#sosylvie

[priafey]

FINALLY made a ref sheet for Sylvie... behold

[priafey]

Hiii. I wanted to share this excerpt from the latest chapter of Among the Many Lost Souls (which should be ready for publishing sometime between today and tomorrow). This is Sylvette's (or Sylvie's) backstory in a nutshell. It's <1k words. Trigger warning for allusions to sexual abuse (specifically, CSA), domestic abuse, and general violence. SYLVIE LORE, HERE WE COME

Sylvie remembered, very clearly, the first time a stranger touched her.

She couldn't have been older than three. One of the servants put her out in the hallway that day. They were angry with her over something she'd done; she'd long since forgotten what. There was rain bearing down on the tiny windowpanes a world above her. She couldn't see it, but she could hear it. Something sad swelled in her. Sylvie scraped at the wall with the talisman the servant had given to keep her busy as she began to sniffle. Someone tall knelt next to her before she could arrive at tears, however, and she neglected her makeshift toy to look. Her wet, little eyes were like two wilted, orange poppies reaching up to meet the stranger's smile.

"Do you want up?" he asked, and Sylvie's face lit up like a Fire Festival mage's fingertips. His own fingertips slipped under her legs, and he raised her up above his head. Sylvie could still see the rain running like a great, distorted curtain down that hand-wrought glass if she closed her eyes. She could still see the shapes she traced with her tiny finger, on the breathprints that appeared in front of her nose. The wispy cobwebs, the splintered wood, the cracked paint. All of it. The only image she conserved more clearly from that moment was the one she put together as the man lowered her into his arms.

His eyes. Hazy with sadness, like hers not a minute ago. And yet teeming with love.

He breathed in deep then, and pressed her head to his breast. His chest jerked as he fell into inconsolable sobbing. Sylvie was confused. She vaguely wondered if he was sad he couldn't see the rain up close, like she had. She wished she was tall and strong, like him, so she could lift him up to look. Meanwhile, she buried her nose in the soft wrinkles of his robes. He smelled nice. Deep, musky, sweet, she'd think, years later. Like a leather-bound book filled with more flowers than pages.

One of the servant's voices in the adjacent room made him start. Quickly, but gently, the stranger set Sylvie down. He must've glanced back at her three or four times before disappearing around the corner of the hallway.

Moments later, she heard someone else coming up the stairs. Those were footsteps Sylvie knew well. She began to strike the floor with the talisman as quietly and harshly as she could, leaving dreadful etches in the woodwork. His voice broke out like a roar. He gained ground. She trembled uncontrollably as he grabbed her arm and yanked her off the floor, chastising her for always ruining all the nice things he bought for her. Sylvie didn't often struggle against her father once they made it to her room.

But on that day, she did.

There came a point in time she thought it all so normal. Her father's visits became like the rain–sporadic, unknowable, uncontrollable occurrences she regarded with complete indifference, except when they occurred with an unusually intense violence. Similarly did all the servants, not to mention her mother, Lousine, concern themselves with what was unfolding under their roof. At least in her mother's case, Sylvie supposed, she couldn't be blamed for failing to protect her. She had her own screams to let out on the marriage bed.

For eighteen years was unthinking cruelty the routine within the jarl's longhouse, and for eighteen years did Lousine sit on the secret that would increase it tenfold, from the moment it got out.

She went to go talk to her during the evening, on her birthday. Sylvie cried a lot. Lousine, however, cried very little, even as her daughter begged her not to go tell her husband what they now both knew–even as Sylvie fell to her knees, pulled at her dress, and did everything to plead as fervently as she could without drawing the jarl's attention. But still Lousine left her.

The sepulchral silence of the hours that followed scared Sylvie worse than any of her father's doings ever had. Her mother was dead. She had to be. Sylvie spent the night curled up in bed, praying, though she'd never been very devout, that the Divines spare her the jarl's wrath. That she'd wake in the morning, and he'd be dead or gone, and she and her real father could leave it all behind to go live in High Rock together.

Instead, at first light, the jarl issued a decree.

Sylvie did not get the chance to speak to Florence as he was arrested in the merchant's square, nor as she felt, in the soles of her boots, the force with which he was beaten against the cobbles of the road leading to his house, nor as she heard the jarl declare this former thane of his a traitor of the highest degree, undeserving of any of the titles and properties he had so graciously been granted. These, he said, were now forfeit. Having seized all of his belongings, the guards bound, gagged, and threw Florence on the steps of his ruined home. In a final act of humiliation, the jarl handed his wife the torch. Sylvie heard every word he whispered into Lousine's ear then.

"Time to make your whore go up in smoke."

[priafey]

Note: a few of these are grouped by category (such as the #gotd tags or my OC tags)

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My Main Tags

#gotd – Gwilin of The Day (Gwilin reviews)

#oneperf – For gwilins that received a perfect (10 out of 10) rating in at least one category #noperfs – For gwilins that did not receive a perfect rating in any category #_/10 – Format of the tag for the overall rating of a gwilin. i.e. you will find all gwilins rated 5/10 under the '#5/10' tag

#depictions – For my art (this includes everything–drawings, memes, poetry, crafts, etc.)

#doodlebox – For compiling posts that gave me ideas for gwilin drawings, so I can make them later

#combinedeffort – For art inspo. Pulled from this line in Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters: "Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known."

#chipmygoodfriendchip – For art made by my friends

#rentfree – This is a Gwilin-exclusive tag for when I am Thinking Thoughts about him •3•

#hi1quastion – Tag for all asks/submissions

#filed under 'posts gwilin would make if he were on tumblr' – What it says on the tin; a post that seems like the kind of shit he would reblog

#sansgwilie – For posts that have little to nothing to do with Gwilin ('other topics' tag)

#gwilingang – A tag I rarely use (it's mostly for when I'm feeling particularly pumped about something Gwilin-related)

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OC tags

For my purposes, I count Gwilin as an OC of mine most of the time. This is because I have multiple AUs based on different versions of him I've created for the fics I've written. More on that here.

#your honor he is La Creatura – For vampire Gwilin

#sorry this is so fari – For Fari Al-Ilat

#morgurzcore – For Morgurz

#felicidad? no. felicitas – For Felicitas

#sosylvie – For Sylvette

#legitlaila – For Laila

#majorlymaxleisis – For Lei

#frijol – for Fjol Blood-Beguiler