Fen'nan wasn't used to it, nor did she ever like it. The quietness, the emptiness. Yet she found if she could keep busy enough, she could stave off her buried memories and thoughts without breaking the law.
The ache in her back stirred her, the Altalar's crimson head raising up from her desk, her hands reaching up to rub her groggy features as her gaze flit to the open book she'd opted to use as a pillow. Modern Altalar text sprawled out across its many pages, much similar to the massive pile of additional Est-allorn books beside it, each book nearly as thick as her arm. With dramatic enthusiasm, she snapped the book shut, glancing once more at the seemingly endless pile of homework as she stood from her chair.
"That's enough reading for tonight, Leironse," she grumbled aloud to the empty bedroom, stretching as she peered around. Seconds ticked by in silence, stirring a restless need to do something, anything, an impatient jangling rising from her, she rocked back on her heels. Seconds later she was rushing down the stairs as if fire licked at her heels, throwing herself out of her home and into the biting, winter night.
He told her to try peace for the next several years. Learn who she was. Learn her culture. Face what she ran from. It was a task she could not refuse. And yet it was one of the hardest challenges she'd ever faced.
But peace was warm, and safe.
Boots crunched through snow as she trekked over the bridge that arched over the canal, lifting her face to the sky, letting the small breeze bite against her cheek, she smiled silently to nothing.
But there was one fact of peace that would never change.
Fen'nan turned into the Salvation Church graveyard, her steps slowing as her golden gaze ran over the burnt down tree. She grimaced briefly, the redhead stalking further into the graveyard, running an idle gaze over the headstones, stopping as her eyes fell on an oddity of a grave, a laugh slipped from her before she could stop herself.
'K da Tlrin.'
Died 308AC
Bye, honey.
You will be missed.
Died 308AC
Bye, honey.
You will be missed.
She sounded out the name in her head, her laughter slowly fading into silence. Replaced by the sinking stone in the pit of her stomach as a name formed in her mind. Caeda. Her smile slid and crashed to the floor.
The undeniable truth of peace was that,
Fen'nan emitted a choked cry as the world came crashing around her, breath stolen from her lungs. Her knees sank into the snow as she collapsed before the gravestone. "Caeda?!" The lump in her throat choked her yell back. "No, no, no," her fingers clawed into the frozen ground in desperation, until they were numb, blistered and bleeding over the grave. Her torso bowed over the grave as she released a sob. "I'm so sorry."
Peace didn't last.
______
She was somewhere else now. Only a few days later. Smells of alcohol and old blood hung in the air, soaked into the counters, the floors, of the Nook & Cranny Inn. From past conflicts and celebrations alike. Around her, someone was spinning in nauseating circles in a dance, laughter and banter ringing through the room, distant and far away as a grave voice whispered in her ears in Modern Altalar tongue.
"Andy is gone."
Fen'nans mind blanked a moment. "...When is he coming back?"
"..."
She waited until she got home to break.
And then glasses were flying, shattering against walls, and floors and she was screaming, roaring her grief, her rage, into the silence. Wood splintering as she released her own destruction upon her home, sweeping papers into the floor, plants flattened and thrown into the flames of the fireplace. She was chaos, ruin, and hate. Pure undiluted hate.
With a final bottle smashed into the wooden flooring, she fell back against the wall, panting as she looked over the ruins that had become her home, her eyes watered with hot, furious tears that she refused to leak. She trembled and shook.
For the loss of life. The loss of two friends that she'd not once ever thought would perish before she. Most of all, the loss of peace. And for the familiar, rising, writhing spite in thrashed in her gut.
Fen'nan inhaled deeply, swallowing her rising emotions down. Contorting her grief into the rage she could make use of. The Solvaan's face went hard as stone, her jaw clenching tightly as she peered out into the cold, winter night and felt nothing but the rage that formed a fist in her stomach.
Peace didn't last.
But wars...
They could last for as long as she made them.
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