Pen to paper.
Inky black on parchment; the liquid left behind as a quill is purposefully moved over the surface with soft scratching sounds, the soft susurrous filling the otherwise silent sanctuary of the sybil’s retreat. It was a stolen moment, stolen ink, stolen paper.
She ought not to have done it.
Ought not to have had any of it in her possession.
The waif of a child training in silence for prophecies of visions. For a future of channeled visual and vocal voyeuristic insights to things that Could Be, Might Be, May Never… Should Not.
She was strong, and yet.
And yet, she was a child.
Distracted by thoughts, by memories.
Dreams given to her that she should, perhaps have shared, but in fear of unknown, of untrained, she instead wrote down.
Drew.
Sketched out on veritas parchment.
Paper created from the blood and spit of Soothsayers. Mixed with ash.
Dried over the fires of supplicant’s offerings.
Stolen from the libram.
Ink made with blood, ichor and dark, deeply buried dirt.
The quill fashioned of a feather. Crude instrument, but necessary in the child’s fervor to get the work out on paper.
The almost beast. Tall. Dark, hair like curling smoke. Eyes a dark, deep unbearable pool of unreadable black. Horns which curved around long otherworldly ears and dripped with equally dangerous blackness. A tail curving up beside the beast’s arm, tipped with a hollow point that oozed the same liquid.
A face too human. Trusting. Made to weave words. To evoke emotion as it insinuated itself into your life. A thick spine full of layer upon layer of thin, rustling spikes. A sound the child could hear but not place.
She finished the sketch, its form strong, sure and yet somehow soft. Inviting and evocative of danger all at once. A promise of something unspoken. She trembled as she finished the line, a knock pounding on her door. “Varalis.”
Flinching, the child knocked her hand into the small pot that held the remains of her ink, splashing it haphazardly across the parchment. The pot spun, knocking then into the candle on her small desk as the Seer entered the room in time to see the Veritas parchment ignite.
White flames turned black as the ink hissed, then turned again - a deep abyssal teal that ate the parchment from the corners in, spiraling in to devour the ink before finishing off the fragments of unused paper. As the smoke rose, a quiet voice filled the room, “Set forth, set free, the truth was given.” Plumes coalesced briefly into the shape of a bird, alighting on the shoulders of the child before dissipating.
Staring at the now much too empty air, the Seer turned to the child, “Varalis. There is much we have to speak about.”
