☀️ Arselia and Akonia

"What a day it's been," Beata thought, settling in to sleep after the night patrol.
Once, she had convinced herself that she didn't need anyone. That she didn't care about others or their kindness, and that having an advantage was enough for her. That she could give nothing to the world—only take, take, and take. She remembered the words she used to tell off the circus owner and the entire troupe, telling them exactly where she had seen them and where they should go; she had screamed about how sick of it all she was, and what stupidity she considered the whole thing to be. Later, she thought that the circus had been the biggest mistake of her life; she hated remembering it and never brought up the topic in conversation.
She thought—out of hatred.
But in reality—out of pain.
When she was kicked out of the troupe, she felt as though she had lost any possibility of bringing joy to people. At that moment, she convinced herself that she didn't want it, but deep in her soul, she still desired to be needed and loved. Partly because of this, she preferred to speak from behind a mask of feigned friendliness. What she failed to notice was the moment when the mask fused inextricably with her face.
And that this might actually be her true calling.
Once, she promised herself never to tie her fate to the circus again, and used the skills acquired there for her dark dealings. But now, of her own will and desire, she was offering to organize a bloody circus performance. She didn't know if she could pull it off, but she wanted to try.
As it turned out, she had missed that almost forgotten feeling of joy and smiles, the ovations and applause, the admiration for her skills and ingenuity. She remembered why she loved the circus, and now she was ready to face her past—not to destroy it once and for all, but to embrace it with open arms.

Her aura will probably never become completely white; she has done too much shit. But the grey it is now is beyond comparison to the almost black that weighed on her soul so recently.



Guyon was still trying to digest the fact that he was now a full-fledged doctor.
He liked it. He felt incredibly important and needed. The responsibility for people's lives frightened him slightly, but he understood that he had enough knowledge and skill to handle most situations.
It seemed he had found his calling.
He had run away to the army as soon as he reached the required age, just to be far from his parents, who controlled almost every step he took and constantly lectured him on how absolutely every son of a mother's friend and daughter of a father's acquaintance was better than him in every aspect. He never thought about who he wanted to be and grabbed at the first opportunity that came along. He was decent at fighting, the gods kept him from dangerous scrapes; overall, he was satisfied with his service and thought it would stay that way...
...but fate decided otherwise.
Back then, he thought his life was over, that only pain, same agony, and humiliation lay ahead, and he would be extremely lucky if he didn't live to twenty-five.
And now he understood that it had only been the beginning. That he needed to leave his past life and be reborn in a new, better capacity. Ironically, it was slavery that gave him the freedom he could never have dreamed of.
And it was precisely in slavery that he began to learn to value and love himself.
Since childhood, he had been conditioned to think that his feelings and desires meant nothing, that he needed to work hard and diligently not so he would be praised—no—so that his parents wouldn't be ashamed of how stupid, lazy, clumsy, and useless he was. In Lower Lunaria, he was essentially perceived as an object and denied any kind of feelings; everyone deeply didn't care what he felt—after all, no one is interested in the thoughts of a sofa or a frying pan, and it was the same here. By some miracle, he maintained his strength of spirit and fought back, but less and less frequently, becoming more accustomed to the thought that he was a complete nobody who didn't even have a right to his own feelings.
Fortunately, things didn't go too far, and when he was allowed to be himself, when people began to take an interest in his thoughts and feelings—he was able to recover.
This path had not been fully traveled—he still struggled to share what troubled him and instinctively expected screams and beatings every time he forced himself to voice an idea or insist on a decision. Now he feels relatively confident and easily suppresses his fears, but at first, Beata had to force him to speak. Her own fierce temperament and love for screaming and beatings didn't help the cause, but her donkey-like stubbornness and firm desire to provide her slave with maximum care and inflict as much kindness upon him as possible gave the process a very decent acceleration.
Speaking of Beata... Their relationship, and especially his role in it after everything he had been through, was a warning sign. Something inside him was very wrong and very broken. But what difference did it make if he was happy and it didn't hinder him? Even when the curse still hung over him, next to Beata he felt freer and more confident than ever, and only then was he able to try something new—and ultimately find himself.
Now he had something to shut up his inner critic. Now he had good proof of what he was actually worth.
He still has to work on his self-esteem and gain confidence in himself, but the most important stages have already been passed.

His self-doubts hadn't gone anywhere, but now they only slightly shaded his otherwise snow-white aura, strikingly different from the grey hue that enveloped him upon arrival in Margel. And this was certainly huge progress compared to the coal-black despair that crushed him after that night in the bandit fort and didn't let go until he met Beata.