Things That Go Bump in the Night (Cyrah & Ifran)

[Ifran]

71st Spring, 510 A.V. It was night. Outside the winds from the desert carried the memory of Syna's heat, whispering through palm fronds, water fountains, and the gardens of the noble and ignoble alike. Torches flickered, beating back the darkness, but it was a losing game for them. Only the moon and the stars were constant, and their light was dim tonight. Inside, the scions of the House of the North Winds slept, only guards and a few servants still wakeful. Marble floors and silk sheets remained cool. Oil lamps were turned down, the lowest blue flame before nothing, so as not to consume unnecessary fuel. It was quiet. In Ifran's room, he had fallen asleep at his desk at some point, then awoken to hide away the opera he was writing, something that he would not, could not share until he knew which way the winds would blow him, the story of a concubine, a story whose political implications were not lost upon him. And so, after writing for hours, he tucked it away in a private place for him and only him. In Ifran's bed he now slumbered, and if he had a wicked conscience, it didn't keep him from Nysel's embrace.

[Cyrah]

Clement would hit her very hard if he found about this. Perhaps unfortunately, however, he'd been gone and Cyrah didn't know and rightly didn't care if he would ever come back. Which left her largely alone, and the only person who'd been...nice...to her, was the Eypharian. If she'd been older, she would have known better. But she wasn't. And the loneliness crept into her heart the same as it did any kelvic's – crept in and curled up there, constricting, weighing. She called it boredom because she had no other name for it – no name, anyway, that she could wear comfortably. She crawled in through the window, left open to steal for a cool, evening breeze. Darkness did not slow her down; if anything, it made her faster and sleeker and harder to hold onto. Even in her human form, she slinked soundlessly from the windowsill, past the desk, skirting the edge of the bed until she arrived at its side. Barefoot, hair tied hastily back, her face caught behind that ever-present veil and in a dress that was more sack than anything, she looked little more than a lost urchin – or she would have, had it not been in the pitch of night. She sat, on the floor beside the bed, for quite some time. One of the Eypharian's arms had spillt over the side of the mattress in his slumber, the fingertips of his hand dangling just above the floor. Cyrah settled beside it, watching it. A sniff, once – twice, to be sure of the scent. And then she simply observed. How the fingers twitched as he dreamt. When the pulse in his wrist hastened or slowed. She could not have said what she was looking for, though eventually she unwound to her feet, casting a lean shadow across his face where he slept. “Eypharian,” she said quietly. “Wake up.”

[Ifran]

Blue eyes gone black in the gloom opened to see her vague silhouette standing over him. Aru and the Ano Cult would likely be pleased that he did not start, shout, or reach out in violence. The immediate alarum of danger was almost immediately subsumed by the logical conclusion that any assassin who got so close to him with his blood on their mind would already have done the deed. He was still alive. A heavy, slow, waking breath came in and went out. For his patience he was rewarded with recognition. "Anubis," he greeted quietly, then flipped back the light silk sheet. "Cold?"

[Cyrah]

Her eyes peered unflinchingly down into his when at last he came awake, the glint to mercurial irises somewhere between aching curiosity and strict caution. When he flipped the sheet back, though, her eyebrows rocked upward in surprise and she took a step back, blinking confusedly at him. “No,” she said quietly, a frown threatening one corner of her mouth, though he couldn't see it for the veil. It might have reflected in her eyes. “I'm not cold. You said that I could come...here.” Well maybe not in so many words, but more or less. She didn't realize he'd only meant that she could come into his bed -- the thought of which inspired a pale blush into the copper slopes of her cheeks. She took a second step back. “I liked you much better asleep.”

[Ifran]

He chuckled sleepily, covering the offending flesh again so as not to frighten her. His hand reached out to turn up the oil lamp from that blue spark that lent no illumination to a dim orange glow that allowed the room to come into focus for him. "I apologize if that is too bright," he said, "but apparently your night vision is better than mine." He wondered, then, if there was something to that. Her eyes were certainly a strange color, but rather than read too much into that, he determined to be ever watchful and wait to make judgments until he had sufficient information from which to make a conclusion. "You are welcome here. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"

[Cyrah]

She did look away a moment when he lit the lamp, letting her eyes adjust, and then they returned to him. And her gaze scoured over him in the new light, just as curious as it had been in the dark. Her eyes were a distinctly unusual color, and more canine in that way, if one knew what one was looking at. He didn't yet, but chances were he would eventually. She didn't seem particularly forthcoming about her race, though it would've been difficult to simply call her human and let it be. “My night vision is better than yours,” she agreed, with a nod. When he asked her why she'd come, she...had no readily available response. Felt the blush in her cheeks intensify at the realization that she'd just been lonely, and had no friends. He'd said they could be friends, and that's the only thing that had drawn her here. She shifted uncomfortably on her feet, narrow shoulders shrugging a little. “You said we could be friends,” she reminded him quietly. “I thought...that I might like to get to know you.” It was all very simple, and honest. Cyrah could lie well, but she wasn't trying. She saw no need to dissemble, not if he'd been genuine in his desire to know her. She'd been so long without company or affection, half of her hoped he would invite her into his bed again so that she could accept, while the other half hoped he would throw things at her to chase her off. “You can call me Cyrah,” she offered, after a moment, as perhaps a sign of good faith.

[Ifran]

His gaze was curious as it touched her, not hesitantly but delicately, suddenly aware of a fragility within her that had always been caged and armored until now. Once, long ago, a concubine had come to him and bared her soul for him and instead of destroying something beautiful, he had cultivated her like a flower, demure and wanton. Now, against all odds, an assassin had returned to the scene that had almost been the death of him, and though she was quite unlike the woman whose name his mouth had all but forgotten, he could not help but feel the resonance, hear the echoes. "Cyrah," he said, imitating her pronunciation. He smiled. "Death's daughter. You are welcome here." He sat up in his bed, careful to keep threatening portions of his anatomy hidden, and pulled back the sheer silk that served both aesthetic purposes and utilitarian, keeping the mosquitoes at bay. He tied them back and patted the bed, six hands moving at once in what could be a dizzying pattern at times. "Please, sit. Forgive my bad humor."

[Cyrah]

He couldn't see the faint smile that stole onto her mouth when he called her death's daughter, but the expression crinkled the corners of her eyes just slightly. She watched his preparations curiously, and would have told him that she found none of his anatomy threatening, if he'd asked, but of course he hadn't. It was simply a stunning thing to be offered precisely what one wants by someone she knows not at all. After a moment, she padded over to where he'd pat the mattress, and sank down to a tentative seat on the bed's edge. Small hands caught between her knees. In full lamplight, she might have been startlingly pretty, were it not for the general film of filth that covered her from head to toe. The dirt of poverty and nothing more, but it dusted through the gold-riddled strands of her dark hair, and smeared across her smooth, young skin. She tried to look comfortable in her seat, but clearly wasn't. More that she was afraid something about her might be less to his liking, or she might get some part of it all wrong, than because she was afraid of him in particular. “Thank you,” she said politely, after a moment. “I'm sorry for waking you.”

[Ifran]

Her apology brought an amused smile to his face, though he was careful that it shouldn't be interpreted as amusement at her expense, but more at the situation, which was, in fact, quite laughable. Leaning back against the cool headboard, silk tented over the angles of his bent knees, he nodded. "No sleep for the wicked, they say." It was an observation he found generally false; at least, if he was wicked, his conscience never kept him awake and his machinations were easily handled during normal waking hours for the most part. So either he was not quite wicked or the adage was useless as there were exceptions to every rule. "Ahnatep is a lonely place," he ventured, speaking from his own observation now.

[Cyrah]

“I'm not lonely,” she said, a little defensively, shoulders straightening. Of course she was – but she was unwilling to share that loneliness with him, as yet. Her moods shifted like so much candlelight flickering under the snap of a breeze, from vulnerable and eager to tightly restrained. But she didn't get up from her seat and try to leave, which spoke more deeply to how lonely she might have been than how proud she wanted to be. And she was very proud, that much was true. Her eyes stayed on him, wary but more curious than cautious, as the seconds ticked by. Unconsciously, she smoothed the framed hem of her dress down over her knees with her fingertips. “I'm just – you seemed – well you didn't try to hurt me when you could've.” When he'd had her in hand in the theatre, he'd chosen simply to let her go. She didn't quite understand why, unless he really did want to be her friend, though those sorts of things were a little lost on Cyrah. She was too naturally wired to run or fight, never anything in between. Games of survival were beyond her; she grasped politics in theory, but found it all very boring in practice. For those things, she had Clement. She lifted her hands, carefully untying the veil that kept the lower half of her face hidden, and pulled it aside. A deft twist of her fingers found the veil wrapped prettily about her hair instead, and she looked at the Eypharian without the mask between them. And then scratched at her nose with a fingertip. “It itches,” she mumbled.