illuminera (illuminera) wrote in ashelle, @ 2018-10-09 23:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | character: liselotte, location: ashelle, post: log |
A Bit of Searching
WHO: Liselotte & her weird cats
WHAT: attempting to find the missing eye
WHEN: some time before the council meeting
WHERE: Liselotte's bedroom in the castle
WARNINGS:
NOTES: Complete
She felt like everything since the attack on Ashelle happened to someone else, another her, another Liselotte. Had it been her leading people down to safety in the city's crypts while hell broke lose above? Had it been her hearing that she had yet another brother? Her father was dead and she had thought that when you lost someone, you would sink into the depths of sadness, cry until you couldn't cry another tear, but she mostly just felt a jittery unease like she'd been up far too late.
If stayed occupied and never gave herself the chance to sit down and think, then she didn't have to wonder why she wasn't crying, which was why she bustled about readying her room (a pastel mess of frills and bows, never quite updated from when she was a young girl and new to the palace) for what she was about to attempt. She threw a fluffy blanket on her enormous bed, fluffed all twenty pillows. She secured the windows, let the guards posted outside that once her sphinx returned, she was not to be interrupted unless absolutely vital. The younger sphinx, Hissbe, sat at her feet and played with the ends of her dressing gown as Liselotte undid her braids and brushed her hair out. Yes, you could wayfind with messy hair, certainly, but was Liselotte going to do that? Absolutely not.
More than that, if assassins attacked her while she was wayfinding and vulnerable, she wanted to make sure she looked properly tragically beautiful so that bards would write sad ballads about her untimely passing and everyone would be so sad and sorry she was gone.
At last, a guard let her know that her attendant requested entrance back into her room and so she let Purramis back inside. In his natural form, he was a grand (well, he'd describe himself as grand; Liselotte would venture to say that he was actually just a big baby) winged sphinx with no face but a mask, but the fact of the matter was that the castle was not optimized for quadrupeds, let alone ones the size of a lion, so when out and about on tasks by himself, he often took on the form of a beautiful manservant. Ostensibly, this was because doors were tricky without thumbs, but also because he was trying (and failing) to attract the attentions of a particularly handsome footman. Liselotte did not think this was going to work out for a variety of reasons but she wished him luck trying.
"Thank you ever so very, very much! And look, you only ate some of my cheese this time instead of all of it like last time and the time before and the time before. That's so very good of you; I knew you could do it. Could you put that tray on my bedstand, pretty please? Thank you, sweetie~"
Her back was turned to him but she could practically feel him roll his eyes at her.
"I don't really know what you expect, princess. I'm a cat."
That was fair, that was fair. In between putting her hairbrush down and turning around, there was a whumph and the creaking of bed-springs. Purramis had shed his human guise in favor of his true form and was now knocking over far too many of pillows she had just arranged as he made himself comfortable on the edge of her bed. Liselotte sighed but figured this was inevitable with cat ownership, even if said cat was a smartass that fancied himself the prettiest dandy in all the castle.
"Oh, please go ahead, make yourself comfortable, be my guest. You might as well knead and tear my sheets to bits again while you're at it."
"Ooh, maybe I will."
"Let's not have any of that, shall we?"
Liselotte went to inspect what he had brought her from the kitchens: a bowl of almonds and cashews, a jar of pickled carrots, a box full of candied oranges, fruit leather, an entire jug of water, bags of tea, most of a slice of a hard cheese kept under glass. She'd be weary after this and it was always best to stock up beforehand. Satisfied, she slipped into bed, hair streaming everywhere.
"I'm going to do this now. I think that I shall be occupied a very long time, but if I don't stir after a day has passed, break my concentration and make me drink water. Hissbe will guard me but when she needs to be let outside, I need you to be very good and do that for me because she doesn't have thumbs and you do sometimes. Don't pick on her and don't let anyone in that isn't supposed to be here."
Now to begin.
Warm and comfortable in her bed, she walked the familiar path of the Way in her mind, visualizing each twist and turn, and when she was done, the universe awaited. Her father's eye was somewhere and she wanted it back this instant. She started with Ashelle but it yielded nothing, and when that didn't pan out, she focused her gaze on the neighboring Echoes and then the ones a little further away and then the ones even further.
Nothing. Has her father's assailants destroyed it then? Or was it even farther? If they had taken it and run through the Echoes, then they could move incredibly quick, far quicker than anyone but the royal family should, and that worried her. She turned her gaze on Echoes far away from Ashelle, and then increasingly more esoteric ones that even she, who played in Echoes at every chance, had not even seen before.
Nothing. Nothing at all. With each disappointment, she searched faster, searched longer, until she came to a point where she could go no further due to the hunger in her belly and the weariness that settled in her bones. The farthest she went was a distant, barren Echo of thunder and wind, a place called Rarsha, but she had not the strength to search it in much depth or push onward. She let the image of the Way fade from her mind, suddenly far too conscious of the weakness of her body, how utterly and completely exhausted she felt, how she had found nothing.
She couldn't even find one single eyeball. She wanted to take the little porcelain figure of a dragon on her bedstand and shatter it against the wall, wanted to tear apart her room in frustration as she had in the past, but quite frankly, the thought of exerting any energy sounded horrid right now, so instead she just pressed her face into her pillow to muffle the obscenities.
"You're back, princess?" asked the sphinx, now lounging on the floor. By the light coming in from the window, quite some time had come and gone.
"Yes, I'm back and it was...ugh, nothing, I have nothing. I'm going to have to go and tell everyone I couldn't find anything."
"...Well, drink some water, maybe you'll feel better."
Liselotte wearily reached for the jug of water she had placed, now unpleasantly warm, but it didn't really make her feel any better.
"...Well, drink some water, maybe you'll feel better."
Liselotte wearily reached for the jug of water she had placed, now unpleasantly warm, but it didn't realy make her feel any better.