Closed Of Light and Night and the Half-Light

[Fia Eaven]

"I plan on staying as long as I can. It's prettier than Syliras for certain," Fia answered. "I aim to get a more permanent place than the Inn though. Just need time to look about." She was shy as she confessed a private fiction: "While at the Inn, I pretend I have company all the time. Like I'm some great lady who entertains then retreats to her room but," she was scratching the ground for words, "—But when I wake up I feel like I'm borrowing a life. I don't know if that makes any sense at all. I suppose it feels like trying to plant a tree in another man's garden. Or building a tavern in a changing city." Fia sighed and chose to take herself lightly. She smiled wanly and danced to another bridge of thought as the previous crumbled: daylight was dwindling. Sunset was drawing closer, so Fia worked with renewed vigor and focus. Laszlo could hear the scratch of bristles and the sounds of ardent cleaning. Only her occasional hum proved the work wasn't being done by obedient golems. The low clatter eventually broke with her voice. "Well, my hermit scholar," she kept the title alive for the sake of Laszlo's laughter, "I need your help. Moreso your height." She waved to the upper corners of the ceiling and the dusty gossamer that floated there. "Cant' reach the cobwebs unless I stand on your furniture." She was looking at the offending nets of dust as she murmured, "I hate spiders something awful." A small hand-broom missing some bristles given to Laszlo with the same delicacy she showed his katana. He probably didn't even know it had been in his pantry. Fia had the sneaking suspicion it was provided by the Solar Winds. "That's for dusting. I know it may be a bit foreign to you, but you'll catch the cobwebs better." She grinned her admonishment, "So don’t hurt yourself with it."

[Laszlo]

"Very funny," Laszlo smirked, taking the hand broom from Fia with a certain amount of spirit. He turned away and approached one of the corners, beginning to brush the walls and ceiling. "I'll have you know I'm the only reason our tavern stayed clean. I'm a neat person, when I have someone to impress." He first kissed Abalia when she had distracted him from cleaning windows. I wasn't always a bachelor, he almost muttered, but stopped himself. Laszlo was just feeling a tad defensive. No reason to incite more of Fia's polite curiosity. Enough sorrow had happened in this place; there was no need to dwell on it. If things kept going how they were, he'd have to move. Laszlo stepped back from the wall, pulling willowy knots of tangled cobweb from the bristles. The offending, dusty silk didn't seem to bother him. After having a woman come after him with a dagger, and remembering the scene of the murdered Kelvic in the upstairs of his old tavern, trivial things didn't quite hold the same horror they used to. "It makes sense," he said, after a moment of thought. He reached up again at the top of his height and continued sweeping at the corner of ceiling along the wall. "I think I've felt that before, that sense of displacement. Not long after I fell, I went to Kalinor to… I wasn't sure what I was, and, well. Fia, I had these… claws, and…" Laszlo paused to look at his free hand. The nails were pink, trimmed, and harmless. "I went there to learn about the Symenestra. I even found traces of a life I used to have." He shook his head, stopping the clean out the broom, and then reached up again. "I thought I had nothing but those memories I couldn't grab onto. But the longer I stayed, I… I realized that wasn't my life. It belonged to someone else, who died. His wife and children, they weren't mine. I just… had his face." Still feeling defensive, Laszlo. Fia hated spiders. It had absolutely nothing to do with Symenestra, he knew, but the remark still made him hesitate. She hated Symenestra so much that, even in the midst of her darkest moment, she would take up arms against one. It was such a contrast to Abalia and Duvalyon's acceptance of his earthly side. The Lhavitians hated Laszlo's night form, but when he came home at night, he had them. And they didn't care at all. Now, he lacked that reassurance. All he had was the knowledge that he had killed Abalia. Perhaps he should have stayed in Kalinor. "I'm not one of them," he stated, pouring all of his focus now into his assigned task. "And I don't want to be. I'm Ethaefal. But as long as I live, and gods forbid that could be forever, I'll still have that Widow's face." Perhaps even long after the Symenestra have died out. They were a race on the edge of extinction. Perhaps in another few centuries—Sakana was four centuries old!—they would be gone. Laszlo would be a relic of a bygone age. "Sorry." He laughed nervously, turning around and picking at the broom again. "You were talking about something serious and I just stole the conversation. You should look into the apartments. I'd be pleased to have a neighbor who doesn't yell obscenities at me if I go out at night." That didn't happen nearly as often as Laszlo made it sound. It was mostly in the first few weeks. But there were always new arrivals and students less familiar with the Solar Winds tenants. "Unless you would. I suppose I'd understand." Laszlo smirked, flicking a handful of cobweb into a nearby bin. "I am a terrible housekeeper."

[Fia Eaven]

"Perhaps I will, if it's not too rich for me blood." Fia's answer was soft, betraying a mind spent on other things. "I don't understand as much as I want to, Laszlo. About the way your other is and isn't you." Her contemplative voice floated upward from a miry silence. She was on her knees, to scrub spots from the floor and sitting back on her feet. It troubled her, this inability to hear every emotion that filled his words, and she had to wonder why it pained her. "I feel like I am looking at lines dance on a page again, when I long to hear poetry. Please have the patience to 'read' to me for a while yet." Her request was gently rendered, wrapped with her entire heart. What his old friends felt intrinsically, she sought to learn. What only he could fathom, she tried to discern. "We are all our parts. Even the pieces that hurt. I can't disown me arm when I burn it. I wouldn't want to. So no, you are not one of them, but you are not free of them." If she was going to find a friend here, she had to take him entire. Even if it meant squinting until she could withstand a bare look. "It all has made you, and you are something good. Yes, you are an Ethaefal, but that will always mean you are something else too." Fia bowed her head and thrust her rag in the bucket beside her. "I'm sorry. I talk too wide. It's me own head leaking out and hitching to what you say." She didn't clean with the same feverish pace as before, accepting a new timeline. "And me own guilt," she flashed cold, "I was hoping to finish by sundown," she laughed and there was nothing bright in it, "I'm sorry. Turned out I couldn't fix me as quick as I like."

[Laszlo]

Laszlo regarded Fia wordlessly, mouth parted and eyebrows slightly lifted. She was trying to return a favor and make friends and then run off before he changed his shape. Almost as shocking, she'd given him thought-out counterpoints rather than a carefully selected string of words designed specifically to make him shut up. Only Abalia had ever willingly humored his philosophical rants. Duvalyon had mostly tolerated them. He couldn't decide whether to be offended or impressed. "Oh." His moment of silence ended, and his eyes drifted to the floor thoughtfully. The broom was held between both hands, one thumb drawing across the bristles in idle repetition. "You wanted to leave before… yes, I see. Um, that's alright. I understand. It's fine." He reached up to rub at his forehead. She was afraid of him, but in a polite way. This was somehow so much worse than the stares and insults, or seeing mothers hide their children. "Well, you can certainly leave whenever you like. If you're intent on finishing up, there's always tomorrow. Or any other day." Clearing his throat, Laszlo turned around and again reached up to fight off another lacey, dust-laden web high in the corner. There was a dead spider hanging in it. This was what it was going to be like, wasn't it? Abalia was one of the rare ones. Bless her, she was odd, but she didn't mind his Symenestra half. She rather liked it. Seven and Victor… well they were insane. They seemed to even bear some dislike for Laszlo's truer form. And Duvalyon, well. But everyone else… everyone normal would react like this. His other friends had been flukes, hadn't they? No, that was just dramatic. Laszlo was going stir crazy, cooped up in this place on his own. His only company lately, besides Fia, had been another Ethaefal with her own list of problems. And she was even lovely on both sides of the coin. What reason could she possibly have to be so chronically depressed about? Gods, he needed a drink. "Been a while since anyone's humored me like that, though." There was a smile in his voice, though it may have been more courteous than genuine. "I appreciate your thoughts. You talk just fine, though your diction is slipping again. Honestly, I find it endearing." Must have been a Denvali thing. "You could be right. It's difficult not to get hung up on the division between two parts." Laszlo sent a glance at the window, evaluating the color of the sky and attempting to estimate how much time he had left before his shift. "Don't feel badly if you want to go. You've been through a lot. You shouldn't have to suffer through something if it makes you uncomfortable." Mikendril. Laszlo still remembered that name. Something had happened—the last shred of tragedy Fia hadn't surrendered to him yet. He wouldn't ask for it. "I can't properly convey my gratitude for you coming over here just to clean up after me." He laughed softly, stopping to pluck at the broom again. "I could… get you breakfast tomorrow, perhaps. Or, maybe, if you're interested I could read some of that poetry nonsense before you go."

[Fia Eaven]

"You don't need to be grateful," she smiled but her downturned eyes proved she was still embarrassed, "I made little puddles everywhere last I was here. It's only fair I clean them up." Her fears were wholly irrational and he was behaving as if they made sense. Fear rarely did dance with logic, but it wounded her pragmatic spirit to be so full of ignorant dread. He'd called her reaction suffering and it made her cringe to think he equated, perhaps rightly, his presence with such a crushing word. The day she could swallow that sword, she would ask pardon from his clawed hand. Fia gathered her things to take on another section of the floor. She was still holding Laszlo's offer in her ear. Sometimes the rhythm of her conversation was odd. She would let a thing sit and ripen a while before addressing it. It was like speaking to a person long in years. "I'd like your company just cause. No sense of balancing things." Fia was hoping for the effortless give and take a friendship promised. "You don't eat, so breakfast would be a mite funny for me, but…" She was stumbling onto something she wanted and it made her slow, "I would like to hear what's in some of those books. If'n you don't mind." Fia returned to humming again, singing bits of the same song that brought her over the bridges. It made the air warm like the fire Laszlo tended. She was still working on portions of the floor, when the Ethaefal felt the familiar inner chime. Soon the mountains would redden and darkness would drip down the sky from a sparkling zenith. Phosphorous Lhavit would put on its ghostly glow and assure its people that mysterious evening was a beautiful guest. Fia was blissfully unaware, her internal clock was not so delicate. "I'm glad you like it, by the by," she finally said in a low pretty voice, "Me diction. It's a lot of voices. Da wasn't Denval born. His wife was. So I picked him up with a smattering of very bad Denvali." The cleaning was coming to a close as she dried the last piece of the floor. She threw the final bucket of water into the alley and prayed Laszlo's neighbors would watch where they stepped. The front room was done and she was glad for it. Wiping her hands on the front of her apron, she asked, "Is there anything else in particular you need help with?" She wasn't going to force herself into the bedrooms. Ethaefal and strangely dear he may be, but he was still a man she'd met only twice, and that room was still a sacred space.

[Laszlo]

"No, no, I don't think so." Although Laszlo briefly thought about the state of his other rooms, Fia had already done more than enough. His flat looked immaculate. And it smelled nice, instead of just smelling like tea and cinders—which was pleasant, but dull after months of the same. Leaned up against the counter, Laszlo surveyed what was supposed to be his home with a candid look of awe. So this is why men get married. "This is really. Good." Still fidgeting with the bristles in the small broom, Laszlo cast a look at the fire-haired human, smiling in appreciation. Of course he could have done all of this himself—and had in other places—but she had saved him from the chore. He would have gotten to it, eventually. Probably. Fia didn't like the idea of breakfast. Abalia never seemed to mind that Laszlo didn't eat. Rather it fascinated her, like a housecat possessed by its own reflection in a burnished mirror. What is that creature and how did it get here? She really was odd. "When you have time," Laszlo said softly, straightening himself and rounding the counter as he stepped toward his chair, "you should tell me more about him, your grandfather." As he crossed a bar of yellow light, Laszlo cast a grim look at the yellowing sky through the window and thought about cursing Tanroa. In the past months, she really had not been working in his favor at all. It would have been a vain gesture, though. Eventually, he thought, she'd compensate for the same grievances she once caused. He had to believe that. Now then. He and Fia had agreement. "So, let's see…" Sinking down into his chair, Laszlo picked the first book from the top of the pile and opened its thick leather cover. His eyes scanned over scrawls of long-dried ink as he flipped through several pages. "On second thought, no. I'm not reading this aloud. I don't know who ever thought rhyming words could ever be a good idea. It just sounds trite." Ain't that right? No, Laszlo. Just no. Another tome was selected. He paused over the title written on the cover, as if it had suddenly said something poignant to him. Well, it was poignant. A Collection of Ethaefal Accounts. "This is a very old book. Well, a copy of a very old book. It's about Ethaefal. Naturally, I had to read it." A spare shred of wadj stuck out from the bulk of the tome's papery flesh, marking where he'd left off in eighth chapter. He flipped to the present page, skimming briefly over the contents. It spoke of Ethaefal and death. He flipped to an earlier chapter, picking a place at random. "She simply did not belong," Laszlo read, his voice acquiring a sort of artificial cadence as he transmuted inked symbols into speech. "I can think of no other way to describe it. She was too sacred and lovely to walk on dirt and stones, to wear common cloth, to ask for bread. Having her here was like cleaning a latrine with silk." The chapter went on in a similar way, describing some long-dead mortal's near infatuation with an Ethaefal that could very well still be alive. Laszlo had read over these parts earlier, fascinated to see his own kind through someone else's eyes. Fascinating that such an awkward existence could be interpreted so artfully. And a little frustrating. He wished he felt like what these people were describing. Later in the chapter, he happened upon a passage he had either skipped or couldn't remember. "I couldn't resist a traveler handsome as him." Laszlo smiled involuntarily out of happy conceit. "I offered him a bed in the house but he took a spot in the barn. Come morning I bring some food around and there's this terrible… Symenestra in his place. Dreadful spidery race. I…" Eyes narrowed. He cleared his throat. "I threw the hot porridge on him and ran for my pitchfork, like any smart girl would." Silence took over, picking up where Laszlo had trailed off. The log in the fire, now nearly spent, cracked open as if it felt the weight of the moment. "Well, that's fine for you, isn't it?" he scoffed, but looked up at Fia with half of a smile. "Thank you for sparing me the scalding burns, at least." Laszlo closed the book and set it aside, then stood. The mountains were a murderous shade of red. "Ah, well. That was…" Fun? "Badly timed. But it's getting dark. Perhaps you want to be heading home?" I'd like your company just cause. Her words hadn't left his head.

[Fia Eaven]

"Aye," she exhaled the word, looking at her handiwork. "T'will do for now." Her head turned at Laszlo's request to one day hear more about her grandfather. She smiled and the love in it was heartbreaking. "He was a good, generous man when it was not easy to be so." As Laszlo settled in to read, Fia found her own perch by the fire. She seemed almost Ivak blessed, half-impervious to heat. Her skin had been turned pink a hundred times over by the forge's blazing mouth, a dancing hearth was a pittance. An apple filled one hand and she gripped a small eating knife in the other. While Laszlo read, she peeled the green skin and tossed curls of it into the fire, adding a new fragrance to the room. Slips of white flesh were passed from the blade directly into her mouth. Her Aunts had tried to break her of eating apples like this, chiding it as boyish. They had failed her in this and many other things. Fia listened to words like they were music. Laszlo's subtle self-satisfaction was permeated with her vicarious smiles. The human was a glass trinket, able to absorb the color of what she drew near to and cast it back in new forms. The story took a halting turn for the worst and Fia was being jerked into the uncomfortable present. Strung up between compressed laughter and cringing, she defaulted to blushing and looked at her lap like it held jewels. A mumble was finally produced. "Don't make porridge. It's awful." Something about biscuits might have been wrapped in at the end, but it was lost in her chest. The sound of the book closing made her start. Dark? Her kerchief covered head pivoted to witness the moving light. "Easy to forget," airily said to many things. Yes, she did want to be heading home, because she was a coward and selfish. One evening of perseverance failed to turn her heart, and it now knew Laszlo's ties to Kalinor were more than form. "Goodnight, Laszlo." Anything else she could say would either be a lie or compound pains.

[Laszlo]

"Good night, Fia." Laszlo made a point to reach the door first so he could open it for her. An autumn chill brushed past the both of them as it let itself inside, smelling of wet air and dead leaves. He suppressed a reactionary shiver and watched Fia as she moved through the door. The faint smile he wore did little to dim a certain solemnity in his features. "Take care of yourself. I'll see you another day." Briefly pushing his smile wider, he gave the Denvali one last nod before he closed his apartment against the cold air. Something held him in place behind the door, his hand still on the latch. The floor drew his eyes, as if his thoughts had fallen out of his head. The past few bells had been brimming with activity and conversation, and now it was quiet again. A nameless moment passed before Laszlo finally heard Fia's light footsteps take her away from his door. She'd hesitated too. The Ethaefal sighed heavily and rested his head against the door. She was nice. Sweet and honest. And afraid of him. And the worst part was that her apprehensions were justified. I know who I look like, but I would never kill a woman. Except that one time. Laszlo liked her company. Her presence had a way of filling the room, like a ray of light, dampening the shadows that he too often dwelled on. But simply knowing that Laszlo had tangible social ties to Kalinor was enough to make her uncomfortable. Once she saw the whole of him, she'd turn in horror even from his dayside shape. She was too delicate accept all of him, as she had so boldly declared she wanted to. "Should have stayed in Kalinor," he muttered, giving voice to an earlier thought. He pulled himself away from the door and deposited himself back into his chair. He spent another moment to absorb the clean atmosphere of his home, enjoying a materialistic sort of satisfaction, and then picked up the book of Ethaefal accounts and returned to reading. A bell later, sometime after his shift had occurred, Laszlo picked himself back up and donned his cloak. He would find a sleazy little tavern to rot in for half the night, naysayers be damned.

[Whimsy]

Fia Eaven

Experience	Lore
+1 Singing	The Nature of Grief
+3 Cleaning	Ethaefal Horns
+1 Socialisation	Laszlo’s Brief History
	The Two Forms of the Ethaefal
	Repaying Favours
	A Collection of Ethaefal Accounts

Laszlo

Experience	Lore
+1 Organisation	Poetry and Fables on the Pantheon
+1 Investigation	Fia’s (Ex?)Fiancé
+2 Rhetoric	Nickname: Hermit Scholar
+1 Philosophy	Not a Symenestra
	Why Men Get Married
	A Collection of Ethaefal Accounts

Comments
Again, a lovely little thread from you two. It was really inspiring to see Fia so strong and carrying on (even if the information had to be retconned, it was still beautifully written). Laszlo, I loved your constant inner tension of Symenestra guilt vs the goodness of being an Ethaefal of Syna. Made for a really interesting undercurrent throughout the thread. Please PM me if you have any questions or concerns or comments.

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