There was quiet in this place, and calm. She was sitting on the bed, cross-legged working on a picture with paints. The manor was full of ghosts so she did not go there, the Minx-cave was empty, this place was empty as well but somehow comforting. "No reason it should be comforting, after all, you left me too, didn't you Gavin?"

Her mind was growing unstable in the absence of family. It was one of the differences in the elves from her home than many of the other elves she'd seen. Family was a part of her and without them her sanity was going fuzzy at the edges. One of the manifestations of this was she spoke to people that were far away and out of hearing, Gavin, Katt, Trist....Kel was kind of there and kind of not there. She had imbued an image of him with some of her essence and he had more weight than an illusion but it was still not truly him.

The wards that Gavin had put up in this place were strong and apparently disconcerting to others. The owner could not rent the place to anyone, no one would even enter. It felt warm to her, it gave her the same type of feeling she got when her brother used to wrap her in his arms for a big, rib-cracking hug. She did not allow the ghost of Kel to enter this place, it was set aside for time alone.

Adding a ring of forget-me-nots to encircle the heart she had already painted was fast work, it was not a masterpiece but anyone could tell what it was supposed to be at a glance. "Gavin, did you know that paintings have been used as holding spaces for a variety of things" The portrait of Dorian Gray held his aging, there have been tales that vampires have used paintings to gather the spirit of others examining portraits of themselves and now....now I will use one to hold my heart."

Her brother had begun to whisper warnings to her for some months now. Telling her that David had enthralled her and was sucking her essence. At first she didn't believe him but day after day he would speak and she would listen with an increasingly unstable soul. There was a straw, she was sure of it but in the end she had gone to a judge and asked for an annulment. After a great deal of arguing the man agreed, but warning she would not get another based off of 'evil vampire enthrallment' again.

Odd how much like love that enthrallment had felt. "Can't trust myself with this so I'm going to leave it in your care, Gavin. I know....I know, you abandoned me." Her calm cracked a bit at the thought. He had to leave, part of her knew that, but that did not help soothe the hurt she felt at his absence.

"Anyway, I told Kel I didn't think he was right about David. But he does know more about those things than I do. Him and Dad have been hunting them since before I was born." The last part of the sentence was said in her best Kel-imitation voice. "Says that David will forget me within a few days and be onto his next victim within a week, two at the most."

Fingertips traced the outside of the painting now. The heart was in the center, the forget-me-nots gently wrapped around it and the background was a soft yellow. "Maybe it will take him longer to forget me" How long did it take you to forget me?" Swallowing hard against the lump growing in her throat as she hung the painting on the wall above the bed.

Flopping down on the bed she buried her face in the blankets. It had been so long since Gavin had been here and yet she could almost swear that she could catch the faint scent that was uniquely him. "Surely at least a week....maybe even two." With her face buried the words were muffled, and the tears? Well, if no one saw you cry it didn't count.

~%Only a moment ago we had nothing but time...everything lasted forever and you were all mine. Only a dream I know, thinking you'd never go....%~

That was as far as she got in the song. It was the seventh time she tried. It was only a memory, or she thought it was a memory. It was getting harder to tell as the days slipped by. The forest around her didn't look familiar, but she didn't care. Didn't care if she knew where she was because none of it was real anyway, it was all in her mind.

This attitude had spread from one thing in her life to the next, it had been days since she ate or drank. Being an elf this wasn't an immediate danger, eventually it would be but why bother eating when everything was an illusion"

She hadn't yet sorted out why her mind decided to be so very cruel to her, making her believe that David was real, or that he loved her. It was true her mind also gave her some good illusions like Harris, Mur HG and Erik and she adored them but....how could your heart break when it was just a story ending"

The bard in her said she should be proud of the epic her mind had spun, it had everything a good tale could want. Fighting, rivalry, love and betrayal. Now it just needed a good ending and it would surely be a tale told by bards for years to come.

As she lie on the ground, the grass still wet from an afternoon shower, she pondered when the ending would come. She felt hollow, empty and alone. She missed her family, missed the comfort they gave. Missed Gavin, although she had doubts now if he was real or just another character in the story. Would things have gone differently if he had stayed" There was a thread that she didn't dare tug on.

She couldn't bring herself to regret her time with David. Maybe when the enthrallment was well and truly broken" Staying away from town was the only way she could keep herself from searching for him....so out of town she stayed. Would the other illusions come look for her" Her week was usually filled with doing charity work with Erik. Was it odd she worried for the people she would be helping"

They weren't real, they didn't really need her to help them shop, put away the groceries or teach some self-defense techniques....she'd come up with a good variety of things that could be done with a cane for the elderly folk she visited. They always seemed more alive when swinging a cane around and striking Erik with all the gusto they had left, he always volunteered to be the attacker dummy. Well maybe he didn't volunteer so much as Gwen directed her pupils to start wailing on him.

Kept company by the ghosts of memories and a growing sense of apathy she began the song again...

~%Only a moment ago we had nothing but time...everything lasted forever and you were all mine%~

The days went by, as they are want to do, and slowly her mind cleared. The process was painful and the realizations she needed to come to grips with nearly halted the progress that Alaric had worked so very hard to produce.

Some weeks after her mind began to sort itself out she realized that she was being followed. There were some people in Rhydin that looked like easy marks, she knew that all too well as she still found herself lifting a purse or two when she wasn't paying mind to her manners. Gwen didn't really look like an easy mark today, dressed in her leather armor and although no weapons showed she was obviously armed if anyone paid heed to the coc ksure way she walked.

There was a class scheduled for today and she didn't want to miss it because some young fool decided to try his luck so she gave further incentive to leave her be, a subtle flick of her wrists and twin daggers appeared in her hands. She flashed and whirled the blades in a near blinding display before, with another subtle flick of her wrists, they disappeared again. There was no slowing of steps, nor a quickening, she was not about to allow some shadow to dictate her actions. Still, after a block or two when she realized the shadow was still there she felt a trickle of annoyance, then more as this annoyance was ruining her good mood. That was just rude to interrupt her good mood, and not even an offer of beer or cotton candy!

Taking the next alley she came upon and ducking up against the walls, calling on the shadows to wrap her in a loving embrace, she waited for her stalker to appear. It didn't take long for the man to turn the corner, she nearly missed him as he was using some type of magic to mask his motions. It was fascinating, not quite invisible she could only see a shimmer in the air when he moved, swirly waves of air like one could see in the desert just before the oasis mirage appeared.

The man paused, not seeing any sign of Gwen. Both stood stock still for long minutes, you didn't get to be someone good in shadows without patience. This was a virtue that few would attribute to Gwen but there were precious few that ever went on her adventures where such things meant the difference between life and death. OK, sometimes she forgot this lesson and would do things like....jump into a dark pit to see if anything was there. And when she found a golem in a mystic circle she might have leapt on it's head and starting pounding on it rather than wait for the wizard with them to tell her it was OK. But those were just occasional (despite what her cousins would say — that it was the norm) instances.

When she thought perhaps the man had disappeared, using a method not unlike her own shadow stepping, he spoke. "You still smell of strawberries and flowers, Acorn. Some things have not changed."

It was a voice she recognized, one she thought long gone from her life and for a long minute she just stood there. Perhaps her mind had not healed as much as she thought' She couldn't tell it was broken so how did she think she could tell when it was mended" It was a shock to her system and one that nearly sent her in a lightning fast downward spiral. "No, I am getting better. Brain stop this, he is gone, gone, gone." The words a litany, spoken in a desperate prayer to whatever gods would listen. She could not go back to the state she had been in the past month, would not!

"You are getting better, Acorn. I hope you will not hold it against me when you find out that I have been using my magic to mend your mind. Another was twisting it to some purpose and I could not allow it to continue." There was a shift and shimmer and then Gavin was standing there, just a few feet away looking exactly as she remembered him.

Her hand went to the necklace she always wore and found the charm there cool to the touch but there was an odd current running through it now that she hadn't noticed before. The thing she did next was not planned, it surprised her a bit but not as much as Gavin as she closed the distance and threw a hard left punch to his lowest rib. "How could you leave me that way' You didn't even wake me to say good-bye' Who does that' Did you hate me so much?" Each question was punctuated with another punch and by the time she was through Gavin was up against the wall trying to curl up to protect his midsection from the barrage.

"Gwen! Stop! Come on, I can't answer if you're bludgeoning all the air out of me." The words sounded pained, she hadn't held back on any of the blows and she had a surprisingly good sucker punch for an elf so small.

After one last punch to his gut she stepped back, hands falling to rest on her hips and glared at him in that way that women who were very, very angry could do. "Fine. Answer.? These few words held the unspoken threat of more punches if what he said was unsatisfactory.