Carolina Vane (burning_hand) wrote in emillion, @ 2013-09-01 00:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !narrative, carolina vane |
like looking through a fogged mirror
Who: Carolina Vane (narrative) & NPC children
What: Volunteering
Where: Butcher Street Orphanage in the Tenements
When: This afternoon (Sunday)
Rating: PG-13 (for mentions of Carolina's dark past)
Status: Complete~
Carolina looked natural surrounded by small children. There was something maternal about her, something the children responded to in her soft, low voice and her gentle hands. When she'd arrived at the orphanage that afternoon, haggard officials took one look at her and her calm demeanor and installed her with a book of fairy tales in the center of a group of 4- and 5- and 6-year-olds. The children lay at her feet and curled up against her side—so trusting.
Had Carolina ever trusted so readily? She couldn't remember, but she supposed she must have. She'd been no older than the youngest of those whose hair and shoulders she now stroked as she read to them of dashing feline swordsmen and princesses with magical shoes. She'd been so ready to trust the first man she saw after she'd been pulled out of the smoldering remains of her family's farmhouse. He was so tall and handsome, she'd been willing to give her entire life to him. Indeed, 35 years later, she still served him loyally.
The love she'd received as a child had never come from him, only from those who also served. The earliest memories she had of him were all of taking. He'd taken everything she had—her dignity, her identity, her spirit. She'd been told she was once a willful child, but she couldn't remember being anything more or less than what she was now. Her most vivid memories were of pain and despair, of being stripped of everything that had made her human, of being taken apart bit by bit until there was nothing holding her together.
Then there had been the rebuilding. From her component parts, she'd been remade into something stronger than steel, something entirely free of emotion and attachment: transcendent. She lived only to do as she was told, whatever the cost. She was a soldier of the Burning Hand and nothing more.
Even now, surrounded by the perfect peace and stillness of a dozen contented children, she was focused only on the task at hand. She turned the page of the book and gently placed her hand on the head of the child curled up on her other side. She paused in her reading to look down at the child—a filthy thing with a head of matted brown hair. “What's your name, dear?” she asked softly.
The child looked up at her with enormous brown eyes. “Kelwyn.”
Stroking Kelwyn's matted hair gently, Carolina went back to the story with the satisfaction of having accomplished what she'd come here for. This child would make a fine mage.
They would always need new soldiers.