Lysandra
Every face wears a mask
The crowd had been thick with lantern-light, the smoke of incense and burning oil swirling together until Lysandra’s head swam. She slipped through it in a hood of velvet black, a porcelain smile over her own, her bare soles whispering along the packed earth like they’d been kissed by silence itself. She moved as though she had always been there and never at all.
It wasn’t the crowd she was after, she had already played her music for them, but rather the odd gravity of someone who didn’t belong to it. A great shape parting the current, silver hair like pale thread against the dark—recognition tugged at her: the Mer-King of Torchline, demi-god of Safrin. Grief weighted every step, not heavy enough to bow him, but enough to bend the air around him. It drew her after him like a moth chasing the wrong flame.
When he paused at the fountain’s shrine, she let him feel her presence—or rather, she let the fountain declare it. The droplets that had been pattering back into the pool now chimed like crystal bells, each note bright and clear, echoing too sweetly to be real. An illusion, yes, but one spun as lightly as breath. This, was her hello.
Only then did she step nearer, not from behind but at an oblique angle, porcelain mask catching firelight, her cloak folding in dark waves to her ankles.
She lingered in comfortable silence at first, letting the music carry long enough to settle between them.
When she finally moved, it was with a tilt of her hand. Porcelain shifted, the mask lifting just high enough to bare her face to the firelight. Mischief glimmered in her blue eyes, but what lay beneath was warmer, more human.
Her voice followed, smooth and quiet, the edges softened now that it was hers alone. “The tide has carried you far from home, Hadama.” She shaped his name gently, syllables deliberate. The lanterns he carried caught her eye again, and after a heartbeat she added, warmer still: "The lost still guide your steps."
It wasn’t the crowd she was after, she had already played her music for them, but rather the odd gravity of someone who didn’t belong to it. A great shape parting the current, silver hair like pale thread against the dark—recognition tugged at her: the Mer-King of Torchline, demi-god of Safrin. Grief weighted every step, not heavy enough to bow him, but enough to bend the air around him. It drew her after him like a moth chasing the wrong flame.
When he paused at the fountain’s shrine, she let him feel her presence—or rather, she let the fountain declare it. The droplets that had been pattering back into the pool now chimed like crystal bells, each note bright and clear, echoing too sweetly to be real. An illusion, yes, but one spun as lightly as breath. This, was her hello.
Only then did she step nearer, not from behind but at an oblique angle, porcelain mask catching firelight, her cloak folding in dark waves to her ankles.
She lingered in comfortable silence at first, letting the music carry long enough to settle between them.
When she finally moved, it was with a tilt of her hand. Porcelain shifted, the mask lifting just high enough to bare her face to the firelight. Mischief glimmered in her blue eyes, but what lay beneath was warmer, more human.
Her voice followed, smooth and quiet, the edges softened now that it was hers alone. “The tide has carried you far from home, Hadama.” She shaped his name gently, syllables deliberate. The lanterns he carried caught her eye again, and after a heartbeat she added, warmer still: "The lost still guide your steps."
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