Ana Avariel [Obsidian]

[Ana]

'Ana Avariel'
Obsidian

Apparent Age: Twenty-One
Gender: Female
Race | Class: Human | Royal Handmaiden
Birth Place: Aura; the City of Light
Current Residency: Rahn



A love like mine cannot be ended
A love like mine cannot be drowned

-Physical Description-
Arrestingly beautiful with her silky hair spilling over her shoulders in a lustrous mass of gentle ebony waves, a vivid contrast against glowing milky skin, icy eyes, and soft rosy lips. Her countenance promises always a wild vindictiveness in its white cheek and scintillating eye. She stands 5'9".

-Personality-
Her spirit is generally high, though not too rough, and qualified by a heart, sensitive and lively to excess in its affections. She has an always pensive expression. Her anger is occasionally furious, but her love, if ever present love, is never fierce. She possesses a sense of wit and a mesmeric grin. At times she is easily vexed, and perhaps feels the need for revenge far too easily and frequently.

-Strengths-
An eloquent tongue and quick wit do much more justice than a sword; and though she is skillfully capable of wielding that sword, she uses words to wound instead.

-Weaknesses-
Mortality and solitude accumulated tends to make her an easy target for scorn and spite, so much that she hardly believes in the names of love and friendship; and at times she finds the inability to hate -- another weakness, as that can lead to underestimation and ultimately destruction, by someone else or her own hand…

-Likes | Dislikes-
Music is a vice; she is so deeply attached to it that if it were ever to cease existence she would not know what to do with herself. Arrogance and pride are her main objections, and those who present themselves in such a manner as either of the two disgust her.

Weapons
A long sharp-edged blade fixed in a black hilt, bejeweled with an emerald, giving the alleged power of healing and hope. It is named Araduial, meaning 'She who weeps'. It sits in a silver scabbard which was carefully engraved with the words, 'Something is lost when something else dies. Maybe it is life but it is riddled with lies'.

-Body Accessories-
On a thin silvery chain around her neck is a pendant; it is named Avariel, shining like silver in the light of fire, like crystal-water in the sun, like snow in the light of stars, and like rain in moonlight.

-Familial Relations-
Father: Odysseus [deceased]
Mother: Octavia [deceased]
Brothers: Odysseus II, Okeanos [both deceased]
Sister: Octavus [deceased]

History: Here is the tale I am going to tell. But take care... not to smile at any part of it. It begins with a stranger.

I awoke seemingly with no recollection of past life or circumstance in the Forest of Undar, mistaken considerably to be a stray nymph or of some other elven nature; but soon to be revealed that I was only human. They used to say I was blessed by Aphrodite herself somehow; or perhaps even a reincarnation of the beauty, but as time passed those who had claimed this found it idiocy -- our hearts were not the same. The goddess was wise; and wiser than I could ever be.

Unto myself was passed a strange power -- I grew able to create images and phantasms both for good and for evil, casting shadows and withdrawing souls from the very pits of their beings. From where it arose was unknown to the world, nor where the core of its enchantment consistently flowed from, for it was not an internal power of my own but of something else's.

I interpreted this gift like a curse; and on its account I felt pain instead of tranquility; an internal war. A battle to tease the senses -- I could surrender, suffer, or conquer. But surrender to what? What would I be conquering? Why suffer? In my heart I knew that something was missing; but I was not permitted to ask why or how by my own will, for I feared that if I spoke of the matter to another, I might be branded delirious and psychologically deranged.

For a time, my sorrow was of the kind that could not weep; where that internal battle left the entire fortress of my heart carpeted in the dead and the dying, with no one to tend to the wounded. And that fortress, once so strong and so beautiful was then a citadel on its knees, until its foundations completely crumbled beneath the weight of uncertainty. And the price was all those left lifeless on every battlefield of every war fought thoughtlessly in that name. And they were those who were never given the chance to know the answer.

I was found by a knight of the only remaining human civilization Rahn; he stood awestruck and utterly dumbfounded just by my presential grace and alluring beauty -- take this not as arrogance; I am using his own words. He desired to reach out and touch my, but afraid that even the lightest touch might break me; so his distance was kept, as was my own in mystification; and he merely spoke gently from afar:

Milady; how is it that you can mesmerize me so without even a word?

But there came no reply from myself, and I simply watched him; observing each aspect of the man's conformation but not out of attraction -- I could find no reason other than curiosity. And he spoke again:

Your name... milady; I yearn to have knowledge of it so that I may offer you solace. I dare not ask for anything else but that hereafter.

And then my eyes fell into a downcast, bringing about another spell of silence upon them both of us. His eyes were captivated and hopeless, mine engraved with emotional exhaustion, that which he surely could not see. And just as his eyes gave into surrender, my lips parted in a whisper:

I am yesterday and today and tomorrow... and forced to be sorrow and longing and hope unfulfilled... Left with only tears to be the inefficient substitute for the love that is not mine -- I know by the look in your eyes that you have suffered many great sufferings of your own... but you are not asked to suffer me.

He never learned my real name. He brought me unto Rahn to be put under the services of the Royal family; there I became the Royal Handmaiden, remaining at the King's beckon call until dispossession or release. There were things I had done ill since my awakening there in the forest and it was supposed death was the only jurisdiction; I did not, by any means, deserve a second chance. But I suppose that was why I got one.

But this whole rendition of my story should not suffice for my agony; it is only a small part of the tale I have begun to tell. And it was not the end, for I have seen the end and another beginning; another life.

I was born an eon ago to Lord Odysseus and Lady Octavia, four years junior to my eldest brother Odysseus II, three years junior to my brother Okeanos, and six years senior to my young sister Octavus. I never felt like the second youngest, as though my brothers were older, their maturity seemed much less than that of mine.

Odysseus was strong like my father; quick with the sword but thoughtless enough to be slain at age fifteen during the battle of Aura. It seemed strength of the mind and body could only be intertwined with experience, and he was yet a child. My father thereafter seemed to age a thousand years in just one moment, his hair seeming to turn grey, his eyes blinded and his skin pale. My mother wept a storm powerful enough to overturn sixty war-ships and erode away ten hundred islands; and she would stare from her bedroom window each evening, praying to the sky that it would abode my brother's forsaken soul with love, as she so would have done if he had been permitted permission to live.

Aura, the City of Light, dimmed after that night. Odysseus had been intended to take my father's place on the throne of Aura, but in his death it was all undone. And the peoples of Aura grew to fear the day that my father would take his last breath, for they would have no leader to follow; to guide them through the darkness that was about to overcome them.

The next four years were quiet in Aura; and on the third year the winter never went away. Each day, the sun seemed to set a little earlier and rise a little later, making the days seem so much shorter, as if we were wasting our very lives away.

My father passed from this world when I was seventeen. On his dying day, my mother, sister and remaining brother sat at his bedside as he said his last words; and he had never said so much and so little, in so many years.

He was meant to die; as I am dying. His sword was my sword, but he died upon it, like my neighbour's son. They were sons not meant to be fathers; they were sons set to defend their fathers. I am his father; he is my son.

We buried him in the courtyard, beside his father and his father's father before him. My brother Okeanos was made Lord of Aura, but his performance was feared to be unreliable and unlike that of which Odysseus II's was set to be... but it was not of his intention to let our walls fall as they did.

On the eve of my twenty-first birthday, the ground began to shake; our hearts leapt to our throats and pounded in our ears like water on rock -- thunder on air. It grew dark within seconds; and I searched desperately for my mother and sister, but I could not find them. The shrieks of unknown origination rung in my ears and drove me to my knees, and I clung to myself in desperation... and defeat.

And then the most deathlike, pain-striking scream -- all in unison the peoples of Aura seemed to cry out as a ring of light sprung from the centre of the city like ten-thousand daggers, decimating souls and relieving bodies of their entire matter; shattering walls and foundations and annihilating every ounce of vegetation. I watched ashes fly like puffs of smoke through the air... until the light hit me.

My world fell quiet.

Lay down your head, and I'll sing you a lullaby...
Back to the years of lu li lai le...
And I'll sing you to sleep; and I'll sing you tomorrow...
Bless you with love for the road that you go...

My mother's lullaby -- it was just there as if in a dream. And I heard it as if I were a child again, as if she was holding me in her arms and rocking me to sleep; as if I were warm... and safe.

But then the freezing breeze crept upon me like a spider's touch; biting; knawing at my skin. I moved my fingers to find ashes beneath them -- ashes that might have been knee-deep if I had been bold enough to stand. I listened for sounds of life, but heard nothing except the crackling of burning ashes among ashes.

When I crawled up to my knees and let my eyes scan the land, it was nothing but a desolate abyss. I can remember parting my cracked lips to scream, but no sound would come -- my throat was about as dry as only the Hell we read about in stories could allow. And then I felt as if I were there; Hell; and what evil thing had I ever done to deserve it? Nothing that I could recollect.

I crawled through the wasteland; the mass grave unintentionally prepared for the peoples of Aura. I felt no sense of direction, as the city looked the same from all sides; empty.

But then I began to hear the sounds of water crashing against land; was it an illusion; a cruel joke set to play by the instigator of massacre?

But lo, it was the Ocean Aura. It looked the same as it always had; unchanging as the sea. I fell down before it in utter helplessness, weeping waterless tears that stung in my eyes. What hilarity; cruelty that I should survive the downfall of my city. My mother; my brother; and my sister -- death?

And that was where the end begun.

It was the most unforgiving feeling as I felt my body sink furthur under the surface; as my body fought to submerge; as my lungs choked down the arsenic water of the Ocean Aura. My eyes stung against the salt water; and with every passing moment, my mind grew blurrier and my eyes more blind. And then there was nothing.

A love like mine cannot be ended...
A love like mine cannot be drowned.

And that was where the end of the beginning began, and a new life to come; when we draw our attention back to my awakening. It is a circle; it is a chain. My name is Ana Avariel. I am Obsidian.