Empress Lanamika of the Lotus Clan (LA-nuh-MEE-kuh)
Lanamika Oneiros, Empress of the Lotus, The Clanlord.
Death of a Clanlord
The capital city of Taerythia hunched its rain-washed white bricks against time to no avail, though the deportment of the old city suited the day. Mourners lined ivy-mad alleys and peered from arched, vaguely eye-shaped windows like living tears. All the bru'eth held their breath and waited for their erstwhile leader to pass by one last time. I was one of those mourners. Clanlord Rajeiro Oneiros, a peerless force on the battlefield, lived long enough to turn gray and watch his mental faculties drain like paint through a sieve--in his final weeks, there remained only enough dry paint on the cold, metal colander of his mind to remind him, in flashes and half-forgotten memories, of who he once was. He did not get the warrior's death he so badly wanted, but none could say that he did not age well, and nobly.
When his time came, he asked to die in his library, and he was taken there. He kept only one person in the room as he took his last breath, and that was his daughter. Had my mother been alive, he would have asked for her. But he held one of my hands in both of his, glad to have me there in her stead.
"Mikala. Your feast of youth arrived before my night of black bones. As it should be. You will be the Empress of the Dawn. And you will always be my Mikala."
It took his several sputters and half-repeated phrases to express even that much. He then patted my hand gently and let it go as he let go of everything. Time stood still in the ancient library of the clanlords. I stayed at my father's side for a long time, held close by the smell of old tomes, the salt of my tears in my mouth. I stayed until the quiet, which was so complete that a turn of my foot against the slate echoed like a canyon earthquake, caused my ears to ring.
Though the venerated chief and my long-deceased mother had wanted a son, they got me instead. (Legend held that sons ruled over times of peace and daughters over times of war, though my father had seen his share of conflict.) They had officially named me "Amril Veslin", or "The Dawn that Returns (to us)", but that was largely ceremonial. I would be Lanamika--"the bright star." Mika to my friends. Mikala, "little star," to my father.
I was a healthy child with bright, gold skin and eyes of an even brighter green. Auspicious, some said. More importantly, I never went without love.
Palano is a Bru'eth word, one that means, "the rain that lasts all day". It did. The burnished gold skin of most bru'eth in the Lotus Clan, where exposed, seemed tarnished by the foggy mizzle and the greenish wet of the morning. My father, his soul long fled, floated along on a litter and seemed to smile at passers-by. (And, many would later swear, wink at them.)
At times, the green-and-gold pall, stamped with the symbol of the Mother Tree, would conceal the decaying emperor for a moment as the cloth played with the wind. I could hardly bear to lean in as he was brought low by the sacred fire pit, though my height afforded me a sad view of the great tactician's face for the whole of the march. His cool flesh breathed ice along my cheek, even though the tar-fed flames hungered nearby and seemed to mock me, calling me an orphan, a lost child, a mote held aloft by chance.
I kissed my hand and pressed it to my father's face. That was all I could do. Moments later, the pallbearers tilted him into the burning pitch and the earth swallowed him whole.
The Morning After
"Lanamika. Lanamika! You'll burn yourself! Be careful."
The stick of dry, lit sage licked close to my right hand as I held it in my left. Indra was paying more attention than I; the permanence of loss had only begun to seep in as the memories seeped out with the smoke, curling through the space beneath the door and becoming indistinguishable from the air. I inhaled deeply and turned my head slightly to Indra, showing her something that I hoped resembled a smile. My aunt had been more like a mother to me, and a mother's worry crossed the tawny skin of her long, elegant face.
"Thanks, Auntie I. I'm alright. Well. I'm not, but I'm not burned, either."
That made me think of my father's body burning in the sacred tar pit. I turned to Indra and collapsed into her. I don't know how long she held my head to her breast, but it was a long time.
As the day wore on, I wanted air. Needed it. Everything seemed confining, almost menacing, and the open sky was all I could manage. I cut through a thicket I had been through many times, but the day's light waned and I was lost in my mind.
A Sonnet in the Gloaming
Soon, I was lost in the woods, as well. Other bru'eth would have called me a tilethena, or city girl, for managing that. I headed up a hill that looked like a field of glistening, white dragon scales as the wet grass reflected the moon. I hoped to see the town below and get my bearings.
Before I reached the crest, a soft voice chimed close to me.
“Whatcha doin'?”
I turned slowly to see an asrai, though the coast was at the bottom of the hill. She was further from water than most would ever venture. She was also speaking to an elf...most are timid and live far shorter lives than their fae brethren, not for lack of potential longevity, rather because they are frail creatures, easily lost. Sunlight kills them, but the sun was down, leaving only the pale, fading light of the gloaming.
The little asrai, perhaps the size of my fist, hovered in the light breeze, her silent wings moving too quickly to seem like anything but a blur of bluish-green. Her body was a somewhat lighter sea-foam green, and her hair was an unruly storm of pitch. She tilted her head like a dog, studying me with dark eyes with no discernible pupil in the ink.
I took half a step away, as she was fluttering just beyond an arm's length from me.
“I suppose I might ask you the same. An asrai, miles from her water, talking to strange elves?”
She crossed her arms as she hovered and gave me a dramatic look of exasperation.
“I asked you first!”
Her voice was still a soft, tinkling melody. She was not angry.
“So you did. I'm not doing anything, really. A bit turned around, which is embarrassing. I've lived near here all my life.”
“It's understandable. Your father just died and you have to think about ruling the clan when all you really want to do is mourn.”
I almost slipped in the dewy grass.
“You know of me?”
“Of course. We all know of you. Well, mostly the rest of the asrai know of you because of me. I'm the Storyteller. That's why I fly so far from the shore. I need to find things out. Name's Sonnet.
I extended my arm with my hand out, palm up. She gave me a cautious glance, then dropped into my palm. When her wings stopped moving, I could see that they were exquisite—sea-foam and white with purple lines and a pattern somehow reminiscent of both butterflies and oily water at once.
I smiled and brought my head in a little to look at her.
“We've only ever heard of female asrai like yourself. Are there asrai men? Is that a thing you can tell me?”
Sonnet laughed in the tone of a singing bell.
“It's not a secret. No men. I mean, we don't have rules against them, they just don't exist. They say we're born of water and moonlight when someone nearby mourns a loss. Maybe I'll have some new sisters soon...surely your people mourn the loss of your father, as you do.”
I nodded. Maybe she was keeping something from me, but it didn't seem to matter much. She was sweet and empathetic.
“Sonnet...how long can you remain out of water?”
“As long as I want. We don't breathe it or anything. We're just comfortable there. But I make a habit of leaving my comforts. That's why I'm the Storyteller.”
She seemed quite proud of her title.
“Would an asrai storyteller like to live with a bru'eth empress? You can bring back stories whenever you like.”
I don't know what got into me, but the words had been loosed, and Sonnet's eyes widened, revealing merely more of her black, featureless eyes.
“Oh, yes! I would love that! Are you being serious?”
I winked. “I'm an empress. I have to be serious. Yes, Sonnet, I'm serious. I'll give you your own room, a little pond, whatever you like.”
She considered.
“No sunlight, so no windows, and an inside door that lets into the room that's also dark without, or dimly lit with candles or whatever. You're the empress, so probably those magic sphere things. Those are fine.”
I nodded. And so it was. Sonnet went back to tell her family and I waited for her. I had to. The hilltop had not really helped me gain my bearings, and for a moment I wondered if I wasn't subject to little asrai magic. But she's been with me ever since.
Death of a Clanlord
The capital city of Taerythia hunched its rain-washed white bricks against time to no avail, though the deportment of the old city suited the day. Mourners lined ivy-mad alleys and peered from arched, vaguely eye-shaped windows like living tears. All the bru'eth held their breath and waited for their erstwhile leader to pass by one last time. I was one of those mourners. Clanlord Rajeiro Oneiros, a peerless force on the battlefield, lived long enough to turn gray and watch his mental faculties drain like paint through a sieve--in his final weeks, there remained only enough dry paint on the cold, metal colander of his mind to remind him, in flashes and half-forgotten memories, of who he once was. He did not get the warrior's death he so badly wanted, but none could say that he did not age well, and nobly.
When his time came, he asked to die in his library, and he was taken there. He kept only one person in the room as he took his last breath, and that was his daughter. Had my mother been alive, he would have asked for her. But he held one of my hands in both of his, glad to have me there in her stead.
"Mikala. Your feast of youth arrived before my night of black bones. As it should be. You will be the Empress of the Dawn. And you will always be my Mikala."
It took his several sputters and half-repeated phrases to express even that much. He then patted my hand gently and let it go as he let go of everything. Time stood still in the ancient library of the clanlords. I stayed at my father's side for a long time, held close by the smell of old tomes, the salt of my tears in my mouth. I stayed until the quiet, which was so complete that a turn of my foot against the slate echoed like a canyon earthquake, caused my ears to ring.
Though the venerated chief and my long-deceased mother had wanted a son, they got me instead. (Legend held that sons ruled over times of peace and daughters over times of war, though my father had seen his share of conflict.) They had officially named me "Amril Veslin", or "The Dawn that Returns (to us)", but that was largely ceremonial. I would be Lanamika--"the bright star." Mika to my friends. Mikala, "little star," to my father.
I was a healthy child with bright, gold skin and eyes of an even brighter green. Auspicious, some said. More importantly, I never went without love.
Palano is a Bru'eth word, one that means, "the rain that lasts all day". It did. The burnished gold skin of most bru'eth in the Lotus Clan, where exposed, seemed tarnished by the foggy mizzle and the greenish wet of the morning. My father, his soul long fled, floated along on a litter and seemed to smile at passers-by. (And, many would later swear, wink at them.)
At times, the green-and-gold pall, stamped with the symbol of the Mother Tree, would conceal the decaying emperor for a moment as the cloth played with the wind. I could hardly bear to lean in as he was brought low by the sacred fire pit, though my height afforded me a sad view of the great tactician's face for the whole of the march. His cool flesh breathed ice along my cheek, even though the tar-fed flames hungered nearby and seemed to mock me, calling me an orphan, a lost child, a mote held aloft by chance.
I kissed my hand and pressed it to my father's face. That was all I could do. Moments later, the pallbearers tilted him into the burning pitch and the earth swallowed him whole.
The Morning After
"Lanamika. Lanamika! You'll burn yourself! Be careful."
The stick of dry, lit sage licked close to my right hand as I held it in my left. Indra was paying more attention than I; the permanence of loss had only begun to seep in as the memories seeped out with the smoke, curling through the space beneath the door and becoming indistinguishable from the air. I inhaled deeply and turned my head slightly to Indra, showing her something that I hoped resembled a smile. My aunt had been more like a mother to me, and a mother's worry crossed the tawny skin of her long, elegant face.
"Thanks, Auntie I. I'm alright. Well. I'm not, but I'm not burned, either."
That made me think of my father's body burning in the sacred tar pit. I turned to Indra and collapsed into her. I don't know how long she held my head to her breast, but it was a long time.
As the day wore on, I wanted air. Needed it. Everything seemed confining, almost menacing, and the open sky was all I could manage. I cut through a thicket I had been through many times, but the day's light waned and I was lost in my mind.
A Sonnet in the Gloaming
Soon, I was lost in the woods, as well. Other bru'eth would have called me a tilethena, or city girl, for managing that. I headed up a hill that looked like a field of glistening, white dragon scales as the wet grass reflected the moon. I hoped to see the town below and get my bearings.
Before I reached the crest, a soft voice chimed close to me.
“Whatcha doin'?”
I turned slowly to see an asrai, though the coast was at the bottom of the hill. She was further from water than most would ever venture. She was also speaking to an elf...most are timid and live far shorter lives than their fae brethren, not for lack of potential longevity, rather because they are frail creatures, easily lost. Sunlight kills them, but the sun was down, leaving only the pale, fading light of the gloaming.
The little asrai, perhaps the size of my fist, hovered in the light breeze, her silent wings moving too quickly to seem like anything but a blur of bluish-green. Her body was a somewhat lighter sea-foam green, and her hair was an unruly storm of pitch. She tilted her head like a dog, studying me with dark eyes with no discernible pupil in the ink.
I took half a step away, as she was fluttering just beyond an arm's length from me.
“I suppose I might ask you the same. An asrai, miles from her water, talking to strange elves?”
She crossed her arms as she hovered and gave me a dramatic look of exasperation.
“I asked you first!”
Her voice was still a soft, tinkling melody. She was not angry.
“So you did. I'm not doing anything, really. A bit turned around, which is embarrassing. I've lived near here all my life.”
“It's understandable. Your father just died and you have to think about ruling the clan when all you really want to do is mourn.”
I almost slipped in the dewy grass.
“You know of me?”
“Of course. We all know of you. Well, mostly the rest of the asrai know of you because of me. I'm the Storyteller. That's why I fly so far from the shore. I need to find things out. Name's Sonnet.
I extended my arm with my hand out, palm up. She gave me a cautious glance, then dropped into my palm. When her wings stopped moving, I could see that they were exquisite—sea-foam and white with purple lines and a pattern somehow reminiscent of both butterflies and oily water at once.
I smiled and brought my head in a little to look at her.
“We've only ever heard of female asrai like yourself. Are there asrai men? Is that a thing you can tell me?”
Sonnet laughed in the tone of a singing bell.
“It's not a secret. No men. I mean, we don't have rules against them, they just don't exist. They say we're born of water and moonlight when someone nearby mourns a loss. Maybe I'll have some new sisters soon...surely your people mourn the loss of your father, as you do.”
I nodded. Maybe she was keeping something from me, but it didn't seem to matter much. She was sweet and empathetic.
“Sonnet...how long can you remain out of water?”
“As long as I want. We don't breathe it or anything. We're just comfortable there. But I make a habit of leaving my comforts. That's why I'm the Storyteller.”
She seemed quite proud of her title.
“Would an asrai storyteller like to live with a bru'eth empress? You can bring back stories whenever you like.”
I don't know what got into me, but the words had been loosed, and Sonnet's eyes widened, revealing merely more of her black, featureless eyes.
“Oh, yes! I would love that! Are you being serious?”
I winked. “I'm an empress. I have to be serious. Yes, Sonnet, I'm serious. I'll give you your own room, a little pond, whatever you like.”
She considered.
“No sunlight, so no windows, and an inside door that lets into the room that's also dark without, or dimly lit with candles or whatever. You're the empress, so probably those magic sphere things. Those are fine.”
I nodded. And so it was. Sonnet went back to tell her family and I waited for her. I had to. The hilltop had not really helped me gain my bearings, and for a moment I wondered if I wasn't subject to little asrai magic. But she's been with me ever since.
Age
138
Children
Eyes
Green
Hair
Blonde
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Golden skin
Height
6'4" (tall, even among her people)
Weight
165 lbs.
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