Desreal: in which there is a child in a rather grown girl;

“You would give up your sacred rights for a brat you barely know?"
"Yes, I would."
"You would give up your throne for him? He who has caused you such misery, such humiliation?"
"Yes, I would."

Skylar was many things. She was Nicodemus, and she was Hawthorne. She wasn’t them as well. So many things and so little time to explain them. She was a girl and a woman, all at once. Skylar had liked and loved, now knowing the difference between them. The men in her life were so plentiful, and she knew she was blessed for that. Nicodemus, loving and tender father, he was everything that she could have hoped for even if it had taken it’s swerve down a different path. There was Stelios…sweet Stelios who had shown her kindness, and the very tender beginnings of what might have been true love. But she knows now that it was very different, and that true love was such a rare thing to find. And of course Formaldehyde, her teacher and her love, who had shown her the difference between platonic love and what she felt for him. True love was not certain as of yet, because yes it was so hard to come across. Only time could tell, but it was certain that she was in love, and that so far she saw no reason that they couldn’t be together forever. Love kept her going and frightened her all at once. She had seen Nicodemus in love, and the passion that he had felt it for Hawthorne. Together they were more beautiful than she could ever hope to be. Together they were their own Morticia and Gomez Addams, so in love, so perfect. She hoped beyond all hope that that was how Formaldehyde and she would be.

Her childhood had been nothing like Saga’s own. It had it’s rough parts indeed. Upon her birth her mother had been stolen away, along with her father, leaving her under the watchful eyes of the wolves. That had never bothered her, she had been a rather adventurous child. But then her world was turned upside down when Hawthorne was murdered. Skylar’s life had been an abyss, spiraling down further and further into a rubble. Still Skylar blames herself, because she only knows the rough outline, never told the full details. After Hawthorne’s murder Nicodemus had vanished from the element, and Skylar had found herself lost in her wondering, her searching for him. When he returned once more, she had not, only remained evermore lost. But then she had returned somehow, somehow finding the beacon that was Andraste. Nicodemus had no care of her then. She saw the pain in his eyes when she looked at him. Sometimes she wondered if he wanted her dead. Later she would find that it was simply pain for her being so like the beauty that was Hawthorne.

Everything had to get worse before it got better.

But of Illiana? Of Lily? Nicodemus had never spoken of her. Not to Skylar or anyone else. It was his secret. That among many.

Skylar was beautiful, though she was unlike others. Hers was an awkward, bizarre form of beauty. She still holds a faint line of childhood, and her form is more doe than horse. Long, leggy, pale, wide and large eyes like that of a china doll. Skylar was truly different from Saga. He is tall where she is tiny, his muscles make her lack of them seem even more infinitesimal, and the dark of him accents her paleness all the more. Saga is solid, and Skylar is all but translucent. He is warrior understanding all of pain, she is scholar and understanding nothing of violence. Ironic that her blood was warriors and a little spies. In that she was so unlike her family. Different. If Skylar lacked in physical beauty, she made up for it with her voice (like that of a Chapel’s bells).

Saga comes and surprises her, body shying away only faintly. Why she was here she didn’t even know. I suppose her mind had always been plagued by wanderlust. That or her Earth and her Air had dragged her there. Very likely as they acted on whims and did things against her own will. Soon she smiles to him, a shy thing, long mane concealing her face like a blushing bride’s veil. Skylar had always been a reclusive and shy thing, hence why she was so far into the jungle with no one to protect her. She thinks then of Formaldehyde, where he was, and what he was doing. The swelling of her tummy might have been obvious just then, a gentle prod at her tummy a signal that her time was soon. Really though, for someone pregnant? She was hard to show. There was barely a lump to her barrel. Indication of how scraggly she really was. There is a child in her face, smiling at this dark stallion before her. It was almost frightening, this ghost of a child that was still somewhat alive upon her face, even though her real childhood had long since passed. Denial was something that froze you no matter how fast time moved.

“Hello.” Her bell-voice is a whisper, her winds stretching out to caress his face. “I am Skylar.” She giggles then, as though the words fell across her lips as anti-climactic. The smile falls from her face, a sudden frown taking her as her brow furrows. She leans into him. Skylar wasn’t much on….normalcy either. No one could say that she wasn‘t as strange as she looked.

“Why are you alone out here?”

APPRENTICE
**SKYLAR**

"You have spilled your own blood rather than the blood of an innocent. That was the final task and the most important."

Air III Earth III, Teacher of Andarin, Lorelei and Onipa'a

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