Personality

Seth plays to his strengths, few as they may be. He knows his smile is warm ( disarming, if used properly ), so he is generous when handing it out. He knows his eyes are gold, but his tongue is silver and, oh, does he take such care with his words. They are spoken with a softness, quietly, gently - his voice is melancholic, but it is noble nonetheless. For all his maturity - forced upon him too young into boyhood by the pressures of the court, and of magic - Seth is hopeless. A romantic, they’d say, for he has been in love far more than he has been out of it. Passion comes just as easily as his next breath, though it would not be a lie to say his was fickle and fleeting - as all flames are.

Sheltered behind white Sawtine walls, he has never known the world beyond, and struggles to connect with it now that he has his freedom ( nobility is empathy’s most effective poison ). One cannot say Seth does not attempt, however, despite his disconnect.

They say he’s stolen from the sun when they look into his eyes, brilliant and uncomfortable to look too deeply into. They are the sun’s color ( honeyed, Dandelions, he’s heard it all ), Apollo’s own. But they betray him, too. See, to be born into the royal court is to immediately be introduced to stoicism. There is little room for raw emotion, or for candor, and thus Seth learned swiftly to remain stolid above all else.

It never quite reached his eyes, though. They burn alongside his temper, brighten for those few smiles he truly means. But, perhaps most importantly, they’re just as weathered and worn as he is - tired. It is a careful skill to learn ( seeing one’s gaze for the novel it was ), but to those who know it, Seth is just as open as the sky is blue.

History

Where it all exactly started couldn’t possibly be pinpointed. It’d be easy to say it started with his father’s upbringing ( cruel, calloused, cold. A boy born too early, too small, and but the third in a line of strong sons. Strength - one of a brutish sort, and not of the mind, for Ephraim would have his father’s love a thousand times over if the man could only look past his size - was a common theme in his household, one dare say perhaps the only desire of the family, given it’s militaristic roots.

See, Ephraim saw more of the sea than land as a child. He was 6 when he first weathered an ocean storm aboard a naval vessel, and 8 when he was finally tossed from the deck and into the depths. Only he can say what those dark waves showed him. But all with eyes could say it certainly changed him.

It could be assumed the beaten, meek child that fell into the sea drowned. For what was pulled out of the ocean - by sailors, it should be noted, and not the child’s own father - was angry. Hungry. His father never did accept him, not really. The idea that he might have been wrong about the child’s capabilities sat acidicly in his heart, and he seized any opportunity to berate the boy.

And despite him, despite his brothers, despite the world, Ephraim got just about everything he ever wanted. With nothing given to him, he carved out success for himself with bleeding, calloused hands.

At least, that is what it appeared like. But everything looks perfect from afar, doesn’t it? )

It could just as easily be said it started with his mother, too ( Wisteria - orphaned as an infant - lived a life no less complex. She is taken in with the best of intentions, in simply the poorest of situations. Her mother - in all but blood - did her best, really.

But to escape a civil war into the trials of motherhood, all while desperately attempting to meet near impossible standards, why - it’d put a strain on any relationship. Wisteria cannot win true pride from her mother - not for lack of trying - and leaves for a better life. She meets Ephraim instead.

It is Blisse’s conception that sparks their marriage, one to save reputation rather than for any real love. ).

But, most would say it started the night he was born.

She goes into labor in the summer. It’s two months too early, and it’s too dark to see properly. Everyone is slick with sweat, the room oppressively hot even in the midnight hours, and there is a lot of blood. The twins are born into the symphony of cicada songs and the bay of hounds, and they are not thought to live past daylight hours.

 Ephraim arrives an hour after their birth, breathless and heatsick, his horse weak in the legs. The doctors assure him his visit should only be to say goodbye. He holds his children, feather weighted and silent, and he too is quiet, for a while.

 He says goodbye.

Seth is an easy child even in his infancy, if not a source of well deserved concern. He is not Wisteria’s first child, though he is half of her second, so the wet nurses feel comfortable enough assuring her ( lying, with the best of intentions ) that he is a normal boy. They tell her that it is normal that the boy does not cry, when he is hungry, nor feeling ill, nor cold, not even for the most common reason babies cry: for nothing.

They assure her that their children, too, stared into empty rooms with interest. That they, too, found joy enough to laugh in the company of no one but themselves. They meant well, really.

But with age came the unavoidable truth ( though try his mother did. Even when confronted outright, she insisted there was nothing to her boy. He was perfectly average, nevermind what anyone said. Ephraim knew better, but he knew better than to fight her, too. He allows her delusion for as long as he can. ) that Seth - both of the twins, in fact - were mages.

Magic is a gift. It’s what so many tell themselves, eachother. Magic is a gift, and it is an honor to have it. Perhaps they are, in many cases, correct. But Ephraim would liken magic to wild madder - a weed. Something pretty that sprouts from within, curls upon the stalks of what could have been, and tightens. He thinks of magic when he sees his garden, the life choked from it by a thick bed of little white flowers. He thinks of his dead garden when he looks at his son. His son, who is defined by his magic. His son, who he feels he has been robbed the chance to ever truly know.

It is no different to Seth, but his father can only ever wonder what could have been. To Seth, his magic is simply a thing that happens. The frequent appearance of the dead - at first, at least - were no more exciting than the sun rising come morning. In fact, they were friends to him in those early years. Seth was popular neither with his peers nor his siblings, finding only Mellow among the living to seek him out. And the dead? The dead simply never left him be, he may as well befriend them.

He was still a child when his ability was finally soured.

It begins as a joke ( a cruel one, but not quite as cruel as it ended ). He is easy to tempt into the night - as foolishly and desperate he was for company, not yet privy to the malice of men and their boys. A small group of his peers lock Seth into a mausoleum, and whatever it is that follows is heavily cloaked in secrecy.

And they wear them well, the LeClerq family and their many fucking cloaks. Not all are privy to each other’s, and certainly none are privy to all. They are taught early the facade they play their part in, and learn late that it isn’t their game, and they don’t have to play it.

What remains of Seth’s young childhood is one of the secrets most are oblivious to. It is known that he spends a large portion of it bedridden, and sickly. The details of his illness were ( and still are ) kept under lock and key, fiercely guarded and all but taboo to speak of. He never does recover fully, though he does get better and is soon deemed well enough for travel. And not a second later, the LeCLerq arrives at the Order early in his 17th year, following his twin before him.

He is no model student despite his well-read nature. He is swift to master the book, and just as fast to grow bored of it. He spends his time exploring what he should not ( ruins, temples, monster hauntings, the like ), and giving minimal effort to his studies.

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