AnEmberOfSundown
Object in motion
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2025
- Messages
- 153
- Points
- 63
Originally posted in the feedback forum, but I guess it was the wrong place for it. A quick read with subtle plot, hope you enjoy and thank you for reading.
BLURB: Legends say she appears across cultures: the veiled guide, the ash queen, the immortal mourner. To Professor Beric Raghthul, these are only archetypes—until a student’s question, and a stranger’s smile, force him to reconsider. Is he about to uncover the most tragic life in history…or become part of her myth himself?
The lecture hall's amphitheater seating sloped inward toward its central dais, like a gladiatorial pit of days long past. Combat in this arena was of the intellectual variety however—much less prone to bloodshed. Students were seated in the descending rows, though many spots remained vacant. For most, this was an elective class and a few had chosen it specifically for how little attention it would truly require of them. Others attentively took notes while their teacher spoke passionately, but with the practice of a man who had given the lecture many times over many years to many bored students. Beside a whirring, arc lamp powered projector stood Doctor Beric Raghthul, professor of anthropology.
Still young for an academic, Beric was nonetheless graced with greying hair at his temples, thinning hair at his crown, and the kind of scratchy beard on his full jaw that suggested grooming was a routine more than a statement these days. He gestured upward at the image projected on the wall from a glass plate photograph resting above the lamp. The image of a stone relief carving showing a feminine figure with one hand raised and the other extended toward supplicants nearby.
"The Veiled Guide of the Azeem Jadojehad inscriptions, first published in Marquet nearly three thousand years ago. Note the iconographic similarities to the Twilight Mentor of Taldoor legend, forty-five hundred years ago—" He switched the plate for another image, a fresco of a hooded woman gently guiding a child through a dark forest. "—and the Ash Queen of ancient Issylra...so archaic that she was thought to exist around the time of the fabled Calamity." A third image showing an oil painting of a fearsome, blindfolded woman raining fire upon a routed army. He then let the imagery speak for him. In the quiet of the classroom, only scribbling quills and the subtle grinding of the brass fan on his projector could be heard.
"Archetypes," Beric continued after a suitable pause, "exist not because of one single story, but because many stories share the same ideals, the same narrative foundation. In this case, the Immortal Queen archetype shows us the burden and responsibility of power on those who do not seek it, but wield it anyway."
A murmur from the student body reached the professor's ears and he squinted past the ozone-smelling arc light into the darkness for its source. A young man Beric recognized—Marcus Aethien—was huddled with his neighbor in conversation. The student's discussion partner was a new face though. A young woman with a quiet mien and an unassuming presence. His pale hair and slightly-pointed ears stood out in the dark, making the motion that accompanied conversation obvious from a distance. She was harder to see, the darkness beyond the lamplight made it difficult to tease out details and she wore her hair loosely about her face. Luckily for them, Professor Raghthul was not a man who was quick to anger.
"Something you wish to add to our understanding of these legends, Mr. Aethien?" He raised his voice a bit louder than his normal lecture tone to grab their attention. It succeeded.
The young man sat up straight and cleared his throat. Marcus was not the most diligent student in his lectures, but he did try harder than many others. "No Professor. I was just wondering—well, we were wondering..." He trailed off and gestured at the imagery on the wall.
"Your friend?" Beric nodded toward them.
"Oh, no sir. She's auditing the class, we just met. B-but with how similar these stories sound we were wondering if..." He trailed off again and looked at his neighbor. She gave him a gentle smile and an encouraging nod. Marcus sat up a little straighter and spoke once more. "We were wondering if these might all be stories of the same person?" A ripple of quiet chuckling made its way around the room.
Beric's response to the query was not what any of his students were expecting. He quietly walked to the projector, drew the outlet prism upward to zoom out, and lined up all three images together. Then, he added a few more. All depicted similar iconography with obvious and varied cultural influences.
"Numerous stories across cultures separated by thousands of miles and centuries of time but sharing similar morals and imagery..." He began. Marcus shrank down a bit.
"Right...yeah, sorry Prof—"
"What you are suggesting is not new, Marcus." Beric interrupted, turning to once again face his pupils. "In academic circles, it is known as the 'Monarch Hypothesis'. The idea that a single, extremely long-lived individual is the source of many of the legends we know today. That she has had a hand in guiding entire civilizations, preventing catastrophes, aiding the afflicted, and mourning the lost. Professor Weiss of the Marquesian Institute has written extensively on the subject and Doctor Kalross at Emon University has essentially staked his tenure on proving it. Early in my own academic career...I was an adherent as well."
"But you don't believe it anymore?" Another young woman spoke up from the darkness, near the front row. Beric removed his spectacles and began slowly cleaning them; a gesture they all recognized as preceding a carefully-articulated departure from the syllabus.
He sighed. "I do not, Ms. Chen."
"Don't like the idea of a woman secretly running the world, doctor?" The goad from one of the less-attentive seat warmers in the back of the auditorium was rewarded by a fresh ripple of chuckling. It was then silenced with a glance from Beric as he replaced his glasses.
"My dissent is not academic in nature." He glanced up at the back row again. "Nor is it rooted in misogyny." The professor clasped his hands behind his back and began slowly pacing. "My dissent comes from weakness and empathy. It is...humane." He gestured absently at the projected images above him.
"What do you see? Over and over again, similar motifs. Some are obvious, some less so. If she truly is the same person in each of these, look closely." He let them scan the images during a deliberate and practiced pause.
"She's barefoot." A short, sturdy woman from the middle tier spoke up. "In four of the images, her feet are uncovered, even the Veiled Guide and feet were considered taboo back then. The other two don't show her feet at all."
"Very good, Miss Clahiarain. While not all of the art shows her feet, none of the stories mention sandals, shoes, or any other foot covering congruent with the time period. Who else?" The professor gestured broadly to the room.
"The eyes." Naomi Chen spoke up again from the front row. Beric nodded in amusement. She was always a sharp one. The young woman pointed upward at the illustrations with an expensive-looking fountain pen. "Their eyes are all hooded or covered...except her." She gestured toward the image at the bottom-right corner. The fresco, with its dyes still showing faded but discernible colors, showed a woman who looked idiosyncratically monochrome. Her hair was ashen, skin pale as marble, and her eyes a blank white. "If they're all the same person, was she blind? I don't—" Naomi glanced down at her notes before looking back up, "I don't recall any of the stories mentioning that." Her professor gave her a subtle smile.
"The Grey Lady," he clarified, "the oldest—and some say original—Immortal Queen story. In fact, there are those in academia who argue that the archetype should bear her name instead...and you are correct. No Immortal Queen is ever described as sightless. In fact, many stories make a point of describing their protagonist as having exceptional vision—even, potentially, into realms that are invisible to mortals such as us." He turned to face the class again. "What else?" The thoughtful quiet returned, but the practiced educator let it sit. He could feel it, the subtle tension which told him that someone in the room had an answer they were wrestling with voicing. He shifted position and looked to the intruding auditor. She was looking straight at him, her face a mask of neutral attentiveness. Beside her, Marcus fidgeted again. The young man looked uncomfortable and cleared his throat.
"She's sad." He shifted in his seat. "They all look kind of...sad. Not like 'weeping' or whatever but just...I don't know...tired? That sounds bad, I just mean she's—" He shrugged helplessly and turned to his neighbor, but her gaze remained on the center of the room. Beric smiled tightly and resumed his pacing posture, hands clasped behind his back once more.
"You have just hit upon the question that every follower of the Monarch Hypothesis must eventually grapple with. It took me five years to do so and you have reached it in the space of one conversation. Excellent work, Marcus." He cleared his throat and his tone turned somber. "Every story in the Immortal Queen archetype describes the subject as carrying an ineffable sadness. Worse still, every story starts the same way. A mortal woman transcends mortality through struggle and suffering. She was not born a goddess or a demigoddess, not blessed with divine lifespan. She had a life that was suspended to serve something greater. If the Monarch Hypothesis is true," Beric stopped and sighed, "then there exists a woman who has endured for perhaps thousands of years without rest."
"But doesn't history have lots of stories about people seeking immortality?" Another voice from the back of the room echoed down toward the center. "I mean...all the time you want to try new things? Sounds pretty great to me." This time, the smattering of chuckles was counterbalanced by an equally subdued chorus of sighs and reproachful mumbling. Beric resisted the urge to speak softly to ensure they could all hear him.
"I am afraid I must disagree. Our hypothetical Monarch has watched her friends die. Her family. Her entire culture fade into memory. She has borne responsibility for every tragedy she could not prevent and carried the cost of intervening in every one that she could. I cannot imagine a lonelier fate, and I would not wish such an existence on anyone—much less someone who has theoretically done so much good for so many people. Perhaps it is just as cruel of me to deny the sacrifice but, as I said...it is a weakness. One that I have chosen in order to continue to catalogue history."
The quiet that followed was heavy and contemplative. The scratching of quills stopped and even the brass mechanism of the projector fan seemed to acquiesce to the need for silence. The smell of ink and parchment settled about the room and the perpetually dancing motes of chalk dust looked almost reluctant to continue their whirling in the rays of afternoon sun that crept around the edges of the shades in the classroom windows.
"The beauty of archetypes," the professor concluded, "is that they allow us to celebrate the ideals without confronting the individual cost." A distant, tolling bell across campus broke the spell. Many students found themselves sitting up straighter, having leaned in unconsciously. Some wiped their eyes or sniffled as they packed up their belongings. Beric cleared his throat as they worked.
"For next week, I invite all of you to look through the various Immortal Queen legends and select the one that most resonates with you. We will contrast and compare them in groups. Be prepared to defend your beliefs and why you feel that your Queen best represents the archetype."
As they exited, he wandered to the far wall and opened the shades, looking out at the campus for a few minutes while the room emptied. Eventually, he made his way back to the dais and his small desk beside it, deep in thought. It was rare for the Monarch Hypothesis to come up in any discussion, rarer still for an undergraduate to propose it. He considered giving Marcus' papers a second look...perhaps there was more there than he had initially believed.
"Professor?"
Beric looked up from gathering his notes in surprise. He hadn't heard any of the students approach, yet one stood now at his desk. He did not recognize her face, but her bearing gave her away. The student who had sparked their intense discussion.
In the light, she looked like any other underclassman. Her clothes were loose, drab in a not-poor-but-not-ostentatious way and her deep auburn hair was bobbed in a timeless style. A neutral, fine scarf lay lightly about her neck and she had a canvas bag slung across her body. She held herself with the unassuming poise common to young students, but without a submissive lean; as if she knew how much space she took up and neither apologized for it nor claimed anything more.
"Ah," he responded, "the mysterious auditor. I hope you're considering enrolling, if only for Mr. Aethien's sake."
She smiled gently and earnestly, but shook her head. "I'm afraid I cannot stay. I wanted to come thank you for your insight, although..." She swayed lightly where she stood and caught his eye. "I happen to think that such an existence wouldn't be all sorrow and loss. With so much time to wander, I like to imagine that one might also find new joys and new souls to share them with. Even if temporarily." Beric found his shoulders relaxing at the sound of her voice, it was almost lyrical and carried an accent he couldn't place. The smile gave him pause though; he felt a recognition that was hard to pin down.
"That...is a comforting thought. One I hadn't considered. Have we met before?" he asked. "I apologize if you've taken my class already, Miss..." She shook her head again.
"No, Professor, we have not. I do believe our paths nearly crossed many years ago though. You participated on a dig at a site you called the 'Veiled Sanctum'? It was your paper on that expedition that drew me to attend your class today."
Beric chuckled, self-effacing warmth climbed up to his ears. "Oh, not my best work I'm afraid. We didn't find much there to write about."
"Mmm," she nodded along, "I understand the locals weren't very happy with it, though I suspect that wasn't your fault. I've heard that your senior researcher was..." She cast about for a suitable descriptor and the professor chuckled again.
"A bit of an ass. It's okay, Doctor Coburn was well known for it. It's unfortunate, I always felt like we could have gotten more from that site if he hadn't offended the local population so often. That's why he let me write the paper, he was more disappointed than I was. You see, I'd agreed to go because I was hoping to find..." He trailed off, old memories clicking together. "Hoping to find proof of the Grey Lady. I was...I was still a follower of the Monarch Hypothesis at the time. That paper was published twenty years ago, most undergraduates hadn't been born yet. You couldn't have been more than a toddler back then?"
The auditor laughed again and shrugged. "Thank you, I've been told that I've aged well—but your paper still makes the rounds. It's accessible in the university library, you know?"
Beric smiled, abashed. "Of course, of course."
"You may not see it as your best work, Doctor," she continued, "but I enjoyed reading it. You saw the evidence of the people who lived there and tried to tell their stories. They would thank you for that, if they could. It is...compassionate in a way that Doctor Coburn's approach was not. I was particularly interested in your notes about a room you called a 'memorial garden'? There was an inscription you had not been able to translate."
He nodded along, his mind suddenly drifting back to the dig. "There...there were a lot of inscriptions we couldn't translate. Linguistics researchers are still trying to figure out much of the proto-Issylran language but...wait. That inscription wasn't in the paper, my notes are archived. Are you a visiting researcher?"
She simply smiled at him. "Cha'n e an lasair seo a’ chiad fhear," she spoke gently, "tha cuid eile air a ghiùlan gus am bi mi ga chumail." Her unplaceable accent slid into the words like a native speaker and made Beric's heart stop. This was a dead language but was unmistakably being spoken right in front of him.
The auditor wordlessly slid a blank piece of paper from a pile on his desk to rest in front of him. She met his eyes and nodded to it.
"This flame is not the first, others have carried it so that I may tend to it."
He picked up a fountain pen and frantically began writing as she spoke. As he caught up, she finished the quote from memory.
"Cha'n e an lasair seo mu dheireadh, giùlainidh mi e chum gu'm bi muinntir eile 'g a cumail suas." She paused again. "This flame is not the last, I shall carry it so that others may tend to it."
Beric could barely breathe as he scrabbled to capture the words. Her shadow on the desk shifted as she moved to the stairs, but he dared not look up lest he stop writing and forget what she'd said. Her voice drifted back to him as she silently walked away. "If you should ever return there, I think that this time you would find the memorial garden to be much more...satisfying." She giggled quietly as she climbed the stairs; a lilting, joyful noise that danced around the empty room.
The stunned academic finally finished writing with a splotch of ink from his protesting pen. He looked up to stop her but his words died in his throat. He watched her climb the steps of the amphitheater and noticed something that he hadn't been able to see from where she stood at his desk before. Something that took his breath away.
She was barefoot.
He found his voice as she stepped to the top and reached for the exit.
"Wait! Who...who are you?"
The woman turned to him and the afternoon light caught her eyes. For just a moment, and Beric couldn't be sure if it was the reflected sunlight, her irises seemed to disappear into the whites of her eyes. She reached up to her scarf and pulled the back of it over her head into a makeshift cowl, shielding herself from the glare.
"Nothing ever truly disappears, Professor. It fades, it changes, it mixes and dilutes and influences...but it's never truly gone." She smiled at him...a tender upturn of her lips that bore an ineffable, familiar sadness and he finally understood why she had looked so familiar.
It was the same gentle melancholy that looked down at him from the images projected on the wall.
A moment later, the first of the next class of students burst in through the door, talking loudly and disrupting his concentration. She was gone in an instant, as if she was never there.
That night, after his last class of the day had left, Professor Raghthul sat at his desk in the same auditorium, furiously writing on fresh parchment. The document, titled "Research Proposal: Return Expedition to the Veiled Sanctum Site" would go on to detail his primary objective: Investigation of Eastern Foundation Memorial Garden.
He debated including his secondary objective, then quickly and firmly decided to do so: Reexamination of Monarch Hypothesis in light of new evidence.
BLURB: Legends say she appears across cultures: the veiled guide, the ash queen, the immortal mourner. To Professor Beric Raghthul, these are only archetypes—until a student’s question, and a stranger’s smile, force him to reconsider. Is he about to uncover the most tragic life in history…or become part of her myth himself?
The Monarch Hypothesis
The lecture hall's amphitheater seating sloped inward toward its central dais, like a gladiatorial pit of days long past. Combat in this arena was of the intellectual variety however—much less prone to bloodshed. Students were seated in the descending rows, though many spots remained vacant. For most, this was an elective class and a few had chosen it specifically for how little attention it would truly require of them. Others attentively took notes while their teacher spoke passionately, but with the practice of a man who had given the lecture many times over many years to many bored students. Beside a whirring, arc lamp powered projector stood Doctor Beric Raghthul, professor of anthropology.
Still young for an academic, Beric was nonetheless graced with greying hair at his temples, thinning hair at his crown, and the kind of scratchy beard on his full jaw that suggested grooming was a routine more than a statement these days. He gestured upward at the image projected on the wall from a glass plate photograph resting above the lamp. The image of a stone relief carving showing a feminine figure with one hand raised and the other extended toward supplicants nearby.
"The Veiled Guide of the Azeem Jadojehad inscriptions, first published in Marquet nearly three thousand years ago. Note the iconographic similarities to the Twilight Mentor of Taldoor legend, forty-five hundred years ago—" He switched the plate for another image, a fresco of a hooded woman gently guiding a child through a dark forest. "—and the Ash Queen of ancient Issylra...so archaic that she was thought to exist around the time of the fabled Calamity." A third image showing an oil painting of a fearsome, blindfolded woman raining fire upon a routed army. He then let the imagery speak for him. In the quiet of the classroom, only scribbling quills and the subtle grinding of the brass fan on his projector could be heard.
"Archetypes," Beric continued after a suitable pause, "exist not because of one single story, but because many stories share the same ideals, the same narrative foundation. In this case, the Immortal Queen archetype shows us the burden and responsibility of power on those who do not seek it, but wield it anyway."
A murmur from the student body reached the professor's ears and he squinted past the ozone-smelling arc light into the darkness for its source. A young man Beric recognized—Marcus Aethien—was huddled with his neighbor in conversation. The student's discussion partner was a new face though. A young woman with a quiet mien and an unassuming presence. His pale hair and slightly-pointed ears stood out in the dark, making the motion that accompanied conversation obvious from a distance. She was harder to see, the darkness beyond the lamplight made it difficult to tease out details and she wore her hair loosely about her face. Luckily for them, Professor Raghthul was not a man who was quick to anger.
"Something you wish to add to our understanding of these legends, Mr. Aethien?" He raised his voice a bit louder than his normal lecture tone to grab their attention. It succeeded.
The young man sat up straight and cleared his throat. Marcus was not the most diligent student in his lectures, but he did try harder than many others. "No Professor. I was just wondering—well, we were wondering..." He trailed off and gestured at the imagery on the wall.
"Your friend?" Beric nodded toward them.
"Oh, no sir. She's auditing the class, we just met. B-but with how similar these stories sound we were wondering if..." He trailed off again and looked at his neighbor. She gave him a gentle smile and an encouraging nod. Marcus sat up a little straighter and spoke once more. "We were wondering if these might all be stories of the same person?" A ripple of quiet chuckling made its way around the room.
Beric's response to the query was not what any of his students were expecting. He quietly walked to the projector, drew the outlet prism upward to zoom out, and lined up all three images together. Then, he added a few more. All depicted similar iconography with obvious and varied cultural influences.
"Numerous stories across cultures separated by thousands of miles and centuries of time but sharing similar morals and imagery..." He began. Marcus shrank down a bit.
"Right...yeah, sorry Prof—"
"What you are suggesting is not new, Marcus." Beric interrupted, turning to once again face his pupils. "In academic circles, it is known as the 'Monarch Hypothesis'. The idea that a single, extremely long-lived individual is the source of many of the legends we know today. That she has had a hand in guiding entire civilizations, preventing catastrophes, aiding the afflicted, and mourning the lost. Professor Weiss of the Marquesian Institute has written extensively on the subject and Doctor Kalross at Emon University has essentially staked his tenure on proving it. Early in my own academic career...I was an adherent as well."
"But you don't believe it anymore?" Another young woman spoke up from the darkness, near the front row. Beric removed his spectacles and began slowly cleaning them; a gesture they all recognized as preceding a carefully-articulated departure from the syllabus.
He sighed. "I do not, Ms. Chen."
"Don't like the idea of a woman secretly running the world, doctor?" The goad from one of the less-attentive seat warmers in the back of the auditorium was rewarded by a fresh ripple of chuckling. It was then silenced with a glance from Beric as he replaced his glasses.
"My dissent is not academic in nature." He glanced up at the back row again. "Nor is it rooted in misogyny." The professor clasped his hands behind his back and began slowly pacing. "My dissent comes from weakness and empathy. It is...humane." He gestured absently at the projected images above him.
"What do you see? Over and over again, similar motifs. Some are obvious, some less so. If she truly is the same person in each of these, look closely." He let them scan the images during a deliberate and practiced pause.
"She's barefoot." A short, sturdy woman from the middle tier spoke up. "In four of the images, her feet are uncovered, even the Veiled Guide and feet were considered taboo back then. The other two don't show her feet at all."
"Very good, Miss Clahiarain. While not all of the art shows her feet, none of the stories mention sandals, shoes, or any other foot covering congruent with the time period. Who else?" The professor gestured broadly to the room.
"The eyes." Naomi Chen spoke up again from the front row. Beric nodded in amusement. She was always a sharp one. The young woman pointed upward at the illustrations with an expensive-looking fountain pen. "Their eyes are all hooded or covered...except her." She gestured toward the image at the bottom-right corner. The fresco, with its dyes still showing faded but discernible colors, showed a woman who looked idiosyncratically monochrome. Her hair was ashen, skin pale as marble, and her eyes a blank white. "If they're all the same person, was she blind? I don't—" Naomi glanced down at her notes before looking back up, "I don't recall any of the stories mentioning that." Her professor gave her a subtle smile.
"The Grey Lady," he clarified, "the oldest—and some say original—Immortal Queen story. In fact, there are those in academia who argue that the archetype should bear her name instead...and you are correct. No Immortal Queen is ever described as sightless. In fact, many stories make a point of describing their protagonist as having exceptional vision—even, potentially, into realms that are invisible to mortals such as us." He turned to face the class again. "What else?" The thoughtful quiet returned, but the practiced educator let it sit. He could feel it, the subtle tension which told him that someone in the room had an answer they were wrestling with voicing. He shifted position and looked to the intruding auditor. She was looking straight at him, her face a mask of neutral attentiveness. Beside her, Marcus fidgeted again. The young man looked uncomfortable and cleared his throat.
"She's sad." He shifted in his seat. "They all look kind of...sad. Not like 'weeping' or whatever but just...I don't know...tired? That sounds bad, I just mean she's—" He shrugged helplessly and turned to his neighbor, but her gaze remained on the center of the room. Beric smiled tightly and resumed his pacing posture, hands clasped behind his back once more.
"You have just hit upon the question that every follower of the Monarch Hypothesis must eventually grapple with. It took me five years to do so and you have reached it in the space of one conversation. Excellent work, Marcus." He cleared his throat and his tone turned somber. "Every story in the Immortal Queen archetype describes the subject as carrying an ineffable sadness. Worse still, every story starts the same way. A mortal woman transcends mortality through struggle and suffering. She was not born a goddess or a demigoddess, not blessed with divine lifespan. She had a life that was suspended to serve something greater. If the Monarch Hypothesis is true," Beric stopped and sighed, "then there exists a woman who has endured for perhaps thousands of years without rest."
"But doesn't history have lots of stories about people seeking immortality?" Another voice from the back of the room echoed down toward the center. "I mean...all the time you want to try new things? Sounds pretty great to me." This time, the smattering of chuckles was counterbalanced by an equally subdued chorus of sighs and reproachful mumbling. Beric resisted the urge to speak softly to ensure they could all hear him.
"I am afraid I must disagree. Our hypothetical Monarch has watched her friends die. Her family. Her entire culture fade into memory. She has borne responsibility for every tragedy she could not prevent and carried the cost of intervening in every one that she could. I cannot imagine a lonelier fate, and I would not wish such an existence on anyone—much less someone who has theoretically done so much good for so many people. Perhaps it is just as cruel of me to deny the sacrifice but, as I said...it is a weakness. One that I have chosen in order to continue to catalogue history."
The quiet that followed was heavy and contemplative. The scratching of quills stopped and even the brass mechanism of the projector fan seemed to acquiesce to the need for silence. The smell of ink and parchment settled about the room and the perpetually dancing motes of chalk dust looked almost reluctant to continue their whirling in the rays of afternoon sun that crept around the edges of the shades in the classroom windows.
"The beauty of archetypes," the professor concluded, "is that they allow us to celebrate the ideals without confronting the individual cost." A distant, tolling bell across campus broke the spell. Many students found themselves sitting up straighter, having leaned in unconsciously. Some wiped their eyes or sniffled as they packed up their belongings. Beric cleared his throat as they worked.
"For next week, I invite all of you to look through the various Immortal Queen legends and select the one that most resonates with you. We will contrast and compare them in groups. Be prepared to defend your beliefs and why you feel that your Queen best represents the archetype."
As they exited, he wandered to the far wall and opened the shades, looking out at the campus for a few minutes while the room emptied. Eventually, he made his way back to the dais and his small desk beside it, deep in thought. It was rare for the Monarch Hypothesis to come up in any discussion, rarer still for an undergraduate to propose it. He considered giving Marcus' papers a second look...perhaps there was more there than he had initially believed.
"Professor?"
Beric looked up from gathering his notes in surprise. He hadn't heard any of the students approach, yet one stood now at his desk. He did not recognize her face, but her bearing gave her away. The student who had sparked their intense discussion.
In the light, she looked like any other underclassman. Her clothes were loose, drab in a not-poor-but-not-ostentatious way and her deep auburn hair was bobbed in a timeless style. A neutral, fine scarf lay lightly about her neck and she had a canvas bag slung across her body. She held herself with the unassuming poise common to young students, but without a submissive lean; as if she knew how much space she took up and neither apologized for it nor claimed anything more.
"Ah," he responded, "the mysterious auditor. I hope you're considering enrolling, if only for Mr. Aethien's sake."
She smiled gently and earnestly, but shook her head. "I'm afraid I cannot stay. I wanted to come thank you for your insight, although..." She swayed lightly where she stood and caught his eye. "I happen to think that such an existence wouldn't be all sorrow and loss. With so much time to wander, I like to imagine that one might also find new joys and new souls to share them with. Even if temporarily." Beric found his shoulders relaxing at the sound of her voice, it was almost lyrical and carried an accent he couldn't place. The smile gave him pause though; he felt a recognition that was hard to pin down.
"That...is a comforting thought. One I hadn't considered. Have we met before?" he asked. "I apologize if you've taken my class already, Miss..." She shook her head again.
"No, Professor, we have not. I do believe our paths nearly crossed many years ago though. You participated on a dig at a site you called the 'Veiled Sanctum'? It was your paper on that expedition that drew me to attend your class today."
Beric chuckled, self-effacing warmth climbed up to his ears. "Oh, not my best work I'm afraid. We didn't find much there to write about."
"Mmm," she nodded along, "I understand the locals weren't very happy with it, though I suspect that wasn't your fault. I've heard that your senior researcher was..." She cast about for a suitable descriptor and the professor chuckled again.
"A bit of an ass. It's okay, Doctor Coburn was well known for it. It's unfortunate, I always felt like we could have gotten more from that site if he hadn't offended the local population so often. That's why he let me write the paper, he was more disappointed than I was. You see, I'd agreed to go because I was hoping to find..." He trailed off, old memories clicking together. "Hoping to find proof of the Grey Lady. I was...I was still a follower of the Monarch Hypothesis at the time. That paper was published twenty years ago, most undergraduates hadn't been born yet. You couldn't have been more than a toddler back then?"
The auditor laughed again and shrugged. "Thank you, I've been told that I've aged well—but your paper still makes the rounds. It's accessible in the university library, you know?"
Beric smiled, abashed. "Of course, of course."
"You may not see it as your best work, Doctor," she continued, "but I enjoyed reading it. You saw the evidence of the people who lived there and tried to tell their stories. They would thank you for that, if they could. It is...compassionate in a way that Doctor Coburn's approach was not. I was particularly interested in your notes about a room you called a 'memorial garden'? There was an inscription you had not been able to translate."
He nodded along, his mind suddenly drifting back to the dig. "There...there were a lot of inscriptions we couldn't translate. Linguistics researchers are still trying to figure out much of the proto-Issylran language but...wait. That inscription wasn't in the paper, my notes are archived. Are you a visiting researcher?"
She simply smiled at him. "Cha'n e an lasair seo a’ chiad fhear," she spoke gently, "tha cuid eile air a ghiùlan gus am bi mi ga chumail." Her unplaceable accent slid into the words like a native speaker and made Beric's heart stop. This was a dead language but was unmistakably being spoken right in front of him.
The auditor wordlessly slid a blank piece of paper from a pile on his desk to rest in front of him. She met his eyes and nodded to it.
"This flame is not the first, others have carried it so that I may tend to it."
He picked up a fountain pen and frantically began writing as she spoke. As he caught up, she finished the quote from memory.
"Cha'n e an lasair seo mu dheireadh, giùlainidh mi e chum gu'm bi muinntir eile 'g a cumail suas." She paused again. "This flame is not the last, I shall carry it so that others may tend to it."
Beric could barely breathe as he scrabbled to capture the words. Her shadow on the desk shifted as she moved to the stairs, but he dared not look up lest he stop writing and forget what she'd said. Her voice drifted back to him as she silently walked away. "If you should ever return there, I think that this time you would find the memorial garden to be much more...satisfying." She giggled quietly as she climbed the stairs; a lilting, joyful noise that danced around the empty room.
The stunned academic finally finished writing with a splotch of ink from his protesting pen. He looked up to stop her but his words died in his throat. He watched her climb the steps of the amphitheater and noticed something that he hadn't been able to see from where she stood at his desk before. Something that took his breath away.
She was barefoot.
He found his voice as she stepped to the top and reached for the exit.
"Wait! Who...who are you?"
The woman turned to him and the afternoon light caught her eyes. For just a moment, and Beric couldn't be sure if it was the reflected sunlight, her irises seemed to disappear into the whites of her eyes. She reached up to her scarf and pulled the back of it over her head into a makeshift cowl, shielding herself from the glare.
"Nothing ever truly disappears, Professor. It fades, it changes, it mixes and dilutes and influences...but it's never truly gone." She smiled at him...a tender upturn of her lips that bore an ineffable, familiar sadness and he finally understood why she had looked so familiar.
It was the same gentle melancholy that looked down at him from the images projected on the wall.
A moment later, the first of the next class of students burst in through the door, talking loudly and disrupting his concentration. She was gone in an instant, as if she was never there.
That night, after his last class of the day had left, Professor Raghthul sat at his desk in the same auditorium, furiously writing on fresh parchment. The document, titled "Research Proposal: Return Expedition to the Veiled Sanctum Site" would go on to detail his primary objective: Investigation of Eastern Foundation Memorial Garden.
He debated including his secondary objective, then quickly and firmly decided to do so: Reexamination of Monarch Hypothesis in light of new evidence.
Last edited: