R2M Elise

Princess Elise III of Soleanna

She's a doe. Original Mobian concept by

Rp lines, badly drawn axe and shredded outfit by me!



Elise closed the little worn book, her white gloved hand caressing the pages made wavy and yellow by the wet air of the sea, the brinks eaten by salt. She wondered if Odysseus ever reached his home in the end. Time had swallowed in its guts the last book of the Songs, leaving the present generations with an open final. Time, with his wars and truths and cataclysms.

Sharp azure eyes pierced the horizon, reflecting the white clouds like little shreds of sky.
…and in the future?

Yesterday the breeze of the evening had carried her the smell of ashes, dragging her out of the deep marine cave that was her last shelter. She had walked along the rocky shore following the wide grey arch of smoke in the red twilight sky, watching it sink in the archipelagos, disappearing behind the curve of the planet, like a giant arrow pointing towards home. Month by month, she had seen those pillars of destruction cross the sky, the Islands falling one by one.

This time, it had been probably Madura the Wise’s turn, the most occidental of the Kingdom. Like every time, Elise had prayed for her lost people.

But unlike all the other times, the ashes had started falling, a black rain obscuring the bloody light of sunset, and she had understood: those minuscule black particles had once been delicate feelings, biting arguments, cunning truths or deep thoughts embroidered on frail paper, had been the spirit and memory of her nation, the books, the hundred of tomes of the Royal Library…and now all that was left of them had nested between the fibers of her white clothes making them grey and dull.
Something had laughed inside her, something alien and yet sadly familiar.

Oh, she that disliked that color so much…she would have better started liking it. The whole world, it had said, would have soon turned grey and lifeless, before falling into darkness.

Four immobile and silent cloaked figures had watched impassible her running away suddenly, and had followed her back in the cave without a sound, guarding at turn the agitated rest of that night with empty lifeless eyes that could not understand.
Today she had woken up and the sky was clear again, the horizon free and wide. She had returned in the same point, on the same rock, but this time in her hands she was holding a little fragment of hope. All was left, that single book…only because she had decided to carry it the day she left. But weren’t all the tokens of the past, all born from such situations? Haven’t they survived the fury of Time by strange chances and fortunes?

In the future, Odysseus that had already lost its final destination, would have lost even his start. Forever a traveler. Forever trapped in between.

And his mysterious incomplete story would maybe have raised new and more deep questions in those future minds blessed by ignorance. Destruction was a natural way to shape the future, and from evil hadn’t to be born just more evil.

The thin doe dropped her gaze, kneeling graciously on the flat rock, regarding the little squared thing in her hands with new marveled eyes. So many things its simple material existence had taught to her in this cold morning, in a better way than all the written words in it could ever have.
It was ridiculous, it said, it was a drop in an ocean of loss.
It was, but even a single drop of water was relieving for a plant whose roots sank in a wasteland.

Time will come, when you won’t find even that…

Elise blinked, one of her long ears turning towards the deep crack that separated her rock from another. From deep, deep down, she had heard coming the clapping noise of water, pulled so far through invisible ways by the waves: she looked at her still dirty clothes, a sudden resolution making her stood up again, and reach the edge of the shore in few long, elegant jumps between the rocks, her foot made firm and sure by habit. She stopped looking at the white roaring waves, few foots under her, letting the smell of the sea fill her nostril, its untamable strength comfort her.

“Then when that time will come, even just the memory of the water will have to be enough for me…’’ she retorted inside her mind, cold and calm.