Shipping out to Sylira (Seidaku,Kit, pm to enter)

[Wrenmae]

Spring 75, 511 AV

The grand stone was behind him, the face impassive as it had been at the first of his journey and thus the same...always quietly appraising all who entered the city. Among the merchants, Weaver sneezing harshly, Wrenmae entered once more the city he had approached ten years ago.

It was familiar, in its own sort of way, the winding streets appearing to swim in his sights.

"Beautiful isn't it?" one merchant said, jabbing into the boy's ribs with a chuckle, "Bet your young eyes haven't seen such a sight as that."

"Once before," Wrenmae answered, returning the smile, "But I do not know when I will see it again."

Pushing away from the merchants, he rocked down the street on Weaver. The Gelding had begun much healthier, but now it drearily moved with a stumbling sort of finality. Long ago his personality had wavered, eternal sickness filling his bones and skin with contagion and wrapping him in almost perpetual suffering.

Wrenmae would not be taking him, Ket either for that matter. She, once a kitten and now a bit older, still having the stumbled dexterity of a younger creature, also looked on wearily. She sneezed, a purring sort of cough that was at once as wretched and heart breaking as anything he had seen before.

Sighing, he made his way through the people, their remembrance dampened by the years of his departure.

He had sent two notes ahead of him, letters from Lhavit. His path would take him to the docks, and this evening depart. To his old master of Voiding, he had entreated to say farewell, and finally to Kit, the only being who knew him almost better than he knew himself. She was his niece, and life had been darker as result of him. Perhaps she would fare better, now...now that he was leaving.

Still, it would be nice to see her before he was gone.

Pausing near the junction of the cobblestone road, the masts swaying in the breeze, Wrenmae looked back at the city he had grown up in. So many memories, hardship and joy among these crowded streets and unknowable illusion. His life, to this point, had been an illusion...clothed in hopes he could strive beyond his marking, beyond his gnosis, beyond Vayt.

He could not.

Everything he was, everything he would be...it was not in spite of Vayt but because of the Dark God. Everything Wrenmae was now, he owed to his former family and Vayt...and more to that mercy the Disease deity had given him.

Whether that meant he was a willing servant or not...well he had not quite arrived at a complete conclusion. Still, certainty that his condition was something to be understood and mastered, not abhorred.

But he shivered at the ramifications of that thought...like many others.

He approached the ships, tying his horse to a post.

Seidaku and Kit...hopefully they would arrive soon. He was not beyond leaving without seeing them, but it would leave something unfinished, something hollow.

If he had a choice, he would not leave on that note.

[Kit Rowan]

Kit had all but forgotten about Wrenmae. But it wasn't out of malice. She was all packed up, had her tent and bedroll ready. The things she would not need daily Kit had thrown into her chest. The things she would she had packed into her rucksack. Tomorrow she would be gone from this wonderful place. She found the paper almost by accident, thrown across the floor. Immediately she suspected the Broken Man . . . but this letter had arrived some time before, so that was not possible. It was a true letter. It had been a long time since Kit had seen Wren. She would grant him this, at least. He was her uncle, not by blood but still. He deserved that much. Kit arrived at the docks a little worse for ware. Her right hand was bandaged, and there was a nasty bruise across her right cheek. The girl's eyes darted, uneasy. Not of Wren, though. The stories of the sickness that had surrounded him had faded with the passing of the year, and now she wondered if it might not have all been coincidence. She was worried about something else. This was no storybook reunion of family, childhood friends or whatever combination of the two they were. She spotted him and padded over to him, her body tired, her eyes elsewhere. "Wrenmae," she used his name, all of it, and smiled. It was thin smile, brittle, but honest. "It's been a long time."

[Seidaku]

Seidaku stood at the edge of the docks outside of Alvadas, staring down at the creased and rumpled letter in his hand. Every time he left the city, he felt a twinge of discomfort as he looked around, expecting things to be different when he looked back, and jarred back to reality when they remained the same. The sights, the sounds, the smells, they were all so... steady. Very disconcerting.

He had been surprised by the presence of the letter. In honest recollection, he thought it might have been the first he had received in, well, ever. That it had been from Wrenmae was no less shocking. How could he not see the boy off? They had not been close, but he still felt a certain affection for his first apprentice.

Looking up from the letter, he spotted the boy. Though, he supposed, Wrenmae was not much of a boy any longer. Seidaku also noticed the young woman with standing with him. It had the look of a private meeting, something that neither would appreciate his stumbling into. Rather than walking over, he looked away and into the waves, taking a small comfort in the way that they constantly changed as they crashed into the docks.

[Wrenmae]

He lost her words for a moment, gone in watching the gentle forest of masts sway in the breeze. They creaked to each other, a language known only to callouse-palmed sailors and the waterlogged wood they rode upon. It was a new world for the storyteller, representing something, a distance, or maybe a horizon he had not touched.

It was the edge of her words that pulled him out of his quiet distraction, grounding him back in Alvadas, back in his present.

With her words, his face transformed, exhaustion seemed to seep away from his expression, replaced by a vibrant relief. It was almost comical how quickly his face changed, from the joy of rediscovery to surprise, and grave apprehension. Worry lurked at the corner of his mouth but he tried to smile. There was question in his eyes, but for now the reunion was more important than her apparent injuries.

"Kit," he said, "I'm glad you could come." Emotion choked his voice, but he held his composure. He strode forward a step, arms out in a sudden capture of her beaten body, pressing her against him. He held her for a moment, noting the differences in how she had grown, the familiarity of her scent, a thousand tiny observations that pieced memory from shadow. Stepping back, eyes brimming with emotion, the storyteller held out his hands as though presenting some magnanimous performance. "The sea! The wide world stands before me and I'm to leave on its tides tonight...can you imagine? Me? On a boat?" Laughing, he shook his head, still not sure what to make of it himself. For the first time, he was truly leaving this place...and perhaps more importantly, he would not return.

Alvadas existed in several shades of color to the storyteller, most were dark and fettered with their own flavor of tragedy. The distrust, the death of those who cared for him, the distance growing between the only other person he regarded as family, darkness that crowded his continued life. At the same time, without this city he would have died regardless of his dealing with Vayt. The mystery of illusion, the myriads of races and stories that passed through his life, these were the points of light leading him toward a future.

Alvadas, in all its glory and misfortune both, was a home not worth forgetting...

The energy left him, sliding from his body in unseen streams, his arms collapsing back near his sides as a helpless laugh rocked his narrow frame. "Forgive me, I'm just...a little boggled is all, a little overwhelmed." He raised his eyes to hers, flicking his field of vision briefly to the bruises and her damaged hand. "Still climbing roofs," he asked with a smile, "Wasn't too bad of a spill I hope."

[Kit Rowan]

His voice was thick, his expression raw and pure, but Kit could scarcely hear it, barely even see the turmoil in his face. He pulled her into an embrace, and Kit felt awkward. She reached behind him and patted a hand to his back, like a child needing comfort. Kit prided herself on being, if not clever with words, at least free with them. But the pieces weren't fitting together in her mind. When he pulled away she found her tongue again. "I guess it is," she said, not particularly wowed by the thought of it. She would be leaving Alvadas soon, too, but not as a traveler. As a refugee, a runaway. The world stretched from horizon to horizon but there would be no place like Alvadas. In the city of illusions, life had meaning. Real meaning. But beyond that the illusions dissolved, Syna shone with the color it was supposed to shine and the stars were still in the sky. How dull it would be outside. How boring. How Wren could look forward to leaving it again like this was beyond Kit. Inside her a whirlwind she had never supposed was there roared, it howled, spat, buffeted Kit on its wings like a songbird, losing up and down in the torrent of winds and only trying to stay upright. But it couldn't get through; her face did not remember the way her mouth should move, and she could not translate the madness of it to words. She fiddled with her thumb, bit down on her lip, opened her mouth and shut it again. "Climbing roofs," she echoed, smirking, a joke shared in private with herself. "Yes, I was climbing rooftops a bit ago." Technically true. "I fell to the ground near the end, but I handled it right." But never did she tell him how she actually got hurt.

[Wrenmae]

She was not the same. Moreso, she was honest...which was as significant a change as morphing itself. Her embrace was awkward, thick with tensed muscles and strained breathing. Even the pat on his back had been patronizing, a stranger's parody of care. Nearly three years of absence and this was all she was able to give.

He smiled in kind, his face acting out the emotions he wanted to feel. Beneath his skin, an earthquake ravaged his emotional landscape, mere formality the catalyst. Kit wasn't here to see him off, her every movement was a poor disguise for habit. Perhaps she hadn't even realized why she came, merely had. Like everyone else in Alvadas, Kit could care less about the boy of ten years standing cold and forlorn by the stone-faced gate. She had no tug of emotion from the years they had spent together, likely only the ebbing suspicion of something foul within his character.

She, the only person left to him, had rejected him in the most fundamental of ways.

And a shadow passed across his eyes.

What use was there in smiling or good if it was always the result of guilt? Nothing he had done, no experience he had earned seemed worth the effort in the end. His adopted parents were dead, his niece was a distant (if not friendly) acquaintance, and his true family was long gone to the belly of some wayward creature. Nothing in his life thus far could compare to the horrifying emptiness he saw in her eyes, saw in his own soul.

There was something dead there, a place devoid of compassion.

She may have faced horrors in his absence, in fact he was assured by her words and nuances of body that those wounds were not inflicted by mishap. As much as he wanted to press, the stirrings of brotherly instinct kicking in with a dusty cough, he held his tongue and nodded.

But the light had gone from his eyes, snuffed out as suddenly as a candle crushed underfoot.

"Always were a climber," he acted, laughing, "But what would life be without a bit of adventure?" It sounded forced to him, the words almost screeching in his ears and the laugh more of a hollow bark than any display of mirth.

What would life be without a bit of hardship?

What would life be without anyone to share it with?

"I suppose you did not think to see me again, fortunate fate we can see each other at least one more time." He murmured more to himself, heart careening into some distant void with the sound of glass fracturing, the weave of their entwined stories fraying. Seidaku had not yet shown himself, and perhaps even he would not come.

To be lonely was unbearable, but to be lonely alone was worst.

And to inflict harm on those he cared about was unthinkable.

She would have to do.

He reached behind him, taking a small ball of tawny fur from a saddle pack. Ket, curious little creature, poked her head up from sleep with a morbid sort of interest.

"I will not need her, where I'm going...I fear Ket far prefers an ocean of land to water." The last word caught in his throat unexpectedly, emerging with a wet gurgle that forced his hand to rise, trying to catch them, but only appeared flailing. He turned from her, a rough attempt to control his own features. Dashing the tears forming at his eyes he forced himself to breathe deeply, to sustain a sense of dignity, at least, in this final farewell.

The letter was a mistake, and the clarity of the notion struck him a heavy blow. He would have sooner left ignorant of how she felt now, of how little his departure meant.

Her father was dead, her mother a mystery, but what did she know of suffering? Alvadas had been, for the most part, kind to her. She had not gone for want of affection or food, entertainment or activities...and though perhaps she had her share of rough experiences, she knew nothing of finality. The day on the windy pass, a stupid choice made of youth and fear, and the long arduous task of coming to terms with what he forced upon the world with his life...none of that was hers to hold, to bare. If he told her, she would revile from him, perhaps even hate him. Why not? The consequences of a decision made eight years ago were just as tangible now as they were then. Certainly it was impossible to evolve from his experience and come to terms with the sheer horror of what he'd done.

No. His life would be a constant reminder that he should have perished in the winter storm, stuck lifeless to the rocks till some animal pried him from the ground.

Rage coursed inside him, a bubbling frustration with not just Kit but everything, the world itself and his own poorly informed decisions.

His fingers clenched into a fist, pressed firmly against his legs as though the effort alone would leave imprints. He wasn't leaving Alvadas. Nothing so simple.

No, now he saw he was just leaving another place of hooded glares and whispered fears...that he was a Plague bearer, a Blighter, a monster. Years of striving against it won him no affection, not even a hint of compassion from the only being in the world left to know him.

She was like everyone else.

And to her he entrusted his animal companions, the suffering beings who were perhaps, in their simple intelligence, the only ones to grasp how falsely he smiled.

"I ask that you take care of her, Ket is still young, but curious and playful when she's feeling well. She is used to Alvadas and the road, so take her to either."

He held her in his gaze a moment longer, drinking in her web of experiences, her stories, her obscured beginning and even more curious end. He asked the bruises silently who birthed them, or rather what...but mere appraisal revealed no truth.

"Well," he said, staring at the ground and the pile of gear he had stacked there, "Before you go, I'd like to say something...and you need not respond...I just feel like saying it."

Filling his lungs with air, banishing the sorrow that crept in reddened veins across his eyes, he put both hands gently on her shoulders. Catching her eyes with his own, he pierced her aura with his own and coaxed her attention to his mouth, his words, the last bit of advice he may leave her with. Hypnotism, a gift of saboteurs, seductresses, and spies. He used it now as many had before, to grant him what he desired. There was no guilt any longer, a lead weight descending on his already heavy heart. The best he could do for her and everyone he knew was to distance himself from them...what he was, what he could become, he would not visit it on them if he could.

"Live without regret, and try to fill the days with meaning. You do not know how lucky you are to be who you are, to be what you are. With talent and drive, the world could be to you as one extended stage, or anything you want it to be...really. Seek out what your heart desires and never let the world bring you to its level. I lost sight of that a long time ago, and maybe I have a harder time of it than you...but I don't want to see my own mistakes repeated, especially in someone I care about."

Tears held themselves at the corners of his eyes.

They refused to spill.

"We are not blood, but I count you as my family, my only family. We have grown distant, or perhaps were never so close, and so there is much of you I do not know nor understand...but please take my words to heart and make something great of yourself. Be safe, and remember the choices you make may last longer than you anticipate. I am a product of that...and I always will be."

He pressed himself closer, his eyes almost brilliant as power and Djed coursed through them. A trail of blood briefly seeped around the edge of his right eye, descending like a teardrop down his cheek. "And if you are in trouble, never ask for help from a stranger, especially if they offer it freely." He accentuated it with a flash in her mind, a brief picture of Vayt. He was clad in fur, a handsome creature with shifting eyes and a confident smile. A corona of smoke coursed around his face and one hand lay open and descending, as though to rest upon her head.

"Beware that man, avoid him if ever you see him...for there is nothing good that can come of his visits."

Pushing away from her, he broke eye contact and his power, setting himself to gathering gear to take onto the ship, counting out his Mizas with distracted methodical intensity.

"Now go, I can already see that you did not want to be here."

He did not look at her again, his face away, perhaps so that she could not see the tears mixing with the blood and seeping down his cheeks.

[Kit Rowan]

Kit trembled. Wren took hold of her and she stared into his eyes, utterly transfixed. Had she known to feel alarm, she would have, but Wren's push caught her by surprise, took her off balance, and she was helpless before it. His words tore through her, tore through her, and cut their message into her mind with hot knives of Djed. She staggered backward after Wren released her, and reeled at the sheer urgency, the image of a man. How did he do that? She wondered, lookin upward at her adopted uncle. And then, in the same moment, why is he sad? Gods, she felt strange. An intruder in her own skin. Her mind was scattered and not yet gathered. The her eyes would not move to make sadness. She could not force herself to laugh. Words spilled from her mouth. "I . . . I'm . . . leaving Alvadas tomorrow." Her voice sounded dead even to her own ears. "I need to leave." To run, to get far away. "I'm going with a caravan. North. To the . . . Spires." She swiped her sleeve across her eyes, to get some dust out of her eyes. Dust. "Gods," she said. She stood there, stranger to herself, and wiped her eyes again. Ionu trusts me, she thought. I must be strong. And though she could not stop the tears from running down her cheeks, she did not sob, she did not break down. Was she a selfish little girl, crying for herself? Was she crying for Wren? Both, or neither? She did not know, but now she was starting to shake. "I was lucky I found your letter. This is . . ." Kit shook her head. Well. That was just it. She didn't know what this was. He was looking away from her. Wren was looking away. Why? It was her fault, she knew. Kit felt a sudden debt to Wren. She did not understand death and disease and plague as Wren did, but she knew what it was like to see someone that she cared for and not think that they loved her. "Wren, look at me." She breathed, shivered and pulled up the sleeve on her left arm, up past the elbow. She held it up, forearm toward the sky, for Wren to see. An elaborate triangle, pointed the wrong way down. "You're the first I've shown it to."

[Wrenmae]

In the space of seconds, he had lost everything. By his own hand he had given away one of the creatures he cared for the most, struck his niece through their shared mind as suddenly as if he had physically hit her, and lost his own meandering path. He couldn't force himself to smile; the expression felt wrong on his face, different. For the years away from Alvadas he had striven to be a step ahead of the depression riding in the dungeons of his mind. Of course he was marked, of course he was guilty, of course he was Plague itself...but the notion there was more than that had somehow given energy to step forward.

Now he was on his knees, sobbing quietly and shoulders heaving as he tried to purge that emptiness so acutely burning into his guts, that void in his heart as certainly as if he had opened a portal there. He tried to vomit the nothigness, send it swimming away with his tears. It had never meant so much before, but he had nowhere to call home. Alvadas was as close as he came and the people had reviled him, feared him even.

It took this long to realize that he had lost more than just his family in the mountains, he had lost his home, his very life. In more ways than one, Wrenmae carried himself with the same damaged despondency as a corpse might should it be given leave to move again, to act as though it lived again.

Years could not put a distance between what he had done, he would always be cursed and always be damned.

Vayt liked to break his toys before he used them.

Maybe that was why he hadn't seen the God in so many years.

Kit was speaking, her voice the halted rhythm of someone not quite sure where they were, what they were doing. It was a voice Wrenmae recognized as fear, and it stung him.

She was running...from something, and he had the audacity to summon her here for his departure!

"Sometimes your troubles follow you," he muttered without looking at her, "Sometimes you can't escape." he looked down at his hands, bright and healthy, free of disease or misuse.

"Who hurt you?" It was sudden, interrupting her near the end of her revelation, and he turned with reddened eyes to stare at the inverted triangle. Its importance was lost to him, but the way Kit looked at him, the way her eyes sought a thread of recognition or shock made the storyteller think he should know.

The Inverted.

He remembered the symbol for the elusive group, the Trickster worshipping performers had long held the captivation of Alvadas and the cities around it...did it mean she was accepted? Did it mean she had achieved her goal of standing among their numbers? Why, then, would she hide it from others?

"You're...the Inverted?" he asked hoarsely, clearing his throat of thick tears and trying to restore a sense of modesty back to himself. Wiping a sleeve across his face, he reached a hesitant hand to touch it, shying away at the last instant and letting both limbs fall null at his side. "Does it have something to do with why you're running?"

[Kit Rowan]

She blinked, then shook her head. "No," she said, "that's not what it means." Kit took a deep breath and closed her hand into a fist. When she had been given Ionu's mark, there had been no need to learn, no surprises, no uncertainty. It was nothing like her Reimancy, which can with no limits or bounds and so often pushed past what was safe and sane. He had done something to her arm, but also to her head. She knew what she could do. When she opened her hand, there was a flower with deep red petals. She could not feel it in her hand; it was not really there. But it looked like it was. The colors shifted, switching to green and blue and violet at her whims. One illusion, one sense; this was child's play to her. "It's not the reason I'm running," she said, and the flower dissolved into nothing. "I got into trouble on my own, and when I got out Ionu gave this to me." "But it might happen again. It will happen . . . if I stay." She corrected. "So I'm leaving, before it does."

[Seidaku]

Standing at the edge of the docks, Seidaku tried to force his attention away from Wrenmae and the girl. Even with the little focus he had given them, he could see that it was not a moment that bore intruding upon. He felt embarassed even to be on the outskirts of their meeting.

Even he could see something was wrong, though. Whatever that might be, it was even more obvious that it was between the two of them and that wrongness would only be compounded by his presence.

When the boy fell to his knees, he took a few steps forward but managed to stop himself as their distant conversation continued. This was not something that he could help with.