Memoria

Vanguard: Calder City

@Colonel Sep

What show is that? Looks like something from that Vampire anime with the magic lol

I'm thinking more like...

Vanguard: Calder City

The Music Teacher

M A R T H O L D F O X
M A R T H O L D F O X

^{"There now. That's a little closer to music."}

◈ C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T◈ C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T _________________________________________________________ (FC: Kedar Williams-Stirling; Dialogue: Pale Blue) _________________________________________________________ ◈ S U M M A R Y◈ S U M M A R Y _________________________________________________________ Marth Benjamin Oldfox _________________________________________________________ December 3rd | 25 _________________________________________________________ Single | Male | Homosexual ◈ S T A T S◈ S T A T S _________________________________________________________ Height | 5'9" _________________________________________________________ Hair Color | Black _________________________________________________________ Eye Color | Dark Brown _________________________________________________________ Hometown | Calder City -

H I S T O R Y H I S T O R Y ___________________________________________________________________________________ ◈ His childhood was not unhappy in any simple, merciful way, because it was not unhappy at all in the usual sense. It was loud, loving, strange, crowded, lavender-scented, and full of the ordinary little storms that pass through big families and leave everyone at the breakfast table anyway. Marth was one of six siblings, raised in a house where someone was always singing in the next room, arguing over toast, painting by a window, dancing barefoot through a hallway, or calling for a missing shoe that had somehow found its way into a cupboard. Marth's parents were loving, eccentric, and almost impossible to embarrass. His father was a painter, the sort of man who forgot time when color was involved, and his mother was a dancer who treated music as if it were passing through the body. His maternal grandparents lived close enough to feel like part of the walls. Together, the whole family helped run The Old Lavender House, a grand lavender-painted Victorian home passed down through generations and kept alive as a bed and breakfast. There were guest rooms with old quilts, staircases that complained at night, vases of drying flowers, and mornings full of eggs, coffee, sheet music, paint water, and relatives speaking over one another with great affection. But Marth's gift first announced itself through pain. Not his own, though it felt like his own when it came. His paternal grandfather was dying from a long, brutal illness, and Marth, still young enough to believe adults could keep the worst things behind closed doors, heard him mentally crying out in agony. The voice arrived inside him with no warning, intimate and unbearable, a private suffering that should have belonged to one man and suddenly belonged to a child too. That was the first time Marth understood he could hear what others never meant to give him. It was also his first real grief. After his grandfather died, music became the place Marth put what he could not bear to hear anymore. He discovered his singing voice almost by accident, then learned one instrument, then another, as if every new sound gave the pain a different room to rest in. His family, artsy and gentle and a little hippie in their old-fashioned way, did not teach him to fear his gift. They taught him restraint. They taught him privacy. They taught him that tenderness was not the same thing as permission, and that even love should knock before entering. Now Marth works as a middle school music teacher, which suits him so profoundly it seems less like a profession than a natural extension of his soul. He uses his telepathy carefully, rarely reaching deeper than surface thoughts unless he must, and even then with the unease of someone touching a door that may not belong to him. His life has been, for the most of it, lovely, ordinary if not magical, and kind, which is perhaps why recent discomfort sits so strangely on him. Since ending his first and only relationship after discovering his boyfriend had cheated, Marth has found himself visited by the kind of trouble he has never quite known what to do with: a scorned ex-lover appearing unannounced and drunk at his apartment in the middle of the night, wounded, insistent, and careless with the peace Marth has always tried to keep. It has left a lingering unease in him, a feeling of being watched for, wanted wrongly, interrupted in his own life. Marth is not used to fear arriving with a familiar face. Still, he tries to be sensible. He tries to be kind. He tries not to confuse pity with invitation, or softness with surrender. Most days, he succeeds. Most days, he makes gentleness look like its own kind of music.◈ A B I L I T I E S A B I L I T I E S __________________________________________________________________________________ ◈ Telepathy: Marth is a telepath with telempathic undertones, allowing him to read and hear the surface thoughts of others with buried emotional impressions such as the fear, shame, grief, affection, anger, or calm that arrive to him as tone beneath the language, like hearing the chord under a melody. With focus, he can press deeper to reach into memories, though doing so requires more effort and carries a heavier moral weight. He can also communicate telepathically, placing his voice inside another's thoughts with a softness that can feel like comfort, warning, or trespass, depending on how gently he enters. Through this connection, others can respond to him with their thoughts in return. The telempathic undertone of his power grants him light influence of emotional states through telepathic contact. Marth cannot rewrite someone's heart or fully control their emotions like a true Empath, but rather he can project a kind of emotional tuning and resonance in small measures. When threatened, he can turn that inner voice harsher, bombarding someone with his own thoughts in a sudden psychic rush meant to disorient, overwhelm, and confuse, causing mental discomfort rather than physical harm. The telempathic aspect of this allows his thoughts to interrupt how someone's brain interprets sensations like sight, breath, pain, balance, fear, and numbness. So while the body remains physically intact and unharmed, Marth can use his telepathy to press a telempathic suggestion into someone's mind. He cannot make the body perform impossible damage, only convince the mind of a sensation. The effect only lasts while Marth focuses on projecting it, so it is temporary and completely psychosomatic. The target experiences the sensation as real enough to react because the body obeys the mind's panic. A person who thinks they have gone blind may stumble and freeze. Or a person who believes they are being suffocated may begin gasping and clutching their throat. He usually needs eye contact or a strong telepathic lock to do it well and it lasts only seconds unless he keeps concentrating and even then, he may experience psychic recoil if he pushes too hard or too long because Marth's naturally empathic nature makes him susceptible to feeling some echo of what he inflicts. ◈ Mindlight: The harsher aspect of his gift is a visible psychic manifestation that blooms at the center of his forehead as a swirling, rippling orb of pale pink mindlight, luminous as a small tide caught beneath skin and starshine. It appears only when he summons it, and once it forms, he must choose: hold, fire, or dismiss. Nothing happens passively. The orb must be released and must reach its target for the effect to take hold. A quick fire is rougher and stronger, capable of stunning someone or knocking them unconscious, but it often comes with an uncomfortable psychic recoil against him. A steadier hold allows for cleaner effects, such as sleep or direct emotional influence, while the longest hold can brush memory itself, requiring the most control and the greatest restraint. Because the orb is visible, it gives him away. Everyone can see the moment his power gathers. And because he can dismiss it, every use becomes a small moral trial: the charged, breathless pause between mercy and violation. P E R S O N A L I T Y P E R S O N A L I T Y __________________________________________________________________________________ ◈ Marth is still in the way a room is still after music has ended: not empty, only softly holding the last note. At twenty-five, he has the calm, picturesque manner of someone raised in a loving, somewhat eccentric home, among old songs, strange little family traditions, and five other siblings who taught him tenderness through teasing, fussing, and the occasional merciless correction. He is warm, easy-going, and storybook-classical in the bones, with an elegance that never seems rehearsed. He is not stern, exactly, but he does have standards, and his quiet judgment usually arrives as a tilted head, a gentle “Mm,” or a look that makes nonsense feel suddenly very aware of itself. There is an open warmth in him that often reaches his eyes before it reaches his voice. He laughs easily, sometimes at himself first, with the kind of soft, surprised brightness that makes a room feel less guarded. His care has a sheltering quality to it, old-fashioned and faintly enchanted: a lamp left on, a scarf placed over someone’s shoulders, a hand resting briefly on a student’s music folder before a recital, a half-hummed melody while he straightens chairs after class. As a middle school music teacher, he is patient with noise because he understands that noise is often only feeling before it learns where to go. He notices when a child has gone quiet, when laughter is covering shame, when a wrong note has become the whole world for someone small and trying very hard. He does not make comfort into a performance. He simply comes nearer and makes the room easier to be in. Beneath that gentle composure is a sentimental heart he cannot always keep neatly folded away. Marth feels deeply, though never with much melodrama. A remembered song can make him wistful. An old photograph can still him. A sweet, ordinary kindness can catch him off guard and leave him blinking it away with a little laugh, as if embarrassed by his own softness. There is something mystical about him, too, but not grandly so. More like a man who suspects every house has a favorite hour, every child has a hidden rhythm, and every silence is waiting for the right note to open it. Still, he tries to be sensible. He can be pragmatic when needed, even if his pragmatism often arrives with a teacup, a sigh, and a little too much feeling tucked underneath. He does not need to rescue people from themselves. But sometimes he tries. Not because he wants control, and not because he thinks himself wiser than everyone else, though he can be a little guilty of both in small, harmless ways. He does it because he is soft-hearted, because he believes people are often braver when someone quietly believes for them first. Marth is not tragic. He is not broken. He is simply tender in a world that can be careless with tender things. Most days, he makes gentleness look like its own kind of music. ◈ M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S __________________________________________________________________________________ ◈ Marth has no major goals right now, too busy focusing on his job as a middle school music teacher and helping run the family bed and breakfast to think beyond the present moment. Perhaps future events will drive him toward greater ambitions.◈

Thread Deletions Request

Hi @LegendBegins,

Any update on this request?

Thread Deletions Request

Hello,

Can you delete the following threads please?

roleplayerguild.com/topics/194650-wel…

roleplayerguild.com/topics/195673-the…

roleplayerguild.com/topics/195551-the…

roleplayerguild.com/topics/194696-god…

roleplayerguild.com/topics/194729-god…

roleplayerguild.com/topics/194367-rom…

Thank You! :)

The Season of the Enlightened

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_{Present - Late Morning 《》 Lady Melody Heathering 《》 The Haven for Wayward Girls 《》Melody@MemoriaPrudence@PatientBeanMorris@Blizz}

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The moment Morris gave his faint agreement—his consent cloaked in duty rather than delight—Melody offered no exuberant thanks, only the softest smile, like the end of a lullaby. “That is most reassuring,” she murmured, her voice a silken thread stitched into the bustle of the room. “I believe the girls will be safer with your presence." She was gathering her gloves when movement caught the edge of her vision, a tall, skeletal figure with great antlers, moving near soundlessly across the far end of the room. It moved with such eerie poise that it seemed not to walk but to drift, each step too elegant for the mortal world. Melody’s eyes lingered a moment, reflective as polished glass. Curiosity flickered in her, but she let it pass, for something else pulled her gaze. A sudden thump broke the hush. Prudence had tripped, laying sprawled across the polished floor, her invisibility unraveling like mist in sunlight. She blinked up at them, all gangly limbs and wounded pride, at least from what Melody could reckon. Morris’s scolding came next, taut and weary, but Melody did not join in. Instead, she let out a quiet, knowing chuckle, the kind that suggested she'd seen this play before and would see it again. “I expect we’ll see you again soon, Miss Havesford,” she said, her tone lilting like bells at twilight. “I’ll be gathering all the girls by evening. Best compose yourself, my dear.” And with that, she turned and left the cold, isolated room. No rustle of skirts, no click of heels, only the hush that follows a candle being blown out. Evening arrived like a whispered spell. At the edge of the city, Lady Melody stood before the circus gates, where gilded light curled around iron bars and ghostly music hummed like a song remembered from a fevered dream. Dusk was no longer a color but a mood, the sky a lilac bruise laced with peach and sorrow. Those colors reflected in the mystical center of her irises. Her eyes were full of witchlight. Mr. Maleficar's Traveling Circus was already alive with flickering lanterns and twirling shadows. Glowing orbs floated like tetherless stars, and the air was perfumed with roasted sugar and something stranger, wild and unspoken. Yet beneath the enchantment, Melody felt...off-kilter. The sensation stirred just behind her ribcage, as if her heart had skipped a note in some divine composition. Her eyes shifted, irises turning silver as the threads of magic thickened in the air. Something about the place whispered of illusion—not the joyous kind, but the sort spun to obscure rather than delight. Still, the girls were alight with joy. Some clung to one another, pointing and gasping; others skipped ahead too eagerly, their laughter shrill and echoing like windchimes tossed in a gale. A few were already causing a ruckus, drawn to the spectacle like moths to flame. Melody was subtle to reprimand them, not wanting to draw attention. Among them, Eliza clung tight to Melody’s hand, her small fingers wound with fierce trust. She hadn’t yet found her footing at the Haven, and it was only Melody she followed without question. Melody’s thumb gently stroked the back of her hand in reassurance, as steady and natural as breathing. They were soon to pass through the gates, and though Melody’s chin was high and her poise unbroken, she noticed the stares. Whispers. A woman too still, too composed, too elegant, too dark for a place of raucous color and chaotic joy and boundless money. Her gown caught the lamplight strangely; her gaze, unblinking and silver, unsettled. But she did not waver. As the lights twinkled and music burst into bloom from within, the swell of color and sound washed over her. A shiver passed through her. It was a rare thing, not of fear, but something like excitement. Unfamiliar. Not entirely unwelcome. The circus was about to open. NPCs Eliza

The Season of the Enlightened

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_{Present - Late Morning 《》 Lady Melody Heathering 《》 The Haven for Wayward Girls 《》Melody@MemoriaMayweather, Prudence@PatientBeanMorris@Blizz}

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The compliment lingered in the air like incense. “A saint among many.” Melody did not correct Mayweather. Her lashes lowered, the corners of her mouth curled in a soft, unbothered grace, and her irises shifted: from storm-swept dusk to something rounder, warmer. Lavender melting into lilac. As if her soul had briefly settled into its bones and found itself welcome there. She seemed to still herself... shoulders lowering, hands folding together. A momentary quiet gathered around her like a shawl. “I don’t know about sainthood,” she said after a beat, her voice gentle, shaded with a smile. “But I do know how to boil tea, hum lullabies, and sit with grief. I suppose that's more than most." A slight hint of melancholy settled in her gaze. When Mayweather offered to send word for Morris from wherever he was tucked away—likely that cold little lab of his—Melody’s smile remained, though her head inclined in gentle refusal. “Oh no, don’t trouble yourself, Mayweather. You’ve much to manage as it is,” she said, a tone of understanding nestled behind her words. “I’ll find him.” Melody exited with grace, trailing the quiet warmth of her presence behind her like perfume. She paused briefly, only to add, "Thank you." Beyond the drawing room and the girls' sleeping quarters, the corridors were quiet in the way cathedrals were... filled with the hush of things left unsaid. Candlelight wavered across aged plaster and gilt-edged tapestries, throwing slow shadows over the stitched coats-of-arms, the stitched bruises of history. Along the walls, portraits of formidable women watched her pass: a weather-beaten sailor with a saber at her hip; a violinist with eyes closed and blood on her bow; a woman clad in widow’s black, her spine as straight as her sorrow. Among others, Melody did not know if these women were real, but she had a nagging sense that each had a story. Each had bled something to build this place, whether historical, fictitious, or otherwise. The Haven was made of them, she thought. Their rage, their devotion, their ruin. The light played across Melody’s cheekbones as she walked, her silhouette cast beautifully like the anthousai of some forgotten fairytale. And then— A grunt. A muttered curse. Turning a corner, Melody came upon Madame Bisset, arms wrapped around the cracked base of a monstrous flowering pot, its lush orange petals spilling from the rim like overripe tongues. “Oh dear,” Melody said with a note of melodic sympathy, stepping closer. “Shall I—?” Bisset huffed, "No, no—leave it." Madame Bisset waved her off with a breathless flurry. “Foolish of me to grow something this large in a clay pot. She's an absolute diva." Melody chuckled behind her palm, coy and fond. Her voice twinkled, "But what do divas desire more than applause." The older woman snorted and scoffed but didn’t hide her grin. “Go on, girl. Off to your haunt.” Melody offered a delicate curtsy, continuing on. When alone, without emotion to mirror or company to soften, Melody’s eyes often found their resting hue—a deep, violet shade like candlelight cast through amethyst. That color carried no agenda. No false warmth. It was her own. Just her. The true shade of a woman who’d spent most of her life listening to others before herself. As she neared Morris’s door, her mind wandered toward Mr. Maleficar’s Traveling Circus, which had arrived just before dusk. Perhaps only a few days before. The posters were everywhere in the city... ink-bright and lurid. She hadn’t voiced it aloud, but something in her stirred uneasily when she passed them. Too much color, too much hunger. And yet, she did not want her own reservations to impose on the joy of the girls, who'd already made loud protestations as to why they should be allowed to go. And so, here she was. The door stood ajar. Inside, Morris hunched over a table littered with strange things. He was deep in concentration. He hadn’t heard her knock, it seemed. Three times. The clink of glass, the hush of movement drowned out everything but his own preoccupations. She let herself in, slipping through the door like a sigh and gathering her skirt as to avoid a snag. The room breathed cold. Not in temperature alone, but in the way mortuaries did. Or cleanly dressed battlefields. The walls were bare stone and mortar. A long table held jars with fluids she couldn’t name. On another lay bone fragments that seemed more sculptural than anatomical. One looked like the curve of a femur that hadn't belonged to any creature she recognized. Even so, all the bones held the shape of questions, unfinished and uncertain. A drain waited in the floor, mouth open. Melody didn’t shudder, but she did hesitate, heart slowing. Her fingers curled loosely in front of her skirt as she glanced toward the bones again. Macabre. That was the word that returned. She’d never fully understood his gift, only that it was crude, practical, blood-bound. Nothing like hers. And perhaps that was the difference between them. He built from remnants; she softened wounds with the breath of feeling. She straightened her spine just slightly, her gift humming beneath her ribs, and adjusting her posture to reduce surprise. Melody's magic had a way of tempering the space around her so as not to rupture the tension of the room. "Morris?" she said softly, her voice carrying the gentleness of an older sister waking a child from a dream. "Forgive me, I tried knocking..." His attention didn't snap immediately. She let her voice hang. Melody's gaze flickered toward the darker end of the room. Something stirred faintly. Not seen, not known. She felt the soft impression of emotion, a young aura, light and mischievous. It brushed across her empathic senses like the wing of a moth. Melody's eyes shifted in color, one, a deep azure, the other, a soft, rich emerald. She thought it might be Prudence, knowing of the girl's penchant for invisibility, but made no move to acknowledge it. She returned her focus to Morris. “I see you're in the middle of... something,” she began, casting another glance at the skeletal framework on his table, “but I wondered if you might accompany me and a few of the girls into town. The circus has arrived not too long ago, and I thought it might do them good to see a bit of fantasy outside our walls.” The woman hesitated a beat before she continued, searching for words with velvet care. "I'd go alone, but..." she offered a faint smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, "I imagine the sight of me leading a troupe of mostly lily-faced girls through a strange, tented bazaar might stir more curiosity than comfort. Optics being what they are." It was more of a half-smile now. Not bitter. Just honest, despite her position in society as the ward of the widowed Baroness Florence Heathering. Her thumb brushed across her palm. She waited then. Heterochromatic eyes steady. Eyes full of witchlight and possibility. Patient. Reaching no further than was welcome. NPCs Madame Bisset Mayweather@PatientBean No visual image at present.

The Season of the Enlightened

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_{Present 《》 Lady Melody Heathering 《》 The Haven for Wayward Girls 《》Melody@MemoriaMayweather@PatientBeanMorris (Mentioned)@Blizz}

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The butler closed the door with a muted click, leaving the room steeped in the soft hush of late morning. Melody lingered by the bedside, her gaze fixed on Eliza—small, fragile, curled into the pale cotton sheets like a secret she was sworn to keep. Outside, the muffled shouts and laughter of the other girls drifted in through the glass, a reminder that life still spun happily on for those untouched by present fears. A glimmer of movement caught her eye. Just beyond the windowpane, three girls pressed in close, their breath fogging the glass as they stared at the newest arrival to Lady Rosemarie’s Haven. Their auras, curiosity tinged with caution, flared faintly in her vision, a swirl of pale yellow and muted green. Melody’s gaze met theirs, her irises catching the light in that strange, almost liquid way they often did when she was attuned to the emotions of others. At once, the girls startled and scurried off, their shapes vanishing down the garden path. She didn’t notice she was still humming the lullaby until the last notes slipped out of her mouth and into the still air, long after Eliza had surrendered to sleep. Melody's hand hovered briefly over the child’s blankets, a faint ache pulling in her chest as she thought of her own mother. A final glance, steady, protective, and she turned toward the door. A knock came just as her fingers brushed the handle. The door opened to reveal Mayweather, framed in the hall’s dim light. Melody didn’t know her well. Few truly did. Mayweather was a woman spun from secrets and shadows, with hair the shade of a morning fire, but there was an unspoken understanding between them. Pleasant enough. Safe enough. As the other woman stepped inside, Melody’s eyes instinctively shifted to match the exact shade of Mayweather’s own emerald green, the edges of her voice taking on the faintest trace of her Irish lilt without her willing it. She listened as Mayweather delivered Lady Rosemarie’s summons for early tomorrow morning, nodding once. “Of course,” Melody murmured, her tone smooth but threaded with quiet curiosity. “Though I admit, you’ve piqued my interest. Lady Rosemarie rarely calls for urgency unless the ground is shifting beneath our feet.” When Mayweather offered her warm praise, Melody’s lips curved, not in vanity, but in something gentler. “You’re kind to say so, but I’ve only done what any of us would, if we’re paying proper attention.” Her gaze lingered on the sleeping girl, softening. “Perhaps I fuss over them more than I should... but I’ve always thought... if I cannot have children of my own, I may as well love the ones who find their way to our care.” She didn’t let the silence settle too long, straightening with the ease of someone who knows how to close a thought before it turns too heavy. “Tell me, Mayweather, have you seen young Morris about? I’ve a small... request for him. Something harmless enough.” NPCs Eliza Mayweather@PatientBean No visual image at present.

The Season of the Enlightened

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_{One Month Ago 《》 Madame Bisset speaking to Lady Rosemarie about Lady Melody 《》 The Haven for Wayward Girls 《》@Memoria}

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"So, what seems to be your concern?" Lady Rosemarie begins, "Is it about our new attendant, Lady Melody?" Madame Bisset is a herbalist from France, a wise, older woman whose keen sense of people has provided her with immense insight into the inner workings of humanity. Her enlightened gift grants her the ability to influence plant life. She can plant a seed and urge it to bloom in mere minutes. Simple, yes, but quite a marvelous and invaluable gift. She's been an essential steward of The Haven and one of Lady Rosemarie's closest confidantes. The Madame's lip tightens as her eyes fall to the near-empty tea cup resting on her lap. She seems lost in her thoughts, aimlessly twirling the spoon in an unrefined manner. After a moment, she gathers herself, ending the mindless motion of her aging wrist as she looks up. "You know, she reminds me of lavender steeped in midnight. Calming, but if you brew her wrong... poisonous in ways you won’t taste until it’s too late." Lady Rosemarie's eyebrow lifts delicately, "Go on..." "I've grown quite fond of her, truly. I would even say I admire her, but she is dangerous. Gentle by nature, but dangerous nonetheless. Helpful, if treated carefully, but the potential harm she may impose upon others if her gift is misused concerns me." Lady Rosemarie says nothing, only her eyes narrow in attentiveness, her body shifting with a sense of curiosity at Madame Bisset's carefully chosen language. The herbalist continues, more bluntly now, "Mon ami, let me put it this way. Melody's danger lies in her reach, non? She can enter a person's emotional world so...seamlessly, so convincingly, that she blurs the line between comfort and control. She can become exactly what someone needs, but in doing so, she may also bend their will, dull their instincts, or awaken feelings that were never fully theirs to begin with. The gentleness of her magic makes it harder to resist. That subtlety is what makes her dangerous." "I see..." "Rosemarie, mon ami, I only heed this warning out of caution for the girls, for you, for The Haven. I've seen her magic firsthand, time and time again. And you know of her past almost better than anyone. The poor woman...but her good intentions can still lead to destruction, and these girls are highly impressionable. Lady Melody may sever bonds to protect someone, but what if she cuts too deep? What if she breaks a connection that could have been mended with time, or silences love before it has the chance to bloom? She is a powerful empath, which makes her vulnerable to others' emotions and to severing those crucial bonds that tie us all together." Madame Bisset pauses suddenly, her countenance shifting as if she regrets having brought it up at all. But in the end, she is a woman who speaks from the gut, from the heart. "I only fear that, one day, Melody will act from a place of exhaustion, grief, or misplaced devotion, and in doing so, accidentally destroy something sacred and essential. Frankly, I've never once treated her like a porcelain doll, nor a weapon, but rather, a storm dressed in silk. Beautiful. Gentle beyond reason. But that woman, I believe, is capable of ruin..." Present Day 《》 Lady Melody Heathering 《》 The Haven for Wayward Girls 《》@Memoria The girl hadn’t stopped shaking since she crossed the threshold. She was curled in the smallest corner of the parlor, knees tucked beneath her like she could disappear inside herself. Her name was Eliza, or at least, that was what she whispered when asked. Melody had offered warm tea, a wool blanket, and silence; the first two accepted with trembling hands, the last with desperate gratitude. But Melody didn’t need words to understand. She could see it. Eliza’s aura quivered around her like a torn ribbon; sharp pinks of shame, bruised yellows of fear, the gray-green rot of long-endured dread. It clung to her like wet fabric. Melody’s eyes, tonight a gentle rose-gold, shimmered faintly as she knelt before the girl, careful not to startle her. “I’ll sit here,” she murmured, folding her skirts beside her. “That’s all. Just sit.” And for a while, she did. But as she breathed, the space between them changed. Melody softened, not just her voice, but the tilt of her spine, the curve of her shoulders, the shape of her very presence. She became something quieter, smaller, more fragile. The fear in the girl didn’t vanish, but it recognized Melody’s mirrored ache, and it loosened. Eliza reached for her hand. “He said I was his,” the girl whispered. “He said I was the only thing keeping him alive.” Melody’s smile didn’t falter, but her pupils flickered slightly, like candlelight catching wind. “My dear,” she said, gently, “you are not a thing. And he does not get to live by swallowing your light.” With those kind words, Eliza fell into her arms. They sat there in silence for a while. And Melody, eventually humming a lullaby and watching the colors around the girl soften into shades of peace, held her until she drifted into slumber. With the help of a nearby butler, they carried her to an empty bed in one of the shared living quarters for the younger-aged girls and tucked her under the cool cotton. She hardly stirred. Lady Melody didn't need to see her aura to realize she had not found a peaceful rest for quite some time. And the other girls were out on break thankfully. So in repose, Eliza could finally have a moment to dream sweet. NPCs Eliza Madame Bisset