Star's Stories - Short Looks at Various Characters

Moonlight glimmered softly from the still waters of the decorative pool, the soft light providing an otherworldly luminance to the scene and leaving shadows strewn across the great statue that rose from its center. Those shadows were fitting in their own way, obscuring the features of the goddess it was carved to represent, leaving her visage murky and only half seen. They mirrored her own relationship with the goddess she’d adored since she’d been old enough to understand what religion was.

The slow, steady drip of water was the only sound to accompany the soft chirping of insects as Arietta Taliras sipped from a goblet while she gazed up at the statue. The silence was fitting, for she could hardly reach out and touch the visage of her goddess now. To do so was to be burned, to defile the beauty that now lay shrouded in shadows as if hiding from her. So she was left feeling bittersweet, gazing with longing yet knowing she was no longer able to truly come close.

The contents of the goblet left her lips stained crimson as she took a deep sip, the sweetest wine unable to dispel her melancholy thoughts. The wind shifted, blowing in from the west where lay the ocean. It brought with it the faint scent of salt, of lands unexplored and travels not had. She was stagnating, she knew, caught between languorous comfort and keen fear. A never-ending drunken revelry of her own design that even Sanguine might have been proud of as her own worries and desires bound her ever more tightly to the very life she’d sought to avoid.

Another sip from the goblet and it was gone, the sweet nectar vanished near as quickly as it had filled the vessel. Her eyes finally turned from the statue where the answers she sought must be hidden, ashamed and frustrated even as a sense of well-being suffused her, leaving her flush with pleasure. It was a contradiction of sensation, her heart railing against the injustice of it even as the goblet slipped from her fingers to clatter upon the stones below.

Never once did she look down as she set out to return to the comforts of her manor. To do so was to gaze upon her failures, to remind herself that no matter her resolve or how she sought to fight it that her baser nature inevitably won out. Her footsteps receded from the scene as the slow drip continued, leaving the pale face of her latest victim gazing sightlessly up at the statue of the goddess as the last remnants of their lifeblood dripped slowly from a torn throat into the tranquil pool.

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Arietta

The dancers swirled about to the sweeping melodies that filled the air, the masks they wore doing little to disguise the emotion that hummed between them. Excitement, lust, nervousness, amusement...they were so vital. She looked out from behind the mask that concealed the upper portion of her features, leaving only ruby lips that wore an insincere smile to greet those that looked her way. Pale eyes gleamed in the light of innumerable colorful lanterns that were strung up to banish the darkness, succeeding only to present a shifting canvas of shadows that lay heavy between the pools of luminance like the silence between breaths.

It felt suffocating to her. The abundant life, the way the people around her swayed and danced, hearts racing while she stood within a bubble of silence. Once, she would have been among them, filled with laughter and mirth, her own heart beating with excitement at the thrill of it all. She'd sought out the gala in a vain attempt to recapture that feeling, danced with partners and performed all the correct steps, but she felt nothing. A hollow void existed where once those emotions had dwelt, leaving only bitterness and resentment at the smiling faces that surrounded her. Where others saw possibility and a chance to indulge in thrilling mystery, she felt only hunger. All-consuming, ever present, an unquenchable thirst only exacerbated by the vital melody that lay beneath the music all others could hear, a song of heartbeats and endless hunger played solely for her.

In that moment she knew that before the night gave way to the morning's light that one among those present would never see the dawn. The song was overpowering, commanding her attention beyond all other considerations, the sweetest music she could have ever dreamed. In the end she could only be true to her own nature, just as the wolf, no matter how much like a faithful hound it might have looked, would only ever be a predator. She could pretend to be one of them, move flawlessly through the motions to imitate the vitality they thoughtlessly exhibited, but she would never again be one of them. And so she smiled and laughed, flirted and danced, her heart a hollow void that felt none of it while she sought the one who would be sacrificed to sate, ever so momentarily, the sanguine thirst that lay beneath every false word and gesture.