[Changeling] Julien's Beginning
There is no sense of family in the lives of the Lost. To know a mother’s love, or a wife’s smile at the sight of her first-born…these are not our luxuries. These are reminders of that which was robbed from us by the Gentry. This is not to say that we have no sense of what it is to love…or to lose…it is simply the somber truth by which our ‘society’ is based. When the chips are down and the day is at its end, we are alone. Even in the lust-burning throws of passion, we are alone. But I have found purpose, if not complacency in my own wrath. I have found the Way of the Sword. I protect and serve, from now until the moment I am slain.
Make no mistake, my oath-sworn blade is to the names and honors of all lost in need, but it does not preclude my existence from being somewhat miserable. Despite my sense of purpose, she who owns my Word of Bond is little more than the epitome of the ice-queen. The Lady Persephone is, make no error, a terrible beauty. Forged in the cold, spiteful ‘Pleasure Chambers’ of our mutual keeper, I owe her my blade in protection…repayment for my inability to save the life of her sister. My first…and only…love. There is no sense of penance, no lash more agonizing than the sight of my Lady Persephone day…after…day. They were twins, you see. I am certain, by now, that my agony and fear of further failure is all that forces her from fleeing my care. She basks in my misery.
But now…you have the players. The actors in this Divine Comedy of Sorrows. And, while an humble cast it may be, now my tale can begin.
***************************************
The sound of tattered leather slowly ripping itself apart from the friction of speed and gravel is deafening when running for one’s life. I know this, first hand, thanks to the Cruel Beauty of Arcadia. She stole me into her bosom and trapped me in an eternity of elegant sorrows before my will ever realized itself. But I escaped. The escape isn’t the story, though. It never is. Nor is the capture, nor the time spent in the citadels of glamour. The story doesn’t begin until you’re torn and broken; heaving air and bile onto some alien plain and wondering if you’re still being followed. That’s the story, this is simply the preface.
I was born in the winter months of 1934, though I scarce remember if that’s the truth or just my muddy-version of it. I recall living in France…not out of true recollection but out of the shadowed similarities I see in picture books and photographs. I do not remember where, precisely. My home and school were long ago rendered oblivion and memory, but I endure. Faintly, I remember a content childhood…a mother and father who believed in faith and compassion. She was beautiful, that I remember. And he was lithe and graceful. Their professions, I could not say. But we were a family, and for that we were thankful. We were a family bonded together by a time of adversity and war, shielded from the worst of it by our remote location (I assume) and the strength of our faith. We were Catholic. Were. I am no longer religious; I think my reasons to be obvious.
But regardless of what is now…then I was a young man with a dream and a large heart. I recall what I wanted, as it is what I want to this day. I wanted to mean something. With all that is in my heart and soul I wished to make a difference. To fight, and mayhap die, for something I believed in. I never imagined the horror that getting that wish might bring. It is true, you know. You should be terribly careful what you wish for. My wish, when I was younger, was a boyhood fancy. A long-waking dream which I kept tucked away like a gem in my pocket. I attended school, as children do, and excelled reasonably adequately through it. By the winter of my sixteenth year, however, I felt myself growing far too large for my surroundings. So, simply, I fled.
I wonder often if that is when the Mirror-of-me was replaced. I wonder if the deep sorrow I imagined my parents experiencing at my loss never truly came. I wonder if the me-of-ashes was forged that evening and placed in my stead. I may never know. But I fled, to the city. To the militias. I sought to enlist. To make a difference. To protect people. And I was turned away. Perhaps I seemed frail, or perhaps my body was simply too elegant and angular to befit a soldier. And thus there I was, broken in dream and weighed upon by the bearings of failure. I could have given up, then, but I did not. Too proud to return home and too hopeful to bear the journey, I found myself quickly accepted as an assistant at a fencing studio. I’d never lifted a blade before in my life…but the thought was so terribly romantic that I couldn’t resist. Don’t get me wrong, for the longest time all I was required to do was sweep, or make repairs, or fetch dinners. But one night the Master handed me a sword. And one night, I excelled.
He was impressed, I daresay, and so was I. My movements were far more graceful and precise than even I could imagine. I’d always been quick, you see, but grace had constantly eluded me. With the rapier in my hand, it seemed, I was made hole. And so I trained. I trained in the dark hours where the aristocratic peerage under the Master’s tutelage could not see me. I trained for endless nights, forgoing sleep as though I had no need of it. Finally, I felt complete. But this would be no tale of tragedy were I to have been as lucky as this. One of the Master’s rich pupil’s did discover my training…and he challenged me. Much of that evening is blurred by bramble and thorn, but I recall winning. I recall winning and being exiled. And I recall her.
My Keeper was (and perhaps, in some resigned part of my mind, always will be) the most elegantly beautiful being I have ever beheld. When I came upon her, fleeing with tear-stained eyes and clutching my blade, she gave me the deepest smile of sorrow I have ever known. I went to her, drawn like a moth to some intense flame, and she covered me with her beauty. The Theft was a whirlwind of desire, comfort and depravity. She spoke gorgeous words of needing me…of needing a hero…of my talent. She spoke the most perfect lies a woman can speak, with the most sinful lips a woman could have. And I believed. Deep within me, she ignited a flame…and I was hers. Assured of my safety, I took her hand and followed her through the Hedge (though at the time my ego was far too in control of my actions for me to notice) and descended the gilded stairway to her keep. Deep within the alien realms of Arcadia she revealed her True Shapelessness to me. Far away from any who could find aught but comfort in my screams of terror, she bound me and broke me to her will. I believe, for a time, I liked it.
Time, I discovered swiftly, moved agonizingly slowly within the Collector’s Estate. The Collector, yes. I came to know her name, or at least what we called her, within my first fortnight as a member of her Guard. The Collector of Pain and Rarities. She was a charming fey, truth be told; a beautiful being who basked in her own debauchery. I was lucky, in all honesty. The Collector’s Estate was divided into three factions of ‘pet’. My own, her Guard, existed to see to her protection from the other residents of Arcadia and to ensure the safety of her Collection. The second, the faction the woman I would come to love belonged to, was the Collection itself. Pride and Lust found themselves blended within the Collector’s Estate. Her Collection boasted the most beautiful and skilled courtesan, geisha, whores and ladies I have ever beheld. She adored them, doted upon them and treated them like fragile dolls. Until they were purchased. I suppose in true terms, the Collector was a Madam, renting her Collection to high paying Gentry or Goblin alike. If the Piece pleased her patron, she was rewarded. If not…I could not speak of the agony.
The third of the Collector’s estate was somewhat more elusive. The flames within her lanterns were all alive…the shadows they cast the same. Everything seemed to be living within our Keep. It was, in a way, a comfort. I grew to become swiftly fascinated with the elementals serving as sunlight and flame within our walls. They were clever and quick, always knowledgeable about events from the world outside. It is thanks to them that I began to remember myself, much to Her displeasure. Her ire, I learned soon after, was not something I dared entice. The idea of escape plagued me after the first time I witnessed what would be my regular punishment for any ill-deeds. Swiftly aware that I had neither care nor mind to be broken by her lash, she decided that subjecting me to the pain of others was far worse. And so it was that at any small slip in my demeanor or duties, she would fetch the beauties of her Collection and flay them before me, beating them until a moment before death, all the while informing them that their pain was my doing. She was a cruel mistress.
Time passed and I resigned myself to become the perfect soldier and swordsman. I excelled at both, if I do say so. My martial prowess is overcome only by those Changelings who are more in-touch with the Wyrd than I. And that is saying something. Pleased with my advancement, the Collector appointed me at the head of her Guard. The newfound freedom was so intoxicating that I almost grew drunk with it. I was given leave to enjoy her Collection when they were not under employ, given full liberties within the Estate and made completely comfortable. I was a slave, yes, but a well-treated slave.
I made the occasional trip into the heart of her Pleasure Chambers. I met and learned of every piece within her curio of sorrows. That, dear reader, is where I met my love. I’ll not speak her name, out of respect and sorrow, but rest assured that as truthfully as I tell you this tale, I loved her. She was the most magnificently delicate and beautiful woman I’d ever seen. And a twin. The Lady Persephone, you see, is the identical twin of the woman I cherished above all things. Perhaps our dynamic becomes more logical to you now. Upon meeting the pair of them, a plan of escape began forming in my mind. I’d heard news of the war’s end via an elegant lantern in the South Hall (the war, I would come to find, was in reality Operation Desert Storm. While decades had passed outside the Keep, only years had moved within it) and I seized the fresh crop the Collector intended to seek as an opportunity.
Upon reflection, I was foolish. I fled with them on the night of her Hunt. I threw back the doors to the Collection’s Hold and lead a charge for the Hedge. Many were slain. I was not. Sword aloft and the fire deep within me burning like a cleansing flame, I charged her walls and lead a massive attack on her hounds and guards. We were not overcome. The walls were our final obstacle, and one that my love could not surmount. Spurned on by Persephone’s desperate cries to return to the Keep, my love hesitated, and was dashed. I never even saw her fall. But I did not stop, I could not stop. The ache in my heart blended with the fire for freedom and I began my run.
As I approached the brambles of the Hedge, I heard the cries and trumpets of her Hunt approaching. Moving with all the alacrity I possessed and careful to be as quiet as my pumping lungs would allow, I pushed myself from the thorns at the moment I felt her manicured talon grasp for my throat. I was free. Truly free. My mind swirled with exhaustion and elation and I found myself unable to remain calm. Overcome by a fit of hysterics and not thinking of the armor and blades I wore, I tore down the street cheering and laughing with the sin of it all. Only after hours of aimless wandering was I able to locate a newspaper. My joy ended, immediately. 2000. The year was 2000. Fireworks echoed in the air and I turned my gaze to the Eifel Tower in time to see the New Millennium ushered in properly. I’d been gone close to five decades. I was alone, adrift, and alien.
For the next several years I existed on the kindness of the rare other Changeling I encountered in my journeys. Resolute that I would arm myself to perfection and lead another charge on the Collector’s Keep, I was unswayable. I rallied what assistance I could find and traveled around the world with the assistance of another former slave of the Collector. And for years, I dove. I dove through bramble and bush, assisting others in finding freedom…seeking what news I could find of my old Gentry. But it seemed hopeless. I was alone, truly alone. Never without a sense of Cruel Irony, however, Fate interfered only half a decade after I’d successfully found myself free. And in the same location.
When not diving the Hedge to aide in escapes, I found myself well contracted as a protector of the weak and in-need within our ‘society’. I was pure of heart and noble, in the eyes of my peers, and thus I was trusted often. I learned that, with care and discretion, even those closest to corruption could be brought back to the side of logic and clarity. There was something in it…in having the gift to use my own inner-flame as a cure for other’s darkness. I marveled at it. It was during one such marveling that I found myself walking beneath the Eifel Tower (I made occasional trips, when I could locate a benefactor to assist me in transport, on the off chance…) and was promptly slapped across the face by a figure so beautiful I wept and found myself on my knees. The Lady Persephone towered over me in all of her awe-inspiring terrible beauty. She did not have to speak, her face said volumes even without the utterance of a syllable. I rose, steadily.
“I serve and protect,” I said, taking my practiced bow. It was that night that she held me, for the first and only time. That night that we found kinship in loss and self-hating pride. I swore myself to her care, then, that I might see her safe where I’d failed her sister. Where I’d failed the woman I love. I would be strong, I would teach Persephone what it was to comprehend that which is Good and Righteous…or she would destroy everything I am. She took to the life of a Courtier swiftly and found herself within the Autumn Court comfortably. Though none of the Seasonal Courts truly encompassed that which I treasured, I enlisted my blade within its ranks as well. It was close enough, for the time being.
This is where the tale begins, the cast set and the stage adorned with beautiful faces and roads. I know not where I go, only that I fly there with swift wings and a pure heart. I am no longer a boy, and not quite a man. I am Julien. I am the Flame of War and the Fire of Cleansing. And I will Overcome.
Make no mistake, my oath-sworn blade is to the names and honors of all lost in need, but it does not preclude my existence from being somewhat miserable. Despite my sense of purpose, she who owns my Word of Bond is little more than the epitome of the ice-queen. The Lady Persephone is, make no error, a terrible beauty. Forged in the cold, spiteful ‘Pleasure Chambers’ of our mutual keeper, I owe her my blade in protection…repayment for my inability to save the life of her sister. My first…and only…love. There is no sense of penance, no lash more agonizing than the sight of my Lady Persephone day…after…day. They were twins, you see. I am certain, by now, that my agony and fear of further failure is all that forces her from fleeing my care. She basks in my misery.
But now…you have the players. The actors in this Divine Comedy of Sorrows. And, while an humble cast it may be, now my tale can begin.
***************************************
The sound of tattered leather slowly ripping itself apart from the friction of speed and gravel is deafening when running for one’s life. I know this, first hand, thanks to the Cruel Beauty of Arcadia. She stole me into her bosom and trapped me in an eternity of elegant sorrows before my will ever realized itself. But I escaped. The escape isn’t the story, though. It never is. Nor is the capture, nor the time spent in the citadels of glamour. The story doesn’t begin until you’re torn and broken; heaving air and bile onto some alien plain and wondering if you’re still being followed. That’s the story, this is simply the preface.
I was born in the winter months of 1934, though I scarce remember if that’s the truth or just my muddy-version of it. I recall living in France…not out of true recollection but out of the shadowed similarities I see in picture books and photographs. I do not remember where, precisely. My home and school were long ago rendered oblivion and memory, but I endure. Faintly, I remember a content childhood…a mother and father who believed in faith and compassion. She was beautiful, that I remember. And he was lithe and graceful. Their professions, I could not say. But we were a family, and for that we were thankful. We were a family bonded together by a time of adversity and war, shielded from the worst of it by our remote location (I assume) and the strength of our faith. We were Catholic. Were. I am no longer religious; I think my reasons to be obvious.
But regardless of what is now…then I was a young man with a dream and a large heart. I recall what I wanted, as it is what I want to this day. I wanted to mean something. With all that is in my heart and soul I wished to make a difference. To fight, and mayhap die, for something I believed in. I never imagined the horror that getting that wish might bring. It is true, you know. You should be terribly careful what you wish for. My wish, when I was younger, was a boyhood fancy. A long-waking dream which I kept tucked away like a gem in my pocket. I attended school, as children do, and excelled reasonably adequately through it. By the winter of my sixteenth year, however, I felt myself growing far too large for my surroundings. So, simply, I fled.
I wonder often if that is when the Mirror-of-me was replaced. I wonder if the deep sorrow I imagined my parents experiencing at my loss never truly came. I wonder if the me-of-ashes was forged that evening and placed in my stead. I may never know. But I fled, to the city. To the militias. I sought to enlist. To make a difference. To protect people. And I was turned away. Perhaps I seemed frail, or perhaps my body was simply too elegant and angular to befit a soldier. And thus there I was, broken in dream and weighed upon by the bearings of failure. I could have given up, then, but I did not. Too proud to return home and too hopeful to bear the journey, I found myself quickly accepted as an assistant at a fencing studio. I’d never lifted a blade before in my life…but the thought was so terribly romantic that I couldn’t resist. Don’t get me wrong, for the longest time all I was required to do was sweep, or make repairs, or fetch dinners. But one night the Master handed me a sword. And one night, I excelled.
He was impressed, I daresay, and so was I. My movements were far more graceful and precise than even I could imagine. I’d always been quick, you see, but grace had constantly eluded me. With the rapier in my hand, it seemed, I was made hole. And so I trained. I trained in the dark hours where the aristocratic peerage under the Master’s tutelage could not see me. I trained for endless nights, forgoing sleep as though I had no need of it. Finally, I felt complete. But this would be no tale of tragedy were I to have been as lucky as this. One of the Master’s rich pupil’s did discover my training…and he challenged me. Much of that evening is blurred by bramble and thorn, but I recall winning. I recall winning and being exiled. And I recall her.
My Keeper was (and perhaps, in some resigned part of my mind, always will be) the most elegantly beautiful being I have ever beheld. When I came upon her, fleeing with tear-stained eyes and clutching my blade, she gave me the deepest smile of sorrow I have ever known. I went to her, drawn like a moth to some intense flame, and she covered me with her beauty. The Theft was a whirlwind of desire, comfort and depravity. She spoke gorgeous words of needing me…of needing a hero…of my talent. She spoke the most perfect lies a woman can speak, with the most sinful lips a woman could have. And I believed. Deep within me, she ignited a flame…and I was hers. Assured of my safety, I took her hand and followed her through the Hedge (though at the time my ego was far too in control of my actions for me to notice) and descended the gilded stairway to her keep. Deep within the alien realms of Arcadia she revealed her True Shapelessness to me. Far away from any who could find aught but comfort in my screams of terror, she bound me and broke me to her will. I believe, for a time, I liked it.
Time, I discovered swiftly, moved agonizingly slowly within the Collector’s Estate. The Collector, yes. I came to know her name, or at least what we called her, within my first fortnight as a member of her Guard. The Collector of Pain and Rarities. She was a charming fey, truth be told; a beautiful being who basked in her own debauchery. I was lucky, in all honesty. The Collector’s Estate was divided into three factions of ‘pet’. My own, her Guard, existed to see to her protection from the other residents of Arcadia and to ensure the safety of her Collection. The second, the faction the woman I would come to love belonged to, was the Collection itself. Pride and Lust found themselves blended within the Collector’s Estate. Her Collection boasted the most beautiful and skilled courtesan, geisha, whores and ladies I have ever beheld. She adored them, doted upon them and treated them like fragile dolls. Until they were purchased. I suppose in true terms, the Collector was a Madam, renting her Collection to high paying Gentry or Goblin alike. If the Piece pleased her patron, she was rewarded. If not…I could not speak of the agony.
The third of the Collector’s estate was somewhat more elusive. The flames within her lanterns were all alive…the shadows they cast the same. Everything seemed to be living within our Keep. It was, in a way, a comfort. I grew to become swiftly fascinated with the elementals serving as sunlight and flame within our walls. They were clever and quick, always knowledgeable about events from the world outside. It is thanks to them that I began to remember myself, much to Her displeasure. Her ire, I learned soon after, was not something I dared entice. The idea of escape plagued me after the first time I witnessed what would be my regular punishment for any ill-deeds. Swiftly aware that I had neither care nor mind to be broken by her lash, she decided that subjecting me to the pain of others was far worse. And so it was that at any small slip in my demeanor or duties, she would fetch the beauties of her Collection and flay them before me, beating them until a moment before death, all the while informing them that their pain was my doing. She was a cruel mistress.
Time passed and I resigned myself to become the perfect soldier and swordsman. I excelled at both, if I do say so. My martial prowess is overcome only by those Changelings who are more in-touch with the Wyrd than I. And that is saying something. Pleased with my advancement, the Collector appointed me at the head of her Guard. The newfound freedom was so intoxicating that I almost grew drunk with it. I was given leave to enjoy her Collection when they were not under employ, given full liberties within the Estate and made completely comfortable. I was a slave, yes, but a well-treated slave.
I made the occasional trip into the heart of her Pleasure Chambers. I met and learned of every piece within her curio of sorrows. That, dear reader, is where I met my love. I’ll not speak her name, out of respect and sorrow, but rest assured that as truthfully as I tell you this tale, I loved her. She was the most magnificently delicate and beautiful woman I’d ever seen. And a twin. The Lady Persephone, you see, is the identical twin of the woman I cherished above all things. Perhaps our dynamic becomes more logical to you now. Upon meeting the pair of them, a plan of escape began forming in my mind. I’d heard news of the war’s end via an elegant lantern in the South Hall (the war, I would come to find, was in reality Operation Desert Storm. While decades had passed outside the Keep, only years had moved within it) and I seized the fresh crop the Collector intended to seek as an opportunity.
Upon reflection, I was foolish. I fled with them on the night of her Hunt. I threw back the doors to the Collection’s Hold and lead a charge for the Hedge. Many were slain. I was not. Sword aloft and the fire deep within me burning like a cleansing flame, I charged her walls and lead a massive attack on her hounds and guards. We were not overcome. The walls were our final obstacle, and one that my love could not surmount. Spurned on by Persephone’s desperate cries to return to the Keep, my love hesitated, and was dashed. I never even saw her fall. But I did not stop, I could not stop. The ache in my heart blended with the fire for freedom and I began my run.
As I approached the brambles of the Hedge, I heard the cries and trumpets of her Hunt approaching. Moving with all the alacrity I possessed and careful to be as quiet as my pumping lungs would allow, I pushed myself from the thorns at the moment I felt her manicured talon grasp for my throat. I was free. Truly free. My mind swirled with exhaustion and elation and I found myself unable to remain calm. Overcome by a fit of hysterics and not thinking of the armor and blades I wore, I tore down the street cheering and laughing with the sin of it all. Only after hours of aimless wandering was I able to locate a newspaper. My joy ended, immediately. 2000. The year was 2000. Fireworks echoed in the air and I turned my gaze to the Eifel Tower in time to see the New Millennium ushered in properly. I’d been gone close to five decades. I was alone, adrift, and alien.
For the next several years I existed on the kindness of the rare other Changeling I encountered in my journeys. Resolute that I would arm myself to perfection and lead another charge on the Collector’s Keep, I was unswayable. I rallied what assistance I could find and traveled around the world with the assistance of another former slave of the Collector. And for years, I dove. I dove through bramble and bush, assisting others in finding freedom…seeking what news I could find of my old Gentry. But it seemed hopeless. I was alone, truly alone. Never without a sense of Cruel Irony, however, Fate interfered only half a decade after I’d successfully found myself free. And in the same location.
When not diving the Hedge to aide in escapes, I found myself well contracted as a protector of the weak and in-need within our ‘society’. I was pure of heart and noble, in the eyes of my peers, and thus I was trusted often. I learned that, with care and discretion, even those closest to corruption could be brought back to the side of logic and clarity. There was something in it…in having the gift to use my own inner-flame as a cure for other’s darkness. I marveled at it. It was during one such marveling that I found myself walking beneath the Eifel Tower (I made occasional trips, when I could locate a benefactor to assist me in transport, on the off chance…) and was promptly slapped across the face by a figure so beautiful I wept and found myself on my knees. The Lady Persephone towered over me in all of her awe-inspiring terrible beauty. She did not have to speak, her face said volumes even without the utterance of a syllable. I rose, steadily.
“I serve and protect,” I said, taking my practiced bow. It was that night that she held me, for the first and only time. That night that we found kinship in loss and self-hating pride. I swore myself to her care, then, that I might see her safe where I’d failed her sister. Where I’d failed the woman I love. I would be strong, I would teach Persephone what it was to comprehend that which is Good and Righteous…or she would destroy everything I am. She took to the life of a Courtier swiftly and found herself within the Autumn Court comfortably. Though none of the Seasonal Courts truly encompassed that which I treasured, I enlisted my blade within its ranks as well. It was close enough, for the time being.
This is where the tale begins, the cast set and the stage adorned with beautiful faces and roads. I know not where I go, only that I fly there with swift wings and a pure heart. I am no longer a boy, and not quite a man. I am Julien. I am the Flame of War and the Fire of Cleansing. And I will Overcome.