Information

Veiss has a minion!

Promise the Serene

Veiss
Legacy Name: Veiss

The

Angelic Legeica
Owner:

Tribe

Age: 5 years, 3 months, 1 week

Born: January 28th, 2019

Adopted: 2 years, 2 months, 1 week ago

Adopted: February 23rd, 2022

This pet has been nominated for the Pet Spotlight!

Statistics

Level: 251
Strength: 627
Defense: 627
Speed: 625
Health: 626
HP: 596/626
Intelligence: 268
Books Read: 268
Food Eaten: 3
Job: Unemployed

CREDITS

profile template (c)

helix (get it)
template edited by

Tribe,

spacemage,

Gyarbear
story by

Tribe
Background courtesy of Unsplash user eberhard grossgateiger

These memories a lavender haze

They say the three archangels rose from Salixa's ashes, graceful heralds of the coming New Age:

Ananiel the Watcher, the Lady of the Skies, She Who Raises the Sun and Moon, the Aspect of the Moonlit Stag Owl.

Kadkadael the Arbiter, the Law of the Land, He Who Upholds Justice Among Men, the Aspect of the Wildwillow Panther.

Verchiel the Absolver, the Lord of the Waters, He Who Redeems the Broken, the Aspect of the Brightspring Stallion.

Titles are naught but empty words rung hollow with glory; they are stories not quite founded in truths.

The truth is we three–Analia, Khthon, and I–were unceremoniously spat from the maw of the Ether, spun up from the remnants of a dead goddess.

Our legacy is one of rebuilding, of finding our footing amid an unforgiving undertaking.

Analia is the eldest of us, dutiful and sweetly charismatic. Soaring high, she keeps her distance from the affairs of Man, a keen-eyed observer whose quiet judgments speak loud with their weighted insight.

Khthon is gentle yet justified, one who confronts the disputes and transgressions of Man with a steady hand and heart. He walks most closely with Man, bearing witness to the realities of their self-made injustices and atrocities.

As for I, I am the steward of the afterlife, of those wrested from life by the tides of change. I unearth the ghosts of guilty conscience, proffer compassion to those who strive to make amends and grow beyond their lot lived in life. I contend with the deepest of vices, watch these souls struggle to make strides to change; I bear witness to their hard-won growth and the stumbles of relapse and poor choices. I know I cannot save every soul, but I can to offer them whatever kindness and dignity they need.

I am ever more aware that some are never meant to be redeemed.

We shoulder these obligations with the fresh zeal of wide-eyed dreamers; we embrace these as our true purposes, give our all and more to the world of Man.

But the reality is that this heavy work is neverending, a traumatic brutalization of good intentions and innocent naivete.

None of us three, as mighty as our capabilities are, emerge unscathed.

The path forward is fraught and exhausting; I guide my souls as best I can, yet their healing is ornery and fickle–it bristles at guidance, chomps the bit at kindness, threatens to buck at progress.

High above, Analia has the luxury of distance, to wash her hands of mucking in the trenches of Man. Yet even she finds herself troubled by the views on high, worried much by the wayward patterns of Man's histories.

Khthon and I see the best and worst of Man, bear witness to their heedless, reckless way about the world.

In them, we see hope, yet even more reason to despair: in spite of their potential–this intuitive promise of the good they can do–they are staggeringly capable of amoral horror, turning against their fellow man with slick words and deceited feats.

We lean on each other, looking for the good in our charges: to remind us why we answer this calling, why we set ourselves alight to warm their feckless souls.

In time, we became well-enamored with each other, oft seeking the other's counsel in times of hardship and uncertainty. We meet neath wisteria boughs and amongst lavender fields, stealing whatever moments of beauty we can for ourselves; they are precious memories, happy ones departed from the gravity of our covenant.

Khthon, bent and broken, could not bear the burden of his obligations; loving him was heartbreak in itself, his despair a robber of our joys.

Analia saw his suffering, saw the jagged edges of his being; she offered him a choice, a chance elsewhere and elsewhen: a new domain, a new calling.

Eden is paradise in ignorance., a refuge, a sanctuary.

... She offered him an escape, a chance to refind the tranquility he sought.

She finds me at Urðarbrunnr's shore, after I storm out–a fickle, overemotional prat–from our three's meeting. I sulk by the waters, watching them languidly lap at the sands; I fail to notice her approach, wholly unaware of her until she sits at my side.

I scrabble to get up. "Are you mad?" I spit the words at Analia, bristling in indignance. "Do you know what the garden would do to him? How could you have offered it to him?"

"You... you of all people know that this is not sustainable for him. Holding him here is a condemnation, forcing him to flail and struggle... and for what?" Analia looks at me, her sunrise eyes wide with gentle concern. "We are powerful, Veiss, but that does not make our judgment infallible. Our judgments can still be misguided, set down paths that lead us wrong."

She pauses between words, hesitating to say her next thought. "Your wish to have him here is not for him, Veiss. I believe it is rooted in you; I have much love for you, but this selfishness does not befit you." She breaks her gaze, casts her eyes onto the horizon.

Her words are barbs to my heart. "You couldn't possibly love him like I do." I whisper the question quietly, brokenly.

"I... I know you love him dearly, Verchiel." She picks her words carefully. "But I cannot in good conscience let you deny him this; staying here, even with your well-meaning love, is not doing him any good. Love itself cannot mend the hurts of his soul; elsewise we would not be here, standing at this crossroads. He will rejoin us when he is ready, if that time comes; I will always hold space for him."

She sighs, holds my gaze. "I care for him as I care for you." She gets up from the embankment to wrap me in a bittersweet hug; it's a comforting embrace, one that smells of sweet cedar and warm sun. "I do not need to love him like you to know that this is not what it means to love him."

"How could you say that?" My retort is still tinged with resent. "How could you give him that choice, to take him away from us?"

"Do you not see?" She looks crestfallen, yet cautious. "This choice isn't mine to make, nor yours."

She whispers her next words so quietly that I scarcely hear them:

"It was always his."

Some would say love is a vice.

But I see it as a remembrance, a reflection of ourselves and the future we wish for.

In Valerian, I see him happy, deservedly so–this was a path that brought him joy; I marvel in his bliss, his carefree goodness offered without hesitation.

The truth is, I do not begrudge the choice of his past: I saw the way it brought him to his knees, the way it bowed his spirit.

There is no beauty in brokenness.

There is no romanticism in remembering the haunted look in his eyes, the deadened trudge of his dread, the ways in which he could no longer endure.

He deserves this happiness, this sense of being so completely whole--whether it is the shape of the past or something newfound... adapted.

... Analia was right; it was not my place to deny him this.

It took much inward searching to find the core of my distraught fury: I did not know if I would recognize him after this transformation of self, whether I could still love him with the shadow of the past hung heavy over us. I did not know if I fully came to terms with what his choice meant, with what it truly wrought.

I... I was afraid.

I did not know what we had done to him. I did not know if he was still enough of who he'd been, how much it had changed him and his good heart.

Yet I moved to confront this fear, to see the consequences with mine two eyes.

I braced for the worst.

And yet, I saw the best of him.

His time there has softened him, his magicks well-woven into Eden itself. Once he was the Panther, proud and ferocious, hotly pursuing his quarry; yet now, he is a mere housecat, well-contented with his fare. This gentling over the ages, this discarding of projected power and strength: it is an admirable peace of self. This is no unworthiness, no great weal or shame.

Because the truth is: there is beauty in healing, in rebuilding and finding new heights.

Mayhap he was never meant for this, but he is everything he needed to be, right here in the Garden. He is awash with its enchantment, both its beneficiary and font of life, far capable of this grand purpose.

A truth, unspoken, rings loud in the core of my being.

Times change. We change.

But my love for him--my promise to him--does not.