Seais
Legacy Name: Seais

There's a light that dances over the lake. Seias is bewitched by her, creeping slowly around the water's edge. But he's confined to the darkness where his siblings flicker. (If he leans in close enough, he can just barely make out her hands.)

She catches him staring, eventually. He notices it, the way she pauses above the water and flits closer. "You," she says. "It isn't polite to stare." He pulls back, for a second. "No. No, it isn't. I'm sorry." The daylight will burn him away, soon.

There's a light that dances over the lake. She's not easy to spot, only noticeable when you're looking for faeries, but when he can see her, she's bewitching. (Her fire is cold, but it burns him away.) In the dim, he can seem to make out hands - tiny, dainty little things - and often wonders, watching her, if she is in fact a fae. He proposes to ask her, soon. But for now, the sun is on the horizon, and Seias' siblings are yawning in wait.

(He was a shadow once, nothing more.)

Winter comes. The flowers growing around the lake shrivel up, spent, and his siblings have so much more room to move. And the lights - they sparkle in the bushes, careful to avoid the cold. She's waiting for him in the branch of a gnarled tree; he creeps slowly up its trunk to join her. From up there, he can see everything: the flowers, wasted and tired, the cold sun. He's always liked it more, this way. "So I heard," the Light tells him. "When you do nothing more than watch, it's easy." "To learn?" he says, breathless. "Yes." "And what did you learn?" She turns her head to him. "The water's cold, even in the summertime."

Yes, the water's cold and empty. Tiny lights hit it like bullets, a smattering of gold and blue. She burns brighter than all of them, anyway. "You can only be a princess for so long," she says, and she's panting and manic, but Seias is happy for her, so happy. (Her fire's the brightest; she'll swallow him whole.) She takes his family then. "Shadows are worthless. They only make everything cold."

She burns him away. She burns him away. Seias flickers even at night, longing to pull away from the trees and the lake, this awful, muddy place. (Is he confined here? Must he stay here?)

When the water has no need for light or shadows anymore, he runs. He tells himself it was the best thing to do: 'your family's dead. She killed them. She called you weak. She made you feel worthless.' It's hard to remember why that is, but this land accepts him, so he decides to stay. (The people here are all sunshine, and he wants to stomp it out. It's hard to remember why that is, but something must have changed.) In any case, he's not a king, he thinks. He's simply staying the night.

His face is lit up by a candle; he knows because he can see from the mirror. He thinks he must have forgotten how that can be, or why everything seems to have changed, again, wonders if he's still a simple shadow. (He's a bird, he's a crow, pecking at the castle's window. 'Excuse me, let me in.' He's not a king. He's not a king. But he can be.)

In a night, he takes over. He shadows the guards, he rattles the shutters. He stomps the gardens dead, and the people... they let him. He's not a shadow anymore; he refuses to be. (The flower in the vase on the window sill is slowly wilting, each day a new petal on the floor. And Seias only watches. Darkness hates beautiful things, so it obscures them. That's the only way it knows.) It's all really kind of unfair, though - kings have never needed a silver tongue, and Seias' is gold. All you people need, he says, clasping his hands, is a little history. And they hear him, and they nod and they shout, each and every one of them. They clap their hands and they agree.

Seias the Great, Seias the Terrible. Seias the no good, steps on the cracks and snuffs all the light out, sniffing like he's better than you, oh, he's better than you. Oh, he's better than all of this.

Green becomes yellow, flowers die. There's something giddy in Seias' chest, and he's sitting on a big and terrible throne. (The lights always whispered about the beauty of spring and summer, but the shadows... they talked about the cold.) Surely, winter is for royalty. Surely, Seias belongs here.