[The Nest]Different colors made of tears (Mara)

[Sian The]

Spring 41, 512 AV

Her mind wavered in and out of consciousness, like heat waves shimmering over hot sand, mutating images to blurred shadows of themselves. Eyelids fluttered and fell, over and over, the orbs underneath rolling restlessly. Delicate fingers clutched in spasms at a silken coverlet, while the hands began to move, twisting in the bindings that had already gouged angry red furrows in skin pale as ivory.

“She’s waking. Shall I get the sleeping draught?” A female voice, smooth and sibilant, floating above the young woman’s head.

“No. Not yet. There is a healer here. He was given permission to speak to her – something to do with the level of drugs it’s taking to keep her quiet – it might be bad for the child. Hellebore approved it.”

Dried, chafed lips moved, soundlessly at first. Then a small particle of sound escaped them.

“Jiu . . . Jiu . . . “

The female caretakers shook their head, looking at one another. They knew. From her screams when she was first brought in some months ago, they knew who Jiu was.

“Come. There’s much to do. Show the healer in and we can get on with our duties.”

Silence feel again, as moment by moment Jael swam up, and up, and up, through the milky shrouds of the drugs leaving her system.

Eyelids fluttered and fell, and then opened and she stared upwards, the tears already gathered in the corners of her dark, sorrow filled eyes.

[Mara]

The Nest, Mara was not well acquainted with it. It was swathed in rose fragranced silk, curving beams of canopied beds and salvers of soaking fruit speckled around rooms with overbearing doors decorated in stitched mosaics. There were no better warden's in all of Mizahar, he was sure. Eyes as dark as cherry pits refused to wander over the gold shimmer of the well light rooms. It was as close to sunlight as could be offered by the pale caresses of opalgloams.

It had been days for this prearrangement, enough time to know his target better, and persuade his way into the prison. Lightly robed Symenestra strolled through the halls, acting as if they were unassuming wanders. A shrewd illusion of freedom, but everyone was a sentinel, everyone was surveillance. He had heard of Swyph, a capable hypnotist. So gifted he could meander into someone's mind and reproduce their lost loved ones, encourage them to behave, comfort them, all behind a false face. He pondered if his efforts had been squandered on Jael. He had to assume so when he heard that she was being restrained, secured to a bed and sedated.

Elongated digits strummed against his shoulder, and he revolved to view the accuser with breathless lips. The face was with an apathetic expression shaped by short foggy grey hair. "She's just ahead." the voice was low and deep and a skeletal finger poked past his cheek to the chamber a few paces away. Two women exited the door, giving a nod to both of them as they passed the two males.

"Ahh- Thanks." It was unnerving, the male leaning over him with such a groaning voice, coupled with the encompassing environment.

"You said Hellebore approved your visit?"

Mara sucked in his cheek before swallowing a gob of bitter venom. "Yes, I expressed some interest, so he allowed me to check upon the drugged patient. You've yet to successfully impregnate her, correct?"

Worming amethysts burrowed down past his lava smeared pupils as they searched for some wavering in poise of his words. Mara had to struggle to hold his thoughts steady and his countenance still, not daring to stoop from his hold or slid from their gawk. "I see. Is there some concern over the drug used?"

"Not at the moment. We have been dabbling with a theory that it may slow her ovulation. You know, some women have such delicate forms. It's best to check." A blatant lie, but with no hitch to the slimmest syllable. He had no proof of any such notion, but it sounded genuine enough. "A successful insemination and birth is the goal." his lips upturned into a trained smile, fangs tapping across metal.

The other nodded in his satisfaction. "Then by all means, don't allow me to hold you any longer." He spoke his peace. A hand outstretched to lead the way, but offered less than a shift from the half-blood’s side.

Mara ducked away from him drumming a fretful talon over the flank of the bag of medicinal materials he had carried with him. He could feel eyes boring into his skull as he touched the room. He sealed the door behind him without glancing back.

His heart skipped across swelling lungs, and blood drained from his cheeks and eyes leaving a now standard ashen lilac in its place. The bed was adorned as attractive as most of the rooms, but dimmer, with long braided stems of silk roped about the slenderest wrists of any human he had ever seen.

Dark brows knitted together as he looked her over, tears already spilling from her waking lids and dampening the chestnut hair fanned beneath her. His knees shook with each closer step and her discreet sobs pounded in his ears.

There was not enough air to help fill his aching lungs as he looked over her, pitiful and tensing. She reminded him of the white rabbits he used to spot in the traps outside of Avanthal. Their terror would drive them to scurry around the cage until they had worn themselves out, even battered themselves, with thrashing feet and squeals that most would not expect from such a noiseless animal. It was heart wrenching and he was often wounded himself releasing them from their pen. She looked just like that as her hands gripped at empty air.

"Jael..." he felt guilt now putting name to face. He sat at the edge of the bed, careful not to pressure her. "I am Dra-Marvasa Whitevine. I work at the Purging, and I have some comfort to offer you." His hand reached toward her binding but he faltered. If she tried to escape on her own, before he was allowed to explain, or she attacked him, there would be no chance left at even developing some kind of strategy.

"Your brother, Sian sent me. He has come to Kalinor to rescue you."

[Sian The]

Her mind was murky, as if it struggled through brackish water, imbued with silt, stifling her attempts to find the surface and draw air into her burning lungs. She was disoriented and didn’t know if she was pushing in the right direction. Her open eyes told her little, the room around her might as well have been a mountain top or a desert or the filthiest prison cell, for all that primary sense was taking in. Her fingers, her back, her legs, told her little more, for though the silk of her bedding whispered softly against her skin, that sense too was off and she could not detect where she was or that it was soft or soothing. Her dry mouth only moved restlessly as her lips mumbled her son’s name, the remnants of the foul taste of the sedative they drugged her with sparking no recollections. Pleasant scents of clean linens and some far off incense made it no further than the tip of her nose. There was nothing to anchor herself to. No life line for her mind to grab onto, though it struggled unceasingly to find that focal point. And then, there was a voice.

Jael heard Mara speak – she heard the sound, but not the words. And though the Symenestra might look down their long noses at his northern accent, he had been in Kalinor long enough that the sibilant qualities of its citizens had woven themselves into his pronunciation. Her mind latched onto that sound – its source – and like a pearl diver she shot upwards with her find, desperate to reach the surface of her consciousness with that treasure. Here was the locus that she required. Here was her enemy.

Without any warning, her unbound leg shot up, aiming a kick at the sound – and the one producing it. At the same time, her head writhed and came up as well, her dry mouth working to gather what little saliva it could muster. Straining against the ties on her wrists, she wrenched her torso in a twisting motion, her shoulders coming but a few measly inches up off the bed. Her dazed intent had been to kick the petching Widow in the head and spit in its face. She fell far short of her mark.

The light covers over her body wrapped and tangled about her leg and it fell back, impotent for the moment. Her mouth was far too dry to create much of a wad of sputum, and what little came out trickled uselessly down her chin. Falling back with a soft, despairing cry – her voice too hoarse from constant sleep to make much of a sound – her head flopped from side to side like she was trying to swat away an annoying insect. The gathered tears now flowed copiously, wetting her temples and trickling down to her jaw and neck. Betrayed by her uncooperative body, she moaned, turning her head away from the still unclarified figure that shadowed nearby.

“I will fucking kill you,” she hissed through clenched teeth, her words cracked and strained. Her body convulsed with another effort to do him damage, and this time her leg managed to kick free of the impeding cover, though she was still far too weak to lash out with any force or accuracy.

Her head whipped about, though, her face a mask of agonized fury.

“I will fucking kill you!” she spat out at her tormentor – one she could now see through bleary eyes was male. Beyond that she saw no details of the widow come to abuse her in some way or another.

“If you try to touch me, I - will - fucking - kill you!” Her voice, still low in volume from her throat and mouth’s long inactivity, was strident in pitch, and there was no questioning the sincerity of what she said. If she could, she would kill him – destroy him, maim him, rip him to shreds – just as his ugly, bastard, cunt of a race had done to her life – and her son’s.

[Mara]

A lump rammed into his shrinking esophagus and he crooked he head from her fraught body. It was challenging to look at her, writhing with stiffened and swinging limbs. She was so terrified and so wrathful. How could he blame her, or feel betrayed if she had landed him with any kind of blow. He almost craved for such a beating.

He hoisted from the bed studying the floor while he waited for her to exhaust herself, as most small creatures do. Her words, however, grated against him and lifted microscopic hair upon the back of his neck. If he had the heart and it would have done any good he thought he could have let her take a knife-edge and drive it into his chest, but it would not be beneficial. She would still be confined, used until she perished. No, sadly for her, he was her only hope so he could not in good conscious grant her wish.

"Jael..." His head slanted back toward her. "I'm sorry, I know you are suffering." He wrapped around the back of a chair neatly tucked against the wall and dragged it with a scrabbling of wood against granite until it rested near the bed. He drifted down upon the seat, legs characteristically doubling over one another with his hands about his lap. "I'm not here to hurt you. I won’t even touch you if you wish me not to." he held his hands up to declare their location to her. "Not a finger, I swear."

Mara's foot tapped against the floor soundlessly in his discomfort. He bobbed conspicuously from where he sat. He had to try again. "It took me a while to get here. To find you." mauve brooches pulled away to his palms flattening over the hem of his pants a few times as he spoke. "I'm sad to see you restrained." Head still bowed, he skimmed ruefully to the bindings flushing her fair rind. "Better than finding you hypnotized I suppose." he found her face, narrowed caramel eyes stabbing into his glassy orbs. He was trying to sooth her with an even tone.

"You can call me Mara, someone sympathetic to your plight, a healer at the Purging, more Estarian than not" he inhaled a great breath with a shaky laugh "Overall, 'A shitty Symenestra'" quoting the only other half-blood he had ever met. "And an equally as appalling human, but most importantly, I am your brother's doctor."

His hand reached out toward the vase of vaguely wilted flowers decorating an end table by her bed. "He went through hell to get here." He plucked at a white petal and pushed a claw effortlessly through the papery smooth material so it shredded in half. "I had a lot of trouble keeping him alive."

He looked into her eyes and saw his familiar patient floating about behind the warm swirl of color. "You two are very alike. Just now even as you were repeating that name," Jui "He also muttered your name for days. Less than a week ago I was finally given the explanation to the name. Jael, captured in the harvest and detained for surrogacy." His voice wavered into something like regret.

"He came to save you. Foolish devotion that should have failed miserably." he shook his head and rubbed his wrist over stinging eyes until they were warm with comfort. "It just so happens that I have a history of devoting myself to fools."

[Sian The]

Still the beast stood there, ogling her – why would he not leave? Why would he not leave her alone? Why did he not heed her warning – for she would do as she said, if he dared to touch her and she had the chance to hurt him. Her eyes narrowed as she returned his stare, hers comprised of ice and fire together. She greatly desired to sear him with her gaze, to freeze the poison that passed for blood in his veins, to . . .

"Jael…I'm sorry, I know you are suffering."

It was the girl’s expression that froze, her pretty lips pulled back in a feral snarl. In the odd way that brains do, her own snatched immediately at something – through the clearing fog, she could still remember. She had never given the Widows her name. There were none in this vile place that knew it – she had refused, stubbornly, some vague sense of retaining at least one shred of herself for herself, as they stripped her of all else. Her son’s name had slipped away, into the air, whilst she was defenseless to hoard it close to her heart. But her own name – never had she voiced it. If nothing else, she would force the one who had raped her over and over to see his child born knowing that he had no idea who she was. He would have no piece of her identity – not that she thought he would really give a shit.

But this one knew . . .

Her eyes fought to focus more precisely, as the form wavered and rippled. The man was pulling forward a chair, sitting – she could not make out his face clearly due to the drugs still seeping out of her bloodstream. Her lips puckered into an unasked question and her writhing stilled.

"I'm not here to hurt you. I won’t even touch you if you wish me not to." Hands held upwards, palms forward – she focused on them blearily.

"Not a finger, I swear."

Her head flopped back down wearily, sinking into the cushioning softness of the pillow. Tears ran freely from the corners of her eyes and she sobbed, a reaction to the drug, the terror, the confusion. What new torture was this? The Symenestra did not kill with knives or blades – they killed with kindness. While they planted their lethal seed inside their captives, they bathed them with all things sweet and beautiful and comfortable. What trickery was this? How did they guess her name – and why did they need so badly to get her acquiescence to her own murder? Couldn’t they just accept the fact that she hated them? Why pretend? Why did they pretend that what they did was acceptable? Why was this Widow here pretending to be nice? What did he want?

His words were a garbled mess. She only half-listened. How many would they send to explain – patiently – how much better it would be if she would just cooperate? If she would just nicely and politely play co-conspirator in her own demise? Her eyes clamped shut tightly and she wished she could clamp her ears shut too, to drown out that voice. It was different, somehow. But the message it carried was to be expected. Just play nice. We even stole your secret – your name. But just be a good girl and only the very end will hurt really, really bad.

”I am your brother's doctor."

It took a moment for that one phrase to sink in, past all the horribly weak defenses that she still tried so hard to keep aloft. When it hit her conscious brain, it bounced right off again. She must have misheard him. Her eyes flew open and her head lurched towards him. She strained to hear his words now. They were incredible – unfathomable. Her brother was in Lhavit. Her brother did not even know where she was. Her brother was Shinya and could not ‘come to Kalinor.’ Her brow furrowed as she tried to concentrate – tried to decipher this strange code this Widow spoke in. With the drug clearing from her brain with each passing minute, her eyes took in his features and form more clearly, He looked . . . different. And he spoke differently too.

She bit down on her lower lip which trembled with more as yet unshed tears. The fingers of the hand closest to the healer unfurled slowly, spreading out in a fan of supplication. The far hand pulled at its restraint, the fingers also curving as if she would pull him close.

“My brother?” Her voice was weak now, all its strength spent in the previous effort of snarling at him like some wild beast. “You’ve seen my brother? Please . . . “ He had given his name but she had not been listening closely. “Please . . . Help me. Please . . .

Her hand softened into a form that beckoned him to take hold of it. “Please . . . take me to my brother.”

[Mara]

The fatigue had settled as he knew it would, her voice whistling a mournful song in the place of snarls. There he latched upon her beating hand, for he could not bring himself to stare too long into the sun that was her deep set globes. The precious gems of smoky quartz that dribbled dark stains through milky whites and veiny corners crawled beneath his skin. She was looking for comfort in a hand made of bone instead of corded silk. The arrow headed tips of his reedy spears stiffened and cracked from his lap, but never budged.

There was hesitation to offer such a simplistic action of human courtesies. None of the excuses that could be assembled would outweigh reason. Whether he was cautious of Jael and her retracted claws or that his pity would operate his hands of their own accord and release her, only to watch her fall prey to the hunters prowling the halls. Either way he flexed to muster the will to outstretch an honest palm.

"I will as soon as it is practical." anxious glances bounded off the wooden doorframe as clapping steps pattered outside her room. "I need to gain enough trust to sway the proceedings here, but now that I have found you, I will let Sian know that you are here and..." misplaced courtesy scrapped away the grizzly thoughts, she may not be as pleased as some to simply be alive or to have been discovered detained to a bedframe.

Steam pushed from the hallow caverns of his nostrils, and fingertips kneaded at his pounding temples. "We are conceiving a design, a way to get you out of here; to get both of you out of here. It will take some time, but now that I know where you are I will try and make some variations to how you are accommodated."

"I may be able to influence the administration of the drugs they are delivering to you. If I can weave a convincing enough tale, I will try and cancel out as many unnecessary visits to your room as I can. If you are willing play a part and work with...” he cleared his throat like the word stuck in his throat before it could slip into the open air “someone like me, I will try and have you sent to the clinic under my care."

"Your Zintila that Sian has talked to me of, must certainly have heard your calls. Your brother as well seems to love you fiercely, I can think of no other that would cross the Unforgiving and crawl into a spider's nest with little more than a hunch." a pull across his cheeks of stretched lips mimicked a smile, but his forehead wrinkled away from her sight. As heartless as he seemed her tears were not wasted on him. As he had been with Sian The, his heart strings were played mercilessly, both from their imprisoning cots.

Mara uncurled his legs and bent forward in the chair. Flattened hands ironed the mislaid waves along the edge of the bed. "I can only promise to do everything in my power." he trailed upward to seep into her watery orbs. Penitence smattered his forlorn features as fingers inched over the fabric and landed unruffled in her palm with a consoling squeeze. "Is it enough, Jael? If there is more, you have only to ask."

[Sian The]

Another name. Another secret stolen from her. Sian – had she murmured it too, in her drug induced slumber? None of the Widows had ever mentioned it to her before. Only this one. Her vision was clearing even more, and she gazed at Mara, her expression confused, doubting, bereft of any real hope. His words were . . . unbelievable. They soared from his lips to her ear, but her mind was throwing up a barricade, refusing to be taken in, to be uplifted by false hope – hope for succor that could not be real. Sian could not be here. And if this one sat beside her was a doctor – why would he be trying to help her? What was all this he was murmuring, in a voice that feigned reluctance to be overheard? They were concocting a plan? She had not been sedated when she was first brought into the city, and dropped in the Nest. She knew there was no escape – not for her. The only way out of Kalinor was death. Jael had been prepared to pursue that route – better to at least deprive these murderers of at least one walking womb. But they had intercepted her much too quickly, and resorted to tying her up, and then drugging her – after she had managed to land at least a few blows and bites on the one who came to breed her. So what was this preposterous nonsense of ‘getting out of here?’

Wearily, she tossed her head from side to side, in the exaggerated manner of a child, her voice still thick with the medication. “Zintila? My lady of the stars can not shine here – not here, in the caverns of night. The city of death . . . She has forgotten me. She has no power . . . here.”

Her eyes came back to his, as he leaned in closer, meeting her gaze with one that looked thoroughly abashed. Then her eyes dropped to watch his fingers slide over hers, felt their reassuring grip.

With a sudden buck, she brought her hips off the bed, and rounded them upwards, bringing her knee up to soundly connect with Mara’s temple.

“Get out!” She screamed. “Leave me alone!” She literally hissed in his direction.

“Kill me! Now! Or leave me the fuck alone!”

Her body writhed on the bed as a seeming fury overtook her, as she struggled against her silken bonds.

[Mara]

Blood fled knuckles oppressing his cracking digits. He assumed it to be suffering or panic, he had underrated her hatred. As her muscles tensed and raised her pelvis, he turned toward the boosting limb in time to give it an improved aim. Jael's knee cracked against his cranium, her shin swiping along his ear. It flung him forward until he was all but upon her with incisors extracted from behind a chewed and splintered hilt in grimace.

"Ahh! Petch!" he raised from her side, yanking his hand free from her grasp to cradle his trodden skull. The chair's back smashed against stone and cluttered the surface out of the way as Mara paced from her side, his sharp aggrieved pants lingering beneath her screams. The pain was burning and tense, a migraine that left a copious brand of scarlet along his face.

He rotated back toward her as the door clacked open and garlands of light streaked across the floor and up the wall. It was a young girl, too young to be anything but an adolescent in training. Her eyes settled stationary upon Jael's squirming body, flinging layers from beneath her to nest along the floor. She then tracked the line of dishevelment to the crumpled furniture and the young healer all but doubled over in discomfort. She hastened toward Jael, ampoule of slopping gold in hand to administer the required remedy to quiet the torment of the surrogate that had no name.

"Don't fucking touch her!" Mara's shout was harsh enough to cement her feet to the ground. She turned to him with wide amethysts pulling over his still contorting expression, with pinched surface and compressed lids.

"B-b-but she is-"

"I said don't go near her, leave her alone." his voice lowered as he rubbed at the bass beating along his temple.

His milder speech seemed to perk her confidence and she took a few more steps "It's a small dosage. It will only help to calm her, it should be fine." she assured as if this was her hundredth outing at such a inconsequential chore.

Mara strode toward her and gathered her brittle extremity, carting the arm so she stumbled at his side and from the bedstead. "I said don't touch her." he growled his sullied eyes were pronounced black cavities descending into his contrasting orbs that fell upon her and bobbled a lump in her throat as she shriveled away. "Now please leave." he released her slinging her toward the door. The fledgling mistress scampered away, apprehensive and discouraged. Mara was sure he would have had no good fortune with anyone older and less impressionable that she.

The door slammed behind her and again the dim glow suffused the room. Marvasa turned away from Jael to return to nursing his injury. "I don't mind Jael. I don't mind if you hate me." his neck curved his jaw into his shoulder so his opinion could reach her safer. "I'm not asking you to like me. You don't have to pretend I'm different than every other Widow." his eyes lay shut once again finding his own voice raucous.

"But what do you have to lose? What more could I possibly take from you that has not been taken? Be skeptical, be cautious, but don't throwaway hope. Your brother, your son, your city, they are waiting for you. Can you not accept help, even if it is from someone of the same race that did this to you?"

[Sian The]

He fell forward, onto her, and it was if his skin seared hers, the way she squirmed to get away from his touch. But he was as quick to break any connection with her himself, rising up to clutch at his head. In an instant, it seemed, the door was opening suddenly and there was another – of course. Was this not their way? How many Widows did it take to confront and deal with one puny little woman? Already Jael’s teeth were clamped shut, her head turning as far as it could go into the silken pillow, determined to fight any effort to subdue her again. And then she heard her words – but it was in his voice. Jael was so confounded that she forgot to struggle for a moment, and her head whipped around to look at this new bedevilment. What was his true purpose? As he berated the young Widow and basically threw her from the room, Jael’s mind worked furiously, trying to grasp his intent, for she could not – would not – believe that Zintilla had at last heard her weak pleas for mercy.

Then he was speaking to her again and his words could have easily been coming from her lips. She did hate him. He was one of them. Then why? Why . . . ?

Exhausted, even her tears spent for the moment, she fixed him with a baleful stare.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

[Mara]

His hand fell from painful peak to massage at his grinding jaw, muscles tugged so rigid he felt as if he had been clouted there as well. She reverted as quickly as she had fallen into her outburst. The distress overspread her wrath, until his words were mislaid or his movements too frank.

"I'm sure it matters little." he respired his reply and spun to her again, still several steps from her bedside. What ratio his blood held only mattered to other Symenestra, how ironic that to the rest of the world he was no different. She would loathe him, Lhavit would detest him, and he deserved it. His atonements were his own and he would take as many blows to consecrate the validity of his obligations.

Likely harder than taking a knee to the head or observing her slip through madness to vulnerability by the simplest of gestures, was speaking so openly as to gain her trust. He had to explain himself, whatever that entailed, and he spurned it. He was offering himself knowing the meaning would be inconsequential, no matter how earnest. It might as well have been a riddled out, encoded deep in yesterday too twisted by the smallest of tweaks to matter to anyone but him.

"Marvasa." he finally gave in after her silence bequeathed no rejoinder. "I just want to leave. I was not raised to watch people used as birthing fodder." he curved at the middle and lifted the fainted chair until all four legs were steadily upright. “Sian’s arrival simply gave me the excuse I needed to return to the surface. I worked lengthy and troublesome hours to keep him alive and I won’t allow him get himself killed after all that. The only way he will escape, is with you, and the only way to liberate you, is with my help. That is if I’m not found out and killed before then.” It was the only other outcome, death or escape. He was disturbed by the road his life has taken. “It's my own egotistical conscience. I'll atone for my share in the bloodshed in Kalinor, with your lives." it was a warped truth one that could easily become genuine even in his mind. He thought those words would help her conviction preserve him as the monster she saw. Then maybe she could accept that he was employed by his own selfish needs, and it would be enough.

He fell into the chair slouching, defeated and staring straight through any objects across the room "If you are not satisfied by the time we are safely in Lhavit, you can kill me like you so badly want to." a morose lament of laughter crackled between caustic cords. "I would not stop you. I assume your city would not as well." He was not looking to be a martyr. Continuing to pretend as if he was content to meet an untimely end was exhausting, but these days his own life meant little over other causes. What was a purpose in life if you were not willing to die for it?