Shade-Eyes, One elf's descent into Oblivion. Options

[kementari]

Hey, all.

So, long time lurker, first time poster. I've really enjoyed reading all the stories you guys have put up over the years.

I've been working on chronicling a group of vignettes on and off since 2006, and it's still a work-in-progress. Some disclaimers:

First, it's all quite long, so I sincerely apologize if anyone gets TLDR syndrome from reading it. Additionally, I tend to take a little free license with lore where Bethesda has been silent, so please don't crucify me for some of my inventions passed off as "world fact" in the story. Finally, I do draw some of my plots from game elements, but I change them where I think I can do better. Please don't let either of those admissions become the basis for hating me. Writing these stories is cathartic to me, and in some small way, I feel like fanfiction is the highest form of glorification I can give the story guys over at Bethesda.

I'd also really love feedback (CRITICISM! PLEASE!) on characterization, prose, pacing, or anything else, if any of you have the time or willingness to give it. While I of course appreciate even small affirmations, "hm, good work" doesn't really help me grow as a storyteller.

Anyway, here goes. Hope you enjoy it.

This post has been edited by kementari: May 27 2008, 12:31 AM

[kementari]

((This snippet was intended as the second "segment" of the previous "chapter", I just didn't get around to finishing it until lately.))



In a straw bed, covered only by a thin blanket, several floors underground, Lily stretched her aching back experimentally and thought to herself that it had been a wholly perfect day. The aftereffects of the barrage of vampiric magic notwithstanding, Lucien had whisked her off to what he refused to identify as more than “a safe place” and treated her wounds, as gentle as she had ever seen him.

Now he lay under the blanket, mere inches from her, the coldest killer she had ever known sleeping the untroubled sleep of the innocent. She propped herself on an elbow and traced the lines of his face with her eyes, features neither exceptionally sharp nor bland, warm nor cold , handsome nor homely. She made no mistake of imagining him as hers; he would walk away from her someday, if she didn't die first, but she knew she would belong to him forever.

Lily stifled a yawn. She was still exhausted after her ordeal, and every fiber of her being wanted to sleep. Still, she knew that, as always, when she woke Lucien would be gone. Food and clothing would be waiting for her, procured as though by magicka, though she might be in the deepest jungles of Cyrodiil's southern marches, and outside her shelter, the unsettlingly un-horselike mare Lucien had given her would be waiting patiently to take her wherever she wished to go. It would be days or weeks, perhaps longer, before she saw him again, she knew. It was his way. She refused to squander these moments...

Ten minutes later, she was fast asleep. Silently, Lucien opened an eye. The torch in the wall sconce flickered as he stood up from the bed, and he dressed himself with only the lightest whisper of fabric on fabric. Drawing a small purple-petaled flower from the depths of his robe, he whispered a soundless prayer. He deposited the bloom into the hands of a tiny statue of a woman in a whimsical pose, set into a recessed alcove in the room's central pillar. Without looking back at Lily, he walked silently out of the room.