Fools to Wisdom

[Cassandra Southwind]

43 Spring, 514
The Basilika

The first quarter of the day found the Basilika mostly empty. Most of those who had come to enjoy the pieces on display had already gone again, but it was too dark to start on proper morning rituals and too early to arrive for a sleepless Rest. Cassandra sat among the stoic, staring art on a bench which may or may not have been on display. Her feet were propped up the marble arm, her head reclining on the seat opposite. A moderately sized book was creased between the fingers of her upstretched hand, the faded pages hovering carefully above her peering eyes.

This was not the first time the wild Svefra girl had graced the hall and its high, cerebral airs--but only in the last few days had she become a regular patron. She was proud of the ragged, roughspun mark she made on the otherwise regal arrangement around her. Some of her happiest memories were the averting gazes of her fellow students, who retreated in the shade of her repelling scowl. It made her happy to make them uncomfortable, to be the other they didn't know what to made of. But she would not smile outwardly, out course.

Because even though she had enrolled in a class at the Academy and spent half of her nights sleeping in a hard, landed bed, Cassandra was still Svefra. Her pod had set sail, had continued their pursuit of the literal horizon while she chased more theoretical ones. But she was still a fisherman, still an adventurer. These mountains and their walls could not take that from her.

She was reminded of the tale of the Svefra man whose cunning had swindled a guild of wealthy cityfolk out of all of their coin, only to prove his point by dumping it all into the heart of the Suvan. The more appropriate story would not occur to her for weeks to come: that of the drunken city sailor, who thought he could be a pirate if he taught the flotilla how to sail.

In the lonely dark of the near-empty Basilika, Cassandra let herself crack a smile.

Then her attention settled again on her book. She had been staring at the same page for nearly a half-bell, her mind wandering where her eyes could not focus. She still hadn't admitted to her astronomy professor how little she could read of the text she was apparently expected to memorize; for now, she wavered between the opposing strategies of Sucking Up And Learning Already and the much less honorable Giving Up. The latter was certainly easier, but it would have meant that staying in Lhavit had been for naught.

She had almost forgotten another reason for staying, but then she finally decided to call it a night. With a heavy sigh, she closed the book and sat up. When her fingers fell from her eyes, she saw a face that stirred her memories like wildfire.

Alses.

The hall had filled a little since she had last laid down, but Cassandra could only see one. The ethaefal's lesser form seemed to glow in the stale air around her, twisting the student's stomach in an anchor hitch around her heart. She blinked a few times before she regained her composure, but she could not resist the pink that flared around her ears. A part of her was convinced that the long lost night had been a dream, and that she would never see Alses again.

But there she was.

"Alses," she said lowly, and the acoustics happily carried her hesitance to every ear. Embarrassed, Cass stood and decided to approach instead. It took a few ticks to close the place between them, and every frantic moment was filled with the desperate decision of what exactly she was going to say when she got there.

She sighed again when she was close enough to speak, her book rolled unceremoniously in her fist. Forgetting to smile, she stammered, "How-- where are you here? I mean-- what-- how are you?"

[Alses]

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OOCYou don't need to apologise for length; I enjoyed it . Nice to have you back with us.

It was obvious to anyone with attentive eyes that Alses had slept poorly – if indeed at all. Her mortal chain, therefore, was looking rather the worse for wear; the normally-pale skin around her eyes had taken on a bruise-purple tint, and her eyelids were puffy - not so much bags under the eyes as eight-piece luggage sets. Her neck had swollen, too; the normally-invisible slits on each side that were her gills now glared out into the world at large, expanding and contracting slightly with every breath of the cool night air.

A white ghost, swathed in ruffled cream silk and gold, she drifted across the skyglass terraces that made up the bowl of the Basilika, segueing smoothly between paintings and drawings, between elaborate furniture and fine sculpture, ambling in an aimless spiral towards the centre. She occasionally stopped to examine a piece amid the empty clutter before quickly moving on, often before the sleepy artists themselves had even fully registered her presence, flitting from display to display without rhyme or reason.

Here, her eyes ghosted over the shimmer of a marble arm, forever reaching mutely out. There, her gaze lingered on the shapely curve of a bronze thigh, glowing in the light. Further on still, she feasted richly on the fruits of a painter’s labour, so skilfully done it looked as though one could simply reach into the painting and take your fill.

None of them held her attention for long, however, her gaze distant and far-focused – which for Alses meant that she was seeing far more than most others ever could, the pre-dawn gloom turned into a spangled diorama of colour and sound and phantom touch with the merest subconscious flicker of desire and rendered into ever more intricate displays if anything inspired her conscious interest.

Something so mundane as sound took a while to percolate through to her brain; the sound of her daytime name took some time to register as she soared through the dreaming depths of the world, enjoying her own private firework show.

The spiny, spiky, prickly-as-a-porcupine aura, though, sharp with the tang of salt and the sea, as abrupt as a slap to the face, that got her attention far more quickly, stirring up memories and…other things. She knew that taste, that sight, every ripple and jag of it, how it could open up like a flower or close down in ticks, bristling with defensive needles. She’d done both, on the strangest of nights in Lhavit, and then, when morning was near, the sea-bound Svefra had vanished like a dream and Alses had barely caught a glimpse of her since.

Indeed, had it not been for the occasional feel of that aura on her skin, and her absolute confidence in her abilities as an aurist, she’d have dismissed the whole encounter as a strange bit of Aviakittis fantasy, and any subsequent flickers as nothing more than a bit of idle mental longing. As it was, however…

The low, hesitant echoes froze Alses in place and she turned, slowly, heart inconveniently in her mouth for some reason, almost fearful of whatever she would see.

Cassandra.

Close – almost too close, the incandescent inferno of her emotions tightening Alses’ skin with their phantom heat, boiling and writhing around her, face mask-like and almost inhuman in its taut stillness with the effort of restraining the inner confusion, a small volume clutched, forgotten, by her side.

Cassandra’s speech was…disjointed, jumbled, sharply defensive even though it probably wasn’t meant to be, two questions in rapid-fire succession and then mutely asking eyes, the blue trembling with…all sorts of things.

To give herself some space to think, to get away from the battering assault of the girl so near and all the inner strangeness that resulted from her proximity – Alses hadn’t imagined that on Aviakittis night, she noticed sourly – she shut her eyes, swaying slightly in place as the words echoed in her head.

“Why am I here?” she echoed, unconsciously correcting the mistake, eyes sliding open slightly, the world still liquidly blurred. “Couldn’t sleep,” she admitted. “And help from the kariino only goes so far.”

A smile tugged at the edges of her pale lips. “Which also tells you how I am: tired. For the moment, anyway.”

Alses gestured rather aimlessly out at the Basilika and the remnants of the night’s displays, hand vague and languid. “I like looking at the artworks. Sculptures especially, these days. Keep meaning to buy some, as it happens. Make home a little less…empty.” There was perhaps a soupcon of loneliness and even a touch of unease in her voice at that as she tailed off, eyes gazing past Cassandra and the Basilika, into the middle distance and Tenten peak, atop which her home glowed.

Switching her attention back with a jolt to the tensed figure so close – she could reach out and touch her, could almost feel the warmth, the actual, physical warmth, of her body – Alses looked down and away, noting with no small surprise the book nestled in the crook of Cassandra’s hand. “You’re reading at this bell?”

She blinked midway through continuing that, as another part of her fatigue-poisoned brain finally kicking into life and nudging her insistently. “Your pod,” she murmured, chasing the thought and abandoning the previous subject, even though it was one dear to her heart. “I thought – your pod’s left, hasn’t it? I’m sure the paperwork went across my desk…you’re still here?” The rising inflection at the end turned it into the most delicate of questions, left hanging in the air between them.
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[Cassandra Southwind]

Cassandra's empty hand fidgeted uncertainly at her side until it found solace in scratching the back of her neck. There it lingered, somehow a nuisance that she had never noticed before. What did one usually do with their hands during a conversation, much less an encounter with one such as Alses? Cass hardly noticed the fatigue that darkened the woman's luminous face, but still she gave a careful expression of pity when she described as much. Between these thoughts and the others that swarmed behind her eyes, Cass did not realize that she was not the only one suffering from mental distresses.

She let herself glance at the pieces around them when Alses mentioned them, uncertain which ones were supposed to be good and which could be deemed sub-par. She decided against engaging in that path of discourse, having already embarrassed herself enough with that sod of an introduction. Knowing Cass, she would not be able to avoid expressing her disdain for the frivolity of art and artists.

Her fist tightened on her book when she realized that warm green eyes had fallen on it. She lifted it with a shrug. "Introduction to Astronomy," she explained, then showed Alses the faded title on the wrinkled cover. "I... I am taking a class, at the Academy."

She couldn't remember if she had mentioned her explicit interest in studying the stars on that night they shared, but she did remember most of what had been shown to her. The ethaefal held an intimate connection to the stars, and so did she value the tradition of knowledge and study for which the city prized itself; Cass wondered, hoped even, that Alses might be proud of her effort.

Consciously she opened the book and flipped quickly through its pages. The marks danced blindly before her undiscerning eyes. "I do not..." She began, then hesitated. After an instant she decided that there was no need for pretense, that honesty was a cherished necessity in Alses's presence. "I do not read very well, so I take much time to study. I like it, though. I did not think it takes so much energy to work so little."

She had practiced that last part, the grammar and flow of it, in anticipation of many a conversation with a classmate. But of course, she never let them get close enough for that. Talking to people was hard--at least, talking to cityfolk. Come to think of it, Cassandra had not spoken more than five words to anyone except maybe Valory, her dolphin tavan, since...

"My pod will be back in a year," she explained quickly, and it did not take an aurist to see the pang of loneliness that lilted between the words.

One which was quickly drowned by the shallows of small talk. Cassandra's eyes wandered upward, as if attempting to glimpse the stars through the glowing skyglass arches. Her voice bounced on her exposed neck, her book resting comfortably between both hands. "Did you take this class? Or were you born with knowing the stars?"

[Alses]

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Alses twisted her head sideways to squint at the title, the remnants of gilding winking in the faint light and distracting her, rather than making it easier to comprehend the printed letters. A tick or two of observation, though, and she managed to get the title, correlating it with what Cass had actually said. “Astronomy class? You are? How splendid!” her smile was small, but warm, sincerity and tiredness combining together to make it.

“If I recall aright-” as though she could forget “-you were interested in the stars the last time we met – met properly, I mean.” A faint scowl flitted across Alses’ features as she recalled the Midwinter Ball, and the way in which Cassandra had slipped through her fingers – or rather, had been snatched away.

She wanted to ask how the auction-induced date had gone – hoping that the answer was ‘terribly’ – but Alses just couldn’t quite figure out how to put the question into words, still less words that wouldn’t be offensive in some manner.

“I’m glad you’re pursuing your interests,” she settled on, lamely, instead, letting the frown pass away into the silence. “The stars and the vastness of the universe are a worthy subject of study.” A wry, slightly mocking smile. “But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?” She tilted her head back to look skywards, beyond the bowl of the Basilika and its lacework arches, beyond the lights of Lhavit and its spires, out to the glittering stars and nebulae of Zintila’s jewellery box: the universe.

“It’s not that you’re not working,” she reassured quickly. “Just that you’re performing work of an altogether different kind – and mental effort can be just as tiring as physical toil. Perhaps more so, in some cases, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Absently, she twisted her hands together, a physical expression of her own nervousness.

The light of the Basilika and the universe as a whole threw her upturned face into high, dramatic relief as she continued, voice high and pensive. “I didn’t take your class,” she admitted quietly. “What I know of the heavens is something I fell to Mizahar with. Rather like remembering home after too long away; all the details are fuzzy. Big landmarks I know in my bones, the detail…not so much.” She sighed heavily and turned her face unerringly eastwards, to where the sky was lightening with all the inevitability of dawn.

A smile – an anticipatory, beautiful smile – split her lips in expectation of the feast that would dance across all of Lhavit soon enough, heralding the change of the skyglass from abyssal shades to the rosy rainbow glow of the daytime, and her own personal resumption of glory. Not quite here, not yet, but still so close in her mind that Alses felt that all she would have to do was reach out a hand and take it, embrace the Change that the true dawn’s lemon-yellow light brought.

She pulled herself back to the present with an effort – Lhavit still wore its darkened mantle, even though her brain had skipped ahead to that glorious time and the choir that would sing confidence into her consciousness, Syna’s radiance warm and reassuring at her back. When she was Ethaefal, then the armour was there, perfect and impervious, she was the laughing sun incarnate, all aglow with poise and precision and power. When she was Konti, though…wrapped in a corpse’s pale flesh, there was the shivering core of her soul, all raw and open.

Shaking herself minutely, with a rustle of ruffled silk and a whispering shimmer of gold, Alses brought herself back to the matter in hand. “Proficiency will come with practice, that I can promise you, but…would – that is, would it help if…if you had some assistance? I still remember how I was taught – it wasn’t that long ago – and you’re always welcome to visit me and my home, you know.”

That, too, Alses thought sneakily, might help just a little with the loneliness exploding off the girl in great curling waves; Cassandra was all at sea - to continue the metaphor - in the static environment of the city, without a means to chart her way through the undercurrents and riptides of society, without a lighthouse in the dark to guide her to safe waters.
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