background
Lauralae was born in the realm of the elves, her mother and father a secondary family that, while not having the greatest of power, had a settled and confident place in society that left her raised to have her magic encouraged; the hopes of her mother laid on her shoulders with the idea that she would be strong enough, smart enough, to prove herself. Eventually, this would mean she would have a choice of a match that would please her, but the idea never really interested her: she would rather spend the rest of her life reading and learning, ignoring any notion of picking from any lineup that might be put in front of her.
Her childhood was normal with little remarkable about her. Her mother began teaching her the ways of womanhood and how to behave, as well as leading her into the heavily guarded secrets of the magic they were all blessed with, as her father crafted her to be intelligent and wise. It was not a life that she enjoyed, however; Lauralae, while she enjoyed her books and her learning, craved something more than her lonely existence.
There was a passion inside of her; she wanted more than what her parents could offer, even with all their position and power. For all that she had been raised to know she would have power and security it was never enough - she wanted more, like an inbuilt craving, a hunger inside of her that was suffocating and dangerous.
She discovered the deep libraries, lost down in floors behind locked doors, behind large steel and guards that would slit her throat faster than they'd allow her to delve into the tomes before her. The book she chose, after exploring maps, novels, romances and spell tomes, hidden histories of her people and beyond, was hidden in the back of the grand library, buried below a dozen others that described worlds beyond the glen of her people, across seas and deserts that waited for her to find him.
Lauralae was shunned, deemed a demon, a traitor. She had ignored the rules of her people, the children's stories that told of the punishments for such evil and deceit, and was cast out for it. Where she had hoped for acceptance, uniqueness, the support of her parents and a place more fitting for her than simply a bride Lauralae instead found exile. Her name was torn from the family pages, from history books, and she faded into darkness as though she never existed at all.
Leaving her home and losing herself to the power that had tried to possess her it took some time for her to figure out where she had found herself. She simply lived, and existed, as much as she could without any aid - which, for a girl that had relied on family and magic for so long, was not the easiest of task. Relearning the things she had once understood to be second-nature to her was a long, arduous task and it seemed to near the edge of impossible for her.
An elderly woman needed help with her work in a store that Lauralae visited when her own stores were low, offering herbs and leaves from the outskirts of the forest. While Lauralae offered little of herself - her name, her talent for poison making, her rather adept touch when it came to growing plants - the woman, Myr, tested her, offered her plants to name, to judge which worked well with one another, and when she had shown that she knew more than the average wander she was โhiredโ, in a sense. She was taken on to learn, to be taught, and in return she continued to help with things around the womanโs home. Making things, cleaning up, going to the places the elderly woman couldnโt reach anymore - she proved to be a capable assistant, even if it took time for her to settle.
While she couldnโt touch people, she couldnโt be around people without fearing hurting them - even if she shunned the world she still wished for the ease of companionship that sheโd had when she was younger - she was happy, as much as she could be with the way that her magic ate at her. She still felt half-possessed, as if the moment she let her guard down she might lose herself to it, but she managed.
One day, when she came to โworkโ, Myr offered her a gift; it had been weeks and the struggle to balance the things she could touch and the things she couldnโt had become a visible struggle and it was driving Lauralae to the brink. The gift she offered were gloves, made of spider spin silk, enchanted to keep magic bound; if she wore them she would be able to touch things, people, and live as she might have if she wasnโt cursed. It wasnโt a cure and it was hardly anything of a step in the right direction but Lauralae felt as though she had, somehow, found a means of going forward. If she could continue like this, finding short-term reparations for what had happened to her because of her choices, then she might be able to continue to exist without losing herself entirely. In return, Lauralae offered to stay with her, to care for her in her growing age, to act as a true apprentice in as many ways as she could. It was all she had, but it seemed to be enough.
Time continued and, for months after, life didnโt much change - not until someone else came into her life. With her gloves on and her hood down Lauralae appeared to be a normal woman, a girl learning a craft from her elders and hoping for more from her life than, perhaps, what her parents might have asked for her. A man came into the store, offering coin for poisons, and Lauralae was struck with infatuation - the first she had ever claimed to have in her life, the first time she had ever dared to show any interest in someone. The man, Aramas, was secretive, sly, and she was enchanted by the mystery he offered, the distraction from the ever present weight of the cursed possession she had almost lost herself to.
Encouraged by Myr, who had been hoping to guide the girl she had come to care for towards a simpler life than what she seemed to want to lead, she pushed herself towards a chance at happiness. She had never spent much time around men before, not in a romantic sense, and she was little more than an awkward presence in his life for some time.
Time went on and she danced around him for weeks, unsure how to act, what to say, even with the safety net of her hands kept out of sight and out of touch. It wasnโt falling in love (how can anyone love someone they donโt know, after all?) but it was a step in the right direction, a step towards being happy. The darkness inside of her seemed sedated and quieter the happier she was and she worked towards that, even as she attempted to ignore the flush of her cheeks and the rush of her heartbeat.
Things continued, quiet and simple, until conversation turned from discussion of poisons and herbs to talking about power, magic, the influence and talent needed to use it. While Lauralae had known Myr accepted her for who she is and what she did she had never imagined someone might wonder and think the same things she would; that magic is power, that knowledge is strength, that having both is a gift, something to be cherished and understood. She took to him, starting to spend her time at his side when she was not learning with her teacher, giving herself over to the idea that she might be happy; she had a new life, now, and a chance at making something for herself that no one else could touch.
While Lauralae may have been inexperienced when it came to any kind of relationship that wasnโt somehow parental (Myr becoming a surrogate for what she had lost in her exile) she knew that any kind of romance could not be forged on lies. It had been months that her life have revolved around talking to him when he stepped into the store and she knew that if she was going to move forward she would have to make sure he was aware of who she was. He could not love her, all of her, if he didnโt know the truth; so she showed him.
His reaction was nothing like she had expected.
She had no idea what was going through his mind when she had invited him out to talk, drawing him into the forest. She explained what she dared to do, explained that she had been blessed (cursed, she thought to herself, but dared not say aloud) as much as she could give him the information, explaining how she had been teaching herself, how Myr had cared for her, offering as much as she could, considering her own lack of knowledge, and felt her hands shake as she watched him shut down.
She had thought he saw her, saw her beyond what she might have been, that he would have understood that she was something that he had said was something worth having, but she was wrong. When she confessed herself to him she saw nothing but the same anger and shame that she had seen in the faces of others before she had learned to keep herself quiet, hiding her ills and her power; the same disgust that made her turn away from the population.
Instead of turning to her and accepting her for who she was Lauralae found that she was faced with a man that wanted to kill her. His hands went to his daggers, the ones she had given him poisons for, helped him to prepare for whatever he wished to hunt or fight, and she reacted. Her hands, bare of her gloves, slid up her arm, nails scratching at her arms, drawing blood, the power flying out of her and leaping forward to attack and punish him for his shame of her.
When she woke up he was gone - she was weak, exhausted, and she had no idea what had happened or what she had done to him. All she knew was that moving hurt, the scratches on her arms were dirty with her blood and the only option in front of her was to return to her home and hope that no questions were asked. She had no choice but to continue as nothing had changed, to hope that Myr heard nothing of the damage she had wrought and the things she had done to herself. She was no longer anything she had imagined herself to be, and she was forced to deal with that in the secrecy of her own mind. She became a shell.
Returning home took Lauralae some hours. She made her way back to the house she called her own and slipped inside, climbing the stairs to find her surrogate mother, to ask for comfort, for something. Rather than finding her friend alive and well, waiting for her, perhaps fretting, Lauralae found nothing more than the body of the woman she had come to love. There was no open wound, nothing more than a pale corpse and the scent of something familiar in the air - poison. She knew the source.
