[Red Diamond] Shaking Off the Ice [Riley LaRose]

[Jaiun]

13th Fall 511 A.V. The light flickered in front of Jaiun's eyes. The flame danced back and forth across the candle that sustained it's life, darting erratically back and forth as wind blew it hither and thither. It was hypnotizing, the way the flame moved, leaving faint trails of heat in it's path as it tossed it's proud head... "Want me to top that off for you?" Jaiun jumped slightly in his seat as the rough voice of the barman reached his ears, the spell broken. For a second, the Kelvic sat there, dazed, then he turned to look at the man who stood only inches away from him, separated only by a thin board of wood, his hot breath on Jaiun's face. "Well?" The man asked impatiently in Vani. "Would you like to top off your drink?" Jaiun glanced down at the tall pitcher of ale before him and shook his head. "No, I'm fine." Jaiun replied in the same tongue. The man harrumphed and moved away; clearly, he though Jaiun was halfway to drunkenness. This was hardly the case; Jaiun hadn't even touched his drink. It was the combination of a long day on the job and his recent emotional turmoil, Jaiun knew, that had been the reason why he was so distracted and scattered lately. It was not befitting a bear to be so splintered; a bear had to be strong, focused, and ever vigilant, as Jaiun had learnt from his Icewatch trainers. Unfortunately, Icewatch was also the root of his problems. Jaiun turned in his seat to view the rest of the pub- the Red Diamond tavern, that was. Light from a massive fireplace and several candles situated around the room illuminated a scene of debauchery and merriment; maybe a dozen people, mostly Vantha, were situated around half as many tabled and drinking from pitchers like Jaiun's. Voices, half of them suffering from the drink their owners had consumed, raised in a symphony of broken songs and talk that made the Kelvic bear's ears hurt. Jaiun's eyes flickered over each of the Vantha in turn. Maybe it was interaction with others he needed, Jaiun decided. Maybe he just needed to hear another's voice and share company with another. Maybe he just needed to find someone to talk to...Now, who else would be here that he could talk to?

[Riley LaRose]

In all of Riley's life, she had never been in a bar. In Ahnatep, slaves were forbidden to do many things, and drinking was one on the list, although a potential buyer had the ability to force a potential slave into consuming some form of questionable liquid, but Riley was lucky enough to avoid that particular cruelty.

She had entered the Red Diamond out of curiosity. Currently, she regretted it, as Vani was being spoken around her in loud voices that hurt her sensitive ears. While the light wasn't as uncomfortable here as it was out on the frozen tundra, she still felt uneasy. It had been so long since she'd been around so many people. She wasn't sure what to do, seeing as these people were nothing like the other slaves or the Eypharians that used them for entertainment, servers, and companions.

A single silvery green eye flashed around the room, glowing briefly as light reflected off it oddly, before going to find an empty seat somewhere. Her eyes settled on a male with blonde hair glancing around the bar, and she discreetly took a seat next to him. At least he wasn't an Eypharian. His blonde hair was completely unlikely for any of that particular race, and if he had been one she probably would have shrunk into her cloak and hidden. Fight or flight wouldn't have applied for her. Eypharians frightened her beyond that point.

For a long while she didn't look to the man at her side. He was a shield for her, someone to hide under without his conscious knowledge so no one could take notice of her. Now, all she had to do was manage to speak Vani and figure out what it was she wanted to drink. Her winter cloak hid the restless movements of her hands as she tried to look knowledgeable as the bartender approached.

[Jaiun]

Jaiun noticed the girl when she entered the pub. His eyes had been wandering when he noticed the slender, dark-haired woman when she entered the room. For a second, he thought he was just another Vantha; but, as he examined her closer, a general intuition, picked up from his years on the Icewatch, told him she wasn't. She was graceful, with long limbs and a natural air; and, if their was something Vantha usually were not, it was graceful. Hardy, yes; graceful, no. The girl meandered her way across the room, eventually taking the open seat next to Jaiun. He glanced at her out of the corner of her eye, and sighed. The girl was silent, which meant it was going to be he who would have to initiate conversation. He wasn't too good at these types of things. Oh well; he'd try it. "You new around these parts, miss?" Not the best opener, but it would do. Jaiun made sure to pose the question in Common, for by all looks of it this girl looked like an outsider and therefore unlikely to be too fluent in Vani; while Jaiun didn't speak too often in Common, he knew quite a bit of it by way of talking with travelers entering the city, so he did his best to speak with her in it. "You seem to be a bit disoriented, if I may say so. Do you need any sort of help?" He asked, courteously enough. He gave her a rare smile, so as to assure her he was not some sort of criminal or creep looking for an unsuspecting foreigner. Gods know Jaiun had arrested enough of those in his time.

[Riley LaRose]

Riley started just slightly as the man next to her spoke, his Common holding traces of this place just as hers held traces of Eyktol. She looked at him through her one visible eye and saw the small smile he offered her. She hadn't expected to be smiled at so kindly. She gave him one of her own in return and chastised herself for trying to hide under a person who seemed so willing to be friendly.

"I haven't been here too long, yeah." She said quietly. Her sentence sounded awkward even to her, but she hoped her next half smile would alleviate any of the lingering oddness of her words. The right side of her mouth, hidden by her sheeted hair, twinged in discomfort as it twitched in Riley's attempt to give a full smile. The ache was familiar, and so Riley gave no expression of discomfort at it. "Everything is so light out here. Pale." But for your eyes, she thought of adding. Her eyes were lighter than his, and while she was so used to the color of the forest, the scalding sands of Eyktol, and the long grasses of Cyphrus, she hadn't been ready for the stark white landscape she had escaped to. So different it was from the hot tundra of Eyktol, and so similar. It felt like home here.

"Do you need any sort of help?" He had asked her. She wondered for a moment at that. He was so polite, one of the kindest humans she had ever met. Kind humans could become cruel in an instant, though. So very cruel. "I was just wondering about this place. I smelled... There was something interesting about this place and I wanted to investigate it. What do they feed people here?" She gave him another half smile as she glanced around again, her lips quirking up in good humor. "What is your name, by chance? I know very few people here by any type of name." She spoke as politely as she knew how. Etiquette was something of an art in Eypharian halls, and they enforced it on their slaves so they could sound at least half-way intelligent.

[Jaiun]

Jaiun nodded solemnly in response to her first stament. "I expected as much, really." Shock rumbled within Jaiun as he saw her eye. Silvery green, it was shaped in such a way that was almost...animalistic. She's a Kelvic! Was the first thought that came to his mind. His animal nature, fierce and pround, bubbled beneath the politeness that came with the job of greeting travelers to Avanthal; it yearned to communicate with it's Kelvic kin. Somehow the innate beast within Jaiun sensed this key fact about this woman; such is the domain of a wild beast to recognize another wild beast, perhaps. ...Or perhaps not, for the woman apparently didn't notice such a thing; she continued to speak to him in an accent that Jaiun could not place, going along as if he were just another human. Perhaps it was simply seeing the aforementioned travelers in their infinite variety that informed him of this. Trying to contain his surprise, Jaiun said, somewhat gruffly, "Well, we have ale, of course. Also got wine and hot chocolate if you don't like that, and some bread and meat to go with it. That's pretty much the entire meal here," Jaiun said, laughing in a rather deep range for a second. "My name? I'm Jaiun, of the Polar Bear Guard. And, being on the topic of names, may I ask who you are?..."

[Riley LaRose]

Riley, unlike Jaiun, did not notice her current companion was a Kelvic like she by the nature of his eyes. His teeth said he was different, like her, but she had no idea how to react to the presence of another Kelvic out away from the kennels in Ahnatep. She didn’t know how to address it, and a strange intuition stated that he wouldn’t understand if she tried to communicate with him as she had done to other felines on her journey. He was the same and yet different. It was something she couldn’t place.

His gruff tone caused her half smile to falter just barely, but it returned again as she picked his words out of his language. Humans, and human-formed Kelvics, spoke in both word and tone and not just in one or the other as true animals did in the wild. Half of what he named, or the greater portion, were things Riley was not permitted to enjoy in Ahnatep nor on her travels. Here there was nothing to stop her, with the exception of her uncertainty. Was ale like beer? Eypharians liked beer.

”They have that all here?” She asked him quietly. It was a feast! She could dine like the masters did! ”How do you get what you want?” She hoped to Syna that there weren’t slaves kept here to serve their masters. She wouldn’t stomach the food they would make. It would probably taste like sand.

His laughter coaxed another slight smile from the Kelvic. She wasn’t sure what the title tacked on to his name meant, and so she wondered if he was discreetly telling her his animal form. A polar bear. One of those large white things she had seen with the Humans in these city.

”My name is Riley.” She said simply. How did one make a glamorous title out of “clouded leopard”? How did one even explain the appearance of a clouded leopard? There were none that she had ever seen, sadly, or perhaps she could have made a home with them. ”I am from Ahnatep.” She said eventually, figuring that it was required when coming somewhere new and meeting people who maybe had never met someone from the area she was from.

[Jaiun]

"Why, you signal for the bartender, or one of barmaids. After that, you just tell him what you want, he'll tell you the amount of mizas required, and then you pay for it." Jaiun gestured to the bartender, who had been attending to other customers. He began to amble over. In the meantime, Jaiun continued talking to the girl. It was strange: Jaiun had never really liked talking, moreso since Kariselle, one of his fellow bears, had disappeared- except with those he knew well, like his closest friends. But their was something about this girl -this Kelvic- that made him feel comfortable around her, even though they had only known each other for mere seconds...perhaps it was the simple presence of another of his kind? But he encountered many other Polar Bears, knew many of them from his job, and their were plenty he didn't like. Jaiun couldn't quite place it. "It's nice to meet you, Riley," Jaiun continued on, regardless, listening to the girl speak in a quiet tone of voice that would have been hard to hear in such a crowded place if not for Jaiun's bearish hearing. "From Ahnatep, you say? You've come a long way to Avanthal. Did you rent a caravan all the way here?" As he talked, Jaiun looked over the girl. Now, what was her true form? In this, Jaiun had no idea. Jaiun realized how little he looked like a Polar Bear- he was slim and tall, barely the image of a monstrous Polar Bear made man. With the other Polar Bears, he had felt an instinctive feeling of their true nature, a sense of sameness that they shared. But this Riley...she was different. Same, but different, somehow. He had no idea what she truly was. This girl could be a hummingbird, for all he knew. By this time, the bartender arrived, and waited impatiently for Riley to make her order, as did Jaiun, so they could continue their conversation.

[Riley LaRose]

”They come if I signal for them?” This was beginning to sound quite like what she knew her fellows back in Ahnatep had to do when they worked the kitchens. She, luckily, had never needed to even touch a pot. Nor any utensil of any kind, but the masters didn’t like their slaves dirtying up their feeding utensils. Jaiun signalled for the bartender to come over, and as the man did she panicked for a moment, but at the sight of the man she calmed. There was no collar on him.

As Jaiun continued to speak to her, she felt herself become more willing to smile and talk. She could usually open up quicker, but in such a place filled with Humans she found herself more introverted than what was usual for her. She didn’t want people to look at her, to notice her. As he addressed how she had gotten here, and as he confirmed her words of originating from Ahnatep, she managed even another smile. ”I wanted to go somewhere far from Ahnatep, and I came here. It is very different from where I come from. Everyone and everything looks different. We don’t get polar bears down there. Or any other kind of bear. I never saw any until I came to Taldera.” Her silvery eye flashed again, reflective once more as light slanted off of it. ”I traveled alone a lot... Not many people like me. They see me and turn away.” Her voice dipped into a more sombre cadence. ”It is nice to meet you too, however.” She added on before she forgot it.

Her eye lifted as the bartender stood before her, looking irritated and impatient. It was a familiar expression that had her heart fluttering before she quelled the instinctive reaction. She clamped down on her fright, told herself that this person wasn’t going to demand she do anything or hit her if she disobeyed. She had to learn to trust these Humans, or how could she ever expect them to look at her kindly?

”I want um... Hot chocolate and bread.” She said uncertainly.

[Jaiun]

"Indeed, they come if you signal them." Jaiun cast a glance in Riley's direction. "Have you ever been in a pub before?" The question was blunt- but then again, bears were rarely ever not. The guard's job of being polite to passerby had softened Jaiun's tongue a bit, but he was prone to getting to the point rather than beating around the bush. Jaiun listened in silence as Riley explained her origins, taking a sip at his ale every now and then. He spoke again when she had finished- "Yes, Ahnatep is quite a different place from Avanthal." He quipped, then continued on in a more serious voice. "Up here, we have lots of polar bears, more than any other type of animal, in fact. At least, we have a lot of them within city limits. We do have a lot of...other...animals outside of city limits." Jaiun was quiet for a moment after this, and the look on his face, though he tried to hide it, was pained. Unconsciously, he rubbed his arm, where the Gnosis Mark of Morwen lay, hidden under his coat. "Well, you're in luck, Riley, because I like you, and that makes up for three people at most." Though his tone was joking, he was looking at Riley with a more strange look on his face. Bears weren't used to sympathy but her tone gave Jaiun an inkling of what a hard life this girl had. "Here, let me pay for that," Jaiun added as she made her order for hot chocolate and bread, clinking a couple copper GM onto the table.

[Riley LaRose]

Riley's eyelid lowered over the silvery surface of her green eye. Her dark lashes were heavy against it as his blunt question hit her. Blunt was far better than playing coy, at the least. Blunt was something she was used to.

"I was never allowed to back home. Only Eypharians and their friends, Snake-People and the important people from other places, were allowed to drink in Ahnatep. Me and my kind got water, bread, and some other necessities our Eypharians thought we deserved or should have." She shut up about the topic before her voice could become bitter. She didn't tell people what she was right off the hop. She liked them to believe she was a good person, and not someone's former dancing pet. "What is the Polar Bear Guard? Is that what you are, then?" She didn't want to exclaim he was a Kelvic to the whole bar. Instinctively, she knew to hide the bestial nature of her race. Eypharians managed to control Kelvic under the guise of bonding, they captured free Kelvic that wandered their way close enough to Ahnatep's golden halls. What if the Vantha here did the same? So, her question was somewhat whispered, although it was loud enough for them both to hear perhaps clearly.

Another smile settled on the visible half of her mouth at his reassurances that he liked her at least, and she had to agree that he made up for many people who didn't like her, although three was probably cutting it short. He was her first Kelvic outside of Eyktol, and he more than made up for most of what she missed back home but for her parents and her siblings.

While the strange expression made Riley nervous, she tried to hide it under words tilted with the same joking tone he had used, although she meant them in all seriousness. "I think you make up for more than three others."

He startled her by offering to pay for her order. While money was a commodity she was fairly new to, she did understand the concept of paying and of buying people their food, although it worried her that he would do so without knowing her that well. "Thank you," she said quietly, but she moved his copper mizas aside in his direction, and placed her own on the counter from her small wallet. She gave the same amount he had in the same form of miza. She didn't want his pity, nor his charity. The gesture didn't go wasted however. No one had given her anything like this.