"It is a common misconception, you see."
His words pierced the awkward silence that had been ever present since their introduction the day before. Sitting beside her as they watched the stately waltz conducted upon the stage below, Sandalphon's words had such a strange quality as he spoke. At times seeming a distant whisper, at others no differrent than the middle aged man he seemed to be, and yet always audible to her above the stately sounds of the music being conducted in unfeeling, perfect meter, as everything in the city seemed to be done.
"Men who have given up the things many would consider essential to merit that description. To sacrifice mortal form, mortal pleasures. Truly, we must seem monsters to the few who know us. Even to our friends."
"As you can see below", he said, gesturing to the dancers below their vantage within the theatre's balcony, "We are far from it".
Years of courtly graces made the response of Sandalphon's veiled companion almost automatic, her soft and well practiced voice having none of the ethereal qualities of the other. "I assure you, noble Sir, that the court of our lady Valledia the Even.."
"What do you fear?"
Sandalphon's sudden interuption was abrupt, it was outside the protocol with which her every dialogue, every thought had been conducted.
"I do not know you, Myriel Lethlehaime, but I know of you. Jewel in the crown of a few well considered magisters, and glimmer on the brooch of many a petty beaurocrat. You have never served in their wars yet you have insinuated yourself into many a courtly appearance in their strange aristocracy on the arm of someone influential."
"Yet now you are here, and you are alone. None in your homeland know of this, and if they did none would admit it. You are fleeing something Myriel, and here my knowledge of you is incomplete."
Confusion, panic, deception, and resignation all made fleeting appearances across her face. The former dispelled by Sandalphon's sudden casual placement of his hand across her wrist, his presence in this world suddenly seeming very real, the latter banished by her own lifelong curse: pragmatism. Thoughts raced in an instant through a quicker mind than any knew to accredit her, intendedly so. Think, plan, adapt with a smile and a curve of the spine, be soft and unchallenging. You know who sits next to you. He has what you want. Consider your options, Red Lady in Passing, become Grey...
With a sigh heavy upon her bosom, Myriel Lethlehaime for the first time resigned herself to honesty in the face of no other option, there beside the not-man in the place of his power. When she did speak, her voice came softly.
"Gracious sir.." said Myriel. "Ah, damned with graces.. I fear exactly what all women fear, and I most of all. I fear the withering of age. I fear the decline of my mind. I fear the time to come when I am worth nothing to those around me, a crone to be secretly mocked by the young. I fear the coming struggles my nation faces with the Infernals, where no sorceress who cannot be a tool of war will be anything but a burden. Most of all I fear my leader, and the things I know she has done in the name of country. Secrets are a currency in the Capitol, and there is so much I know, Sandalphon. I drown beneath that wealth. Always present but quickly disregarded in the clamor, so many dirty dealings and dark secrets meet my ears across a scented pillow. That has been my life and my security.. until now".
What had once been a picture of feminine curve worthy of any sculptor's eye began to crumple beneath the weight of emotion.
"She knows that I know. What's left of good in me, almost forgotten in the lies I've lived as truths hopes that she doesn't know how I learned of it. There is no home for me among the Amurites any longer, Sandalphon. Death likely seeks me even now. I came to you because I am already a corpse, no matter where I run."
A glimpse of iron found it's way into her figure as she spoke further.
"To be left to rot in the pitiless sun with none who remember me but for the assassin who snatched away my life as he wipes clean his blade! That is the most I may hope for now, with far worse fates seeming more likely the more they are contemplated. I would do anything, give up anything, to escape those ends."
With that, all else was left to sobs as Sandalphon sat in silence beside her. His form had become almost tenuous with the shadows of the theatre now, as may often occur when a Shade's concentration is harvested to other ends than his place in the mundane, before solidifying once again. None may know the mind of one so ancient as he, who endures and husbands the strength to lead where others find resignation and melancholy in the face of endlessness. The many layered machinations of such a being surely form a puzzle whose final appearance may not even be clear to the craftsman himself, but within at least one such place in the mind of the not-man, a piece fell into place to join the others.
"There is a way, and you will exist to remember who the person Myriel Lethlehaime was when none else remain."
"It is a common misconception that we are monsters. We are not, because we choose to remember where others struggle to forget. Take my hand, I will show you this life as a memory of mortality. Tonight we begin a Waning. Then, we will speak further, and of many things."
Shadows filled the empty spaces as both figures left the theatre hand in hand. He intent on the Waning to come, she quietly satisfied that at least one final deception had proven effective after all.
Either she is VERY newly a Shade, in which case it makes little sense for her to have so much power she would be a leader option, or she has fully Waned and even though she may have become a Shade out of Vanity, she would have long ago forgotten what point there is in it.
Needs a little more explanation about why she has turned towards Shadow I feel, what has driven her to do this (she still looks young and frisky in the portrait!), but maybe that could be explained in a further piece.
