Moira Orseeva - Soul Out of Tune
Its loss pained her, though not for the reasons others would imagine. It wasn’t as though the baton was particularly powerful. Deep down, Moira suspected that despite its origins and reputation, its capabilities and rumored potential were greatly exaggerated.
It was about what the baton represented. It was her having the last laugh over the College of Mac-Fuirmidh for seeing her expelled. It was about how it felt in her grasp. It was about how she managed to snatch some small victory from the jaws of an ignominious defeat.
It was about him. Colin. It was he who stole the baton from the headmaster’s office for her. He fell when he tried to climb out the window, snapping his neck in the process. He died to get that baton for her. He was prepared to die for her, and did. Even if she later grew bored with him after having re-animated his spirit, a sense of guilt gnawed at her for seeing it given away so freely. She showed no real resistance when offering it up; what was it all for, then? What was the purpose in having Colin get it in the first place if she wasn’t prepared to defend it?
Her thoughts raced as she wandered aimlessly within the gloom she now called home. The bio-luminescent toadstools that flanked either side of her loomed overhead, judging her just as all others did. She missed the warm glow of the sun. She missed the salty air and the sound of rushing waves hitting the craggy shores of Gwynneth. She missed even her homelands’ fens and marshes, with their unpleasant odors and many insects.
Moira refused to give in to despair and self-loathing, however. She would direct her hate towards the world above that spurned her and her desire to advance and reinvent art, music, and drama into something new. It was the Nameless Bard who said that art that is allowed to become stagnant serves no purpose. Through the Troupe of the Undying and her body of work, she would replace the stagnant with something fresh. Controversial, yes, and yet all great works produce controversy among their contemporaries.
She felt humiliated before those two, and yet she would be vindicated in time. She closed her eyes, and she could hear in her head the praise, applause, and adulation that was soon to come. She could hear them chanting her name and throwing bouquets of roses near her feet. Moira could imagine them all there, the faces of everyone who ever stood in her way or dismissed her, and she could hear the keening of the banshees she had at her command snuff out each of their lives, all at once.
A thing of beauty, and the last of her works that they would ever hear.