View source for Gwynek (prime)/A Gentle Heart

Not for the first time in recent weeks, Gwynek suspected he was going mad. The whispers didn't help - they did not help at all. Still they went on - each one startling, not unlike those times when sleep draws near, and at the edge of consciousness a stranger's voice calls ones name. A jolt, a twitch, and lucidity invades, initiating the dull journey to dreams once more.
 
He hardly talked anymore. When he did, he found it difficult. Contrasted to a few months ago, when he had first struck out as an adventurer. He could hardly be stopped from talking. Anyone he happened to find in Ta'Vaalor between hunts he'd chat up. Not for any particular aim or ambition other than curiosity and urge to help others feel welcome, less...alone. Even aboard the FFZ, he was silent among his hired crew. They seemed haunted in their own ways - and content enough to exits in a companionable silence.
 
''"It is returning, he is returning, they are returning,"'' A panicked whisper - breathy, pleading, urgent. 

Gwynek did not understand the world. Not in its current shape, nor its antecedent forms. Something about eels and nereids. Something about an island in the eastern sea. Something about fruition, and the nature of spirits, and bargains struck, and the sea reclaiming what it is owed. And like many subjects, he did not have the wherewithal, or patience, or whichever requisite virtue the moment demanded - and it could have all slipped by. He wanted to let it slip by. Ever since the Manticore's flight across Elanthia, Gwynek had felt reticence at the notion of getting involved in the larger affairs of the world. There were better people suited to it - better capable and better comported. 
He felt content to be small, feel small, and let his world grow small - thinking that perhaps he'd be find his way out of it.
 
He had not. Yet people needed help, and so he went. He hoped his small efforts could contribute to a few lives saved.
 
"You have a gentle heart," one of his friends said one evening in the King's Court, and you should protect it."
 
''"Please, just let me go,"'' the shuddering sob quivering in the whisper's voice reflected in a spasm of his eye, concealed from onlookers by blackthorn, glaes, and sapphire. A few lives saved...though, what the merchants offered appealed to his vanity.
 
Statement pieces to contribute to his scrambled aesthetic of witchery and foolishness - among those things a glaes beaked raven mask of blackthorn. A piece to match the spirit of his blade he had named Unkindness. He donned it, and it became one with his flesh. He could remove it, with great pain and terrible wounds...but he found that he preferred it - found that there was something deeply comforting about not seeing his face reflected back in mirrors or still pools. 

''"Feed me something that screams,"'' sibilant and fleshy this whisper, as if its speaker were more jowl than jaw, more gum than tooth. 
It was not that he heard voices which made Gwynek worry. It was that he was coming to accept their company, and all the stolen moments of private agony and obscene ecstasy that came with them. His concern was distant, as if he were watching himself drown from afar - but it made him long for other days, earlier days...happier days. And maybe he could get there, by helping the villagers of Caligos. Maybe he could sail to the west for so long he'd come around to the other side of the Dragonspine. Maybe he could return home proud, strip off his mask and beam a genuine smile again. And maybe, and maybe, and maybe... 

''"Please don't leave me!"'' The ache of those words resonated with an emptiness in Gwynek. And maybe, instead, he would just continue being small, taking small actions to help people in his small world. And maybe that would be enough.