Elva Rackthorn and the Tears of Azrael

Travel Blues, Part 3

After breakfast there was a scare where the vel Sints asked to see the upper wing where Elva's room was, not respecting, as everyone else did, that Mother's study was cursed and not to be walked past. Elva, with some liberal and embarrassing line-feeding from Nyx, bought herself time by pleading that her clothes and underthings were spread out everywhere in a packing frenzy, and the Baron, with a benevolent air, allowed Elva a day to make her hall presentable and continue the packing she had previously assured her frowning father was much further along.

So now, after frantically hiding away all incriminating signs of necromancy, Elva had turned to actually packing.

Elva held up an old dragon plushie her mother had sewn. It was fierce and frightening and a delightful shade of purple that was almost black. But was it worth losing the space of one book for?

"So what are the Tears of Azrael?"

Elva dropped her dragon and launched herself across the room at Nyx to wrest away whatever private papers he had in his hand.

But when she landed on her bed, she saw he was only fiddling with an old piece of practice embroidery, pulling out the junk stitches with his talons.

"Hi?"

"Where did you read those words?"

Nyx scrunched up his face, his face markings rippling. "It's not really reading. When I'm inside your shadow... your mindscape... your thoughts sort of swirl around. They aren't words, really, but the words are there if I look at them long enough."

"We'll need to find you a better hobby than reading my mind."

"It's not really mind reading." Nyx examined one of threads he had excavated from her lopsided mugwort. "It's more like— sorry, are you upset by this?"

"Yes!"

He blinked. "It's just hard to tell with you humans. You don't have any heartmarks. And you yourself are rather, uhh, volatile."

Elva felt her eyes narrow, her hands curl into fists. "I'm what now."

"Yes. Precisely." Nyx grinned with all his sharp teeth and looked smug, so Elva leaped at him.

When they had wrestled and Elva had graciously let him throw her to the floor, she said, "Well, I think it's fair to say you probably have siblings."

Nyx poked Elva with the tip of his wing without leaving his hard-earned perch on the bed. "So. Tears?"

Elva stared at her ceiling. "They're these gemstones, almost, said to have mystical powers. But the books don't agree on what they do." She sat up. "But they're powerful, that's certain. I was given a few of them by my mother. And she told me to find the rest and protect them."

Nyx peered down at her. "Your mother, the one who lost her memory?"

Elva nodded.

"So how...?"

"The damage to her was different than damage to you— I've said I think the binding ceremony made the difference. Whereas your memory was bisected and half taken away and the other preserved, she perhaps has access to all her memories, but she can hardly hold any of them. It varies day by day, even hour by hour. It's like her mind, her present mind, is a sieve, but its capacity and the gradation of its holes are constantly changing, and you never know what contents it will hold." Elva traced a pattern on her rug with her left hand, while her right cupped her knee. "When she told me about the Tears, she could remember enough to know it was important to tell me about them, and she gave me a letter, a letter strung together from her moments of lucidity. She had been planning to pass her quest onto me, and last time I visited her, she was finally able to."

Elva looked up Nyx. "So I'm going to find the Tears of Azrael. And I think they can be used to heal her."

"And me?"

"Oh. Probably." Elva hummed. "Though if you're still bound to me by then, there might be complications. Optimal situation, I think, we heal my mother, and she can figure us out if I haven't by then. She's sort of," Elva paused, gestured widely with her hands, "a legend in the field."

"And the not optimal situation?"

"We're already living the not optimal situation. Hopefully," Elva said, pushing herself into an upright position. "It's all up from here."