Flashback Ionu's Children (Anton)

[Kit Rowan]

Season of Winter, Day 48, 507 AV

Winter's chill was usually mild and easy against the city streets, by natural climate or grace of Ionu no one could say for sure. But Ionu had a sense of humor, and they'd let winter's claws dig deep into this city this day. When Kit had set out she'd thought herself safe with a warm cloak against the chill, but Ionu had played a trick on her by showing open blue skies and a bright and shining sun, and allowed her to see the billowing clouds and feel the harsh cold against her skin only in time for the snow to begin to fall.

It took bells of stubborn exploring before Kit admitted to herself that it was too cold as she wrapped her cloak tight around her little body, as wind rushed around her, sapped the warmth from her legs and exposed fingers and left her ears feeling ice-hard and ice-cold against the side of her head. She sought shelter, the winds rushing around her and stealing her warmth while snow fell from above in thick, steady sheets till little specks of white remained in her hair and about her shoulders and slowly piled up on the shifting streets of Alvadas around her.

Ionu helped their faithful, but sometimes they had a sense of a humor when they did. It wasn't long before Kit staggered headlong into a wall she couldn't see that sent her sprawling back on her ass, exposing her to the full onslaught of the cold as Kit looked up. By allowance of illusion, the snow left on the tops of the visible arches and buildings were left visible, and Kit saw in their outlines the image of the temple of Ionu. As a good a time to be devout as any, yeah? And besides, there would be warmth in there.

No longer bothering with the pretense of keeping out the cold, Kit made the run through the temple yard, cloak lashing in the wind behind her. Her clothes were like a quilt, woven together out of old shirts and blankets in a random, slapdash style plainly Alvad and plainly impractical for the cold. She pushed through the doors and found the interior of the temple quiet, and most importantly, warm.

Kit closed her eyes, looked toward the ceiling and sent Ionu a silent prayer of thanks for shelter. She shook off the snow from her shoulders and hair and wandered to the nearest brazier she could find, held her hands over the coals and flexed her fingers, willed them and the rest of her body to feel warm and pleasant again. "When I get older," Kit promised her god in the tired certainty of a child who doesn't know what impossible means, "I will bring you all the colors in the world."

[Anton]

Winter.

Just a word, when it came down to it. Like spring. Like summer. Like dearest, dearest fall. Seasons were just seasons when you spent your life trapped in the dark beyond their touch, beyond the sounds and colors of Alvadas, of a world said to be wonder unbridled. The temple doors were cruel in this regard, for when they opened they offered the briefest, briefest glimpse of the world outside, and simultaneously, a denial of it, for Anton could not venture forth into the beyond. Such were the rules for the children of the Womiyu.

Dumb rules, he has always secretly thought. Stupid rules. But it was never his place to speak out.

So here he was again: Playing at altar boy to a temple with no altar, playing at this farce of a duty, in the season where visitors to the temple were at it's lowest. Sitting on one of the temple's too-tall-for-him benches, stubby, naked feet dangling idly as he...what was he doing again?

Staring, probably. At nothing and at everything. Got boring after the first few, well, ever.

Something needed to happen. Something desperately needed to happen. He had seen spring, he had seen summer, he had seen fall; granted, all a one door show, but he had yet to see the temple door's allowance of winter. If Ionu was kindly this day...

Then the doors opened, and Anton, after a quick prayer, practically exploded off his seat, blurring towards his first glimpse of winter.

[Kit Rowan]

SLAM went the doors, shut before Anton could make a turn into the front room, denied his first look at winter by the farness of the run and the heavy temple doors. He came out front to the crushing familiarity of a door closed to him.

And a visitor.

Kit was a child barely into girlhood, eleven autumns old, a scrawny creature made by the streets, thin athletic muscle and a twitchy stance that spoke of comfort in movement and unease in stillness. Her hair was rust-red, cropped short around her ears, and her child's body had only begun to assert its female shape beneath her patchwork clothes.

Anton caught Kit wringing her hands over the fire as he made a mad dash through the temple, and his footsteps drew her attention to the hall before he came around the corner. Kit saw him as younger and smaller at a glance. In the hierarchy of children that put her in charge. "Aren't you in a rush?" Kit blew into her hands and rubbed them together, trying to squeeze what little warmth she could from her hands before she turned half-away, propping a hand against her waist and giving the kid a smirk that she hoped said I'm older and smarter and bigger and better than you.

Kit was at loathe to abandon her post by the brazier. Fire and warmth were beautiful things. So instead she made her stand without moving. "I don't think I've seen you in the temple before," she said, tilting her head to the side as she looked Anton up and down. "An alter boy?" Kit made a guess. "Helping out Cadmus, huh? You been marked?" She hoped not. The kid having a mark complicated things and sent ranking spiraling into uncertainty, disregarding age and size and everything. But if he was in the temple, chances were high he was . . .

[Anton]

Turning round the bend, into the long, long hallway that opened into the main chapel, streaking pass another set of benches, hopping above and across one of them only to find that, well, people aren't made fair and equal and some of them just closed doors much, much faster than others. He saw the white then, you see, but it wasn't the snowshine of frosty Morwen's visit through Ionu's domain.

It was anger. Hot and searing and just burning to act out.

It was also impotent, for he found that he could not express it.

Even for a sprout of a mere 7 winters, Anton was tiny, by height and girth alike. With a build that made Kit look nourished and well fed in comparison, the top of his head didn't even reach over her shoulder. He looked more toddler than boy at times, and as in to further hammer in their contrasts between them, he wore neat-looking azure temple clothes.

"Aren't you in a rush?"

Staring up at her, he answered her question and her smirk with what he intended to be a don't mess with me glare but, in his experience, tended to invoke more of a please pinch me. I can't bite reaction. Or maybe that was just the head priest's little habit. Cadmus was...well, he was steeped in Ionu's light, and it showed in the little actions.

"Helping out Cadmus? You been marked?"

"Soon!" he said, almost reflexively and most certainly defensively, though he had no idea what she meant by that. Etiquette demanded he finish the customary temple greetings first though. "Welcome to the temple of Ionu, home of the Lord Trickster. The color of the day is orange and the fruit of the day is kumquat. We hope you have a pleasant time." Along with the little bow, stiff in posture and bitter in inference, to the girl that had denied him winter.

[Kit Rowan]

Kit was scarce more than a child herself, and saw enough of a peer in Anton to read what he meant, rather than what adults liked to see. But if she could get away with treating him like a child, then she'd be the adult; she'd have the lead and she'd establish herself at the head. She ignored the threat in his eyes, reached down and mussed up the child's hair in mildly demeaning affection.

There wasn't a whole lot of satisfaction in it, though. She was used to children in the street competing and jockeying for authority and clout, paying the cost for it in boasts and dares and promises. It was like this kid wasn't even playing the same game!

Maybe he wasn't, if he really was an altar boy. Maybe he was just supposed to go around making sure worshipers felt safe and at home. Kit bit down on her lip, feeling suddenly as though she'd been caught kicking a cripple.

He wasn't marked, anyway, and if he wasn't about to try to push her position down that put Kit firmly in front. "I know whose home this is," Kit said, and she couldn't stop the derision from leaking through her voice. Who did he think Kit was, that she wouldn't know? Well, she didn't know the color and fruit of the day, but she half suspected it was something Cadmus had thrown into the introduction just to confuse visitors and please Ionu. "And you can quit it with the tourist pitch; I follow Ionu same as you. They led me here and out of the cold." Kit said a nod, conviction clear in her voice. "You know how the city is."

[Anton]

The girl was...grating. Tall and grating and talking and thinking herself big for it, and Anton had no idea how to deal with it. The other Womiyu children were...well, he wasn't so much the Omega of the pack as he was utterly and completely non-existent. A spectre that everyone pretended not to see. They knew what he was, and what they believed he could and would have done to them.

She didn't, and it would stay that way. Anything -even this, he reckoned- felt better than abject fear. Among other reasons.

"I do," he said, trying to smile, hoping it would rob insult from her obvious condescension. "It's, um, um..." He fumbled nervously for a word, any word that he thought would aptly describe what he believed to be the outside world. She had already stabbed off a large chunk of his little kid dignity in the humiliating short exchanges prior, and he wasn't keen on giving up any more of it. White? No. Too vague. Cold? She used it already. "Uh...Moody. Yeah, moody. That's bad."

He gave himself a slap on the mental forehead. Smooth, boy. Smooth.

"You should pay your respects to Our Lord Trickster," he added lamely, gesturing to the not-altar beyond the benches.

[Kit Rowan]

This time Kit propped both hands against her sides, raised an eyebrow in question. Kit had never heard the city described as 'moody' before, and she was not sure she liked the way it framed her stomping grounds. "It thinks that it's funny, yeah." She said, though she was fairly certain that wasn't what 'moody' actually meant.

The boy was stumbling over himself and trying to cover his tracks with formality. Kit turned her head toward the empty podium. She stared at it for a long moment before she shrugged. "I'll leave Cadmus his altar." She said with a little smirk. Kit ran a hand threw her hair to try to brush off whatever snow was left, brushed it away from her shoulders. "Alvadas is mine."

It had always seemed a small aberration that Ionu's central place of worship was a place of silence and mediation. Where was the color? Where was the noise? She supposed the confusion of that might please Ionu too, but to Kit it always felt like a trick made at the expense of anyone who thought to worship behind the temple walls, as though Ionu would swoop down and bless someone who was dull enough to spend time locked away doing nothing and have the temerity to dedicate it to Ionu and expect them to do anything more than laugh at the prayer.

[Anton]

"But I must insist."

There it was: the tiniest little shift in Anton's squeaky voice, and a very sudden and very brief change in his eyes; a sort of vacancy in his stare. A little bit of an...edge in both, perhaps? An in-and-out flicker of a snake's tongue; the flash of red from something seen as small and limbless and, by it's very nature, timid. But a snake is feared, yes? Not when it's hidden. Not when they don't know a snake's a snake. But the sentence was passed, and so was the moment. Maybe there was never even a moment to begin with. Imagined, most likely, or the product of a boy so unsure of himself that he couldn't even keep up a proper consistent persona chancing upon what could have been interpreted as the the look of a zealot with a little too much sorcery and just looking for a big enough like, say, a silencer-sized, excuse to use it.

A lifetime of training cannot truly, consistently triumphed the human condition, and Anton was winters away from his first decade. Disciplined as he may be, he was still a little child, and the annoyance was growing.

Or it's just imagined. We move on.

"It is custom, please." he continued, bowing once, meek and mellow and polite. "The temple asks only that you pay the proper respects. Please." He added that last word with an unsure little smile and eyes that wouldn't look out of place on a puppy. "Please. Please. Please. Please. Please."

[Kit Rowan]

Insist? Insist. Insist! The word had an electric effect; Kit's little body went a tense. He was gonna demand this of her, huh? Try to push it down her throat? Petch that. She crossed her arms and looked down at the altar boy, her mouth forming a little line. "Proper respects," she said, treating the words like foreign things on her tongue for dramatic effect. "Proper respect . . ."

"Ionu," Kit said. "Is illusion, is mischief, is trickery. If our Trickster wanted me to pay respects, it wouldn't be by kneeling. Actually, down and out, this seems like a pretty crap place to worship. You want respects?" Kit squatted down so she could look Anton in the eye, a little subconscious reminder that she was taller even while she put her face a little closer to his. "Go out into the streets and watch Ionu's city in motion, where there's noise, where they'll sell you bread that looks and smells and feels just fine but tastes like the sweetest chocolate you've ever felt on your tongue."

"I trust the stones of the streets to carry me to where Ionu wants me, I watch the illusionists in the streets and the illusions of the streets. The only better respect than living among Ionu's work is doing it yourself, and I've gotta say, I've not much many tools for harmless mischief on me right now." Kit raised an eyebrow at the boy. "Is this how you pay respects to our colorful, noisy god then?" She nodded to the altar, corner of her mouth twisting up in a derisive smile. "In silent prayer and peaceful mediation?"

[Anton]

He wasn't sure which part hurt the most. Maybe it was the part where she threw his latest bit of courtesy on the ground and stomped on it till it cried and cried until it died choking on its own tears. Or maybe it was the part where she insulted his home. Or maybe it was the part where she brought herself to his physical level in a gesture that said haha shortie shortie short short. Or maybe it was the part where his eyes widened in shock and he took a step back -almost tumbled back onto his arse, but let's pretend there was some dignity to it- when she thrust her face into his, when he just couldn't hold his ground when it counted, when none of the reasons he told himself in the seconds after -that she was bigger, that she was a girl, that she just has that much presence- tried to matter but just didn't, just didn't, just didn't at all.

Truth though? He was sure. He was very, very sure what hurt the most. Those things up there? Those sources of pain? They're the ones he can admit to himself.

Alvadas hurt the most; of a city he couldn't really sit, of noise he couldn't hear, of food he couldn't taste, of serving a god who preaches the values of sensation and wonderlust with silence and quiet subtlety. Scarfiace, they called it. Duality, another had said. But those words didn't change the fact that he could be locked in here forever for all he knew, never to graze outside on the fields of illusion.

Hurt turned to irritation.

"Enjoy your stay here." Another bow, and he turned and walked away, retreating, a less generous man might say. "The temple is welcome to all of Alvadas. I respect your interpretation of Ionu." Again, neutral and squeaky and pleasant. "Even though it is shallow and stupid and conceited and utterly ignorant. Just like you."