River's Sketchbook

[Fury]

It is an inseparable part of her, as much as her arms and hands are. The pages within the sketchbook are the repository of her thoughts, the things she witnesses- an on-going journal of her memories. Some of the sketches have been worked with great detail, but most are done quickly- trying to capture the moment before it passes, or recalling a memory or thought before it's gone. Some of the drawings are scenes, some of locales and landscapes. Some are of animals, both domestic and wild. Most, however, are of people.

Almost all of the drawings are done in simple pencil, and show many mistakes, erasures, and re-workings. The drawings are often accompanied by hurriedly written notes in a cursive hand.

[Fury]

(Artist note: Yeah, the proportions on him are terrible I need to fix that. I don't imagine he's that short)

[Fury]

(At the bottom of the page, is a faded out line of text: "Uncle Cody. I miss you.")

[Fury]

"Uncle Davey in his stupid damn hat"

[sonuvalich]

I know what I want for Christmas, a mug that says "#1 Thayan." Maybe a T-shirt that says "If you can read this, maximized vampiric touch!"

Looks great though, and the proportions make it more funny to me. It would explain why I can't get any respect, walking around looking like I'm shrinking.

[Fury]

River stood before the dresser, and gazed into the hazy, cracked mirror. The room was spartan, it's furnishings old, the linens tattered and threadbare. But it was a roof that didn't leak, and in the Valley, that meant a lot. She reached into the dresser, withdrawing a nightgown, and changed quickly- trying to beat the ever present chill. It didn't work... it never did. This place was cold... and it seemed to be in the figurative sense just as much as the literal. Giving a sigh, she looked back to the mirror and tugged the tie that held her pony tail free. Thick chestnut colored hair fell down past her shoulders, and across her face, hiding most of her features aside from her nose and mouth. She picked up a silver-handled brush, and began to run it methodically, hypnotically through her hair, until it shown with a cool sheen, as if moonlight had managed to find it's way in and kiss the tresses. The brush had belonged to her mother, Josephina. Uncle Cody used to brush her hair for her every night before sending the little girl to bed. She'd hated it then. She'd squirmed and pouted and complained that none of her other friends had to have their hair brushed. Wide, misty grey eyes peered into their own reflection, trying to dig in, to see what was going on behind them. She watched the face looking back at her, and wondered who the hell that person was, what that person believed in, who that person wanted to be. Answers were just more questions.

River sighed, and set her brush down. She moved to her bedside and sat down on the mattress. It was old, musty smelling, and seemed perpetually damp. She picked up her sketchbook. The old one, the one that had travelled from Amn with her. Thumbing through the pages, she paused on a couple of drawings she'd done of her uncles. Fingers reached out, and ran over the lines she'd drawn. They had tried so very hard to protect her. To keep her safe, and innocent of the world they lived in. The world, of course, had other ideas. River was precocious, and clever, and had a knack for getting into trouble. She'd probably driven Cody and Davey to their wits end, but somehow they'd managed to raise her, had kept the bad at bay, and she'd grown into a young woman that wanted very much to believe there was good in everyone. Except, of course, there wasn't. Not everyone.

Cody and Davey were gone, and River was left alone with two sets of lessons- the things they told her, and the things she learned that she wasn't supposed to. Valuable lessons, both. One set made her a good person. One would keep her alive. She blinked back the prickling of tears, and closed the sketchbook after telling her uncles how much she loved and missed them. Maybe there was a way for both Lessons to meet in the middle. To compromise. It seemed unlikely.

River blew out the candle, and climbed into bed. She huddled under a blanket that was too thin, trying to stay warm.

[Fury]

She'd seen it, of course. The single piece of parchment, tacked to the wall inside the Second Wind.

"River Swift"

She'd left it there, and walked by trying to be blissfully unaware. Now, there was a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, and the sensation of wanting to be sick. She carried the candle to her nightstand, then turned and folded her dresses, placing them in her trunk. On top of them, she placed both sketchbooks. With deliberate care, she closed the lid, and turned the key in the lock.

With a slow, shuddering sigh, she sat down on the floor, cross-legged. Eyes stared into the dancing shadows being cast about by the single candle. Slowly, she reached a hand out, out of the light and into the dark. Cody had shown her once. Had shown her how to do it. She'd never been able to get it right. But it never mattered, because they had kept all the bad things away.

She was not strong. She couldn't pick up a sword and defend herself, she couldn't cast a spell... that's not what she was good at. There was really only one thing she could do, if she wanted to live. She'd never been able to. But she needed to remember, and learn. The shadows were the only thing that could save her. The shadows, where all the bad things were.

[Fury]

River sat cross-legged on her cot, her sketchbook open across her lap. Her pencil scritched quickly across the page, and she quietly sang to herself. The song was a lullaby, one that she'd heard so long ago- sung by the voice of an angel. That lullaby was all that was left of Josephina Swift, and River treasured every word.

She smiled to herself as the image began to form and take shape across the page. It wasn't often that the vision inside her head made it's way down through her arm and out her fingers looking the same as it had in conception. It was a dwarf, bald but with an impressive beard, arms raised above his head, with what she figured divine power would look like, if you could actually draw that sort of thing. Beneath it, she quickly wrote out "Ghim's New Boogaloo", and offered the page a sweet, almost child-like smile.

"Don't change... no, I know it will change who you are. Don't let it change your heart"

It would. There wasn't any help for that. It would have to, in order for her to survive.

The lullaby faded, and passed into silence.

[Fury]

The head of a needle

River sat on the floor, cross-legged before the fireplace. She took the poker in hand, and stirred the embers until tiny tongues of flame began to creep up and warm the chill night air. She couldn't sleep. Maybe it was the full moon coming. Maybe that was just an excuse.

She silently opened her sketchbook, and looked at the next empty page. It had been days since she'd drawn anything at all. Days that seemed like ages. She picked up her pencil, stared long and hard at the page, then set it down again. It wasn't there. The images in her mind were too fast and too conflicted. There was no balance.

Balance.

She was losing it- first teetering hard into one direction, then another, and then another.

They'd lost Davey in Waterdeep. Cody had forced River to keep moving, to keep running, even though pursuit was there, getting closer. Cody knew. He knew River would wind up alone. He'd told her there were three things she should never, ever forget. He made her promise, cross her heart and hope to die, even.

Three things. Never forget where you came from. Never bite the hand that feeds you. No matter what, Live.

She hadn't forgotten them. She wouldn't, she'd promised. She just didn't realize, until now, how very difficult it was to keep all three. The promise to live seemed so very simple a thing. She'd arrived alone, broke and scared- and discovered that her openness, her quick smile and innocence brought people close, people who wanted to help her. People who would be sad to see what she saw now- that innocence slowly flowing through her fingers as if it were the silky sand trickling through an hourglass. She'd seen thing. Remembered things. Was willing to do things- and all in the name of survival. Things that were very likely to make her a different person- one that those gentle, caring people would not find worth helping at all. That really shouldn't bother her, she told herself. But it did, and in that moment she realized what Davey and Cody had tried so very hard to preserve.

The hand that feeds. The hand that picked her up, dusted her off, and offered her a starting point. The hand that had become so much more. No, there was no chance of her biting that hand. Instead, she realized she was willing to fling herself entirely in the face of anything that threatened- no matter what she needed to do, no matter the dark stain it might impart on her soul. A little contradictory to living at all costs, wasn't it? Was it worth it? Yes. By the gods, yes.

She pulled a note from her pouch, written in a plain hand. It instructed her to meet at the same place, and gave a time. She shivered slightly, knowing the hand that had written it. How could she forget where she came from? It was impossible, she was drawn to it like a moth to an open flame. She seemed to yearn for it, despite the fact that it loomed there, a menacing beast of shadow, so happily willing to devour the other two in one greedy gulp. But they would welcome her. And they would be family- a family that accepted her for what she was, who she was, and what she could do. It would be a place she could belong. She thought of the man that wrote the note she held. Just standing next to the hooded figure had formed a lump of pure fear in the pit of her stomach. There was only one other time she could feel how quickly her beating heart could be stopped, and that had been in the clutches of a vampire. And yet she was to meet with him again. She'd even requested it. And she knew that he knew. But excitement surged beneath fear, and she realized that hidden within all the roiling emotions sat one little fact. She wanted his approval. She wanted to know if he saw potential. In his eyes, she didn't want to be thought of as just a witless child.

She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, and rocked slowly back and forth.

Another angel lit upon the head of a needle, and began to dance.

[Fury]

The Dark Hour

Parchment collapsed beneath her fingers, crumpling into a ball that was squeezed within a white-knuckled grip. Tears sprang unrequested to her eyes, coursing down her cheeks before she could swipe them away.

Emotions. They would be her downfall, clearly, in this world where they just did not seem to be welcome. The chaotic nature of her elven heritage meant those emotions were there, all the time. She felt, lived, every one of them- raw and unfiltered. At this moment there was a wild tumult of confusion, hurt, and anger.

Without temperance, without control, her emotions could get her killed faster than any sword. But anger covered the wound. Anger staunched the flow of tears, and anger filled the sudden, unexplained emptiness. It built a protective wall around the confused, hurt soul within. The one that simply wanted to know- "Why?"

She unfolded the parchment, smoothing out the wrinkles on the desk. Flipping it over, she penned a response. Once done, she grabbed her cloak and with a frustrated hiss, gathered the night's shadows about her.

She would deliver her message, and before the dark hour had passed, something out there, somewhere, was going to feel pain.

[Fury]

The Hammer Grip

It had been some time since her sketchbook had been in her hands, but now as she sat by the fireplace in the back room, her pencil scritched with renewed vigor, capturing a series of lessons lest she forget what she learned. Notes and questions accompanied the illustrations, all of which have been worked, erased, and worked again.

[Fury]

The Saber Grip

The next illustration is of a different grip, done much the same as the Hammer Grip. A great deal of thought and effort obviously went into making sure things were as exact as she could make them. The worn paper and darkness of the erasures spoke of the level of River's concentration, and frustration as she fought to make things right.

[Fury]

It had been such a long time since she'd sat, in the quiet hours of the night, losing herself into the lines and shades her pencil made. So much had been happening, that her sketchbook had become nothing more than a notebook- a day planner for this meeting or that. Art seemed dead. The sense of wonder that urged her to capture the world around her had faded, along with the innocence that could see the amazing in the most mundane things.

Silvery eyes watched the dance of flames within the fireplace as her mind tumbled through the obstacle course of her thoughts. River thought of all the things that seemed to be slipping away from her, and with a slow deliberateness, she reached again for the sketchbook and pencil. Not to note, but to draw. Things slipping away from her was nobody's fault but her own. She either chose to let these things go, or to hang onto them. Wonder and beauty were not dead. Her life was full of amazement, if she would simply open the eyes that allowed her to see them. Her lips twitched a smile, and a nervously trembling hand set pencil to paper, creating faint shaky lines at first, then growing in confidence. There was one source of wonderment that she could not deny; a beauty that filled her life and made it rich, and full.

[Fury]

There was no preamble, simply an image and a single, obscure quote.