The Arcane Ones

Elai

The first time Elai woke up under an unfamiliar ceiling, he was only two months away from turning fifteen. Two months away from earning his freedom, his ticket into society. He was so close to leaving The Home behind him, so ready to get out, and yet, the unexpected early change in surroundings gave him a kind of cold anxiety that sat in his stomach. At once upon opening his eyes groggily and throwing his body into sitting position, he realized with a sinking certainty that he was most definitely still inside the Ilnathin Children's Home, in some room hidden at a top storey he didn't know the building had. He could tell it was the top storey and not a middle storey because of the peculiar ceiling. From each corner, the wall slanted upwards to again meet in one fifth point at the top. He knew right away that the roof above him was pointed to the sky, just like some of the buildings visible from his dorm window downstairs. Thick wooden beams also criss-crossed from each corner, not unlike those in The Home's dining hall, but these ones, of course, were not embedded with the ceiling above, but instead, remained horizontal. The beams were low enough to touch with his hands outstretched. Elai had only ever walked below flat ceilings, and slept on the bottom mattress of a bunk bed. He had become so used to the closeness of everything around him, he had come to depend on it. Now that he sat sprawled on a wide, open bed with so much space around and above him, it almost seemed suffocating. Like the room was a vacuum sucking the air right out of his lungs. 

After some moments of getting a grip on his new reality, shaking away questions like why am I here and what is going to happen next, like a ringing in his ear the door from across the room beckoned for his attention. It's dark presence along the white washed walls was enough to inspire nightmarish visions of what lay beyond. Elai had always imagined there was more than meets the eye about The Home, with how the Matrons spent so much time on the other side of a locked door behind the kitchens. The children were scolded if caught trying to creep toward it while one of them unlocked it, but those that supposedly saw behind the door before it closed again only reported a dark hallway. Elai spent another long lapse of time glued to the mattress, unable to gather the courage to make a sound much less creep towards that foreboding doorway. But he finally mustered the effort and, barefoot and quiet as silk along tile, he tiptoed over the rough wood boards and the messily handwoven rug in the center of the room. He saw his hand, the doorknob was cold, dirty brass and it turned. 

But then it stopped short. 

A cold wave of relief washed over his body. It was so much easier to be locked inside a strange room than to face whatever mystery lie beyond the door. So, with now weak legs but a lighter heart, he turned around to finally face the room with mere curiosity. He hadn't forgotten what was obviously the reason he wasn't where he normally slept, but somehow those heavy thoughts about his life and place in the world felt less important in a new place. He could feel them though, those dark, heavy thoughts, lurking at the edge of his mind. He felt them like cold fingers gripping his shoulders, right up at his neck, hard and firm like a father might lead a child to a mess they made. But the lace curtains projected watery shadows across the floor and along the opposite wall, early afternoon light giving the small little area a warm yellow glow. There was no decoration on the walls, but there was one small thin table at the foot of the bed. It was just shorter than the mattress, so he hadn't noticed it from where he sat before. The woven rug was between it and the door, an oval shape with colors and patterns messily entwined in the weaving. Over all, it was just so like the rest of the Home, simple and mostly colorless. The sheets were white, the bedposts uncarved and plain, the floor sanded smooth but unpolished. The rug and laced curtains were all that existed outside of the same white box the Matrons stuffed every Ilnathin child into. 

Shaking his head again, Elai gently swept the curtains aside before those cold, cold fingers covered his eyes. 

The view was sadly uneventful. It was even less revealing of the outside world than his had been, in the dorms. He used to sit on the floor and dream away, watching people walk by and the clouds above drift listlessly into the peaks of the mountains that loomed above the rooftops. He couldn't help but be disappointed that this new window he found himself in the company of was not only much smaller than his old one, but also too high up along the wall to see out of from the floor. He would have to stand up tall if he wanted to look out, but all that could be seen was a bricked wall and it's smoke stack. Not even a mountain peeked up from behind it, and the street below was shrouded behind something greyish protruding out from the Home. It was then that finally, those fingers were slowly tapping away at his shoulders, his face, his head. Pulling at his hair, his ugly white hair and poking his sad, colorless eyes. Seeking refuge from all this empty space giving the thoughts room to breathe, he dove into the mattress and under the sheets, trying to block everything out with sleep. If only he could just sleep all of this away and wake up miles from the Home, in another Teldom across the Solo Sea. Sleep came, but it was light and brimming with the usual terrors. 

In any case, Elai had no idea just how much he really had to carry atop his small, pale shoulders, and yet those nightmares felt heavier than they ever had.