Eisheth’s Journal

15 Uktar 1373

- Part I -

I do not have much time, for she will call to me soon, but I shall endeavour to record within your pages, little Journal, the events that have occurred here thus far.  I beg you forgive my summarizing, along with any omissions (be they unintentional or purposeful) or observations tainted by bias.

The spell was cast—there’s always a spell being cast, isn’t there?—and I drifted through the mirror portal, dreamlike, swathed in darkness, in refracted light.  Neither hot nor cold, frightened nor expectant, I simply was.  And… was, and was, and was—for around me was reflected a hundred thousand others, identical to myself and yet different.  There were Eisheths with long black hair and spiked blond hair and no hair at all; dirty, whimpering Eisheths in peasant garb, haughty Eisheths in queenly scarlet silks, Eisheths clothed in nothing but a wicked smile; Eisheths bearing all manner of tiefling manifestations, from hooves to tails to fiery lava-like skin to pointed little horns sprouting from her forehead, somehow gleaming ivory in the non-light.  It was impossible to assess whether these others could see me, too—though one of the more saucily-dressed versions of myself with a whip-like tail licked her lips and favoured me with a long-lashed wink.  I might or might not have blushed, if one could indeed blush in this place which was really no place at all.
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* Note: Thought I would try my hand at a mirror-world post.  Enjoy.

Chicago, April 2008

I.
Early evening in late April, unseasonably cold.  The sky a flat metallic gray from corrosive winds blowing in from Gary, feeding the pavement below it a feeble, icy half-rain that has chased the city’s inhabitants inside their favorite haunts.  Neon signs twitch and flicker to life as the air takes on a darker set, orange and red and yellow and pink blazing cold thin fires in glass tubes.  Headlights flash from cars and buses and the occasional grim-faced bike messenger, all rushing through the gritted, dank streets, orchestrated automatons on a track.

Somewhere nearer to the clouds, the “L” grinds to a rusty halt, sparks joining the intermittent rainfall, fading before they hit the ground.  A girl, small and slight, stumbles out of the third car onto the rain-slick platform, balancing a tower of books in one arm and dangling an overstuffed satchel from the other as she darts among the myriad train passengers.  A freckled frat boy with a backwards Cubs baseball hat bumps against her with a grin and an invitational remark.  She ignores him and, shivering, clatters down the iron-grate steps to the corner of State and Van Buren, her long auburn hair tangling behind her in the wind.
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11 Uktar 1373

“Love! — A word by superstition thought a God; by use turned to an humour; by self-will made a flattering madness.” *

I cannot remember now who wrote those words, only that in the past few days they have proved truer than I imagined.  For it is all vanity, all madness, is it not?  This whole process of saying good-bye, the unsurety of whether I shall ever again pay a visit to my dear father, or partake of the wisdom and hospitality of War Wizardess Chistra, or succumb to the delicious temptations of my darling, sweet Thrain.  Never before have I felt so basely selfish, a sentiment entirely at odds with what I have learnt of love.  Love should be a selfless entity, a way of seeing others and seeing oneself that nigh makes sacrifice a necessity, a blessing.  Crecentia and Sethia seem to have it in the right — but for me, I think it is different.

I always knew in the core of my heart that I was a wicked little creature, that I had as little use for love as it had for me.  It was not a matter of deserving (or not), or needing others (or not), but rather a grim determination that I had been set apart from a realm so easily accessible to everyone else, and must remain isolated there lest I lose everything for which I had fought.  But somehow, despite my efforts to the contrary, love has crawled in and consumed me, like a sinew of smoke, or flies on a carcass, and I cannot stop it, much less cleanse myself of its stain.
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Eisheth’s Story, Chapter XXXII.

Note:  So… remember back in the day when I was writing Eisheth’s backstory?  Well, here’s the next chapter.  Up until this point, Eisheth has been taken from her abusive home by a mysterious (and hott!) elf named Avalin, who doesn’t entirely seem to have her best interests at the core of his motivation.  Although he claims to be rescuing Eisheth from her (evil!) mother, Eisheth’s not 100% sure she believes him.  The two are currently stuck in a little podunk town — Avalin was attacked and nearly killed by a pair of Beasts of Malar, and Eisheth’s chaotic evil tiefling characteristics have inexplicably begun to overwhelm her chaotic good ones.  Enjoy the bloodlust. —  srw

I.
Somehow, I had forgotten how it felt.

Yet now my chest — barrier of parchment, cage of dry twigs — threatens to burst outward with its force, to shatter with the frenzied thrumming that has overtaken the normal rhythm of my heart.  It is as if I am being simultaneously consumed and nourished — by fire, by darkness thick and viscous, by raw electric power, broader and grander than anything I could have imagined.  And it is mine.

Somehow, somehow — this feeling had slipped beneath the pallid surface of memory and been lost — how?

I remember now the poet — Raphiene, or Bluffton, or was it someone else? — said that darkness is absence, loss, emptiness… and therefore it can never satisfy.  Thus its horror, its mystique, and, for some, its draw.  I had thought him wise until this moment.  For I feel neither absence nor emptiness, nor do I feel any less than myself — rather, I feel more myself than ever before.  It is as if I have been compounded, fractured and yet multiplied like the offshoots of a serpentvine, or reflected ten thousand times through a bee’s-eye crystal, or emitted as a spectrum (spectre?) through a prism.

The poet, whatever his name, can never have felt like this before.  Inferior, pitiful man.
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I.
Crecentia rose, as she did each morning, with the sun; and like the sun, she shone.  It was difficult to discern, in looking at her, whether the golden light of the sunrise pouring through the thin muslin curtains enhanced her beauty or was diminished by it — for the half-celestial had a light of her own.  It radiated from her rich chestnut hair and twinkled in her eyes and danced beneath her nigh-translucent skin.

Or perhaps its origin went even deeper; for, as she began to pray to Sune, as she dipped her head in reverence, her eyes large and imploring and full of love, her ruby lips moving over the whispered syllables, she was so beautiful that it was almost painful to look upon her without one’s heart threatening to break.
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