[Shinyama Pavilion] A Poisonous Delivery (Duvalyon)

[Alses]

To Alses, it felt as though an eternity passed before the shakes and shivers subsided – coupled with the usually-painless, but always depressing and straining Change, the sensation was hellish, spears of pain driving up into her stomach with every movement. She had been vaguely hoping that the poison in one body wouldn't carry over to the other, but it seemed she would have no such luck: it was still there, all right. 'Lessened, though,' she thought cautiously, as the gray fog began to rise from her brain and the pinching fingers driven deep into every muscle started to fade. A lopsided smile quirked her mouth as a stray thought occurred, imagining the poison confused by the change all around it, now having to deal with a Konti body rather than an Ethaefal one. 'Serve it right,' she thought, irritated. Long, long arms, cabled with muscles and laid over with a tracery of gray veins – almost like the djed connections in a bound artifact in their organic complexity – intruded on her tunnel vision, surprisingly gently tugging away the tea-bowl and pushing another, larger one into her hands, half-full of clear liquid. Her lips parted, of their own accord, breathing harsh – whether she admitted it to herself or not, Alses was thirsty as a Konti, and she was now fighting both poison and the natural instinct to plunge herself head-first into the water. “My thanks,” she croaked, rocking slightly in place, pulled forward by instinct and held back by years of discipline and no small amount of fear. Her vision grayed again, though, with a sharp spike of agony that drove through her body; the bowl slipped from nerveless fingers – she didn't hear if it smashed or not through the thumping roar of blood in her ears. When the hot waves of pain from deep inside had finished their assail, leaving blessed calm in their wake, she found herself staring into two bloodred eyes and a rather prominent nose. For some reason, this struck her as funny – a chuckle escaped her lips even as her eyes roved, unfocused, over Duvalyon's face, very close to hers. A frown creased her forehead as his words percolated to the forefront of her mind. 'Pupils?' she thought, confused. 'Does the doctor think someone poisoned me? 'm sure I told him I fell on a plant.' “Don't have any pupils yet, doctor. Maybe in a few seasons' time. Or years. Doesn't matter, really. Don't have any ambitious aperen – appren – pupils – to poison me right now anyway.” She took a cautious breath, and then another - still no pain, just a dull ache, receding and returning like the tide, but steadily growing weaker all the same. “Your tree medicine is working, I think.” 'But if so,' came the irritating little voice in her head 'Why am I still so dizzy? Why can I not see straight?'

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

The wooden bowl clattered to the floor flinging water on his feet and shins. He frowned at his newly damp toes. Served him right for wearing sandals in an infirmary. Blame cultural habit; at home he wouldn't wear anything at all on his feet. When Alses chuckled in his face, Duvalyon's inquiring expression went flat. Not the most common reaction to his appraisals. He preferred the perplexed frowns that followed, at least they didn't have a tinge of madness. This patient was proving sloppier than he had foreseen, defying the cultural expectation for both her forms. "Your eyes," he said humorlessly, "I want to see your eyes." Giving up his line of inquiry for a moment, Duvalyon went to pick up the bowl. He threw a rag on top of the slick ground. Last thing he needed was for her slip and fall on her head, then he'd never be rid of her. "Maybe it's best if you lie down for a bit until your thoughts feel clearer." She needed to drink some water eventually, but he was running out of on hand vessels. At the Purging he had assistants to do these menial things. Duvalyon was forced to climb the shelves again and play nursemaid with the water jug. This time he kept the cup of water out of her reach. "Not until I'm sure you won't dump it on my head." While some strange reactions were expected, he began to pursue the possibility of other contributions to her malady. If Duvalyon was anything, it was thorough. Was there anything in the box she carried that would have a detrimental effect on her person? "Do you know what exactly is in this?" he asked, his long fingered-hand gesturing to the warded box she brought him. It was an ambitious question. He wasn't even sure she could recollect her name.

[Alses]

The ceiling was quite a restful thing to look at whilst lying down, at least – simple white plaster and wooden beams, no extraneous decoration or miscellaneous twiddly bits to confuse the eye. She was a little worried – in a dull, distant sort of way – that she'd fade into the sheet over the examination table. Her skin was practically the same colour, after all, and her eyes were having difficulty working out where she ended and the sheets began. To her mildly concussed brain, this seemed like an eminently sensible concern. The doctor was trying to make her drink: she turned her head away. “Don't, don't,” she murmured, tiredly. “I don't react well to eating or drinking. Don't make things worse than they already are.” Time passed – without the sense of Syna's presence in the sky, Alses had no means of marking bells and chimes, but nonetheless with each passing second the medicine she'd swallowed continued its steady work, flushing poison from her flesh, slowly breaking the delirium which had swept over her soon after the kuhari spines had pierced her hand. She blinked, slowly, swimming to a slightly more aware state as a question registered on her ears. “Hmm? The box? Samples from ill people at the Dusk Tower, according to Mr. Secretary. Including one of the Dusks. Break the seal t'dispel the wards.” She half-rolled, just enough to cast a bleary eye at the box and Duvalyon both. It cost her quite a bit, and she wasn't able to maintain it for long, letting her head rest flat again in short order, furious at her own weakness. “Heavy, ugly, slow, clumsy, awkward,” she spat, through gritted teeth, then calmed abruptly. “Still, there are compensations. Memory is so much better like this, no choir of thousands singing in my head. Just an ache and some whispers, now.” Her voice was flat, her face expressionless. “I know what you are, too, doctor. At last,” she added, sotto voce. “Predator in a city of prey, if the local tales are to be believed. I'm not sure if I do.” She turned over, slow and ginger this time, onto her side, head propped up with an arm and gazing at Duvalyon. “Here you are, ministering to the sick, and in the Shinyama Pavilion no less. Which means that either the Shinya are a signal failure at their duties of protection – and if that is true then Lhavit is a lie – or you are not quite the predator the housewives of the city make your kind out to be. Should I be worrying about being carried off to...to wherever it is?”

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

There it was, that curiosity restrained by wariness. Alses was finally repossessing some of her faculties and turning them on him. She asked him questions open and furled, encompassing the complicated concepts of who he was and his purposes. The stories of housewives? It always entertained him to be a ghoul in local folklore. "No." That answer seemed the end of it. All Alses's dreamy philosophy and poignant wondering boiled down to the arid word. But wait, his mouth was opening again... "Kalinor." ...just enough to disappoint. Duvalyon finished wiping the floor with the dropped rag and tossed it in some corner heaped with linens. It was less than glorious work. Much of it was menial until someone came to him broken or split open. In the midst of his rut, he was forgetting his obligation to his people. It came back to him like a shiver. A Symenestra should never forsake the chance to sway another person towards a more docile picture of his race. "I live and work here in Lhavit like any other. The city provides a certain measure of tolerance. The only thing I am here to take is knowledge from the library." His conversation paused as he flipped through a ledger categorizing the Shinya's herbal stores. Claws delicately pinched pages as he scanned them for something mildly useful as a poultice. By the book's account, ground Hollyhock would serve well mixed with hot water. Lhex did not smile on him though. The journal noted a depletion of the plant in their stores. He wouldn't waste it on an Ethaefal, who could mend the wound daily. She would get bandages and a prayer. Duvalyon returned to Alses's side; narrow bits of linen looped around one spider-like hand. "If you don't mind," he said with new courtesy, "I'd like to wrap it the area. I tend to be over cautious." He continued, "I don’t expect this will be the last of feeling ill due to the Kahuri and medicine. Stay indoors and force yourself to drink water. Maybe some broth."

[Alses]

'No.' Such an emphatic, sure statement – as though such a thing was not only futile, but unthinkable. Perhaps he'd been offended by her question – she still wasn't too good on the finer points of courtesy; prolonged travel tended to erode that sort of thing. He carried on, though, so whatever offence she may have caused, it was presumably minor. The good doctor only voiced a single, solitary further word, though. How cryptic: rather par for the course when it came to Duvalyon Hellebore, it seemed. “Kalinor. Kalinor.” Alses rolled the word around in her mouth, tasting it. “It has a nice ring to it. Lhavit always struck me as a bit harsh. The name, of course, not the city - I doubt there's a more beautiful settlement on Mizahar.” She fell silent for a while, pondering whether to ask him more about the Symenestra city – whilst she did so, the lean, lithe figure finished wiping the floor and straightened, looking right at her with those bloodred eyes. It was much easier to meet them without her vision swimming alarmingly every five seconds, so that was a plus. She didn't dare channel magic to read a little about his aura, not yet, but she could at least watch his actual expressions now. Alien expressions on an alien face, true, but still a rough guide. “Do you miss it?” Alses asked, suddenly, curious. Some people seemed to care not a jot for where they came from, others clung to its memory with a grim determination that bordered on the fanatical. “Or should I not ask?” she added, quickly. “It's confusing – I used to know what I should and shouldn't question, but...” she opened a hand and let it fall. “...that knowledge is gone now. Forgive us – me - if we're rude.” Mutely, she held her injured hand out, the half-healed punctures glowing – more noticeable in her Konti seeming – on her palm. “I don't mind,” she murmured, softly. “I learned to appreciate caution early on.” A pause, and then, by way of pre-emptive apology for her questions, added: “I wish you luck with the library. Perhaps one day I shall read your contribution, doctor...” she tailed off, expectant, waiting for his name.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Did he miss Kalinor? Duvalyon wasn't accustomed to questions about his state of mind. No one, save maybe Laszlo, cared to know, and he was prone to wave Laszlo's questions off as quickly as possible. Due to his usually unflappable features, even this minor astonishment was striking on the medic's gray face. "...Hellebore, like the flower," he supplied it with a rehearsed ease despite his lingering surprise. The second portion came after a note of hesitation, as if he was wary of giving it out. "But my first name is Duvalyon." The medic was tempted to look over his shoulder to see if something more was at work than the Ethaefal's simple curiosity. "I don't think you would find my library contribution interesting..." he trailed off still distracted by her other question. "It's a treatise on Symenestra fangs and their mechanics... And yes," he admitted quicker than he liked, "I do miss Kalinor. Incredibly so." Zlynge. He hadn't planned on being that honest. He shrugged and let the answer finish. As he spoke, he seemed to work faster, forgetting to be circumspect about handling Azo too easily. They often bristled when they couldn't fully observe his motions, so it forced him into a laborious pace. "While I know the purpose of the construction, spaces are laid out strangely to me. Everything is on a line when I am accustomed to something more like a spiral." The bandage had been wrapped around Alses's wrist and was now being passed diagonally over her palm. "And this happens frequently." He indicated the now dim room. The luminous city shined through the scarce windows, but didn't fully illuminate the space. "I forget I'm sitting in what everyone else considers the dark. It looks fine to me." His pupils had already begun to overwhelm his iris and any shift towards the light made an eldritch sheen flash behind his eyes. "Like anyone, I crave the familiar." Duvalyon tucked the bandage's end deftly into the layers, finishing his task. "There. You are free." Well-timed, a Shinya acolyte arrived with a candle and began to light the various wicks scattered about the room. Duvalyon took over the task out of courtesy more than need, excusing the Shinya. It was easier for him to reach the wall sconces anyway. "What do you call yourself, by the way?" He knew better than to ask a name. The fallen ones had lost theirs and found their new labels clumsy approximations of what a name should be.

[Alses]

Alses hid a smile at the astonishment clear in the medic's manner – it was reassuring to see she wasn't being ministered to by a statue. Something in her questions had managed to crack the facade and information wormed its way out of the otherwise-taciturn Symenestra. First, his name, a long but elegant collection of syllables – Duvalyon Hellebore. She still wasn't sure of the purpose of second names, exactly, but his was a nice one, at least. “Hellebore? Ah, the midwinter rose. How delightful – Lhavit will be drowning in hellebores in winter, you know. It should be a beautiful sight.” She watched Duvalyon dextrously wrapping her hand in a long linen ribbon of some sort, binding around her wrist and crisscrossing her palm, his movements becoming steadily more assured and quick – faster and faster until his deft hands almost seemed blurred – although that could have had something to do with the restful darkness of the room or the vestigial traces of kuhari playing hob with her vision again. Possibly both. Alses raised her free shoulder in a half-shrug at the doctor's dismissal of her interest. “All knowledge is interesting; you just have to look at it in the right light. Besides, always presupposing I don't end my days on the point of a sword or otherwise come to a sticky end – I think that's the phrase – I'll last forever.” She looked down at the opalescent scales on her arms, trying not to think too deeply on it. “I have to do something with my time, after all,” she continued, determinedly cheerful “-and I was told a very long time ago that learning is a never-ending journey. A fitting pursuit for an Ethaefal, no?” She flashed a brief smile at the doctor's bowed head, and never mind that he couldn't see it. The lighter tone of her voice would probably be enough. Duvalyon's admission about the real reason for the dark brought a sardonic twist to her lips. “And there I thought you'd left the candles unlit on purpose,” she murmured, covering a yawn with one hand and blinking slowly. Her night vision was atrocious. “Easier on the eyes for me. More restful, too.” She cast a slightly apprehensive glance over to the window, the shimmering glow of the city matched by a pale orb rising in the night sky. “Leth reigns, and 'tis well past time I was dreaming, after all.” Alses fought to keep her hand still as the claws on Duvalyon's hand gently touched and scraped across her skin as he finished tying a knot in the bandage – not hard enough to break the skin, but maddening feather-touches that demanded scratching. “There. You are free.” At the good doctor's pronouncement, Alses rose slowly from her sitting position on the side of the examination bed and gingerly tested her weight, first on one foot, then the other – the first flush of poison had wrought merry hell on her, and she wasn't about to take any chances. Just then, the door opened and a silent acolyte padded in, his face gilded by candlelight. Duvalyon quickly captured the candle from him and flitted about the room, touching flame to waiting wick; the Shinya boy vanished as silently as he had come. Alses, standing somewhat unsteadily by the bed, squinted as the golden glow rose, letting her eyes adjust to the soft light. “What do I call myself?” she echoed, surprised. It was such an odd way to phrase the question – unless one knew something of the nature of the Ethaefal. “Such tact, good doctor! Do you know another of my kind, to be so courteous? In any case, I go by Alses – a far, bright star in the northern sky.” A shrug, and a wistful, melancholy smile. “It serves as well as anything for a name on this-” 'ball of shyke' her mind supplied, the words screaming up her throat, though she caught herself before continuing. No need to take that perennial irritation out on Duvalyon. “-on Mizahar.” Alses coughed, and then gave him a fey smile, changing the subject to something that had been bothering her ever since Duvalyon's admission of homesickness. “Whatever secrets the library contains must have a great hold on you, if you miss Kalinor so much and yet still choose to live here.” Alses paused, half-turning in her progress across the floor. “Or was it not a choice, as with me and my kin?”

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Duvalyon allowed himself a pittance of a smile at Alses's compliment for his tact. Symenestra believed themselves well-read and somewhat knowledgable of the world. Any praise that confirmed the idea was well-received. He was lighting the last candle when Alses asked his reason for remaining in Lhavit. This give and take was precarious. Duvalyon was covetous of his privacy and kept aspects of his life well divided. He adopted many faces; should some behold each other, they would disintegrate. "The library is a useful afterthought. A friend," it felt strange using the term for Laszlo, but he had no other that would lend credence to the story, "asked for my help. It required me coming here for a few seasons. I'll likely be gone in early fall." He smirked, "I don't imagine Lhavit will weep at the departure of a 'Widow', but the Shinya's supplies will never be as neatly organized again." As an Ethaefal and Konti, Alses had nothing to offer the treacherous side of Duvalyon. Manipulation was unnecessary, so he spoke offhandedly. His only purpose was to prove his race was not something that hissed in the dark, and ensure the Ethaefal had enough wherewithal to navigate herself home without falling off a bridge. "Are you feeling well enough to be on your feet?" he asked with a fraction of doubt. "If one of Lhavit's glittering favorites died after my ministrations, they'd throw me off the observatory roof," he mumbled. While Alses rediscovered the ability to walk, Duvalyon finally turned his attention to the box she had carried to him. Break the seal to dispel the wards. Gods, he loathed handling magic. It was like holding a snake by the neck.

[Alses]

Was that a ripple of tension across the doctor's back, just before he turned from lighting the last of the candles? Perhaps, perhaps not; the leaping shadows and her own poor night-sight made it a guess and nothing more. “A friend?” she echoed, perhaps slightly envious, quickly turning contemplative. “I know very little about friendship, of course, but it sounds to me as though this person is very lucky indeed to count you as one.” She frowned at Duvalyon's comment on the character of the city, all the more irritated for his truth; Lhavit, for all its diversity and inclusivity, its easy acceptance of everything up to and including magic, was rather wary of the Symenestra, and for good reason, given the proximity of the cave system - Kalinor, that was what it was called - and the peculiarities of Symenestran reproduction meant that it was something of a juicy target. Still, Duvalyon had been nothing but professional – if a little bit brusque – since she'd come to her senses. Not a single untoward advance or behaviour. That could, admittedly, have been a lulling tactic, waiting until she dropped her guard, at ease with his presence and his actions – but then again, that seemed like a very cumbersome way of going about things, since he'd had ample chance to carry her off whilst she was raving, smashed out of her head on kuhari poison. On balance, then, either the wily hunter had had his claws clipped, or the Symenestra weren't quite the monsters that Lhavit's good housewives made them out to be. “You could leave notes for your successor,” she suggested. “That way they might keep your system instead of having to start again. I always hated working in a strange lab – nothing was ever where it should have been, and there generally wasn't a master index to help me find things. I always ended up wasting a lot of time poking around in cabinets and cupboards trying to find the locations of everything from glypher's paint to infinitite crystals. Very annoying.” She raised an eyebrow at Duvalyon's next words. “If I'm not well enough, then soon I won't be on my feet any more, will I?” Alses retorted, sharper than she'd intended. “You'll have to catch me. Or let me fall, of course, but as you say, Lhavit doesn't like to think of us getting hurt.” Damnable mortal chain, and damnable irritability, too. Alienating people wasn't ever her goal, but it was so easy when trapped in mortal sack of flesh. “In any case, I survived the djed storm and all it wrought. To die from falling on a plant would be so...embarrassing. If I have to,” she continued, more softly, “I shall find a cane, to help me keep my balance. I may have eternity, but most everyone around me doesn't. Dala Mizahar djunn, no?” She waited, a heartbeat, no more, before realising her mistake. “An old expression,” she murmured, the high flush of embarrassment noticeable on her cheeks. “Something akin to 'Seize the day', figuratively speaking, of course.” From her position, leaning up against one of the examination room's walls – the short trip had taken more out of her than she liked to admit - Alses watched the spidery doctor's approach to the box with interest. He didn't look happy – insofar as anything could be inferred from such an eerily blank, alien face. “Is there some problem, Doctor Hellebore?”

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Duvalyon chuckled at Alses's suggestion of him catching her. The low laugh was a textured masculine sound, matching the dusk shades in his voice. While portions of him were funereal, this fragment was pleasant. Her attempt at irritability missed its mark. It took more obvious displays for a sunborn to offend him, as there was a perpetual thrum of dislike from them. "I was deep in a cave during the storm," he had moved on. "Very convenient," he murmured. "And as someone who has seen his fair share of death, it is more often like your plant. Sudden and ignominious." Her question was instinctively deflected with the angle of his body, his back turned slightly toward her. He was not accustomed to inquiries that could lead to assistance. "No," he said mechanically. Reminding himself to be courteous, he added deftly, "I am just wisely wary of magic. It has a corrosive quality." Nothing left to be done. Duvalyon used a claw to snap the seal and held his breath while he waited for the pulse of magic to settle and dissipate. It struck him as excessive, but he couldn't argue against the generations of pomp that still clung to the towers. He looked at the contents and scowled. "I am no aurist." Perhaps if the Konti healer was working, she'd be able to make sense of the bottles. "This does nothing for me. I'll have to compel one of the Shinya to 'read' them for me. If that's even possible." He sighed with a trace of irritation, "They'd do better to render me a list of symptoms or let me see the afflicted. I can only decipher blood straight from the source, and that's piecemeal." He smirked, "And I doubt one of the tower would welcome that process." As an afterthought he mentioned, "You were at least too confused to see me try it on you." Duvalyon began to pull objects out of the box, "Maybe there's something useful, like a letter at the bottom of all this..."