Elsa Zerbino Vargas (elsavargas) wrote in thebattleage, @ 2011-04-02 23:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! complete, (narrative), elsa vargas |
Narrative: 2. Life
Who: Elsa Zerbino Vargas
Where: The Circle Tower in Orlais
When: 9:45, early Verimensis
Summary: Life is what happens when you're not looking. Or, in some cases, it might be what happens when you least expects it.
Rating: PG
She did not consider it a possibility, did not even think that such a thing was possible. Children, tiny screaming infants, were a part of life, a part of the bustling, colourful existence that people outside lived. Inside, there was no such joyful creatures, only strict codes of conduct and raised eyebrows if anyone broke them.
When Elsa realised that she was indeed pregnant – the earliest tell-tale signs easy to hide but difficult to ignore – she went searching for a window. The one she had found as a child, in the tower in Antiva was no longer to be looked out of. Instead she found a forgotten window niche in a dusty abandoned corridor high up in the Tower. It was not the same, not coloured beautifully with her memories, but it would do.
There was still a world out there, even though she had tried to forget about it so long. Breathing in the fresh, crisp air – so different from the dusty, conserved air inside – she looked towards the horizon and thought about the future of her child.
Perhaps she ought to be thankful that she had not conceived until now, that the decision had been spared her, and Davio and she had had five years together. Five blissful years, she told herself, ignoring the stabs of discomfort. He had always come back to her, that was what mattered, she told intoned internally, eyes on the horizon.
But there was no hiding from the truth, it was staring her in the face, assaulting her nostrils with the smell of the world outside. The Circle was nothing like the Outside, what little she knew of it. She would not be allowed to keep her baby.
Placing a hand on her stomach, she tried to imagine how her child would look, but she had seen too few babies to know what to think. It happened now and then, that women got pregnant, and as far as Elsa knew, there were no punishments involved.
She had just never seen the babies.
The hint of a swollen belly one day, and the next the woman disappeared. When she returned, there was no questions, no curious glances.
Life was something for those outside of the Tower. Inside, time might as well be standing still, that was the feeling one got. People aged, relationships changed, new people arrived and the old ones died. But somehow everything remained exactly the same.
Letting her eyes caress the contour of a distant mountain, Elsa imagined her future. Walking the corridors, holding her lessons, heavy with a child that no one would talk about. Her invisibility as a woman increased tenfold, her state a taboo instead of a natural course of a relationship.
Then...being taken away. She could not guess as to where, how far, but she needed no details to imagine the anguish. Giving birth, surrounded by people who waited silently to take away the very life you were fighting to bring into the world. Clawing hands reaching for the little one, your own flesh and blood, now to be brought up by strangers.
The picture of her unborn child began forming then in her mind, unbidden, her imagination creating it with no other fuel than the longing in her heart. Dark hair, curling as Davio's did, blue eyes clear and piercing. She could imagine the child growing up, a perfect mixture of the parents uniting in looks and heritage what could never quite be united between themselves.
Elsa sighed.
It was strange how something could at the same time be your worst nightmare and a dream come true. It was more than she could eve have hoped for and at the same time it was a thing she would have feared if she had thought of it.
The walls of the Tower were too thick for her to be able to lean out far enough to spot the ground. It was there, far below, and she had to make do with the horizon. Mountains, distant copes of trees whose name she had forgotten. The sound of the wind...
A sudden gust of air beat against her face, making a chill pass down her spine. Her fingers curled around her stomach, a feeling of protectiveness growing slowly stronger inside her.
Elsa had never before questioned anything Davio had told her, seldom done anything that was prohibited, she was the very picture of a meek and obedient Antivan female, her rebellions few and invisible, her spirit hidden deep within her. She had gained what little power she had by manipulating the weak and charming the powerful.
But it wasn't enough, that little morsel of power. It was enough for many things, it assured that she was left alone, seen as just another pretty woman with little will or power. It made some of the older mages smile at her benignly, and some of the younger mistakenly assume that she was not a threat.
But it was not enough to enable her to keep her child, and she was quickly realizing that that was the only thing she wanted. She had wanted things before, and she had most often gotten them, but this was a wish that was more precious than anything before it. But any feat she’d have to think up to get her dream, was also proportionally larger.
She had to leave. It was the only solution, the only way she could keep her child. Pulling the window shut, the rusty hinges protesting loudly, she leaned against it, trying to think. A hint of the freshness from outside lingered in the air and she greedily breathed it it.
Was it possible? Had she ever heard of anyone leaving the tower, finding a way to...escape?
She had never before thought about escaping, but until this day she had not had a reason that overpowered her mixed feelings for her home and the Outside. Worry over a lover, the loneliness of not being allowed to express herself freely, the petty squabbles with other enchanters - none of these things had made her seriously consider trying to leave. But knowing that she was carrying a new small life inside her, warped her view of things that had been unchangeable weeks earlier. She could not giver her baby over to strangers, not live with the pretension that it did not exist. While it’s sudden existence was a shock that overthrew everything she had planned or imagined, it was nonetheless a small speck of light, a scarlet mote in the tapestry that was her life.
She had been a battle mage lacking a fight, taught spells and tricks without having a reason to use them. But no longer.
Elsa began to rise, shaking out her skirts, meaning to go to Davio, to ask him for help and assistance. He was a man he would...sinking back she realised exactly what he would tell her. Fatti maschi, parole femmine, that was what he always told her when she tried to arrange things or plan something. Deeds are manly, words are womanly.
Leaning against the cold stone of the wall behind her, she sat on the floor, trying to think, trying to plan, trying to foresee the trouble she would meet.
If she could only bring him a plan, something that gave him no reason for questioning her but plenty to accept.
Long into the night she brooded, while her back grew cold and her legs stiff. Dust motes danced in the air around her, it was dark and still. Few ever came to these parts of the Tower; it was a long lost testimony to the days when the mages in Orlais had been even more numerous. When she finally rose, her eyes were gritty, but her mind was sharp as cut glass. It was going to be hard, bordering on impossible and she would have to step out of the shadows in order to do it.
Having something to fight for really changed everything.