Entry 06: Niamh
Title: "Niamh"
Entry Number: 06
Author: saraste_impi
Fandom: Original
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 1824
A/N: This is the fifth part of what I'm for now calling the ReWording 'Verse. Also, named both my characters and wrote this one from another POV than the previous ones.
Niamh really did feel bad for her, she really honestly did. As she sat there, by the bed with the prone form lying in it under an intricately patterned quilt, she let her shame over her own actions wash over her and embraced her fault in all of it. If anyone was to be blamed it was her. Her actions alone had led them here. Yet there was a part in her, that coldly rational part of her, which knew that what she had done had been done out of necessity, that there had been no avoiding it, never had been. She would not necessarily say that what had happened had been written in the stars, but she did feel like her story and that of the girl now lying upon the bed had been meant to intersect, to be written into one.
Even now, when the girl - she is such a child compared to me, in years at least, if not temperament and thoughts - was relatively safe, sleeping in Niamh's bed in her own chambers, her household protected with some of the strongest magic her kin could weave, most of his of her own Wording, she felt somewhat sick of having dragged the human into affairs that were so dangerous.
But she'd had no other choice, not really. Not with the way things stood. Mere individual lives and their harmonious routes, which she had robbed from Audrey's life now making the somewhat eventful plot of her life into a dangerous mystery, would have to be sacrificed for the good of the world. Even when she knew that she was also doing it to give Audrey a better life. A life in a world with a better future. And she would need Audrey's help in making it so.
In the end, when Niamh considered everything she knew and what could be done, the way the world itself, the way it's very core structure could be re-Worded and changed from what it was, had been, and could be, she knew she might also be saving Audrey's life. She did regret that she had to put her life into danger which threatened her life and her self-hood, the person Audrey was and what she could do, to do so.
She looked down at Audrey and then away, unable to keep her eyes in her sleeping form for a long time, letting her gaze roam sightlessly over the room and letting her thoughts turn to that which she had so often thought about before.
I wish there was another way. Some other way, anything, to stop what is coming. Keep you safe. I may tide the coming days, the possible days after what I fear and know might be coming, in relative ease but you may not. Nor others of your kind. We are so selfish, always so selfish. Why cannot the world be as it was, even when you have and are doing so much to try and burn up nature and follow your selfish whims? Why cannot it be done in another way?
The world was, as she had told Audrey, standing on a precipice.
In the chasm of it there was a future which would rend the world open, shake it's very foundations and alter much of what was and had been, reWording the past and the now to weave another kind of future. And the cost of that future would be blood and tears, suffering the like of which the world had not yet seen, not even during the great wars waged amongst humankind and it's nations and countries. Niamh herself had been there to see the first war, what the humans had called the Great War, had witnessed the tears, the pain, the suffering that humans had brought to one another with machinated warfare and the stupidity of the human condition. Then - not even a whole human lifespan after, but merely barely a generation apart, so that the children of those who had fought and bled and suffered and seen the utter folly of war were the ones going into battle - there had been another war, even more horrifying that the one before it.
The Fae and other supernaturals often wondered at why humans, with their frail bodies and limited lives, were often so eager to wage war and throw away lives that could have used to better the world. Not that humans were the only ones waging war, or had ever been so. Niamh knew it to be so, even when she was not old enough to have seen the last great war among the Fae, which had incidentally interspersed and overlapped with a war the humans had fought amongst themselves with canons and swords and muskets.
Niamh looked back down at Audrey again, at her red hair spilling over onto the pillow underneath her head, her sleeping countenance looking so peaceful that it tore at her heartstrings. And at her neck, where the wound still lay, the wound none of them had yet been able to heal. A spider-web of black ominous lines was spreading out from it, the circumference still small but wide enough to cause alarm. The wound which had robbed Audrey of her voice and thus of her Words.
A wound which had rendered the girl helpless just when Audrey would need all the power she could muster, or end up dead.
Dead.
Niamh's fingers shook as she gently stroked Audrey's pale cheek. And it was because she had sought the human out, because she had once seen the girl and known then and there that they were meant to spend the remainder of their lives together. She had seen the power within the girl, the potential and strength of her will, had known, even when she couldn't explain it even to herself, that the girl was something, someone special. Maybe not for someone else but to her. It was as if the girl had reWorded everything Niamh knew to be true of herself - even while she had never thought that humans with their mortal short lives were inherently inferior to her kind and thus little else than vermin as some of her kind thought, she had not given them much thought - and shown her that her life would be less full and whole without the girl in it.
She had not even known the girl's name then.
But she had found out. Audrey came from a family of famous Worders, was twenty-eight years of age, had educated herself in Oxford and used her Words and Will with ease and had done so from a very early age. She was single, lived with her recently widowed mother and had two sisters and a brother. Also, she was the most exquisite little morsel of humanity whom Niamh laid eyes upon. Her physical form was pleasing enough and her wit and temperament well suited for conversation, as Niamh had found out when she had talked with Audrey, hiding her fae features with a glamour. A glamour which Audrey had seen through but which hadn't prevented her from prolonging their conversation. That had surprised Niamh, who had been convinced of the opposite outcome.
However, Audrey had shown herself to resist suppositions. She had preened modestly and told Niamh quite subtly that she had seen through her. Had seen her true visage. Had been polite, sociable and only a little hesitant in being conversing with a fae. Niamh had thought then that she would have time to woo Audrey properly, yet it was not to be.
And now Audrey was engaged to be married with Niamh. Who was acutely aware that she could have handled the thing better than she had, but things were progressing quicker than she had anticipated and she had had no time to play nice, court the girl in a normal proper way and letting Audrey know her before she bound them together with a promise. A promise which would grant the human some protection but at the same time alert some to Audrey's worth and existence.
Niamh had had no time and had been forced to resort to desperate measures. She had used her Words and wrenched an unwilling but inevitable answer from Audrey and so they had become engaged to one another with Audrey resentful and fuming and utterly humiliated that Niamh's words had bettered her and bound her in such a way. What Niamh had not told her and had surmised that Audrey did not know was that her words wouldn't have had such an effect if there had not been love in the syllables, woven deep into her will. Mere want or desire wouldn't have created such a strong bond. Not even with a yes for an answer. Not with the way Niamh had carefully worded it subtly so as to not appear to the whole room they had been in the corner of as to what she had been asking, what she had been proposing.
Yet, there had to have been someone who had known. It was all Niamh's fault, she couldn't blame but herself for her choice of venue.
And now here she was, sitting by her fiancée's bed and waiting for her to open her eyes, hoping that the words to cure her of her muteness and give her her voice back would be found before the spider's web of pain poison spread any farther and possibly robbed Audrey of her voice permanently. Maybe even...
“I'm sorry,” Niamh repeated the words again, threading them with only a hint of her will to give them more weight, that they might penetrate through the fog of unconsciousness clouding Audrey's head. “So sorry...”
She had been selfish.
She had endangered another because she had fallen in love, in a love so outside the norms of her kind that it was a rarity, happening maybe once in half a millennia. She had brought danger upon Audrey and could not in good conscience tell herself that the danger had been there already, that her meddling had not done nothing to bring it to a head, as it were. Maybe she had speeded the process or maybe Audrey would have been left alone had she not interfered.
She let her fingers carefully touch the mark on Audrey's neck, making the girl shift and grimace and shy away from her touch, even when it was light and she strove to be as careful as possible. The skin was burning and pulsing beneath her fingertips and even when she was not pressing at all, the skin cracked and a foul smelling green liquid oozed out from the wound.
She gasped, shot to her feet and withdrew her hand. She closed her eyes for a second, centring her will and uttered one word into the room, wishing it to carry without and give her the help the girl needed.
“Help.”
Entry Number: 06
Author: saraste_impi
Fandom: Original
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Fantasy
Word Count: 1824
A/N: This is the fifth part of what I'm for now calling the ReWording 'Verse. Also, named both my characters and wrote this one from another POV than the previous ones.
Niamh really did feel bad for her, she really honestly did. As she sat there, by the bed with the prone form lying in it under an intricately patterned quilt, she let her shame over her own actions wash over her and embraced her fault in all of it. If anyone was to be blamed it was her. Her actions alone had led them here. Yet there was a part in her, that coldly rational part of her, which knew that what she had done had been done out of necessity, that there had been no avoiding it, never had been. She would not necessarily say that what had happened had been written in the stars, but she did feel like her story and that of the girl now lying upon the bed had been meant to intersect, to be written into one.
Even now, when the girl - she is such a child compared to me, in years at least, if not temperament and thoughts - was relatively safe, sleeping in Niamh's bed in her own chambers, her household protected with some of the strongest magic her kin could weave, most of his of her own Wording, she felt somewhat sick of having dragged the human into affairs that were so dangerous.
But she'd had no other choice, not really. Not with the way things stood. Mere individual lives and their harmonious routes, which she had robbed from Audrey's life now making the somewhat eventful plot of her life into a dangerous mystery, would have to be sacrificed for the good of the world. Even when she knew that she was also doing it to give Audrey a better life. A life in a world with a better future. And she would need Audrey's help in making it so.
In the end, when Niamh considered everything she knew and what could be done, the way the world itself, the way it's very core structure could be re-Worded and changed from what it was, had been, and could be, she knew she might also be saving Audrey's life. She did regret that she had to put her life into danger which threatened her life and her self-hood, the person Audrey was and what she could do, to do so.
She looked down at Audrey and then away, unable to keep her eyes in her sleeping form for a long time, letting her gaze roam sightlessly over the room and letting her thoughts turn to that which she had so often thought about before.
I wish there was another way. Some other way, anything, to stop what is coming. Keep you safe. I may tide the coming days, the possible days after what I fear and know might be coming, in relative ease but you may not. Nor others of your kind. We are so selfish, always so selfish. Why cannot the world be as it was, even when you have and are doing so much to try and burn up nature and follow your selfish whims? Why cannot it be done in another way?
The world was, as she had told Audrey, standing on a precipice.
In the chasm of it there was a future which would rend the world open, shake it's very foundations and alter much of what was and had been, reWording the past and the now to weave another kind of future. And the cost of that future would be blood and tears, suffering the like of which the world had not yet seen, not even during the great wars waged amongst humankind and it's nations and countries. Niamh herself had been there to see the first war, what the humans had called the Great War, had witnessed the tears, the pain, the suffering that humans had brought to one another with machinated warfare and the stupidity of the human condition. Then - not even a whole human lifespan after, but merely barely a generation apart, so that the children of those who had fought and bled and suffered and seen the utter folly of war were the ones going into battle - there had been another war, even more horrifying that the one before it.
The Fae and other supernaturals often wondered at why humans, with their frail bodies and limited lives, were often so eager to wage war and throw away lives that could have used to better the world. Not that humans were the only ones waging war, or had ever been so. Niamh knew it to be so, even when she was not old enough to have seen the last great war among the Fae, which had incidentally interspersed and overlapped with a war the humans had fought amongst themselves with canons and swords and muskets.
Niamh looked back down at Audrey again, at her red hair spilling over onto the pillow underneath her head, her sleeping countenance looking so peaceful that it tore at her heartstrings. And at her neck, where the wound still lay, the wound none of them had yet been able to heal. A spider-web of black ominous lines was spreading out from it, the circumference still small but wide enough to cause alarm. The wound which had robbed Audrey of her voice and thus of her Words.
A wound which had rendered the girl helpless just when Audrey would need all the power she could muster, or end up dead.
Dead.
Niamh's fingers shook as she gently stroked Audrey's pale cheek. And it was because she had sought the human out, because she had once seen the girl and known then and there that they were meant to spend the remainder of their lives together. She had seen the power within the girl, the potential and strength of her will, had known, even when she couldn't explain it even to herself, that the girl was something, someone special. Maybe not for someone else but to her. It was as if the girl had reWorded everything Niamh knew to be true of herself - even while she had never thought that humans with their mortal short lives were inherently inferior to her kind and thus little else than vermin as some of her kind thought, she had not given them much thought - and shown her that her life would be less full and whole without the girl in it.
She had not even known the girl's name then.
But she had found out. Audrey came from a family of famous Worders, was twenty-eight years of age, had educated herself in Oxford and used her Words and Will with ease and had done so from a very early age. She was single, lived with her recently widowed mother and had two sisters and a brother. Also, she was the most exquisite little morsel of humanity whom Niamh laid eyes upon. Her physical form was pleasing enough and her wit and temperament well suited for conversation, as Niamh had found out when she had talked with Audrey, hiding her fae features with a glamour. A glamour which Audrey had seen through but which hadn't prevented her from prolonging their conversation. That had surprised Niamh, who had been convinced of the opposite outcome.
However, Audrey had shown herself to resist suppositions. She had preened modestly and told Niamh quite subtly that she had seen through her. Had seen her true visage. Had been polite, sociable and only a little hesitant in being conversing with a fae. Niamh had thought then that she would have time to woo Audrey properly, yet it was not to be.
And now Audrey was engaged to be married with Niamh. Who was acutely aware that she could have handled the thing better than she had, but things were progressing quicker than she had anticipated and she had had no time to play nice, court the girl in a normal proper way and letting Audrey know her before she bound them together with a promise. A promise which would grant the human some protection but at the same time alert some to Audrey's worth and existence.
Niamh had had no time and had been forced to resort to desperate measures. She had used her Words and wrenched an unwilling but inevitable answer from Audrey and so they had become engaged to one another with Audrey resentful and fuming and utterly humiliated that Niamh's words had bettered her and bound her in such a way. What Niamh had not told her and had surmised that Audrey did not know was that her words wouldn't have had such an effect if there had not been love in the syllables, woven deep into her will. Mere want or desire wouldn't have created such a strong bond. Not even with a yes for an answer. Not with the way Niamh had carefully worded it subtly so as to not appear to the whole room they had been in the corner of as to what she had been asking, what she had been proposing.
Yet, there had to have been someone who had known. It was all Niamh's fault, she couldn't blame but herself for her choice of venue.
And now here she was, sitting by her fiancée's bed and waiting for her to open her eyes, hoping that the words to cure her of her muteness and give her her voice back would be found before the spider's web of pain poison spread any farther and possibly robbed Audrey of her voice permanently. Maybe even...
“I'm sorry,” Niamh repeated the words again, threading them with only a hint of her will to give them more weight, that they might penetrate through the fog of unconsciousness clouding Audrey's head. “So sorry...”
She had been selfish.
She had endangered another because she had fallen in love, in a love so outside the norms of her kind that it was a rarity, happening maybe once in half a millennia. She had brought danger upon Audrey and could not in good conscience tell herself that the danger had been there already, that her meddling had not done nothing to bring it to a head, as it were. Maybe she had speeded the process or maybe Audrey would have been left alone had she not interfered.
She let her fingers carefully touch the mark on Audrey's neck, making the girl shift and grimace and shy away from her touch, even when it was light and she strove to be as careful as possible. The skin was burning and pulsing beneath her fingertips and even when she was not pressing at all, the skin cracked and a foul smelling green liquid oozed out from the wound.
She gasped, shot to her feet and withdrew her hand. She closed her eyes for a second, centring her will and uttered one word into the room, wishing it to carry without and give her the help the girl needed.
“Help.”