Well, I wrote this short story, see. Please read it and give feedback.
Lights flickered along the colonnades of Byzantinea. The stars gleamed brightly on this clear night, and a slight draft caught a banner, which fluttered from its base at the top of a lapis tower. Out of every door in the city peered a lamp and in the public spaces the fumes of incense and pine torches wafted into the seething night air. By the river Byzan, the citizens of the city crowded to float small candles down the river. It was only a few hours after nightfall, but the murky waters were already obscured by the little lights, creating the illusion of a lava river flowing and curling gently with the tide, through the city, past the lighthouse and docks, and out to the open ocean. For all the activity and throngs of people, there was a great hush, for it was Alm-Letalia the Night of the Holy Choice.
Every year in the Republic, the shortest day of the year was marked with the solemn holiday, traditionally the anniversary of the destruction by the gods of the Blessed and their subsequent scattering across the world in the beginning of history. As it was told to children, the goddess Azura gave to these blessed people a choice: that evil shall lurk in the wilderness, but that they remain glorious, or that there shall be no pure evil, but their own island rent asunder, and fall under wave. Of course, those being an enlightened people shrouded by the mists of cliche and time, they agreed for their own cities and farms to be engulfed in the Atlantic Ocean. But now such lore was restricted to those who cared to read the ancient languages, and the holiday was seen among the layman as a time of remembering the fallen. .
Down in Ules district, the small crowd that had milled by the river landings and quays hand broken up by twelve, and the streets were deserted besides for a random watchman and cart pushers bringing produce to markets for the morning. By the water were no markets and the silence was total. At one gondola landing sat a fully clothed young woman, waist deep in water. She seemed to be brooding on the little candle in the water, which she was unwilling to let go. Whenever it would move toward its comrades, she would drag it back to herself and stare at it. Or so the situation seemed to Celephanil of Pelegard.
He too was here to release a candle and to “perpetuate a tradition” as he called it in his pompous and blown-out vernacular.
“Good Evening,” He said, rather portentously, as usual.
She stood up very suddenly, letting a small shower fall out from her chiton. She turned around, looking very indignant that he had disturbed her solitude.
“Ah, Adinine Ulumni? How are you?”
“Not unwell, thank you,” she said uncomfortably, “Yourself?”
Now, Adinine Ulumni and Celephanil Pelegard were somewhere between intimate acquaintances and distant friends. Both were members of Ules House, she being the daughter of a wealthy and ruthless banker, (a shame that sent her fleeing to the priesthood of Synora fearing her immortal soul,) and he being something of a question mark. He had appeared in the Ules Court in the waning years of his teen hood and had charmed and flattered himself into three extensive land holdings, a fleet of merchant ships, luxurious homes in the city and country, and a seat in the Senate representing a little known but growing province in the far west. But for all his success, his background was a shadow. It was said that he was from the north, but northerners, when asked, would shake their heads and say that he came running out of the forest one day, dressed in rags, and screaming in tongues. Before that, he was a mystery.
“Fine.”
“So, who are you here for?”
“Um, nobody. I take walks at nights sometimes.”
“At twelve in the morning?” She asked.
“Yes, um, what, or I mean, who are you here for?”
“My brother.” An awkward silence followed.
“I’m sorry,” Said Celephanil, finally “I never knew you had a sibling. How long ago did he pass?”
“Nine years,” she said, in almost a whisper.
Another silence. Celephanil didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to walk away and seem brutish nor did he want to delve deeper into a painful memory. The choice was made for him.
“He was really a wonderful man, you know. But I don’t think I knew him very well. . .or I don’t remember him very well. I was eight when he died.”
“Oh. How did he, well, pass?”
“Riding accident.”
“Oh.” A pause followed. Adiline seemed to be breathing heavily, but Celephanil didn’t know what was happening.
Then, she said, “You know, it’s funny how some things fade away in the mind while others stay in the forefront, burned in forever.” Her voice was rising all the time. “I can hardly recall his face anymore, but I remember what I said when I heard the news.”
The girl shivered, though it was a steamy night, not under eighty degrees.
“What did you say?”
“I. . .I. . .I. . .” She stopped, took a slow breath, then rapidly disintegrated into a wailing mass upon the water steps.
“Oh my god, I should die! I don’t want to live!” She screamed into her hands, sobbing hysterically.
Celephanil was shocked by this turn of events.
“Um . . . I’m not very good with this comforting thing . . . It will, er, get better.” He put his arms around her and patted her on the back. She managed to compose herself long enough to whisper into his ear.
“I can’t take it any more, Celephanil.” She said, with a wild tone in her voice, “It’s there, always there, When I least expect it. It’s always watching.”
“What is watching, what?”
“What I did, no, what I thought when I first heard.”
He said in what he thought was a soothing voice, “What did you think?”
It was obviously the wrong question. She melted out of his arms onto the step, where she lay, writhing and crying. He pulled her up like a rag doll into a sitting position, and knelt down beside her.
“He would sometimes tease me for my doll and pull my hair when I was little. I only thought him a nuisance but oh my got I also thought” She pulled away from him and crawled into a corner, under the pedestal of a gilt bronze statue of Azura the Avenger.
She rocked back and forth as she said, “I also thought, I also thought.” Now she cried to the heavens and screamed out, “I thought ‘about time.’ Oh god I want to die.”
She was now screaming in lamentation, and people were peeping out from the doors of waterside villas and townhouses to see what was causing the commotion. Not heeding the staring people, Celephanil pulled the girl close to him, and rocked her like a child.
“No, no, you were too young to understand. It was just shock.
She fell back into his embrace, sniffing. The girl now only whispered, as if her voice was spent. In his arms, Adinine seemed frail and sickly, as limp as a noodle. He rocked her again.
“Quiet, Adinine. You know, I lost my grandfather when I was young? It was really terrible. I remember it. He was very active into his seventies, but then, in three years of sickness, he was transformed into an almost inhuman, parasitic thing. My mother wouldn’t even let me see him, fearing it would be burned into my memory, my grandfather in the depths of illness. Death was a blessing.” This didn’t seem to comfort her. She began to sob silently to herself.
“No, my brother was twenty! He had his whole life ahead of him! You know I found some notebooks of his last year? He was a poet! A man of letters and sophistication!”
She now began to cry heartily again, periodically giving utterance to banshie-like shrieks of woe.
“Now will you let me finish my story? It’s quite relevant.” Said Celephanil. Adinine nodded from his lap. “Well,” he laughed, “I was very upset when they pulled me from class to tell me he died.” The girl began to cry more profusely. It must have to added to her guilt. “But not because I missed the old man or understood it very much, but because I wanted to go back onto the swings.” She actually laughed a bit. She was so beautiful when she laughed.
He continued, “And you are obviously not evil and cold hearted, being that you are prostrate in mourning, twenty years after the death of the mourned, in the middle of a public street in the richest district of the city. It’s time, I think, to lift your sodden veil of sorrows, don’t you see the morning coming? I think your brother does not want your unhappiness or your sympathy.”
She was sniffing now, seemingly over her crying spell, “Well, I guess I have been stupid.”
“No, you are being honest,” he said thoughtfully, “and by the judge of your emotions, for the first time in your life.” She broke down into a crying spell again, and he rocked her, patting her back.
By the time the sun rose her head over the loftiest minaret of Byzantinëa, the lamentation was over, but for one girl in the service of the water goddess, guilt had floated out to the sea in a boat of wax.
O of where dost thou hail, Celephanil, Celephanil? Why dost thou wander in Tengelwar great, why on the sea do you sail?
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