23th Flamerule 178 AR - “Always”
Snow, it was always snowing. Lilith gave one final look outside the narrow window snorting. Tucked up in the only bed in the room, with a heavy bear pelt covering her to the torso, enlightened by only the faint light of the candle put on the wardrobe, she started to write down a few words on her diary, confessing her intimate thoughts with quill and pen on a silent paper that would have conserved them in time.
“... And here we are, on this rock, frozen and icy even at the end of Flamerule, to seek more information about him. I don't honestly know if we will find what we are looking for, but, surely it's a start considering the only few informations that slipped from mother's lips”
Her gaze fell on her brother, sleeping close to her, as they did since they were kids, forced to share the same room and bed in that filthy place in the slums of Athkatla.
She almost instictively passed her fingers through his hair, smiling faintly as he started to snort a bit in his sleep, unwillingly turning around from the candlelight and turning on the other side.
If it wasn't for him, she wouldn't be there. Born together, raised together, survived together. Never separated, neither from destiny nor from their choices. She remembered the sentence of a famous poet describing twins like two halves of one soul, walking around the world with four legs.
“Always sentimental. Typical” The cold mocking voice interrupted her thoughts as a shivering breeze coming inside from the cracks of the wodden floor.
She was there, sitting on the chair in front of their bed. Almost impassive, shrouded in the shadows she loved so much.
One of her boots was sitting on the edge of the chair, in a quite unconventional posture, with the left arm resting on the lifted knee. She looked at Lilith with her usual detached gaze: vertical-pupil eyes staring unblinking at her from the darkness.
The young arcanist had to admit to herself that, despite she hated her with all herself, the unwanted guest had some style, with that posture typical of a feline predator studying the victim and ready to attack.
But not her, she wouldn't have attacked Lilith. After all how could she have? She was only in her head.
The guest then stood up in all her alluring figure, wearing the usual black leather armor, which perfectly fitted her shiloutte, with the arms slightly opened towards the exterior, ready to summon her twin daggers in her hands from the mechanism hidden in the bracers. Lilith always remeained with a strange bittersweet taste in her mouth as she looked her in the face: they were so similar, yet so different. It's like staring in a mirror and hating what you see in it.
“You came quite far, in an enviroment we surely don't like. And for what? To search for your father?” the guest chuckled with a mocking tone.
“If we have to... we have somehow to fix your mistake” Lilith replied dryly.
“Mistake. You used the right word.” The dark-armored figure looked to Draven as well. He was still sleeping in peace, like if she wasn't there at all.
“Yes, you two were the worst mistake of my life. I should have put out of your mysery long ago. And for that I must apologize.”
“Well, I surely put a remedy to your mistake...” Lilith faintly smirked to woman before her.
“Yes, and what did you obtain? That now I'm part of you”
“You. Don't. Exist! You are in my head” Lilith replied almost growling with a sinister tone.
“Reality is what we make it to be. And I will be with you forever....”
Lilith then squeezed her eyes a few times. “You are not here. You are not here. Fuera!”
When she opened her eyes again, the woman wasn't there anymore. The room was still the cold empty hole she rented the same day. Her brother was still sleeping peacefully close to her.
She then put away her diary in a pocket of the coat. Licking her fingertips she grasped the candle fire to extinguish it and tucked herself under the heavy bear pelt to find some warmth in that frozen inferno before falling into a nightmarish sleep.
The last sound she heard before falling into oblivion was the woman's voice “Always.”