is it hot in here or is it just me; Straia

[Erebor]

some are lost in the fire

some are built from it

As soon as he'd seen his mother, Erebor had known they'd need to have a conversation. It's not that he worries for her. He is no more or less concerned about her new gift than she is about him. It's more that they need to meet up, to compare notes, to come to an understanding about what each can do, and how each can benefit the Chamber.

And although their conversation may have been delayed, it's not been for lack of desire, but merely due to more pressing concerns. In both of their minds, the Chamber always comes first. And that means things like recruiting, like attending the Deserts event, like making sure that the basic needs of the kingdom are satisfied will always, always come before anything else. And both of them would have it no other way.

But now, as the afternoon wanes and starts to head into gentle twilight, Erebor is finally able to seek her out. He enters the pine forest without hesitation. It has regrown marvelously, and he imagines it's returned more or less to the state it was in before the volcanos. He pauses for a moment, imagining what it would have been like if he'd been here, and had his new gift, when that had happened. Could he have prevented it? Should he have prevented it? An interesting thought experiment, and a moot point. He had not been here, not for that loss. He'd been born the Prince of Ash and Ruin, son of the Queen of Ash and Ruin. And now? Now he was the Prince of Heat, son to the Queen of Ravens. And the trees knew it – they were no longer ashes and ruins either.

He closes his eyes, letting himself feel the heat currents. He finds her this way, tracking down a single pulsing beacon of warmth, surrounded by a handful of smaller beacons that could only be her birds. He moves through the pine trees toward her, feeling the branches of the trees caress his skin as he goes. If he has one lingering aftereffect from the quest (not counting the most obvious lingering aftereffects), it is his joy at the sensation of touch. He'd been partially robbed of it when he'd been boiled, and what touching there had been before that had been largely painful throughout the entire process. It is pleasant to feel pleasant things, like the wind in his mane or the reassuring fingers of the pine trees on his back.

She stands before him in a small thicket-clearing, big enough for the two of them to stand comfortably, but not big enough for much else. It is quiet here in the heart of the pines, and Erebor wonders if she'd been passing through or seeking solace. He knows she walks the pines (and the borders) just as he does.

He gives her a nod, pushing through the last of the trees to emerge into the clearing as he does so. "Mother." he greets, his voice deep and handsome with a subtle kind of affection that he knows his mother will recognize. If he weren't so ridiculously colored – his coat a deep wine red, his mane and tail colored with broad stripes of alternating dark green and dark blue - at the moment, he'd look every inch a stallion. He is no longer a boy, especially not after the quest. If he hadn't already been so damn grown up, he'd surely have been by the end of that. A raucous 'caw' draws his attention upward, and he sees a bird (his mother's, he assumes) circle them high overhead. He looks back to Straia. "Ravens?" he asks, although he is obviously not questioning what the birds in the sky right now are. His question is obviously about the bigger picture: why ravens? How many ravens? What can the ravens do?

Certainly he could ask all of those questions individually, but he knows that his mother will understand exactly what he's asking. And if she were to skip out on anything, he wouldn't hesitate to raise more questions, or to ak for clarification. But for now he relaxes back (a relative term, considering that he is never truly relaxed) and waits to hear her story, her telling of what had happened to make her kin to the ravens.

And after that, he doesn't doubt, it'll be his turn to tell a story.  

erebor

heat manipulating lord of the chamber

warship x straia

Have I mentioned how much I love this HTML.

[Straia]

The Chamber always comes first. Her son understands this, and has never been bothered that she chooses it over him. He does the same in return. Sometimes she wonders where exactly the boy came from, because he is unlike the family she has lost over the years. Her sister, mostly, who has never accepted that the Chamber always come first. Lu had left the Chamber in serve of it, but in the end, she stayed in the Deserts in service of that kingdom instead. The Chamber never held her little sister’s heart, and without it, Straia couldn’t keep her sister’s heart either.

Oksana had been a similar story, though it was a boy and not the Chamber that held her heart. Though now, with the tides shifted, with magic restored to the Chamber, Oksana could stay. Hopefully she would, though her adopted sister would perhaps never truly belong. Not without Makai, and Straia knows that Makai still wants nothing to do with this place. Straia can’t help but wonder if eventually, Oksana will go join him again. She still doesn’t know, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. Straia will stay, and that is the only constant.

She isn’t surprised when Erebor comes to find her in the pine trees. For one, the ravens have already told her of the strangely colored boy in the woods. And plus, their conversation was long overdue. Even without his gift, she is easy to find. She’s always in the trees, when time permits. Time rarely permits, except at night, and she seeks out the solace they have always provided her whenever she can. Not necessarily to be alone – oh, a Queen is never alone – but simply because there is no better place in the world. There never will be. As far as she’s concerned, the Chamber could bury her beneath the trees one day and she rotting corpse could fertilize them. She will give back to them what they have given to her.

“Erebor,” she says, chuckling slightly as he approaches. She reaches out and picks up a lock of bright blue hair with her teeth and then drops it on his neck again. “You look like Christmas threw up on you.” She grins, but there’s affection in the teasing as well. She does love her son, even if she never says it. But he knows, and that’s enough for both of them.

Then he asks the inevitable question, and she rolls her shoulders slightly. “I have no idea why ravens. And I’m not entirely sure where the gift came from. The Chamber, perhaps. Maybe Beqanna, though I would lean toward the Chamber. Hell, maybe I was born with it and never knew, because there’s never been a day in my life I haven’t served this kingdom. Though I doubt that theory.” That’s the truth of it. She doesn’t know entirely why she can do what she can do now. She simply knows that she can.

One of the ravens lands on her shoulder and caws. She nods, and it disappears again. “Infection has returned to the Valley. Shame he didn’t come back here. He ruled once, though Infection is as much a monster as Rodrik. I’ve only heard tales, though the raven’s tell me the tales are true.” The constant spies might be the most useful thing she’s gained here. She mostly uses real ravens as spies. They are older, they know things that her black magic ravens cannot know. Though those spies are useful as well, because they can see still everything.

Then, around them, the elemental ravens emerge. Some of made of shadow, some of light, some of fire and ice and earth. She keeps them smaller, so they can avoid the trees, but enough to show a demonstration. And then, raven wings grow from Erebor’s side and her own. “I don’t know the limits yet, except everything I do have something to do with ravens.” The wings disappear from their sides.

“And you?”

straia

the raven queen of the chamber

image © Squirt