[The Stardust Arch] Starlight and Tragedy

[Eliza Soule]

Ashan 37, Arc 719
The Stardust Arch

The Stardust Arch in the Stormlands was one of the most beautiful places Eliza had ever seen. It wasn't just the half ruined arch that was apparently all that remained of a civilization gone for centuries now. Perhaps even longer. It remained as a silent but poignant epitaph to those whose names, faces and deeds seemed otherwise irretrievably lost.

It wasn't just the craftsmanship that had allowed it to resist the passage of time, or the veins and blotches of glittering silver dust that were nestled deep into the stone blocks. More so, it was how the night sky, the starlight wrapped itself around the arch and its surroundings like a loving, protective cloak. It must have been blessed by Xiur himself, or so the legend went. From Eliza's perspective, a place like this could only be touched by an Immortal.

She could only have come at night, in order to view the ruins in all of their glory and beneath the starry skies. Any other time of the trial would have seemed like sacrilege. Although she'd been told that this was a relatively safe place to be, even at night, the daughter of Ymiden had not come alone. Her wolfhound companion Darwin was by her side as usual, and as ever he was protective of her and watchful. And her tiny primate companion, Eberhardt, was tucked safely into the folds of her cloak.

Having arrived, and marveled at the place by slowly turning full circle to take it all in, she sensed that she was even less alone than before. There were rumors that spirits resided here, and she imagined that she felt it to be true. Were they the spirits of those who had once lived, loved, worked and died in this place, she wondered? Or did the arch function as some sort of conduit that drew to it any number of wandering spirits? She couldn't pretend to know or even guess if it was so.

The first thing that she did was to light a candle at the base of the arch. For the spirits, the departed, and for Xiur himself. Eliza wasn't a follower of Xiur and she wasn't touched by the Immortal in any way. But she'd often wondered if she might like to be. It was the stars that she loved and always gazed upon in order to remember the many, many loved ones who'd moved on and left her behind. The timelessness of the night sky astounded her, and that was Xiur's domain.

After she'd lit her candle, Eliza found a soft patch of grass to sit on, and after a long moment of just looking upon the place, and wondering, she smiled as Eberhardt scampered out from behind her hood and onto her shoulder. "I wonder what they were like," she said. By them, she meant the people who'd once lived in this place, before all that they'd left behind was this arch. Were they human? Maybe Biqaj? As she understood it, the Biqaj did tend to look to Xiur quite a bit for their good luck and their blessings. But then the Biqaj were seafaring people. It was curious to think of them building a settlement so far inland.

Had they been a city of merchants and traders, scholars and artists? Or had they been politicians and warriors, for one could hardly have existed without one to do the bidding and the other to follow their orders. Perhaps it was a combination of all. When the mortalborn looked upon the arch and its beauty, she couldn't fathom such a feat done by anyone without an eye for beauty and an artist's flare.

What had undone them then? Had they grown out of the place and rather than expand the walls, they'd moved on and abandoned it? And then left it for nature to take over. Or had they all died out due to plague or some other naturally made disaster. Or had they all at once, to the last man, woman and child, been destroyed by some mortal enemy or foreign invader.

Eliza yearned to know, in a way that perhaps no other could. And so calling on a gift of hindsight given to her by her father, Deja Vu, she reached back, and looked closer.

[Eliza Soule]

Often times, from Eliza's unique perspective, history held fast to it's secrets, kept them close and didn't let go of them easily. Her gift of hindsight allowed her to look past all those measures of forgetfulness, and uncover secrets that might otherwise be lost forever. Sometimes however, it felt as if she was prying where maybe she shouldn't. A trespass on something that was intimate or sacred. As a result, she tended to keep those secrets to herself, and only divulge in some way or other, those moments in time that chose her.

As she focused on the arch, the images of what once had been scrolled past her mind's eye at a dizzying pace. Decades, even centuries, rolled by and played themselves out in a matter of trills. Whatever this place had been called, it had been much more than an arch in a peaceful forest clearing. People, one generation after another, living, laughing, working and worshiping, dying and mourning like any one of a thousand places on Idalos. Times of peace and periods of disagreement, decades of growth and progress and others of sadness and struggle and an eventual falling away.

Often times when she looked back at a person, place or a thing, Eliza experienced a peculiar sense of detachment. The emotions that might have accompanied the histories, in general, were muted and failed to leave any strong impressions behind. It was the moments which chose her however, which touched and inspired her. Things were no different this time. It wasn't so much one moment, but a small series of them that she witnessed, almost as if she'd experienced them herself. A small boy and a small girl playing together in a garden between houses. Him with a mop of dark hair, her with golden curls. They were older then, maybe ten, twelve arcs old, walking barefoot at the edge of a nearby stream and holding hands.

Then they were sixteen, him stealing a kiss beneath a shade tree and her, blushing and smiling as he wove a string of daisies into her hair. Then there was the goodbye at the gate. They embraced and they kissed, they spoke of their love, his for her and hers for him, and they promised their lives to each other before he turned and walked away. And then, from then on, it was only her who Eliza saw. At night, always at night and always by the arch where they'd vowed to meet again, watching off in the distance. She was eighteen, then twenty, thirty...sixty, trial after trial, arc after arc. Her smooth skin had grown wrinkled, her bright eyes faded and her golden hair had turned white. But he never came. Had he gone off to war, or was it something else? Had he been killed? Or had his love been a false one and he'd chosen not to return?

In the end, it didn't matter. It wasn't the question of the mortal boy's fate that chose to assert itself. Instead, it was the girl who never gave up on him, or them. Who watched for him, trial in and trial out, all her life through and until the very end. It was her heartbreak and grief. Her experience, just a brief, and some would say inconsequential one in the history of this place. But was because of that almost beautiful, singular tragedy, that when Eliza blinked away the trance, even as she reached for her notebook and charcoal pencils, her face was wet with tears.

[Eliza Soule]

Each time that Eliza called on her father's gift of hindsight, the trance-like state that she entered into, came over her in stages. Two of them, and there was only the briefest of pauses in between. One to see through, and the other to draw. Once a moment had been chosen for her, her skills as an artist certainly came into play. But for the most part it was the vision, and the emotion wrapped up in it, which guided her hand. The tears were still wet on her face, and she looked past them while she worked.

She drew the arch and it's surroundings as they were now in this moment under the night sky. Not as it once had been, when the civilization who'd built it had been a lively and flourishing one. But while they were beautiful and inspiring to look at, the arch in the clearing was only the setting. The subject was the woman standing alone at the base of the arch. Every stroke of Eliza's charcoal pencil, every line and every bit of shading was designed to draw the eye to her, without the eye being aware it had happened.

The way that Eliza chose to portray her, meant that she could be anyone. She was turned slightly away, her face lifted towards the horizon. But her features were mostly concealed by the long strands of silver hair that caught an errant breeze and lifted across her face like a curtain. The way her hair was shaded to catch the light of the moon, it might have been blonde, or it might have been silver. As a result, the woman might still have been young and hopeful, or grown older and more sentimental. Those who considered the question, would do so from their own perspective. The trick was to capture the wistfulness of the moment, which Eliza did by lifting her chin towards the horizon, and by revealing only the smallest, but important details of her face through the lifted tendrils of hair. The drawing was a detailed one overall. But in some instances, too much detail would ruin the desired effect.

Lighting was important, even in a charcoal drawing. The proper use of shading to portray light, in turn could infuse emotion into a drawing, and that was what Eliza intended. Composition, which she'd addressed by placing both the arch and the woman, went hand in hand with narrative. No matter how simple or complex a drawing, each told a story. In this case, it was a wistful, melancholic and sentimental one. One of waiting or hoping, to which almost anyone looking on could relate.

And then, when the drawing was finished, the trance was broken and Eliza blinked once again. Emotionally exhausted, she looked at what she'd done with a clearer head. She was pleased with the results and lifted her lips into a sentimental smile. In order to make sure that the drawing didn't smudge or ruin after she slipped it back into her notebook, she took out the small, old perfume bottle that she'd found discarded one trial, and had given a good cleaning before putting it to use. She'd filled it with a solution that she used to set her fresh drawings, and misted on with a squeeze of the antique atomizer. Then allowing it to dry completely, she put the drawing away and gathered up her things.

She stood then, took it all in and when she looked back at the arch, Eliza smiled. "Thank you for sharing your secrets with me. I'll keep them safe," she said, and then made her way home.

Later, she'd transform her drawing into a painting. A charcoal drawing, with all its many shades of gray, might portray a great deal of sentiment, but it couldn't begin to capture the magnificence of the place. That required saturated color. The way the moonlight reflected off the Stardust Arch and caused the silver vein in the stone to shimmer, the way the stars wrapped themselves around the clearing. That was the sort of thing that required oil on canvas. Oil refracted the colored pigments in the paint in order to produce a rich, glowing color. She'd achieve that all the more, when appropriate, by grinding bits of gold and silver leaf to a sand like texture and mixing it into the paint.

As for naming her painting, Eliza felt strongly that this work's title ought not be too suggestive. It shouldn't in any way instruct an an admirer on what they ought to feel or think when they looked at it. Instead, each might view it from their own perspective, based on whatever their life experience might be. They might even personalize its meaning. They might argue with another who'd interpreted it differently. With that in mind, Eliza titled her painting simply 'Eugenia'.

[Aegis]

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Thread Review

This was a very touching and emotionally charged thread. I rarely get so emotionally invested, but this one did it for me. Very well done.

Word Count: 2164
Review Request Link: viewtopic.php?f=242&t=17435&p=116618#p116628

Eliza Soule

• Skill Points - 10
• Renown - 0
• Skill Knowledges
  1. Drawing: Infusing sentiment into a drawing
  2. Drawing: Use of shading, lines and curves to draw the eye to a subject
  3. Drawing: Overuse of detail can ruin a desired effect
  4. Drawing: Finishing and preserving a charcoal drawing
  5. Painting: Use of oil paint for saturated, glowing color refraction
  6. Painting: The importance of titling a work of art
• Non-Skill Knowledges
• Items and Other Rewards

Player 2

• Skill Points -
• Renown -
• Skill Knowledges
• Non-Skill Knowledges
• Items and Other Rewards

Final Notes

If you have any questions, please PM me.

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