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[Itt]

Rhysol's Disease

3rd of Spring, 519 A.V.
Previously...

Like maggots that crawled in tandem to the thumping of his pulsating heart, Itt felt his muscles and skin twitch. They clambered on his spine causing him to curl backward, Itt unable to run away from the host of his mental bacteria properly. The large temple towered over behind him, it's domed roof eclipsed into black suns. He ran from them, he ran from the black suns, towards the lake of Ravok, the waters that had so willingly accepted him way back when. He stomped his feet on the sturdy, floating platforms they called roads, his entire body shaking with each step, attempting to bring the pain in his head to his limbs. His limbs can be numbed, his limbs can be cast away from him. But his head could not, and the voices in his head could not be silenced.

He slowed to a stumbled, then veered to the left, away from the canal that surrounded the temple, his shoulder hitting the person beside him. People were in good spirits from the celebrations of the day before, and the day before that, Rhysol's blessing already reaping rewards, so the man grabbed Itt to support him rather than throw him to the ground. The man spoke in garbled tongue, Itt's ability to decipher language leaving like he felt his soul leaving him.

The more Itt tried to think, the more he pushed the voices away, the more he spiraled downward into his irrational imagination. He couldn't repress the self-imposed illusions of black ink distilling the blood in his veins.

"NO!!" He cried, shoving the man away. The strange stumbled back towards the canal, falling over the edge and onto a passing Rasovala with passengers who were enamored with the elegancy of the chaos factory. The couple on the small vessel screamed as the man's sudden weight tipped over the boat, all the people on board falling into the cold, fresh water with panicked splashes. The people around gasped, some going over to try and help them out of the water.

Itt continued to run. He ran as far away from the city center as he could.

Sweat. Run. Sweat. Run. Run home, little boy.

Tears touched his cheeks and dropped to the ground. He ran through the Noble district with its aromas of perfume and steamy baths and sweeteners. It's architectural delicacy aplenty with its gargoyles and stained windows and brass lined doors. The air was coated in sugar and honey, sticking to the inside of his throat like smog. His starving stomach clenched, Itt gagging. Acid filled his throat. He spat it out and continued on.

After passing by many guards on duty to protect the noble district, he ran across a bridge into the Merchant's Ring with bustling sellers. Everyone was shouting. Everyone. There was no path he could take where he did not hear the shouting of urgent salesmen and women attempting to sell their goods, and the customers eager to buy. People reached out for objects the objects like the hands of those who reached out to their god in the Temple of the Black Sun.

Itt shoved his way past the crowds, even cutting across the canal that cut through the People's Market. He jumped into the frigid water, swimming to the other side, the fish that some children had been feeding urgently swimming away. Itt clambered out with a desperate grip on the foundation. A worried passerby came over, a woman taking his hand without his consent, trying to pull him up. "No! Stop! No! Please!" He begged. He begged for her to let him go, for the voices to let him go. You're next. "No, no, no, please!" He yanked his arm away from her, she nearly becoming a victim of the water herself. She let go and quickly stepped away, letting the fearful Itt climb out of the water himself and scramble on the road like a fish out of water, coughing at the scents of fish and meat engulfing him. The steam and smoke of cooking clung to his wet skin, and the warm air burned against his newly soaked skin.

You're next, his curse told him. "I don't- no, I please, no!" Itt pushed himself to this feet, slipping on the wet boards that lined the canal. He flinched at the stares that gazed at him like a caged bird. He grimaced at the intensity of their eyes. He fled into a valley, cutting through the ring of terrible screams and shouts, finally making his way to the docks.

The horizon of the lake was cool and calm, unlike the raging in his head. The waves that used to wave at him now gnashed their glimmering teeth, the splashing of trout raging claws. Itt ran along the far edges of Ravok, looking for boats that were going towards shore. Every boat he came across, however, was either already gone, well into the water, or was securely docked for the day, the fishermen and travelers unpacking their things. Itt gripped his hair, pulling it with clenched fists, the accumulated algae that tinted his hair a slight green sliming off onto his hands.

A crew of fishermen walked towards him with nets and hooks, their narrow-eyed gaze as they avoided the sun bringing the sinister thoughts to his head. You're next. He gasped, running away from them, finding himself, yet again, in another alley beside the Silver Sliver Tavern.

He pressed his back against the wall, his arms and hands covering his head. He heart battered the inside of his chest to the point it hurt. He avoided the people on the street, hiding behind the trash bins and staying in the shadows. He screamed to overpower the voices.

He can't be near them, he can't be near anyone, he needed to stay away, he needed to be alone.

Alone...

He was alone.

Truly alone...

[Caspian]

It can get tricky, sometimes, thinking in six.

Caspian mulls over the smattering of musical notation he’d scribbled in deep charcoal on a scrap torn from his notebook, the shorthand of it serving, as the minutes go by, to only further muddle his recollections of the turns of phrase and pitch that had occurred to him, rather than memorialize them in some reliably retrievable way.

The easier path, if one is writing a song, is undoubtedly to do it in the usual four - but Caspian, of course, has gone for the thing that boasts a time signature with a bit more of a flourish, so rather than striking the downbeats of straightforward quadruplets, he’s gone for a dimensioning of his musical measures that demands he somehow divide an eight into a six and then a three and sometimes a two, and carry it off as if doing so is second nature.

It’s not work, this. The awkward angling is something you get used to, juggling violin and bow and dresser-turned-stand with questionable written depiction of music and wood-wrapped stick of charcoal on top. Backing-and-forthing between a thought occurring, to his lifting his violin to his shoulder and sliding the bow on top or lightly plucking the strings to get a semblance of the pitches he’d envisioned, to pausing to contemplate and playing a little scrap of the same thing but different, to taking that scrap and manifesting it in ciphers on paper that only he can understand, that understanding at best barely tenuous -

Tedious, sure, but it isn’t work, because despite everything to the contrary, he’s actually quite happy these days. Happiness is relative, relative is a Slag Heap - disregarding that entirely and the fact remains that he loves it, his violin, and he doesn’t shimmer on it like he used to but he’s getting there, to an aptitude he once called his own, and it’ll take some doing but he’s already happy with this, even now, with scrambling and fussing and the curvatures of the instrument that sings in sallying, saccharine slips in the slopes of his arms.

The song he’s writing - he’s not sure what it is yet, but it’s something to do with this city, with the lapping of the waves against the Docks he calls home, with the sway of dark robes around tight temple corners and the loving slurring of silken skirts and gilded oars through waters grave, beneath bridges light. Ravok sings to him in 6/8 time, always, and he’s tried for 4/4 but that was forcing it, imposing some degree of jagged stateliness that he’s never felt it inherently conveys.

There’s no forcing it, though, and in good spirits he abandons composing, for the moment at least, and his bow across the strings finds old songs he knows by heart in its liberation. There are merry waltzes he can twirl into the air, that bloom through his open window, out from his apartment and into the streets below. Spring is not something he’s ever particularly held his breath for, despite his having been born in it - but today, the city’s fete still seems to show no signs of relenting, and it’s infectious, the giddiness, the full-hearted embrace of having been granted by Rhysol’s will, a means for so many to thrive, and Caspian allows himself to wrap himself up in a little bit of it with the rest of them.

Three hours have passed today since he first took up his violin. The time had winked away without his knowing, but had he some cosmic opportunity to trade them back, he would have refused without hesitation. It will likely take another three, and another, and maybe a dozen further to piece together the melody that for the past week has been winding towards him, dredging itself up from the depths of the lake, swanning on ravosala’s swing through the canals, to slither up the docks and stairs and into the thrumming of his heart. To articulate the need to articulate itself has taken him this long - but he won’t rush this, and note by steady note it will eke itself, and then -

Caspian sets his violin on his table and loosens the camber on his bow, throws on his burgundy tailed coat and slips out of his apartment.

There’s no aftermath he wishes for this song, no prize he seeks, or payment, and he certainly hopes there’s no consequence. The thing existing for the sake of itself will, its fate perhaps to simply be added to his readily recoverable repertoire of Sunberthian drinking salutes and Avanthine lullabies.

Aside from the suggestion of what can barely be designated as a song, Caspian’s reward for his last three hours’ labor is hunger. When he exits his apartment building and tips out onto the late afternoon’s blithe bustle, he’s still not entirely decided what he’d rather - he’ll just see if any of the stalls catches his eye, he supposes, or the eye of someone with a disposition for the sympathetic.

When he turns a corner, though, just past his home and the directly proximal Silver Sliver Tavern, it’s with a good deal of surprise that he runs right into someone he knows.

“Itt?” Caspian says, bounding back. The smile that organically spreads across his face is arrested, though, at the sight of the Kelvic, who -

Well, there’s no courtly way of putting it - but Itt rather looks as if his soul’s been a touch... spit out and siphoned.

It’s a drastic departure from when they’d send each other out in the open fair, only two days before.

“Where’ve you been?”

He’s already scanned the alley, before and behind them. Strollers and jovial revelers aside, they appear to be alone.

[Itt]

Itt had been alone his entire life.

Even in the days before he left home, and during the days that his mother held his hands he alone. He couldn't communicate then, with his mother or father. He couldn't truly connect with them, and they didn't want to connect with him. When he lived in his tree and ventured into his home city, all he saw was faces and heard voices. He never talked with anyone for again, he was unable to. Even here, in Ravok, where he's learning how to speak, he couldn't connect with others. Everything moved so quickly around him, he could never fully latch on to anyone. His entire life has been grasping at language and coats, only to have them slip between his fingertips, the people to be swept away by the world. No one ever stayed.

He has always been alone.

Hiding from the depths of his emotional torment, Itt buried his face into his knees. He was always alone, even now. He can't escape the solitude, it was a part of him. It was in his mind, speaking to him. He was alone even in his thoughts. Nothing but that word could penetrate his brain.

Alone, alone, alone, alone, alone.

The worst part was that this wasn't just about solitude. This was about isolation. He wasn't simply alone because he had no one to talk to, no one to call friend. He was by himself because no one wanted to talk to him. No one wanted to be his friend. This was confinement. Seclusion. Segregation. Quarantine. It was purposeful. Everyone he's met didn't happen to leave. He parents didn't happen to leave him at that tree. They wanted him there, they wanted him gone.

Maybe they knew about his sickness. Maybe he's had this disease all along and everyone could smell it. He's been infected with this illness since day one and everyone was actually being tolerant of him instead of just throwing him into some lake to drown. Hit him over the head until he bled his black, black blood. The infectious ichor that consumed him now, telling him the reality of his life.

That made everything so much worse. Everything from Shiress saving him to Caspian talking to him on that roof. It all wasn't real. They weren't his friends. They didn't want him around.

Itt's chest tightened to the point of wheezing. He wanted desperately for it to not be true, but everything was telling him so. He didn't want Caspian's guidance on the roof when they were being chased by the guards to be just another way for him to get rid of him. After all, Caspian did come to him in the first place, didn't he? He didn't have to come sit by him. He chose to do that on his own. Right?

In Itt's internal strife, he recalled the festival a few days ago when he had met Caspian the second time. He came out and purposefully called to him, didn't he? That wasn't avoidance. He could have kept walking. So... he had a connection to Caspian. Yeah?

Man, it was almost as if he could hear him calling his name how vivid he saw him standing outside of the bustling crowd.

But he didn't recall him asking 'where've you been'.

Itt lifted his head away from the small isolation chamber he had created, looking both ways down the alley. He blinked through blurry, wet eyes at the figure, biting the inside of his lip. "Caspian?" He spoke, but the words were almost lyrical with their wavering tone. It might have looked like he was crying, with his puffy eyes that were pink around the edges, but visible tears were hard to find since they blended in with the moist droplets of sweat that were smeared on his face and forehead.

Abandoned.

Itt curled more, his shoulder lifting as if to hide his face, though his neck stretched to continue to peer at the figure that he desperately hoped was the man he had met on the roof. The man he had seen at the festival and had talked to. Someone who he could say hadn't slipped through his fingers yet.

"I-I-" He sniffed, his nose stinging with another bout of tears, "Caspian, please?"

[Caspian]

“Oh, Itt, I - petch the stars above -“

The state of things is much worse than Caspian had initially realized, and he bites back the rest of the swears that begin to bubble up. Something’s horribly amiss, doesn’t take a great detective to divulge as much - but what that something is, and if it is yet lingering and lumbering and looming, may not be something either of the two of them can handle.

They can assess later, plenty of time for that to be had - and the switch flips in him, the one from dandy about town to skulker on bended knee, one of the reasons if not just sheer dumb luck that he’s survived 25 years of life so far, and all errant thoughts of his promenade and late lunch are banished, making room instead for ones of scrying and survival.

Survival from what, exactly, he doesn’t know, but they can’t linger here, especially not with the hurdles of Itt’s modes of communication which undoubtedly would keep them ever longer.

“Itt,” he says softly, venturing closer, holding out his hand carefully and still keeping vigilant sights on both ends of the alley. “I live nearby, okay? Come with me.” Verbosity might be the end of him, from that way he’d careened the night they first met, but Itt’s so rattled and looks like porcelain someone’s gone out of their way to shatter - so he against perhaps better judgment adds in urgent murmur, “You don’t have to. I can just - no. Whatever you want. But it’s not far, I promise, and I don’t think it’s safe to stay out here.”

[Itt]

Itt wasn't sure what he wanted Caspian to do, despite calling out for help. Itt himself didn't know what to do, he felt his mind seemingly start to deteriorate. What did he want him to do? What should he do? What was wrong with him? What was happening to him?

He asked so many things but nothing was answered, the feeling of his pulse throbbing in his neck and flooding his brain in powerful pounds made him hurt. His head hurt. His tongue was dry, trying to lick the insides of his mouth, the moisture relocated to his cheeks and eyes. His blue veins appeared black within his blurry vision, his stomach flopping inside him.

Nothing was right. Everything is wrong.

Itt tried to focus on Caspian's voice, though he mumbled some of his words, making it indiscernible. Whether this was because of Caspian's own doing or because Itt was slowly losing his ability to hear over the cacophony of sounds beating inside his skull he couldn't tell. He looked up at the man, his stance changing— molding into a hideous hunch and prowling legs, standing on the balls of their feet.

Everyone was right. Everything is wrong.

For the moment that Caspian lurked forward, Itt's heart stopped before fluttering in hasty panic. You're next. Itt forced his head into his lap, knees jamming into his eye sockets. He couldn't bear to look at what his friend had become, he couldn't look at his stalker, his aggressor, his killer. If he was next then they better just do it and rid him of the misery of his solitude!

Itt shuddered at the sound of his name, his neck lifting his head away from his knees before he could crush them into a jam. He gazed back at Caspian, over his shoulder, the one who spoke, the words coming easily onto his ears.

I live.

I live? Itt blinked, the lingering tears that hung from his corners falling just before his hands wiped his eyes, swollen and red. Was he really, okay? Lowering the hands, he looked at the shadow looming before him, finding green eyes that weren't furrowed with anger, or teeth-baring with a sharp shine. It was, indeed, Caspian. As he had said, he lived.

"I live." The words pierced Itt's tight lips and clenched throat. Caspian was really here, and if he had lived through whatever maniacal phase of transformation that was, then he could beat this disease too. He may be dying, but he wasn't dead yet. He could live.

Itt only needed to hear the word come in order to unfurl himself from his fetal position, legs aching to stretch with shivering muscles. He put a hand against the brick wall pushing himself up to stand, inhaling deeply through his nose, audibly snorting the collected snot. He could do this.

He can beat this. His moist hand grasped onto Caspian's like the grip of death, the sloth holding onto Caspian's lifeline like the limbs of a tree holding him high above the ground. His free hand quickly wiped his eyes in a failed attempt to clear them completely of the water that caused his vision to become murky, standing on the balls of his feet, ready to leap wherever his friend led him.

"Yes." He sniffed.

[Caspian]

The strength with which Itt takes Caspian’s hand catches him off guard for a moment, and were it anyone else, he might have instinctively wrung his way out - he might not have offered his hand in the first place - but it passes without his needing to convince himself of anything that he hasn’t already decided.

Quickly, with purposeful alacrity, he leads Itt out from the alley with a sharp turn around the corner. The Silver Sliver isn’t ever entirely without even the most scattered of customers, but it is a little quiet now, quieter than he thinks it ought to be on a temperate afternoon, and he scrolls back through his mind to how it had appeared when he’d first passed it a few minutes prior. Were the patrons the same? Were there any more, any less? Was the barmaid always wearing an apron trimmed with green - or had it been blue? Was anyone watching them too closely now?

No one apprehends them - and no one, at least to Caspian’s knowledge, pays them more mind than anyone reasonably would, to see two people suddenly emerge from a brick-lined alley, the one of them in tears. (And maybe there’s something to critique for that collective apathy - but it makes this part a little easier, so it’s perhaps not something to be missed.)

It’s two tight flights of stairs up to his unit, and his heightened alertness doesn’t let him simmer until he’s unlocked his door, let them both in, and bolted it behind them.

Fastidiousness is imminent in Caspian’s compact but immaculately swept apartment. One of his saving graces, of which he possesses remotely and sparingly - but no matter the late hours at which he so often drags himself home, or the fizzled states into which he drinks and smokes, he keeps his possessions in their tidy, preassigned places, and the reinstatement of them there in the event they’re dislodged an action of constant compulsion.

There’s a modest circular table in the corner, corralled by two wicker-woven chairs on which are tied two quilted cushions in deep green. The sheets on his bed are laid immaculately flat, pillows fluffed to undisturbed pronouncement and to the right is a chest of drawers hewn in deep mahogany, against which his violin case is propped. A restroom with wash basin and mirror, a closet left slightly ajar through which he can catch the glimmer of his sapphire suit with its glimmering silver embroidery - and two windows through which the afternoon light streams silently and innocuously through. All in all - the typical rented Ravokian unit one might find Dockside, save for a modestly sized painting hanging upon the far wall by the dining table.

The depiction contained within its heavily oiled strokes is as typical in subject matter as the home in which it’s housed, a veritably digestible illustration of the sea, land, and sky - but the curious part that might be noted is its gradual but measurable shifting in color and form.

“Itt,” Caspian says, out of his own knowledge of the magical curiosity paying the painting no mind, leading him to one of the wicker chairs and fussing about for a carafe of water and a glass. “Are you alright? What the petch happened?”

[Itt]

A mixture of mental exhaustion from the barrage of varying voices in Itt's head and the lack of physical energy from his sprint and slow starvation forces his legs to wobble as he stood to follow Caspian. His toes spread and pressed into the ground as if attempting to root themselves into the floating city, and his head was heavy and hung weakly like a broken tree limb one gust away from plummeting to the ground. But Caspian's momentum kept him moving, his feet slapping along one after another. If it weren't for the movement, Itt would have planted himself right where he was, and stayed, but each step uprooted him, readying himself for the next.

It was a vaguely painful process, the soles of his feet stinging from their heavy steps and the forced movement when his body protested led him to even more tears. But Caspian had plans, Caspian was going to help him, he was going to overcome this disease. It wouldn't take him. Right?

Liar.

Itt looked at the back of Caspian's head, turning and looking around like a deer amidst the crackling of twigs. No, Caspian wouldn't lie to him. Caspian wouldn't do that, Caspian was his friend, he helped him before, on the roof, Caspian isn't a liar.

Itt stumbled over a loose board, breaking his gaze from the back of Caspian's head for the moment it took for him to regain his balance. When his burning, red-eyed stare returned, looking at the hand that held his, it was dark, gangly, and searing. Itt gasped, quickly following the arm back up to Caspian's head which was now a slimy, black mass with red, pointed teeth, strange marking lining its neck like the priest at the temple. Itt went to scream, but the closing of his throat in fear forced it down to a meager whine, drowned out by the creaking of the tavern door opening and the loud clatter and chatter of teeth, tongues, and boots.

Itt's fingers released the beast that was dragging him, but Caspian's grip alone was enough to keep him moving and to not resist. If Itt forced the hand to release him, he was afraid he would root himself in place and be stuck where he was. But if he continued, then it surely would be his doom.

The mortified Kelvic, met with an impossible dilemma, was about to pull himself away from the creature, when a tingling sensation came across the side of his face. The sensation of a gentle caressing of his cheek from warm fingertips grazing across the fuzz of his skin.

Itt jerked his head to the side, trying to face the source, only meeting vaguely intrigued eyes from a few of the members of the Inn. But there was only one that Itt locked eyes with the moment he looked over.

A woman.

She sat at a table with several others, mostly men in varying degrees of uniform. Unlike her compatriots who were more focused on their jokes and conversation, she watched Itt with a silent stare, neither cold nor welcoming. She leaned back in her chair, shedding the gloves from her hand, red markingsChaon gnosis tracing the skin of her fingers and palm.

While Itt stared at her there was no sound.

People moved and bellowed with laughter, order their drinks, and clunked across the floor, but nothing made a sound. There were no voices. No heaviness over his body. Even for a chime, there was no one else but them. Him and her, sitting in a void. Staring.

Clear as the day was from the night, the woman inhaled slowly and deeply, the breath flooding Itt's ears. Itt did the same. Slowly, she let out her breath, and while her eyes shifted away from him, the world around him began to return. First sounds, then the visuals, everything returning from their faded appearances until he was firmly placed back in the Silver Sliver, Caspian's grip holding tight to his hand. The woman turned to her companions and joined in on their laughter.

Itt looked back at the hand that held his, and it returned to the familiar grasp of the man he had met and known. Caspian brought him to the stairs, Itt glancing over his shoulder towards the woman in an attempt to get one last look. Unfortunately, he was too late.

Before Itt knew it, he was in Caspian's quarters and sitting in a chair by a painting of a large body of water. Similar it how the lake looked before he set sail to Ravok. Was this painting of Lake Ravok?

Who was that woman?

Recollecting the event of walking by, Itt couldn't remember the darkness and isolation of the two of them together. He only remembered that it had felt that they were by themselves. Visually he remembered entering the tavern, turning to look to his right, spotting her for a brief moment, and then heading upstairs. But it had to be longer than that. He felt that something happened. He didn't hear any voices anymore. Something had to have happened.

He couldn't have imagined it.

The sound of the name Caspian had given him jostled him out of his contemplation, Itt looking up with his brown eyes at the man who was searching for something. What he was searching for he didn't know.

Itt pawed at his eyes, sniffing to gain some composure. He didn't know if he was alright. He didn't feel alright. For a moment, when he was with that woman he did, but something was still wrong, and he couldn't put a finger on it. Was he still infected? He couldn't tell, he was too tired to try and figure it out let alone explain what had happened with his extremely broken language skills.

Even when he did put some thought into it, the only thing he thought of to say in a shakey, meek voice was, "Rhysol... Rhysol..."

[Caspian]

Religion is inescapable in this city, the mere touch of Rhysol himself all the more impossible to elude. It writes itself into the seams of the cobblestones, the swing of the ravosalaman’s oar, the clinking of the chains wrapping the limbs of the live cargo on the Lark barges, infiltrating the pace of every resident here joining or giving way to the processions leading from one shrine to the next. Through now, Caspian has kept himself away and out of it. There were cues he learned to adapt to, where to kneel and when, the angle considered sufficient for bowing one’s head, the number of breaths to be counted to span the respectable duration one should hold themselves in introspective rapture. He knows the songs too, the children’s choruses and the droning temple hymns, easy enough for him to pick up on and intriguing in their choral dissonance, a sharp deterrence from the alternating merriment and wistful rambles of Snowsong Hold.

Of course he can’t subvert Rhysol here, not even under his own roof, the name escaping from Itt with a tenor that sets Caspian on edge.

“Friend of yours?” he asks arily, the unease of that edge leading him to his default directives of wryness that tend to emerge when he’s at a loss.

Ineffectual here, though, maybe - and beyond ineffectual, probably unhelpful and likely damaging and categorically unnecessary and infuriatingly said and done.

Frowning slightly, he sets the glass down before Itt on the table, filling it with water from the carafe, and takes the seat opposite him. It doesn’t lift, though, the growing sense that he may be quite out of his depth here - because in the typically interpersonal he knows how to stoke an ego, assuage certain strains of guilt, coax and hoax and goad but here -

Meaningless, his bag of tacks and tricks, because between himself and Itt everything’s pared itself once again to what does meet the eye.

Behind Itt, Akvin’s painting shifts and warps, the sky greying and clouds passing across the sun to conceal its rays, the waves growing to looming heights to crash ever hard upon the rubble-strewn shore.

[Itt]

Itt stared at the floorboards in front of him as he lowered his hands from his face, clasping them together with an intensity that made them tremor. His breath was quivering in his chest too, exhaling in sporadic, brief chunks. He sucked in his lips, biting down on them to force his mouth closed so he would breathe through his nose. His nose was better at breathing than his mouth was. Unless it was clogged with snot like it was.

The snot flapped and globbed around in his sinuses when he inhaled. Already annoyed by the sensation, Itt exhaled quickly. The mucus dislodged like he had hoped, but it spewed onto the floor like a projectile. Itt jolted, startled by the yellow glob's speed. He quickly got out of his chair and onto his knees, his hands swiping across the snot in an attempt to wipe it up. It worked. If his goal was to try and coat as much of his hands and the ground as possible in the stringy slime.

Friends of his? "No, no, no, no friends. No friends." They were definitely not his friends. Rhysol was not his friend. You don't have any friends. His eyes started to water again.

Caspian turning around and placing water on the table brought his attention away from the sticky mess he was creating. He stood up and returned to his seat, his back to the living painting. He swallowed. "No friends. Rhysol no friends." He avoided eye contact, eyeing the room. "No friends."

[Caspian]

The sudden expectoration’s a bit startling, and for a moment Caspian hesitates, because he’s never been much in charge of anything like this before, the absence of prior experience the result of his having a knack for disappearing before full onset of inconvenience. Something clicks in him, though, a successive evolution of the instinctive compulsion that had overcome him when he’d put out his hand in the alley, and with discreet flourish - if such a thing could ever be - he draws out a scalloped handkerchief from his right pocket and offers it to Itt. From his left pocket he’s got another one, this one with a corner monogrammed in gold, and with a tip of water from the carafe, he swiftly mops up the floor. A quick flick over his shoulder, and the handkerchief lands past his chest of drawers, squarely tucked away in a corner and out of sight. To Itt, Caspian flashes a conspiratorial schoolboy grin - so maybe he’s digging in his bag of social tricks for lightening a mood after all, and he can only hope the demonstrated flippancy has some effect in a positive direction.

“I only meant to rib you.” He pauses, catches himself pausing, turns the reflex response over as marred by the pause and doesn’t know if he ascribes to it as wholly as he might have on a more frivolous day. “There’s a few schools of thought here, you know - well, maybe the only school - that would beg to differ.”

Behind Itt, the graying sea steadily rolls on towards the shore, each hue remaining its same pitch, but deepening in timbre. Caspian regards the changes curiously, as if watching himself on display from the other side of a shop window. “It was all new to me too, when I first arrived. Where I’m from -“ Another pause, another consequence of indecision, the sensibilities of self-preservation, the designations of his origination still something under contention. That, and it’s not that he’s worried, exactly, that if Morwen’s name escapes him Itt would immediately turn and pass that information on to someone who shouldn’t be on the receiving end - not on purpose, he’s not capable of it, but when has lack of intent guaranteed prevention of undesirable ends?

Veracity gets the better of him, something that’s built up within him for the better part of the past year. “Where I’m from, where I was born - the Goddess is an architect. Of crystal, and glass, and scaffolds of biting light,” he watches himself admit, and the seas in the painting are growing jagged and white, holding themselves in looming cages that threaten to shut against the land swiftly matching in pallor. “Ice vanishes, and melds, softens to frost and circumvents to flow. So follow all things, or so they told me, becoming both more and less than they were before.”

It may be a mistake, erring on verbosity, and he can only hope his demonstrated ease, its recitative rhythms and bends, might prove to be an anchor. “It’s not so different from Rhysol, in some ways. There’s a love, one that doesn’t err or falter, for things just as they are - and of those things, there are multitudes of countless and boundless design. Have you ever looked at frost up close? Every structure is different from the last, and the one before it, and the one falling beside. You can rest it upon your fingertips for the slightest of moments, hold your breath and will with all your might against it, and it expires all the same, with another to take its place, just as beautiful and equally fleeting. Morwen is chaos, Rhysol is ice - and between the both of them there’s an abyss’ worth of love for the infinite, for endless iteration. You can’t cage the winter or the dark.”

Realizing the rush that’s left him, he laughs in embarrassment. The sky in the painting lightens, clouds parting to let in the rosy hues of dawn, the seas quelling to light turquoise and levels that lap the rocks on the shore, the edges of spring returning to the land in the distance.

“Religion is what you make of it, and I can only imagine what you make of Rhysol. All that aside,” he says, casting back on his usual airy veil, “I think there’s a lot fun to be had with all the pomp and circumstance.”

He might have gone on, if only to apologize - but there’s a tapping at his second-floor window, and a brush of black against the glass.

The sight of it results in a drawling sigh, but it makes him feel more like himself, or at least less self-conscious now that he can hide behind his customary spike of bemused irritation. Another insistent tap - uncalled for, really, he was barely idling - and he leaves Itt at the table to unlatch the window.

A dark raven soars into the room, perching on the footboard of Caspian’s bed. It cocks its head from side to side, regards Itt with a caw, and sends an accusatory croak in Caspian’s direction.

Caspian takes his seat once more, crossing his arms and ankles with a jaunt, and glares right back. “Leave off, Taalviel. You’re gouging the wood again, and the marks are impossible to rid.”

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