Burning Needs (Caelum)

[Sondra]

TS: Winter 511, Day 2, Pre-Dawn Darkness Nuit like, Sondra fumbled through the pre-dawn mirk and chill. Wind harvested by the sea seemed to be pushing her further inland. The city was creaking and stumbling into activity. Light still ballooned in the gloom, slipping from cracks around windows and doors. Her sea-colored eyes passed over the buildings with more fatigue than judgment. The men at the quay had told her about the Stranger's Welcome. Its proximity to the wharf made her wary. A clean tavern and a close one was always a sure sign of expense. She began to worry the city was too small to host anything of ill-repute with prices to match. "Petch," she announced to no one in particular, as she grew increasingly frustrated. Gods she was tired, maybe there was a temple where she could sleep while pretending to pray. Preferably a temple to a forgiving divinity she was not keen on. Last thing she needed was a negative mark earned for snoring in the presence of the divine.

[Caelum]

there's a drumming noise inside my head that starts when you're around I swear that you could hear it it makes such an all mighty sound The hour of the wolf had beckoned Caelum into its embrace. Thrall had held him encapsulated for a slow pile of days, a greater distance behind eyes that changed and toward the rising and the setting he would run. He boots beat against the same stones, traversing all of the Denval to learn all of the twists of its streets and make of its faces a litany familiar. Air felt glowing in his lungs, aching but not unpleasant. It was not unlike the trembling mirage left within the flesh, a decadence of which he had partaken long ago. It was truth, though, that his gnosis marks felt ill. The bones of him felt diseased, threatening to spill into blood and violence or erupt with decay at any given beat of the heart. So the Sunsinger wandered, seeking the questions to go with all the answers he already had. His hands were jammed into the pockets of an old riding coat, worn leather as cracked soft as the breeches that hung from the too sharp slant of hipbones. A heavy weave of Drykas braids and love knots tumbled over his collar, a stray loop sagging against the hard slope of his cheek as he ambled, head down and shoulders huddled against winter's closing jaws. as I move my feet towards your body I can hear this beat it fills my head up And gets louder and louder It fills my head up and gets louder and louder "Lady," his voice penetrated the haze of torchlight, both trying to hold back the night. Day was coming, Syna would soon lift Her radiant head; but not yet, no. He spied her between the Passenger Quay and the tavern, a careworn figure in the chill and damp with fog rolling off the sea washed footings like smoke from a forgotten pyre. His heart thudded once his chest, a drum that foretold the whisper of dragging chains. Muscles tightened, breath caught short, fighting the absolute compulsion to open up Nikali's blood red kiss above his hip with the absolute knowledge that it would lay him low in this embattled town. "Lady," he said again instead, shaking his head in an attempt clear it. He was seeing ghosts, he realized, and lifted hands from pockets to rub at the back of his left hand where Rak'keli had blessed him. It all burned cold as iron, muddling his mind between the unholy pull of two opposing forces. He stepped closer, light from the Stranger's Welcome catching him off guard and stretching his shadow out too long. "Are you well?" creditsFlorence + Machine.

[Sondra]

Sondra heard the purposeful salutation and cringed. A nod, a grumble, that was acceptable among neighbors. It was too early for any stranger to be both wholesome and forcefully sociable. These were the bells where men who loved darkness tried to clumsily seize what they couldn’t find in the night before. She would know, having been expelled drunk and disoriented from taverns round these bells. Where she usually ended up by painful dawn, she couldn't fully recall or didn't care to. The Konti walked a little faster, and raised her shoulders in a protective hunch. Undaunted by the obviously disinterested pose of her body, the man called for her again, consolidating her idea that this was a deliberate pursuit. One hand fell to her side, and her thumb pricked the sharp beak of her hammer. The sensation brought some comfort as she pressed on, but she wondered what manner of laws the people of Denval had regarding violence. Finally, the words were flung from such a short distance, she was compelled to acknowledge them. The face that turned to face the Drykas was sharp. Cut into marble planes by want, pain and suspicion. Her pewter and silver scales seemed more armor than adornment, scratched and dull. “I’m not your petching ‘Lady’. Shove off.” This was the creature who had absorbed the world and learned to spit it back up when cornered. There was no forgiveness in her glance, just a cold edge that might have been fear but it was so heartily mixed with real threat, it was hard to tell.

[Caelum]

I run to the river and dive straight in I pray that the water will drown out the din Sound stopped against the backs of his teeth. It was in synchronization with his feet when the woman whirled on him, full of sound and fury. Ribbons of fog pearled about her ankles, snaking about her wrist where a hand plucked at the death of what appeared to be a war hammer hanging from her hip. It haloed him though he knew it not. It slipped through the light to bring all of the sun light out of the velvet dark of his eyes, a more mortal echo of the finest, palest line of sunrise just beginning to dare the horizon. Both his hands raised, flipping palm up in entreaty. The winged serpents of Rak'keli's gentle, cruel favor coiled about the back of his right hand, dulled in the eldritch light. He rocked a step back, then another, narrow shoulders attempting to brace for a blow. but as the water fills my mouth it couldn't wash the echoes out but as the water fills my mouth it couldn't wash the echoes out "No, no you're not," he agreed carefully, grimacing even as recognition burst behind his eyes. It felt like grains of sand and a rocky shoreline, digging in his knees, moondust and betrayal carrying him half the naked distance between hell and heaven's ceiling. Yes. Yes. He knew her. "I'm Caelum," he said. A breath was exhaled slowly. What dreams had come to Denval's shores? Sun-singer, holocaust-bringer. She did not know him, and why should she? He searched her face, noting the pinched features, the loveliness that was still there, distilled and tampered down with the world's suffering. Hideous. Beautiful. "You just got here," he deduced. "You're marked by my Lady's brighter sister. Avalis? It's dangerous to call upon the powers the gods have granted us here. Gnosis marks are cursed." A beat. "You should know that," he said more quietly. "I wanted you to know that. To warn you. Are you seeking a place to stay?" Chains rattled again inside his soul. He tightened his jaw.

[Sondra]

When Caelum moved forward, Sondra slid half of the hammer’s grip from its loop, wasting no time in marking the seriousness of her sentiment. There was an animal stoop to her bearing as aggression and apprehension sharpened each other’s claws. She watched the Drykas’s dark eyes with a depth and scrutiny that was unsettling. It was a trait of the pale race; the unknown weight of their knowledge had a quiet menace. One never knew what parts of your protected thoughts were being slit open and spilled for a Konti’s perusal. Caelum’s raised hands marked the point when she let go and the hammer slid back into its reassuring place. Her body was uncoiling, adopting the upright lines and soft sway of a Konti. Its edges were still shrill and treacherous, filed into jagged shapes over months, but he could see she was giving him a measure of credence. He looked at her with more kindness than she deserved. There were even flickers of an interest beyond the pat curiosity she was accustomed to as a Konti abroad. It confused her and made her feel strangely ashamed. “Caelum,” she repeated stupidly. When he claimed she had just arrived, her chin barely tilted an assent. “Some of the gods’ gifts are curses,” she mechanically replied to his warning, as if the phrase had been repeating in her head for days, waiting for a moment it would be of use. Sondra did not know what to do. The interaction had passed beyond her realm of understanding. Usually the play followed the proper paths of ending in conflict or a swift parting of ways. It did not gently transition to hospitality and fumbling courtesy. Unless one counted her first interaction with Hadrian, but all things involving the mage and herself were unique and never to be used as a measuring rod. She cast a look about, waiting for the rest of the con to manifest. When it didn’t, she looked into his cupped hands again, as if the explanation would be there. “Maybe. But I’m broke as sin,” a private joke, or so she thought, “And I make for shyke company.” Rolling her shoulders, she adjusted her pack. “What’s all this to you?” She barked a laugh, “There’s no altruism amongst strangers, Cae.”

[Caelum]

"But we aren't strangers, lady," he replied in an accent that was fletched with phoenix feathers, shot straight from the heart of the sun. It caused the Common to feel foreign in his mouth, any accent of this mortal coil too dense, too bitter. Concern drew his eyebrows together and he deliberately swiveled his right hand so as to display to her its back and the sign of Rak'keli emblazoned upon it. This was performed with the hope that knowledge he was a healer would further the cause of his face with that war hammer of her's. "At least, I don't think we are," he finished on a lame note, hands dropping empty of everything but morning's quiet mist. Denval slept around them while the dark began to bleed back into the ground, falling ill to shadows with Syna's rise. His eyes flinched as the wolf's hour retreated. Then they closed. I swallow the sound and it swallows me whole till there's nothing left inside my soul Day broke burdensome, diffused through all of the dispersing fog. Clouds were grey, iron colored as if to reflect the delicate artistry of the Konti's scales. Armor, they claimed, they suggested, winter's newborn sky reflecting the state of Denval where even gods hardly dared tread of late. The glory of sunrise coalesced instead within the Drykas, a slow burn, a gloaming melt. Windmarks writhed and vanished while embers and earth spilled through his hair. The lines of his face sharpened, mastered. It was painful, he had been told once, painful to watch and there was a blind woman in a city in the south who claimed his face was her only lasting sight. His shifted and his shadow gained some inches in height, shoulders a touch more broad, and for certain his clothes fit him far better than they had but moments previous. He opened his eyes to find himself still watching her. Uncertainty crouched in them. He did not expect her to know him still. as empty as that beating drum but the sound has just begun "There's a place to lay your head. If you like," he told her. "It's a clinic run by an Opal Order Healer. I swear it's safe. As safe as anything and any of us are in Denval these days." A beat. "Even, perhaps especially, for the Unburning."

[Sondra]

His voice. It began to splinter and color, the evening cold leaving it. She had never truly heard it, it had only passed through her. Did she know it, or only hope she did? Dawn began to break, but it did not stop on the horizon or bind itself to the armored sky. It flooded the man before her, and Sondra had to close her eyes. She felt them prickle with tears despite the shade, and her view of nothingness turned into bright moons as the light pressed against her pale lids. When the white heat subsided, she opened her watery eyes and saw an Ethaefal in his first moments of the day’s splendor. He looked at her still, his eyes unwavering even as they transmuted to gold. They now watched a gradual heartbreak as she realized they were not strangers. And here she was graceless. Her mouth was rich with rue as she twisted a laugh and grief together. “The son of the dawn,” she softly greeted in Kontinese. “I am glad I came so far to spit in your outstretched hand.” Sondra turned her head to show her profile and hide the face the eras had given her. It was undiluted now, no longer made luminous or tender with shades of dreaming. Silver was beaten to gray and white to ash. Only a flush of shame brightened it. If she had any less need, she might have abandoned the conversation entirely. Even, perhaps especially, the Unburning. The ominous title made the woman unconsciously press her hand over her stomach, as if trying to quietly stop a wound. Did they understand more of the cinders than she? Of the flames that overwhelmed her dark scrying mirror, destroying every other vision that tried to surface there? “Today I am merely the Unwashed and Unfed,” she answered with another of her glass smiles. Rocking where she stood, the Konti struggled with the line between want and need and which was more worthwhile. A victor emerged as she roughly stuck out her bare hand, a ruse to touch him and remember what it was like. “Or Sondra.”

[Caelum]

"Sondra," he tasted her name and took her hand in his. Beneath the fogged glass of thrall and the density of the profane siege laid upon the city, his consciousness dared to surface, to attempt to sharpen. His hand gripped her's, calloused and scarred at the wrist as no one of his race ought be. A kiss was pressed to the arch of her cheekbone, light and intimate at once, Though she was drawn and pale, half starved and garbed in the filth of impoverished travel, he did not notice or did not care. "Welcome," he greeted her in Kontinese, not a man accustomed to smiles. He did not offer another, but it required no truthsayer to sense the honesty in that simple word. Maybe that was enough. Straightening while the sun spiked his shadow out black against the ballast stone street, he made a gesture to her pack in silent offer. "There's hot water and hot food at the clinic," he tempted and if asked he would not be able to explain why. He was not the sort to beckon, to lure, to enforce a sense of charity. Yet the whole of this mortal coil was occupied since setting foot upon Denval soil with feelings hazed and disjointed, aching and intoxicant. It was a battle of every minute not to open to the tugs of Nikali's tether, but he could not but listen to their thunderous soft tread. "Why did you come?" It was a question weighed with lifetimes, uncertainty crouching in the sidelong slant of his eyes. He loosened his fingers, but he did not release her hand while turning toward the sea cliff upon which the clinic perched.

[Sondra]

When Caelum kissed her in greeting, Sondra remembered when she was honored and her hopes unbroken. She automatically murmured a word of blessing in Kontinese, a seer’s elegant reply to a once common gesture. Caelum treated her as if she was already forgiven, leading her easily to her old ways. His invitation fell on a younger Sondra, who would vanish the moment her answer ended. “I would like both, very much.” His sudden, direct question had an equally deft reply. “I had uncommon dreams,” she said plainly. Explanation followed after a beat, deceptively grounding the phrase to a particular train of thought. “And mirror visions. The life I had now and and the life I had then… each saw something it wanted to find again. I simply followed the gold string and he followed the black.” Sondra chuckled and looked elsewhere, embarrassed by the obviousness of her want. One was powerless when you confessed to need. It created a fulcrum through which she could be manipulated and moved. She wondered if Caelum could understand how bare she felt. Her temper crouched in the corner, ready to leap to her defense without restraint or sense should he show contempt for this floundering openness. “It had been a long petching while since I could find a thing I wanted, so I did not hesitate.” The Konti felt a twinge of guilt, and the smell of ash filled her nose. She realized his hand still had hers. She clenched her jaw and willed it to submerge. Only submerge, she could not yet banish it completely. As long as allowed, she was not letting go of a guiding hand. “Son of dawn,” she struggled against him having a name, as it implied a certain amount of solidity and he was still half a dream. “Why now? Why is it calling now?” she shook her head, as if retracting the question, “I don’t have to know yet. I may not even be in the state of mind to.”

[Caelum]

Their footsteps fell strident though their pace was slow, the gait of his guest weary with the tribulations of travel. It was as if in echo the very air of Denval wished to mark their passage. He set his eyes upon the increasing lights of the clinic, let the feel of her hand in his tether him to the ground. He had long since lost his mooring, burned and buried them in black waters in a city far from here, but of late he had begun to rebuild them bit by bit, braid by braid. They were not the same, but that might have been the entire point. "What life is that?" He asked with an eyebrow spiking. "The life that followed the black thread. You're sure they aren't the same? Those threads. Black alchemizing to gold for a chance to settle a thing?" Memory of their shared dream floated through him. He did not choose his words with care. "To be absolved a thing?" The city proper stretched from slumber around them, shutters tossed open and guards returning from their shifts. An unattractive flock of gulls descended upon the fresh barren branches of a pecan tree, cawing up a maelstrom to send the passing butcher's son to cursing. They passed, encapsulated by leftover fragments of fog, wandering in an unnatural privacy past the blurred border of the city. They followed the cliff road, well kept by citizen volunteers, a brief distance to its end at the clinic. "Why now? If I knew the answer to that question, daughter of fire, Tanroa Herself might wait upon my smiles." And his smile slid into a smirk, punctuating his point.