#her lore is she drowned and became a spirit haunting the sea

[nsuyeula]

[Last couple years have been a mad trip

How do you look so perfect

You must have some portraits in the attic ]

[retvenkos]

gone // kade & olinda (blades mc)

Blades of Light and Shadow - A Kade & Olinda (my Blades MC) Story.

ghost towns of my past are all burned and gone survivors in their wake, broken up by dawn.

a mother, once, haunts me now, swimming in my mind a father, too, of echoes past there is no more mankind.

we came from ash and broken bones we search for things unfound we fall upon weakened knees we wait until we’re drowned.

--

The earliest thing they remember was fire; red hot tongues reaching high into the night sky, embers becoming stars as they jumped from home to home, crop to crop. Their world was on fire, and they watched from the trees nearby. They were both little things, then, thin from the dying crops, scared from the cries of innocents, prepubescent and alone.

How old had they been? Old enough to run, to laugh, to smile. Were they old enough to mourn?

The boy, short and sickly, his eyes the color of emeralds, held onto the little girl. He grabbed fistfuls of her ebony hair, his fingers scattering through her scalp like stars in an inky sky. The flames reached higher, their tendrils dancing alone in a melancholy turn about the funeral pyre.

They watched the destruction from below, all watery eyes and shaky hands.

How old had they been? Old enough to fear, to cower, to hide. Were they old enough to know?

Could they comprehend all that they saw?

Did they know that everything they had and everything they had been was gone? (“They’re just children!” “They’re survivors, now.”)

Kade shivered in the cold, the damp settling deep into his bones. He coughed, ash lying in his throat, a sickness coating his teeth. Olinda looked at him, her big eyes searching.

The answer was dead and buried, burning at the stake.

--

The world was vast, but for all of its grandness, it was unforgiving. Harsh winds, churning seas, chilling monsoons, burning fires that towered higher than the great Temple of Light in Whitetower. Not all tragedies reached here, the outskirts of Riverbend - the edge of the world -  where paved streets turned to dirt roads and weary travelers became cheap drunks.

But a tragedy of young orphans was common. Enough so that they were readily given a name; Nowhere Children. Coming from nowhere and going the same way. Towns like Riverbend were full of them - common tragedies that no longer brought tears to the eyes.

They were young, and it was for the best.

“They’re lucky. By the time they’re eight they won’t remember anymore.” The owner of the pub set the children up with drinks at a seat short enough for their stubby legs. The ale was just strong enough for them to sleep soundly, knock them out so the demons could be kept at bay a little longer.

A farmer looked at them, pity in his eyes and understanding in his head. He sighed with the weight of death and sorrow, “Disaster stay with you. It’s not going away. Not anytime soon.”

“Aye, perhaps you’re right. You’d know, brother.” Another drink slid across the counter.

The fire never left them, its embers never died in the caverns of their minds, the hollows of their souls. It raged against them, ravaging all that they were and all that they could be.

Kade had been touched by the flames and its effects lingered beneath his skin. It turned his complexion pale, his breath shallow, his muscles weak, and his emerald eyes dim. The town knew it as Ghost Sickness, a way the dead damn the living to a life of suffering and an existence of pain. Recompense for having survived, a promise of reuniting again, soon.

They didn’t expect him to last, so they entertained him with stories. (It was a way to wash away your sins, appeasing the dying.)

Olinda would watch him from his bedside, holding his hand, trying not to notice how stark the contrast of their skin was, worse and worse with every passing day. The pallor of his skin turned him closer to a ghost than the living as the bronze of her skin grew darker from long days of work. She held him tighter then, desperate to see the blood rush to the spot she cradled.

She would bring him flowers or bits of grain and he would tell her his stories by the light of the flame, it’s greedy tongue going this way and that, her eyes watching it in fear. He told of the past, of wars come and gone, of how constellations got their names, of how they came to be, the longing in his voice that of an old man who was seeing his final days.

She laid down next to him at night, making promises instead of prayers, vows instead of wishes. She had earned their keep in this farmhouse, this room where they could stay. She would earn their freedom, too, where they could make stories of their own volition and desires.

For now, she would make those necessary trades to keep them behind closed doors. For now, she would do what she must so that, at the end of the day, the only family she had left would not be gone in the fire’s wake.

--

Place after place. Alley after alley. Pub after pub. Door after door. Stone after stone.

They roamed Riverbend like the ghosts they had left behind, searching for a place of belonging, trying to carve a home out of the ruins they were saved from. Strength was hard to come by, but from high spirits Kade could spin powerful wills using a single song. Stories were his magic while memories were his poison. He bended the people to his will like a siren, leading them into the future he had been so certain he would never have.

He was cursed, some thought, leading others to treasure he could not possess. Olinda was haunted, said others; the fire put itself in her veins, an evil that, when forged, knew not what it was but hungered nevertheless.

She was a soul looking, searching, hunting for a life beyond what she had been given. She touched the lives of others but drifted, unsatiated. She could find places and people and bring them on her trail, set them on a new path and destiny, but could not change her own.

They would have to lose themselves before they found their home. They belonged to ash, now; they were remnants of the fire, pieces of a conflagration that had left very little in its wake. In the end, their home was the woods they had hid in, all those years ago.

How old had they been? Old enough to be gone.

The fire knew it. The long shadows that the flames threw knew it, as well.

--

The memories that plagued them had screams, beckoning them to the dark where the pyre had burned in front and the shadow engulfed them from behind.

It’s where they had come from, children born of shadow, lost to the fire.

It burns in their eyes now; anger, fear, sorrow, death.

Do you forget us, bard of darkness? Do you run away, worker of shade?

Olinda clinged to Kade, his light proof that her fears were not so, that they were not Nowhere Children with a sickness of ghosts, born to nothing but sorrow and dread. She held his aching bones, his aging soul. She looked into his emerald eyes, searching for answers. (He crafted some for her; prophecies of adventure, lore of good.)

He had his stories, a past that he could recount to make him feel grand, a past rich enough he need not think of a future that might not be.

But when she asked, all he could do was comply and fashion her a fate of dreams, a future fit for the bards in Whitetower, perfect for the Legends of Light. A life full of wonder, away from the dirt roads, long days, and bright fires they knew.

(He never spoke of his future. There was no telling what it held.)

She had taken his tales with a fervor, intent to drink the good spirits before they were gone.

Where did they go? Will they come back?

--

Kade was gone and a new story was being written for her, its dangers stronger than she could ever know. (What did she have, now? What could she bring back?)

A fearless will, shaped in her brother’s image, pushed her onward to what lay beneath.