What For Do You Yearn

i have to write something. because if i don’t write, then
i’m going to become an even more different person than i already have
Illara starts her day by rising early, nightmares chasing her from sleep yet again. They’ve become reliable in that way. She runs a hand along Ed’s torso, fingers dipping along the broken pits of him like one does to a worry stone. She says hello to him that way. She says goodbye to him in that way. She looks over to the nightstand, where she keeps the sleeves he’d not been wearing that night stored away.
Unlike all the other days she’s done this, today she reaches in and cleans out the bits of broken glass. She unscrews what’s left of the jar that held a compacted soul within it. She takes the sketches she’d been idling on before the Star Strider crashed, and she takes those with her to the town forge.
I *have* changed. I see that now. I see it in the way home feels harder to remember. Like it is the dream, and this is the reality.
I feel like I’ve lost hope of seeing it again, because every time we turn around… things get worse.
The situation. Ourselves. The things we’re forced to do by being here.
Why do I feel like I have to stay?
What, truly, compels me now?
If the people who would be most aided by a sun shining over Crypha don’t want us here, what reason do I have to continue on?
It felt like the right thing to do. That was the thing– all of this felt like it was the right thing to do in some way. But these weren’t her people. This… this wasn’t their fight. What they were told all along was true, and while before Illara had been filled with noble purpose, now she couldn’t identify why she’d stayed.
These weren't her people. This wasn't her fight.
Her head turns as she passes the town hall, drawn by the sound of a child wailing. The Dalvath soldier flanking her turns with her when she lets her feet lead her that way, not warning her, nor complaining about their interruption in returning to the mansion. Illara walks up the charred, bloodied steps and into the front hall where a family, lacking adults, are being spoken to by a soldier.
The elder wraps an arm around the shoulder of the middle, who appears to be in shock. The youngest of them has collapsed down and is the one crying. Whatever news is being shared, it looks grim.
And there was so much of that. The death count only climbed as they sifted through the remnants of the wall's dismantling, through the buildings torn apart by that and other spells. All of it has felt impossible to reckon with, or at least… the sheer sight of it had been too much to process at first. The horror at the time had slipped her, too, into shock, like the middle child was now. But the pain of the younger orphaned child crying pierces through that thick veil overlaying the way she's been interacting with the world since the siege and brings focus to her eyes, to her mind.
The darkness that had encroached the town would bleed out into the world beyond if they didn’t hold the line here. If Cryphan leadership was let to think that they could bring all of this down on other countries, and to do so successfully, then they would. The thought catches in Illara’s throat, and she turns away to head back to the mansion.
She fights in the belief that the power that lead an incursion like this could be broken if Crypha were no longer the safe haven it is for vampires. She fights, like any Dalvath Royal would, to keep her people from knowing such struggle and terror. From having to face this themselves. She gives bits of herself to safeguard against that.
That sounds so noble, put like that, doesn’t it?
i want to go home, though. i want to taste fresh air. i want to stop shivering. i want to sleep somewhere properly well-guarded against assassins. i want … safety.
i never had it before, either, just the illusion of it. but that was on such a different level than this.
i wanted purpose. i wanted to feel needed; to find a niche to fill that wasn’t just a struggle to fill shoes i’ll never be able to. i wanted, so badly, for *this* to be that thing. to have something i’d done… that i could be proud of, and make others understand the worth of. i thought i found that in automatons, at first– and then i thought i’d found it in *this*.
i just wanted to make her proud.
she’s not, though. she never will be– not for something like this. and i cannot even blame her for that. if i succeeded and came home, even, it’ll be a mark on my record she endures. proof of my strength and resolve, perhaps, but nothing more. and if i support volatia’s claim, it’ll become even less than that.
where does your loyalty lie, daughter? who do you really serve, and who really benefits from this?
you’ve engaged in the war your father wanted brought upon the world, but you were not the price your parents expected to pay. maybe it’s just in that way– this whole thing a perverse act of divine justice, to cause them to feel loss as keenly as those they visit war upon. is that why it feels so hard to give this up?
or is it because of the relics, the whispers, the small things that lead us to think that this is the right path. that what we’re doing here is greater than countries and politics, but in the betterment of the entire world.
i need to feel that reassurance again. i’m not sure i ever will.
In the dream Illara has after having drifted off in the library’s loungechair, she dodges the first knife of the Unbroken Circle’s assassin only for one to sink into her side from behind. She turns to find and see Lydia standing behind her, who pushes her into the flames of an Anima pyre even before she’s dead. The shock of sinking back into that starts her awake, her side smarting right away and bringing tears to her eyes. She gasps, looks at the ceiling; hears the silence around her save for the crackle of the burning fire.
She lets the book she’d drifted off in reading hit her stomach. Her head drops forward into the crook of her hand, massaging her face. Her eyes feel as though they’re opening less and less with this lack of sleep she’s getting, and she knows she’s going to be useless soon if this keeps up.
Pushing out of the chair, she resolves her way to her feet, and then to the doorway, upstairs to grab her tools, then down again to grab her cloak; and at last resolves her way out into the cold to head to the forge again. Alone, it would have taken her a day or so to rebuild a construct, but she wanted to rework the shape of the metal into something different– an improved version of her prototype she had in Ed. A protector, rather than the jack of all trades he was meant to be.
If she has one of those, perhaps she’ll feel safe enough to sleep and sleep well again.
The blacksmiths greet her when she enters, and she greets them in return. It’s so short as to be tacit, but the tensions between some in the town and those perceived to be occupying it haven’t faded. Not even with the aid the army’s been giving to help rebuild following the attack.
Many things in life are just more complicated than that.