Immortal Enigma [Lidith and Lugh]

[Lugh La'Sar]

The yellow eyed man walked through the Ilain forest, his clothes decked in furs to match more closely to the local style. It had been a long time since he’d been in Ilia, nearly a decade, if he remembered correctly. He had forgotten how much he missed the smell of frozen air and the beautiful serenity when the snow is high and hasn’t been disturbed. His home in Nabata had an excellent view, but it was missing the all too important aspect of change that the rest of Elibe had. He was glad he’d decided to attend to his business more personally.

The snow crunched gently under his feet. He’d been hiking for hours, trying to find the place where he first met Danu and Perun. It was around here somewhere, it’s a shame how many landmarks can change in a thousand years. It had taken some convincing to reassure Stavros that he would be fine without his guard. After all, the odd bandit or brigand would be too busy focusing on his wealth to realize that he was more than just a eccentric man in the woods.

Lugh rotated his head, cracking the stiff joints in his neck, as he came over the crest of a hill. In the valley below, he saw what he’d been looking for; the Waystone he’d been hiding on when Danu and Perun rescued him. The strange stone looked more warn down than he remembered it. It made sense, he supposed, after all the years wind, snow, and rain. He took his time getting down the hillside, not wanting to slip on any hidden patches of ice.

He slung the bag with his traveling harp off of his back while he marveled at the immensity of the Waystone. Even warn down as it was, it still was twice as large as he. Pressing his back to the ancient relic, he slid down into a sitting position, the thick, fur robes keeping his bum dry. Gently he took the harp out of its protective case, calmly plucking the strings and tuning them. When he was satisfied with the sound, he took a deep breath and began to play the somber melody that had been Perun’s favorite song in the Thunder’s winter.

[Deleted]

Ironic that she was in perhaps the best mood she'd experienced in nearly 1200 years, and yet the past bubbled up around her like a bog, constantly trying to pull her back in as she unconsciously compared the world as it was to what it had once been. Not even the discovery of Lynessa had staved that off; if anything it had only intensified it, drawing all the more closer to home the simple facts of reality. The world she had once spent leisure time with the one she cared most for was gone, and in its place was something strange and alien, a world in which they could not even exist as themselves.

And yet - despite the differences, despite the centuries of hatred and war... it was still Elibe. Humanity was still - human. She had met good people while traveling here, and Lynessa had found love and a happiness of her own. It was not a life Lidith could conceive of for herself, to do that would be to betray too much of what she was, but she she was not her sister. It was not good, and it was not bad; it was simply The Truth, as much as there was any certainty in this world, and there was no sense in denying it.

But where did that leave her? Her great working had failed - her plans crushed and shattered by the horrors of the Scouring, and she incapable of stopping it. If she could not stop, and she could not continue... the ancient manakete shook her head, continuing to step quietly through the downy snow of her once homeland in search of answers and purpose alike. They were not forthcoming, but she had not expected them to be; nothing worth doing was. True purpose only came from reflection and refinement, and she had a great deal of both to do before she found her answers, Lidith suspected.

It was the trills of music that caught her attention, pulled her from the thoughts that so easily consumed her these days and pulled her away from the world without. Strange, sad notes on an instrument she couldn't quite place, either the final notes in her descent into madness or someone playing a musical instrument. Probably fifty-fifty if she had to guess. It was a bet she'd win, Lidith discovered shortly, continuing down the valley she had been lazily trekking through to find a clearing of sorts. Within it was the object of her search, or at least the latest and least of her searches - the source of sound. The man reclined against a stone of some description, something she didn't recognize, but perhaps it held some great meaning to him.

Him.

Lidith seemed to glide across the snow, her movements as ever obscured by her dress; white against white, a ghost of the past. But rather than fear or stealth, she wore a slight smile, a knowing look that spoke little but implied more. Certainly not what she had expected to find, but an interesting turn of events nonetheless. It seemed Ilia was a land of reunions. "I did not imagine you a harpist, Lugh."

[Lugh La'Sar]

The notes sang through the clearing, echoing through the forest in the Ilian mountains. It was not a happy song, though it was very long - the entirety of the piece taking almost a day of playing to complete. Thus, this song was broken up into several pieces - the discovery of a lover, the call of war, the loss in battle, lovers searching for their love, and concluding in the death of the protagonist whilst his love held him in her arms. Perun had found particular pleasure in listening to the lovers looking for one another, Lugh seemed to remember him saying that he liked the hope of that portion of the song. Of course, the music was far from complete without the lyrics, but Lugh was no singer. That had been Danu. He missed few things more than making music with the his companions around a campfire.

A ghost emerged from the long line of the forest, gliding across the white as if she were a part of it, a snow wraith. The ghost was long and slender. Larger than any woman he’d ever seen. All but one. In fact, this spectre had a remarkable likeness to that woman. Perhaps recounting old memories and the blanket of snow had tricked his mind. Until she started to speak and his fingers slipped on the harps string, the music suddenly dying, the final echo of the broken chord haunting the air.

He stared at her with his one good eye, mouth just barely agape as a smile began to steal over his face. “And I did not imagine you alive, Lidith.” He shook his head slightly, his hands still resting on the harp strings as the snow gently fell around them. The ghostly lady looked as she always had, in a perpetual state of half shift. It was as if nothing had changed. But also as if she did not know what had become of the world in the thousand years since they’d last lain eyes upon one another. “Would you like to sit?” He asked, not quite sure what else to say.

[Deleted]

"...Yes, I would like that very much, old friend." It was perhaps a little more emotive than Lidith usually was, not one for gaudy shows of emotion in the eternal pursuit of diplomacy - an art in which every action, every reaction, every motion and thought and word and breath had to be planned and honed to create the desired effect. A battle of words, not steel, but one in which she was all the steel she ever needed; the impeccable, perfect idol and ideologue of her dream. But here, she was just Lidith. Old and maybe a bit decrepit, going by how much of her strength had been lost to the ravages of the ages... but Lugh had been a friend, or at least an ally. A man who might not share the exact same goals and methods as her, but similar enough, and both working against such relentless opposition, that they had been allies of a sort nonetheless.

But... that had been a different time. Time had never been her ally, though, a treacherous mistress who ever worked against her. Even as she had always hoped that time would grant her victory over the hearts and minds of her opponents, it did little more than steal the lives of mortals and calcify the minds of dragons, ironclad in their own superiority. Even in the millennium since the mighty debacle of her greatest failing not all wounds had been healed, hardly any of them in fact, and she did not yet know how to heal them. So one side of her cautioned against even Lugh, the idealist who loved humans as much or perhaps even more than her, and she felt less for harboring even such thoughts as these.

Lidith took the offered seat nonetheless, inspecting the stone against which he sat for a moment before deciding against laying her monstrous weapon against it, instead placing it carefully on the ground. Gone were the times it had been light enough to wield, or that she had been able to manifest it from her essence; now it was but a relic of the past, a grim reminder of what had once been - and perhaps literally the bones of a past best forgotten. It was a sort of irony all too amusing in its blasphemy; one of the more popular theories of her scythe's origins had been the bone of a dragon, after all, and now it - albeit figuratively - truly was such a thing.

"I did not either, but life has a way of defying all expectations," she returned gently, answering the unasked question as much as he cared to look into it. "Did you know little Lynessa yet lives too? All grown up, with a husband and home all her own... and yet still much the same girl she was so long ago." Lidith and Lynessa's relationship had been no great secret, but caught amidst the horrors of the Scouring, she wasn't actually sure if Lugh had ever met the younger dragon. She thought so, but it was all so grey and fuzzy now, as if she were viewing someone else's memories through a - a sieve, perhaps, or a leaky dam. They felt inaccurate, unfaithful, as though they were not truth. But what was truth, save for what the those who ruled claimed it was? Dragons had tried to exterminate humanity and the brave, noble Heroes had fought back in the name of freedom - or so the story went. How much of that was true? Hm... perhaps more than some of her kin would like to admit, but certainly less than the mortals would like to believe.

She leaned back against the stone, willing the tension to drain from her shoulders as Lidith tried to center herself, to quell the turmoil of her heart as she spoke. It was difficult, but less so in the frozen beauty of their still surroundings, in the company of someone she had once trusted... pretty close to as far as she ever trusted anyone, anyways. The dragon leaned her head slightly towards Lugh as she spoke. "It seems that Elibe is still full of surprises." Not so surprising was the fact that she still, for better or for worse, towered over him even when sitting. It wasn't something she usually thought about much, but her height did occasionally bother her when with those who she wished to be at equal height as. "What of you, Lugh? Did you too awaken from the great sleep, or have you roamed this world ever since?"

There was not even the slightest hint of subtlety in what she was asking, though delivered with just the right wording and decorum to sound quite innocent indeed to the uninformed observer - but no dragon who had experienced and survived the Scouring would fail to understand what "since" was referring to. Of all the great and wondrous works of dragons, of all the terrible history they had been a part of, the near-total genocide of their race was... well, pretty far up there. To put it lightly.

[Lugh La'Sar]

Gods, how long it had been since he’d last seen Lidith. It was strange, seeing someone who had been fighting for the same goals back before the Scouring. Those who sought equality and compassion were not great in number, and it was not exactly a stance that either of the warring races appreciated. Lugh had watched far too many of his brothers and sisters in arms fall against the rising tide. If they weren’t killed by man they were killed by dragon. He’d always found it funny how choosing to protect innocent live was so often just as deadly a decision as committing genocide.

And yet, here she was. She’d barely changed at all. She even had her scythe on her still. The great weapon of Lidith As-Saif. How many souls had she reaped with that hooked blade by the time she’d fallen. Or not fallen, he supposed, but disappeared. The yellow eyed man could not help but wonder if her time asleep had left her feeling the same way about mankind as she had before the Scouring. A pang of guilt washed over him, as the white revenant sat down next to him. How much had he changed since they’d last met?

“Lynessa lives, as well?” Lugh was shocked to hear that bit of news, though it meant good things for Lidith’s fellow ice dragon, if it meant she’d kept off his radar. “I’m glad to hear that. Though I cannot say I knew her very well. It is good to hear of one of our kind escaping what happened and having something resembling a normal life.” Lugh laid the harp gently across his knees and placed its cover over it so as to shelter it from the falling snow.

The yellow eyed man turned his head, having to raise his chin notably upward in order to actually make eye contact with it giantess. “I did not awaken from the great sleep, no. I’ve been roaming Elibe since everything fell. Since it all was broken. I avoided being seen for what I really am, I haven’t been in my true form for… I can’t remember how long.” Lugh looked up longingly to the sky. He missed his home. He missed his wings. “But I’ve done well, as a merchant and investor, kept myself hidden behind thick walls to keep unwanted eyes from seeing my secrets. And yourself, Lidith? How long have you been asleep? Surely you haven’t been awake for very long, if you are still alive while in your half shifted form?”