kay_brooke (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kay_brooke) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2012-03-16 09:36 am
kay_brooke) wrote in rainbowfic2012-03-16 09:36 am
Snow White #12, Tea Rose #22
Name: kay_brooke
Story: The Myrrosta
Colors: Snow White #12 (bridge of birds), Tea Rose #22 (my idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation)
Styles/Supplies: Canvas, Pastels fororigfic_bingo card prompt "friendship"
Word Count: 2,909
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; no standard warnings apply
Notes: Eh, just an attempt to write some Darmon and Prettor backstory.
They met by accident.
In another lifetime, under different circumstances, they wouldn't have met. Salkiys rarely traveled. Most were content to stay in the same village their whole lives, raise a family, contribute to the village's welfare, and die peacefully.
In that, Darmon was no different. But he also had the stories.
The stories had been passed down through his family for generations. Legends, they were, legends that claimed Darmon and his family were the descendants of none other than Tianya, the one who had risked everything to save the vestiges of salkiy civilization that remained after the fall of Border Glory. She had found places to hide the surviving salkiys underground while the surface was crawling with ekalap and human armies, hunting down and slaughtering every salkiy they came across. She kept the few remaining residents of Border Glory fed and clothed until the humans and the ekalaps focused their attention on each other instead of the salkiys. She planned the raids that rescued so many records and so much history from burnt out buildings, taking advantage of that fact that the humans and the ekalaps, once they had no more salkiys to kill, started murdering each other.
She hadn't saved everything. She hadn't saved even a tiny fraction of what used to exist. But if she hadn't acted she wouldn't have saved anything at all. And for that, even a thousand years later, the salkiys were grateful.
Every salkiy knew the story of the fall of Border Glory, of the death of Farras Araithus at the hands of the humans. Every salkiy knew about Tianya and what she had done to save them.
Not many knew of the Myrrosta. That was a part of the story that had mostly been lost to time, or perhaps deemed too fantastical to be included as part of the very real, historical events that occurred during and immediately after the attack on Border Glory.
Darmon's family was one of the few who still remembered and told the story. But they were the only ones whose version of the story held deeper implications, such as the connection between Tianya and Farras Araithus.
Couched in myth and hearsay and the degradations of a thousand years, the nature of this connection was unclear. From the time he was a small child Darmon had been particularly fascinated with this bit of this family history, this Tianya who had not only played such an important role in saving and preserving salkiy civilization but who had also been somehow connected to the last Araithus of the salkiys. The stories didn't go into any detail, and that his parents and grandparents could only shrug helplessly when he asked for specifics. They told the story as they themselves had heard it, and so on back through countless generations.
Darmon couldn't understand, even as a child, why no one had ever thought to ask the kinds of questions he was asking.
But no one had, and if there had once been someone among his ancestors who knew the answers, they were long dead.
It wasn't possible to talk to the dead. They were gone. They had taken their places among the stars and had no more to do with the mortal realm. Darmon didn't want to wait until he joined them to get his answers. He understood, from an early age, that there was only one way for the dead to talk: the writings and books and records they had left behind.
Darmon started with his own family. His grandparents had some old books that had been passed down, and Darmon spent his first few years of research poring over them, trying to glean some kind of deeper understanding from the scant details the books gave him. When he had memorized every word in those books, he moved on. The arai of the village had his own little library, with more books than Darmon's grandparents. So Darmon asked permission to read them. Because Darmon was quiet and respectful and didn't make trouble, and because he was a good student, the arai allowed him to spend his afternoons once lessons were done in his dwelling, looking over the books. He never allowed Darmon to take any of the books home, so Darmon spent most of his teenage years in the arai's dwelling, sometimes far into the night, obsessively reading and re-reading the books by the light of an ethestras torch.
By the time he entered his early adulthood and gained his third Ethret armband, Darmon had exhausted the arai's supply as well. And still his questions weren't answered, though he had some theories.
Darmon was a typical salkiy. Not long after he gained his third armband he committed to starting a family with a female in his village, and it wasn't long after that when they had a child of their own.
And Darmon was happy with his life, but he wasn't content. Not as long as his questions nagged at him, demanded that he find the answers to them. It was important to him. He knew it was important to his family, or it should be. As a descendant of Tianya he had quite a legacy to live up to. Wasn't the fact of his blood reason enough that he should emulate his ancestor and bring back to the salkiys something they had lost? The true story behind the fall of Border Glory, the Myrrosta, Farras Araithus, Tianya, and how all of those connected was something the salkiys needed to know. No more should the salkiys be so ignorant about the most important story in their entire history. But he had no more reading material. So there was only one thing left for him to do. He agonized over the decision, because his desire was an odd one and it bothered him that he was so driven toward it when he should have been content with his family and his life.
But at night he had strange dreams, and there was nothing for it. He had to go.
His mate, Trelle, didn't understand. He didn't think she would.
"But why?" she snapped at him in irritation as he stood before her, dressed in his cloak and sandals. He had just told her that he was going north, all the way to the foothills, where he hoped to find the remains of Border Glory.
"I have to," he said.
"If you find these ruins, how is that going to help you?" Trelle was trying to feed their daughter. The child was barely a year old but just as stubborn as her father already.
"I don't know yet," said Darmon. "But there is nothing more for me to learn here. Maybe there will be something in the ruins."
"After a thousand years?" Trelle wasn't stupid.
"Maybe there will be salkiys living there," he said, trying a different tack. "Maybe they'll have more and better records. Maybe they'll have the original copies of the things Tianya saved."
"What if they don't?" asked Trelle. "Will you come home and forget all about this nonsense?"
"Yes, I promise," said Darmon, though he knew as soon as the words were out of his mouth that they were a lie. He had spent almost his entire life, from the time he was old enough to understand spoken words, trying to find out more about his family's history. If he found nothing at Border Glory . . . he didn't know what he would do. He would have to think of somewhere else to go. Maybe other villages had other materials for him to peruse. He could easily spend three lifetimes trying to find everything. He briefly wondered if it would be possible to find the half-mythical location of Lenthyn, the ancient temple of the Araithus. No one knew where even its ruins were, but Darmon was sure he could find clues somewhere. And if he found it there might be something of worth there. That could easily take yet another lifetime.
Darmon spared a brief moment of sorrow for Trelle and for his daughter. But it couldn't be helped. He was answering a higher calling, one that he liked to think came directly from the Goddess herself. It was almost heresy, but he couldn't help thinking it.
Trelle sighed and touched her palm to her forehead. "Yes," she said. "Fine. Go."
She didn't give him the symbol of a true goodbye, nor did she give him the traditional farewell of promising to be there when he returned. It bothered Darmon, but he left without a word. If he had no family when he returned from Border Glory, it was the price he had to pay for his obsession. A calling did not come without sacrifice.
He traveled north, and by the end of the summer he had ended up in a salkiy village nestled in the foothills of the mountains. According to Darmon's research Border Glory had once been somewhere nearby, but he didn't have specific directions. So he went into the village and started asking.
Salkiys were suspicious of strangers, especially in the north where it wasn't unheard of for an ekalap to infiltrate a salkiy village by pretending to be one of them. Darmon tried to put everyone at ease by openly allowing others to sense his essence, proving that he was in fact a salkiy, but he was still a stranger and he still received odd glances or even outright glares. Most salkiys he tried to stop and ask questions of just shook their heads and hurried on without answering.
The second sun had almost disappeared beyond the horizon leading to the human lands, and Darmon was thinking about stopping and finding a place to sleep for the night when a male salkiy, this one about his age and with dark brown, curly hair, hailed him over.
"I heard you were asking questions about Border Glory," said the salkiy, flashing Darmon a quick smile. Darmon relaxed a little; this salkiy seemed much friendlier than the rest.
"I was," said Darmon. "Do you know anything about it?"
"I do," said the other salkiy. "I'm called Prettor."
"I'm called Darmon."
Prettor put his hand on Darmon's arm. "Come with me to my dwelling. I might have something you're interested in."
Prettor lived alone in a tiny dwelling at the edge of the village. He had left his family's dwelling but had not taken a mate. Darmon raised his eyebrows at Prettor when he found this out.
"I haven't had time for a mate," said Prettor. "I've been too busy, and . . . well, there isn't room."
"What do you mean?" asked Darmon, but then he entered the dwelling and stopped, gaping in shock.
The dwelling was small, it was true, though two or three salkiys could have lived there comfortably. But almost every bit of it was stuffed with books. Papers were scattered all over. Darmon had never seen so many records in one place before.
"I've been doing my own research," said Prettor unnecessarily.
"About what?" Darmon asked.
"Border Glory," replied Prettor, as if it was obvious. "I know where the ruins are."
"Do you?" said Darmon, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.
Prettor nodded. "It's not far. Everyone here knows where it is, but no one wants to talk about it."
"Why not?"
"Because the land is cursed."
This was something that had come up in the stories Darmon had heard and read about, that Farras Araithus, upon his death, had placed a curse on the land so that no one could ever claim it for themselves, but he had dismissed it as a bit of fancy to make the story sound better. "So that's true?"
"I'll show you," said Prettor. "As soon as the suns come back. But nothing grows within the boundaries of what was once the city. In the past some have tried to grow crops there. But they all fail. The very soil itself is poison."
Darmon nodded, but he also remembered a dim, half-forgotten story about the curse not being permanent. "The Myrrosta is supposed to be able to bring it back to life, if I remember correctly."
Prettor looked pleased. "So you do know the story of the Myrrosta. Not many do these days."
"It's sacred to my family," said Darmon. "We're descended from Tianya herself."
At this, Prettor's eyes got wide. "Are you really? Then we've truly met well. I am myself descended from one of the salkiys in the original refuge Tianya built. My family has been here ever since. I've never been satisfied with the incomplete stories I was told, so I've been spending as much time as I can finding out more."
Darmon couldn't believe how lucky he was to have found someone whose interests matched perfectly with his. "Have you, by any chance, heard anything about the connection between Tianya and Farras Araithus?"
Prettor nodded enthusiastically. "I never heard about it in any of the stories I was told, but from the books I've read there was undoubtedly one. I have some theories."
"As do I," said Darmon. Since this seemed it was going to be quite a long conversation, he found an empty stool to sit on. Prettor placed a plate of bread in front of him and sat on his own stool, leaning forward eagerly. Darmon also leaned forward. "I'm positive Tianya was a personal student of Farras Araithus, one of a very small number of salkiys talented enough to study under the Araithus himself. They were probably very good friends."
Prettor's eyes twinkled. "I'm positive you're right about Tianya being a student. But I think she and Farras Araithus were more than good friends. Much more."
Darmon cocked his head, hardly daring to believe what Prettor was suggesting. "But the Araithus was forbidden that kind of contact."
Prettor shrugged. "Perhaps that's what the law said. That doesn't mean he obeyed it."
Darmon, more than most, knew that historical figures weren't to be thought of as perfect. They had been possessed of the same flaws as any salkiy. But he still recoiled instinctively from any suggestion that Farras Araithus hadn't been the almost-god history painted him as. He clamped down on that instinct and reminded himself that Farras Araithus was just a male salkiy, even if he had been the most talented of his generation and chosen as the personification of the Goddess in the mortal realm. He had to have made mistakes, just like any other salkiy. But Darmon had a hard time believing he would flaunt the law so brazenly, and he told Prettor that.
Prettor laughed and said, "I never claimed he was brazen about it. Why do you think it never comes up in any of the stories, and only in the written records after some creative interpretation? It was a very secret thing."
"Creative interpretation?" said Darmon, seizing on that phrase. "So you haven't found anything that directly supports your theory?"
"Have you?" Prettor countered, and Darmon had to admit that his own theories were mostly conjecture from reading between the lines than direct statements.
"But I believe it's true," said Prettor. "It's the only thing that makes sense with the text of the prophecy."
Darmon furrowed his brow. "What does the text of the prophecy have to do with Tianya?" The prophecy was the dying words of Farras Araithus, and it foretold the coming of the Myrrosta. Whatever connection Tianya had with that was so far beyond Darmon's research that he hadn't even formally addressed the question even to himself.
Prettor took a deep breath, like he was about to tell Darmon a great secret. "I believe Tianya had a child."
"We know she had a child," said Darmon. "With a male she met after the Fall. Obviously she did, otherwise my family wouldn't exist."
Prettor shook his head. "No, don't you see?" he asked, nearly jumping up from his stool. "That was her second child. She had an older child, one whose name has been lost to time, but whose existence the records I've seen are quite clear about. I believe her eldest was the child of Farras Araithus."
Darmon breathed in sharply; it wasn't quite a gasp, but almost. If Farras Araithus had fathered a child . . .
As if he was following Darmon's train of thought, Prettor nodded. "I'm convinced that Farras Araithus had a child with Tianya, a child he never met because he was dead before it was born. I believe the descendants of this child are out there right now, somewhere. And I believe that one day someone in that line will give birth to the Myrrosta."
Darmon could only fold his hands and bow his head for a moment, deep in thought. Prettor's words made sense and slotted everything neatly and easily into place. The connection he'd been looking for his whole life. He almost could have resented Prettor for finding this information before him, except that there was no proof, was there? And no way to find out where the direct descendants of Farras Araithus were now, if they did in fact exist.
At least not yet.
"I would like to see the ruins tomorrow morning," said Darmon.
"I'll gladly show them to you," said Prettor. "I've waited a long time for someone else who understood my need to discover the past."
"Then," said Darmon, nodding at him, "we'll continue the work we both started."
kay_brookeStory: The Myrrosta
Colors: Snow White #12 (bridge of birds), Tea Rose #22 (my idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation)
Styles/Supplies: Canvas, Pastels for
origfic_bingo card prompt "friendship"Word Count: 2,909
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; no standard warnings apply
Notes: Eh, just an attempt to write some Darmon and Prettor backstory.
They met by accident.
In another lifetime, under different circumstances, they wouldn't have met. Salkiys rarely traveled. Most were content to stay in the same village their whole lives, raise a family, contribute to the village's welfare, and die peacefully.
In that, Darmon was no different. But he also had the stories.
The stories had been passed down through his family for generations. Legends, they were, legends that claimed Darmon and his family were the descendants of none other than Tianya, the one who had risked everything to save the vestiges of salkiy civilization that remained after the fall of Border Glory. She had found places to hide the surviving salkiys underground while the surface was crawling with ekalap and human armies, hunting down and slaughtering every salkiy they came across. She kept the few remaining residents of Border Glory fed and clothed until the humans and the ekalaps focused their attention on each other instead of the salkiys. She planned the raids that rescued so many records and so much history from burnt out buildings, taking advantage of that fact that the humans and the ekalaps, once they had no more salkiys to kill, started murdering each other.
She hadn't saved everything. She hadn't saved even a tiny fraction of what used to exist. But if she hadn't acted she wouldn't have saved anything at all. And for that, even a thousand years later, the salkiys were grateful.
Every salkiy knew the story of the fall of Border Glory, of the death of Farras Araithus at the hands of the humans. Every salkiy knew about Tianya and what she had done to save them.
Not many knew of the Myrrosta. That was a part of the story that had mostly been lost to time, or perhaps deemed too fantastical to be included as part of the very real, historical events that occurred during and immediately after the attack on Border Glory.
Darmon's family was one of the few who still remembered and told the story. But they were the only ones whose version of the story held deeper implications, such as the connection between Tianya and Farras Araithus.
Couched in myth and hearsay and the degradations of a thousand years, the nature of this connection was unclear. From the time he was a small child Darmon had been particularly fascinated with this bit of this family history, this Tianya who had not only played such an important role in saving and preserving salkiy civilization but who had also been somehow connected to the last Araithus of the salkiys. The stories didn't go into any detail, and that his parents and grandparents could only shrug helplessly when he asked for specifics. They told the story as they themselves had heard it, and so on back through countless generations.
Darmon couldn't understand, even as a child, why no one had ever thought to ask the kinds of questions he was asking.
But no one had, and if there had once been someone among his ancestors who knew the answers, they were long dead.
It wasn't possible to talk to the dead. They were gone. They had taken their places among the stars and had no more to do with the mortal realm. Darmon didn't want to wait until he joined them to get his answers. He understood, from an early age, that there was only one way for the dead to talk: the writings and books and records they had left behind.
Darmon started with his own family. His grandparents had some old books that had been passed down, and Darmon spent his first few years of research poring over them, trying to glean some kind of deeper understanding from the scant details the books gave him. When he had memorized every word in those books, he moved on. The arai of the village had his own little library, with more books than Darmon's grandparents. So Darmon asked permission to read them. Because Darmon was quiet and respectful and didn't make trouble, and because he was a good student, the arai allowed him to spend his afternoons once lessons were done in his dwelling, looking over the books. He never allowed Darmon to take any of the books home, so Darmon spent most of his teenage years in the arai's dwelling, sometimes far into the night, obsessively reading and re-reading the books by the light of an ethestras torch.
By the time he entered his early adulthood and gained his third Ethret armband, Darmon had exhausted the arai's supply as well. And still his questions weren't answered, though he had some theories.
Darmon was a typical salkiy. Not long after he gained his third armband he committed to starting a family with a female in his village, and it wasn't long after that when they had a child of their own.
And Darmon was happy with his life, but he wasn't content. Not as long as his questions nagged at him, demanded that he find the answers to them. It was important to him. He knew it was important to his family, or it should be. As a descendant of Tianya he had quite a legacy to live up to. Wasn't the fact of his blood reason enough that he should emulate his ancestor and bring back to the salkiys something they had lost? The true story behind the fall of Border Glory, the Myrrosta, Farras Araithus, Tianya, and how all of those connected was something the salkiys needed to know. No more should the salkiys be so ignorant about the most important story in their entire history. But he had no more reading material. So there was only one thing left for him to do. He agonized over the decision, because his desire was an odd one and it bothered him that he was so driven toward it when he should have been content with his family and his life.
But at night he had strange dreams, and there was nothing for it. He had to go.
His mate, Trelle, didn't understand. He didn't think she would.
"But why?" she snapped at him in irritation as he stood before her, dressed in his cloak and sandals. He had just told her that he was going north, all the way to the foothills, where he hoped to find the remains of Border Glory.
"I have to," he said.
"If you find these ruins, how is that going to help you?" Trelle was trying to feed their daughter. The child was barely a year old but just as stubborn as her father already.
"I don't know yet," said Darmon. "But there is nothing more for me to learn here. Maybe there will be something in the ruins."
"After a thousand years?" Trelle wasn't stupid.
"Maybe there will be salkiys living there," he said, trying a different tack. "Maybe they'll have more and better records. Maybe they'll have the original copies of the things Tianya saved."
"What if they don't?" asked Trelle. "Will you come home and forget all about this nonsense?"
"Yes, I promise," said Darmon, though he knew as soon as the words were out of his mouth that they were a lie. He had spent almost his entire life, from the time he was old enough to understand spoken words, trying to find out more about his family's history. If he found nothing at Border Glory . . . he didn't know what he would do. He would have to think of somewhere else to go. Maybe other villages had other materials for him to peruse. He could easily spend three lifetimes trying to find everything. He briefly wondered if it would be possible to find the half-mythical location of Lenthyn, the ancient temple of the Araithus. No one knew where even its ruins were, but Darmon was sure he could find clues somewhere. And if he found it there might be something of worth there. That could easily take yet another lifetime.
Darmon spared a brief moment of sorrow for Trelle and for his daughter. But it couldn't be helped. He was answering a higher calling, one that he liked to think came directly from the Goddess herself. It was almost heresy, but he couldn't help thinking it.
Trelle sighed and touched her palm to her forehead. "Yes," she said. "Fine. Go."
She didn't give him the symbol of a true goodbye, nor did she give him the traditional farewell of promising to be there when he returned. It bothered Darmon, but he left without a word. If he had no family when he returned from Border Glory, it was the price he had to pay for his obsession. A calling did not come without sacrifice.
He traveled north, and by the end of the summer he had ended up in a salkiy village nestled in the foothills of the mountains. According to Darmon's research Border Glory had once been somewhere nearby, but he didn't have specific directions. So he went into the village and started asking.
Salkiys were suspicious of strangers, especially in the north where it wasn't unheard of for an ekalap to infiltrate a salkiy village by pretending to be one of them. Darmon tried to put everyone at ease by openly allowing others to sense his essence, proving that he was in fact a salkiy, but he was still a stranger and he still received odd glances or even outright glares. Most salkiys he tried to stop and ask questions of just shook their heads and hurried on without answering.
The second sun had almost disappeared beyond the horizon leading to the human lands, and Darmon was thinking about stopping and finding a place to sleep for the night when a male salkiy, this one about his age and with dark brown, curly hair, hailed him over.
"I heard you were asking questions about Border Glory," said the salkiy, flashing Darmon a quick smile. Darmon relaxed a little; this salkiy seemed much friendlier than the rest.
"I was," said Darmon. "Do you know anything about it?"
"I do," said the other salkiy. "I'm called Prettor."
"I'm called Darmon."
Prettor put his hand on Darmon's arm. "Come with me to my dwelling. I might have something you're interested in."
Prettor lived alone in a tiny dwelling at the edge of the village. He had left his family's dwelling but had not taken a mate. Darmon raised his eyebrows at Prettor when he found this out.
"I haven't had time for a mate," said Prettor. "I've been too busy, and . . . well, there isn't room."
"What do you mean?" asked Darmon, but then he entered the dwelling and stopped, gaping in shock.
The dwelling was small, it was true, though two or three salkiys could have lived there comfortably. But almost every bit of it was stuffed with books. Papers were scattered all over. Darmon had never seen so many records in one place before.
"I've been doing my own research," said Prettor unnecessarily.
"About what?" Darmon asked.
"Border Glory," replied Prettor, as if it was obvious. "I know where the ruins are."
"Do you?" said Darmon, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.
Prettor nodded. "It's not far. Everyone here knows where it is, but no one wants to talk about it."
"Why not?"
"Because the land is cursed."
This was something that had come up in the stories Darmon had heard and read about, that Farras Araithus, upon his death, had placed a curse on the land so that no one could ever claim it for themselves, but he had dismissed it as a bit of fancy to make the story sound better. "So that's true?"
"I'll show you," said Prettor. "As soon as the suns come back. But nothing grows within the boundaries of what was once the city. In the past some have tried to grow crops there. But they all fail. The very soil itself is poison."
Darmon nodded, but he also remembered a dim, half-forgotten story about the curse not being permanent. "The Myrrosta is supposed to be able to bring it back to life, if I remember correctly."
Prettor looked pleased. "So you do know the story of the Myrrosta. Not many do these days."
"It's sacred to my family," said Darmon. "We're descended from Tianya herself."
At this, Prettor's eyes got wide. "Are you really? Then we've truly met well. I am myself descended from one of the salkiys in the original refuge Tianya built. My family has been here ever since. I've never been satisfied with the incomplete stories I was told, so I've been spending as much time as I can finding out more."
Darmon couldn't believe how lucky he was to have found someone whose interests matched perfectly with his. "Have you, by any chance, heard anything about the connection between Tianya and Farras Araithus?"
Prettor nodded enthusiastically. "I never heard about it in any of the stories I was told, but from the books I've read there was undoubtedly one. I have some theories."
"As do I," said Darmon. Since this seemed it was going to be quite a long conversation, he found an empty stool to sit on. Prettor placed a plate of bread in front of him and sat on his own stool, leaning forward eagerly. Darmon also leaned forward. "I'm positive Tianya was a personal student of Farras Araithus, one of a very small number of salkiys talented enough to study under the Araithus himself. They were probably very good friends."
Prettor's eyes twinkled. "I'm positive you're right about Tianya being a student. But I think she and Farras Araithus were more than good friends. Much more."
Darmon cocked his head, hardly daring to believe what Prettor was suggesting. "But the Araithus was forbidden that kind of contact."
Prettor shrugged. "Perhaps that's what the law said. That doesn't mean he obeyed it."
Darmon, more than most, knew that historical figures weren't to be thought of as perfect. They had been possessed of the same flaws as any salkiy. But he still recoiled instinctively from any suggestion that Farras Araithus hadn't been the almost-god history painted him as. He clamped down on that instinct and reminded himself that Farras Araithus was just a male salkiy, even if he had been the most talented of his generation and chosen as the personification of the Goddess in the mortal realm. He had to have made mistakes, just like any other salkiy. But Darmon had a hard time believing he would flaunt the law so brazenly, and he told Prettor that.
Prettor laughed and said, "I never claimed he was brazen about it. Why do you think it never comes up in any of the stories, and only in the written records after some creative interpretation? It was a very secret thing."
"Creative interpretation?" said Darmon, seizing on that phrase. "So you haven't found anything that directly supports your theory?"
"Have you?" Prettor countered, and Darmon had to admit that his own theories were mostly conjecture from reading between the lines than direct statements.
"But I believe it's true," said Prettor. "It's the only thing that makes sense with the text of the prophecy."
Darmon furrowed his brow. "What does the text of the prophecy have to do with Tianya?" The prophecy was the dying words of Farras Araithus, and it foretold the coming of the Myrrosta. Whatever connection Tianya had with that was so far beyond Darmon's research that he hadn't even formally addressed the question even to himself.
Prettor took a deep breath, like he was about to tell Darmon a great secret. "I believe Tianya had a child."
"We know she had a child," said Darmon. "With a male she met after the Fall. Obviously she did, otherwise my family wouldn't exist."
Prettor shook his head. "No, don't you see?" he asked, nearly jumping up from his stool. "That was her second child. She had an older child, one whose name has been lost to time, but whose existence the records I've seen are quite clear about. I believe her eldest was the child of Farras Araithus."
Darmon breathed in sharply; it wasn't quite a gasp, but almost. If Farras Araithus had fathered a child . . .
As if he was following Darmon's train of thought, Prettor nodded. "I'm convinced that Farras Araithus had a child with Tianya, a child he never met because he was dead before it was born. I believe the descendants of this child are out there right now, somewhere. And I believe that one day someone in that line will give birth to the Myrrosta."
Darmon could only fold his hands and bow his head for a moment, deep in thought. Prettor's words made sense and slotted everything neatly and easily into place. The connection he'd been looking for his whole life. He almost could have resented Prettor for finding this information before him, except that there was no proof, was there? And no way to find out where the direct descendants of Farras Araithus were now, if they did in fact exist.
At least not yet.
"I would like to see the ruins tomorrow morning," said Darmon.
"I'll gladly show them to you," said Prettor. "I've waited a long time for someone else who understood my need to discover the past."
"Then," said Darmon, nodding at him, "we'll continue the work we both started."
no subject
I am kind of annoyed at Darmon for abandoning his family, though. Maybe Trelle will find another male salkiy to help her take care of their daughter... or something.
no subject
Maaaaaaybe. :)
Darmon does go back to his family, though, and ends up raising his granddaughter, so he doesn't disappear forever.
no subject
no subject
no subject