8th Winter 515 AV
Deep in the center of Semele Park, the central gazing pond remained smooth as glass with no sign nor sound of activity. A thickened sheet of ice delicately layered the top of the calm waters, still frozen from the night's icy touch. All around bare flower heads and leafless shrubbery created an atmosphere of aging and decay. On a frost covered bench sat an unusual visitor to the morbidly serene surroundings. The sleek and finely furred figure of her tail took up half the length of the bench before the flippered end, which sloped off the edge and rested against the ground. Eldrid's usual toga had been forsaken on this ever chilly day on account of a rather unfortunate charcoal stain. Despite the cold she wore a simple band of black cotton material, the traditional clothing of her people. Unperturbed by the frigid temperatures the delicately featured Akvatari sat slightly forward on the bench to give her intricately patterned grey wings space to move freely.
In her soft, seal tailed lap sat an open book with crisp, clean cut pages that carried a faint yellowing from age. The expertly scribed words within appeared elegant, almost fragile in Eldrid's eyes. Her fingertips gently caressed the pages, almost as if they could feel the meaning of each word merely by touch. Sadly, this was not an ability Eldrid possessed, however, as her eyes trailed slightly behind her fingers, she already had plans to test another strange ability she had discovered. Ever since her second day working at the Chevan Art Gallery, Eldrid had percieved what she thought were strange, vividly real hallucinations whenever she read from a book, but only when she read aloud. At first she had thought it was the book, the one about various festivals in Riverfall with which she had first experienced the sensation. She had finished her note making in silence after that strange occurrence, relieved to be left alone by the harrying images, before rushing to Zandar, the librarian who had found the book for her. At first, he had thought she was joking, but after almost a bell of adamant explanation and pleas he seemed more ready to accept her as crazy than joking. She then asked him to read the segments she had read, but was not expecting the severe lack of any manifestation which followed. Eldrid could scarcely put the doubt and confusion which that had caused, along with the embarrassment, into words. After that every day wandering the icy Riverian airways and streets had become a permanent series of doubtful thoughts and mental ponderings of lunacy. Until the hallucinations started happening whenever she read aloud. Now she simply felt like a lunatic.
That would all come to an end today . . . Eldrid hoped, or she would prove herself crazy. Either way, she knew she needed an answer to the troubling question. Thus she had come to Semele park in the first hours of daybreak to conduct a test. Eldrid let out a hesitant breath and shifted her fingers to the sentence she had chosen from the chapter on the festival of lights.
"Painted glass jars are often used to make colourful, unique candleholders." The sentence was informative like the book it was in, not entirely Eldrid's style, but she needed something to test with. As she read the sentence aloud, she watched the glass jar she had read about materialised before her, above the book, covered in painted markings. She reached out and wrapped her hands around the cold, hard jar. The weight of the object became immediately apparent to her as she lifted it away from the book, just as a glass jar weighed. The Akvatari paused before she continued, marveling at what she was about to do, almost certain this confirmed her lunacy. She lifted the jar up into the air, and brought it down against the edge of the bench. A dozen shards of glass exploded from the edge of the bench, scattering into the frozen dirt and bare Baby Cheeks and Rose Hips. Eldrid snatched up one of the icy cold shards and flitted over to the pond immediately. From her experience she only had so much time with the hallucination. In her own hand the cold, sharp glass felt all two real, which was something that had prompted her curiosity regarding the validity of these hallucinations. She reached out her delicate hand and pressed the pointed tip of the shard into the ice, carving into the pond.
REAL
Eldrid winced as she felt the glass she had been carefully handling cut into her hand slightly, drawing blood. It had occurred to her that an injury might prove the realism of the manifestations, but she had been attempting to avoid unnecessary pain and harm. She flitted back and sat on the bench once more, cautious of stray glass.
Moments later the multihued glass shards vanished into small clouds of rapidly disappearing grey mist. The one in Eldrid's hand had simply ceased its existence as well, and she felt nothing other than the sharp stinging pain in her hand. She cast her eyes towards the pond, scarcely able to contain her exhiliration. There, in the ice, remained the singular word she had been hoping to see. A confirmation of her own sanity. REAL. The Akvatari shot into the air and let out an excited yell of unintelligent noise before descending to the ground, rather embarrassed by her outburst as she began to collect her books together.
