Doom Upon All The World

Chapter 21: Adelaide

Anthony had asked her to meet him in their mother's old quarters.

She doesn't like to go there but he seemed adamant that that was where they should meet.  When she arrives, her dislike of the room is forgotten.  Two painted canvases hang side by side on the wall.

A present Anthony hated that he could never give her was now his to give. 

"Surprise."  Anthony says as she covers her mouth with her hand.  Tears well in Adelaide's hazelnut eyes, the same ones as in the painting of their mother. 

She is speechless for several moments.  She doesn't have any memories of them, nothing.  She's heard stories of them over the years but never had she seen their faces.  Now, seeing them for the first time, two people that she held an invisible love for all her life, breaks her resolve.

She weeps tears of utter joy.  The resemblance of their father in Anthony is striking.  And the beauty of their mother so ruggedly defined in his features.  But the longer she looks at them, the more she sees herself.  

The waves of curly blind hair.  The dark eyes.  The strong jaw.  The serious, stoic, often maddening gaze.  The light blush and thin lipped grin.  The freckled bronzed skin.  Everything she sees in them, she has seen every morning when she looks in the mirror.  Tears stain her cheeks wildly. 

Anthony doesn't try to comfort her.  To draw her in would be to take her gaze away from the paintings.  So he just stands there, and the he speaks.  "I keep trying to think of what mother would say to you.  Seeing you and Julien together so often has made me think of them more often than I did before.  And with the anniversary so close makes me wonder what they would think of what we've become, of who we are."  He looks down on her tear sodden face and smiles.  

"Mother would be so proud of you.  Her pride and joy.  She loved me, loved us, more than anything, more than father, I sometimes thought.  For years I screamed at myself on the inside because you didn't know them, didn't love them like I did, didn't get the chance to.  I was angry.  I felt cheated.  I tried for the longest time to put their faces on parchment but at that point, even I couldn't remember all the details of their faces."  He sighs and looks between his sister and his parents.  

"But then Mythalus gave me these.  He found their memories, left behind as some sort of echo when they... passed.  And from them, he painted these."  He presents her with the sketchbook, his expression uncertain.  "And drew these.  However, they are quite... intimate, should you look at them, be warned."  She chuckles lightly in disbelief and flips carelessly through the pages.

Hers eyes widen.  Her face heats up with blush.  And she snaps the book shut.  "Yup.  Never unseeing that."  She mutters, squeezing her eyes shut as Anthony snickers to himself, earning an elbow between his ribs.  

"Mythalus painted these?"  Adelaide questions, examining them closely, running her thin fingers over the material.  Anthony nods though from where she stands, he doubts she sees it.  "They're beautiful.  So,.."  She begins to go on but something stops her.

Suddenly the room is upside down and the world is not right.  Her stomach does flips in her abdomen.  Her breath is heavy and labored.  She puts a hand on the wall to steady herself.  Anthony notices the change automatically and is at her side in an instant.  She waves him off putting a hand to her head as her vision pulses and her mind seems too vibrate in her skull.  

He relaxes a little, and that's when she falls.  Clambering to her knees, she clutches her head in her hands, the whispers filling her ears.  They shout so loudly that she can't hear Anthony screaming for her, or yelling for help, or begging her to answer him.  The pain behind her eyes is excruciating.  It's blinding and bewildering.  And that's what really scares her.  The fact that it came on so fast, without her knowledge.

It throbs and vibrates in her head, seeming to bounce off the walls of her skull, echoing the same thing over and over again.  Then, all at once, it's gone.  Adelaide is left with nothing more than ragged breath, and the memory of horrible pain.  "Addie?  Are you okay?"  His hand is on her back as she tries to sit up.  But before anything else, she has to get the message out, it's the only way they'll leave her be.  

"It's them."  She whispers, out of breath.  "The Eva... Evann..." She stumbles trying to pronounce it.  "It's an elven word, something I don't understand."  Anthony straightens.  "Evanuris."  He mutters quietly.  Adelaide goes still and looks him in his honey colored eyes.  "They're coming."  Her voice is faint, but the gravity of her words is far from lost on him.