Rhoswen ►
The weak lay hand on what the strong have done ,
The lake, she had always loved. For where still water settled, tranquility - indifferent and unburdened - followed. Here, no narrowed eyes could latch along the lines of her sharp, sinful body; only, of course, her own to gaze back up at features filled with a labyrinthic angst that haunted her long and low into Calligo's archaic shadows. The loss of herself, of any sense of self, buried furtively under her skin with the vigour of a parasite long bereft of sustenance, only to find it deep within this red ravaged woman. Many times Rhoswen had felt absent - a ship adrift upon an ocean with no name - but, she had come to accept this feeling with the knowledge that everything passed, and that Solis would guide her home. This time, there was no home to return to. And more troubling, perhaps no God to seek solace from. As a child, Rhoswen had been proud of her contempt and defiance in the face of all religion, but age and pain had brought belief to her doorstep where it was determined to stay. Solis had blessed her dreams, banishing nightmares of a dark, distorted goddess from the recesses of her mind and he had given the girl a purpose that she had promised to follow.
Until Raum.
A slow flood of pale aureate light spilled over Vitreus to hail the deluge of dawn, hues of amber and violet turned to watercolour upon the lake and as the burnished beauty of Solis drowned out the dark, Rhoswen released a sigh into the air: exhaling all the spent oxygen she had harboured in small, bruised lungs. Every hallowed morning she had come, casting a nameless glance at her daughter as she slept, before slipping out into the final hours of Caligo's reign to watch such a beautiful demise. To hail the day. It was a ritual Rhoswen had performed for every night spent in Denocte as an adolescent, until the very moment she had left, and never again had the Solterran believed she would find herself a citizen of this forsaken land again. Now she was back, the ritual had started once more. Swallows soared overhead, exalting the sun God with high-pitched hymns over and over again as they circled Vitreus' painted surface, the reflection emblazoned with Solis' house colour of gold. Rhoswen did not know what the future would bring; she did not know if her faux pas would be forgiven nor whether her guilt would ever abide, but she did know this:
she never made the same mistake twice.
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