𝒜 𝒮𝒾𝒹𝑒 𝒮𝓉𝑜𝓇𝓎 𝑜𝒻 𝒢𝒾𝓁𝓉 𝒷𝓎 𝒜𝓈𝓈𝑜𝒸𝒾𝒶𝓉𝒾𝑜𝓃
- Hush Little Lark. Settle in. Your wiggles are too much." A soft voice, baritone, crept in through the morning. "I'll tell you the story of a warrior who fought the fight of love..." The small girl laughs, brown curls rustling around her as she snuggles into her father's side, green dress with dark swirls of silver clothing her small form. The man tickles her ribs, causing peals of giggles to echo through the library she knew all too well.
Valencia opens her eyes slowly, letting the dream fade to the background. Only a dream, nothing more.
She rubs her eyes, sitting up slowly in bed. A soft sigh escapes frowning lips, her smile not yet bidden to linger on her features. She looks around the room, taking in the small desk, the chair, the nightstand, the bed. Small items on each that didn't matter to her groggy mind.
She got dressed. Green tunic. Belt of vials. Satchel of devices. Her smile put on like the last piece of an outfit, fit into place like it belonged. Patting her cheeks twice, she heads out the door. Down the stairs and to the waiting hearth beyond.
"You sleep too long, girl."
A hazel gaze moves to the speaker. Harriet Ipsman. Her nanny. At least, she was when she was young. Now, the woman was more akin to a cook and housekeeper, settling into the role of taking care of a whole house. Leaving room for a young miss to earn her green, and the masters of the house to resume their lives passions.
Valencia shakes her head. "I slept just long enough, Harry."
"The funeral week is over. It is time to get back to life." The woman speaks gruffly, setting a bowl of smooth oats before the girl, swirled with honey and small berries.
The girl sighs, picking up her spoon and scooping up a bite, letting it fall back into place. Her smile lingering, but not reaching eyes which held sorrow. "Life..." She murmurs the words. She stirred the oats, not partaking. "A return to what, one may wonder."
Harriet places her hands on her hips, looking at the girl with worry. "A return to everything, girl. Your songs. Your studies. Them being gone does not stop the bell's toll." She goes to the stove, cleaning up the evidence of her cooking.
Valencia chuckles softly. "Yet my heart feels as if it has stopped. It aches, Harry. I wish to not feel it for a time." She pushes up from the table, wandering to the door. "I am off to the Halls. I will return for supper." Though she most likely would not eat that either. Any grumbling noises from the dark clad woman was missed by her departure.
She leaves, and solemn steps take her down the familiar lanes. Cheery smiles are given in response to greetings, her smile giving light where she felt none. She kept her paces, and did what was expected, brown waves a riot around her, eyes no longer holding that spark that kept her alive.
It was buried between two matching coffins, deep in the earth where none dare venture.
It took an hour to reach the Halls she was on her way to. Her steps reaching her table. Her chair. Not that she owned them. But she was in them constantly to the point that no one else sat there, and the librarians left her books where they had lay. Two weeks they had been open without her, and two weeks none had put them away.
"Ah. Valencia. You are here."
A voice broke into her musings on books and dusty papers. She looks over. Miere Halstead. The owner of the voice, and a small delicate woman who smoked a pipe that held no odor to the smoke. The keeper of most of the books that existed in the Halls.
"Your father has left behind quite a mess. I was hoping perhaps you could come look. Sort through the piles and find those that are mine, and those that are his." The woman continues, smoke winding around her from the long pipe she held to frowning lips.
Valencia nods quietly. "I shall look." She looks to her own books. "These... can all be put away." She had no reason left to continue searching them. The story she had been chasing felt like ash in her fingertips.
She follows the small woman to the back room where her father had work. A scholar's study in the Halls. His robes still hung on the post. His glasses resting on the edge of a desk full of books and pages. Valencia smiles and nods to the woman as she departs, closing the door behind her as the girl focuses on the task ahead of her.
Sort through that which remains. Find those that belong to the Halls, keep those that once belonged to the man.
Days she spent in that room, sorting through. Books made their way to a small cart to be put away. Some made way to stack on the desk, to be taken home eventually. Added to a private library where they would be forgotten. Valencia worked tirelessly, keeping her smile like armor, and her eyes like flames gone silent.
Five days passed. And then six. However, on the seventh day, the silence was shattered by books falling.
"Gods have mercy!" Valencia shouts the words, throwing a book down along the rest that had fallen. Her breaths come in ragged, and anger vibrates through her form. The room was mostly cleaned now. Only that stack of books remained on a desk that had been a man's entire life. And now, they were scattered across the floor, like a grotesque reminder to her of what had happened.
She had not cried yet.
Harriet had lamented it several times.
And though, in this moment, it would be appropriate to finally break down and allow the storm loose, Valencia clung to her anger instead. Heaving breaths and hands shaking at her sides. Finally, one slides to her stomach, and then up to the small locket hanging around her throat.
A groan and she kneels down, starting to pick up the books that she had treated so horribly moments before.
However, her hand paused on one. Open to a page with a curious drawing of an orb. Two words. Siren's Song. But Song was crossed out. Lament written boldly beside it. Her father's hand. She picks up the book and stares at the page, her heart beating faster in her chest. The story it belonged to flickered through her mind, speeding through like destiny taking hold of her in moments.
Everything stops and she takes a shaky breath.
Two moments pause, without count.
Then three.
Another, taken without exhaling.
Then, it exits in a whoosh as she reads the lines scrawled small on the bottom of the page. She flips the page over, continuing her read.
Twenty-four lines of prose.
Fifteen cities.
A pathway highlighted on a map drawn in scrawls she had set to memory.
Life surges through limbs that had gone cold three weeks prior. She rushes into an office she knew all too well.
"Miere!"
The woman with a pipe looks up from her reading, amethyst eyes focusing on the cacophony of a girl that had just burst through her door sans knocking. "Valencia." She speaks the name slowly, looking her over. Something had shifted.
Valencia walks forward with rapid steps, slamming the book on the table. "My father was searching for the Siren."
Miere blinks slowly. "The Siren?" She knew full well what the girl was talking of. But she could see the life flickering around the edges. A purpose that was being rediscovered.
The girl laughs, holding up the page and pointing at it. "The Siren! The Story of a Warrior documents a Siren that traveled alongside a man." She runs one hand through her hair, long broken of the braid that it had been in, light dancing around her edges. "Scholars have argued back and forth over translations, but my father suppositioned that perhaps..." She pauses, then looks at the book, running her fingers down the page. "...perhaps it was not a sweeping ode to adventure and gallantry, but a love story. A tale of love and loss, heartache and true happiness, bound together by a word that any could mistake in translations!"
She turns to Miere, speaking rapidly, her eyes holding a life she didn't have hours prior. "The Siren joined the Warrior on his journey because of a deal struck. Give him her songs. Storms to the sky. Fire to his sword. Ice to his fingers. Help him save the world. Make it a better place. And along the way, she fell. She loved him, Miere." Her hand goes to her forehead, her excitement able to be felt in the air. "When the line said 'her world destroyed, shattered around her' perhaps they weren't talking of the city around her. Her world destroyed. Not the world. Not a world. Her world."
"The Singers have sung the line hundreds of times, thinking that it meant love for the world. For the people he saved. The story of a warrior who fought the fight of love.... He loved her. The song... told the story no one was listening enough to hear. Scholars have fought back and forth because a city doesn't exist in ruins where the battle supposedly took place, but they never considered..."
She breathes slowly, her eyes going to the window and to the people milling around beyond. "She sang the song of life and death because the Warrior had died. She was... bringing back the love of her life. The reason that no ruins stand where the story takes place is because the city stood firm around them. The Warrior fell... and she shattered as his body touched the earth."
She stops and breathes. The assumptions running through her mind.
"Miere it's real. The Warrior. The Siren. The Siren's Lament is a real artifact. He was sure of it. I am sure of it."
Miere takes a long puff of her pipe, smiling slowly. "Mm. Yes. And the Association has long since said that your father was wrong in his suppositions, and that he was crazy for believing in such tall tales. But... what does that mean for you, Valencia Harper?" She poses the words slowly, her amethyst eyes not moving from the bright girl that once more existed in her office.
Valencia pauses, staring at her. Her heart was beating too loud in her throat. Her eyes held that shine of life. Hope.
Then, she swallows and closes that small black book, holding it against her chest, breathing slow, thinking. Then, finally, she speaks slowly. "It means... I have fifteen cities to go visit. I'm going to find it, Miere. I'm going to prove my father right. I... am going to dream as he did."
The small woman smiles slowly, smoke curling around her form.
A journey... perhaps... had been started in the heart of a girl they had all thought dead with parents buried.
