Anaïs-Nikiroth Abraxana
A beautiful elven bardess of mixed blood sets out to perfect her skills, find a wealthy Patron of her own, and locate her mother - whom she has become estranged from and wants desperately to reconcile. Anaïs was one of my first and favorite characters from a Neverwinter Nights roleplay server called "Talernon".
Almost There
Farewell
Almost There
With lively, graceful movements and light steps, the elven woman - scarcely more than a girl, really - danced about the Inn Room with her arms stretched above her head. She swayed like a willow in the breeze, twirling and laughing.
I'm here! I'm really here! She reveled in the small room with its small but thoughtful luxuries. Such a change from the hovels and haylofts of the road. Of course, a woman with her talents was welcomed in most places… despite her mixed blood. What farmer's table would not be graced by lore and news from distant places, his children sung to sleep after a memorable night of music and stories by an elven bard-in-training? Alehouses and mining camps and village squares and rural countryside manor homes - she had played them all in the past year. Not as a stagehand to her exotically beautiful mentor, her own mother as a matter of fact, but as a performer on her own.
With cool, creamy skin of an unusual hue, it was difficult for most to place her race. Was she a grey elf with elegantly dark complexion, or a pathetically light dark elf? Both, in truth. She had long admired the smooth nightsky skin that her mother possessed, complimented by deep black hair shot through with ruby strands. But her father, with his milk-colored flesh and sparkling amber eyes, was a handsome male as well.
To think… in her youth, my mother may have graced this very Inn with her songs! Maybe this is the one where she met Father. Anaïs-Nikiroth Abraxana smiled inwardly as she threw herself back on the bed. Tragic, perhaps, but beautiful, their love story. The parts her mother left out in her youth had been filled in wistfully by her father when she went to his village to seek the man who had sired her after a vicious falling-out with her mother.
They were close as mother and daughter could be, but both had a competitive edge and as Anaïs reached maturity and her own skills and beauty became a threat to Abraxana's success, arguments became commonplace. When Abraxana forbid her daughter to perform, even in the street for pennies, tempers flared one last time and tongues let loose with biting remarks that neither could forgive the other.
From that day forth, she had been alone. Although she'd made her way just fine, she had yet to acquire a true patron. She needed someone to finance her so that she may spend all of her time training and composing instead of giving impromptu performances just to earn room and board.
For a time, she had thought her Father would be game - but his family refused to accept his bastard into the flock and although he had been gracious in spending time with her, he could not accommodate her as she had hoped.
At least I have the snifters She sighed, her bright mood fading as memories swept over her. And he does love me, as he can.
Her eyes darted across the room to the red enameled box, lined with black velvet, that contained two crystal glasses. One was blue and amber, the other a blushing pink and pale green. They had once belonged to Nikiroth's great-grandmother and now they were hers.
I just hope I can find her. She so often spoke of Cresentine and her time there, I just know that's where she's gone.
Quietly, she stripped to her nightshift and blew out the last candle, curling up to rest in the darkened room of the Squatting Orc. Even if her mother was not there now, she had every faith that she would pass through or someone would have had news of her, and if she must wait here, she would. Adventure and laughter and friends and, she hoped with girlish embarrassment, love, awaited her here.
Farewell
She knew exactly what would happen to her if she let it. Scratching absently at the newly bound wound, Anaïs-Nikiroth Abraxana came to terms with her fate quickly. Certainly, neither Hirdreig or Noné seemed to agree with her choice. Both hovering reluctantly as she stood, resolute and yet teary-eyed in the woods South of Cresentine. They had been good friends to her, almost from the first moment she set foot into Littlebridge, and she loved them for being here with her at the last.
This isn't exactly how I thought my story would end she thought, fingers trailing over the brightly enameled red box. After all I've seen and done, first in the shadow of my mother and now following along with my friends, to find my death in the bite of a wandering hound.
The young elf woman of mixed heritage, a bard-in-training, wished she could say she had no regrets about her tragically short life (well, short for an elf, at any rate). After the vicious disagreement that ended with she and her mother parting ways, and the disasterous attempt to blend with her father's people in a haughty little elven village in the North, Anaïs had made it her goal to find her mother and reconcile. She regretted that despite looking in all the places her mother spoke of with the most fondness, she had not yet found her. She regretted not finishing the glorious tale she'd begun recently - a high adventure story featuring a large, burly barbarian warrior, gruff but wise and gentle in spite of the great violence he was capable of, and a beautiful half-elven priestess with an intriguing accent and deep, throaty laugh. She especially regretted never finding out first-hand, just what all those sappy love songs and tear-enducing poems her mother had taught her really meant.
Maybe they'll find a cure someday - if they ever get off their duffs in Littlebridge. Maybe this doesn't have to be the closing chapter of my story
"I vill miss you, Anaïs."
"I will miss you two, too." Her voice did not break, though she felt tears welling up in her eyes again. "You have been good friends to me. Noné, you may keep the glasses. I know you admired them."
The woman gave her a heart-felt but remarkably sad smile and accepted the gift; a matched pair of crystal snifters that were all she had of her father. "Zhank you."
Her eyes fell upon Hirdreig as the older man sighed, but she didn't think there was anything else she could say to him. I hope he understands, I just cannot take the chance on becoming one of those those things. The priestess said there was no hope for me; and having seen what I've seen of them I will not draw another breath knowing in a matter of days or hours, I could be hurting those same people I tried so hard to save. If I could put an arrow into my own heart, as I did to those disease-crazed people before, I would.
A nod to her friend was the last thing she knew; the priestess' blazing greatsword seared through her delicate body. For a moment, the agony was intense, and then - just as Noné had promised, there was only cool, floating bliss as she ascended.