#Julia Valdyr

[estamba]

She had had the world...well, a world at least, and lost it.

Everything she wanted. A safe, secluded space filled with beings that she and her God had created and formed to be her librarians and companions. Sometimes a mist wanderer would come through--but the occasional company and knowing full well she could expel them at her whim was not a bother. She had read and she had written and she had been content in chronicling her God and his movements.

And then darkness. She should have, by all rights, been terrified. But she had been born into darkness and it was only through her own hard work and the help of her God she had achieved the bright in-between she had made her home. A return to the darkness was...unexpected, troubling....but not terrifying, even as her twisted children and her books slipped through her hands and all sank into the void. It would have been easy, restful even, to stay there. Things would have been over, a finite end to questions--but to leave without so much as an explanation to Isambard? A high priestess could not so easily abandon her duties, even for a fellowship of one.

So she did not fade into nothingness alongside her books and her librarians and her little world. She fought and fell and woke to familiar sounds and smells. Of salt water and the bumbling cooing of a Quaggan. A while later, days, maybe weeks, found her nestled in the corner of the Inn at For Mariner, clean at the least, her pale hair whisping into soft curls, wearing soft shoes and pants under a rather too large purple shirt that had been belted at the waist, with a mug of tea in hand, listening to those around her. Soft words and falling back on old fortune telling skills from the streets of Divinity's Reach--along with no small amount of pity she was sure--had gained her a bed and enough to eat while she considered the situation she found herself in now.

She had lost all but...this was not the first time. She doubted it would be the last. No, indeed who should arrive at her table but her own Gods’ estranged kin? Asking for her help. Well...asking for one who could help mend a broken mind with a deep dedication to truth. It would have served him better if she still believed in Kormir as a benevolent being instead of selfish and uncaring...but she would not turn him away. Not for his sake. He had all the admirers and fawn devotion a man could hope for--but for the sake of his kinswoman who had placed herself between the world and Jormag among so many others and suffered now for it. So set aside was her inherent dislike for the man. Not that he had ever done anything to merit her ire other than existing as he was. Alluring, intoxicating to be around, like little golden strings coiled around one’s fingers and wrists and drew them closer. It was deeply unsettling. Today though he was on his best behavior...open, calmed, restrained, she suspected for her sake. It did not go unappreciated nor unrewarded. So she took his hand and let him take her from the Inn and outward--stopping of course for a fresh set of gloves.