• Solo • The Forever Box

[Eliza Soule]

Date: 2nd of Ashan, 723

It was late in the morning and there were any number of things that Eliza ought to be doing. She could be occupying herself at her gallery with the uninspiring work of going over the books, crunching the numbers and taking account of her inventory. Immortals knew it wouldn't do her any harm to familiarize herself better with the more mundane aspects of running a business; even one focused not on numbers or lists, but art and imagination. She'd learned, or rather come to her own conclusion that business is the work of a practical mind; the tools of the trade being pencils, lists and carefully kept books. The artist however relied on different tools in order to commit to canvas what they make of the world as looked at, not just with their eyes, but with heart and soul.

Still, while accounts received and profit margins failed to inspire her, Eliza understood that the better kept the books, the freer she was to create; to follow her imagination wherever it took her. Which meant that this late morning and its favorable light could have found her upstairs at her easel doing what she felt she did best. Instead, not even out of her nightdress yet, she'd found herself down in the basement of Story Book Manor, where the only measurable light was cast by a couple of lamps mounted to the naked supports; creating eerily flickering shadows across the floor, ceiling and walls; along with a smaller version that she'd carried down with her: An old hooded lamp that cast a dull golden puddle of light on the floor where she currently sat, knees drawn up together and bare feet tucked underneath the folds of her robe.

She'd wandered down to the basement some time earlier for reasons she could no longer recall. But now having lost track of the time, Eliza found herself confronted by an old wooden chest that she'd dragged out of the darkest of basement corners. She'd had it put there herself when she'd first purchased and moved into the manor, just as she'd done dozens of times before over the past two centuries as she'd moved on from one place to another.

Eberhardt, Eliza's mysterious and otherworldly little primate companion was perched upon her shoulder, looking on curiously as the daughter of Ymiden gently brushed a thin layer of dust from the chest's domed lid; then paused before turning the small, ornate brass key that she'd left in the lock. "What is it?" Eberhardt asked, and Eliza's smile in response was a sentimental one; a combination of melancholy and fond recollection.

"It's the Forever Box," she said after a long pause, during which she'd considered leaving the chest just as it was. But it struck her that if this, the second of Ashan, was a trial dedicated to remembering the fallen, then perhaps there was no more fitting time than this to revisit the past, and dip into a box full of memories.

[Eliza Soule]

Date: 2nd of Ashan, 723

"It's just a box full of faded paper, dogeared notebooks, drawings, smooth stones and odd little trinkets!" Eberhardt exclaimed after she'd scampered down off of Eliza's shoulder and perched on the edge of the chest. There she could get a much better look at what was inside, but having done so, the little monkey sounded less than impressed. "It's a box full of memories," the daughter of Ymiden said. "More than two hundred arcs worth of memories." Eberhardt wasn't convinced that this alone made the box a special or magical one, but nevertheless pressed further. "Why did you call it the forever box?"

Eliza smiled, pausing to reach into the box and pull out an old pipe carved from ivory that looked to be nearly two centuries old. Though even the faintest scent of tobacco that might once have lingered on well past the original owner's death must be gone by now, she nonetheless lifted the bowl closer to her face and gently inhaled. Running her fingertips gently, almost reverently, over the raised design of the pipe, she finally said, "I didn't. It was Poppy that gave me the chest, a very long time ago, and told me what it was called."

Suddenly Eberhardt's own expression was more solemn, almost as reverent seeming as Eliza's. She might not understand what it was that made the particulars of this box more special than any other chest made of wood. But suddenly she did understand why it seemed to mean so much to Eliza, and why she'd dragged it from one place to another over the course of hundreds of arcs. Poppy. Grandfather. The one who Eliza had witnessed coming into the world; the one who she'd watched grow up and grow old; and the one who'd grown into the most beloved grandfather of all. The memory of whose death so very long ago, still managed to bring a tear to Eliza's eye when she remembered or spoke of him aloud.

"When I was very young and saw him growing older, saw him moving more slowly and becoming more feeble, I became very upset," Eliza remembered while placing the pipe gently back into the chest. "He told me it was simply the way of things and I told him that I didn't want anyone else to die. I didn't want him to die and leave me behind like all the others had done." There'd been so many of them. Even among the ranks mortalborn, because Eliza had grown and aged so much more slowly than others did; because she'd remained a child so much longer than others, there was more family whose faces she remembered firsthand. She'd watched them grow from cradle to grave, and then leave her behind.

"I wanted him to be different. I told him I didn't want him to die. Ever. So he gave me this box," she explained, "to put all my memories in. He said all mortals would someday leave the material plane. Even him. But it doesn't mean that we've lost them completely. He said that what made them, them would stay with us until someone remembers and speaks their name aloud for the very last time. So long as I remember him, he'll only be just a thought away." It was a very old box and so long as she remembered to look both ways before crossing the street and didn't start any fights that she couldn't possibly finish, chances were it would grow much, much older still before she herself became a memory for somebody else. So in a sense, Poppy lived on and would so long as Eliza drew breath.

Most of what she'd put in the chest held very little if any monetary value at all. Faded letters, notebooks full of drawings, chipped glass marbles, a tarnished spoon, a stained scrap of cloth from an old quilt: a collection of odd little pieces of hundreds of lives lived fully in some cases and barely at all in others. Eliza still remembered each name attached to each item, and if she closed her eyes, she could still see their faces. From the two spinster aunts, her own mother's sisters who'd loved her until they too passed away after nearly a century of life, to the small smiling boy, Dafydd, with his shock of white unruly hair and cornflower blue eyes, lost at just two arcs of age from a fever.

"Who did this belong to?" Eberhardt asked suddenly after she'd jumped down into the chest to rummage through it's contents, looking for something more interesting that scraps of cloth and glass marbles. She'd pulled on the end of a delicate gold chain and once dragged free of the rest, a small pendant dangled there at it's end. . It was a closed filigree gold ball pendant decorated all around with raised vines and other plant life, and ringed with several simple flowers, their petals formed from small opals. It was very old; perhaps two hundred arcs or more.

"Aunt Constance," Eliza said, and reached out to take the necklace to let it dangle near the lamp where it spun and caught the light. "I remember how much I loved it and wanted to wear it. But she said it was very, very special and that I would have to wait until she was gone. Then it would be mine to wear whenever I pleased."

"What made it so special? Is it magic?" Eberhardt asked. It was a good question and while Eliza wasn't exactly prepared to admit it, she hadn't thought of the necklace in ages. "To be honest, I'm not sure. Aunt Constance always did have a flair for the dramatic. It's pretty, it's probably worth quite a bit. It's probably not magic..."

Then again, now that her curiosity had been aroused just as surely as the necklace had been pulled out of the box, Eliza found herself wanting more than ever to discover just what Constance had meant by special. She smiled and reached into the chest once more, and pulled out an old notebook with a few blank pages left in it. Then rummaging around a bit more, she found a couple of charcoal pencils to draw with. "but I think I know how we can find out what made it so special, and maybe why she wouldn't let me wear it back then."

[Eliza Soule]

Eliza couldn't quite remember the last time she'd taken the necklace out of the chest and looked at it, much less asked herself why her aunt had thought it so precious that she'd worn it day and night, and had rarely been seen without it. But Constance had been an odd, and prideful old bird from most accounts and so Eliza had been more than willing to leave it at that. Which made it interesting that now, after all of this time, Eliza was suddenly keen on solving a nearly two hundred year old mystery.

Maybe it was simply Eberhardt's questions that had reignited a spark of her own curiosity, or maybe it was because she was feeling particularly sentimental this trial. It was after all, a trial of remembrance. "Aunt Constance has been gone a very long time," her little primate friend reminded her. "You can't go back and ask her, can you?" Eliza simply smiled and shook her head as she laid the notebook open on her lap with a piece of charcoal in her hand, and kept the necklace and pendant nestled gently in her other hand. "No, but I don't need to. The pendant itself will give me the answers I'm looking for."

It was her Immortal Father's influence that granted her, by birth, the ability to look back into time in search of the answers she sought. To observe the many, fleeting details of lives lived, of origins and meanings; people, places, things; to see into the past with her mind's eye while rendering on parchment, canvas or paper, an image, just a moment of a long history that might tell her just what she wanted to know. Of course, Eliza was no more in control of what she drew, any more than she controlled what she was [/i]shown[/i].This was how her mortal born ability Deja Vu worked.

If the talkative Eberhardt said anything more after that, at least for the next few moments, it would be as if in an echo chamber and Eliza heard none of it. Deep in a state of observant meditation as she focused on the necklace cradled gently in her hand, she witnessed more than two hundred arcs go by in brief but ordered snippets, details, a timeline racing by, moving from the present, deeper and deeper into the past.

To be honest, much of that timeline was rather unimpressive, since the necklace had spent a larger part of it's history laying loose at the bottom of a locked chest, buried under any number of other sentimental trinkets. But then there were the many glimpses of Constance wearing the necklace as she went about the many days of her life. All the while, Eliza sketched, an image not necessarily of her own choosing taking shape on the page. It was the work of a grandmaster, like any of her other creations. But unlike the others, this one was done in a trance like state.

Much of what Eliza saw, sparked old memories. Constance had loved the idea of gardening, but her thumb was a notoriously black one, and not at all green. She hadn't been able to keep even the most hardy and drought resistant plants alive. And so, naturally Eliza had been curious when, as if overnight, Constance's garden had begun to thrive, almost in spite of her aunt's efforts...or lack thereof. Eliza remembered how proud her aunt had been, how others had been awed by and had complimented the beautiful, lush and colorful oasis that had sprung up around her home. Strangely, it had seemed catching, since their gardens as well had begun to thrive.

Eliza had been too distracted by other things back then to have made much of it, so far as mysteries went. But there in those flashes of memory was perhaps a clue. Just a glimpse, and a very brief one, of Constance at market, being handed the necklace and pendant by an impossibly old man. The old man winked as the transaction took place, and Constance had winked in return. There was something about that old man, just for a split second; a gleam, a youthful, almost eternal twinkle in the eyes, that suggested he was not at all as ordinary as he seemed. Perhaps as old and in fact much, much older. "Ashan," Eliza whispered aloud, but to no one else in particular.

The Immortal of Spring, she thought as more images flashed by; much more fleeting than ever before. Until finally, her trance broke and Eliza glanced down at the image on the page. Ashan himself, standing with palm open much like her own was now, with the pendant resting there, shiny and new. Contemplating that for a moment longer, it came to Eliza that way back then, it had been more than Constance's, and her neighbor's gardens that had thrived. The whole area had seemed to spring to life, to an extent, strangely, even out of season. But she couldn't recall that it had rained any more than usual. In fact she didn't remember that anything about the weather during that time had been the least bit remarkable. All she knew for sure, was that it was only the case, after Constance had begun wearing her necklace. The one that she never took off.

Eliza smiled suddenly, and placed the necklace and pendant around her own neck. "Loshova. Spring's Bounty," she whispered. Pondering all that had occurred during the past few weeks, the terrible ice storms and the damaging pirate attacks, the area, it's people and it's livestock, could probably use a little more spring cheer and the abundance it brought. And so like Constance had done, but for different reasons, Eliza would keep the necklace on. Perhaps having being freed from the forever box once more, that bit of eternal magic woven into the pendant might spring to life once again.

[Eliza Soule]

Rewards Requested

Notes/Warnings: No

Thread: The Forever Box
City/Area: Beacon

OOC Note: The pendant/necklace is a pre-approved renown reward, as is the method of identifying IC it's nature, origins and purpose. Approval thread here

Renown: Reviewer's Discretion
Wealth Points: No.
- If you are claiming Wealth Points, please link to your Wealth Thread for this season, as Wealth Points can not be awarded before this is completed:
Collaboration: No
Local Language Thread? No.

!	Message from: Fate
	Done!

[Fate]

Your Review

Eliza Soule

Hello Eliza. It nice to see you back and read more of Eliza’s threads. This was an excellent way of bringing an signature item into the story. The Forever chest sounds life a beautiful thing, and especially for someone like Eliza a good way to keep memories. I look forward to seeing what adventures she gets up to with that item. Thank you for the Read. Fate.

• XP: 10
• Knowledges:
  • Business Management: business is the work of a practical mind; the tools of the trade being pencils, lists and carefully kept books.
  • Business Management: the better kept the books, the freer she was to create
• Loot:
  • Magical Necklace (Approved Renown Item)

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this review - drop me a PM.