Atlantic Roleplay Community Boards

[Cezanne Abella]

---

At first there was only darkness. Cezanne tried to feel her way forward, but her outstretched hands made no purchase; they found only emptiness. She thought back frantically, trying to remember. What had brought her here, and why? Her thoughts spun dizzyingly inside her head, giving her vertigo in a place where “up” and “down” already meant precious little.

And then there was a spark of recognition. The darkness opened up ahead of her, and she saw Valentein standing, slumped slightly, in the mists. His forehead glistened with perspiration, eyes beset with angst behind his violet spectacles. Cezanne smiled warmly and reached out toward him. He was still too far ahead to have seen her yet – the gesture more to reassure herself.

Valentein abruptly turned his back and slung his coat aside. Cezanne tried to hasten her step, to escape this black corridor, but her feet would simply not do her bidding. The faster she tried to walk, the slower she seemed to move, and the farther away Valen seemed to be. Cezanne looked down in confusion at the hooded shroud she wore, trying to gather it up, to pull it free of her feet, to sprint, but to no avail. It only seemed to weigh her down more.

As she lifted her gaze again, Valentein’s anguished eyes lifted to lock with her own, but only briefly. He clutched his left arm to his chest, a violent screech tearing through his gritted teeth, and he fell into darkness.

“VALEN!!” Cezanne screamed, frantically entangled in her shroud, stretching a trembling arm as far as she could reach in the direction he had disappeared. She was overcome and collapsed into the dark mists as well, awash as screams turned to sobs.

Cezanne felt a hand upon her shoulder and looked up, desperately hopeful. But the face was not Valentein’s. The kind eyes of Sage, an aspiring actress who stayed in a guest room at the theatre, searched Cezanne’s face.

“Ere ye quite a’ight, Lady?” Sage asked, trembling. At least she had a candle, and the darkness had begun to retreat.

“Valen, we’ve got to find…” Cezanne’s voice trailed off as she realized that she pointed toward the theatre stairs.

Sage shook her head slowly. “M’Lady he still hasn’t returned to his room in these two nights, ye know tha’…Have ye slept down here all night waitin’?”

Cezanne felt the blood draining from her face. If she had been worried about Valen before, she was terrified now.

“I fear something’s happened, Sage. Something horrible.” Cezanne climbed the stairs, two at a time, toward her chamber. Sage was one step behind, trying to calm her.

“’E’s just gone back to ‘is sister’s camp, thassall, Miss. Or out carousin’, Don’t fret o’er ‘im so. Men ere like tha’ ye know.”

But Sage might as well have been talking to the washbasin. Cezanne threw reagents into her pack and opened an old chest. A last thought, but perhaps for the best, Cezanne hesitantly drew out a dark hooded shroud and held it up reverently. She spun on her heel and dashed down the stairs.

Sage paused at the top of the stairs and watched as Cezanne wrapped the shroud around herself, whistled for Covenant, and disappeared into the stormy Umbran night.

*****

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
~Edgar Allan Poe