our love upon a tasteless altar
strong herbal lavender / a brown belt with a gold buckle / warm, golden sunshine
There's no going back now. There's no forsaking the bonds that stand. There's no touching, let alone a pushing back, the porte, flung wide, of history.
Had it been this way, just a few months ago? Had everything been so black and white, so staunch and grim?
One must be stout in the face of it. The Saintess...it's quite possible that she is not.
Rella shudders to think what will happen when the Sanctifex closes its cold, calm clutches around Louis; when this task he's been handed becomes too great for even his most zealous, determined, and inrebellious of minds. To bear arms as the Driver of the Seeker Archetype, when the Prince Archetype had gone so woefully rogue, and elevated itself to a peerless King...
She also shudders to stand in the wind of the moor, alone, without him, but she can bear up with a sterner mind than one that would be defeated by merely that. There are worse troubles to be had in Euchronia, in other recesses of Torceana as well as in the comparatively idyllic Port Brilehaven, at this time.
It's easy to be a well-liked, even full-adored ishkia without worry for discrimination (even if it's a lie, rotten lie). Not so easy, surely, to be a spurious clemar, half or something else an elda, or a common ("common") paripus.
Louis and Basilio lean on each other perpetually. If they didn't have each other to support, Rella's shudder would only redouble, her wings wrapped around her woefully concave chest in self-suffection.
It's good they lean on each other. She's not sure she's ready for them to lean on her.
Rella waits for her partners to return just as Sanctor Forden waits for Louis to make the same mistake he did, and become so ambitious that the Archetype he's been assigned overtakes him as well. In this way, the Sanctor can prove that loss of control of the Archetype he'd Awakened was due in no part to him and due entirely to the fact of its status as a relic of power from The Old World that the Almighty had purposely discarded.
How foolish and cunning of Forden, to be able to sway the rest of the Church to let him repeat such a mistake. How wiley he must be, to avoid persecution and instead be able to pass blame off onto another; coach and curry favor, endless favor.
But it's not as if Rella knows nothing about that. Certainly not as if Rella has never danced with the devil of public opinion and necessary preparations for necessary presentations.
(Her role in both the igniter experiments and the trials of the archetype awakenings she may very well take to her early grave. This fate...she practically welcomes it.)
Her sister has begged to visit, at divers times. Rella has always found some cold but ingenious - if not to say disingenuous - way to faux-warmly decline. Something about the port chill over the moor, which flatlands' apathy doesn't do anything to blow it back where it had come. A thought to Junah's singing career, in Montario's Altabury; or else, abroad for fame in Uraya. Even, a backhanded compliment about the dream of a sibling restaurant.
No matter whether or not the framing of their sisterly love has always been somewhat of a lie, Rella refuses to let Junah cling to it childishly. There is her own life to think of, and well she'd go to do it.
It is cold in Altabury Heights, too.
That's why it'd be something of a lie to tell Junah that it's cold, here in the garrison of Aletta Manor. In fact, even with all the treachery that laps at their heels, Rella finds an unparalleled comfort, when she and Louis and Basilio are all there together.
A partnership that defies expectations so heavily, so easily. She supposes it's something purely real. That's valuable - invaluable - far beyond any supposed sanctity of tribes, any harsh shunning of elda or paripus, indeed.
That place in the sun, for three so unlikely... It gives Rella a strength and suppleness she feels she's never had, certainly never will again if all this should go awry.
(It will. How could it do anything but be so? Rella's a saint, so she is positive, but she is also pragmatic. Perhaps too much for her own good. But it has attracted such bedfellows as these...)
Even now, the thought of Louis and Basilio approaching the port in Louis's runner, refreshed from a game of chess together on the deck but not quite as rested as if they'd been at home, for whatever home means when you are the type of people who skulk in shadows with your back face on.
Rella doesn't mind the fact that it's she who's homebound, weak and bereft of will. She doesn't think she does, anyway. At any rate, it's difficult to tell.
But it's not the fainting couch she's been resigned to, just yet. She still commands the dragon (icebound!) lain in wait, and she still certainly commands at least some mighty share of the attention of one Louis Guiabern and one Basilio Magnus.
She doesn't want to control them. It's just a matter of safety. For all of them, and for the kingdom too.
Louis's presence is staunch, at her shoulder. Basilio, the dog-eared page and tower, even flanks him from a higher vantage.
And all this isn't even to discuss how belligerent she'd been, originally, toward Louis and his proud ideas.
Threatened? Perhaps she was, and fanned her wings in a stubborn display of pride, endless pride, of the ishkia and those who bear their tribes' markings fairly, indeed.
Louis, the mystery, the buck of horns against the fickleness of fate's one birth toward what he truly seeks - a chance for everyone, for everyone that strives to deserve it and make good with the world. Louis's inscrutable fantasy, and Basilio that accompanies it, whilst Rella stands as a gauntlet in his, their, path.
So, of course, he has picked her up, and redetermined - redoubled, in untouched faith.
Rella doesn't hope to outsmart Louis. She's not even sure she hopes him to turn. However, the idea that she could retrain herself against his magnificent self-concept and all-possession had been what had convinced her to remain upon the precipice of this path, all in all.
What temptations the devil may bring for a saint. What honor in this personal, unpious sequence: to be for the birds and to go to the dogs.
Basilio dotes upon her, just shy of reverent. Louis studies her graces, just short of affection.
It's poetic, really. Rella, his scapegoat, his failsafe, his pride of a fall, now stirring in Louis some thought of a redress. Basilio goes where his master will order, and Rella will take him as time and space ever allows.
So Louis must now come to respect someone else's judgement, for once. So Louis must see that Rella's merit has never tumbled, as it soars high, high, high.
Oh, and of course, though he'll deny it, Louis is inseparable from his Basilio, his knight hound, his Gae Bolg in scouse and plainclothes.
Forever ours, my Basilio...
It's not a holdover of guilt that keeps her bound to him now. What mental moral debts Rella could ever have repaid via Basilio, she has long done so. That's not to say that he isn't dear to her in large part because of what brought them together, those years ago.
But now, he is simply Basilio. No one can lay claim to a greater share of righteous effort, of good-faith declension, than him. As people go, Basilio is very nearly without fault.
To conquer anxiety, Louis wishes. To do away with the parts of people that hold them back.
Perhaps it's because Rella is one of the few that knows where Louis's anxieties lie that she allows herself to trust him; needs herself to, can't imagine not, now.
(Well. She can imagine it, of course. She's a brilliant woman. But she won't.)
Rella heals. She soothes. She sunders.
Basilio guards. He snarls. He perspires.
Louis summons. He conjures. He inspires.
Oh, none of it even bears a crucial relation to the problem of the Archetypes, and the Sanctifex, and the fate of the world. It's just damnably personal.
Tasteless, in the face of conflict. How should Rella dare to reinterpret the calamity by which Euchronia is beset in view of her own relations?
This must just be why her own magla flows so uninhibited, honed to be keen and strong.
Weakness...simple, sentient weakness.