Solo Provident Son

[Dariel]

The Zintia 75th Day of Fall, 512 AV Lhavit had opened Dariel with open arms, allowing him to settle in with ease and comfort. Literally. The Inn was cushy and affordable and he'd been able to get a hot bath full of fragrant herbs within bells. As the herbs soothed his spirit so did the warmth sooth his sore muscles and throbbing ankle. He'd thrown away his travelling clothes and changed into the spare set he'd had the presence of mind to bring. Only the boots remained of the ragged figure that entered the city. And those he too would shed before long, but that was merely a matter of logistics. He'd probably need an entirely new skin as it stood. Among the finery of Lhavit he still looked drab, and he would need to blend in. He had few plans to go elsewhere. The layout of the city, the architecture, the sights... even the tea. Lhavit had been all he'd hoped for so far, and he hadn't even begun to probe its insides yet. He remembered enough information about the city that he worried he might spontaneously drool just thinking about the Towers, the Bharani Library, the Observatory. Not even considering the simple fact that a goddess dwelt at the heart of it all. For possibly the first time in his life, the young man was in love. If he hardly knew his lover that was something time would take care of. He couldn't imagine disappointment. And he was hard at work fixing his ignorance. Like a fish navigating the currents of a stream he'd step into the milling crowds of the Zintia, let them carry him a while, then veer off to seek out a sight he'd spotted or let a different tide sweep him up. It might have been an inefficient approach but not a stupid one. The crowds moved like blood through a body, with the city's fixtures its organs, When the time came to eat, the city's heartbeat lead him to the local's favourite kitchens. The places the locals ate. The places that offered good value for the Kinah. If he'd thought to bring pen and paper he could have mapped the city's bloodflow, timed the pulse of the crowds to fully comprehend it all beyond knowing that the Mhakula Tea House must have been a gift from the gods themselves. But of course he hadn't thought to bring any of that on his flight to Lhavit. All his possessions could be stowed away in Dariel's satchel, and there'd still be room for a passenger. Dariel stopped mid-flow, forcing a distracted pedestrian behind him to evade a collision in an almost acrobatic fashion. The satchel. Paper. It was time.

[Dariel]

He'd known the store's location all along. It was the first thing he'd sought out after he'd rested and recuperated from his journey. But he didn't feel fit to step inside yet then. Maybe he still wasn't. Maybe he'd never be. But if he didn't do it, many of the sacrifices he made coming here would have been pointless. He needed to do this. Needed it to help him make sense of it all. His course was set then. Which made the walk itself a mercifully brief formality, swimming upstream through the current in a straight line, ruthlessly cutting off the people who thought to get in his way. A line was only the shortest connection between two points if you didn't have to stop to clean your boots because you stepped on someone. Up to here everything had gone splendidly, but beyond the door barring his way lay the true test of strength. People -the unwashed masses as they were- were predictable. They acted out of base instincts: self-preservation, love, greed. Give them the proper push and they will heedlessly run off in the right direction. But a person, a person was a much more complicated and delicate structure. The one aberrant person with a brain or an opinion would just be swept along with the tides of a crowd. Isolated however they were as delightful to have as they were dangerous. Behind this door he'd meet a person. A person that was supposed to know him, a person he was supposed to know in turn. But that was a decade ago. Did the Masutes forget about the son they had to give away to safeguard his future? Had their days passed in agony? Most likely the truth lay somewhere in between. Tanroa had a way of dealing with wounds, but there was little she could do to scars. Dariel loved being prepared, he loved being in control of things. It expedited getting what he wanted and it kept him safe, and oh was it ever his right to lord over the small enclosed minds that populated this world. It was his right simply because he was who he was and they were who they were Fearful, superstitious, content, naive, innocent, disgusting, disgusting, disgusting weak little things... But this, this here was different. These were Dariel's parents. Even if they turned out to be disappointing there was no way to sidestep the bonds of blood. He strangled his train of thought then and there. He was procrastinating and he knew it. The young man sucked in the autumnal mountain air through closed teeth and his hand pounced on the door handle. Pushing it open he took the first step into Keper Masute's store, head held high.

[Dariel]

Stepping inside was not the revelation he had expected. The guts of the little shop were comfortable in a way. Large windows offered both light and air aplenty and kept the cluttered room from feeling oppressive. Despite the constant draft the air was pregnant with the smell of learning and knowledge. The smell of libraries. The smell of books. Paper and well-tanned leather, a legion of blank sheets singing to his brain with one voice to fill them. It was quaint, even... lovely. Less lovely was the disorder. There were racks to hold both drying paper as well as ready sheets, a shelf to hold a variety of finished books and for each of those another copy strewn upon a small dark table. But also workpieces in various stages of production scattered about. A leather cover being stretched to form here, a finished product settling in a vise there, piles of stitched subsections, piles of thin wooden boards to form covers from, at least three open jars of glue drying out, brushes, stencils, knives. In fact it was disgusting to Dariel. Before he had the time to finish his observation, the pale newcomer's mind was drawn to a new impression, someone singing not too loudly. Voice held soft and low, carefully sweeping from note to note, wrapping them in slurred Arumenic it wasn't altogether jarring. Dariel's Arumenic was atrocious. He'd managed to pick up and retain a few words and phrases. Enough to ask for directions if he'd ever make it to Ahnatep. Too little to understand an answer if given one. While his eyes squinted to find the source of the song hidden amongst the scattered implements his mind tried to wrap around the words. Something about a sailor lost among a sea of sand and waiting there for a ship of bones to take him home to his love? That was about the best he could make of it and possibly utterly wrong, even if the sad theme fit the somber melody. Finally finding and homing in on the singer, the young man turned to face him, taking a tacit step forward. "I could have this straightened out within a day and your work would flow better for it, you know?" Dariel was trying his level best to be casual about this, but casual never came easy to him. Like most anything he did it was usually the result of a plan, a strategy. Which was in turn the result of knowing a few things about what he was even getting into. But right now he had no plan and no idea what he was up against. Quite simply, Dariel was dealing with a jumbled pile of unknowns and possibilities. This one he'd have to play by ear. He'd just have to hope it didn't involve being stranded in a sea of sand.

[Dariel]

The older man looked up from his workbench, his song faded. His smile was warm, genuine, foreign to Dariel in that way. And it rippled a hundred wrinkles across the bookbinder's tan skin, making him seem ancient when he was not."That is kind of you to offer, young man, but I like it this way. All my books need my attention. I like having them close by." There was his opening. Twitch a smile. Show sympathy. Indulge the old man. It wasn't a plan but it was more than he'd had moments ago. "Like children." The younger, paler man summarized while he looked over the bookbinder. Where were the parallels? There was the nose, most certainly the nose, but little else he could find. Of course, age softened and distorted the features. Maybe the older man's eyes seemed smaller because his eyesight was slipping and he needed to squint, his cheeks and neck were most sagging. Dariel's words had touched something in the other man, giving him pause, reminding him of something. As he'd intended. Hit another smile. Be awkward - that one wasn't hard. Hesitate. The look they exchanged lasted until the younger man turned, just enough to move the satchel hung from his shoulder into the other man's field of view. It took a few moments for recognition to set in, but set in it did. After all, this was the very same satchel the bookbinder's son had left home with almost a dozen years ago. It had been his before, and his father's before that. And he had picked it up on his long journey west and even though the Alvadan stitching had long since faded and frayed it was still easily recognizable. Looking back up from the satchel, the older man scanned the younger one's face. It was his time to look for similarities. Eleven, almost twelve years were a long time. Children grew and changed. No spark of recognition flared in the bookbinder's eyes until his gaze settled on Dariel's nose. That nose, shaped so very much like his own. Finally he dared speak again, his voice infirm, breathy, hesitant."Son?"

[Dariel]

The smile creeping across the pale lips was genuine enough, even if the elation was more of being recognized rather than reuniting with his father. But then and there it said more than a thousand words could have. Keper Masute the bookbinder, father of Dariel Masute the former wizard's apprentice and returned son, leapt around his worktable to embrace the young man. The joyous occasion even endowed him with the strength to find his upright posture again, though it had long been a victim of the stooped posture his work required. Keper was tall, but his son even moreso. The older man had to squint up at Dariel while he held him close, but that only served to fan the flames of his rapture. "You've grown!" Keper remarked quite pointlessly, "My what a fine young man you've grown into. You even got rid of the baby pudge. But look at how pale you are. And your hair... Dariel, what happened to your hair? It used to be the colour of chestnuts, now it's almost white." By now the old bookbinder was positively rambling, but his last observation struck a chord. The fear of a misstep calmed the older man down, but his son gave him a quiet and ready reply. "The storm happened... father. You know which one I mean. We were seven, all of us users of magic of some description. We were not safe for one another then. We had been caught unawares and we were not safe for one another. It scattered us to the winds. I got lucky... I got lucky, but I did not escape it either. Does it..." Dariel gave his father a look that almost manage to come across as fearful. "Is it an issue? That I do not quite look like yours anymore?" He had never been one to dodge the awkward moments. Very much unlike Keper Masute who tried to avoid awkwardness as much as he could. To his credit he rose to the occasion nonetheless. First he graced his son with the kind of smile only a parent may bestow upon a child. The kind of smile that will not simply light up the room, but warm it for days to come. He pushed himself another step, even laughed now, if only briefly. "Son. Blood calls to blood. Old fool I may be, I'm not that much of a fool." People. Lovely little things.

[Dariel]

In a sense it was all a bit disappointing. He'd expected more doubt, more questions, more necessary explanations. But Dariel had no intention of pushing the issue. He knew it was simpler to give people the information and impetus they needed to arrive at the right conclusion. The right conclusion being the one he wanted or needed them to arrive at, of course. Keper Masute's fast acceptance of his son's return simply made the whole thing feel anti-climactic. A paranoid shadow of a doubt crep into the tall youngster's mind at that notion. Was it that easy? Did the old man really simply accept his son's return as fact? Dariel could hardly ask him. At best that would cause unnecessary injury. At worst... it was better not to consider unlikely result resulting from roads not travelled. Not that that solved his quandary. He only had one way to be certain. Dariel inhaled, finally properly returning the father's hug. When he exhaled, he bade his muscles relax, felt his chest sink, his shoulders sag, gaining acuity of mind in exchange for the body's strength. And there was more. In the same way that he gave up physical power, his Djed came alive, flowed from his arms and legs towards his torso, swirling about and spiralling ever higher with each breath he took. Breath that began to mimic Keper's in rhythm. It was a simple trick, a brief but effective shortcut to harmonize his own being superficially with the older man's. Roiling Djed filled Dariel's head. His brain was a solitary rock in a temepestuous ocean. He was ready and gave the ocean leave to drain into his senses. First came the sensation of cold metal. Iron or copper, more a taste or a smell than an impression of touch or sight. Djed. Traces and remnants of it were everywhere and he was loosing more into the world as he worked his. This was expected, and he'd learned to pay it no mind. And since he had no plans to investigate Keper for active or residual magics he would not even need to take the time to get used to this background impression, this pollution of his senses. Next he focussed on the old man in his arms. Like a ghost, his Auristic fingers brushed through the bookbinder's aura, a swirl of trailing vapours in a burned shade of orange in this case. It had a soft tenacity to it and it was warm like a hearth fire. It was startling in its rarity, a curious thing. Reaching further, Dariel's mind sought out the man's heartbeat and found it quick and heavy. He inspected the skin and found it flush with excitement. It got even warmer near the palms, but also unexpectedly dry. He must have smiled because the old man smiled at him in that vapid, senseless way that only a smiled reply assumed. And yet, Dariel was not satifisfied. He needed more. Always more. So he pushed for it. Strained. Felt a pressure behind his eyeballs as if an unknown force was about to squeeze them from his skull. He ignored it. Delved deeper into the father's aura, but whatever lay beneath the surface was blotted out by this overbearing excitement. Nothing hinted at the presence of anything else in any relevant amount. No doubt, not even a tinge of guilt, just the heady giddiness he'd expect to find in a giggly drunk or a playful child. Greedily he'd thought to push on, but the mounting pressure inside his skull cautioned him, and his better, more reasonable demons urged him. He'd had his fill of proof. This would have to suffice. Only actions and reactions could deliver him the reaffirmation he so craved now. Well, what would a good son do now? "Can we go see mother?" Dariel heard himself say the words, quietly, softly even while his consciousness was still busy harnessing and eventually abating the torrent of concentrated Djed. The enterprising Aurist was unsure what surprised him more there. The words themselves and their tone, or that he'd spoken them without thinking. Maybe, he allowed hismelf to hope, maybe he was really home safe.

[Phoenix]

Dariel

Award

Skill	XP Earned
Observation	5
Navigation	2
Investigation	2
Auristics	3

•	Lores Earned
•	Falling in love with Lhavit
•	Navigation: Lhavit
•	The Heartbeat of Lhavit
•	Humanities basal instincts
•	Lhavit: Prominent streets and shops
•	Keper Masute’s Shop
•	Bookbinders Satchel
•	Father and Son Reunited
•	Auristics: A means to get answers without asking questions
•	Every boy needs his mother

The Order of the Phoenix

Great little thread! I love character development and the stories that unravel when we delve into the little corners of their minds. What a wonderful read! I tried to give you what I could, but good job

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, please send me a PM and we can figure it out.