In Your Wake.

[Albireo]

Albireo accepted the fabric without as much as a nod. She had gone beyond such gestures, beyond what mattered on the surface. For a moment she buried her face in its clean folds, wishing to disappear, wishing to leave all worldly problems and dangers behind. Still, she was stumbling through Mizahar and still, she hadn’t found anything of significance yet. Pretty fool. The fabric dried her tears, absorbing wetness like a sponge. “Thank you”, she whispered eventually. Her eyes felt dry and ugly, but expressing her gratitude was something she could do. To a Widow. The thought made her flinch and sniff a little. Her mind had been upside down and inside out like a piece of clothing left to dry in mountain winds. All she desired was her Lord’s gentle light, neither Syna’s blinding rays nor their companion, dry and hot dust. The city lay in shadow and skyglass glow, the moon hidden between thick clouds for now. Still tangled up in messy confusion, she didn’t even notice the stares and whispers all around them. At his question, she shifted a little, tried to put weight on her knee. It stung a little, but she carefully rose, staggered for a moment, then stood still. “Yes. It is necessary.” To overcome her fear, she’d struggle with her fears a little longer and listen to his story. Widows were cruel, liars and dangerous creatures, yet… he hadn’t done anything to tempt or hurt her. Quite the opposite. Still sniffing, she clung to that thought, kept it in mind. “The Basilika?” she offered. A place of learning and sharing, it radiated peace, a sense of calm and serenity every time she exchanged stories and theories under its high roof. A Symenestra had listened to her story of Sun and Moon once. The scene surfaced like a bizarre and blurred dream. Indeed, it was a good place. If he agreed, she’d follow after him with a slight limp, almost invisible if one hadn’t seen her fall.

[Mara]

Ardent and diligent observation from the spring of abysmal burgundy pits trailed Albireo to her feet. He mimicked her lead, rising to the support of long extremities that lifted him to a less than remarkable variance to the nimble height of the Ethaefal with the slight slope to her stride. She was suppressed intrepidly behind dried eyes and well-drawn features. He may have overlooked the uneven gait or mistaken the grimace of her eclipsed countenance as distaste rather than a sheltered pain nibbling the frays of jostled nerves. Now instead he continued as a silent witness striding several paces to her side with a narrowed view of the street ahead and a peripheral understanding of the creature to his left.

The crust along the edges of his inner thumb became victim to a restless habit, the claw of his index chipping away layer after layer of tender skin until it whitened into shredded mesh. Thin layers peeled back into his cuticle and then ripped free so a single dribble of warm blood filled the trench between grated finger and onyx nail. An unsightly habit he was hardly aware of until the dull sting crept past the wall of chattering thoughts. Much like biting nails or twisting strands of hair around a finger, it was compulsory and anxious. His fist balled to stop himself. It was hardly noticeable unless he became carried away before attention overrode the comprehension of the damage caused and suddenly small ribbons of dressing were applied so his work could continue unhindered.

The glint of the crowning glass knoll tempered the street the silver silk of moon rimmed clouds. The Basilika hummed at the epicenter of nightly activity: A quiet quartette of stings and brush strokes across textured canvases. Bustles of steeply taken steps played the rhythm, their own steps padded in harmony to the beat as they began to ascend the marbled steps.

Marvasa steadied a full step behind her, inspecting the ripple of muscle under the sashay of rippling fabric. His arms grew tense, careful for a fall and hoping he could catch her if need be. His movement stuttered with nervous reaches with the slightest hint of a stumble, but he refused to touch unless the floor was thrown from beneath her.

The longing gaze that spun into his expression landed upon several open canvases once they had completed their short journey to the open floor. The whiff of wax and flax seed was shrouded within the scent of the freshly made paints, each color expelling stringent odor of its very own, smells that were nostalgic and unforgiving. Several open spaces were left or abandoned amidst the bustle of quiet discussion. "Shall we take a seat?" he had not articulated since they had risen from the pavement and the echo of the room made his hushed tone feel harsh in his throat. The abraded digits wiggled against the curve of his palm. He motioned to an unoccupied seat, long carvings spiraling the frame of the bench and long enough to hold four if they did not mind flattening to one another's sides.

[Albireo]

Silence followed like a soothing shadow. Albireo refused to search for words. Offerings thrown to the wind, sometimes they were nothing more. They walked side by side, neither leading the way, neither lagging behind, although she kept him within sight. Although he was kind, the sound of his steps and the feeling of his presence next to her were queer enough. If he walked behind, the tingling stare in the back would release her panic once more. Logic and reason whispered alright, but instinct still overrode those. A small sigh escaped her lips and tension slipped from her form at the sight of the beautiful spires and structure reaching for the night sky. The glow illuminated their faces a thousand times more than the lights at the street. Inside the light reigned over all. Please forgive me for fleeing Your light today, she told Leth, one last glance towards His pale face, before entering. It was a good place. The Basilika welcomed her with a strong smell of paint, some wax, parchment and dust. Breathing in, Albireo noticed the trembling of her body and fingers had shrunk a bit. A start. The glorious faces of those producing, creating, telling, imagining were surrounding her and suppressing her fear. In the bright light, it seemed tiny and ridiculous… He directed her towards a wide bench, wide enough for four of their statue. Still, she claimed the end and carefully bent her knee. To rest the wound, to keep the bandages from shifting, it was all the same. The white shining under dark fabric reduced her to weakness. Disgust followed. However, the creature at her side never went unnoticed. Flowing movement: And they called her elegant, although it was a different kind. Once they were facing each other, Widow and Ethaefal in all their glory, she nodded. As if closing a book and opening the next. “Why are you so different from the others? What does it mean?” Soft voice like feathers beckoned him to reveal everything (as much as he wanted). Her eyes were wide, but focused.

[Mara]

The healer claimed his seat a number of wing flaps after Albireo had perched upon the corner’s edge. Her pellucid wreath of gemstone antlers haloed the melancholy of her figure, till she was as inhuman as the pristine statues upon their ledges and dispersed about the flooring in the midst of natural life. It was life mimicking artistry or some misrepresented irony from which life was drawn. The mirrored ledge of the bench cradled him its recess. The cool buffed wood soothed his feverish grasp as he drew the creases of flattened palms over the fine metals that bit into the frame of the planks. The gap between them felt necessitous as if the air would have tethered them apart to diffuse the crass catalyst they would incite had they been seated side by side.

The question struck him forwardly and stiffened him enough to flinch away despite the whispered tepidness in her speech. The muscles of his shoulders and stomach were fraught with tension, crumpling into him, bending in half at the waist. His toes curled around the pavement and jostled him in an uncooperative sway, the curvature of his forearms latent over his thighs, fastening his hands into each other.

The hesitation on his tongue was palpable, but it coagulated there in the pit of his jowls as if it was amalgamating his confession. How does one begin to answer a request like this? It should have been more problematic, but he seemed to find himself explaining what he was or having it illuminated for him in most societal state of affairs. It was some vindication always, why he was or was not, human or Symenestra, and how precisely that reflection represented his worth. “My birth I expect is the real answer you seek. My mother was a proper Symenestra, born of Kalinor, blessed by Viritas. My father however,” he tilted his view in her direction, allowing her the attestation before spoken was the dark dye that drained from his blood sullied eyes, circling the drain of bottomless pupils, admitting the ceramic listlessness of staid lilac. “He was a Vantha healer that raised me in the North, in Avanthal, Morwen’s extolled residence.”

A smile, that no more doused the spoil of his irises than a mist upon a roaring flame, slipped up over the bridge of dulled fangs and fell away. The blaze which lapped at the serrated sidles of reminiscence singed the screw of a grin outside the delicate murmurs of Morwen’s chill and the prolonged hope he still held that his home and its inhabitants was the same as when he had departed from it. The sound of the melodic Vani still chimed happily in his thoughts when he evoked them, though Common now poured more gamely between each discrepancy, and even Symenestra now trickled amongst particular opinions that could better be alleged in Spider Tongue.

A fan of lashes flapped over the tarns of trepidation and warmed them to the simmer of cerise they so effortlessly tenanted. “My father raised me in the rehearsal of medicine, and I seemed to have taken to it. Though I left many seasons ago, spent some time in Kalinor, but soon found myself here in Lhavit.” It was astounding, even to him, how much one’s life could be summarized into a few choice sentences. Even so, he felt he had been generous with the information. His attempt was to answer what puzzlement she still held and any interrogation that may follow. He uncurled in the bench and pitched a lissome calf across his thigh. “You seem so very troubled. Is it the yarns and tales that are told that you dread, or have you met a Symenestra before?”

[Albireo]

Noticing how he flinched away, Albireo curled up without realizing it was a mirror of his motion. The bandaged knee stayed in place, foot planted on the stone floor, but the other went up, sole resting against the edge of the bench, arms folded around it and chin resting on the knee. She stared into space. When words started to trickle and travel the air, however, she turned her head in an attempt to leap over fear and acknowledge a person as equal. Their eyes met. In his irises charcoal melted away and gave way to solid lilac. Despite the distance of air and stone, despite the other, invisible gap, Albireo saw and recognized it for what it was: Vantha! Still, her breath caught in her throat and she listened to his words before raising confessions of her own. She had asked a question, now she had to listen. Unusual for the storyteller. As he mentioned Kalinor, it was her turn to flinch back and shut eyes in denial, although it didn’t halt the tone of his words. Naturally. The name Viratas she didn’t care to inquire about. Whatever it stood for, it surely strayed far from the glory of her beloved Leth. Heritage on his father’s side confirmed the suspicion that had grown in Albireo’s chest. It seemed impossible, yet it was sitting right next to her. If she reached out with her right hand, she’d be able to touch him. Although pale, he’d be warm and soft like a Vantha. It tugged at the strings of memory and brought back long forgotten things, broken things. Fumbling for something, she tried to wedge it free of ancient dust and present it to the cold light of skyglass. “Avanthal… old home.” The only words she could force out, yet they rang with the familiar tone of Vani expression. For the first time she cursed that ethereal horned body for dulling memories of her mortal past. Then it was his turn to ask and hers to tell a tale. Albireo launched into it as if running from something else. “Both. There is a subtle kind of power in the tale. But I have seen them as well, feral faces, bloody eyes and sharp claws. Hunting us.” Eyes flashed to his fingers almost without realizing. Did he have claws and fangs? If not… what did that make him? She’d taken him for a Widow at first. Was it only her troubled mind? In an attempt to learn more and cure the faint trembling inside, she continued. “Why medicine? What draws you to it?” Then, after a moment of consideration: “If that is a stupid question, I apologize.” Although its color was cool like water darkened in moonlight, her gaze seemed to burn while regarding him. Half-Vantha. If it was like that, there was some hope for acceptance.

[Mara]

An escaped Vani descant chimed in a whispered phrase, one that floated in the brevity of ephemeral lyre strings still purring in the stagnate air. Imagination, he assumed, was to fault for the moment, for she offered nothing further and the tidings had evaded him with the mastery of whirling smoke lacing between iron bars.

Her confession, however, wrenched him into a depth along the faults of the flooring. The fright of the hunt, for there was no other word which spoke as truly to those outside of Kalinor. Harvest was their word, the Symenestra, and in the deep of the woven city it truly appeared to be only this. Each cycle fetched a reaping of new faces, wombs hospitable and equipped for the implanting of vivacity that would purloin them of their own. The coagulated gore of innocence, more than he cared to attest, haunted him and left him ravished and cadaverous. A hand trembling undetected from within newly coiled fists, as her observation was conspicuously drawn to the dark tips. The shame crept into the dank reverberant cage of domed bone, weighing heavy upon pliable lungs.

Sight stained by the bleach of mauve had shied from meeting the Lethaefal, but entrenched courteousness heaved him into a meeting gaze. The same apprehension troubled his own features, the reasons for which very different in its stead.

"No, it is not a stupid question, not at all." His assurance was warm, nesting in a sprouting of an accustomed Vani inflection chiming dimly along the curve of ending syllables.

"I began to study medicine because it was expected of me. My father's hold was that of medical tradition and he was very good at what he did. I wanted to live up to the name." He wanted to surpass the stigma, but at the time it seemed he only hoped to please his absent father and care for his mother. The vanes of teeth captured his lip, and his thumb rubbed against the bridge of his scarred knuckles. "It did not take long to discover my own reasons for my studies."

"In the end, I suppose I hope to atone." a sardonic laugh puffed free from a clenched jaw. "I'm sure it is foolish of me to think by virtuous deeds alone I may balance my life's scale, but I must try. Aspirant thinking alone has led me to reason it may amount to something, if not purely a conserved existence that may not be without some succor."

"Above all else, medicine is my life, it always has been."

He rallied the courage with a scramble of changing topics corkscrewing through his thoughts. What could he have in common with her? More so, what did he wish to know about such a curious creature? Though he was relieved she was holding still and not absconding in terror, he could still see the sheen of glassy orbs threatening the rims of her lashes where trepidation still bed her. “Do you have a profession or a passion perhaps?"

[Albireo]

The hint of warmth she now recognized as traces of Vani served to relax clenched muscles and made her feel more at ease. Avanthal, Avanthal… Over time it had become a fortress of peaceful memory, a surreal paradise. Although it had nothing to do with the place as it was now, couldn’t have anything to do, she clung to its image. That person appeared like a messenger of ancient dreams and was accepted, even needed as such. Hold. The words, the exclusive terminology did their share. Albireo drank up every single syllable. Soon they were replaced by others. Atone. She understood without asking. At the sudden laugh, she gave a start, wrapped her arms around her shrunken body once more. Fabric hung as if there was no flesh underneath, less than it really was at least. Ghostly, perhaps. But she didn’t flinch away. During the process of getting behind the barricades and climbing over the wall, she had somehow abandoned the idea of flight. The realization hit her hard. At the same time, a completely different feeling washed over her, warm and soft and rusty for one as her. “It has amounted to this conversation here and now. I am grateful for that.” She tried to catch his rainbow gaze, the only thing to hold on to, hoping to decipher a bit of the same gratitude in them. Then the question was returned, in a way, and she sighed. How distant, how insignificant it seemed in the face of her trepidation! Yet it was the only way she could cope with what she had become. “I tell stories. If you know Avanthal, you must know how the Vantha do it. I remember bits and pieces of their tales and some from other places.” In truth, they were fantasies built on unspeakable horrors she had glimpsed, tiny legends she wrapped around the fear to soothe it. And suddenly it connected: like a medicine of the mind, made to treat a very personal malady. Had she become a medic of the mind then? “There is a debt between us. Let me give you a story as a sign of gratitude, yes?”