And she swam. [Lillis & Isikais]

[Lillis]

Lillis accepted the clothes offered with a lively smile and an enthusiastic word of thanks, turning her back to him even as he turned his back to her. She stripped down quickly and rather unabashedly, tugging on the foreign garments with relish as she abandoned the wet red silk of slavery. She listened to him speak as she changed, the gift from Avalis alerting her to some slight untruth in his words -- no matter, she let it go and gave a slow nod of her head in response. As for how she came to be there, well... she knew just how much she was worth alive and also knew that she was worth precisely nothing dead, so she chose her words very carefully: "Necessity mandated that I... go for a swim." She folded the abandoned clothes with surprising care, aware in the back of her mind that silk of such quality -- even abused as it was -- might still fetch a price. She lifted that pair of pale blue eyes to meet his face then and smiled rather weakly: "Certainly I can't be the first escapee to wash up on the docks of Sahova." Not with Sunberth so very nearby. Lillis was exhausted, but somehow restored now that she was out of the wet clothes and no longer trembling with cold. She began to rake her fingers through that mass of yellow curls, the Chevas mark behind her ear glinting just slightly in the dim light of the room. She focused on him then, making a poor show of being occupied with the combing of her hair, and somehow summoned up the strength to read him -- colors began to come into focus and she was outright staring. It was her only means of ascertaining whether she might actually be in danger here, in this room; her only means of defense.

oocSo, she is a novice Aurist and she's tryin' to read him! It requires all of her concentration and she can only garner basic information, but all she wants to do is try to figure out of he's the type of person who would offer her back up to slavers for reward money. She reads in colors -- you can feel free to describe his aura based on basic color-aura reading info found on the web or you can hint toward his intentions and I can describe it... however you wanna do it.

[Isikais]

A slave. He thought to himself, the old Eypharian presumptions flooding back as he looked at her, half expecting a Benshira now that he knew her past. He looked her up and down again, as if sizing up a piece of merchandise. A kitchen wench or perhaps a janitorial slave... Eyes wandered over her, drifting to the scarred patches and designs there. ...but certainly not suitable for showing, let alone for pleasure. It was a few moments of staring, his posture and demeanor both suddenly shifting at the news of her status. He let his gaze linger a little longer, wondering at what she must have done as a slave dressed in silks. The naturally his thoughts wandered to her captors, wondrous condescension for those who were unable to keep such a harmless seeming slave from escape. Were this Ahnatep, were she a slave to Eypharians, fear and hunger would have retained what chains had clearly failed to keep. "You are not the first slave that I have seen, no." He replied finally, his tone suddenly condescending, eyes locked on hers, an eyebrow raised at the audacity that prevented her from averting hers. "But you are the first I've seen wash up on this island." He turned back to the mirror, scrutinizing his face, and beginning the painstaking process of redrawing the runes with a mild irritation at the effort he now thought wasted on an escaped slave of all things. "Be warned though, if your captors come looking for you, Sahova will not protect you. We want no quarrel with Suberth, or it's slavers." He preened and traced faded runes as he spoke, the Eypharian mindset suddenly all too present in his movements, an occasional pause as he realized that his second and third set of hands were not present to assist in the multitasking. "But I am also not going to seek them out if they don't come looking." He grinned a wry grin, at the thought of it. The money they could offer him was of little value here in Sahova, and he could think of very little that he needed that wasn't already available to him here. His speech slipped into the deeply accented tongue of Old Arumenic, without a thought or even his own awareness. "You must know, though, that if you were of any value...he paused only a moment for a sideways glance at the awkward and curious creature standing there. "the longer you stay, the more likely the eventuality of their searching for you here." He turned back to his meticulous work without waiting for confirmation that she understood his meaning, the layered subtlety therein, or even the casual insult he had just given her.

[Lillis]

"I have no intention of staying," she said plainly, braiding her hair as neatly as her current state allowed. "I shall stay the night -- thank you for that -- and then be on my way." To where, exactly, and how? She did not know. But he was right, Sahova would prove no sanctuary to an escaped slave. Despite the escaped-slave status, she held herself like a noblewoman, for indeed she'd been born into a noble family on Mura. Thus she did not drop her eyes to the floor, nor make herself small. She stood at her fullest height, chin lifted, eyes locked on his eyes when she addressed him. "As to my value..." She arched her shoulders in a shrug. "I imagine I'm worth a great deal. It's a personal vendetta against my family on the part of the man who kidnapped me. He will come for me, and should his searching bring him here --" another shrug, though through this one her expression was full of vitriol "-- tell his men I was here, don't tell his men I was here, it makes no difference to me." For she had seen how they all would end, and it brought her a great deal of comfort.