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Holga.
Holga bears the faded marks of her tribe like healing bruises; blues and yellows and blacks and purples, bleached from long years away, hard words and hard blows flung at her for the choices she made. But lingering, always lingering: because they may have cast her out of her home but she could never get them out of her heart or her bones.
But there is more to Holga than violence and bruises; she carries love, too, in her hands and in her arms.
There is Kira’s grassy stain that stretches along Holga's inner elbow and down, from when she first picked up the baby in one hand and her seemingly useless father in the other, not knowing that they would become more dear to her than anyone else in the world. Kira’s mark partially obscures Marlamin's yellow that once blazed across the meat of her palm, from the first time she took his hand and decided that he was worth losing everything for. Once nearly sunshine--now something more akin to butter.
She hadn’t known, then.
She dreads the day it disappears entirely; but she can't regret Ed's blue across her knuckles, from when she hauled him, broken and grieving, up off the barroom floor; a counterpoint to the red marks on his neck, dark as fresh blood, that haven't faded in 15 years and counting. She doubts they ever will. Not with who they are; what they are. Kith and kin and home in a way she never found with Marlamin.
She had made her choices; would make them again, and again, even when they broke her heart.
Because Simon's gold is a shimmer on her bicep, just the shape of his hand; and just above that, the deep conifer green of Doric, mingling somewhere in the middle.
Xenk isn't there yet: but Holga has seen the wash of his green across the back of Ed's knuckles, nearly jewel-like. She wonders if her own will be as dark.
The malevolent branches of a Red Wizard’s blade burns stark on her breast. That too is a soulmark, though no loved hand had given it to her. But when she looks at it—traces her fingers along its length, she remembers being chosen, and the mingling of grief and joy.
(Forge is nowhere to be seen. His mark had been thin to begin with, flimsy as a cobweb.
She's glad of it.)
Edgin.
Ed’s hands are a riot of green, like a sun-dappled forest in summer.
Zia’s moss in the tangle of his fingers, from the first time she had hesitantly took his hand; reinforced, day after day, till the last time he had clutched at her, weeping. As vibrant as it ever was, even though she’s been gone their daughter’s entire life. This last, final memory of a woman punished for Ed’s own failures.
The grassy tones of Kira, from when Zia bore her and Ed had caught her in two shaking, bloody hands, husband and midwife and suddenly father, all in one, terrified to fail at any of them—remembering always that he did; he did. Failure after failure, but giving up on Kira was unfathomable, so he didn’t.
(He’s terrified, after Neverwinter; that his own blue would be pale on Kira’s back, that in two years she would realize she never much needed her father at all.)
Doric’s conifer rests across the back of his left hand, who didn’t trust humans but trusted them, trusted him, to have her back, be at her side, to not betray her the way the family of her birth did.
And the newest: the dark emerald of Xenk cast around his knuckles, a memory of a helmet and a dragon and a lonely beach. He doesn’t know what it means; doesn’t want to think of it yet, Zia’s memory still so raw.
But there are other colours, too.
Holga has claimed him in the red gash on his neck, in the broken corners of his heart; neither wife nor sister, but hearth and home all the same. A brand he carries, and a guilt–but he will never tell her, because her knuckles are blue, so blue, even when it was never about him, only about the little girl who deserved better than she got.
Simon is a wash of gold on his wrist like a bracelet, and he could burn so bright if he wasn’t so terrified to fail, until he was too terrified to fail, a trapped animal remembering his teeth.
(Forge might be somewhere, underneath the green; he’s faded too much to tell.
Ed tells himself he doesn’t care, and almost means it.)
Kira.
Sometimes, Kira wonders if her father’s obsession with the Tablet of Reawakening was linked, just a little, to the fading of Kira’s own mother’s mark. There is no colour from Zia on Kira’s skin; instead, Holga’s red is in its place. It is not supplantation; it simply is, like the sun and the tides, and Kira has never known differently, and has never wondered otherwise.
(Do you regret it? she asked her father, once, when they were alone. Do you regret choosing Holga over her?
He had closed his eyes and whispered: No. May she forgive me.)
Kira hadn’t known, then, that Edgin Darvis would have said the same thing, if it he had brought back the mother of her birth instead of the mother of her life, and hated himself for it; but she knew it now.
His blue has never faded from her shoulders; her green still stains his hands. That, at least, she can finally depend on.
Forge is there on her arm, vivid as ever; she had loved it once, this reminder that at least someone had chosen her. Hates it and resents it now, and prays for it to fade the way it has for everyone else.
Sofina had never touched her. Had really barely spoken to her. She’s glad of it; that she has not overlain the others that now scatter her skin.
Simon used to swoop her up, as a little girl; she had laughed her child’s laugh, and it had left a bright scattering of gold under her armpits.
She carries Doric against her knuckles, bright and new.
There will be others, someday; perhaps an emerald shade from the man who had left his own brand on her father’s hand, held out in aid. Perhaps new companions, or a spouse; a child of her own, maybe, far into the future. Perhaps she will be as technicolour as Doric, or as sparse as her parents.
She can’t wait to see.
Doric.
Where Holga is a faded bruise, Doric is a painting.
Nothing from the parents of her birth; no ochre nor oxblood stain her skin—but her foster parents left splotches of brown and white as they outstretched their hand to a little tiefling girl, left alone in the forest.
They are the first; but they are not the last.
The Emerald Enclave has given her layer after layer, her entire upper body a myriad of colour: memories of every lesson they taught her, how to fight and think and love; molding her into the person she is. Some are deeply saturated; others thin and nearly watery. But there, all the same, layer upon layer, a legacy of acceptance she thought would never get anywhere else. A home; a family.
We want you here. You belong with us.
Simon does not mark her the first time they meet, nor the first time he places his own trembling hand on hers. Neither do Ed and Holga; really, they hardly touch her at all, at first, not if she can help it, certainly not on her bare skin.
That takes a crypt, a forest, and the Underdark; a plan made of fairy spit and hope, and a speech about failure— a quest to take down a common enemy who has left marks on all but one of her companions, faded as they may be. After a death, and a life returned, and a family restored.
But after, after—there is a glitter of Simon’s gold on the back of her hand; next to the twilight blue of Ed's, when he had passed her a small round rock for her slingshot. There is a graze of red on her arm, now, from where she brushed against Holga as they bathed away the blood of some gnolls. A green graze on her tail, when Kira had handed Doric a knife when Doric’s hands were occupied.
And her own green on all of them in turn, like leaves in spring.
We want you here. You belong with us.
Simon.
Simon likes to think of his soulmarks like jewels, like gems; a different kind of weight than those he grew up with, but treasures all the same—ones he can carry through all the long years of his life. He will live longer than his companions—save, perhaps, one; but he will remember them on his soul and his skin.
The pink quartz of his mother along his side, when she had first held him; the deep amber of his father on his neck and into his hairline when he had cradled his newborn son. The silver of his sister on his forearm, a continuous varnish, tugging him into games and pranks. The citrine of his uncle on his shoulder from endless nights pouring over books on controlling the magic that sparked up his spine but never came at his call.
Then had gone the long years of loneliness, when he had left family and home to become something other than the disappointing son, though they never claimed him so—but the marks never faded, and he loves them yet; his own marks are still as heavy on their skin as they are on his.
Doric is a flash of tsavorite garnet on his hand, and he had thrilled to see it, that first time; still was thrilled, to be honest, though she would never want him back in the same way he wanted her. But that was alright, because they wear each other’s colours; and she may never share his bed but she will always be on his right, in his heart, in his life.
He carries Ed as a flourish of lapis on his forearm, a legacy of a job gone sideways; Holga and Kira like tumbled bloodstone on his palms, a helping hand and a little girl who was quickly becoming a woman in front of them all.
(Forge might be underneath them, somewhere; he can’t be bothered to care)
Xenk.
Most of Xenk’s earliest soulmarks are gone.
The rust red line of his mother, where he had been placed under her breast; the purple of his father, when he had first held him. The grey of his first friend, vanished from around his wrist.
(And all of his gone from them; the Beckoning Death wiping them clean, stripping their colours, dying to be born anew as monsters, nothing to hold them back, weigh them down.)
He himself leaves soulmarks wherever he goes; the green smears on hands and foreheads and arms, to be layered underneath other colours and shades while his own skin remains largely pristine–save his forehead, Szass Tam’s brand there for all to see, inescapable and unfading.
He gains some marks, over time–a smear of orange on his bicep from his first lover, once marigold bright; the cast of sky blue around his forearm, Salafin’s last legacy. A smudge of black on his neck–the first living person he ever killed, the imprint of their thumb and index finger clear under the bolts of his jaw, when it was kill or be killed and he had not known how long his life would be.
The bloody mark Dralas left on his wrist, so many decades ago.
Legacies of death, all, and most faded with time and the burden of other memories.
He acquires no new colours for many years; stops looking, stops wondering if people will matter to him enough to leave a varnish of their souls on him.
And then–
He leaves Edgin and his company on the beach, thinking nothing of the encounter; it is not the first time he has aided a group of adventurers to obtain something precious to them; nor the first time he has fought a dragon for little more than grudging gratitude and someone else’s dream.
It is only later at his lonely campsite (they are always lonely, after he gets used to company; but it passes, every time) that he notices an ultramarine cast to his ring finger and his pinky, where a man who had once despised him had grasped his hand.
He looks at it, and wonders at the ache in his chest.