(The air grows heavy with the scent of copal incense as Sarahways arranges obsidian shards in a circular pattern. His fingers, still stained with pigments from another life, move with ceremonial precision.)

A fictional character Telling. Meet Sarahways.

They called me Sarahways the Color-Thief when I dwelled in the shimmering twilight of The Hollow Court. My art was not mere pigment on canvas, but stolen fragments of reality itself—the exact shade of a kingfisher's wing at dawn, the bruised purple of twilight over winter water, the impossible gold that lives only in a child's laughter. We of The Unveiled were keepers of truths too raw for mortal eyes, our faces and names laid bare before the court as perpetual reminder that even fae can be... unmasked.

My transgression was one of compassion—a fatal flaw among our kind. I painted a mortal woman's dying breath using hues stolen from the Queen's own dream-garden. The law was clear: no mixing of realms, no preservation of fleeting mortal beauty. But how could I not capture that final exhalation where her soul became mist and memory? They said I "broke the sacred geometry of separation." I call it bearing witness.

The exile was not merely banishment but unmaking. Each step away from the silver groves felt like peeling away layers of my own essence. The modern world assaulted my senses—blaring sirens that scarred the air instead of birdsong, electric lights that mocked the moon, faces glowing with artificial blue light rather than inner magic. I wandered through concrete canyons where humans rushed like ants, blind to the world's fading wonders.

For three cycles of the moon I dwelt in shadows, a ghost feeding on forgotten beauty—the way rain glistened on fire escapes, the haunting perfection of weeds breaking through pavement. I was fading, becoming one more unseen thing in this world that has forgotten how to see.

Salvation came through stone and memory. The Dark Masons found me tracing ancient patterns in steam on a diner window—the very geometries my aztec ancestors used to chart stars and souls. They recognized the old ways in my fingertips, saw how my exile had granted me double vision: both fae sensitivity and mortal fragility.

Here in the Lodge, we are exiles who build new truths from broken things. Where The Hollow Court prized perfection, we find beauty in fractures. My art has transformed—now I mix mortar with crushed jade and memories, building altars where abandoned gods might dwell again. The Masons understand what my own court never could: that something broken and remade carries more power than something never wounded.

This modern age believes it has outgrown ritual, but it starves for meaning more than any other era. My telling is this: exile is not an ending but an unraveling. We are all unveiled eventually—whether by choice or circumstance. The true magic lies not in preserving perfection, but in finding the sacred patterns in what remains after everything falls apart.

(He places a final obsidian shard, completing the circle)

The pain never leaves—it becomes the mortar between stones. And sometimes... sometimes what we build from our brokenness becomes more beautiful than what we once were whole

Visual

Obsidian-dark skin dusted with faint gold-leaf patterns, pigment-stained fingers, eyes like polished volcanic glass, short-cropped black hair with jade fragments woven in, dressed in a shroud-like cloak the color of dried copal smoke.

Faction: The Hollow Court · View the Gallery · Listen in the Songbook