[STENELLIAN ASCENDANCY] JL | Empress Xue'Daio Nox, Kiv'Watt | "Hurts Like Hell"

Posted on Fri Aug 23rd, 2019 @ 3:00am by Xue'Daio Nox Tr'Verelan
Edited on on Fri Aug 23rd, 2019 @ 3:23am

Mission: Over the Border, Where Shadows Walk

The seasons were supposed to be ever turning, or at least that was how the doctrine was supposed to go. Nothing seemed quite certain anymore, not even the sage and stone beneath the stars, not even the turning of the tides. Xue couldn’t find the chance to lay down her sorrows, to soothe her soul, to sort out the weariness in her bones or to calm the fraying of her tattered nerves. Instead of that cool summer breeze she longed to feel embrace her, she was met with the icy tines of winter prying at her delicate frost tinted skin. It curled around her silvery mane, combing it and ushering it further from her careful braids until it licked the air like flame. White, smokeless flame. It reached for the sea, the cold iron and turquoise waves beckoning her ever closer to what would have been certain death and in response she issued a disdainful, and rather unladylike, little snort of sheer defiance. The thick veil of her alabaster lashes covered her eyes and in a single blink, an otherwise unmentionable moment of time, the thought was gone and she was left once more to nothing more than the crying of the gulls circling above.

With the jubilee of Si’a’s marriage over, the fanfare of the Vindicator’s visit now gone, Apsha had been left to the dark brooding that came with mourning the loss of an Emperor and the buzzing of a senate that worked studiously to be sure that the Empress chose to wed again. At times Xue was unsure whether it was for their sake or for the sake of morale within the people. Her people. One thing was absolutely certain, however, they would never accept Evan Merlin at her side. The man represented the unknown, his race a mystery even to himself, and that alone would have been enough to finish ripping the Ascendancy apart at the same torn seams her pregnancy to him had already put a hole in.

The suitors that had been chosen for her proved as much.

Already the Cardassians had sent a Gul, young and handsome enough, to try his hand at courting her. The condolences he offered were nothing short of a thin veil designed to curry her favor… And he received nothing more than the chill of the starlit one’s disapproval. She’d nary cast her rose colored eyes in his direction more than once, refusing him the respect of her gaze and instead issued a chaste reminder that his people were bound to the Ascendancy through a system of want and need and that their welcome was certainly growing thin.

He’d left just as quickly as he’d come, leaving her to the relative peace that came from watching her beloved sea roll in and out, listening to it’s incessant arguing with the stars for the chance to claim her as she continued to wade through the vast quagmire of emotions and memories that plagued her. Guilt led to depression and depression led to anger as the maudlin process of acceptance led towards whatever it was that fate had chosen for her. In life she’d never once allowed sadness to color her nature, but color her it had. It had taken a bird from the breeze and the shine from her eye. It had left her mean, snappy, incorrigible, and perhaps even cruel.

There was no forgiving her sins or the anger she’d felt at what she’d considered to be abandonment and betrayal by Maec. If anything, it proved that two wrongs certainly didn’t make a right and did little to reconcile a broken heart when the truth came to light. He’d been in trouble, dying, and she’d been bedding another. A cruel trick of reality and life to say the least and she feared, and knew, that she was so very caught up in the undertow of the aftermath.

Still… He didn’t feel dead - the bond they shared never once notified her of his passing and she certainly hadn’t felt him slip away. The question of whether or not she’d missed it, that it had gone ignored or overlooked, nagged at her almost incessantly - and that, albeit subconsciously, was where she chose to hang her fettered hat. Whether she’d admit it or not, the Queen, the shining embodiment of the cosmos themselves, was waiting.

“Might I ask what you’re looking at?”

Xue didn’t startle at the less than subtle roll of her father’s voice. Kiv’Watt was never far from her now, serving his time as the master of her guard with every grace and fanfare allotted to him - and she refused to deny him that which had always rightfully been his. Her chin lifted ever so slightly up and to the side, affording her the chance to glance at him from the corner of her eye, “The sea.”

He nodded in response, carefully stepping up to rest his hands on the chilled balcony railings, “Ah yes, the sea.” It seemed like such a benign answer, but deep in his heart he could hear and feel the resonation of the roiling water calling to him as much as it did to her. It hissed as it tirelessly crashed against and retreated from the rocks below them, sending spray into the air and creating a fine lace of foam across the surface. “A holder of many mysteries, the final frontier.”

“Even though we were born from it.” The white Queen nodded, “Amazing how that works.”

Pithy as she was and stern as he was, Kiv’Watt couldn’t help but smile at his daughter’s flippant attitude. He could practically feel the way her eyes rolled in their sockets. Disdain oozed from her every pore and melancholy from her every movement. In truth, it pained him to see her in such a state. The star failed to shine, there was no hint of glimmer, no promise of the light she once held so perfectly. That power, that finesse, was all but gone. Hidden. Buried beneath a frozen surface - the fluidity of the sea turned to ice. “Like you, she guards her secrets well, Xue’Daio, but there are some that cannot be hidden at all.” He exhaled, tilting his bearded facade in her direction just in time to watch her eyes leave a fleeting seabird long enough to regard him.

“And what is it do you think I fail to hide?” She asked, subconsciously tightening her fingers on the black silk of her robes. His words sought to disrobe her of her mood, she could feel him beckoning the greater facets of her virtues from their hiding holes - coaxing them from the shade and back out into the light of day. Xue held onto them, keeping them close at hand as the festered in her guilt and grief. The thin cold air of the Apshan winter did little to help her hide much of anything.

“Maec…”

“Don’t speak his name in vain.” The albino snapped defensively, her chin lowering and her shoulders setting as she tore her eyes from her father and set them firmly on the undulating waves beyond.

Her reward was the man’s chuckling and the shaking of his head that bled into the grooming of a massive hand along his beard, “You still wait for him.” His bright turquoise eyes rested on her, watching the tension creep along her elegant neck and down through her shoulders. Her own head shook ever so slightly, but she made no further move to deny that which they both knew was true.

How could she deny such an accusation? A lie would not suit her, nor would it suffice or clear past her father’s defenses. Xue wouldn’t be fooling anybody, not even herself, had she rebuked such sentiment. Yes, she was waiting on Maec i'Ahaefvthe Tr’Verelan, waiting on a ghost to come sailing home on celestial tides. She was waiting for the stars to restore him the same way that they’d taken him. The longer that place beside her remained cold, the worse her mood became - but it too, like everything, would run its course and shift to allow a new era to begin. That was what she feared the most - the moment that his memory would begin to fade and his name would begin to mean nothing… She feared time itself more than she feared her own undoing.

That was the way of things.

Her silence curried a soft scoff from the old Makta, “Someday, my dear, the sun will return to the coast and the shine will return to the stars. It is inevitable.” He smiled, laying a gentle hand upon her delicate shoulder, “We float on a river of time, and all our lives we’re told that this river will take us home to where we belong. Hold steady, Xue, and the water will take this weight from you. This too shall pass as it’s nothing more than a bit of chop in the current. You will survive, my girl, you will.”

Kiv’Watt, having imparted the only solace he could ever hope to offer his soul wounded daughter, bent to rest his lips against the top of her head. Assured of her safety and state of mind, he took his leave just as quietly as he’d appeared, leaving her in the care of the sea birds adrift upon the breeze and the steady roar of the sea. There was fight left in her yet - enough that she could, and would, easily fend for herself against any enemy… Even her own wildly out of control heart and mind.

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Xue'Daio Nox Tr'Verelan
Empress of the Stenellian Ascendancy
Queen Regnant of Apsha
Queen of Aliene