Elias Bronwyd
Elias Bronwyd
In those few days his senses had dulled to that damp, musty scent, the dim light, and the quieted voices of those huddled nearby. At first he'd been hypersensitive to it all, perhaps overloaded with the drastic change, but he could no longer bear to listen to the grievances of the others nor weary himself with resisting these conditions. His lips remained pressed together in silence, his bright green eyes focused on the light seeping through the crack between the stones near the ceiling. Daily he seated himself in its meager warmth, his bare legs drawn up, bare arms encircling them, his fingers intertwined just above his crossed ankles. The long robe littered with feathers hung below his shoulders, gathering in the crooks of his arms and draping across his lap, leaving his pale skin illuminated in the faint light. There was nothing to be done with his unkempt, unusually dark brown locks but to keep them tied back, though even at the crown of his head they still wisped and curled halfway down his back. He didn't have to brush the long strands from the sides of his face to know that the others sometimes stared; when it wasn't impure thoughts, it was a morbid curiosity-- or as he hoped, fear-- about the foreign lettering inked into the skin of his right arm. The script wound from the shoulder around his upper arm to the elbow, the language a now archaic tongue used by elves. They asked, but he never looked or answered, as though he were mute. It was only when their keeper called "Elias" that he ever turned away from the light.
In those few days his senses had dulled to that damp, musty scent, the dim light, and the quieted voices of those huddled nearby. At first he'd been hypersensitive to it all, perhaps overloaded with the drastic change, but he could no longer bear to listen to the grievances of the others nor weary himself with resisting these conditions. His lips remained pressed together in silence, his bright green eyes focused on the light seeping through the crack between the stones near the ceiling. Daily he seated himself in its meager warmth, his bare legs drawn up, bare arms encircling them, his fingers intertwined just above his crossed ankles. The long robe littered with feathers hung below his shoulders, gathering in the crooks of his arms and draping across his lap, leaving his pale skin illuminated in the faint light. There was nothing to be done with his unkempt, unusually dark brown locks but to keep them tied back, though even at the crown of his head they still wisped and curled halfway down his back. He didn't have to brush the long strands from the sides of his face to know that the others sometimes stared; when it wasn't impure thoughts, it was a morbid curiosity-- or as he hoped, fear-- about the foreign lettering inked into the skin of his right arm. The script wound from the shoulder around his upper arm to the elbow, the language a now archaic tongue used by elves. They asked, but he never looked or answered, as though he were mute. It was only when their keeper called "Elias" that he ever turned away from the light.