive to her, and that one thing was her freedom. The freedom to go on a horse ride without the parade of horsemen who were required to ride with her wherever she went; to not be stopped as soon as she reached a certain point on the land. She wished to be presented within the town, to meet lots of new faces, introduce herself, dance in a great and wonderful ballroom. However, she knew that these dreams were just that; dreams. Just as transparent and unproductive as the wisps her unconscious mind summoned up in sleep.”
Danae blew lightly on the parchment as she reached down for more ink. It wouldn’t do for her story to become all smudged! “She quietly entertained daydreams that one day, atop a white horse, a man of impeccable status and appearance would find his way to ride within the boundaries that kept her here and sweep her off her feet and take her with him to a land far away, where she would never again be forced to stare at the same old walls of the same old castle day in and day out. On this day, nobody would tell her how far out she would be allowed to go. From that day on, she would be free to live as her own person, in her own right. And that would be the happiest day of her life.”
As she wrote more and more, the story seemed to take a shape of its own, one that Danae could scarcely control with the fountain pen in her hand. She grew more and more emersed in the writing, unaware of anything going on outside of her room or all about her. She kept on writing.
“One day, on a day that seemed no more or less special than any of the ones before it, when it seemed that the girl’s dreams could never come to actual life, something happened that changed everything for the girl. Even as she woke up, sensing around herself, she knew that she would never again be the same.”
(that’s all I’ve been able to get. I know that it draws a lot of parallels between what happens later on with her being stolen, and the be careful what you wish for idea. We’ve all got to learn it, after all! But it’s like she’s interrupted here or something, but there’s more around this that hasn’t yet been written)
*
It was late the next night, when the soft clicking of the glass doors next to Danae’s bed signaled an intruder into her bedroom. The last attempt to take Danae away so recently having failed, it had been Emenual’s belief that another attempt made to this effect so soon would be quite unanticipated by those taking up residence within the house.
Quite boldly did he walk over to Danae’s bedside, glancing down to her for only a moment. It was his plan to be quietly and quickly in and out, quietly so as no one would hear his entrance, and quickly so as not to give the child time to squeal on him, as had already thwarted one attempt already made here by Dendrite.
Shaking his head at the other’s basic tactics, Emenual roughly pulled back the blankets covering the child, lifted her up into his arms and putting a heavy hand over her mouth, turned away from the bed to leave the room as abruptly as he had entered it, ignoring her shows of terror at her own seeming helplessness.
She did not notice as Neunch entered her room as they left it.
(these two scenes almost seem to flow onto each other, don’t you think, there just needs to be some work to make them mesh) *
Danae stood against the bars of her cage, looking up the slant back up to the next level that her captors had disappeared towards. What was she doing here? Where was Mikael? What did they want with her here?
Her deceptively small hands grasped the bars tightly and squeezed before she consciously made herself release them. Stepping back, her frightened gaze darted all around her. Miakel would come back to save her. She just had to wait here. Patience, he had always taught her. He would come here.
He had to.
As harsh sounds from above resounded down to her with a sense of finality, Danae found her mind drawing back to her as yet still unfinished story writing.
Softly, she started speaking the words of the story to herself, in an attempt to calm herself and bring things to some sort of normality that she could handle. “Too late, the girl began to understand the need for those barriers that she had so protested to in earlier life. It was just too bad that the knowledge had come to her far too late.
“It had been true that she’d been unable to escape the confines that had felt to her like a cage at the time, but in keeping her in, those same barriers had succeeded in keeping others out, for her own good, no less. For the first time since her abduction, she began to question for the first time the greatness of those barriers going down and letting her free. That freedom had been fleeting, when now all she wished for was the safety of her warm, comfortable bedroom. No such luxury was being offered to her right now, as she sat inside of a little boxed in area that was, for the first time in her whole life, a real cage.”
“We go after her. Get her out right now. I don’t care how we do it, only that we do it now!”
(okay, I have the feeling that that’s been written before! Have we got this scene written elsewhere? Or is that just me?) “Master please, I implore you think for a moment.”
Mikael came in real close to his butler, closer than the rules of personal space ordinarily permitted.
“Danae is gone. Gods only know what her captors could be doing to her right now. I vote that we go after her and get her out of there as soon as possible, and you dispute me on that?” Mikael near hissed the words out in a low, deadly tone.
The butler lowered his eyes accommodatingly.
“Is there anything you have a need for me to get for you, sir,” he asked in subdued tones.
“Alert the stable men. We need all the horses that are capable for the most speedy retreat. Caleb, find your brother. Have him round up all others who will come.” Mikael took a moment to touch the woman who had been Danae’s handmaid softly. “Don’t worry. We will find her,” he said in determination, before stalking out of the room, as everyone else hurried off to do as commanded.
“Mikael, I have no wish to step out of line but…”
“Then don’t,” Mikael said darkly, gathering hefty artillery.
“But,” Caleb continued, regardless, “I must say that in my opinion, Giles is right. You are in no way thinking clearly about this.”
Exerting great amounts of self control, Mikael turned around from what he was doing to face one of his most trusted men; this one who had only been coming into early manhood when they had arrived, had become more like a son to him over the years. Ordinarily, he would have trusted Caleb’s opinion overall. This, however, was not ordinarily.
“Then what,” he asked, “Would you have me do?”
“I don’t know,” Caleb said, struggling not to fidget under the unblinking glare Mikael held him with. “I agree that we must do something, but we need to plan. We need to have a plan, before we just go galloping off in this way.”
“There is no time to plan,” Mikael told him, turning away again. “I am aware that they have the advantage right now. They will be expecting us, even this very moment, and we will not be disappointing them by playing right into their hands. But Caleb, tell me what else can we do? Danae’s life could be at stake here.”
Caleb opened his mouth and closed it again, without a sound emitting out from it. He knew that what Mikael said was right. They couldn’t chance Danae’s death because they needed more time to plan. And at least Mikael admitted that it was one of the stupider plans open to them.
He was right about one other thing to; they truly did have no other choice.
(taken from page 277 – 301. the ordering was so hopelessly out of context, I had to fix it up and where I’ve changed order or words, the first line or word is purple. and I’ve added all new bits in purple and left some scenes out of this sequence of ordering cause they are too confusing to my mind. Feel free to move them around again yourself if it feels right. I know you will anyway. We REALLY need a time line. If it’s this hard for just this section, it’s not going to get easier with others!! I think that the biggest changes included the time line where Mikael was killed and Danae’s corresponding physical reactions to that. all of his pains are at the start, hers don’t come till near the end. I think because her pains are connecting to something that happens to him later than we originally thought? Or maybe by the time I adjusted that part, I’d just been sitting in front of the computer for wayyy too long. Let me know what you think. It’s amazing how about 6 scenes we put separately almost merge smoothly into once with a bit of editing and thought.)
From Part Two of Danae’s Legacy.
* * * * *
Janual stealthily opened the barrier that held Danae where she was. From inside, her head jerked up, body tensing, eyes proud. It was night and her holders usually left her along through the hours of darkness to sleep or meditate or whatever. It had been an ideal arrangement for her, not that she’d never thought they would change the rules on her. With caution, she rose up to her feet. Janual held out a cautionary hand to her.
“Quietly,” he warned, his eyes trained steadily upon her.
Danae narrowed her eyes, not trusting him an inch. Was this another part of their great plan to have her come over to their side? She resolutely said nothing, careful to keep her mind blank, unwilling to fall into yet another one of their little mind traps.
“You don’t have to say or do anything. Just follow along after me,” Janual said softly, extending an arm out to her cage. The locking device shimmered a moment, and then was gone in a way that Danae had seen the others do many times before. Still, she didn’t move. Janual sighed suddenly.
“Yeah, I did hear how that sounded. You don’t even have to believe that I want to help you if you don’t want to. Either way, come with me. If I’m taking you to them, you don’t have a choice either way. If not, I could give you more than you hoped for. Now, will you come voluntarily?”
The way he said it, so matter of factly, sparked something inside of Danae. Not that she fully believed him, or even cast aside much of her reserve; but as he said, if it was an order, she would have to go anyway, and if not, she had more to win than she had to lose. The way he’d put his words had seemed almost like a threat, except for the fact that she didn’t quite think that was so.
Danae shook her head sharply against those last thoughts. Caution! When was she going to learn that all things that she thought of down here as instinct were just fake, traitorous creatures? She could believe nothing. Everything could be tainted, played with, twisted and turned into some parody of its former shape. Nothing here was real.
So why now did this youngest member of the small gathering holding her here seem to come to her in the closest semblance to help since she had had Miakel?
Nothing here was real.
Danae’s breath hitched at the throat in reaction to the thought of her guardian who was now lost to her, even as she tried to hide it. Those monsters had let her out of this cage then too. There she had witnessed the gruesome, torturous death of the best friend she had even known. Did they have another such surprise lying in wait for her this time?
Whatever it was, Danae resolved to be prepared for it. They would not break her any further. She would erect an emotional barrier of rock that they would be unable to break through. Impenetrable.
Breathing evenly, Danae took the first steps out of her cage and towards Janual. She would see soon enough what their designs for her were. Thinking and worrying would not change that or help her now. However, for all of her internal monologues, she never saw coming what Janual said next.
“Hit me.”
“What?” Her whole appearance betrayed disbelief, before she inwardly railed at herself for showing that much of a reaction.
“Here.” He handed her a hard, metal rod from somewhere that she had not seen before. “Making it look real. What they will do to me after your escape on my watch will be nothing compared to what they’re planing to do to you on the morn.”
Escape? Although the word never exited her mouth, the unanswered question halted her hand from the bar that was held out in front of her.
“Well? Hurry up and do it! Do you want to get caught? Understand you are fast losing your value to them as an active player at the end. However, as leverage, you are beginning to gain much potential. Unfortunately, leverage does not have to be so well preserved…” Janual looked in Danae’s eyes deeply and the seriousness in his eyes could not be mistaken for a trick. “You know that they do not have to keep you alive to ransom you. They could kill you tomorrow if they wanted to. Not that they would. They enjoy the torture far to much for that.”
“Why? Why are you doing this for me? Aren’t you with them? What has suddenly changed your mind?” Danae’s eyes softened as she tried to understand where this gesture that he offered her was coming from.
“Someone like you could never hope to understand. Don’t try doing me any favors in your mind,” Janual told her harshly. It appeared that he had glimpsed the subtle changes in her eyes. “This does not make us friends; or even allies. If we by chance meet again, I will not stand on this action a second time. Do not think that even I could get away with this a second time. I would not give up the only family left to me for the likes of… trust me when I say that if it came down to it, I would harm you for them.”
“I believe you,” Danae said softly.
Janual looked at her in disdain.
“I don’t know exactly what you are to them, and I don’t much care. That’s not my problem. Now don’t make me tell you again. Or would you like to go back to the cage I pulled you from?”
Janual fell senselessly to the floor of the cellar. The metal bar fell with a dull ‘clank’ onto the stone slabs. Danae stared down at it and the childlike man who had helped her, without really seeing either of them.
She turned away and ran.
*
(I’m putting this in black between the two new scenes in purple so it can still stand out. You can change this later but my message for is here that put like this, you see that they turn Danae running away as uncaring of what happens to Mikael afterwards, except that the reader would know from previous scenes that she is still not aware that he is not there. Mikael used to be sure of this also, but time with their mind games has worn him down also. The main thing that he doesn’t know is that Danae already thinks Mikael is dead, again from previous scenes that I have to find a way of putting in here in some chronological flowing way. Hmmm)
“Well, it seems as though the little girl has decided to make a new path. One that means she has grown past you,” Dendrite informed Mikael meanly. “You realise of course, that this means that you have outlived your use to us now.”
Turning casually, Dendrite thrust his long, steel sword deep into Mikael’s abdomen.
(something…?)
“He’s dead,” Dendrite informed the others gathered there. “Stabbed him right in the gut, although not before I let him see how quickly and easily his little charge had found the way to move on without him. I’m really not sure what hurt him the most, her moving on, or the sword I left stuck inside of him.”
“So he’s dead,” Emanuel confirmed, knowing that this was all that was really of any importance. “Which leaves us free to do our own bidding with the child that’s left. ‘Kill the guardian, and only the child will remain (or something like that)’, the prophesy foretold. Now that the guardian is dead, the child ought to be free for the picking.”
The sound of horrid laughter from all those summoned and gathered there, followed this statement, with the exception only of Dentrite who got the distinct impression that the recognition he deserved for the deed committed by his hand appeared to be sorely lacking.
Just keeping this note in case we need it later - (Mikael, whom the others had left for dead, is somewhat recovered by Danae’s healing through the link that they have up between each other, something that none of them knew about or counted on. While it is popularly thought by bad and good alike that he is dead, Mikael escapes, albeit slowly and weakly, this only to be figured out when the bad guys go back to where his body was left and find it absent. A search for both him and Danae is conducted anew, in full force, while Mikael struggles to find shelter, his home, and Danae)
Janual watched with horror as Mikael slumped down on his chains, the choking sounds that echoed through the halls as Mikael took what Janual was sure were to be his last breaths. After a quick debate with himself, Janual swiftly looked over the hallways around him, evaluating at this point that all those others here would now be celebrating, and none would be back to dump Mikael’s lifeless body until much later.
With a decision made in an instant, Janual ran across the stone floors to Mikael’s side, and carefully did he pull out the sword from where Dendrite had left it to remain in Mikael’s abdomen, and put it into his belt to deal with later. Mikael groaned in pain and sunk lower in his chains, but never did he open his eyes, so far beyond it was he now. Janual resolved then that whatever else, the torture done to this man would stop at his death, there would be no more taken by this soon to be dead and lifeless body.
Kneeling in such a way that when Mikael’s body fell, it would fall against him, rather than with a louder noise onto the stone beneath them, Janual reached up to unchain the shackles from around Mikael’s wrists. Bracing himself for Mikael’s weight when he did fall, Janual put his arms around the trunk of his body, leaving his arms to flop around senselessly by his sides.
Slowly standing up, Janual paused just one more time to make sure that there would be no one to come back down here to find him before he had finished this deed which he did take upon himself to complete. Once reassured of his solitary state, Janual begun the slow journey back above ground, to find a place worthy of having this brave man’s body laid upon it.
(merging, I know this doesn’t fit, I might work it later, now I’m just figuring order out…)
“Oh no. Not that.”
Janual came across the bloodied mess that had once been Mikael.
“All for nothing,” he murmured to himself as he attempted to pick up the bulk of a man from the stone and chilled floor of the dungeon he had been dumped in after the torture. “What a waste.”
The body was beyond sensory pain now, Janual thought to himself as he scraped it along the floor. He reached the opening, where it was lightly beginning to snow.
“I can just leave him out here a little,” Janual mused aloud. “Nobody would ever know. By morning, the snow will have covered the body. It would not be found and the Child, Danae, would never be any the wiser.”
As it was, it was the weight that became too much for the 14 year old. Under a tree, a little way from the opening of the cave mouth leading into their dungeon, Janual dropped the body. Bowing his head in an almost unconscious gesture of respect, Janual turned as the snow became more biting and headed back to report that his job was done.
(here I’ve merged two into one but my mind’s too blurred with order to see if it merges as it is right now)
As he came to the cave’s entrance, Janual looked back, just once, now able to hear the muffled sounds of jollity being played out within. He bowed his head slightly to focus on Mikael, whom he still held in his arms, although, by now, he was beginning to sag. Janual stopped for a brief moment to adjust his weight, before heading off again.
It occurred to him twice during that time that he would not be able to go back again after this. It was too late to replace the body back to where Janual had first found it when he had been overcome with pity and the injustice felt towards what had been done here, and even if he were to do it, this would have the effect of making him no better than those others in there.
The first time, when he came to think this, he had to ask himself if he thought it so bad, really thought it so bad, to have to begin his life again, somewhere else, a place where he would not have the expectation placed upon him to be the spy, to commit those awful acts, or at least makes the beginnings of such horrid acts. As he went through this in his mind, he looked down again to the man he carried, and evaluated those feelings that were attributed to this act he now made.
It was not until he found that he must stop, a fair way from the cave now, between to tall, old standing trees, that Janual’s thoughts again came back to this subject. He lightly placed Mikael’s body down on the earth between the two trees, and Dendrite’s sword nearby, before sitting down himself and looking of into the distance.
He had never known anymore than what they had shown him. What had seemed wrong then had been aptly explained away by his brother, or one of the others. However, it had not escaped his attention, the underlying doubt that they had been starting to feel about him of late. He wasn’t even sure when it had begun, but he had always known that he was not like them. Beyond a doubt, he knew it now! As he looked back down to Mikael’s body, Janual thought back to any times when it might have been that he could have helped him, but hadn’t. He remembered the girl, Danae’s face, the anguish on it when he had come to tell her that her Mikael was dead. Little had he known then, that Mikael had been quite alive, and that it had been a trick played on him to test his faithfulness to Emenual and the others. Maybe he had failed, maybe he had passed, but now was definitely the time to begin to make up for all those past times of wrongdoings.
Janual stood up again, this time with single minded purpose, and after bowing in a show of his respect to the man lying on the ground, now passed, the boy turned away in the direction of the Capitol. It had been the last place where he’d heard Dentrite report ‘her’ to be. If he was lucky, she would still be there for him to find now, and if he was lucky, and she gave him the chance, maybe he could bring her help, this time, rather than hindrance.
(I’ve looked and beyond this point, there is no track of his character development up till the point that he reunites with Danae and meets Camael for the first time. Slack on our part!) * * * * *
In the blackness through which he sunk, Mikael felt the tugs of death. It pulled him softly in all directions, dispersing him through the night. The black was soft, so soft compared to the biting piercing pain and agony he knew as life. The path before him wavered, as though seen through heat. Rippling light shone through his release, it blinded and cut, bringing pain and life. In his body again, he moaned in despair. Would he never be free?
* * * * *
(you do not know for sure until later that Mikael is alive. Until then, you are only brought to this new cloaked character at the entrance of a monastery, pleading for Sanctuary or solace or something. The flashbacks only come after.)
*
The deer stopped by the tree, sniffing around its roots for the scent of food. Times were hard in the colder seasons, no less for the animal kingdom. Food was scarce. The animal burrowed deeper, suddenly bumping against something buried beneath the days old snow.
Grabbing with its teeth, the deer reared back with some sort of torn cloth in its mouth. Spitting it back down onto the snow, hooves dug apart the snow. When it burrowed for another taste, the cloth was found to be attached to some sort of flesh. Both were slowly unearthed by the deer’s slow insistence.
Dropping it unceremoniously on top of the snow, the deer sniffed its unconscious prey, nudging it with the tip of its wet nose.
(this bit I’m not so sure about…)
“Shoona, what’s this you’ve found then?” a voice came from out of the mists. “What matter of beast is this?”
The man cam up alongside the deer, or Shoona, as it had been called by the man who now bent down to turn over the body.
“By the gods. It’s a man!”
* * * * *
* * * * *
“Child, you’re bleeding!”
Huh? Danae’s sleep clogged mind refused to work as she was dragged from blissful sleep of tortured dreams. However, the shadows were being forced to recede, at the same time as pushing her forward. She had no choice in it. Nobody heard her unvoiced objections.
“What is it? Please… go away…” she mumbled, more in the awake than she wished for.
“Get her a healer. She is severely injured. How did we miss this when we took her in with us?” the man mused above her. Danae’s brow furrowed in confusion. Were they talking about her? But nothing was wrong with her. She was about to let them know that this was all for nothing, when a sharp pain ran her through, robbing her of all her breath and other thought.
“Quickly! We are fast losing her!” that same man said, with more urgency than even before. Danae was dimly aware that he rested a cool hand on her forehead. “Don’t fear, child. You shall be find. Just hold there. Hold.”
She didn’t even try.
* * * * *
When she woke up, it was like she was in a different world. Bright, white light all around her, and then the imprint of it under her eyelids whenever she closed her eyes. It was horrible. Just where had they taken her, these people who had promised to help with whatever had been wrong with her? Stupid of her to trust. Never again. She would leave now. Why couldn’t she move?
“Ah, there you are. And awake again too, I see. You gave us quite a scare back there.”
That voice at least seemed familiar. She attempted a reply, and found that her vocal cords seemed far from well used. How long had she been kept here?
“What is…?”
“You will be better soon. I assure you. The worst is definitely passed.” The words seemed to fade in and out of Danae’s awareness. She couldn’t quite seem to hold onto anything hard in the short time that she was here. “… just need some more rest… better… later…”
(not exactly sure what her ‘wounds’ were, mental/physical/other, but they were definitely parallel to Mikael’s, not that you know that at this point which is why we focus on her injuries instead of him; and spawned from that dream.)
* * * * *
Hester looked at the bedraggled wretch whom he had opened his door to. Concern suffused his features. He extended his hands out to reach for the man urgently.
“Oh, do come in! Please! What is your name?” Hester asked, drawing him inside and closing the door firmly behind them both.
“Richardo…” the man said weakly, before passing out.
“Hester? What is it?” his wife, Mallary asked, as she came up into the room behind him. She gasped when she saw the man, Richardo, unconscious on their living room floor. “Who is it?” she whispered, unable to take her eyes off him.
“He just appeared on our doorstep.” Hester looked down at Richardo again. “As he was, there was no chance that I would turn him away.”
Mallary nodded in understanding, before drawing herself together and saying, “I should get something to heal his wounds. They look simply awful. I wonder what happened to him.”
“I guess we’re going to have to wait until he wakes up to find out,” Hester said.
* * * * *
“Girl, take a good long look at yourself, you’re just not equipped to be a man. Now, I’m not saying that you have to go all prissy but there’s more to life than just bein’ a good fighter.”
Danae continued to stare sullenly at the floor tiles. At her silence Aratai continued, “Come now, you can’t tell me you never looked at the dresses them girls wear...” Her knowing smile was lost on Danae who looked up at her with painful fire in her eyes,
“You know nothing about what I think and you never will! I’m not your daughter, I don’t want those silly dresses and I’ll never be all that you want me to be. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about who I am! Just stay away from me.” She turned, running down to the gate in the wall and, opening it; she shot one last desperate look at Aratai before vanishing into the busy street.
“Mamma, what’s wrong with Danae?”
“Nothing dear, she’s just being... temperamental”
* * * * *
(she goes to Kel’s and asks to stay with her, she doesn’t like the whole ‘family’ scene, can’t deal with it, it is so different to what she had and she is torn between her childish longing for it and terribly missing Mikael and his lifestyle. She now begins to realize that she doesn’t really want that type of life but likes what she has/had only she won’t admit it yet.
Kel is at first worried about what Danae is asking, thinking that she needs privacy and a babbling girl will disrupt that but takes her in after she has sent her back and the ‘mother’ of the house speaks with her about Danae’s unseemly behavior.
This is the first of Danae’s rebelling although it isn’t true rebelling, it’s just seen that way. Danae doesn’t get all ‘damn society and their rules’ but she does her own thing. The ‘mother’ objects to the training Danae does.
“It’s not feminine, she’s setting a bad example for the girls”)
* * * * *
The man was convinced that both of his shoulders were dislocated. The way that they merely hung, having little to no life of their own, and barely responding to the commands that were sent to them via his brain, appeared to back up this assumption. He had no idea where he was now, only where he needed to be. And that was wherever the child Danae was. He would not let her slip so easily from his fingers again!
* * * * *
“~Eh, na-po, ara-ti mai. Kolulopo tai?
Eh, na-jai, a mara ti dai, Kolulopo hai ...~”
A mad woman pottered about in her garden, singing in her gibberish near to where Danae sat, hidden from view. The sounds made no sense, they were of no true tongue yet the sound conveyed more than words would ever have about peaceful longing that had passed its stages of stormy grief to the tranquil ache Danae could only hope for. She sat up, listening closer with her talent as opposed to her ears.
“An alah geh-bo my taba cai-to, ana li, For you ih makhr...” In her mind, the words of madness began to slowly clear. “Ah silent hijo xai.” The last two words sung so clearly of pain that Danae stood, watching the woman now.
“Mai soul ist silte, formaita you, I bleed beloved so,
An ever haine... ” The woman turned to see Danae and, eyes widening, covered her head with her arms. She shouted more gibberish then fled, as though Danae would hurt her.
“Please, “Danae called after her “Please, don’t run” But the woman heeded not.
A voice sounded from behind her “She’s afraid of men.”
Danae spun with a scowl, “What are you talking about, I’m not a man”
“But you dress like one, that crazy crone wouldn’t see past the pants” The girl surveyed Danae with amusement, “You’re right though, defiantly not a man.” The girls around her tittered “Any man who was built like that would be... {I can’t catch what she says}”
Danae struggled for a cutting reply but the moment was lost and the girls walked off skirts swinging with their swaying hips, giggling.
Again Danae sunk to the ground, why was everything so confusing when you got around people? Nothing was simple anymore. Sinking her face into her hands she sat, feet sliding in the dust and slowly, as the pressure built in her chest, she cried. Silently and swiftly the tears fell until she wiped them harshly back. “I’m not going to cry. I told myself I wasn’t going to cry anymore.” Sniffing she got to her feet and, brushing the dirt from her pants, she slowly jogged off to train some more.
* * * * *
(At first this bit confused me... no, it still does...)
Danae watched as the young man trained with his father, the image blurred and she could almost swear that it was Mikael there, teaching her as he had when she was young, the blurring stayed and she realized it was tears. She shrugged her shoulders back. Picking up her staff she began to drill.
When she stopped to rest she heard a voice behind her,
“You know, it’s no only men that fight. You don’t have to pretend to be what you’re not just because you want to be violent.”
Danae ignored her.
“I know you hear me, even if you are too rude to acknowledge me. If you want, we train the passing before dawn. They’ll kill me for telling you about it but everyone deserves a chance to be with their own kind, even if you refuse to accept what you are.” Danae spun to retort but the girl had turned to leave already and to call after her would be so… silly. Her shoulders slumped and she sat, brooding.
* * * * *
(insert something about Danae travelling through wilderness to get to the main town as well after this which is think could go here. Stop me if I’m wrong!)
* * * * *
Richardo opened bleary eyes with strange images stirring in his mind. He realised that he was in no room that he recognised, before groaning at the pounding aches that seemed to cover his whole body and skull, making him seriously suspect the possibility that someone had come along to him with a sledgehammer and grounded his body deep into the board beneath him.
A sounds pierced into his awareness, setting of a thousand new dagger wounds through his eyes all around his head.
"Mother? I think that he's woken up."
There was the sound of rustling nearby. Footsteps. A burning coldness against his skin. He asn't quite sure where.
"Um, Richardo? Are you awake?"
Shuffling. Through the daggers that continued to torture him, and slashed open his eye lids, Richardo struggled to focus. White light instantly blinded him. Then through that, came the dimmest emergence of actual form. Beginning as darker shades, Richardo was soon able to make out two silhouettes; one taller than the other. The taller one stood by his bedside.
He struggled to make it out more clearly, before his eyes strayed sideways, almost of their own accord, to the second figure. It struck him that there was something familiar about this figure. Something he couldn't quite get his finger on, but if he would just think about it a little while longer...
And then it was gone.
"Where...?" The effort of that one word was far too great and the whiplash from it left Richardo gasping for breath. New pain broke out all around him, seething even down to his lungs every time he breathed. His throat felt wretched. Helpless.
Coldness came again. This time he was able to decipher, only just, that it was against his forehead. Down his cheek. And the other one. The sheet that lay over him like a sheet of cement was lowered an inch or so, allowing the coldness to seep lower. Over his throat. His collarbone; lightly dabbing, harshly stabbing.
It was all too much. He vanished again to unconsciousness.
The heavy skirts she wore swept gracefully across the floor, as she moved around the small room. A single small window set in the top corner of the room, allowed a slanted patch of golden light to filter in through the air, catching light across the deep auburn of her hair and the red of her dress, small pale hands that deftly manipulated the shuttle of the large loom which she came to sit down in front of.
There began a contented clacking sound as she came to begin her work.
(there’s more of a reason and context for this part of a scene, even though it is not yet complete)
* * * *
(After Danae left that place and as she was coming closer to the Capitol, Dendrite sent a group of shadow figures after her, ones that could do naught but haunt and plenty to scare. I think this may even be a quote, either by Janual when he finds out about them hunting and following her, or by his older brother when they next see each other much after. They were also trackers. As long as they were close by, the ones she had run from knew where she was. This was an additional part of the fear factor. It is these who she is running from at the opening of this scene)
* * * * *
Alternatively running and stumbling, looking haltingly over her shoulder every few seconds in the following minutes, Danae made a panicked way through what she assumed had to be the main street of this new town she found herself in. Breathing rapidly, in, out, in, out, her eyes took in the sights of the half darkened street around her.
So intent was she upon her new surroundings and whoever had been following her before, Danae barely noticed until she was fallen on top of him, that a person had just come into her path. As she began to fall, she became aware of a strong hand grasping around her upper arm, preventing her from her untimely decent.
Slightly disorientated, Danae slowly came back up to steady footing, ready to face the young man whom she had just bumped into. He was an attractive looking man, of obviously high background who couldn’t have been much older than her, with well-kept reddish brown hair, and deep, kind, friendly looking eyes, which were at that moment creased in some concern.
“Are you quite alright?” he asked her with worry evident in his voice.
“Uh, yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry to have knocked into you like that; I guess I wasn’t really watching were I was going. I hope I didn’t get you too bad,” Danae said, appearing distracted in her attempts to avoid eye contact with him. Revealing her face front on to anyone right now was not very high on her list of good things to do!
“No, no, not at all,” the young man said, confused by her obvious evasiveness, and tilting his head from side to side in attempts to get a better glimpse of her full face, attempts which Danae continued to avoid.
“Well, I’m sure if you’re okay, and I’m certainly okay, that I’d be best to get back on my way,” she said, in haste to be gone from here already. “Sorry again for stopping you.”
“That’s quite fine,” the man said in perplexed tones, “You didn’t stop me at all. Are you sure you’re quite alright?”
At the genuine worry in his voice, Danae ignored her sense of caution for a moment to look up at him square in the face, her own wonderment at his concern evident in her features.
“Ah, so there you are,” he said good-naturedly. “I wondered what you looked like under all that hair and shadows. So what’s wrong, hmm? What are you running away from?”
Danae’s eyes widened instantly at these words, and the urge to run again came upon her. “Run? What makes you think that I want to run?”
“Hey, calm down there, okay? It’s alright, I won’t hurt you,” the young man said to her, having noticed the wild, scared rabbit look in her eyes. He held out his hands to her in an attempt to calm her. “Stay with me now. Maybe I can help.”
Even seeing that this man, little more than a boy really, was intent on his offers of help, Danae struggled to understand exactly how he could help, or even understand what was going on with her right now.
“Uh, no, it’s alright, really,” Danae said, looking briefly over her shoulder as she said it, in those moments not totally sure whether it was him, this unknown stranger, that she was trying to convince, or herself.
“Now come on, you know that’s not true,” the man said, taking her arm in his again, this time far more gently, but still mildly insistent. “Here, come with me. I’ve got a place where we could go to talk.”
Caution coming rapidly back into place, Danae hung back from his insistent pulling. “No, it’s alright, really. I can take care of myself. I’m not even going in that direction. I needed to go this way, but feel free to go where you need to go. It’s not like you need to look after me or anything. I mean, after all, we’ve just met!”
Danae tried to force out a derogatory laugh at the thought of him having any protective instincts towards her after only moments of acquaintance. However, the same laughter did not reach the man in front of her, and soon it died out of Danae also. He sighed.
“So, why don’t we start over again?” the man asked (acquiescingly?). “I’m Camael. What’s your name?”
“Sabrim. My name’s Sabrim.”
With a nod and a small smile, Camael reached out his hand this time, looking down to hers, asking this time, without words, whether she would come with him or not. Looking down to his hand also, Danae gave a small shake of the head.
“I’m sorry... no,” she said, staring at that hand. “No,” she said again, before disappearing into the night.
* * * * *
“Your pay for the week. Don’t spend it too quickly. Remember you still have your rent to be paid biweekly.”
Danae lowered her eyes from the dry tone to the pay package sitting in her palm. It seemed worryingly thin.
“This… this is it?” she asked hesitantly.
“I’ll have you know that it’s more than a sizeable amount for the work that you complete around here,” her boss flared.
“I’m sure it is,” Danae hastened to assure. “It’s just that with living expenses being as they are, and pay being so little… I don’t understand how you can require so much rent from us.”
“Life is hard, little princess,” the boss told her severely. “I hope that you didn’t expect to just walk into a job and have them paying you the highest salary, for if you did, you will find yourself sorely mistaken. It takes years for any of the girls to climb that high, almost a lifetime for most. More than you will ever hope to achieve with your distracted air around your work!”
Danae took the admonishment in stride. She knew that it would do no good trying to explain herself. It would only come across as whining, for which she would only get penalised in her pay next fortnight and told something along the lines of, “Well everyone lives with hardships, dearie.”
“I don’t know what to do with you. I offer my estate for you to live within, let you rent out one of our finer rooms, and all you have are complaints. Maybe if you spent less time arguing and more time working, you would find things went a lot easier for you.”
In the face of that grossly unfair statement, Danae only barely found the restraint to hold back an indignant retort. Finer room? After the manor that she had lived in with Mikael for most of her life, and the estate with Laithlyn before that, this place within town could only be regarded as little better than a hovel, at best!
“Then I thank you kindly,” Danae forced out between gritted teeth, knowing that no more could be gotten out of this conversation, if one could even call it that. “It was very generous of you to give me this much.”
“That is it,” the boss said huffily. “And from now on, you’d best remember where your checks are coming from, missy. Without them, where would you be? Living on the streets, without my charity, mind my words! I dismiss you now, but remember to be back in at first light on the morn, understood?”
“Of course,” Danae said, with a slight inclination of the head.
(when she meets Camael, it is because she is searching to find something that will release her from this ‘temporary’ solution of work, through possible past acquaintances met through Mikael and her history together, or even just someone with a faint memory for Mikael. She is getting desperate by this stage)
She walked outside into the rainy street, blissful and at peace. Soft loving spread through her and she felt calm but grieved. Mikael’s death still tore at her heart and her words haunted her, she could never forget him. The guiding force in her life. (The reality of this changes for a while as she gets caught up in things that are trivial but seem to have the world resting on them.)
(even though this is really small, there is something about this, like, some sort of a turning point that happens in this moment. I think you wrote it. Does the turning point idea help at all??)
*
(a lot happens between these two scenes: much of the Danae/Camael stuff yet to be written)
* * * * *
He stood above his victim, watching with glee as he writhed in pain, the body on the ground convulsing, twisting. The man would not last long; he could not. He was not strong enough. Carefully guiding the feelings of each person was so dear to him, like guiding a child. He felt very fatherly toward his subjects, like a mentor, steering each student on a path to self-discovery. And yet, he always felt so unsatisfied with the weakness of the human body, it was so frail, the mind often more so. Many a student would survive the physical torture but his mind; his weak little mind would betray the body’s small show of strength…
* * * * *
Danae stumbled and fell hard onto the cobblestones, clutching her stomach in obvious pain.
“Danae! What is it? Danae?” Camael called to her anxiously, instantly putting strong, young arms around her.
“Camael, it’s…I don’t know,” Danae said, half in a daze caused by pain.
“Oh shit, you’re bleeding!” Camael cried, as he drew his hand back from her, a hand now wet with her blood. “Quick, I’ll help you stand. We’ve got to get you to a medic.” His voice was frantic as he said the words.
“No,” Danae gasped, “No doctor.”
“What else are we going to do then, Danae?” Camael asked her. “I’m sure as hell not going to let you bleed to death!”
“Don’t have to,” Danae spoke in a whisper. “Let me on the ground. Put your hand on my head…”
“Danae, stop it! You’re delirious. You need help!” Camael cried.
“No, listen to me!” Danae said urgently, using precious energy to get the words out. “We don’t have much time. Put one of your hands on my forehead, then over the wound. Do it now, Camael!”
“Okay, okay,” Camael said, a harried expression on his face, attempting to cater to her wishes. “But you’ve got to promise me that if this doesn’t work, you’ll let me get you to some help.”
“There is no help for this!” Danae said savagely, between clenched teeth. “Now do as I say!”
Camael, taken aback by her harshness did as she commanded without another word. She closed her eyes and attempted to concentrate on filtering her natural powers of healing through the strength of Camael’s body and back into her own in an attempt to stem the blood flow and quicken the healing process. She took deep breaths, in and out, ignoring the gasp that wracked through Camael’s body as he felt her intrusion.
She knew exactly how it felt, almost as though someone was sucking in all of your life energy and internal organs in through a vacuum from the inside of you, and showing no mercy doing it. It was only with the secure knowledge that Camael would sustain no lasting problems after this ended pressed Danae to forcing herself in around and past the blocks he instinctively put up inside of himself. She doubted he was even aware of doing it, but that made them nonetheless strong.
Once in, there was next to no difficulty in taking the process to its natural completion. Camael watched with shock filled eyes as first the bleeding below his hand ceased, before the edges of the wound itself appear to pucker around the edges, and even move closer towards the middle in the attempt of closing the gap left. He withdrew his hand quickly, only to swiftly return it there at Danae’s pain filled calling of his name.
And then, with a suddenness that belied the whole event’s importance, it was over. Danae took one last deep breath and opened her eyes, letting out the breath in one long sigh. Camael lifted both of his hands up in front of his face to stare at them, utterly stunned at the turn of events that he had just witnessed.
“Did I just do that?” he asked, not taking his eyes off of his hands, as though they might without warning go off to make some other miraculous miracle occur if he didn’t keep a close watch on them.
“Of course not, you dolt,” Danae said, still weak. “Now you can help me up, please. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it back home on my own.”
“Yes, right, of course!” Camael said, darting to his feet and stretching his arms out to her, resolving to leave all questions for answering when they were again settled at home.
(does it work to have the two scenes becoming one here?)
The travel home was long and slow for Danae and Camael, hampered mostly by Danae’s frequent need to stop every few minutes to recatch her breath and to make sure that again the wound hadn’t reopened and started bleeding again. Although she had been able to heal it somewhat, there still remained the deep feel of fire within her, one that wouldn’t go away and was made worse with every jolting step they took.
“Oh Camael, I need to stop again,” Danae pleaded with him, for the umpteenth time.
“Hang on, Danae, just a little bit longer. We’re almost home now. As soon as we get there, you can sit down and rest without having to get up again,” Camael pleaded with her, trying to make their travel as painless as was humanly possible.
(and here?)
“Okay, since being around you, I have seen many strange things happen, many strange things, but this…that was like nothing I’ve seen before, and…I’m really not quite sure what to make of it!” Camael admitted, as he strode agitatedly back and forth on the carpet in front of where Danae reclined.
“Please, Camael, stop. Not only are you going to wear a whole there in the carpet where you walk, but you are beginning to make me feel very dizzy,” Danae admonished weakly.
“See? Even that! You’re not even affected by what just happened. And just what is that supposed to make me think, huh?” Camael asked her, needing answers. “Just what is that meant to make me think?”
“Alright, calm down, Camael. This really isn’t as big a deal as you’re making it out to be,” Danae said, too tired to calm him with anything other than words.
“Isn’t it?” he asked, “Then just tell me what is! You were bleeding heavily from the abdomen, and then, just like that, it healed itself.”
“I’m sorry, Camael. I can’t explain it now. I need to…I need sleep. Maybe when I wake up, when I’ve rested some…” Danae drifted off. The trip home had truly sapped the last of her strength, and as she slept, Camael made sure to keep constant watch over her.
(there is a morning after scene where they talk and Camael is slightly apologetic over his reaction, as there is something that he is hiding from her, which is also let out in the open in this big revealing talk scene… I’ll get around to it eventually)
* * * * *
(there is a festival, many festivities here, but I am not sure whether Janual is there or not, and this will decide where it happens within the story)
Danae and Camael walked together, hand in hand down the middle of Main Street, amongst all the night time stalls that were beginning to set up for the festival.
(for some reason, there is a need for the two of them to appear to be involved to everyone to see them)
Around them, were all the sights and smells which had always before been quite absent from Danae’s life, so secluded had she always been in the house that had been her home from the time she’d been 4 still just mere months ago from this time now. Until recently, she had had no cause to realize all it was that she had been missing all this time, for if she had, then surely nothing would have kept her in the one place for so very long!
* * * * *
The tall windows seemed to go on forever to the small boy, who rushed along the cobblestones paving the narrow alleyway that he was passing through. His golden hair flashed with light as he passed through the tall slits of the vibrant, pastel colored sunset that fell through the gaps between the houses and shops he went past. His small feet echoed loudly in the passageway, and there was a cringe on his face at the thought that someone might hear this and find him here in this place that he always before been forbidden to him.
But that was before, Janual reminded himself. They had no power over him here and now. As much as they liked to think otherwise, they did not have the talent to dog his every step, to follow him here and to know what it was that he had done, did now plan to do.
* * * * *
The dark man, recovered months ago from the depths of snow, stood at the gate of the cottage that had sheltered him through the worst of this whether. No longer were the clothes on his back ragged or torn from misuse and torture. Also, he had been given a warm cloak to shield off the harsher winds and weather at the end of the cold season.
It had taken many weeks to regain the strength to stand, let alone to regain his sense of self and purpose. Still a further few to regather his former strength and health. It was finally time for him to go back to address issues long passed. They could no longer keep him contained.
He set off.
* * * *
“You what?” Danae didn’t know whether to laugh or just dismiss it out of hand. Either way, this couldn’t be real. He couldn’t really be serious about what he said.
“Why is it so hard to believe?” Camael asked, stepping before her so that there was no polite way to just avoid his gaze. Not that that didn’t stop her from trying. “We spend at a lot of time together. We know that we’re compatible. And we have fun. Where’s the problem?”
“The problem is; isn’t all that enough? Why try to complicate it?”
She looked warily at this boy, no, this man who had been her friend and ally for longer that any other before or after Mikael. Her eyes dropped to the ground as she fought herself to regain composure, she had enough to deal with. All of her other emotional baggage could wait.
“How? When did this happen? How could I have missed something like this?” Her skin seemed to shrink around her and she felt again like a lost little child without control over the direction of her life.
“I’m the first to (emphasise) your abilities Danae, but you can’t expect to know everything, anyway, there are things that people are happy to look over…”
Danae moaned as she covered her face with her hands, Camael waited a moment before gently pulling them aside.
“Danae, you can’t hide from this”
“You can’t just throw something like (this) at me! How do you expect me to take it? You know how important you are to me. Why do you have to ruin it? Couldn’t we keep everything the same as always? Think about it, we live together. What will people say?” Her crumbling attempts at well-founded excuses fell into an ungraceful heap.
“Come now Danae, you and I both know that you don’t care about what they say. This is between us, but maybe that’s the problem...”
There was a noise outside and his last words were lost as Danae jumped up to answer the door.
“Just a minute” she called, although she was unsure to whom she directed the remark.
There was a slight shudder of warning as she opened the door but the shock of seeing just who was standing there struck her with startling awareness all the same. Her hand fell dumbly from the doorknob to her side without her even noticing. She stepped back, her breathing short and shallow.
Recovering her senses again she made to close the door in his face but she was too slow. Janual braced his hand against the wood.
It was only then that Danae called out in desperation “Camael!”
It seemed that her was by her side immediately, responding to the panic in her voice.
“Who are you?”
“I don’t want to hurt you. I come as a free agent. Well, as free as anyone can be in these times, I suppose.” Janual met Danae’s eyes with intensity, that built credence in his words. “I know what was said between us in the past. I only wish to make up for it now. I left Emanual and the others. I can’t go back now. I swear to you that they want me now just as much as they want you.” “So give me one reason why I shouldn’t just give you to them? Why do you think that I would allow you entry into my home? If what you say is even true and they try to track you, which I assure you they will, you will lead them straight to me, giving them two things that they want at the one time. No, I think that I should throw you out right now; that would buy me more time to get out myself.”
She could feel Camael standing directly behind him, could imagine the shocked expression on his face. He had never before seen her like this; so hard, and she could imagine that he couldn’t like what he was seeing now. Regardless of what he might or mightn’t think of her, Danae schooled her face into a firm, uncompromising expression. Camael didn’t know what she’d been through, or how her history crossed Janual’s because she had never deigned to tell him. But if he felt for her the way that he said he did, then this was just one very real part of her that he was going to have to deal with.
“Well? Have you ought to say to that, or should I close the door right now? It gets dark. I advise you to find shelter quickly.” “Please.” That one word, so heartbreakingly spoken, but without the whine of begging would have melted the tower of her resolve had it been anyone else standing there. “I have nowhere else to go.”
For a moment, Danae wavered, so striking was his plea. Even while loathe to take her eyes off her past abuser for a second, she glanced backwards to see how Camael was taking all of this. His expression was inscrutable, not allowing her to see into any of him. Turning back to Janual, his eyes caught hers steadily.
“Please.”
* * * * *
(oh, the flowing of the ‘pleases’ works so well here!!)
“Please. Help me.” Word croaked out through a raw, damaged throat of the man who stood at the door of the cathedral.
(there’s more to this scene, but then, there are more to heaps of scenes. Can you tell how long I’ve been working at this by now?)
* * * * *
(there is so much happening around and after this that it’s not funny. Really noticing just how much we haven’t written yet right now. Have you been writing lately??
danae gives herself up to the ‘powers that be’ more than once for answers. This is the first time. Her answers come to her in the form of her enemy. Whether it is his spiritual shape or just something taking his form, I am not sure)
Danae’s eyes were closed as she spoke.
“Give it up. I prey to you, give it all up now. Whatever is being caused, there is no need for it right now.”
“And why now would you say that?”
A second form stepped out of the shadows; a form quite familiar to Danae from the endless nightmares that she still suffered from. But he could not hurt her here. She would not be touched by him in this place. Still, there was the inherent charm that Danae was quite aware that Emanuel had at his disposal, and she shuttered it out from her mind, determined to ignore it. “Innocent people are going to die here. You have no cause to do such a thing. What could possibly be the ultimate aim of it? They know nothing of any of this. You would make them suffer simply for your gain?” Danae asked, trying to reason him out of this. If it was at all possible, it would happen here.
Emanuel shrugged seemingly without a care.
“Casualties of war,” he said tonelessly. “But anyway, why should you care? It is not like they are your people. Come to speak of it, it’s not even like you know who or what your people are. Or were.”
Danae closed her eyes, even as her jaw gritted.
“They are all my people,” she emphasised. “I know that much and I know what is right. I demand that you let all of this go!”
“Or you’ll what?” Emanuel was clearly unafraid of her threats. “It occurs to me that you wouldn’t be ‘asking’ me like this if you thought that you could do something about it on your own. Could it be that they great and powerful, prophesised ‘Child of the Light’ looks to be as helpless in all of this as those she would seek to protect?”
Danae glared at him warningly.
“I think that your decision has been made,” Emanuel continued. “All those many years ago. I told you then that I could have made you very powerful. Maybe then if you had taken my advice, you would have been strong enough to overpower me now. Don’t you remember, Danae? It is always our past actions that bring us here to the present. Instead of taking my advice then, you beg me to come here with you now, to talk it over like some simpering fool similar to the ones that you live with. Ah yes, I know that your beloved savior Januel is living with you. I also know that it makes conflict within the household. But not for too much longer. Don’t worry about that. I’ll take care of both of them in due time, starting with my beloved little brother. You had your decision many years ago, child. Now don’t you think it’s my turn?” He vanished then, leaving Danae staring after him in appalled desolation.
**** “Januel, we have to get you out of here. It’s not safe anymore,” Danae said, rushing forth into the room he and Camael shared.
“Huh? What are you talking about, Dan?” Januel asked sleepily. It was still the middle of the night, and Januel was far too deep in sleepland to make sense of what was being said to him right now.
Impatient, Danae shook him.
“We have to get you out of here now!” she said, raising her voice and rousing Camael.
“Hey there, what’s all this fuss? Don’t you know what time it is Danae?” he asked, sitting up blearily in bed. “Time for Januel here to die now if he doesn’t get up, right now! You’re brother knows that you’re here. Will you listen to me?”
“My brother? How do you know what my brother knows?” Januel asked, looking at her in confusion.
“I just do, okay? Don’t ask questions,” Danae said, defensiveness taking over her impatience. It did not go past Camael’s notice.
“Oh no, Danae. You haven’t been practice those magic trace works again, have you?” He groaned. “You remember what happened last time.”
“I was stupid and I made a mistake. This time it’s going to be you guys who make the mistake if you don’t listen to me. Why aren’t you coming?”
“Danae, did he tell you how much time we’ve got left?” Camael asked patiently, getting out of bed and pulling his breeches on. “Well no, not exactly, but why would he? He’s hardly going to give away all of his secrets, to me of all people. All I know is that we have to get out of here. Pack up the stuff you’re going to need. We leave by cover of darkness.”
As quick as she had entered, she swept from their room.
“A bundle of joy, your Danae, isn’t she?” Januel asked around a yawn as he resigned himself to the fate of having to get up. “Just a little high strung, wouldn’t you say?”
(as they travel, she tells them about Laithlyn, and how they’re going to need his help, and the quickest way to get his attention is to mind link with him, something that Camael is against, so they have to waste time in convincing him and then Laithlyn almost falls over in his surprise over her first contact with him like that in years and invites/tells her to get to him as quick as possible)
* * * * *
He stepped into the cool shadow cast onto the ground by the cathedral above. The calm feel of the building almost seemed to seep through the walls over to where he now stood, penetrating right through his heavy tunic and straight into his soul. The man was overcome by the compulsion to enter this holy place, to step out from the loud, busy, dusty street that stood behind him and to melt away into the peripheral.
Images suddenly consumed him; consumed all of his senses to the point of near overload. The man almost sank to his knees by the sheer force of them.
As they slowly receded back into the deeper recesses of his mind, the man steadied his own footing, before facing the cathedral once more, and stepping inside.
* * * * *
(preparing herself to find out more about an upcoming bad she has felt coming. There must be some more lead up to it than this. Why hasn’t it been written yet?? is it actual physical and the others just can’t be allowed to remember it, or is it her spiritual journey?)
“Come forth to me, child, do you trust me?” the cleric asked of her, while Camael and Janual merely watched on, riveted.
Danae nodded once, slightly unsure, then once again, with more conviction, starting over to where he requested. Once in front of him, he lifted both hands to either side of her head, and almost as though as a reflex, Danae’s eyelids fluttered closed, as she stood, apparently with total serenity, in front of the cleric in the brown robes.
Then he too closed his eyes, and both of them remained standing as they were, in between Janual and Camael, quickly moving along to become utterly oblivious to either of their presences.
Danae opened her eyes to take in a woman, as she stood now with her back to her, staring out of the tall window in front of her, her wings, as natural on her as the golden hair that cascaded down her back, spanned the length of her body, without being outstretched. Somehow, Danae knew instinctively that this was the woman Elayne, the woman who had carried her, who had given her birth, who had loved her in those few and only moments she had had with her. That this…this was her mother.
Feeling as though she should trip over herself in the attempt to run over, to scream to her mother that it was her, her own daughter, grown up and witnessing her for the first impossible time, Danae was not surprised to find that she could not move from where she could stand. This vision of her mother faded, never the wiser to the fact that her daughter had been given the gift of watching her where she stood. A new vision appeared, this one with the woman, her mother, bathed in light, holding a small babe close to her chest as though it were the most important thing in the world to her. With her head bent down over the babe, the woman’s eyes were softened in love, and the gifts that she had herself to pass on to her.
Gifts of wisdom, of strength, of friends and the knowledge of what’s right and wrong. So many things that she would never be given the chance to teach her daughter, but that would be prominent in her from the moment of her birth due to inheritance. Some things were just genetic…like the wings.
(have we ANY mention of winged types before here? At least, any consistent mentions, cause I’m coming up severely lacking myself…)
Danae struggled with the harsh sounds that wanted to fight their ways from her vocal passages, was convulsed by the sheer effort to keep still, to retain the image of her mother, watching her as her mother stared down at her younger self. It was not to be. The image blurred, and rippled, before fragmenting completely, leaving Danae wide open to the scream that wrecked through her entire body and out through her mouth. It was uncontrollable; she certainly didn’t know how to control it!
But then suddenly there it was, and as she stepped away from the cleric, whose eyes betrayed no sign that all had not gone as he had expected it to, Danae turned to regard her friends, Camael and Janual, both of whom looked like they could each have been knocked over by feathers. “Nah, nah, nah,” Janual insisted, not reacting at all to her obvious pain. “Am I missing something? Since when did little missy over here have wings? Cause I’m sure for one that if you had been walking around this place with wings like that, then I sure as hell would have noticed something way before this!”
Camael was a little quieter in his stunned disbelief in the events which had just taken place, remembering, as Danae was at that moment, the moments between them as they had each come to realize Camael’s true state.
“Foolish of me to think that I was special, I guess,” he said, slowly walking up towards her, his own wings swishing the ground behind him as he took her hands in his, the stunned look in his eyes beginning to just as slowly ebb.
Danae couldn’t speak, felt almost as though if she were to, then she would break this spell that had befallen her. In just minutes, she had seen her mother for the first time, come to fully realize all of those gifts which were her birthright, including these wings which cast an odd weight that she was not yet used to, onto her back, so that she was constantly adjusting her weight just to balance it out.
(there are dreams, we haven’t yet written them yet, where she is with wings, and the dream as a whole has made sense to her, even happened afterwards, but never before could she understand or acknowledge those wings as real… before this point) “The battle is almost upon us,” the cleric said, speaking for the first time since coming back, and reminding them all again of his presence there among them. “There is still much that you each must learn in order to prepare yourselves and others for this time. Camael, you also have much to learn in the during time.”
Camael struggled to conceal his surprise that someone such as him could ever have a large part in any prophesy that was to be played out around him, to nod sagely in reply to the cleric’s sincere statement. Their roles established, they began to understand the parts that they were to play, and now only remained how to go about it, while they still had time.
* * * * *
Camael held a broken Danae in his arms as he kicked at the closed door of their townhouse. There was still no reply.
“Janual, dammit! Open this stupid door!” Camael screamed out. “Dammit!” He kicked at the door again for good measure.
Hastily, the door was opened and Janual’s hesitant face could be seen from around the edge of it. Camael pushed past him rudely with the side of his body. Janual’s expression swiftly changed from hesitant to indignant behind them.
“Well, how was I supposed to know that it was the two of you? For all I knew, it could have been…” Janual trailed off. “What happened to her?”
Camael lay Danae’s body down onto the soft couch with care. “I’m okay, you guys. Really. I just need some… rest.” She closed her eyes and lay an arm over her eyes.
“She hasn’t told me yet what happened to her yet. Maybe she was waiting until she was in the comfort of home of friends both nearby so she would only have to say it once,” Camael said pointedly.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine,” Danae insisted. “That’s not important. What’s important is that we’re going to have to rally everyone around that we can. As quick as we can and… ahh…” Her words came out muffled at best and inspiring of nobody’s trust, before they drifted off altogether. Silence cloaked the room. Janual’s eyes travelled over the room, finally coming to rest and realise that they had left the door open. Before the others could notice and berate him for it, he stood up and headed towards it before the rain or something even more undesirable decided to pay them a visit.
Too late, he glimpsed someone leaning against the outer doorjamb. Janual stepped back with a start and a gasp.
“Oh, what now?” Camael asked with impatience.
Janual just pointed, quite beyond speech.
(I can’t quite see yet what is standing there. When you consider the point of the story up to now, it could be almost more than half a dozen people! If it even is a person…) * * * * *
When Danae finally woke up,
(again, more)
*
Laithlyn summoned his butler to step forward to refill his tankard of mead, and would have dropped it all over himself, the butler and the pristine, white tablecloth, had it not been for the butler’s deft save and swift stepping back to ensure that he was no longer in his master’s way. Laithlyn barely noticed any of this, so consumed was he in the initial reason for his almost accident.
“Danae?” he asked incredulously, for she was not there in front of him, and yet he could have sworn that he had just heard her in his head. “But that’s quite impossible!” he admonished himself, “There are so few who can establish a mind link, it is hardly worth even thinking of.” Laithlyn made the move to reach for his mead once more, before his hand again went limp, and he heard, “But it is worth thinking about. Even integral. I need your help, Laithlyn. Please listen.”
“Danae! But…but of course. What is wrong, dear child?” he asked, falling over himself in the attempt to try to order in his own mind exactly what was now happening, and ignoring his mug of mead, now, all together. He shook his head as if that would clear it.
“There is a battle coming up. I need as many of your men as you can spare,” was Danae’s reply, tactfully ignoring his confusion at the natural talent that she was displaying in such a normally complex task that ordinarily required an amount of thinking about that would end up being the cause for one’s inability to initiate a mind link such as the one she had just succeeded in attaining, in her first try, no less!
“A battle?” Laithlyn asked in confusion, before realization over all that he had ever read of her time here suddenly hit him. “Of course! The battle. How many will you need? Actually, on second thought, worry not about that, you may take all that you need. They will be under your command, of course?”
It was phrased as a question, but it was clear to both of them that Laithlyn expected no other answer than the one he himself had offered.
“Of course, Laithlyn,” Danae said, keeping it to herself how pleasantly surprised at his assumption she was. Ordinarily, no matter how good the warrior, if she was female, it was very rare that she was trusted with an army anywhere near the size that she realized that she would be commanding. The very fact that Laithlyn had all but insisted upon it being done this way was taken as they heighest of compliments by Danae. She only wished, for one sorrowful moment, that Mikael could have been there to witness it and share it with.
“You will come up here immediately to collect them. I must see how you have fared in the past years,” Laithlyn told her, giving her no option. If he noticed her slip into thinking of Mikael, he was tactful enough not to mention it.
Directing herself straight back to business, knowledgeable that she had little to no time to spare on such thoughts, Danae continued with, “I shall send a man to collect them and lead them back here to me. I trust that they will be your most finely skilled warriors, too well trained by far to balk at the idea of working under a woman.”
“You can trust that they would not even notice, for all the attention it would stir among them. They are trained to follow orders, wherever it may be that those orders are coming from.” “Good,” Danae said. “That is well then.” For a moment, it was as if she was conferring with another, before she focused her attention back to Laithlyn to say, “There may be another who is the bringer of orders, in my absence if we are to split into more than one force. It is to be known that he is of the same rank as I.”
“It will be as you say,” Laithlyn was quick to assure her. “I will personally ensure that my soldiers’ trainings are intensified in the time that it takes you and yours to get here to collect them.”
“That will be greatly appreciated,” Danae responded, before adding almost hesitantly, “And Laithlyn?”
“Yes child, what is it?”
“The man I send to you will be a brown robed cleric.”
(just some scraps from the first half of the story that I’m not sure if I’ve given you yet)
Mikael stood on the cobblestones looking up at the manor in front of him. This couldn’t be what he had been left by the old Uncle that he could only vaguely remember from his childhood. He glanced at the law people behind him.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” he asked doubtfully.
It was a three-storey manor. Balconies on the second and third storeys, the second one wider than the third which must have opened up to an attic. Outside the front door was a veranda. Steps from there led down to the path which led to the gate, just in front of where Mikael and the law people stood.
“It is the address stated in this will,” said the female law person. “We have already spoken with the housekeepers. It is the correct estate. Would it please you to check the will?”
She held it out towards Mikael, who merely waved it away and stepped forward without taking his eyes off the manor.
“Do you wish us to show you the inside now?” The male law man also tried and failed in his attempt to bring Mikael’s attention back to them, gaining only a brief glance in his direction before a nod signalled that he would be heading towards the house.
It was huge. Gawdy and large, with a chandelier hanging from the ceiling of the main parlour. Most everything he saw around him stood without purpose in this great manor. A large, entertaining table was in the middle of the room, swinging doors leading into the and kitchen servants’ quarters behind it. Stairs on the right led to the second floor bedrooms, on the left side of the main room was the door leading out to the stables, courtyards and further gardens and vineyards.
As he stepped outside that way, he saw immediately the way that the large estate supported itself. The vineyards were indeed quite impressive. It was there that the law people, along with the elderly couple who were the butler and head housekeepers of the house trailing behind, found him.
(unfinished but I can’t figure the rest out right now)
“Oh no. Not that.”
Janual came across the bloodied mess that had once been Mikael.
“All for nothing,” he murmured to himself as he attempted to pick up the bulk of a man from the stone and chilled floor of the dungeon he had been dumped in after the torture. “What a waste.”
The body was beyond sensory pain now, Janual thought to himself as he scraped it along the floor. He reached the opening, where it was lightly beginning to snow.
“I can just leave him out here a little,” Janual mused aloud. “Nobody would ever know. By morning, the snow will have covered the body. It would not be found and the Child, Danae, would never be any the wiser.”
As it was, it was the weight that became too much for the 14 year old. Under a tree, a little way from the opening of the cave mouth leading into their dungeon, Janual dropped the body. Bowing his head in an almost unconscious gesture of respect, Janual turned as the snow became more biting and headed back to report that his job was done.
*
(you do not know for sure until later that Mikael is alive. Until then, you are only brought to this new cloaked character at the entrance of a monastery, pleading for Sanctuary or solace or something. The flashbacks only come after. This is one such image in italics)
The deer stopped by the tree, sniffing around its roots for the scent of food. Times were hard in the colder seasons, no less for the animal kingdom. Food was scarce. The animal burrowed deeper, suddenly bumping against something buried beneath the days old snow.
Grabbing with its teeth, the deer reared back with some sort of torn cloth in its mouth. Spitting it back down onto the snow, hooves dug apart the snow. When it burrowed for another taste, the cloth was found to be attached to some sort of flesh. Both were slowly unearthed by the deer’s slow insistence.
Dropping it unceremoniously on top of the snow, the deer sniffed its unconscious prey, nudging it with the tip of its wet nose.
(this bit I’m not so sure about…)
“Shoona, what’s this you’ve found then?” a voice came from out of the mists. “What matter of beast is this?”
The man cam up alongside the deer, or Shoona, as it had been called by the man who now bent down to turn over the body.
“By the gods. It’s a man!”
*
(jump in flashbacks, this is when Mikael is well and leaves)
The dark man, recovered months ago from the depths of snow, stood at the gate of the cottage that had sheltered him through the worst of this whether. No longer were the clothes on his back ragged or torn from misuse and torture. Also, he had been given a warm cloak to shield off the harsher winds and weather at the end of the cold season.
It had taken many weeks to regain the strength to stand, let alone to regain his sense of self and purpose. Still a further few to regather his former strength and health. It was finally time for him to go back to address issues long passed. They could no longer keep him contained.
He set off.
12/01/03
“Please. Help me.” Word croaked out through a raw, damaged throat.
Hester looked at the bedraggled wretch whom he had opened his door to. Concern suffused his features. He extended his hands out to reach for the man urgently.
“Oh, do come in! Please! What is your name?” Hester asked, drawing him inside and closing the door firmly behind them both.
“Richardo…” the man said weakly, before passing out.
“Hester? What is it?” his wife, Mallary asked, as she came up into the room behind him. She gasped when she saw the man, Richardo, unconscious on their living room floor. “Who is it?” she whispered, unable to take her eyes off him.
“He just appeared on our doorstep.” Hester looked down at Richardo again. “As he was, there was no chance that I would turn him away.”
Mallary nodded in understanding, before drawing herself together and saying, “I should get something to heal his wounds. They look simply awful. I wonder what happened to him.”
“I guess we’re going to have to wait until he wakes up to find out,” Hester said.
20/01/03
"Well hello there. And what would your name be?"
"Sarael," came the shy reply.
"Hester... Hester, this is what I said I had to talk to you about," spoke a raven haired beauty, drawing his attention back to her without lifting her eyes. It was clear that all she felt was shame.
The man called Hester looked at her without understanding.
"What does this mean?" he asked, completely baffled. "Are you married?"
"No," the woman urged softly, and then, "No. Never... that is... Sarael was born out of wedlock."
Hester's eyes filled immediately with sympathy that came from knowing the sure plight of this single woman in these times.
"How hard that must have been for you. For both of you," he said, raising his eyes to encompass both the woman and her child. "Who's is she?"
"He was married," the dark haired woman replied, skirting the actual question. "A married man with a child, neither of which did I know until after I told him that I was with child."
Hester struggled to take all of this in. Looking distractedly at Sarael for a moment, he said kindly to her, "Would you like to play with some ducks out the back?"
"Could I?" Sarael asked, her eyes instantly lighting up with enthusiasm.
"Of course! Just follow through that room and out the back door; by the time you rach the path, you should ahve dozens of ducks flocking around you."
Sarael jumped up in her excitement, before belatedly remembering something.
"May I, mother?" she asked of Mallary.
"Of course you may, Sara," her mother replied lovingly, laying her hand on the soft, golden tufts of hair atop her head.
When she as gone again, Hester turned back to Mallary.
"Sit, please. I think that this is something we need to talk our way through," he said.
Mallary took a seat, seeming only too happy to place all of her weight on something stable.
"You seem to have a very close relationship with your daughter," he continued, testing out the waters as he sat down beside her.
"She was all I had," Mallary stated as fact, rather than feeling sorry for herself. "After my family found out about... well.. there was no chance of him and I... he suggested that perhaps it was not even his... that I had been sleeping around... with other men! Anyway, I had to set out on my own. It wasn't so bad as all that. I found some reputable work until my time came and then was fortunate to find a midwife nearby who took pity on my plight. She helped me along with the birth, and then Sarael was with me. I won't lie to you. These years have been hard. Very hard. There were times when I really didn't know how we were going to get through..."
"What was his name?" Hester said, slightly more tense this time.
"Excuse me?" Mallary said, in her surprise, raising her eyes up to his.
"The man who... planted his seed within you. Did he have a name?"
"I shall never forget it," she said softly. "He was the Commander of the First House land armies. I never followed up with what he became after that, but his name stayed with me always. He was Rustovich."
Mikael started back to himself in a state of shock. What was going on?
After slowly reorientating himself to this time and place, Miakel stood, setting out to look for Master Andrei. He and Eshu were sitting together at a table in the middle of his courtyard. Andrei looked up as he felt Mikael's approach. He stood, immediately worried when he noted the pallor of his skin. Eshu watched on, likewise worried, but unable to do or say anything to help.
"Mikael, what...?"
"What is this supposed to mean? Is this a joke? What is happening to me? Why was a shown this? You said that I would be prepared as the powers grew. Is this actually true? Is it real?" Mikael asked, each question like a bullet following on from the last. He was far too distraught to be able to make a great deal more sense; his questions came out more in the form of accusations.
"Mikael, stop this now," Andrei said sharply. "Now calm down. Show me what did you see?"
Mikael stepped forward and closed his eyes, a welcome relief to the turmoil running rampant within his mind. He seemed to cool down slightly at the touch of his former master's finger tips at his temples, and concentrated on regulating his breathing and focusing on the white light within as he had been instructed.
"Rustovich... your father... then this must be... oh dear."
Andrei stepped back from him, lowering his hands back to his sides after witnessing what he realised too late had been none of his business. Eshu merely continued to look on with mild curiosity. Upon opening his eyes again, Mikael lost the bulk of his calm achieved, and asked again, "So, is it true?"
"These things are hard to tell from an outsider's view," Andrei said gently, trying to distance himself from what he knew to be something his student had to figure out for himself.
"I need to find her... to tell her who she really is!"
"And what would that achieve, Mikael? Is that what you really want? Even thought this has been shown to you, it may be that you are not to do anything with it until some time later. Think about it. If you were to go to the child now, do you think that she could understand what you were saying to her? At best, you would only succeed in making a family situation very uncomfortable."
"And at worst?" Mikael questioned.
"At worst, you could be the thing that spins their family dynamics apart. They are just beginning to form a close bond together in this vision. Do you really want to ruin that for them?"
Mikael remained quiet for a moment. Andrei dropped the subject, leaving him to make his own decisions on what was right. Meantime, he offered, "Eshu and I were planning on have some mid afternoon refreshments. Would you like to join us?"
Numbly Mikael sat down with them. However, while he was there in body, his mind was off and away, thinking of a time far distant in the future when he would have to deal with the things he had just seen.
(this is also why Eshu knows Mikael's time with them is limited; he was so quick to just dash away at the first sign of something out there.)
(I just saw it, this is what brings his memory back to him. it all works. didn't I tell you it would? *grins*. so from that, there is obviously something between these two scenes...)
Richardo opened bleary eyes with strange images stirring in his mind. He realised that he was in no room that he recognised, before groaning at the pounding aches that seemed to cover his whole body and skull, making him seriously suspect the possibility that someone had come along to him with a sledgehammer and grounded his body deep into the board beneath him.
A sounds pierced into his awareness, setting of a thousand new dagger wounds through his eyes all around his head.
"Mother? I think that he's woken up."
There was the sound of rustling nearby. Footsteps. A burning coldness against his skin. He asn't quite sure where.
"Um, Richardo? Are you awake?"
Shuffling. Through the daggers that continued to torture him, and slashed open his eye lids, Richardo struggled to focus. White light instantly blinded him. Then through that, came the dimmest emergence of actual form. Beginning as darker shades, Richardo was soon able to make out two silhouettes; one taller than the other. The taller one stood by his bedside.
He struggled to make it out more clearly, before his eyes strayed sideways, almost of their own accord, to the second figure. It struck him that there was something familiar about this figure. Something he couldn't quite get his finger on, but if he would just think about it a little while longer...
And then it was gone.
"Where...?" The effort of that one word was far too great and the whiplash from it left Richardo gasping for breath. New pain broke out all around him, seething even down to his lungs every time he breathed. His throat felt wretched. Helpless.
Coldness came again. This time he was able to decifer, only just, that it was against his forehead. Down his cheek. And the other one. The sheet that lay over him like a sheet of cement was lowered an inch or so, allowing the coldness to seep lower. Over his throat. His collarbone; lightly dabbing, harshly stabbing.
It was all too much. He vanished again to unconsciousness.
21/01/03
(I just thought that the dates I wrote those all in might be important. Don’t ask me why, and if you don’t need them, ignore them)
“We have to board that?” Mikael swung to the training master. “Why do we have to board that?”
The master raised his eyebrows in an indication that there was a limit set for speech between student and master, and Mikael had just crossed it. However, since it was something that he had planned to speak of anyway, he turned to the rest of the group of second and third years and said, “While the ability to fight and defend yourselves on land will carry through as the bulk of your training, you shall all find it integral to be instructed in the ways of sea navigation.”
(And so begins his first bad experience *inexperience* at sea. The intro is all I could do)
*
You there! You are holding everyone else up. We are to set sail now. Are you coming or not?” the commander of Mikael’s squadron called out impatiently.
Mikael inhaled deeply, and gritted his teeth as he remembered, in disgust, the last and only other time he’d ever been on a boat, out at sea. Well, he hardly had a choice in this matter, as with the last time. The commander was getting impatient, and Mikael was beginning to know that look well. If he dallied much longer, he would be left behind. It was as simple as that. No one man was important enough to jeopardise the mission over. He held no great importance here. But one day, Mikael vowed silently as the last of the men boarded the waiting ship, one day that was all going to change.
He set foot aboard the ship… and promptly hurled up all that had previously settled in his stomach.
(this is set after he gets Uncle’s house, but after Araliah starts living there with him. Could be the ‘magic’ mission that leads to him finding solace and training with Andrei and Eshu.)
*
(this is copy/pasted directly from that email of yours that I was talking about on the phone the other day… you know, I’ve just read it now, it’s uncanny how much I don’t need to read what you write to be in tune with it exactly!)
I am going to also let things drop whereever they fall in passing conv as I cannot order anything right now...Elyniah! I love Elyniah but I haven't been able to write anyhting recently becasue of this unordered mind thing and it is getting bad because I keep seeing things and stuff and I can't do anything about it...the first time Danae see's a port...is it danae? I can't tell...the shadows that cloak the dirty streets are unable to hide the reek of the garbage etc, they/she emerge/s from the dark small side street of the portside town, to be blinded in the bright light of the sun as it sparkles off the water that stretches as far as the eye can see...with a squeel of joy she runs to the edge of the warf and climbs up on one of the tall piles of rope unheedful of the coarse shouts bandied between the sailors as they [unpack] the cargo, her face upturned to the bright blue sky she calls out in glee to the seagulls that fly and flock around edge of the city, feeding on the garbage floating in the water..her innocent manner onboard the ship that twists every sailor around her little finger except one who is a sour man who lost his daughter to bandits/pirates that patrol the coastal towns...the encounter with the pirates that is actually a plot by the bad guy to get her killed or something, she makes friends with a rat in the cargo hold and the cabin boy, the captain is a drunkard who is rough and violent but not a bad person, that is just what captains are like, not sociable or friendly, even to Danae but he is very capable when it comes time to escape the pirates...the watchmen are danaes favourites just as she is theirs, they both have young sisters and so know how to deal with her and she reminds them of their young sisters,
(about here is where my little ditty comes into it, I think)
“Mikael? Is Mikael okay?” Danae asked, tugging insistently on the sleeve of one of the passing sailors in Laithlyn’s employ. The man, being an average, red blooded male, melted like any other, and quickly forgot his other duties in the face of this child’s concern over her guardian.
“Ho there! Would you desire any help there?” the sailor called out to Mikael. “Excuse me for saying, but you seem a little green around the edges. Even your little miss here noticed.
He patted Danae lightly on the back of the head as he said these words. Danae spun around to face him with a charming grin, before calling out below, “Are you sure you’re okay? See, we can help you, if you want…”
“No, that will be fine. I’m fine!” Mikael insisted, making up for the weakness in voice with the harshness of tone.
Danae and the sailor looked towards each other doubtfully. “Let’s set this dammed ship off already! Isn’t there something else you should be doing?” Mikael demanded testily of the sailor once he reached them.
“Yes sir!” the sailor said, suddenly seeming to remember all of his duties.
“Then see to it that you do them well. We don’t need any accidents here. For Danae’s sake,” Mikael added on gruffly. Then, “Danae, come with me. We’ll find where we’re supposed to be staying on board of this gods forsaken vessel.”
Danae hurried along obediently after him on far shorter legs until Mikael took pity on her and turned around to swing her up into his arms to distract himself as they went to the relative safety of finding their cabins.
the first mate has a daughter around her age and he tells her about the girl then he writes about Danae in a letter to his daughter but he get's killed in the battle with the pirates and the letter is the last thing that he did before the battle...I think, something like that, or it someone else who dies...there is someone who dies...it is sad and depressing...I don't like it but I do at the same time because it is so touching and sad and it is one of those things that you stand up and yell about in the middle of the packed train because it affects you so much...The ship rocked as it moved though the crystal waters yet young Danae stood tall as she watched the dolphins swim along in the bow wave. Turning, she looked up at the captain who was walking along the deck, a contemplative look upon his heavy face. "'scuse me taptain [insert name here], but where's [the first mate]?" He answers her briskly while muttering about dangerous waters and she thanks him before running off along the deck to the first mates office/room (his room is not a bunked one like the crew's it has a desk in it and only one bed) she knocks on the door and hears him tell her to enter before using both hands to try to open the door, he opens it from the inside before she can get it open her self and she tells him that she 'couldda done it herself' he smiles and again invites her in, she walks over and leans on the edge of the desk, the first mate sits in his chair and is still taller than her...she asks what he's doing and he tells her that he is writing to his daughter who is just about the same age as her, he tells her about his daughter for a bit, how she has two brothers who spoil her silly and a cat which they always trap in the empty room down the hallway to annoy her, how she lives in town and has a friend named [annabell] he goes on to other stories of his family....
(and the second half of what I wrote. This leads straight through to where the carriage is waiting for them on the other side when they are on land again.)
Danae was most popular on the duration of their trip. It seemed to Mikael that every time he turned around, there was some other doting fool hanging on her every word and neglecting the proper jobs that he had been set. At this rate, they would all go to the bottom of the sea before anyone noticed anything amiss, or be taken over by pirates without a fight!
On the up side, Mikael had every confidence in Danae’s ability to sweet talk any pirates they may happen across into letting them continue off on their own merry way. However, he didn’t see her having so much luck as far as hungry sharks were concerned.
What he couldn’t understand was why everyone became so attached to the little chit. Couldn’t they see that she was just like any other little girl child? Always underfoot and asking annoying questions. Nothing special about that. Let’s see them take over guardianship of her for a time, then see how special she seemed after that, Mikael found himself thinking darkly. (this is another reason that Mikael is who he is. Somehow, he is completely immune to the ‘love me’ vibes that Danae can’t help but send out to ‘everyone’. Well, at least most of the time at this part of the story, anyway.)
By the end of the trip, it was as though Danae was one of the ship mates. They all lined up, hats in hands, sorry to see her go.
“Do make sure to take care of yourself, little one. There’s such a lot of bad people going around out there.” “We’re going to miss you, sweetness. Very rarely are we blessed with the good looks of someone such as yourself to wile away the long voyages.”
“Sure you don’t wanna continue on with us, child? We could tell you heaps more stories!”
Danae shook her head gracefully at that offer, smiling as she went over to the next sailor.
“Be careful not to let that guardian of yours suck all the fun out of life, okay?” The sailor caught Mikael’s eye, before quickly ducking his own gaze back to Danae. “Just don’t tell him that I said that, or I’m dead meat!”
Danae giggled an, “Alright,” to that, before stepping back to stand beside the impatiently waiting Mikael. He started drawing her away, amidst hearty protestations.
“We’ve still got quite a distance left to travel before we are safely home, and we’ll thank you now for your company and your time and be off now. Happy sailings to you all,” he said as a brush off. “Merry travels, Danae.”
“Merry travels! Who knows, we might be blessed with your company one day soon. Let us know if Laithlyn decides to ship you off some place new.”
Mikael fought against the bile that rose to his throat at the thought of that, before taking Danae’s hand in his and heading towards the waiting carriage. Their luggage was already transferred from the ship and everything was ready to go.
As they started off, Danae refused to sit properly in her seat until all of the sailors were completely out of sight. Instead, she sat on her knees, facing and half hanging out of the back opening, waving her little arms out for all they were worth.
In the end, Mikael had to drag her back into the carriage and turn her around before she went along with his wishes and settled down somewhat for the ride. Her mood shifted to the period of asking her endless questions.
It was a long while later that the excitement of the trip thus far and the endless prattle tired her out. Mikael watched warily as Danae fell back against her seat and she and her mouth fell sound asleep.
Leaning back into his own section of the seat, Mikael took the time out to listen only to the soothing ‘clip-clop’ of the horses hooves on the gravel that lead them closer by inch to the new manor that he would soon regard as ‘home’. It was blessedly the only sound to catch his ears in the dark blanket of night.
(the end of this may only be a rewording of what’s already been typed in regards to this part of the trip ‘home’, between the differing sections of the story 2 & 3)
All she wanted was a hero in her life, was that too much to ask? Someone who would stay beside her; someone who would never leave, a friend, a lover, anyone! Bitter anger filled her stomach as the thoughts free fell from her mind.
How could they say that they loved her? They left her, if you love someone you are there always, whenever they are needed, you don’t just leave them. How could they leave her?
She had believed them when they told her they cared, and now? Now they are all gone
“I’ll always be there for you”
How many times had she heard that and now where was she? Alone, always alone.
She was sick of it.
Then came Sharni. * * * * *
“I might not always be there for you, you realize this don’t you?” The seriousness of the words was countered by the fact that Sharni was speaking with her head upside down off the bed.
Danae looked at the girl, she was so silly at times, so, unlike herself. “I know, but I also know you’ll try, at least you’re not lying to me”
“Lets make a pact of friendship”
Danae’s lip curled, amused “You’d really want to do that with me?”
“What’s that to mean? Of course I would!”
“It’s just that... well, you don’t even really know me” Danae kept her eyes to the floor.
“I know enough”
“Are you sure?”
“Stop asking that silly”
Tentatively Dane looked up, “We could do a binding... “
“You mean, magic?”
“Yeah”
“But what if... what if we change our minds? What would this do to us?”
Danae shrugged “I don’t know, I’ve never tried it with anyone that’s a girl before”
“What’s that to mean? I don’t see how girls are any different to boys”
“You don’t know enough boys”
Sharni poked her tongue out “What would it mean between us?”
Danae shrugged again. “I don’t know how strong it would be”
“Could it hurt us?”
“Not if we are pure of heart”
Giggles “How melodramatic”
* * * * *
(Shani is soft soul-ed, she is sensitive to spirits etc and ghosts through the halls of the manor, she gets caught in the world of memory, drawn into a place that is not her own and the fight to return to the ‘real’ world is difficult. She leaves because Danae starts to neglect her and in this place that is so not her own se becomes desperate for comfort and ghosts are what she chooses. Unfortunatly, because of the link and the natural predisposition of Danae’s to dream and see she is drawn in also.)
<
Mikaels youth, what is he, what does he see what does he show, does he have a release? Does he have to hide all that he is and all that he can be, does he have to hide who his father is? Hiding that is because of repressed emotional and physical abuse is manifested in every aspect of your life, it replays in any manner of ways that are negatively influencing to the psyche…Mikaels relationship experiences in every way will be a repeat of a certain aspect of his childhood, at least according to certain psycho-analytical interpretations, many of which are evident in our own lives, social interaction including dialogue and simple methods of interaction, are we going for a humanly flawed being or are we going for the typical arch type of fantasy? To create a realistic character we need to be able to intertwine the life of the child with the life of the parent, the experiences felt by both will be repeated in the childs life, Adele, The Father, both have their form of realistic abuse, either direct or simply because of the fact that child rearing has and still is flawed.
Social conditioning would have repressed a lot of the childs life, for Mikael this would prob be in the area of just how bad the father was, he saw his mother hide the problems and so would also do this, at least to a point. He would be torn between the examples of both conflicting parents, on one side he would be terrified of being like his father and so would inadvertently repeat it, he would idealise his mother as that is what children do and would be torn between the fact that he has grown with constant abuse of his mother and women on the whole, not to say that he would be like that but he would rebel against all he has been told in order to find himself, the main part of the story is set during the time of his life where he would be trying to grow up and would be the time where he begins to work stuff out or begins to openly repeat it. In his actions in his anger time he would be repeating key aspects of his childhood experiences, what would they be? Would he even begin to figure them out? Is Mikael going to ‘know [him]self’ or will he constantly live in the repetition of the repression in his childhood? Does Adele see that he need an open release? Does Uncle?
The child stood in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot as he looked about for that man, Mikael’s father. His left shoulder rose to rub his ear and he coughed rather unsubtly.
Adele looked up at her son’s friend as she stroked a lock of hair from Mikael’s face, whispering something in his ear. She then turned and left with a rustle of skirts and a smile.
“’C’mon, Mikael, We’ll be late…”
The door stuck half way on the old porch and they slipped through the gap and began to run.
“Y’know,” The other boy said gasping for breath, “Y’know, That guy, the one Uncle was telling about? My papa said that it was all a story and that none of it was real, not really real, just a make believe story.”
Mikael stopped running,
“That’s not true, Uncle wouldn’t lie.”
“Yeah but my papa said”
“I don’t care. Uncle wouldn’t lie, your papa lied, not Uncle.”
Girls who were with the other guys, what does Mikael think of the girls? What is his experience with girls? What is the current view on homosexuality? Is it feared? Is it hated? What do the other boys think of it? Are the masters all hetero? Warriors are notoriously bi, being stuck with only guys for so long.
Is someone called back home for inheritance/marriage etc? upperclass would be…
As they neared the keep, Mikael’s stomach flipped with anxiety. Neither seeing movement from the watch nor hearing, well, anything, was worrying as they were expected. Assuming it was just another form of the training they continued in their usual manner, laughing, joking.
“Oh, finally, good food, not that…stuff…that Lerrin umm…what did he call it? Cooked?”
“I’d say it was charcoal not food”
Laughing with the others, Mikael tried to ignore the sick feeling the place was giving him until he realised that the smell he was imaging was real.
“…There was nothing wrong with my rabbit last night…” Lerrin’s denials stopped suddenly as he started gagging, “By the oath, what is that smell?”
“Urgh, it’s as bad as [some boyish thing to say]…”
Johan cringed, “Do we really need to keep going toward the smell?”
“Do we have any choice?”
“Look, it’s probably just one of those damn set ups to see if we are chicken”
grrr, this isn’t working, I don’t like it and I don’t like it and yeah. A rape, a murder, is it real? Is it just a training thing? Is it a training thing that goes wrong? What is it? Hmmn, grrr, my head hurts.
Talking, ok, Mikael is taught by his father to hate and to take anger out on other people. What of violation? Mikaels trust is violated, his mother is violated, his emotions are violated, he would have seen things in the early years to teach him to be as he is, what effect will the hiding and yelling have on his adolesence, he will hide from those he loves. He will end up hating the ones he wants most in his life, pushing them away. But will he blame himself? Yes, it is not quite like that I know but it is something to go by…
His back ached and head hurt.
this is the one that i wrote in novel when we had to do i think something on dialogue, anyway, it was the class you were late to and i was asleep for...our most resent novel class, pretty much. i didn't name the master then, because i wasn't sure who it was. i am pretty sure now that it is Virago, but you make your own decisions on it.
“The clergy is in uproar about this. They are saying that they have faith in a ‘deliverer’ of some sort. That there is one who will come to restore the land to the glory it once was.”
The man stroked his beard thoughtfully, heavy lids shielding the expression in his eyes.
“What exactly is it that they are saying about this…deliverer?” he asked in a rich, deep tone, without looking once at the messenger.
Seeing the masked menace for what it was, the messenger decided to choose his words with much care and deliberation.
“Um, it is a prophesied birthing,” he explained. “That the great kingdom shall fall, and this Chosen shall rally armies against all resistance to overcome…”
“A birthing, did you say?” The master looked at his spy for the first time, and the messenger tried to suppress the flinch at the vulgar disfigurement which was his face, half concealed as it hade been by the hood over his head. “Oh do not brace yourself in such a way! Do you not think I realize how this repulses you? Now, to what you were saying. Do you mean to say that this one, this…Chosen is not yet born?”
Gaze skating off to the side briefly, the messenger considered that the answer to this question seemed safe enough.
“Yes…” he acceded, drawing out the word between his teeth.
“Glorious,” the master breathed. “So now all we need do is find out the particular details of this supposed birth, and we shall find nothing left to oppose us. I’m sure you understand the importance of this mission…?”
“Of course, sir!” the messenger was quick to agree, before with a low bow, he scrambled from the room.
*They are without names as of yet. The master should have a name. The messenger will probably remain nameless. This is one of the first mentions of Danae and the part that she is to play in these stories. It has been continued to ask what others are going to be thinking about her and what her impact on the whole world is. With Mikael, it will be found later, by their seers, that it is Mikael who will eventually be her guardian, and so they try to stop that from happening too. This is why the two of them continually face such constant danger that is unnatural over the years, that is unrelated to Mikael’s war enemies, so much as the prophesy and Danae, and the threat she presents to anyone who wishes for a different future than she promises.
Kylara shrugged Virago’s slimy fingered hand from her shoulder in violent distaste. The repulsion she felt did not dissipate at the absence of his touch from her skin. She looked down her nose at him with all the indignant disdain worthy of her title as the late Head of House’s widow.
“How dare you presume to lay a finger on me,” she breathed haughtily.
“My most humble apologies, Lady,” Virago accented with a respectful inclination of the head. “My only thoughts were of…”
“I am perfectly aware of where your thoughts lay,” Kylara voiced in disgust. “Have you no sense of decency? My husband has not yet been buried for the space of a full day and night, and already you come here to me, expecting me to…I’m not even sure of what you do expect from this!”
Viago drew himself up, with a prideful air, to his full height which was substantially taller than her own. This did not, however, take from her the self-righteous tone that she had worked up for herself.
“Forgive me for being so blunt, but you must have an understanding of the little amount of time we have left to work with upon Lord Aikien’s passing. Surely you are aware that his idealist’s dreams were in no way practical and have now left us here to face with quite a dilemma.”
Kylara regarded him out of the corner of her eye, weighing up his words with her own feelings on the matter. True it was that Aiklien’s actions before his death had not made him the most popular in practical circles. There had been many who had followed him for the benevolent, caring man he had been, but the fact now remained that those many who may have been quite willing to follow when he had lived, might not be quite so willing to follow now in his absence. Virago was right. Sometime did need to be done.
“Well enough, I concede to your point,” Kylara acceded with some amount of terse reserve. “But now comes to the point, what do you have in mind to be done about it?”
“Naturally, Lady, it will be nothing at all without your consent!” Virago was quick to assure, but with a sly glint in his eye. “However, it is this that I would mildly take it upon myself to propose this: as I do know that you possess the magic…”
“What?” Kylara demanded, cutting him down mid sentence. “What means you by this?”
“My Lady, please do not become unduly distressed,” Virago said in a soothing tone. “I mean no offence nor threat by my words. It is by mere observation that I see fit to utter these words at all. Unless I be mistaken, in which case…”
“You are not mistaken,” Kylara said, knowing that there was no plausible way of denying the obvious. Anyone who had taken the time to watch and come to an understanding of what it may mean would have come to the same conclusions by now. She was merely discomforted by the fact that it was Virago who came to her on it. It would have been preferred had he had nothing on her at all, especially with the popular sentiment over ‘magic users’ within the court.
“I guessed as much.” Virago paused to take in her features a moment, attempting to weigh up how she might take his next words. “Lady, you may not be aware of the advantages such, shall we say ‘powers’, can be if used properly within the court. It would not be a large exaggeration to say that many of those issues brought up now after Lord Aiklien’s rein could be painlessly dealt with now if you could see fit…”
“And you? What is your part in this, Virago? What do you get out of this?” Kylara demanded of him venomously. It was no secret that there was no love between these two. Kylara had never herself trusted him, for all that Aiklien had rathered see the good in everyone around him.
“Why, nothing at all…except…” Virago managed a slight smile that did not reach up to his eyes.
*she has aged early due to the useage of powerful magics that had to take from her physical energy and life force when other spiritual energy no longer was enough for completion of whatever she was doing (still working on what that was exactly). Also, entities can sometimes, albeit rarely, come through some. Usually it’s a throw back on the type of person for who comes through, I’ve seen bad come through Virago, good or mischievous coming through Danae, but also a bad entity tries to take over when she’s around januel and cammael is the time I’m thinking of right now. Keep in mind that there is also astral projection of another from the physical into another’s physical body to cater for here…
(mainly it's the wording from the book he's reading that alludes me here. you'll get what i mean when you get to the end of it. you were always better at pompus wording than me! also, the caps are small caps in word. oh well...) ~
Darkness slowly settled as the sun in the sky slipped unnoticed under the horizon, and the lamp lights were lit to replace the natural light that was let in through the arch windows of the archives. Berant still sat at his place in an old-fashioned, cedar wood desk, by now surrounded by countless books on faith, history, prophesy, politics, among other not so substantial works.
The closest that he had come to any useful information these past hours was a more thorough understanding of the conditions under which the political situation of the Three Houses of the Triumvirate had first occurred. Almost useless information now, Berant thought to himself in abject frustration, restraining the urge to thump down the book hard onto the table. Only years of training and respect for the archives books that had already survived thus long, had given him the strength to overcome such urges.
Closing the book as carefully as he could bring himself to do, Berant sat back from the mountain of reading he had set for himself, stretching his arms in front of him as he gave a prayer to the High Goddess.
“J’niah, mistress of knowledge in the past, present and future. There must be an answer among all these chronicles, but if there be, it has alluded me thus far!”
Such flippancy in prayer was almost unheard of from one such as Berant, but in times so desperate as these, with no one present or in earshot, Berant decided that his own rules could be overlooked in this one instant. He sighed, closing his eyes that were beginning to itch due to the long hours of focusing that they had been forced to endure. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself to take again one of these books, fighting against the wish to fall to sleep atop of them, hoping against hope that within it, he might possibly uncover some vital piece of information that he had overlooked the first number of times.
As his hand hovered above the books, a book with rumpled pages caught his eye. Reaching over other books that were closer in front of him, he took that book in his hands, and read from the page that it was opened to.
(please excuse this, the paraphrasing of this is going to be extremely bad!!)
…FOR ALTHOUGH THE THREE HOUSES OF THE TRIUMVIRATE ONCE HAD STOOD TALL AND PROUD, BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER WILL SURLY TEAR IT DOWN. IDEALISM CAN NEVER REIN THROUGH THIS TIME, BUT NEITHER WILL THE STRENGTH OF MAGIC NOR THE FAITH IN THEOLOGY. SOCIETY ITSELF WILL COME TO BREAK DOWN, THE PEOPLE UNKNOWING OF WHERE TO TURN IN THE FACE OF UTTER CONFLICT, THE DESTRUCTION OF ALL THEY HAD TAKEN TO BE TRUTH…
Berant understood not what had drawn him to this book again. He remembered now that it had been one that he had taken up from the prophecy section. Although he could applaud the prophet’s ability in prediction of the current happenings over one hundred years ago, he could hardly see how, now in the face of this ‘destruction’, such an account could prove helpful in the slightest.
Moving his hand to close the cover of this book so that he may remember it’s face and not be mistaken into picking it up once again, Berant found himself instead turning over to the next page, where he found himself drawn to the words:
A CHILD, BORN OF…? WILL DO SOMETHING IN NICE BIG AND FANCY WORDS THAT I CAN’T QUITE GRASP YET…
May I just say now that many things that you have written in that e-mail are exactly what I have been trying to say to you in the past however long we have been looking at history and I am glad you are finally thinking bout it...well now, lets take a closer look at what you have sent...I am going to take a deep breath and give you my side of viewing and hopefully between the two of us we can balance the two ideas and end up withsomething right...I have left some questions unanswered until I can get more of a grasp on the history here and well, if we combine the two ideas then hopefully there won't be any questions about the stuff we are covering...hopefully...
Next politically in the time of these happenings is so dependant on some of the happenings in ths section that until we have actually worked at them a little longer we won't have them right, but a brief out line may be that the 'evil' (for destperate want of a better word-all the bad stuff that's going on with the advisor guy and the younger bro) would be not quite destroyed or annulled but that it would be pushed down enough to stop being a problem. I am also thinkning that possibly this is some of the events that lead up to the situation that calls for Danae. Back to a question I have asked before, is Danae there for a specific reason, wat is the purpose of her being here, is it some great evil that must be fought or somehting,I know this may have been addressed in some of the other papers but we have never really addressed it in terms of the world, If she is here to fight against some evil then this past and the dirty dealings of the advisor and crew may be the precursor - as we well know, there is nothing that seems to happen in the world without some build up or preparation. To further clarify this idea I was pondering the fact that we are seening some of these characters for a reason, well, there are always copy cats in the world and maybe there is some kind of underworld movement that begings because of the bad stuff that happens, I mean, it is not for the sake of a bunny coming out of a hat that A's mother dies now is it...?
ok now, I know I can put this better but right now I do not know how so read through to the end before blowing me out of the water...
Directly after this section on the A guy it seems that the Magic situation begins to tone down a bit, I don't know how or why or any of that but it seems that it is not violently protested about for a while, it seems that those who feel strongly against it will hold their peace for a bit, obviously there are resurgences in some parts of the area that are still strongly against it. (btw, of course the three are hand in hand...duh! We knew that already, it is always in mind, it's not like I am going to forget it now is it..?) Now I am thinking that the lack of blinding anger against the mag. situation may be because of A guy, don't ask me how, I haven't figured it out yet, maybe that's your bit if you agree with this at all- possibly it is that there are rumours of magic in his blood but the common people love him...fight? or maybe the common people are partial to someone else in the ruling families that has revealed that they have magic...? I think that maybe it might have been that in one of the boring peoples families one of the people use magic to do somehting really good and that A'guys family support that...or maybe they kill the ybro...?I don't know but for a while the religious nuts have to accept things but it does start to wear off after a while. Oh and of course there was good stuff in that history you wrote, I have no problem with the ideas it was just that your portrayal of them was reeking of d&d and we don't want a smelly story. :P I actually liked the direction of the ideas and I don't descriminate based on presentation. Now, baack to the story, We have a govt that is like all govt's - unstable, we also have two conflicting religions (Magic and the established one) and we seem to have a farly feudal society, now, in that history you wrote, you also added a strong Military presence, you actually put them in power for a while and I must say now that if you really meant that then we have some fairly drastic repurcussions to think about, also in the history it seemed a fairly recent thing but well established and if it is that then how the hell do you see that working?? also, govt's based in warrior type almost always end up being taken over by beuracrats annd/or in wars...so I think that my modification of your idea (obviously subject to change) is that the high millitary families are simply VERY strongly linked to the ruling families...marriage or the like, basically so the families are strong in millitary power, it would explain the high ranking of the millitary generals etc and it works with human nature etc..I know the idea need to be refined but we'll get around to it.
I'm figuring that there is some kind of strong foreign influence in the govt here - there is a growing merchant class and when there is business there is expansion, are they discriminated against? also, in order to have so many (it seems) foreigners in the Mikael section we would also have to have the foreigners fairly established in the over all world as we must remember that even in the american 1800's on earth many people had never even seen a black person and there were alot of black slaves at that time, it would be similar in this world, although, they do not have slaves in the country that Mikael lives in...do they? I think that they might have serfs...possibly, and young girls would be sold, that happens everywhere, even now, here...umm, if there is a foreign influence then it may have something to do with the situation in Mikaels time, like, if we throw other people in to the mix it will cause conflict, their religious differences etc...- what is the general tolerance level like here? In the different times it will change obviously but even so, what has been past will determine the future of thought...how far back is this time? how much have things changed, I think that by Mikaels time the ruling powers has reduced to two, one of them is...gone...by this time, umm, that would also cause problems. I'm thinking that maybe the war like thing that is in Mikaels time is more the continuation of the problems that begin in the other bit...we need names for these times... You should be arriving any scond now so I'll stop writing this and talk to you about it when you get here....love you, Moana
Well, we said we were going to do this, so what better time to start, right?? Here we go...
Okay, passing from Aiklien’s ever so short rein, which is not even discussed except for in a short epilogue at the end of his and Kylara's story, as there is no reason to continue his story after the deaths of uncle and adviser and the ‘harmony’ left to be had between he and Kylara, what is next politically? What happens then in society? However wrong it was, there were a few things in that ‘background’ I wrote that were slightly relevant and could be checked now so as to give some direction at the least! Maybe this is what I will send in email to you, Moana. Something that is definitely good for analysis right now, wouldn’t you say? Also, the religious situation is tied up somewhere in here. Whatever happens around it, the religious situation will become changed because of it. The three situations and independent interests, political, social and religious, always go hand in hand throughout these stories. We would do well to remember this from now on. Actually, how closely linked should we have magical interests and situations in all of this, or is that just part of the social or again, maybe just something that affects all three of these main interests?
Aiklien’s part of the Triumvirate remains weaker for a time, allowing the other two Houses to move their claws in a little bit, to that part of power that wasn’t previously theirs, which is in the interest of one of them gaining more power over the other and in the end, overpowering the last rivaling House and being the only high power in the known world. (I like the continued ‘right’ sounding of the ‘known world’. It indicates that there is still some ‘unknown world’, and this could be interesting. It could also just mean that some of the places that we write of, maybe an island inhabited by only winged or only renegades, is not yet known of or discovered as such by the Mainlands, and hence, not dictated by those politics, yes?) This also explains the power war that we knew broke out between the political situation that had been working for a while, and isn’t that supposed to happen while Mikael is in his training institution? I mean, this is leading towards the climax of the situation, when the remaining Houses attempt to completely annihilate each other, and everything changes, and the people are forced to finding another political situation that could possibly work for them now that they are left with nothing. Okay, so that House is just losing power during Mikael’s early life. Kewl, this I can handle, it’s just the not knowing that is annoying.
However, with just one more minor inconsistency, how does such an upheaval so quickly get settled? And who on earth settles it? There are obviously going to be very lasting effects of this time, healed temporarily by concreting, I’m guessing, cause nobody has yet stepped forth to breach the wide crevice that has just been opened directly down the middle of Elyniah. The whole system by which the known world had gone by, has just collapsed, and everything that remains is only there to be questioned, so how could it get settled? Especially in a time frame so narrow as we have dictated. Magic and religion are at war, hence the whole changing of the system in Mikael’s school, so as to insure that no one there gets majorly offended. Status becomes slightly unbounded for a time, and even when it is caught up again, it is not so strict, or at least, definitely not the same as it was before, obviously. Aiklien’s rein may have been short, but it was sure influential! However, from Migual’s entrance to Mikael’s mother’s death, I have a reasonably ordered timeline now set up. Yay! I’m almost overwhelmed by all of the happenings over such a short time, and to know that it will yet be revised soon, as soon as other stories relevant to that time are drawn to our attentions...just wow!