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[Aramenta]

Livvy frowned, and spoke quietly, in Common.

"Marriage. The word Aramenta means not is bondmate. It is wife. Marriage."

Ara turned to look at her, with a frown, the word came to her vaguely now. She was not sure if she had heard it before. "Marrish..." she whispered it in Khida's ear again, her voice fumbling, which made her warm breath roll more quickly around the words. "Marrish, yes... you have... mate who is not for mating? Like a strider. You have person, you be bird for person, they be person for you? You... care for? Like friends. Like Livvy, me. Not like ..." she was struggling with the words. Livvy, was receding quietly again, perturbed obviously, "... not like you me. We friends..." she made the sign again in front of her - care, bonding, personal affection. Shared experience. Healthy closeness. Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration given how little they'd known each other so far. "But then you have friend... heart friend. Friend friend." She made the sign for intensity, oneness. Inseperability. Need. She made the sign frankly, and solemnly, like a child. "Bondmate. It is like this?"

She heard the question about the tents and poles singing, but... this question of bonding, it felt strange. How could she bond to a human, if she was not a human? Ara bonded to a strider, because it was a Drykas, just like her. The singing she gnawed on, to answer later. How do you explain a metaphor, anyway? Especially if you never knew the word metaphor even in your own tongue - just the feel of the idea. Of a thing that is true but not true all at once. Truer than true.
x

[Khida]

Marriage. Livvy provided the word Khida hadn't been able to recall. She nodded to the girl, agreement and recognition. She listened as Ara went on to speak... who seemed to have taken marriage as bondmating instead of family and children. "Marriage is... is pairing," she said slowly, turning her head to watch the quiet girl from the corner of her eye. Just to be sure they were all clear on that point. "Keeping a place, your place, your home. Courting and mating and breeding children." She went on to consider the signs Ara presented -- friend, they had previously discussed in several variations, and it needed no further explanation. The other... her hands echoed it, slowly, trying to tease meaning and implication from the gesture. It didn't come, and Khida tilted her hands out in a manner which reflected that lack of understanding. "Bondmate is..." Friend. Heart friend. Khida's voice trailed off as she mentally tested the words given and found them... small. Too small for that emptiness which lurked inside. She thought it would be him who ended it, he who was her partner, who seemed to fit in all the right ways... and yet, and yet. They hadn't bonded, and the Kelvic wondered briefly if she was doing something wrong. As she sat there on her stool, hands folded over her knees, Khida's expression and manner reflected her train of thought, from consideration to dismissal to distant and somewhat dismayed reverie . Eventually, she returned her attention to the present and the two who waited, pressing her lips together as she sought words. "Unbonded is... empty. Lost. Searching." She knew that state well enough; it was what had driven her from the city of her birth, seeking completion elsewhere. "A bondmate is... everything," the Kelvic finally concluded, offering a helpless shrug at the inadequacy of words -- and of her own experience.

[Aramenta]

Ara tried to internalize the unfamiliar tongue. The gist of it seemed simply. This was the sort of thing romantic fellows said to their beaus: I love you, you are my everything, without you I am empty, without you I am lost. I'd search to the ends of the earth. Blah, blah. But... they said it like a performance. Like wheedling for position. This woman said it in the abstract, and with a strange factuality, that made her consider the words. What if...

What if someone else WERE everything? What if all you had was someone else?

She frowned and leaned forward whispering clumsy commontongue again, "You are... having... no bunmate? You empty? You are looking for bunmate?"

She frowns, and backs up, but not very far looking at the woman's eyes. The strange eyes of hers, so frank over the neckline of Livvy's mother's dress. She could almost see the bird of them now. Could almost see the sharp beak of her nose. Were they lonely, those eyes?

"Bondmate... bondmate... is serving you? Bondmate take care of you, like helper? Bondmate is everything, too? Clean you, help you, need you. Bondmate is human, human love, or Kelfick love, bondmate have?"

She frowned, and sat back, hoping her words were enough.

[Khida]

Khida regarded the quiet girl steadily as she contemplated the Kelvic's words, considered the Kelvic's own amber gaze in return, waiting without hurry to see what she made of them. What Aramenta came back with... was almost funny, in its way. She surprised a huff from the dark-haired woman, not quite laughter, not quite derision, a sound decidedly disbelieving. How entirely wrong could one be? For, as deep as instinct, Khida knew Ara's statements to be entirely the opposite of a bondmate's role. She shook her head, loose hair drifting down over her face. Words... eluded. How did she phrase what she searched for? But then, perhaps she didn't even need to do that. "No," Khida said, brushing her hair back so she could look directly at Ara. "That's backwards. Mine," she added, sudden sharp longing shaping the word. Returned to her lap, her hands closed into fists, while her eyes tuned to the distance beyond Aramenta's shoulder. "Mine to watch over. Mine to guard. Mine to help..." To aid, to support -- yes, even to serve, though in her own paradigm the falcon Kelvic didn't frame it in quite that way. Perhaps notably, marriage, children -- even romance -- didn't feature in that short list. Then Khida pressed her lips together, and breathed out a quiet sigh, her shoulders dropping slightly. "Someday. I will keep looking until I find them." Lonely, yes. She could almost forget, when she was with the hunter. Even for days at a time, lulled by his presence, by their now-easy rapport, by the aid and support and care the Kelvic freely gave him. But he was not here; only Ara and Livvy, and while they seemed fine enough humans, Khida didn't feel either of them could fill that empty space inside. And they -- they had each other, it seemed, at least from what Khida had seen so far. And marriage. And... cloth, Khida thought, looking down at the spindle and the cotton being spun into thread. "The cloth you make," she asked, in what might seem a non-sequitur, "it is for your mate? A gift?"

[Aramenta]

Ara frowned gently, looking at Khida. Everything of the woman, her strength, her assurance, her frankness, the way she moved and walked, the she appraised you with her sharp eyes, spoke of freedom. Of individuality. But... the way she spoke, it spoke of servitude. Of ownership almost. Would she change, then? Would this fierceness she had disappear, or become, perhaps a fierceness in protection of someone else. Ara had a moment, a single moment of imagining the fierce, blunt woman serving her. Harsh and honest, and kind to her, and wild and protective against anyone who would hurt her mistress. Like Livvy. And she shuddered.

It was Livvy that answered, however, her voice curious and insistent, as blunt almost as the bird-woman's, "Why do you want it? You are made to want it? Like the gods made you to want to serve somebody? Or you decide wanting it?"

Ara frowned. Why did this bother her friend so much? And she wondered, idly for a moment - would it be different if Livvy were a bird-woman? Would it be better or worse? Was it kind or cruel, this enslaving by instinct or choice, or whatever it was?

The question about the cloth awoke her, and she shook her head leaning forward again to whisper in the woman's ear.

"No, no. For other woman-mate wear lace. Pretty lace, you look pretty on mate-day. Like... you are gift, not lace is gift, you are gift, an lace is to make you a pretty gift."

x

[Khida]

Aramenta's contemplation went unnoticed, as Livvy's question commandeered Khida's attention. She regarded the short-haired girl with a tilt of her head, a puzzled blink which conveyed as clear as words that she found the question... odd. That why in this matter was not a concern of the Kelvic's -- perhaps simply because she wasn't generally given to doubts or second thoughts. "I choose," she said immediately, with the certainty of conviction. For she would choose -- no one else could pick a bondmate for her. No one could make a bond. And she didn't understand why the girl seemed so... concerned... about the matter. "A Strider bonds," Khida said then, gesturing towards the nearby horses, drawing upon the only remotely similar thing she knew of in the world. "Strider is family," she continued, drawing upon what the other boy had said. "Bondmate is family. Closer than family." For weren't Khida's parents, her only kin, a long ways behind her now? "Belonging. Together. A Strider helps the Drykas, carries their rider, protects, cares. Does the Strider serve? Does someone make the Strider choose?" The discussion of lace, of marriage, was suspended for a moment as Khida waited for Livvy's reply -- and Aramenta's, too, as the only one here who had a Strider. Or was had by a Strider. But something in what Aramenta said pricked Khida in a manner not unlike the way her earlier words had roused Livvy. And ultimately, she couldn't let it pass completely, blinking at the girl. "What do you mean, you are gift?"

[Elysium]

Aramenta

Experience
Observation +2
Rhetoric +2
Webbing +1

Lore
Common: Kelvic
Common: Bondmate
Bonding vs. Marriage
Rhetoric: Making Distinctions

Khida

Experience
Flying +2
Rhetoric +2
Observation +3

Lore
Bonding v. Marriage v. Mating
Mating Equals "Reproduction"
Rhetoric: Making Distinctions
What is a Bondmate?

Notes
I agree; the conversation was great while it lasted! If you have any concerns, please PM me!