A study in Half-Breeds (Seven)

[Dhalvasha]

Summer 9, 511 AV

Symnestrians never walked. Walking was a verb understood as the ponderous footfalls of a too-clumsy race. Humanity and their ilk walked. Symnestrians slid, padded, perhaps even drifted. The grace was more apt, an eerie sinuous synchrony between every muscle. Ghost-like they wafted through crowds of humans like wraiths, never the center of attention but never forgotten either. Whispered rumor of their foul practices, heresy and truth both entwined like lovers. None of them had seen the webbed homeland of these arachni-centric ghouls, and many would live their lives assuming all Symnestra hung screaming women from their webs as they ate them alive.

A comical thought, more a dreary fantasy than any measure of how the Pale Folk lived. Certainly there was some amount of barbarism with the Harvest, none could lay claim against that. But were it not for the necessity in which they bred, perhaps the humans would have formed another opinion of the general bloodline.

It was irrelevant, more the thought of a thought than any real pondering. Moonlight poured into Syliras from above, bathing the city in a strange ethereal duality. Even with the occasional nocturnal traffic, there was nothing quite as calming as the silence afforded with evening. Dhalvasha, dressed in shadows as usual, could have cried out in joy if it would not have been blasphemy to the held breath of the moment. Here, in this kind of mute environment, he could hear his own thoughts. No maddening bustle of a hundred voices ravaging each other, simply the occasional muttered conversation or quick cry of explanation. Night, at least in most places, held a sacred sort of reverence here.

Were he not so jaded to the gods, he might have even said divine.

Life rarely afforded rewards, biologically an opponent from the get-go. But these few moments, these shards of perfection, they truly made the journeys worth while.

Affording a quick glance either direction down the roads, Dhalvasha slipped off his shoes and placed his hands against a quiet dwelling. Simply to climb again held a delightful joy for the Symnestra, an act normally seen with revile or suspicion here. Slipping off his shoes, he clamored onto the vertical surface and up, pausing to turn himself around, placing both arms behind him, and looking out over the city like a pale gargoyle.

"Oh Syliras," he murmured, marveling that even his own voice could make dents in the evening, that his words had weight, "How fragile you are in the darkness, how exposed, how weak, how wonderful." Chuckling, shaking his head, Dhalvasha began the climb down.

There was much to be done, and the evening would not hold its breath forever.

[Seven Xu]

Seven walked. He ambled, he stumbled, he trotted and sometimes he even skipped. But tonight, he traipsed confidently away from the underground market that had all but closed up and patrons trickled out when the day had ended and merchants had begun to pack up their wares only to return in Syna’s first light the next day. It was a routine that went on, day after day. Seven had a routine of his own: the constant search for fresh food on a dwindling budget found him at the bazaar nearly as often as those that set up shop there.

Low moonlight sliced the street in two and Seven dipped in and out between silver light and inky blackness as he swayed through a thin crowd like a drunken vagrant and humming a tune. But, Seven was careless in his aimless pursuit and a rough shoulder bump from someone much larger than him would send his belongings scattering across the narrow walk and into blackness rolled peaches, bread stomped underfoot and a cry of frustration rose in Seven’s throat. Damned if he were a quarter as graceful as a spider-kin, he dropped to his knees and clambered after the rogue fruit. Dirt clung to his dark pants and he nearly stumbled forward onto his stomach to snatch up the bruised peach before it rolled to a stop. Opening his mouth, Seven appeared to scold the unassuming fruit under his breath before wiping it on his shirt and hauling himself upright again.

Well, that was one, out of four he spent good mizas on. Graceful, indeed. Seven’s gaze darted through the crowd only to see splattered orange-yellow imprinted with boots staring back at him. “Of course,” he muttered. It was too late to return to the bazaar, it had long since closed up and he owed a roommate a meal. The velvet peach tickled his palm; he turned it over in his hand to inspect it for stray rocks or sand before slipping it back into the assumed safety of his satchel. His guest would eat tonight, but he would not.

Reaching down, Seven’s palms brushed off the dun brown dirt caked to his knees and shins. He was a ghost of a boy, white skin made impossibly pale from the silvery light of the moon and hair no darker than snow itself. Dressed in monochrome as he did, the splash of color that flickered under heavy eyelids was all the more dramatic and off-putting to many he encountered. Seven passed easily as an albino; while they weren’t especially common in humans they did occur. While Syliras was a cramped, suffocating, stinking city of too many, it was far from Kalinor, far from the Harvest, and far from most uninhibited racism of those that would immediately pick him out of a crowd as a ghost of the Widow race.

His vexation with his own clumsiness and the loss of food would not last long. Taking a deep breath of temperate summer air, a smile curled his thin lips again. There was little he had to frown about anymore, anyway.

[Dhalvasha]

In nature, a spider spends most of her time waiting. Between the construction of her web, the constant renovations, eating, and reproduction...the humble spider never strays far from her created home. Life, to an arachnid, was an exercise in letting life come to it. While some spiders certainly hunted, the quintessential spider sat at the corner of near invisible web and watched the world turn by. She did not concern herself with the morrow, with planning ahead. Food would always come in its own way, and if not, she could always move.

Symnestra were similar in some ways, although they couldn't afford to wait for pretty young girls to wander into their caves. Instread their nature was an observatory one. While stronger creatures with strength of arm could afford to leap in, be brash and impulsive, a Symnestra lives in perpetual fragility and thus perpetual analysis. A misstep or poorly conceived situation could end their lives quickly, just as a situation carefully plotted or planned could yield unparalleled success.

He was no quintessential spider. While he waited, it was never in a web. Dhalvasha grasped what simple spiders could not. A patient spider waits for life to trip into its clutches.

A smarter spider builds his web over where the trundling beetle is about to trip.

Tonight was a fortunate evening, but not for the cool weather or the darkness assuaging his overworked eyes. Observation was his friend this evening, marking the path of weaving drunkards and late night errands passing back and forth through the empty streets. Even had Seven covered himself, swaddled his body with cloth, there was something distinctly familiar about the way he carried himself.

Dhalvasha was drawn to the boy, following his movement with critical evaluation. When he tripped, food spilling from his open arms and vanishing around him, the Symnestra had seen enough. The flash of reddened eyes, the pale skin itself...black nails.

How marvelous, how delightful, how refreshing to be reminded of home from so far away. Clamoring down from his perch, Dhalvasha slipped on his shoes and approached the half-breed. Dra, Dra, Dra...one wondered if he still kept the adorable prefix. So far from Kalinor, he wouldn't be reprimanded for not knowing his place and perhaps it was the fate of all half-breeds to escape Kalinor. Certainly the stronghold of the Widows held no love for their ilk. Despite the survival of their mother in the case of their birth, they could hardly be called true Symnestra at all. Their poison was weak, skin insufficient for climbing, and their forms not nearly the eerie dimensions necessary to hold the Widow's pride. A small splinter thought of the Dra as a means to escape a curse of destructive procreation, the new step of the Symnestra race.

But Dhalvahsa had analyzed these creatures, noted their differences. Despite their physical coloration abnormalities, they were practically human. Was it the fate of the Symnestra to die? To quietly morph into what they were not?

No. The answer lay somewhere else, in neutralizing a newborn's venom before birth.

So what were these...Dra, but an attempt to be what the Symnestra never should.

Human.

Bending down briefly, Dhalvasha seized an errant peach. It had carved a sideways path through the drunkards of the evening, weaving into the shadows where the Half breeds eyes might not have pierced.

Gently brushing off the crumbs and dirt of the road, Dhalvasha approached from behind. It was unknown how well or little this particular Dra knew of Kalinor. To be safe, to assuage the gulf between them before undue accusations or petty distrust undermined their encounter, Dhalvasha pierced Dra's aura with his own force of presence. Of all the possibilities for Djed, Hypnotism seemed the most apt for a Symnestrian. There was already something alluring about their exotic appearance and it only drew the eye closer to the practitioner.

His voice was layered in a slight application of the Hypnotic pattern. He would speak first to the boy's stomach, or to his heart. Generosity and helpfulness were rarely traits dismissed lightly. In Seven's mind, as the Symnestra spoke, a quiet mantra...almost no more than a whisper, urged Seven to relax.

"Excuse me...sir," the sir was almost forced and Dhalvasha bit back the urge to twist the word sarcastically. More and more lately he was disappointed with his preconceptions about others. He had tried to leave the Symnestra way back in Kalinor, but evidently culture pierced deeper than simply skin.

"I do believe you dropped this." Holding out the peach in one clawed hand, Dhalvasha smiled. It wasn't a particularly comforting smile, a too-wide grin with hints of fang touching the edges of his lips. He wasn't accustomed to smiling, nor losing himself in minor dalliances, with small talk and the like. Evidently it was a skill he should learn at some points, his professionalism seemed to suffer without it.

"You must be more careful," the Symnestra continued, stepping closer, "Syliras rarely pauses for accidents."

[Seven Xu]

“Excuse me, sir …”

The voice pricked his ears and shattered the murmuring darkness and forced him to turn on his heels. The accent was familiar; he had heard the silken undertones of a familiar language and that’s when it hit him. It hit him like he’d been punched in the gut and a wave of panic overcame him. Although it wasn’t due to the voice, no, the voice had merely reminded him of an appointment that fluttered out of his memory as carelessly as he had committed it. Would she, could she forgive him? His vexation was short-lived, as red met fiery red with a flicker of djed-laden suggestion his fear, his self-depreciating guilt and confusion was sapped from him and his lips flattened into a blank expression. Syliras rarely pauses for accidents. It sounded too close to a masked threat, although Seven's heart refused to accelerate, and a sickening discomfort never found him.

“Oh, my peach,” he remarked at the fruit cradled between fragile fingers that ended in familiar black points. When it was within range, Seven held out his hand and allowed the fruit to pass between them. Now safely in his upturned palm, the peach remained and finally Seven found the will power to break the lock on their gaze. The reality of the hypnosis had not occurred to the halfblood – there was a voice in his mind, his own, urging him to relax, to be calm – the perpetual smile unfailingly returned to his thin lips. “Thank you. This city isn’t exactly the best place to get lost in one’s thoughts, is it?” Instead of bagging the velveteen fruit, it simply tumbled over his fingers as he inspected it for bruises. One side of it had succumbed to the force of its fall and a thumb-sized indent marred its orange-yellow surface.

If he could just …

Seven’s bottom lip was disfigured by a sharp canine – a bad habit, biting one’s lip, and he knew it – and was brought on by an extrusion of djed through his fingertips. A thought to protect such a fragile thing had come and gone as quickly as the warped and wavering energy that barely had a chance to touch the peach.

“You’re a long way from Kalea.” Seven’s round eyes found those of the Symenestra’s again with a growing smile. He was certainly surprised to see another spider-kin so soon after stumbling upon Asara two nights ago. Was it safe to assume they traveled here together? Syliras was a massive, sprawling city, but Symenestra were uncommon at best. At least the male seemed to be in his right mind as Seven picked up on the failing hospitality in his voice and the span of an unnerving smile. It was ironic, really, that Lhavitians and the graceful full-blooded Symenestra shared a mutual distaste for those that bridged the gap between them. The reasoning may have been vastly different, but the ends were the same. The fruit met Seven’s lips where his shield had failed due to his unending chain of thoughts and he bit down through the thin, bruised skin. It cried out in a wave of lukewarm sweetness, dribbling down his chin and forcing him to tilt his head skyward with a sound of surprise.

The back of his hand met his chin and a white sleeve carelessly removed the sticky peach juice from his white skin. Seven inspected the man, who was much taller, lankier than he – although that was to be expected – and despite their drastic proportional differences, the shared tones of ashy skin, startling garnet eyes and light hair would easily distinguish them as brothers to the uneducated passerby. Seven nearly grinned at the thought.

[Dhalvasha]

"With so many voices," Dhalvasha answered Seven quietly, "It is any wonder one can find their thoughts, much less lose themselves." It was a true statement. Ever since arriving at the population hub, Dhalvasha had maddeningly tried to maintain his own thoughts and idendity above the endless swell of a countless multitude of sounds. In Kalinor, sound tended to echo, to catch the edges of the cave and leap back, reverberating the very air. Few shouted, as few wanted the contents of their arguments to be heard by the city itself. Here, where there was no ceiling save the blue painted sky-dome, sound did not echo and few felt it necessary to speak softly. Personally, Dhalvasha far preferred the whispered cant of Symenos, that language of breaths and murmurs. Beauty was in expressing little to mean much, not the other way around.

The half-breed smiled at him, eyes cups for Dhalvasha's own Djed-thick gaze to pour into. Of course, the Symnestra had not had to use such measures before and queried his own subconscious for the need. Why did he care what the half-breed though of him? Certainly their kind were repulsive, even now he could appraise the human characteristics masked almost mockingly with Symnestra details. Pale skin, red eyes, black finger nails holding the peach close to a thicker (If by a little) frame. Dra was always a prefix Dhalvasha did not abide. 'Little' in the common tongue did little to magnify the importance of their racial differences.

Personally he preferred 'painted', a more apt description for what he saw. Seven, for all the virtue of his half blood, was little more than a human painted in the manner of the Symnestra.

While distasteful, certainly Dhal could not fault the boy for his survival capabilities. It was likely his mother yet lived, unless there were complications in child birth, and that any half breed stood to preserve their origin by virtue of weakened blood...weaker venom. In the end, it always boiled down to the venom.

Settling back on his feet and removing his influence from Seven's mind (Content the boy had not shivered in the initial meeting), Dhalvasha brought his hands behind his back and nodded. His assessment was correct, Kalinor lay far away from them both. All the better of course, as such stifling prejudice had only served to obstruct his work.

"Kalea proved itself to be close minded to my inquiries, my work," he explained frankly, watching Seven bite into the peach with relish. He paused while the boy wiped the juices from his chin, imagining what it might have looked like if the peach had been a rat and that yellow juice had been red. Fruit were the only acceptable meal a Symnestra could eat abroad these days. Something about the Widow digestive process sickened those who had the virtue of performing the necessary and similar process behind a screen of flesh.

Watching that line of juice, imagining its taste on his own tongue, Dhalvasha found he was far hungrier than he'd initially imagined. He quickly raised a hand to his mouth, hiding the fangs poking eagerly from his gums and past his lips. Perhaps one of his greatest biological complaints was that his fangs had been nearly a half an inch longer growing up. While most Symnestra could hide even the most ravenous hunger, Dhalvasha struggled not to look fiendish when in the presence of food or information.

Perhaps he should wear something over his mouth

"So I traveled a distance away, where I could pursue my studies in relative peace."

His voice was muffled, speaking around his raised hand and the elongated fangs made the letters sound forced, awkward. If his eyes had narrowed, it was focused more at himself than the Dra, frustrated he could not control one of the more basic biological processes.

"Unfortunately," he continued, turning his gaze back to Seven, "It would seem prejudices carry themselves farther than my feet can walk."

His fangs retracted, barely pointing past his pale lips. Lowering his hand, Dhalvasha strode by Seven, indicating with one crooked finger that the boy should follow. It felt strange to stand in the middle of the street talking, and likely the boy had somewhere to be. Night grew ever darker, pushing her embrace around them both. At the least they could share the road for a small while.

The trick to meeting a patient was to earn his trust, a process Dhalvasha found more and more difficult by his own impatient nature. This Dra was the only of his kind Dhalvasha had seen in recent years, providing an interesting footnote in his continued search of biological answers. Of course, it would mean naught if he could not bridge some manner of communication between he and the boy.

His own personal misgivings would need to be quarantined for a time. He only hoped he would not forget himself.

"Have you faced similar persecutions? Or has the condition of your birth afforded you some distance from The Harvest and the Widow's reputation?"

[Seven Xu]

If Seven would have heard Dhalvasha’s thoughts aloud, the ‘painted’ moniker he preferred to describe the qualities of someone caught between two races, he may have laughed and agreed. There were times he merely felt like a human wearing the skin of something far more menacing – being raised and living among humans made him little more than that anyway – and certainly felt undeserving of many looks he garnered. “You can’t blame them,” Seven replied as he rolled the juice-laden fruit over in his hands, left to right, with a satisfying smack each time it fell into a new hand, “Kaleans, that is. And,” he added, “Prejudice will be everywhere. People talk, people travel.”

He regretted palming the peach so much as he lifted a free hand up to lap sweet juice off of his fingertips. A look of mild amusement shone in Seven’s crimson eyes as he took note of the flash of too-big fangs that warped the Symenestra’s speech and appeared to be a general hindrance to him. They were quickly hidden behind a ghastly clawed hand. Perhaps it wasn’t all bad not being so … pure of blood. A smug smile was hidden behind another bite of the peach and he took the signal to follow after the spider-kin. Asara loomed in the back of his mind; she would soon find their spot and he would not be there. Guilt washed over him and stung his stomach like acid and he had to make an effort to push the thought away. If this distraction did not last long, he would have time to find her, he knew it.

“The condition of my birth?” Seven replied. His lashes fluttered and his lips tightened as they went flat. He nearly stopped there, but curiosity won and his feet remained steady in their path behind Dhalvasha. “I assure you, there is no condition. I am what I am. I like what I am.” Seven’s voice dripped with venom and he finished off the peach, discarding the pit and shoving his hands into his pockets. “And I was born relatively close to Kalea; I am not from Syliras. Lhavit, actually, so yes I am aware of the prejudice of the Harvest and all the fun that goes along with it.”

A pause let silence grow between the pair before Seven spoke up again. His voice was calmer now, even a bit inquisitive. As they passed the row of taverns, boisterous laughter, song and the sound of stringed instruments wafted through the cool night air. “What do you do, exactly, if you don’t mind me asking? You say that you work, pursue studies … are you a scholar?” Vexation turned quickly to interest. It was rare that he found someone of higher education to speak to. The thoughts of the Symenestra’s rude approach in speaking of his ‘dirty’ blood had wafted out of his mind entirely by the time they reached the edges of the torch lit common area. Pupils expanded into large black pools that seemed to absorb every bit of light they possibly could as Seven peered into the impossible darkness lit only by a sliver of moon in the sky.

“My name is Seven, by the way,” adding, “Just Seven.” The boy was adamant about dropping the prefix that he knew the Symenestra would tack on if not pushed to leave it alone. “What is your name?”

[Dhalvasha]

"No, certainly one cannot blame a rabbit for its fear of the fox...Kaleans, as a whole, mis-characterize our-" he paused, the 'our' felt wrong somehow, as though he was letting the boy in on some private club he had no business discussing. Clearing his throat, Dhalvasha finished the thought and winced at how wrong it felt to include them together "-race."

He talked to fill the void left by the unnecessary breath in his sentence, a small addendum left over from years of conditioning no doubt, "Of course...I didn't mean anything by my wording, simply to remark on the nature of your appearance. Have you avoided most of the fear assigned to our race, or is your coloration of skin, nails, and eyes enough to set you aside from general humanity?" Personally, the differences between the lad and pureblood Symnestra were agonizingly obvious. However, for a human he pulled off the part rather well. Several generations of time and some light might breed the variances from Dra's skin and leave them the same hue and shape as humans. Perhaps only the fangs would remain, IF at all.

Their path was measured with unlike strides. Seven walked carefully now, perhaps with the mistake of before fresh in his mind, and Dhalvasha moved with the same eerie grace afforded all his kind. Idly he entertained that Dra could learn to be more like their mother race, eschewing human custom and embracing the Symnestra.

It was not a notion he expected to work, hatred and bitterness ran deep among the full blooded and motherless race. The ability of half bloods to keep their matriarchal figure in itself was an insult to the rest of them. Sacrifice was rarely looked upon as plainly as those who gazed upon the Symnestra. Few understood past the necessity of the Harvest, the universal understanding that they would never feel a mother's arms around their smaller bodies.

Dwelling on the issue wouldn't solve it, however. It was up to braver Symnestrians to walk into the world and find the necessary means to cure their genetic disabilities.

Seven was the result of one method, a method without pride, the desperate's answer.

He would find another.

"I am a doctor," he answered at last, with the hint of a wry smile, "I am studying the anatomical differences of the various races, including half breeds such as yourself, to find a means to cure certain racial weaknesses among my people."

Moonlight seeped between them, a thin silver line dividing more than just distance, but barriers of upbringing and culture as well. Wind was the gentle mediator here, ghosting along behind them with her half mumbled whisperers, her secrets none could understand.

"Just Seven," Dhalvasha murmured, also distracted with the vastness of the celestial sphere. It was a cave ceiling of unimaginable height, and the stars hung on its roof like patient spiders. "You do not care for 'Dra' then I suppose? Well certainly one is afforded freedom with their own name." Catching the half Symnestra with his eyes, Dhalvasha passed in front of him and frowned. "You seek to distance yourself from what you are? A question if I may...given the choice of which parent to take after, would you prefer your mother or your father?"

[Seven Xu]

“You aren’t weak so long as you stay in Kalinor,” the utterance was bold, to say the least. Dhalvasha’s hesitations and blatant racism towards his mixed blood had churned up a bit of resentment that surprised even him. “I … I’m sorry, that was out of line,” Seven mumbled, and deliberately slowed his pace to drift a stride back from the Symenestra. If what he said had struck a chord in the man’s mind, sparked a flare, he wanted to be out of range from any deliberate swings in his direction.

Seven exhaled as the topic moved along to something equally as uncomfortable, “I’d rather not talk about my parents,” he snapped; this man really had it out to prod at every shortcoming and sensitive topic that swirled at the forefront of Seven’s mind. Could he read him? “They aren’t dead, or anything. It just isn’t a topic I am comfortable discussing – especially to ask whether I prefer one over the other.”

“Distance myself?” Seven’s voice seemed to rise inquisitively, tilting his head upwards to stare at the back of Dhalvasha’s head before shoving his hands in his pockets and speaking in a slow, patient tone, “I do not seek to distance myself from my blood. In fact, I embrace it fully. But, I am not of the Symenestra and I am not human – I am something else entirely. At least, that is how I see it. Dra is an invention, a prefix made by a culture that is not my own, a culture that would not have me even if I wanted with every fiber of my being to be a part of it. So that is why I am no Dra, ser Symenestra.”

Caught between two races, that was what he was. Something else entirely. Seven drew back further, falling quiet as his crimson eyes went dark, expressionless. While he had met Asara nights before, she was vapid and confused and held little of the strong Symenestra culture that Dhalvasha carried in his long, graceful strides. The last time he had experienced such an individual had been years ago, in Lhavit – but he had been easy, passive; he gave in to Seven’s childish charms and held little against him for his ignorance. They had even become close.

It would be obvious to the Symenestra leading the halfblood that Seven had lost himself in deep thought, clumsy feet scraping against well-packed dirt. If it weren’t for the thinning crowd, he may have lost him entirely.

[Secret]

THREAD AWARDS Dhalvasha   Skills Skill Gain Notes Rhetoric 1 Conversing Climbing 1 Climbing the Building Philosophy 1 Pondering Observation 1 Watching Seven Hypnotism 1 For Use in Hypnotism   Lores Half Breeds Don't Like Dra   Notes Would have liked to have seen more. Seven Xu   Skills Skill Gain Notes Rhetoric 2 Le Conversation Shielding 1 Fruitiness Observation 1 Gathering Your Goods Interrogation 1 Heated Questioning Philosophy 1 Pondering Who He Himself Is and His Past   Lores Dirtying One's Pants Pure Breeds Have Fleeful Reasons Too   Notes Not bad, would've liked to have seen it finished.