Damaris

((WIP))

Damaris was born into a family of some nobility. Her father was a respected captain and her mother a Valkyrie for the Old Gods. Much of her upbringing was strict and done by nurse maids and tutors. She didn't often see her mother, who traveled frequently to fulfill her duties, so she spent her childhood in her father's fort dreaming of the day she, too, could be a Valkyrie. 

She was promised to another nobleman, a Duke far above her own caste. It wasn't unexpected--most people of nobility marry for politics and money. Neither her father nor her fiance, Duke Argus, had any interest in stopping her from pursuing her dream of becoming a Valkyrie, so she was sent to the academy for training when she was old enough. She would be of age by the time she earned her helmet and would be able to marry Argus in full Valkyrie regalia.

It was a good plan. Until, halfway through her Valkyrie training, Damaris woke up from a deep sleep screaming in pain. Her right eye had frozen over in the night. It was frostbitten and blind. An "Odin's Eye," they called it. Her teachers and fellow trainees tittered excitedly; it wasn't everyday someone was "blessed" like this by the Old Gods. Damaris wasn't quite as pleased. 

With half her vision gone, she was no longer eligible for Valkyrie training. She was a seer of the Old Gods, a woman who could see the secrets of the fey and magical auras. It was a gift. That's what they told her before they escorted her to the gates and locked her out.

Her father and Argus worried. Damaris had been a boisterous girl, cheerful and full of laughter. Now she was silent. She didn't put on her pretty dresses or have her maids do up her hair in all the latest fashions like she used to. She didn't even write to her mother. Worse, she didn't cry. It was unsettling for the men. They tried gifts, travel, wedding planning--no reaction. It was as if she was empty inside.

Duke Argus sought advice from the oracle Irini. When he returned, he announced that the oracle had told him to go ahead with the wedding and that all Damaris needed was time. It sounded reasonable enough and it wasn't hard to get Damaris to go through the motions. She didn't speak her vows, but when asked for an "I do" she gave a little nod and that worked well enough.

Argus took her home to his estate. He led her to the terrace looking out onto the gardens every morning, swearing up and down she seemed to like it. No one could deny she stared at it, but liking it...? No one could honestly tell how Damaris felt about anything anymore. In spite of what Irini had said about time, Damaris stayed silent for the next two years. She did, however, start going for walks. She took herself around the property, strolling through the gardens instead of having to be led by the hand to the terrace. She rang a bell for servants to come dress her in the morning instead of having to be coaxed out by her husband. She came to the dining room for meals. She fulfilled her wifely duties. She started going out riding around the duchy to watch the people.

She wasn't alert, but she was functional. It was something.

Her father hoped that maybe when her mother came home she could snap her out of it, get her to start speaking again--but she never did. Her letters trickled to a stop. The Valkyrie Order wouldn't tell them anything. There was no body returned to the family, no sword, no armor, not even a shroud for a funeral. She wasn't dead, she just...disappeared.

Damaris didn't react to the news, as she usually didn't. Her face was as stoic and empty as ever. After her father finished speaking, she simply stood and walked out into the gardens. 

This wasn't unusual, so no one stopped her. She could spend hours out there, so no one looked for her either. It wasn't until dinner that anyone realized she was gone.

Damaris hadn't taken her horse. She didn't really mean to go as far as she did. When she walked away that afternoon she thought she would stop eventually--but she didn't. She walked through the gardens, across the property, down the road, through the town, out the gates, past the lake, past the meadow, into the woods, and kept going. The sky darkened and she was tired, thirsty, and starving, but she kept walking. She just wanted to leave. Leave what she didn't know, just...everything.

It was in the darkness of those woods that night that her Odin's Eye saw something. Something big. Bigger than any enchanted cloak or magic shielding she'd ever seen in the upper echelons of society. It was off the path--far off the path--but it was too brilliant to ignore and she needed to focus on something. Anything.

The closer she got to this...thing...the more confused she became. It wasn't one thing at all. Oh, there was something big there all right, but not nearly as big as she thought. There were slips and slivers of fey magic all over those woods. Twinkling orbs of light she first mistook for fireflies scattered as her hooves crunched through the underbrush. With her normal eye, they really were just fireflies, but with her Odin's Eye she saw them for what they were: forest spirits. The tiny underlings of a powerful fae. 

There were markings on the trees, etchings of sigils that glowed with energy, indicating that something here was sacred. They looked mortal-made, as if these were holy grounds for some religious group.

And then there was the house. If it could even be called that. One part tree, one part stone, and all parts moss-covered. It was the tree that was giving off all that magical energy. A giant weeping willow dominated one side of the house. To her seeing eye, it looked normal, just huge. To her other eye the drooping leaves shimmered in silvery purples and pinks. The trunk itself was inlaid with flowing marks and symbols that shed a warm golden glow.

If she hadn't trained as a warrior for years, she'd have never heard Sigil coming up behind her. It was a startling introduction, to say the least. For both of them. 

He clearly didn't have many visitors, but he didn't run her off. She was the first other dainty he'd seen in years, apparently, and that seemed to be enough to keep him intrigued. When he couldn't get her to talk, he offered her tea and waited. And waited. And waited...

The town guards inevitably found her and she had to return to the duchy, but not before Sigil asked her to return. It was nice to have someone else around for a while, he'd said, even without conversation.

In spite of the distance, Damaris did just that. For weeks, she came to sit with Sigil. Sometimes he would talk, sometimes they'd just put their hooves in the pond and listen to the forest. Other times he was...confusing. She usually left when she saw the overlay of another creature over his skin with her Eye. Sigil wasn't himself at those times--literally. There were two different fae, the Willow and the Nightmoth, who borrowed his body. The Willow was dismissive of her to the point of insult and the Nightmoth looked at her with a hunger in his eyes that made her wary. Neither of them would touch her, though, and she realized quickly that she could just sit and wait for them to leave and give Sigil back to her. The way she stared, silent and stoic, and failed to react outwardly to their insults and sneers seemed to make them uncomfortable.

Eventually, she surprised him with a quiet "mm-hm" when he asked if she wanted more tea. Truthfully, she hadn't meant to do it, it just kind of happened. Then one day she murmured a "yes." The following week there was a whispered "hello." It wasn't much, but when it happened, she noticed the small smile it put on her friend's face. And that's when she realized she had a friend. For the first time in years, she had a real, actual friend.

But nothing stays perfect forever. Damaris had let her husband have his way with her--as was her "wifely duty"--since their wedding night. It had finally caught up with her. She missed one of her monthlies. Then another. The way her husband's face lit up when the midwife gave them the news didn't fill her with the same tickle of warmth that Sigil's little smiles did. Her father's didn't either. The more they celebrated, the more her apathy grew. She nodded when asked if she was excited for the baby, but she didn't actually know. The nursery preparations made her feel nothing. The gifts made her feel nothing. Her husband's excitement made her feel nothing.

Sigil noticed. She didn't talk as much suddenly and she knew it, but she couldn't bring herself to answer his questions. But he did notice her nausea and the way the guards fussed over her when she wouldn't allow them to escort her beyond the road into the forest--not that she was trying to hide it much. Eventually, he asked the right question and she nodded.

Damaris had never been so disturbed by someone's silence. It felt strange, like the air right before a lightning strike. She caught flashes of horror, fear, sadness, rage--his face couldn't settle on one emotion. For the first time since finding out she was pregnant, Damaris felt something: guilt. It was the same feeling she'd had as a child when her parents caught her doing something naughty, that fear of being shameful and wrong right before you get yelled at.

Sigil didn't yell. He just hugged her. He never hugged anyone. They didn't touch one another, not like this, and especially not Sigil. But here they were.

The weeks that passed were confusing. Sigil was apalled and Argus vehemently disagreed that there'd been any wrongdoing. It was the first time either of them had met and it nearly ended in her husband throwing Sigil in prison. If she hadn't managed to speak the word, "wait" and caused the whole room to freeze, Sigil wouldn't have been able to escapte. Her father was confused by the accusation that he'd allowed Argus to hurt his daughter, he "didn't think it counted" since they were married, and Damaris couldn't blame him. She wasn't sure Sigil's argument was sound, either.

And yet...

The more time she'd spent with Sigil, getting bits and pieces of her voice back, the more Damaris realized how much she shut down at home. Especially in the bedroom. Try as she might, she could never bring that energy home with her. She couldn't even remember most of her nights with Argus. It was all clouded in a thick fog. She'd always been so far away in her own mind that there just wasn't much there to remember.

Sigil was gone for more than a week. It was...difficult. That week was the first time Damaris put up any resistance to performing her "wifely duties." Argus was livid. Not only because she refused him, but for not even speaking to him when he now knew she could. How dare she open up to a man who wasn't her husband and not to him! How dare she refuse him in his own home! This was his estate and it was his title he'd shared with her, she had no right!

Damaris threw a vase out a window. It was the best non-verbal response she could think of.

She spent most nights in her father's bed, just so she didn't have to put up with her husband. Her father fretted the whole time Sigil was gone, doubting his choices more and more, wondering if he really had done wrong by his daughter. She couldn't offer much comfort other than pouring him some tea and patting his hand. That really only lead to an excess of hugging, crying, and apologizing.

When Sigil returned, he came with Oracle Irini in tow. Argus had been livid during the week, but his aunt was far beyond his level of rage. She outed her nephew for lying about her predictions and advice, revealing that she was deeply opposed to them going through with the marriage before Damaris had fully recovered. The marriage alone was appalling enough, but the pregnancy? The fact that Argus had been using "this poor girl" like that? Irini made it clear: Argus was no nephew of hers. If she had the power to do so, she would've stripped him of his title and lands then and there.

Damaris' father was somewhere between grief and rage. Damaris herself merely felt cold.

Argus was not cowed. The marriage was already official and had been for years. And the pregnancy? Well, the child was already growing. There was no way to change that now.

He spoke those facts with such coldness, the beginnings of a smirk tugging at his lips. And he wasn't even looking at Damaris. He made a point to look everyone else in the eye and address them as equals--but not her.

Damaris hadn't thrown a punch in years, but the muscle memory was still there. He didn't even see it coming, he was paying so little attention to her. If the room was not already silent from witnessing their demure mistress put her knuckles through their lord's teeth, it certainly was after she screamed two words right in his face: "WATCH ME."

She dragged Sigil out of the duchy and never went back. He was something of a medicine man for nearby villagers when he wanted to be and it wasn't the first time he'd been asked for a tea that would wither an unborn child. In a matter of days, Damaris had done exactly what Argus said couldn't be done: she'd changed everything. There was no baby, there was no heir. There was no marriage.

Argus and even her father begged her to come out of the woods, to leave Sigil's little house, at least for the sake of the baby. She kept her voice as cold and even as her husband's had been when she told him their child was dead.

She heard later that he didn't take it well. The servants found his room trashed the next morning. Her father, however, took it significantly better. He seemed happy that she'd found a way out and, in time, Sigil allowed him to come into the shade of the sacred willow tree and have tea with them.

Argus, even to this day, remains insistant that their marriage was never dissolved. The rules of the Willow and the Nightmoth cults--who both lay claim to the whole of the forest--are very clear on divorce: once a person leaves their marital home and renounces their spouse, there is no marriage. Not in the eyes of the fae, the cults, the forest, or even Oracle Irini. So, in the forest she stayed. With Sigil.

Damaris' voice grew and, alongside it, her affections for Sigil. His insistence on appearing as a grumpy hermit amused her and his quiet thoughtfulness never ceased to surprise her. As much as he hated the cults, he took good care of them: concocted medicines, worked tirelessly to look up cures for unusual ailments, instructed them on useful household charms, and, when he thought no one was looking, even kissed a few boo-boos from time to time.

A little over a year after she first came to live with him, Sigil and Damaris married beneath the bows of the sacred tree. Argus is still determined to win her back somehow and wants to kill Sigil for "stealing" his wife, but with the backing of two cults, two powerful fae, and Oracle Irini on their side, the couple aren't too worried about him...for now.