Basked in its light, Gwaeranthe stood, with frozen songs dancing in the wind at her back. Ellador's serene nights shrouded the earth once again, tinted by darkness yet graced with moonbeams. She shifted in place, her fingers impatiently separating the end of her lengthy braided hair. As uneasy as she was, several strands fell from their interlaced connections, 'till the section before the hair tie became broader and looser than the rest of the locks contained.
"Go to our keep's hall. . ."
Her mother had done such diligent work in preparing her. Tresses braided, skin turned shimmery with snow's finest kiss, and a placed her daughter in a dress of mystic allure. A maiden in the harshest of lands, yet untouched by its bitter climate. Her image, so unlike herself, was a mask over her true face. After all, Gwaeranthe's mother had whispered, what is a keep's songstress if not a promise of flourishing, beautiful talent that will arise over a hundred years? Such consoling words, as comforting as her mother had always been. Mother was the freshly lit wick of a candle, a hand to hold, a heart that accepted many without worry.
"There you will wait. . ."
Even in recollection, her mind could not be pacified from its inner turmoils. Gwaeranthe's fixations traveled from her hair to her pale and delicate hands, to the fingers she had; thin yet nimble. They gripped over each other in soft touches, until she could pop one knuckle, then the other, and when she had no more knuckles to pop, she tightened her hold on either hand. Though she was racked with a strange mixture of impatience and anxious feelings running haywire, Gwaeranthe could not bring herself to pace or gaze anywhere but the spacious hall in front of her, and beyond it, to the tall-standing doors.
Gwaeranthe's mother leaned in to settle her head beside her daughter's. Their eyes locked in the reflection of the mirror they shared. Her smile emerged, pleasant as it always was, yet its inability to reach her eyes was prevalent. Gwaeranthe knew when her mother was not entirely herself--she hardly knew anyone else as closely as she did her mother--but did not dare to inquire further on the matter. They both knew the circumstances, and though it may not have been in their own wishes for the stone of fate to turn over, it had done so. Whether by hand or foot, the stone revealed a new face.
Her mother whispered close and confined, just between the two of them, with a steady pool of motherly adoration delivered from her gaze; tender and sweet just as her touch to Gwaeranthe's shoulders was.
"And when he comes, you must greet him with your eyes."
The doors opened against Ellador's snowfall. Droplets fell into the hall for moments on end before softening into a melted puddle. Groaning creaking sounds rumbled through the hall for its audience of one to hear. A crown of white similar to her own peeked into view, beneath the archway, until the figure adorning such silken hair stepped in from the outside. Only the noise of the doors shutting behind him announced his arrival. He said not a thing in his gradual venture forward. His steps echoed against the floor. The hall's lone visitor seemed so far away to him, perhaps miles in his head, yet shone with crescent moon's light upon her bare shoulders. No others stood between him and her, a man on sudden mission to reach this lone beacon of the night.
Gwaeranthe slowly lifted a hand to her chest as the guest neared. His features, sharp and fine as all Isldar beheld, did not break from their strictly-trained demeanor. It was as if she were the wrongdoer moments before interrogation came knocking. Though he was the only other individual within the great hall, Gwaeranthe's rising anxiety diverted her line of sight elsewhere every time she considered watching him approach. He took notice of this with knitting eyebrows and firmly held lips. When she caught glimpse of this expression, her fingers curled around the opposing hand, and vice versa, and with great trepidation on the rise, Gwaeranthe eased a step backwards. He was keen to persist.
Their figures finally met. Two Isldar, a single hall, the same space. Gwaeranthe had no choice but to look upon him, then, when he challenged her own area of comfort by trespassing to its border. He was far taller than she had been able to tell in times past, yet her views of him had always been from afar. To see him now in full view, with nothing between them to act as barriers, struck awe and an inability to process within Gwaeranthe. Strangers could be so frightening--and especially when up close wearing their expectancy plain on their face.
"You must be Vaïlaeras," Gwaeranthe said. Tentatively, she released the end of her braid and let it fall past her shoulder, along her front, where it hang simply.
His shoulders pulled back and his chest centered. With a hard gleam in his eyes, he spoke, "I am. You are Gwaeranthe, the youngest of the Syvesal'amoira's."
Vaïlaeras was not particularly unique in how he appeared compared to other Isldar men, or other Isldar in general. He had allowed his hair, a stark white, to grow long past his shoulders, but kept most of it tied on the upper half while thinner strands fell loose. As others in the hold, his face was dark and brooding, a sort of stern observance that Gwaeranthe had never seen him break from before. His time as a trained archer and warrior for the hold had left him in good physique, but he was no one uniquely revered. Then again, neither was she. Two sharp eyebrows pinched to the center, creasing his features into a squint, and made his thin face seem even sharper than before.
She meekly nodded. He edged a hand out to her, despite the minimal distance set between them. With equal amounts of hesitation, Gwaeranthe reached for his with one of her own, much smaller hands. His touch was coarse and rough, while hers was soft and feeble. The mere sensation of his skin touching hers electrified her nerves, but with her mother's words in her mind, she fumbled the feeling away.
"My father spoke good of you. He says that you have accomplished many things as a marksman for our hold." Gwaeranthe slowly cast her eyes to Vaïlaeras'. Cyan met silvery grey. Vaïilaeras' strict appearance shifted: not so gaunt and judging, with a fraction of gentleness glimpsing through.
"And the scholars of the hold deem you magical," Vaïlaeras replied. "Is that not something to remark?" His hand had not broken away from hers. In fact, he seemed insistent on holding their shared contact for the duration they spoke like this. She attempted to give non-verbal signal that, for her own sake, she desired for her hand to be free, but he forbade it. Vaïlaeras was far stronger than she. Gwaeranthe dared not challenge his physical capability. His thumb traveled to the back of her hand, where it seemingly traced an invisible design along her equally pale skin. "Your father told me we are to meet. In time, we are to marry. You do understand this, don't you?"
She fumbled over words though they had not crawled past her lips to begin with. "No, I do understand. It is why we're here, after all. To meet, properly."
With their eyes held upon each other, Gwaeranthe and Vaïlaeras alike found due time to release their grip on each other. As their touch ended, so too did Gwaeranthe's trained gaze on him. His, however, remained on her.
"You doubt me?" Vaïlaeras asked. "Speak your mind; tell me what you doubt in me, and I will prove it unnecessary. Your mother and father chose me, for they have put their faith in me to take you as my own, a wife. Does that not quell your worries?" His words were as curt as the usual Isldar's; it was not this that made her refrain from looking to him again. Rather, it was how his voice so easily shifted from disciplined to tinted with kindness, where sensibility emerged, as if she had opened many a door around him and brought in the relieving breeze to his person.
Vaïlaeras was capable of good. Gwaeranthe had seen it for herself. She knew it was not that she feared Vaïlaeras. Despite what she knew, Gwaeranthe's discomfort lingered, then festered, then boiled under her skin. "I do not think little of your feats and accomplishments, Vaïlaeras," she said, "but is it not strange to you how you might come here, meet me, and so quickly accept me as someone to marry when we have not spoken before?"
The warrior craned his head, leaning closer. His words softened in just the slightest, for he did not baby her, but rather lowered himself to speak to her more clearly. "If you were an evil thing that our elders had despised, only then might I be against meeting you here, and settling my thoughts. No, Gwaeranthe, this is how all things have been. Our mothers and fathers have followed in this tradition when suited, and few break free from it. I ask again: do you doubt me?" Vaïlaeras gestured past her right side. "See this place?
"This place is peaceful, as it is only right we come together, here, under peaceful circumstance. I've no intent to rattle your mind or wits, Gwaeranthe. I am to be your husband. Your family thinks it good, and so do I."
She felt it again. Knots tying a hundred fold in her chest, rising to her throat and back down again, dancing through her arms as if they would break through her skin. Vaïlaeras spoke evenly to her, Gwaeranthe understood this and even accepted his kindness for what it was. Yet the more she gazed around, the more she felt the man's presence in front of her, the perfection of the night further crumbled.
"Then there is nothing left to say." Gwaeranthe lifted her head and smiled past her fears. "The elders will witness our union, in Frisit's name, and we will be together." The dim doors long past Vaïlaeras taunted her in silence. She had fixated so quickly onto them that she had not realized the warrior reaching for her to touch her again, though only at her arm. When his fingertips grazed her skin, she stilled and looked up at his trained and steeled visage.
"Many would not have come to meet with their arranged betrothed," he said in a murmur, "but do not think your magic has gone unnoticed by me or anyone else, Gwaeranthe. Though you do not carry a weapon for our hold, your power is promising. There are few I would consider worthy to give my name to. I would accept you among them."
Her lips lost their smile in a sudden fracture. Dimmed by her quickly thinning string of hope, she only recovered it slightly before edging away from Vaïlaeras' touch again. This time, he allowed it. She centered herself, as best as she could, and looped around him to venture closer to the doors.
"Thank you, Vaïlaeras," said Gwaeranthe. Her dress's short train spread behind her while the rest of her figure seemingly floated towards the double doors. Now cast in the shadows where the moon did not touch, she added, "I am sure we will have much more to say to each other once our ceremonial day is upon us. Please, pardon my leave; I should go before my mother worries."
The warrior Isldar gazed after her in unspoken, quiet longing. For so long had the works of magic captured his interest, and now he had such an embodiment before him, so far from reaching their potential, that it excited him. He had never been magically gifted before, yet now? he could witness life with magic's touches for his own eyes. How childish was his elation that, for a moment, he had not realized how far Gwaeranthe had traveled. Too far for him to stop her, nor would he. With a single nod of his head, and a gleam of his white hair from the moonbeams' sheer luminosity, he saw her off.
Doors opened and groaned. The songstress slipped between them, into the snow-paved paths. And the doors shut again. The hall lost one and beheld a single figure left to bathe in its light. Vaïlaeras stared at the ghost of Gwaeranthe's image where he last saw it, and beheld the wonders of hope for the future in his mind. The night carried on; and Ellador continued to sing its cold songs in the winds, though perhaps more melancholic than before.
