Reminiscence
Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2020 10:12 pm
Reminiscence
1st Vhalar 720, in Volta
Almost fourteen arcs had passed since the painter Yrmellyn Cole had embraced attunement become a mage. Now, she stood on a pier in the harbour of Volta, a town in the wider Rharne area. It was located at the estuary of Zynyx river, where it flows into Orm’del Sea.
The weather was as it used to be this time of the arc. The Sun was shining from the cloudless blue sky. As it had recently been Saun the air was warm. A windless calm rested over the town but here on the pier, Yrmellyn felt a faint breeze blowing in from the sea. The smells of sea and river filled her nostrils with every breath she drew.
It was the first trial of Vhalar, Yrmellyn’s birthday, as far as she knew. The owner of the “orphanage” in Dust Quarter where Yrmellyn had grown up, Vilda Colmardine, had always said so. Despite the woman's vile ways - she had been an alcohol addicted baby-farmer - she had always remembered this date and told Yrmellyn her age.
Yrmellyn was now thirty-four arcs old. Only she knew it. She hadn’t seen any reason to tell anybody else, not even Ha’zel, her partner. There had been no parties and gifts in her childhood and as an adult, she felt no need of it. She used to celebrate the birthdays in solitude, by reminiscing and contemplating the past while she indulged in her favourite activity, painting.
The important people in her life had been few but their impact had been immense. Vilda Colmardine, orphanage “mother”, dead. Yrmellyn’s mentor in magic and art (also her lover) Mariuz Arbin, dead. The lady Zvezdama Venora, false fallen queen of Rynmere, missing in action after the failed rebellion. The boy Rudi Brandon, her intended apprentice, missing in action during the dark times of the Order of the Mantis in Rynmere. The sev’ryn man Ha’zel, whom Yrmellyn had met in Caervalle Village in Cylus 719 was still living with her. A tiny Emean begin named Bizette appeared in Yrmellyns dreams when they were lucid. By counting in Bizette Yrmellyn was able to achieve six people in total, given that the small being could be classified as “people”.
As it was her birthday Yrmellyn had dressed up to amuse herself. She wore the only dress of importance she owned. Oh, once upon a time she had worn so many spectacular outfits, but after the death of Mariuz, she hadn’t wanted to wear them anymore. She had replaced her former finery with the practical clothing of a travelling artist who took no interest in glamour except for as a motif. The red taffeta dress was the only exception. It was a gift from Zvezdana, whom she had counted as a friend. Yrmellyn only used it on her birthdays.
The need to paint was as compulsive to her as drug abuse is to an addict. Yrmellyn had brought her painting kit with her. These days, she never went anywhere without it, Also, she never went anywhere she couldn’t paint. She was constantly looking for motifs. The piers offered many interesting views and people to paint and had become her favourite place in Volta. There were tall ships, more or less exotic sailors and animals, crafters, merchants, guards, labourers, fishermen, goods, horses and dogs, doves and seagulls.
Beyond the piers, she saw the river and the open ocean.
Strolling at a slow pace she fell into a meditative state of mind and began reminiscing. First, she thought back at the dark and miserable beginning of her life. She had been born in the Dust Quarter, the slum of Rharne. There, she had grown up, in the shadow of Rharne, in a ramshackle house at an untidy street. The owner, one Vilda Colmardine, had been a baby farmer. She recalled Vilda as always drunk, often bad-tempered and testy, sometimes sentimental bordering on tearful and rarely cooking anything else oat porridge.
How could Vilda always have been so sure of Yrmellyn’s birthday date and why had she kept her alive? Who had Yrmellyn’s parents been and why had they left her to a woman like Vilda? Yrmellyn supposed that these questions would never be answered. Vilda was gone. She had died in one of the many infectious diseases that had kept culling the population in the poorest quarter of Rharne. Yrmellyn had been away from Rharne at the time.
When she had returned at the end of Vhalar 717 she had found that not only Vilda but even the house where she had run the “orphanage” was gone. A large part of Yrmellyn’s past had disappeared along with it. Very few people in “the dust” recalled her nowadays, barring the old Elixos at Hannah’s Healers.
When Yrmellyn had been small, she and Vilda had sometimes gone to the Earth Quarter to beg on the streets. Vilda had instructed Yrmellyn to smile at the strangers Vilda stopped. The memories of that time were vague and dream-like. She didn’t recall what Vilda had been saying but supposed that it must have been the usual lamentations beggars used to give people. Yrmellyn’s role had only been to smile. In all her few memories of it, she was smiling. One time a woman had given her a cookie. Smiling, Vilda had let her keep it and eat it. The taste of honey still came to her mind when she thought of it.
How old had she been? Three years? Four? She recalled the honey, the sun on the sky, the crowd in the street, her hand in Vilda’s. In hindsight, Yrmellyn wondered how much money the cookie-woman had given Vilda, inspired by the small child’s happiness for the rare sweet. Vilda had been in a good mood afterwards and even bought her a small mug of lemonade on a whim. At least Yrmellyn thought she recalled that even if she wasn’t sure. Hadn’t they been in a tavern or something? Hadn’t Vilda ordered a drink for herself too? Didn’t it seem a bit unbelievable that the woman would only have bought lemonade? Yrmellyn couldn’t remember. In her memory it was a perfect day, all imperfections washed away by the time. Even now, contemplating the credibility of it, she smiled.
Later, when Yrmellyn was older, it had been more lucrative to let her run errands for the people who held the power in Dust Quarters. At least they had come off as powerful people to her. They had been well off, to the local standards. Sometimes, they had been dressed up in brand new gaudy outfits and spent money like there was no tomorrow to plan for. Those had been the ones to work for until they were broke. Then they had faded back into the crowd of paupers again (or disappeared into the jail) while new temporary rich had risen to take their place. Young errand runners like Yrmellyn had immediately switched allegiances. Nobody had cared about it. They hadn’t been important enough to know anything and they were good little servants to have.
Had she known that she had been working for criminals? She had to admit that she had understood it but found it normal. She hadn’t known much about the laws of Rharne but everything about the laws of survival. The life-conditions in the Dust Quarter had improved a bit in the latest arcs, due to the efforts of a charity organization, hadn’t it? Yes, but in her childhood “the dust” had been the human dump of Rharne. Today, she realized that the people there had been seen as rats and treated accordingly. They had replied by doing as rats did, taking what they needed. But had she seen such patterns in her childhood? No. Contemplation told her that she had only been a part of them.
Unlike many of her fellow errand runners, Yrmellyn had been living in a home. Even an orphanage with a high degree of child mortality had been a notch better than nothing. Vilda had considered Yrmellyn to live there. She had never had to worry about being chased out on the streets. There had always been somewhere to go in the evenings, somewhere to eat porridge and a safe place to sleep in the nights. Vilda had taken care of what money or other payment Yrmellyn had earned. The money had been spent at once (on liquor) as saving up money in the Dust Quarter had been the equivalent of making oneself the target of robbers and cutthroats. Spend while you can, tomorrow you may be dead. This kind of money management had alas coloured Yrmellyn’s view on her economy all her life. It was one of the reasons why she never had become wealthy despite all the money that had passed through her hands in her courtesan days.
For a courtesan she had been. Not the kind of experienced and skilled courtesan who manages money as well as men but the other kind. No. She had been the kind that gets by on youth and beauty alone and spends every nel on shopping and pleasures. In her early twenties, she had already begun seeing her “business” decline. The painter Mariuz Arbin had not been nearly as rich as her former patrons, but meeting him had been the turn of a good card. At least it had seemed so to her at the time. She had moved into his comfortable house and lived with him as his mistress. None of them had cared about formalities and found marriage important. Nowadays she wondered why she had been so carefree at the time. Why hadn’t she thought one bit about how her future might be without him?
Mariuz had taught her painting so she would be able to provide for herself and he had also introduced her to domain magic, attunement. But, there had been more. She had signed a contract to stay with him until his death. The man had been ill and the doctors hadn’t been able to cure him. She had agreed to everything before she had the slightest idea what the consequences might be. A couple of arcs later she had been the inofficial widow of the man she had not only loved but been united with by the magic. Mariuz had died, but the spark had persevered in Yrmellyn. This had also been all she had inherited after him, as she had only been a leftover mistress with no rights to anything. It had all gone to a relative of his. She could of course ask herself why she had been void of foresight. And why had Mariuz been just like her? Had her love been blind? Had his love been true?
For a moment she began to speculate. Had everything been the doing of the magic Mariuz had carried and given forward to her? Had its urge to live and grow prodded Mariuz to find somebody to initiate, someone for the spark to continue its life in after his death? The compulsive need to paint and create that kept growing in her had debuted after the initiation. Learning to paint had felt as necessary as food, water and sleep. Mariuz had been obsessed with art. She had inherited this obsession, this ... hunger for creation. After fourteen arcs of being a mage and a painter, she had to face it. The magic had been shaping Mariuz into the tool it needed for its purpose and it had also shaped her. And the purpose? To immortalize itself and her, by the art they created in symbiosis?
She stopped speculating. Whether she had begun understanding the truth or only was becoming more deluded wasn’t possible to know. She thought about her time with Mariuz again. It had been such happy days, barring the end which had been horrible and sent her into an abyss of loss and sorrow deeper and darker than anybody who was not a mage could imagine. Only somebody who had lost an arm or a leg but still felt the pain of the non-existent limb like it was real might understand.
She had spent arcs in that abyss, travelling around like a vagrant, making a living as a painter. How many arcs? Nine. It had been nine long arcs as a drifter until things had seemed to turn good again, in 716. She had against all odds managed to keep an oath to the immortal Vhalar, to paint the portrait of Zvezdana Venora. Yrmellyn had no idea if Vhalar had noticed it or cared about it. Contemplating it she had to conclude that she didn’t believe so. She had stopped worshipping Vhalar arcs ago and nothing had happened. Did it prove the indifference of the Immortals?
It had still been important to her at the time. She had also gained an apprentice, a boy named Rudi Brandon. With the help of him and In particular, his grandmother and an eídisi named Saeri LaChasse she had survived both robbery and plague. Against all odds, she had met Laurits Verran, an alchemist. But, this good luck had not lasted. The anti-mage sentiments in Rynmere at the time had made her decide to settle somewhere else.
Yrmellyn had felt that being responsible for a young apprentice meant that she needed to give him a stable home in a safe place. She had travelled to Ne’haer, intending to send for the apprentice as soon as she had a house and income. That plan had only served to separate her from Rudi. The situation in Ne’haer had been turbulent. She had left after only a couple of seasons and moved to Rharne.
Meanwhile, Rynmere had closed its ports and it had been impossible to get in touch with people there. She had waited in vain for a letter from Laurits Verran, whom she had entrusted Rudi to while she was away. When she finally had received a message it had arrived by ehco scroll instead, at Hannah’s Healers. Old Hannah Elixo had sent for her. Laurits had been in a rush, writing to Yrmellyn that they were on the run, he, Rudi (who he now claimed was his son) and the grandmother. He had only told her that they were hiding in Norr Port, the northern port of Rynmere, where they hoped that it would still be possible to find a ship to escape on. After this, it had been silent. Yrmellyn had gone down into yet another time of darkness, having lost the apprentice and her plans for the future. Her reaction had been to isolate bury herself in her work as an artist.
When she had felt a bit better she had decided to rent out one of the two apartments she owned in Rharne’s Earth quarter. She had found a good tenant and everything had seemed better, but soon enough a new setback had hit her. Her ambition to tidy up a bit in the debris of the tenants home-to-be had become her downfall. She did still not know what it had been, the odd jewel that had turned to dust in her hand. All she knew was that I had caused a mysterious metallic rash to spread over her body and made her look like her skin was made of rust and verdigris. No attempts to cure it had been successful. Old Oliver Elixo had speculated that she might be a victim of dark magic. In desperation, Yrmellyn had taken an all-purpose elixir which had only made her condition worse. For a while, she had feared that she would turn into a mer. Life had felt like a long and dark night without end.
The painting had kept her going on. Art had been the only light in her existence. She had painted as obsessed. Among other artwork, she had painted the portrait of a thunder priestess. That had made her known to the clergy. The priestess had persuaded Yrmellyn to escort her to Caervalle Town. It had been the first time Yrmellyn had done something out of loyalty with Rharne. Why had she done it? She had no clear answer to that question. Only a feeling. She recalled that it had felt right.
The good deed had brought her into an unexpected tangle of mystery, magic, crime and love. In Caervalle, in Cylus of 719, she left the inn’s main building to check on the horses and in the stable she had met her future partner, the stableman Ha’zel. The sev’ryn man had been working when she arrived. Together they had dealt with a criminal who also had been a flayer mage. They had done it their way and then departed discreetly by sleigh to Rharne. Then, they had stayed together ever after and the weird red roses an odd old crone had given them had never wilted.
Mysterious, wasn’t it? But, there was more to the world than people could understand, right? The flowers were beautiful. Why question a gift of eternal beauty? Why question love when it comes your way? She saw no reason for it.
For a while, it had looked like her life would finally be uncomplicated and happy. That had soon proven to be wrong. In the spring of arc 719, an unforeseen disaster had hit the whole world. Somehow, the connection to the ether that enabled the living to dream, children to be born and the dead to pass on had been shut off. Yrmellyn, being a mage, had discovered how powerful the magic spark she carried was.
It had lurked in her, not seeming so difficult to deal with. It hadn’t felt dangerous. It had been useful (and fun) to be able to tune into frequencies and notes. It had come in handy to have an easy way to find her way by using the compass of magic. Now, it had risen as the strong inner power it was. It had tried to take command and force her to flay and feed it the ether it didn’t get from Emea anymore. Her fight against this urge might have ended with losing and becoming a flayer, if not for Ha’zel. Fearless, the man had brought her with him into the wilderness where he figured Nature (and he) would support her. A long and demanding inner conflict with several big showdowns had followed.
She had won and it had seemed like the spark had dwindled. But, after midnight the dimension of Emea had been mended. Yrmellyn had very little insight into this. She didn’t know what had happened or how it had happened. All this had been, and was, an enigma to her. But she knew that the spark had gained an enormous sudden power boost and caused her to wake up in a dream, in the shape of a dragon. Thus her dreams had gained a new and intriguing quality. She was sometimes lucid in them.
Overall, dreams had begun playing a bigger role in her life although they also made it more mysterious. In a weird dream right before the “Etherdeath” (as she named it) she had seen two men do something. It wasn’t like she understood it. It was mysterious and also very hard to recall. She didn’t remember it from the dream. But, as an artist, she had made a series of drawings with some notes right after she had woken up and so, she had the drawings to look at. By looking at them and musing over them, she had learnt that she had dreamt ... something she didn’t know ... but which she had depicted and saved nonetheless. Thus, she was perhaps the only living being in Idalos who knew the name she had written beneath one of the men on her drawings. She tended to forget that name as soon as she wasn’t looking at it. But, the drawings and the notes did not forget.
Right now she had forgotten it. But she knew that there was a name on her drawings. How could it be that she never succeeded to memorize it no matter how hard she tried? Why was the memory eluding her?
During the summer that had followed, and the fall, Yrmellyn had not done much more than resting and recovering after the ordeal of fighting the spark inside her soul. Life had been simple. She and Ha’zel had stayed in a cottage they had found by Lake Lovalus. They had just lived, doing the basic everyday tasks. She had fished, gathered wild roots and herbs, cooked uncomplicated food, bathed In the lake, been with Ha’zel. The time by the lake rested in her memory like a bubble of light, rest and happiness.
At her return late in the fall when it was too cold to stay at the lake they had returned to Rharne just to find Storm’s Edge preparing for a siege. An army of fire-creatures threatened Rharne. For the second time in her life, Yrmellun had attempted to help her city. But, after a journey to recruit more people to the defence she had fallen ill. She had ended up in the coastal town of Volta.
This was where she still lived. She thought of what she had done here ... not much. She had experienced odd lucid dreams, but dreams were only dreams, even if they were lucid, weren’t they? She had made several paintings. There was that. All paintings had been purple, to some degree. Purple had for some reason become a preferred colour and she had used it generously.
She sighed.
Her life had been a series of ups and downs. Now, from a distance in the time, she saw how she had grown and lived in the darkness until the meeting with her mentor Marius had changed everything and sent her toward a better, happier fate. He had saved her and lifted her from the dust, made her painter and a mage. For a long time, Yrmellyn had believed that it meant that life had a happy end. Nowadays she wasn’t sure of that. Did the lives of mages even have happy ends?
It could often seem like the opposite was the case. Could it ever end well to be transformed and shaped by a supernatural power she hadn’t been born with? She had acquired because she had wanted it...or because the power had wanted her. She feared the latter. Affected by her feelings for Mariuz and her need to rise from an impossible situation, she had made herself the magic’s vessel and tool. But he (and his spark) had suggested it. Little had she known that she would have to strive for control over the spark and its purpose for a lifetime.
Purpose. She needed a clear purpose with her life, well-defined intentions and goals, good plans, strong will and the stamina and discipline to follow through. This was what she could balance the power of the attunement spark with. This was how they could co-exist without the magic turning her into a mind-controlled doll. She knew it. Or was it the spark making her think so?
But, the problem was that Yrmellyn didn’t know all those things. She was a woman without a clear purpose. Her intentions were as vague to her as the meaning of her life. This was what the contemplation of the story of her life had revealed to her.
Next Part
The weather was as it used to be this time of the arc. The Sun was shining from the cloudless blue sky. As it had recently been Saun the air was warm. A windless calm rested over the town but here on the pier, Yrmellyn felt a faint breeze blowing in from the sea. The smells of sea and river filled her nostrils with every breath she drew.
It was the first trial of Vhalar, Yrmellyn’s birthday, as far as she knew. The owner of the “orphanage” in Dust Quarter where Yrmellyn had grown up, Vilda Colmardine, had always said so. Despite the woman's vile ways - she had been an alcohol addicted baby-farmer - she had always remembered this date and told Yrmellyn her age.
Yrmellyn was now thirty-four arcs old. Only she knew it. She hadn’t seen any reason to tell anybody else, not even Ha’zel, her partner. There had been no parties and gifts in her childhood and as an adult, she felt no need of it. She used to celebrate the birthdays in solitude, by reminiscing and contemplating the past while she indulged in her favourite activity, painting.
The important people in her life had been few but their impact had been immense. Vilda Colmardine, orphanage “mother”, dead. Yrmellyn’s mentor in magic and art (also her lover) Mariuz Arbin, dead. The lady Zvezdama Venora, false fallen queen of Rynmere, missing in action after the failed rebellion. The boy Rudi Brandon, her intended apprentice, missing in action during the dark times of the Order of the Mantis in Rynmere. The sev’ryn man Ha’zel, whom Yrmellyn had met in Caervalle Village in Cylus 719 was still living with her. A tiny Emean begin named Bizette appeared in Yrmellyns dreams when they were lucid. By counting in Bizette Yrmellyn was able to achieve six people in total, given that the small being could be classified as “people”.
As it was her birthday Yrmellyn had dressed up to amuse herself. She wore the only dress of importance she owned. Oh, once upon a time she had worn so many spectacular outfits, but after the death of Mariuz, she hadn’t wanted to wear them anymore. She had replaced her former finery with the practical clothing of a travelling artist who took no interest in glamour except for as a motif. The red taffeta dress was the only exception. It was a gift from Zvezdana, whom she had counted as a friend. Yrmellyn only used it on her birthdays.
The need to paint was as compulsive to her as drug abuse is to an addict. Yrmellyn had brought her painting kit with her. These days, she never went anywhere without it, Also, she never went anywhere she couldn’t paint. She was constantly looking for motifs. The piers offered many interesting views and people to paint and had become her favourite place in Volta. There were tall ships, more or less exotic sailors and animals, crafters, merchants, guards, labourers, fishermen, goods, horses and dogs, doves and seagulls.
Beyond the piers, she saw the river and the open ocean.
Strolling at a slow pace she fell into a meditative state of mind and began reminiscing. First, she thought back at the dark and miserable beginning of her life. She had been born in the Dust Quarter, the slum of Rharne. There, she had grown up, in the shadow of Rharne, in a ramshackle house at an untidy street. The owner, one Vilda Colmardine, had been a baby farmer. She recalled Vilda as always drunk, often bad-tempered and testy, sometimes sentimental bordering on tearful and rarely cooking anything else oat porridge.
How could Vilda always have been so sure of Yrmellyn’s birthday date and why had she kept her alive? Who had Yrmellyn’s parents been and why had they left her to a woman like Vilda? Yrmellyn supposed that these questions would never be answered. Vilda was gone. She had died in one of the many infectious diseases that had kept culling the population in the poorest quarter of Rharne. Yrmellyn had been away from Rharne at the time.
When she had returned at the end of Vhalar 717 she had found that not only Vilda but even the house where she had run the “orphanage” was gone. A large part of Yrmellyn’s past had disappeared along with it. Very few people in “the dust” recalled her nowadays, barring the old Elixos at Hannah’s Healers.
When Yrmellyn had been small, she and Vilda had sometimes gone to the Earth Quarter to beg on the streets. Vilda had instructed Yrmellyn to smile at the strangers Vilda stopped. The memories of that time were vague and dream-like. She didn’t recall what Vilda had been saying but supposed that it must have been the usual lamentations beggars used to give people. Yrmellyn’s role had only been to smile. In all her few memories of it, she was smiling. One time a woman had given her a cookie. Smiling, Vilda had let her keep it and eat it. The taste of honey still came to her mind when she thought of it.
How old had she been? Three years? Four? She recalled the honey, the sun on the sky, the crowd in the street, her hand in Vilda’s. In hindsight, Yrmellyn wondered how much money the cookie-woman had given Vilda, inspired by the small child’s happiness for the rare sweet. Vilda had been in a good mood afterwards and even bought her a small mug of lemonade on a whim. At least Yrmellyn thought she recalled that even if she wasn’t sure. Hadn’t they been in a tavern or something? Hadn’t Vilda ordered a drink for herself too? Didn’t it seem a bit unbelievable that the woman would only have bought lemonade? Yrmellyn couldn’t remember. In her memory it was a perfect day, all imperfections washed away by the time. Even now, contemplating the credibility of it, she smiled.
Later, when Yrmellyn was older, it had been more lucrative to let her run errands for the people who held the power in Dust Quarters. At least they had come off as powerful people to her. They had been well off, to the local standards. Sometimes, they had been dressed up in brand new gaudy outfits and spent money like there was no tomorrow to plan for. Those had been the ones to work for until they were broke. Then they had faded back into the crowd of paupers again (or disappeared into the jail) while new temporary rich had risen to take their place. Young errand runners like Yrmellyn had immediately switched allegiances. Nobody had cared about it. They hadn’t been important enough to know anything and they were good little servants to have.
Had she known that she had been working for criminals? She had to admit that she had understood it but found it normal. She hadn’t known much about the laws of Rharne but everything about the laws of survival. The life-conditions in the Dust Quarter had improved a bit in the latest arcs, due to the efforts of a charity organization, hadn’t it? Yes, but in her childhood “the dust” had been the human dump of Rharne. Today, she realized that the people there had been seen as rats and treated accordingly. They had replied by doing as rats did, taking what they needed. But had she seen such patterns in her childhood? No. Contemplation told her that she had only been a part of them.
Unlike many of her fellow errand runners, Yrmellyn had been living in a home. Even an orphanage with a high degree of child mortality had been a notch better than nothing. Vilda had considered Yrmellyn to live there. She had never had to worry about being chased out on the streets. There had always been somewhere to go in the evenings, somewhere to eat porridge and a safe place to sleep in the nights. Vilda had taken care of what money or other payment Yrmellyn had earned. The money had been spent at once (on liquor) as saving up money in the Dust Quarter had been the equivalent of making oneself the target of robbers and cutthroats. Spend while you can, tomorrow you may be dead. This kind of money management had alas coloured Yrmellyn’s view on her economy all her life. It was one of the reasons why she never had become wealthy despite all the money that had passed through her hands in her courtesan days.
For a courtesan she had been. Not the kind of experienced and skilled courtesan who manages money as well as men but the other kind. No. She had been the kind that gets by on youth and beauty alone and spends every nel on shopping and pleasures. In her early twenties, she had already begun seeing her “business” decline. The painter Mariuz Arbin had not been nearly as rich as her former patrons, but meeting him had been the turn of a good card. At least it had seemed so to her at the time. She had moved into his comfortable house and lived with him as his mistress. None of them had cared about formalities and found marriage important. Nowadays she wondered why she had been so carefree at the time. Why hadn’t she thought one bit about how her future might be without him?
Mariuz had taught her painting so she would be able to provide for herself and he had also introduced her to domain magic, attunement. But, there had been more. She had signed a contract to stay with him until his death. The man had been ill and the doctors hadn’t been able to cure him. She had agreed to everything before she had the slightest idea what the consequences might be. A couple of arcs later she had been the inofficial widow of the man she had not only loved but been united with by the magic. Mariuz had died, but the spark had persevered in Yrmellyn. This had also been all she had inherited after him, as she had only been a leftover mistress with no rights to anything. It had all gone to a relative of his. She could of course ask herself why she had been void of foresight. And why had Mariuz been just like her? Had her love been blind? Had his love been true?
For a moment she began to speculate. Had everything been the doing of the magic Mariuz had carried and given forward to her? Had its urge to live and grow prodded Mariuz to find somebody to initiate, someone for the spark to continue its life in after his death? The compulsive need to paint and create that kept growing in her had debuted after the initiation. Learning to paint had felt as necessary as food, water and sleep. Mariuz had been obsessed with art. She had inherited this obsession, this ... hunger for creation. After fourteen arcs of being a mage and a painter, she had to face it. The magic had been shaping Mariuz into the tool it needed for its purpose and it had also shaped her. And the purpose? To immortalize itself and her, by the art they created in symbiosis?
She stopped speculating. Whether she had begun understanding the truth or only was becoming more deluded wasn’t possible to know. She thought about her time with Mariuz again. It had been such happy days, barring the end which had been horrible and sent her into an abyss of loss and sorrow deeper and darker than anybody who was not a mage could imagine. Only somebody who had lost an arm or a leg but still felt the pain of the non-existent limb like it was real might understand.
She had spent arcs in that abyss, travelling around like a vagrant, making a living as a painter. How many arcs? Nine. It had been nine long arcs as a drifter until things had seemed to turn good again, in 716. She had against all odds managed to keep an oath to the immortal Vhalar, to paint the portrait of Zvezdana Venora. Yrmellyn had no idea if Vhalar had noticed it or cared about it. Contemplating it she had to conclude that she didn’t believe so. She had stopped worshipping Vhalar arcs ago and nothing had happened. Did it prove the indifference of the Immortals?
It had still been important to her at the time. She had also gained an apprentice, a boy named Rudi Brandon. With the help of him and In particular, his grandmother and an eídisi named Saeri LaChasse she had survived both robbery and plague. Against all odds, she had met Laurits Verran, an alchemist. But, this good luck had not lasted. The anti-mage sentiments in Rynmere at the time had made her decide to settle somewhere else.
Yrmellyn had felt that being responsible for a young apprentice meant that she needed to give him a stable home in a safe place. She had travelled to Ne’haer, intending to send for the apprentice as soon as she had a house and income. That plan had only served to separate her from Rudi. The situation in Ne’haer had been turbulent. She had left after only a couple of seasons and moved to Rharne.
Meanwhile, Rynmere had closed its ports and it had been impossible to get in touch with people there. She had waited in vain for a letter from Laurits Verran, whom she had entrusted Rudi to while she was away. When she finally had received a message it had arrived by ehco scroll instead, at Hannah’s Healers. Old Hannah Elixo had sent for her. Laurits had been in a rush, writing to Yrmellyn that they were on the run, he, Rudi (who he now claimed was his son) and the grandmother. He had only told her that they were hiding in Norr Port, the northern port of Rynmere, where they hoped that it would still be possible to find a ship to escape on. After this, it had been silent. Yrmellyn had gone down into yet another time of darkness, having lost the apprentice and her plans for the future. Her reaction had been to isolate bury herself in her work as an artist.
When she had felt a bit better she had decided to rent out one of the two apartments she owned in Rharne’s Earth quarter. She had found a good tenant and everything had seemed better, but soon enough a new setback had hit her. Her ambition to tidy up a bit in the debris of the tenants home-to-be had become her downfall. She did still not know what it had been, the odd jewel that had turned to dust in her hand. All she knew was that I had caused a mysterious metallic rash to spread over her body and made her look like her skin was made of rust and verdigris. No attempts to cure it had been successful. Old Oliver Elixo had speculated that she might be a victim of dark magic. In desperation, Yrmellyn had taken an all-purpose elixir which had only made her condition worse. For a while, she had feared that she would turn into a mer. Life had felt like a long and dark night without end.
The painting had kept her going on. Art had been the only light in her existence. She had painted as obsessed. Among other artwork, she had painted the portrait of a thunder priestess. That had made her known to the clergy. The priestess had persuaded Yrmellyn to escort her to Caervalle Town. It had been the first time Yrmellyn had done something out of loyalty with Rharne. Why had she done it? She had no clear answer to that question. Only a feeling. She recalled that it had felt right.
The good deed had brought her into an unexpected tangle of mystery, magic, crime and love. In Caervalle, in Cylus of 719, she left the inn’s main building to check on the horses and in the stable she had met her future partner, the stableman Ha’zel. The sev’ryn man had been working when she arrived. Together they had dealt with a criminal who also had been a flayer mage. They had done it their way and then departed discreetly by sleigh to Rharne. Then, they had stayed together ever after and the weird red roses an odd old crone had given them had never wilted.
Mysterious, wasn’t it? But, there was more to the world than people could understand, right? The flowers were beautiful. Why question a gift of eternal beauty? Why question love when it comes your way? She saw no reason for it.
For a while, it had looked like her life would finally be uncomplicated and happy. That had soon proven to be wrong. In the spring of arc 719, an unforeseen disaster had hit the whole world. Somehow, the connection to the ether that enabled the living to dream, children to be born and the dead to pass on had been shut off. Yrmellyn, being a mage, had discovered how powerful the magic spark she carried was.
It had lurked in her, not seeming so difficult to deal with. It hadn’t felt dangerous. It had been useful (and fun) to be able to tune into frequencies and notes. It had come in handy to have an easy way to find her way by using the compass of magic. Now, it had risen as the strong inner power it was. It had tried to take command and force her to flay and feed it the ether it didn’t get from Emea anymore. Her fight against this urge might have ended with losing and becoming a flayer, if not for Ha’zel. Fearless, the man had brought her with him into the wilderness where he figured Nature (and he) would support her. A long and demanding inner conflict with several big showdowns had followed.
She had won and it had seemed like the spark had dwindled. But, after midnight the dimension of Emea had been mended. Yrmellyn had very little insight into this. She didn’t know what had happened or how it had happened. All this had been, and was, an enigma to her. But she knew that the spark had gained an enormous sudden power boost and caused her to wake up in a dream, in the shape of a dragon. Thus her dreams had gained a new and intriguing quality. She was sometimes lucid in them.
Overall, dreams had begun playing a bigger role in her life although they also made it more mysterious. In a weird dream right before the “Etherdeath” (as she named it) she had seen two men do something. It wasn’t like she understood it. It was mysterious and also very hard to recall. She didn’t remember it from the dream. But, as an artist, she had made a series of drawings with some notes right after she had woken up and so, she had the drawings to look at. By looking at them and musing over them, she had learnt that she had dreamt ... something she didn’t know ... but which she had depicted and saved nonetheless. Thus, she was perhaps the only living being in Idalos who knew the name she had written beneath one of the men on her drawings. She tended to forget that name as soon as she wasn’t looking at it. But, the drawings and the notes did not forget.
Right now she had forgotten it. But she knew that there was a name on her drawings. How could it be that she never succeeded to memorize it no matter how hard she tried? Why was the memory eluding her?
During the summer that had followed, and the fall, Yrmellyn had not done much more than resting and recovering after the ordeal of fighting the spark inside her soul. Life had been simple. She and Ha’zel had stayed in a cottage they had found by Lake Lovalus. They had just lived, doing the basic everyday tasks. She had fished, gathered wild roots and herbs, cooked uncomplicated food, bathed In the lake, been with Ha’zel. The time by the lake rested in her memory like a bubble of light, rest and happiness.
At her return late in the fall when it was too cold to stay at the lake they had returned to Rharne just to find Storm’s Edge preparing for a siege. An army of fire-creatures threatened Rharne. For the second time in her life, Yrmellun had attempted to help her city. But, after a journey to recruit more people to the defence she had fallen ill. She had ended up in the coastal town of Volta.
This was where she still lived. She thought of what she had done here ... not much. She had experienced odd lucid dreams, but dreams were only dreams, even if they were lucid, weren’t they? She had made several paintings. There was that. All paintings had been purple, to some degree. Purple had for some reason become a preferred colour and she had used it generously.
She sighed.
Her life had been a series of ups and downs. Now, from a distance in the time, she saw how she had grown and lived in the darkness until the meeting with her mentor Marius had changed everything and sent her toward a better, happier fate. He had saved her and lifted her from the dust, made her painter and a mage. For a long time, Yrmellyn had believed that it meant that life had a happy end. Nowadays she wasn’t sure of that. Did the lives of mages even have happy ends?
It could often seem like the opposite was the case. Could it ever end well to be transformed and shaped by a supernatural power she hadn’t been born with? She had acquired because she had wanted it...or because the power had wanted her. She feared the latter. Affected by her feelings for Mariuz and her need to rise from an impossible situation, she had made herself the magic’s vessel and tool. But he (and his spark) had suggested it. Little had she known that she would have to strive for control over the spark and its purpose for a lifetime.
Purpose. She needed a clear purpose with her life, well-defined intentions and goals, good plans, strong will and the stamina and discipline to follow through. This was what she could balance the power of the attunement spark with. This was how they could co-exist without the magic turning her into a mind-controlled doll. She knew it. Or was it the spark making her think so?
But, the problem was that Yrmellyn didn’t know all those things. She was a woman without a clear purpose. Her intentions were as vague to her as the meaning of her life. This was what the contemplation of the story of her life had revealed to her.
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