Seelie or Unseelie

Log Info

• Title: Seelie or Unseelie

• Emitter: Ravenstongue

• Characters: Ravenstongue, Telamon

• Place: Ravenstongue and Telamon's house

• Summary: Ravenstongue is trying to cope with Pothy's decision to subject himself to a hundred years of pain in the Unseelie Court, and Telamon comforts her in his usual manner of affection and kind words. Grandfather arrives and casts a much different tone on the evening when he behaves in an erratic and emotionally unhinged manner that's soothed by Telamon's words and the presence of Grandfather's beloved descendant. He informs the lovers of his cousin, an Unseelie fey known as the Corpse Eater, before the family settles in for a pleasant evening.

-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=- Dramatis Personae =--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-      
Ravenstongue         5'0"     99 Lb      Half-Elf          Female    Short half-elf girl with violet eyes and black hair.             
Telamon              5'6"     140 Lb     Half-Elf          Male      A platinum-blond half-sil man with dancing dark eyes
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-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-=-= NPCs of Note =-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-                    
The Feathered One    6'0"     ?? Lb      Fey               Male      A tall fey man with violet eyes and a primal appearance.
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Lúpecyll-Atlon residence, early evening.

The sunset sinks below the horizon, the cloudy summer day giving way to a misty early evening. Student mages down the street are already enjoying the start of the weekend and the end of stressful exams, taking the opportunity to rush their way into the bars and other local hangouts that are not so far down the street, and occasionally some whoops and hollers are carried on the early evening wind.

And then there's Cor'lana, staring at a heavy sword that's currently at rest on her coffee table, holding the plushie of Pothy tightly in her arms. There are dark circles under her eyes that tell on her lack of sleep over the past two nights since they arrived back home.

The front door unlocks, swinging open to admit Telamon. His pace is a little weary, but he shuts the door behind him, latching it, before doffing his boots. Raking his hand through his hair, he walks out to the living room.

He represses a sigh -- it won't do her, or him, any good -- and instead moves over to sit next to Cor'lana, putting his arm around her gently. "It's an ugly thing, isn't it?" he ventures, nodding at the sword. "Pretty poor substitute, in my opinion." Gently, he begins to stroke her hair -- he doesn't know what he can do to heal this hurt, other than be here with his lady love.

Cor'lana immediately puts her head down to Telamon's shoulder, her eyes fluttering shut for a moment. She lets out a sigh--one of many since they'd come back home--and eventually, her eyes open again, although they look downcast compared to before.

"The house is so quiet without him," she says. "I didn't realize how much I'd... miss hearing the sound of him cracking open peanuts. Or him babbling away about things while I'm trying to cook, or write poetry."

She sqeueezes the Pothy plushie a little tighter. "I'm fine with the burden I've been given," she says. "I just worry that... he won't come back. That he'll forget about me. Do you know how many stories there are of mortal men bewitched by fey queens that stay with them in Quelynos and forget all about their families?"

Telamon nods, nestling her against him. "I know, love." A sad, rueful smile. "I miss him too. I... keep expecting to hear him chasing the pixies, or trying to break into the pantry -- again -- or complaining about us getting romantic."

He presses a kiss to her brow. "Is it selfish of me to be glad you didn't go? I... like you said, there are plenty of stories about mortals who fall under the fey spell. And it doesn't always have a happy ending."

"Still... Pothy's not just a mortal man. He's a receptacle of knowledge, crafted by the hand of a god. I daresay the fey may have bought themselves a bit more than they bargained for."

His kiss to her brow and his words purchases a smile from Cor'lana's lips. A small one, but it's a little victory. "I'm glad I didn't go, either," she says. "I thought about it, and I thought--perhaps it'd give me connections with other members of the fey. Perhaps I'd learn some things that could be helpful from the Queen herself about magic. And... maybe I'd get to see Grandfather from time to time."

There's a tiny laugh. It's a hollow one. "But then I remembered she is Unseelie, and that is as dangerous as they come. She'd try and rip me apart from you, I'm sure. And when you told me no, I knew I couldn't go."

She squeezes the Pothy plushie again, smiling as she looks down at it. The beady little blue eyes are not Pothy's eyes, but they seem comforting in their own right. "I don't think they'll hurt him," she says. "Not... Directly. But I don't know what's worse--the Queen's love or the Queen's hatred. Somehow, in the end, I suspect they are the same."

Telamon nods and rests his head against hers. "I... I would've followed, or tried to. Like I told you, you're stuck with me. And if that meant following you into the Unseelie courts, well..." He exhales. "I'm glad it didn't come to that, but I would've."

His expression becomes a little sour. "They really are unpleasant people. No wonder Grandfather wants so little to do with them. I wouldn't either. Hopefully... Pothy's long experiences through the inheritors will keep him from being hurt indirectly, either."

He grins tightly, and gives her a squeeze in turn. "I wonder if he'll start rousing those memories in his head. I think even the Queen might have her hands full with your mother's echo."

Telamon brings up Nadina, and Cor'lana... makes a face. And then she snickers--and then it turns into a laugh. "Tel, I think--I think my mother would have tried to seduce the Queen of Air and Darkness, and I think she would have succeeded," she says, before laughing even harder. It's that odd feytouched nature of hers--so given to sorrow one moment but then to laughter and joy the next. "If anyone could, it would be her!"

Cor'lana's laughter masks the sound of wings flapping in the wind outside the house, and something landing on the windowsill--but it doesn't mask the sound of tapping on the glass. The poor feytouched girl is wiping away happy tears and snickering when the sound rings out--and she springs to her feet, eyes wide and full of tears. "Oh, is that Pothy...?"

She walks to the kitchen and stops short in her steps as soon as she can see the window. "Grandfather!" she says.

Just getting her to smile, to laugh, is a victory for Telamon. A small warmth blooming in his chest, as he wins out against her despair and sadness, for now anyways. "There you go, love," he says with a smile. "Now, maybe we could..."

What he wants to do next is unsaid as he hears the tapping as well. His brow furrows as he rises with Lana, following her, but when he sees who's at the window he moves to open it, letting Grandfather in. It's only polite, after all.

It's a raven with violet eyes that's on the other side of the glass--and when Telamon opens the window, the raven flies in, landing on the kitchen and forming into the familiar figure of Alud'rigan, the Feathered One. "I appreciate you letting me in, Telamon," he says with a genial smile.

And then he fixes Cor'lana with a glance. It's a smile at first. And then the smile drops from his face, which visibly unnerves Cor'lana. "My descendant," he says, in a tone of voice rather unlike the loving and warm tone that he usually uses to address Cor'lana. "Where were the two of you two days ago?"

Cor'lana takes a step back, eyes widening. "I... We were..."

She clears her throat. "We were in the Queen of Air and Darkness's Court. Telamon and I volunteered to go there to assist a friend, who needed--"

Alud'rigan moves very quickly. This is a fact that Telamon knows as he's seen it first-hand. And he holds Cor'lana tightly to his chest, his arms wrapped around her. His violet eyes close. "You must have been so scared," he says. The warmth is back in his voice, and this makes Cor'lana visibly relax.

GAME: Telamon rolls sense motive+3: (5)+13+3: 21

Telamon tenses a tiny bit at Grandfather, not liking the expression there at first. When he relaxes, and embraces Cor'lana, Tel relaxes as well... forcing his fingers to be still. "A bit tense, Grandfather?" he remarks sardonically.

"I can't really blame you, though," Tel continues. "The last couple of visits to Quelynos have been singularly unpleasant. First I had to brave the courts of the king of the Sluagh, which was only slightly less dangerous than trying to pickpocket a dragon. Then Lana and myself wind up backstopping Aya and Aryia in the court of the Queen of Air and Darkness, which was somehow even less pleasant."

He gives Grandfather a sour look. "I think I see why you don't want to spend time with them any more."

There's something dark in Grandfather's eyes as Telamon talks, and the fey lord growls gently as he looks down at Cor'lana. She looks a little uncomfortable again as he holds her--his arms tightening around her. "They can't have you--either of you," the Feathered One says, baring his teeth as he snarls, his canine teeth just a tad too long to be typical elven teeth. "None of them can."

"Grandfather, please," Cor'lana pleads. "You're hurting--"

Grandfather lets go of her, but he fixes Telamon with a look in his eyes that seems almost... manic. It's disturbing to see such blatant emotion in his eyes that are usually so difficult to glean anything from. "You can't let them have her, Telamon," he says. "They can't take her away from me. Or you. I can't have that. I--I can't--"

He goes still as the tears run down his face.

Cor'lana walks briskly over to Telamon's side--and then her eyes dart to the sword in the living room. Her eyes widen, and she signs to Telamon, ((I can't let him touch that sword. Distract him.))

Telamon gives a short nod at Lana's signing. Instead, he snaps out, "Grandfather! Alud'rigan! Master yourself! She is not a possession. Remember what you told me in her apartment, so many moons ago?" His voice has taken on a surprisingly crisp tone, as he continues, "You are not owed anything, least of all a person."

He strides up, right up in Grandfather's face. "Your fear is riding you. The fear and the pain and the loneliness. Do not let them." He reaches out and grasps those clawed hands. "Look at me, Grandfather. She is here. I am here. We have passed through the fire and yet we still stand. Calm yourself."

Cor'lana takes the opportunity that Telamon presents her to slip by. She takes the sword--such a heavy thing--and she struggles with it, putting it away into the study. Her eyes linger for a moment on Pothy's empty book nest, and she whispers, "I wish you were here," before she shuts the door quietly.

Grandfather's monstrous hands are cold to the touch like a corpse, and his nails look quite sharp--but he doesn't refuse Telamon's touch. The violet eyes, however, bore down into Telamon, wild frenzy and maddened sorrow dueling for power within them.

He speaks quietly, softly. "I didn't want her to see... I didn't want her to see me. Like this." His eyes don't move to her, but it's clear he's talking about Cor'lana.

That line makes Cor'lana stop in her tracks. Maybe it's better for Telamon to talk it out with him if he thinks Cor'lana's still in the study?

Telamon keeps Grandfather's attention on him, fixing those wild purple eyes with his own starry gaze. "We all have bad days, Grandfather. None of us are perfect." He wraps his arms around the fey lord, hugging him as best he can. "My gods, I sometimes wonder how I keep from falling apart. It's been one thing after another. I just... keep moving and try not to think too much about it."

Pulling back a bit. "Please, Grandfather. Will you sit down? Have some tea with us, talk to me." Putting his heart into it now. "You believed I was the perfect match for Lana. Trust me now with your own fears and doubts."

Grandfather looks at Telamon for a longer moment... And the wildness that is in his eyes fades away. He closes them. He sighs, and he nods, before he opens them again. "Yes," he says, still quietly. "Please."

Cor'lana turns around, and she nods. "I'll make some tea," she says, walking past the two men again to the kitchen.

Grandfather carefully pulls his hands away from Telamon, and he walks over to the rocking chair in the living room, sitting down in it. It'd been quite some time since he last sat in it, and the chair makes a noise of protest, a creak that ends when the fey lord's full weight is pressed onto the thing. His claws grip the arms of the chair. "I have... struggled with much as of late," he says. "I realized I was possibly stifling both you and Cor'lana by being around so often. I tried to give you your distance. I tried to stay away, save for when Lana was taken and when I felt her in danger. I even resigned my position at the book store when all I could think of was visiting the two of you."

He sighs again. "It's the damnable curse. It's always been the curse."

Telamon relaxes when Grandfather finally sits down, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair again. Then, slowly, he sits down on the couch, resting his forearms on his knees, hands dangling idly. "You've been trying to give us room, but... your anguish, the desire to have Cor'lana near, is wreaking havoc on your well being." He just shakes his head. "What a damned mess. Why didn't you say anything to us, Grandfather? We could've tried something, anything, to ease this pain."

Yes, there's reproach there, but there's also empathy and compassion as Tel regards Grandfather. "Gods only know what might've happened if Lana and I had gone out to dinner. I have this image of you crashing into the common room of the TarRaCe... without bothering to open the door." He laughs a bit at it, wryly.

"Because I should be able to behave better than this," Grandfather says, somewhat bitterly. "I shouldn't have to be... bound by this thing. This curse. I call it that, but I don't know what it is--and I fear it is simply in my very nature."

There is a tight line on his face, a deep frown, as he says, "Perhaps they were right. Perhaps I am..."

Cor'lana arrives back in the living room with a tray of three teacups. She walks over to Grandfather and smiles gently at him, holding out a teacup. "It's okay to say it," she says, gently. "I think I've suspected it for a while, too. That you're really Unseelie."

There's a look in the fey lord's eyes again, but it's an interesting one. He takes the teacup gently with his clawed hands, and he nods. "So long as you do not think me as a monster," he says, humbled.

He puts the cup to his lips and he adds, "Monsters would crash into the TarRaCe, after all, and I think I can manage my senses long enough to not do such a thing." A wry grin spreads on his face, too, as he samples the tea.

It appears that like feytouched granddaughter, a well-timed joke can soothe the soul of the fey grandfather.

Telamon looks thoughtful, as he sips his tea. "It makes a grim kind of sense, you know. The Unseelie delight in... pain. But you've chosen to try and assuage and soothe it. In a very real way you may be at war with your own nature -- like trying to get a dryad to... well, stop living in a forest." His smirk suggests that wasn't what he was about to say.

"It might be, though, that you need to spend a little more time focused here, regardless of the worries about stifling us. You are hurting, Grandfather. And as you will be my grandfather by marriage, I take no pleasure in witnessing it."

Grandfather nods as Telamon speaks. "It is as you say. I... do not like being associated with them. I have long viewed them as monsters who delight in suffering and in pain. One in particular who caused me to declare that I would do anything to suppress these feelings."

His expression clouds again as he looks to Telamon and Cor'lana. "I have a few who I call cousin among my kind. If they are cousin by blood or by association, I have long forgotten--all but one."

Cor'lana looks horribly intrigued as she makes her way back to the couch, setting the tray down onto the coffee table. She sits down next to Telamon and leans forward without really realizing it. "Who?" she asks.

Alud'rigan looks grave. "Do not always trust those with violet eyes," he says. "Now that you two are venturing into Quelynos and I cannot be there to protect you from the machinations of their ways--beware the Corpse Eater. He has violet eyes like mine and wears feathers like mine, but he is... a wicked man. An evil man."

Telamon leans back in the couch, his face looking a little tired. "They are monsters," he says quietly to Grandfather. "Fey they may be, but they are monsters." When Lana sits down next to him, his arm goes around her almost instinctively.

At Alud'rigan's warning, he looks both wry, and sad. "Well, as Lana herself could tell you, sometimes family isn't all it's cracked up to be. We all have 'black sheep' in our ranks, I suppose."

Cor'lana brightens a little as Telamon puts his arm around her. So, for that matter, does Grandfather. There's a sense of healing that descends on the man's face as he just looks at his descendant and the man that has chosen to be interwoven into the family tree, a smile playing out on his face. It's clear he needed this.

But then Telamon mentions black sheep, and he raises a brow. "How is Glórenacil doing, by the way?"

Cor'lana... just stares at him. "What do you mean? Shouldn't you know? You made a pact with him, didn't you?"

The cheer from Grandfather's face disappears as his eyes go wide. "I made no such pact with him. Did you see a mark? Did it look like mine?"

"Yes--" Cor'lana stops mid-sentence, and she looks at Grandfather, and then she looks at Telamon. "If Grandfather has a cousin who is fey..."

Telamon sees the tension drain out of Grandfather, and smiles back at him. Pleased by how things seem to be calming. And then... of course it gets all mucked up again.

His eyes widen, and then he stares at Grandfather and Lana in shock. "...Oh, shit," he says. A sudden, horrid thought appears, but he shelves it for the moment. "Grandfather, last time we visited Glórenacil, he had a pact marking on his chest. He said you had put it there."

He sighs. "I knew, well, know, that you can be ruthless when it's needed. And to be honest, Glórenacil had pushed you as much as he'd pushed me. So I didn't question it." He smacks his head. "I didn't think to ask why you would bother doing so. You told me yourself you didn't care what he did now."

Grandfather shakes his head. "I would not enter into a pact with him," he says firmly. "I had thought, some time ago, about visiting him and trying to make amends--and perhaps he could serve me in some capacity. Make him atone for what he did to his brother and to you both. Perhaps deliver a bouquet of flowers every week. Tend to the gardens. Have him clean the toilet with a small brush. Especially where I was trying not to intrude--I thought, perhaps if I could repair what was there and make him atone..."

Cor'lana looks like she doesn't know whether to laugh or object to the idea of Glórenacil scrubbing a toilet with a pixie-sized brush. "But he has a pact mark, and it's not yours. Where is this... Corpse Eater now?"

Then her eyes narrow. "Maybe he's been drawn to the mortal realm with all the wight activity, judging by his name."

Telamon looks grim. "Except that Glórenacil said that it was after Grandfather came calling... he'd had it for a while. The wights are a recent development." He rubs his temples. "Dammit. Now I can't help but wonder, Lana..."

He looks up, his starry eyes flickering. "Who would've put it into Ainasse's head that she could become... well, not barren? That little punk necromancer? I doubt it. But a fey lord... especially one moving in opposition to Grandfather... I wonder if Ainasse might have a mark too?"

He stares into his teacup. "Gods, I hope I'm wrong about this."

Cor'lana nuzzles close into Telamon's form, sighing deeply. "I hope so too," she says. "I hope so, too."

The rest of the evening passes on a more amicable note. Grandfather's spirits are raised and he promises to visit more often, especially as he learns of what happened with Pothy in the Court of Air and Darkness. Eventually, he leaves with a smile on his face.

The pixies, however, have been listening the whole time. Lily-of-the-Valley is fuming. "I knew it!" she says. "I knew it!"

Mirabilis looks puzzled, which is an expression she often wears on her face when it comes to her pixie sister. "What?" she asks. "Please don't tell me this confirms--ugh--the story you wrote about Lady Lúpecyll and Lord Lúpecyll-to-be last night."

"No, there's not enough kissing under the moonlight for that!" Lily-of-the-Valley says, deadly serious. "You'd know that if you READ it, Mirabilis! No, I saw a very weird... creepy-looking bird the other day with violet eyes. It was hanging out in the trees before it fled. Ooooh, that makes me so mad!"

Lily-of-the-Valley turns around and cups her hands around her mouth. "HEY! Corpse-Eater meanie-head! Leave Lady Lúpecyll alone! Leave Lady Lúpecyll ALONE! Or I'm gonna... Oooh, I'm gonna..."

"Don't hurt yourself," Mirabilis quips.

"I'm gonna TEAR YOUR HEAD OFF AND USE IT AS A BALL," Lily-of-the-Valley threatens.

Her little scream echoes in the dark of night. She deflates a little after a moment. "That was pretty stupid. He'd probably just eat me."

Mirabilis just pats Lily-of-the-Valley on the head. "You've got a lot of heart, Lily," she says.

A sense of peace is restored to the Lúpecyll-Atlon household... for now.