Ixinane's blog

"The future is stardust because you can dream it. The present is clay because you can mold it. But the past is stone because you can never change it."

  Our pasts are such delicate things, the passing whirl of butterflies, distant calls of ravens and shadows at the corner of our eyes.  When born to darkness it is that shadow that follows you, it whispers sweet nightmares as a sword slides against another’s neck, when frost over takes their veins or corruption blackens their skin.  One can ignore it, hide from it, but they can never escape it.  The light itself breeds shadows, and I have seen some that are a deeper black then anything spawned in the edges of night.  We live in a war glutted world, one swelled to the brim with hatred, prejudice and unearthly hungers.  A world that rises the evil as much as the good, it is a fine line, for those who chose to walk the middle.

  Sometimes I forget what it is to be a friend to another.  Then there comes the times the reminder is a brick wall to the very fragile parts of my face.  My doses of reality and the roles I should be playing are never kind when they see fit to remind me of my duties.

  The Undercity always held important memories to me. It was in those dank hallways, all those years ago I meet Blackmarrow for the first time and offered him the contract to end a man’s life.  Three days ago I stood in almost that exact same hallway and took an entirely different contract, this one was to save the life of someone else.

“You must be the well mentioned Ixinane.”
“Lady Stormcren.”

The rush of pressure was familiar. 

Dear Blackmarrow,

  It would be determined by most to have lain to rest hope by now but despite months and no news, I still wish you well and I will never stop writing. I find tonight lonely my dear teacher, though my house is as full as ever... 

  I thumbed through a book that had far to many bent pages.  I had dog eared each one, seeing something of importance, but no such luck for my new task.  I welcomed the distraction, though it would prove challenging indeed. I hadn’t tried to teach a warlock since Wraithlynn was still alive but she was a poor excuse for a warlock to begin with.  Dante served a greater purpose in the accidental demise of her adopted sister, more then she knew and certainly more then she could remember. Her maze like mind had been ready to bury that atrocity with all the others she had suffered and I wasn’t one to dig it up.
 

Beyond me I could hear her moving about her quarters.  She wasn’t the first dead I have had in my home but this was different somehow. She will have to wait, it wasn’t time. The neatly folded letter.. that I could take care of.  It’s an odd thing when someone comes to me for help.

For the past month I was holed up in a tiny town in Minnesota with flimsy internet.  It was outside the town on a little farm that I got married :)

 I knew my husband 7 years as a friend and two years dating before we were married on April 9th, a not so warm day with 75 people from his family and 9 from mine :)

So this is our chosen path. Today the cold bites worse then anytime before, today the frozen world seems to howl with the task before us. I can feel them behind me both huddled in their cloaks as deeply as I did my own. Dante and Dane my loyal and dear household I could not leave them behind despite the monolith of dread erected like a frozen creature before us.

Icecrown.

I must be out of my fel ridden mind. That’s it…finally official, I am completely insane.

  Watching her was almost like watching some nightmare unfold.  One you are not expecting and the kind that creeps around in a darkness you don’t see coming until it’s already smothered you.  Subtle movements, subtle concentration she was figuring it out, not only her abilities but the world they worked in.  She was growing up and faster then I hoped.

((Part of an on going larger story between the two, starting with Again. ))

"My lovely Lady Stormcren…."

  What had he called us in the letters scattered about my desk, the dried rose he had given me set atop the folded writings?  The God-touched man and the Demon- cursed lady, he was right.. what a pair we made.

((part of Tess' story Things, Lots! Time, None!))

"To describe a mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power." - MA

  It hung around my neck like fingered pressure below my throat, almost as cold as the north itself, but I wanted the reminder.  It’s hexagonal shape was a silver center of grounding for me because once he had been just that.  He saved my life, I have never forgotten it and I never will.  
 

My darling Blackmarrow,
  As always I hope to find you well in the frozen depths you stay where my fingers cannot reach you.  I trust you serve your lady well.  Though the blackening marks on the forsaken as of late have brought me to a pause.  Was this great plague what you were grooming me for? Was I to be your hand of destruction?  I trust you would answer me truthfully should you come back, and I trust you understand that this hand of yours has a mind of her own.  I am not sure whether to take this idea that perhaps this is what your long term goal was as a compliment or an insult, but either way, take to heart my love I will never serve any as I had served you and this includes your lady. 

  The hallway should have just been that.. four walls, a ceiling and a floor.  Simple, easy… hallways should not spark memories, but if the do, one is lucky they if they are good ones.  I ventured deeper into the ruin of my estate, each step taking me towards those last two doors.  This visit had been an unexpected trip down memory lane, some good… but being a Stormcren, it became more apparent that our family bred insanity like some elven families breed red heads.  I was not immune, my brother was not… and as much as they would have denied it while alive, neither were my parents.

  Returning home was like leaving the waking world, remembering a time that really was not so long ago, a few months maybe? When the world was still one piece and the flaming catalyst known as Deathwing still lay forgotten in his prisons.  The quakes had taken my family estate, the last remaining in the Stormcren line, the other estate….had been taken by fire, lit by a vengeful heart for a murdered brother.  Our mother and father burned along with it, only ashes in the wind, the same that proud home had been reduced to.  

Synnaquinn,

  Greetings darling warlock, I hope the day is finding you mending well from our bad attempt at sailing.  I hope your friend is mending as well, both body and mind; I do worry about how far the naga pushed her. 

((This story happens around the same time as Synnaquin's: Extended camping or just Slavery  and Silentfox's Ari's Traveling Journal ;) ))

I became aware of rolling, a forceful push along my skin that sent me whirling off into oblivion accompanied by swirls of blues and white. Something was wrong, but I could not grab a hold of it before I was driven back into unconsciousness.  Something… breath….I wasn’t breathing.

  Consciousness came back with the same realization only faster this time.  My lungs burned, screaming at me to pay attention to the obvious as my limbs pulled themselves uselessly through the water.  Somewhere above me was air, it was just a matter of finding out where “above” was.

1. Air

Such trifle things to need, the extension of life through the quickening of breaths.  When one drowns the press of life is just that much more apparent.  To fill one’s lungs with sweet promise of existing.  What better way to know you are alive, then depriving yourself of its touch.

All the old wounds in my life seemed to groan into life, I swear I could feel where Dutaee’s fist collided with my face all those years ago, it wasn’t really the case, but brew fest seemed to be like all the abuse I had ever taken rolled into one painful mess.

He never did come back to see me.  Not that I blame him, one teetering on such a cautious line as he does I would probably think him a fool if he trusted me fully, but still I can’t help but feel a certain amount of disappointment.  I did offer to help him after all, and I had actually meant it.

((If I own it, it eventually gets covered in sketches, I decided to gather some of the Ixis that have poped up in meeting notes, on napkins and various scraps of paper and share them :) ))

I tend to have soft spots for very specific people I run into in my life and each and every one of them annoys me.  Hard to be painted as a villain and have so many blindingly obvious ways to force my hand.  Pity… I wonder if given the choice never to feel anything for any one person if I would take it, it would serve me a great deal not to have broken hearts or responsibilities for others, but sadly… like most I know, I have no choice, I live, breathe and pump fel tainted blood through a beating heart… thus I feel, and do so greatly.

One must really have in their arsenal of thoughts, a sense of self preservation.

I held the solid weight between my fingers.  Heavy…dense enough that a pile of it shorter then I, would weigh far more.  Saronite, such a fascinating stone.

By the end of one night…

“You’re not going.”

Melidane’s body barred the pathway between the door and I, taller then me and the thicker bone structure of a human, she had the physical advantage.  It wasn’t hard, I’m short even for a blood elf and fel wasted thin,  it made me strong in magic only, physically was an entirely different matter.

“Move.”

"Just going to stand there and watch me burn, well that’s alright because I like the way it hurts.”

The coins hit the floor, just a strange melody across the burned floor, the only sound save for his shallow breathing. It was a strange rhythm together, the sound echoing against breaths.. and the both of us.

I can’t seem to get though to him, I’ve tried with my heart, and now with his blood splattered bright across the shop floor.