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[Victor Lark]

66 Fall, 511

He should have been tired.

It had been three weeks since he had given all his money to his closest friend and a charismatic stranger, a little less than that since he had unwittingly committed the best hours of his evenings to a piss-and-whiskey bar that sold as much blood as bets. He was a positively diurnal creature and yet he slept through the greater part of the day when he could not help it, and so he never slept enough because he hated to miss it. The echoes of dark lines had begun to weigh down on his young face, and yet...

The tavern still contained a group of lingerers, huddled around a single table at the tail end of a clumsy conversation, when the door swung open to admit him. The place was dark; the moon was a sliver on the ceiling. He crossed the long lobby to the bar with more energy than anyone should have had that time of night, then offered its usual tender a well-deserved break. The change and commotion unsettled the men, all but the one who dozed alone beside the hearth. By the time Victor had topped off a mug of lager, a chorus of chairs began to shriek of their departure.

If he cared, he did not show it. The door opened and closed in the time it took him to take his first swig. He set it down with a knock, gripped the inside of the bar, stared flatly and honestly at the sleeping man. “What are you unconscious for, hm?” He spat, but there was no malice on his tongue. His toes itched and his fingers bounced.

Finally, he produced a deck of cards from the pocket of his thin wool jacket. They were in the Ravok style, stolen from the ‘Wager with all intention of returning it the next evening. The quiet room was soon filled with the snap and whisper of moving paper beneath nearly-deft hands, training to be quick, to be exact, to be sneaky. He took off the jacket, tried and failed to fling the cards into and out of his sleeve as he dealt them, gathered them, shuffled them. They slid over the long counter and tripped to the dirty ground, but he did not bother with them until he was certain there were too few. When that time came, he collected each one with patient and practiced speed, that habitual look of indifference carved hard over restless determination. Then he rewarded himself with a gulp of cold alcohol and resumed his idle drills.

[Ifran]

Shows could run late, and the after parties later, but some souls roamed in disquiet until the dawn bid them lay down their bones and rest. The actors of the Crooked Playhouse were not quite so in favor of orgiastic epilogues to their shows, and so it took him a deal longer to come down from the high of performance. When he walked into the Sun and Stars, he was disappointed to find its clientele asleep, its bartender playing some sort of solitaire game. All the same, this was his first time there, so he strode up to the bar to see how watered down the wine was, how inventive the drinks. He did not expect the level of decadence and variety his home city held, but with any luck there would be an illusionist bartender who could make ditch water taste like an expensive courtesan's cunny. As his eyes flicked over the cards being played, the symbolism was not lost upon him. "Have you any Silver?" he asked simply.

[Victor Lark]

Victor’s eyes rose in a brief haze. Swords and spears and suns danced before his vision as he looked up toward the swinging door, but the fresh night air dissolved them on an inhale. He was left with the sight of a gold-skinned man with too many arms, a creature he had only seen as the mask of an ethaefal. He dipped beneath the bar to gather his mess from the floor, tossed the cards into the scattered pile and punctuated the pause with a gulp from his mug. Sighing wetly, he dropped the wooden cup onto the bar and replied, “Give me a gold and I’ll let you know.”

A weary smile lifted in his eyebrows, hoping to inspire something similar, if not better, on the foreigner’s square face. Without asking, Victor produced another pint and filled it carefully with the same cold lager that he had chosen; the bitter bite of it was refreshing to his Northerner’s tongue, and it was the only drink there that was worth its price. He slid it across the counter before he took the money. He tucked his fingers against its polished edge, ignoring the cards beside him. “Starting late?” He inquired, and eagerness in boredom was a stain his tone.

[Ifran]

The Eypharian's answering smile was as subtle as High Arumenic on a poet's tongue, and a coin for the ale appeared as if by sleight of hand to dance and flicker down his knuckles before he deposited it in the bartender's hand. The ale was cold, and that was about all he had come to expect from Alvadas where the blur of illusion led to a chaotic sort of civilization that he still could not quite grasp. After his tastebuds were momentarily appeased, he answered the question. "Work tends to run late at the Crooked Playhouse," he said. "But it will begin late tomorrow as well, so the wicked come out to play." His eyes were still lined with kohl, and the faintest remnants of gold gilt limned his skin with a warmer glow of aged ivory. In Alvadas everyone, even the city itself, was trying to outdo the next person in the wildness of imagination given form. Ifran did not have to try. He was exotic whether he could weave an illusion or not.

[Victor Lark]

Inspired by his latest patron’s subtle displays, Victor took the gold-rimmed coin with the same flourish that he had practiced on his cards. Unfortunately, the heavy thing tripped against his sleeve instead, knocked onto the wooden floor and offered a rounding rumble to his sudden chagrin. Pride prevented him from retrieving it; he blanketed the noise with the sole of his shoe and quickly produced two silver pieces from beneath the counter. As they rattled a refrain against the polished bar, he occupied himself with a mouthful of beer.

Victor leaned forward. He liked to think he was attractive, but his slumping shoulders seemed to concede such vanities to the painted scarab before him. His thoughts wandered to his lips, his words. Victor had seen the old stone arch around the city, could never seem to avoid it, though neither had he the means to explore it. Perhaps the next best thing was the memory of a man who knew it well. “You’re an actor, then,” he concluded, grey eyes dancing curiously around the black kohl and gold luster that costumed graceful blues. He did not imagine that the metallic glow was anything but a player’s mask. “The worthiest of professions; Ionu’s finest, they say. I’ve always wanted to see a show.” With a sigh, his gaze finally settled to meet the man’s. “How does the Playhouse treat you?”

[Ifran]

"Actor is, I suppose, the best word for it in Common. In Arumenic, there is a word for the sort of performance I do that encompasses many arts: dance, music, poetry. Even those words have other implications within the context of our culture. For instance, I dance with blades. My music is that of the voice, but we are trained to use it as a more varied instrument than most traditions. And to speak the High Arumenic properly, one must have the soul of a poet whether or not the performer puts a quill to parchment ever in their lives." He paused, gauging the man's interest. Instead, he left his change where it was, likely to be used for a refill at some point. The Eypharian rarely drank much, preserving his voice for its work, but he was not a teetotaler. But instead of expounding upon the cultural, linguistic, and artistic differences between his people and the common human's, he answered the question. "I am challenged at the Playhouse, and content to perform there for the time being."

[Victor Lark]

Victor nodded along as half-true humility faltered in the distraction of interest. His shoulders rose and his face dropped to something more comfortable. To those that did not know him, the flattened expression might seem like anything but curiosity, but his eyes did not waver from his customer’s even as a solid wooden mug came between them. He drew a long, considering pause before he dropped it again. “For the time being...” He repeated, and the taste of the words was too familiar. “Well, what more is there? Would it content you more to be a server, pouring drinks for actors and drunks?”

A glance at the sleeping man and a short laugh later, Victor was wrapping his hands around the elbows that clung to the edge of the bar. His eyes peered as if he thought he knew some secret, but then they softened belatedly when he remembered that he was supposed to be envious. “Or maybe it’s more likely that there’s something outside of Alvadas for you.” His palms opened to admit the presumption. “Where the people look like you, and talk in Arnemic.” Victor had never been very good with other languages. He could have asked where exactly that place was, should have been more curious as to the appeal of it over Alvadas, this greatest of cities. But a different sort of selfishness overtook him in that passing moment.

“Tell me what that word is, for what you are.”

[Ifran]

When the man spoke, Ifran grew quiet and watchful. He considered Common such a straightforward language in comparison to his native tongue that it seemed strange when simple words were so easily mistaken. But he let the man speak, make his insights and his mistakes in the same breath, before he replied. "I am Eypharian and my people, mostly of Ahnatep, speak Arumenic. Of course, Ahnatep will remain on the southern ocean, waiting for me. I would not spend forever in the city of the Alvads, but, as I said, the Playhouse challenges me. I have stepped out of my natural environment to stretch and grow, the better to return to my home, improved, tempered as steel. Sharper and more cosmopolitan. "That is the hope, anyway." He raised his mug. "This is better beer than I expected." It was, for him, high praise.

[Victor Lark]

OOCSorry for the wait!

Victor chuckled. It was true: his was the opinion that had chosen this taste for the tavern’s stores and his was the hand that poured this lager for its latest patron. But it was nothing like what he had drunk between the damask walls of a Noble’s District, and he could guess that this golden man had also known richer brews. His expression tried to say as much as he mirrored the gesture, standing straight and raising his own mug in a sagging toast. “Thank you,” he conceded, and his teeth clung to his lower lip as if to suppress a smile. He looked vaguely above Ifran’s shoulder.

“Eypharian,” he echoed. For once, the human managed to say all of the foreign syllables in order, but the word was still pitched clumsily over the harsh and hectic swing of his Ravokian tongue. “Ah-na-tep. Aru...menic.”

He laughed at his struggle, so as to avoid seeming a complete fool. The words were hardly as difficult as he made them out to be, but Victor did not usually care enough about a culture to understand too much about their words and customs. It was the individuals he cared to learn; as he saw it, there were as many cultures as there were minds with beliefs and desires. This one seemed to think highly of himself. “And are all Eypharians dancers and poets?” Head tilted tentatively, he dared to tread waters into which he had only dipped his toes. “Or are you unique among them? I would think self-improvement isn’t the highest passion for most characters at the Playhouse, either; would you say you are any different from them?”

[Ifran]

Ifran laughed along with Victor, allowing him to save face however he chose to do so. But he repeated the words with that special mellifluous lilt that made even those words -- spoken in Arumenic this time -- little works of oral sculpture themselves: "Eypharian. Ahnatep. Arumenic." The first, an old and proud people. The second, their jewel-city. The third, the most complex language known to sentient creatures on Mizahar, and the apex of their linguistic arts. He could not help being better than other people. "Many in the House of the North Winds are artists," he averred, "but I would not say that I am unique. Here I am certainly exotic." The word carried a strange weight, as if he was not sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, and perhaps Victor would set him straight, an invitation for comment and judgment. "Self-improvement should be the goal of all souls, should it not? Else why do we turn again and again upon the wheel of Lhex, being reborn with a new identity to learn new things about the nature of existence? "Forgive me if I seem obtuse. I have a wandering mind."