( WRITING ★ SAMPLES )

She hated travel.

The very idea of leaving her tiny home and stepping out into a world that had betrayed her and harmed her so many times over left her a mixture of anxious and disgusted, moving through her house to gather the things she would need – herbs, some paper, a quill and a small pot of ink, the necessities that would allow her to cast her magic even on the road. Other people might feel weighed down by the mass of things she needed to summon a simple spell but she hardly cared; if it was a choice between survival and a few extra pouches she knew which she would suffer. It wasn't as though there was anyone to judge her – no, no one cared enough to sugges tthat she employ a bag or a sack around her shoulders. It was better that way.

The door, made of roots and vines, coiled shut behind her as she stepped out and breathed in the air around her. As much as she enjoyed using her legs while she walked there were other, easier ways for her to travel unnoticed – especially when she had somewhere she wanted to be, and fast. Adjusting her stance, Lauralae closed her eyes and summoned the power inside of her, the flickering energy that she could always feel; it haunted her even when she was asleep, like a fire that was never doused, an impossible storm that wrecked her limbs and weighed her down.

Slowly, as though her body was turning into dust rather than another feral creature, her limbs twisted and she moved, falling onto all fours. In the place of the woman now sat a wolf, as dark as the night with eyes wider and brighter than her own human ones, glancing around the forest and lifting it's snout to sniff the air before she huffed out a noise. There was no one nearby, which was a small mercy at best. It takes her a few moments to adjust to the new world view, to having four legs instead of two, but soon she is off, trotting along and scenting out the right path.

Escaping the forest isn't the difficult part of her journey. What proves to be hard is keeping herself safe as she makes her way out of the wooded shadows and into the path of people that might trip and stumble over her form or see her as nothing more than a predator and raise sword or magic to try and take her down. She keeps her head down, for the most part, darting between bushes and small oasis of trees as a means of protection, safe in the darkness as she has always been. Lauralae is no stranger to the hard part of moving around for her coin, not anymore, and she finds the calm peaceful at times. She can't use her magic to summon a means to fly through the air and she knows that she doesn't have the right brand of power to let her travel using the means that the newcomers (and that's a far better word than whatever the rest of the people she's met use for them) are gifted with. Oh, no, you must be a friend of the court for that and Lauralae is a friend to no one.

Around her the forest creatures dart out of her way and whenever she sees someone coming to close she lowers herself to the ground, fur and hackles rising as she growls low and deep in her throat. That's normally enough to turn anyone with sense away – who wants to attempt to best a dangerous, feral wolf, after all? Few people, and she's glad of that. There's power in her disguise and she abuses it whenever she can.

It's only when her faster canine legs tire that she's forced to move through into a village, sneaking back and using her nose to scent out a tavern or an inn, letting her body twist and shift so she can stand, limbs stretching out as she becomes human again. Sliding through the door of the tavern she pauses, her wide eyes taking in the patrons, assessing them, before she finds a table and sits. Tomorrow is another day and she is exhausted – both from the travelling and the magic she has to use each time she becomes a wolf. Soon she will have escaped the closeness of her home and begun the longer journey to her destination: for now, she rests.

“Do not touch me.”

Her voice is low when she speaks and she backs away as though she's a mouse cornered by a cat; rather than stepping forward to face the stranger she buries herself in the cloak, the hood thick and heavy around her face. The darkness, as it has always been, is her one source of protection and she revels in it even as her eyes move and roam over the figure in front of her. It takes her a moment to gather her words but, when she does, her voice is quiet, almost like the whisper of the wind on a stormy day.

“You come here and expect that this world will open its arms for you and welcome you, cherish you, as though it is simply waiting for you to touch it with your grace and warmth. Are all of your kind so foolish, so thoughtless? Do you truly believe that the King and Queen, whichever court you choose to dedicate yourself to, will be kind to you? Just? True? Or are you so deep in the mire of your own foolishness that you cannot see beyond the nose on your face?” Each insult is thrown as a hiss as she moves forward, her eyes flickering and her hands shaking. She is far too used to her own solitude; finding a person willing to speak to her is daunting, frightening, and she rejects it outright.

Her hands grip at nothing, clenched tight, her nails digging into her skin before she manages to breathe out and find words once more. Her head lifts and Lauralae can do nothing more than stare, her expression turning into something more stern and serious.

“You come to find me because of my reputation, I imagine. You seek – what? Vengeance? Information? Security? Perhaps blackmail, that is what they all desire. Knowledge is the most dangerous weapon any man or woman can dare weild and so many ignore it, shrugging it off as nothing more than a librarian's work. How stupid can any creature be?” Slowly, she steps forward, swallowing back the rising pressure of fear and panic inside of her before she breathes out. “Ask me what you came here for. Tell me what you desire. Pay me and be gone – I will get you what you want.”

She walks forward with a quiet, stern gaze, her eyes moving over the plains in front of the town in front of her. Each step is soft and near silent, the shadow under her hood masking her face before she breathes out. Her interest here is made to be unnoticed, made to be as shadowlike as she can manage, and it’s only when she stops, here and there, to try and find something to barter with, something to trade to get a book or a text, a scroll, that she changes her direction. Lauralae is not here to mingle with the crowds and learn how to play by the rules being introduced; she is here to get what she can before she moves on, to learn whatever she can manage without getting dragged down into the alliances that swan around her.

Sometimes, when she hears a voice that’s too familiar to her, she turns, twisting her fabrics around her, eyes blazing in the darkness.

She refuses to ignore her ghosts and she goes to them, breathing out and feeling eyes on her that don’t really exist. Her hands shake until she clenches them, the dark colour of her gloves hiding the pulse of magic she can feel under her skin, destroying her from the inside out.

Anyone walking by may notice the figure, the way she never seems to stay still, the way her eyes go here and there, taking in the world around her and dismissing it even as she sits in fear, but she will ignore them as much as she can. Only people with books, with knowledge, are of use to her and she dares not speak to anyone else.

What does distract her is when she feels the prickle of magic that she’s come to know as a shard. Something that is unique, people brought from worlds that she cannot begin to imagine that might have knowledge that could save her from the creature she is becoming. Her eyes light up when she feels that familiar touch and she follows them, a few steps behind, creeping behind them even as she dips her hands towards books for sale and maps that could lead her to hidden troves.

Today she has moved to the North, to the lands inhabited by what she knows to be Unseelie, and she thinks that this might now be the time to move to learn more about the warfare that is beginning. People that come here, brought by Morla (a woman she has never met and hopes never to have the chance to, a vague knowledge that she must be like the women of the Aellyn land, powerful and unforgiving) may have knowledge that can help her - and Lauralae has things she can offer in return.

She knows the lands around her, she knows the people, where to find books, where to find herbs, flowers, poisons. She knows who you can trust to carry out a murder and which inn will serve as the best place to sleep without fear of theft; she knows these lands because she has lived in them, and she relishes the chance to offer her knowledge for the hope that she might find her own kind of freedom.

When she moves to their side, sliding up behind them, her lips twitch and she leans forward, hoping her meaning comes across. She is sly, she knows, but not so sly that her meaning isn’t obvious;

“What do you know of ‘riddles in the dark’?”