[Flashback] Aftershocks of The Call (Sondra)

by **Avari** on October 26th, 2011, 6:37 pm

Tears prickled in Avari's eyes as she listened to K'Sondra's blunt yet tender words, weaving the feelings that had always lain unspoken between them into a fine, silken thread of understanding that bound them together. She curled her fingers around her own glass of wine but did not raise it, still struggling for words to adequately answer K'Sondra's demonstration of affection without ruining the moment. Lifting her gaze to meet K'Sondra's, she shivered to see the depths in her cousin's blue-grey eyes and wondered for a moment if it were possible to sink beneath the sad, serene surface of them and drown in the ocean of darkness and horror that surely lay beneath.

I wish I that I could, she thought, in a rare burst of humble unselfishness. I wish that I could reach into her somehow and take away the shadows from her eyes, take the memories that caused them into myself. I know I could bear them. I wish I could carry her burdens for her, if only I knew how.

"You are the closest thing I've ever really had to family," Avari replied softly, still awash in the unusual and bittersweet sensations of selflessness and honesty. "You've given me a mother's protection and a sister's friendship and encouragement, though you were always more fun than any mother or sister could ever be." One corner of her mouth curved upward with a hint of gentle humor.

"You are the only person who let me be myself. You see me for who I am and don't turn your face away from me because of it. And for that, I love you the most out of anyone else I know." The color rose in Avari's cheeks, but she lifted her wine glass to her cousin's without embarrassment.

"To hope," she echoed K'Sondra's toast, and drank deep. The wine was sweet and fiery, the fizzy, spicy flavor blazing on her tongue and going straight to her head.

"Ahh!" she gasped, wiping at her mouth and smacking her lips. Avari drank more, relishing the fruity, burning taste of the wine, and a feeling of warmth and well-being spread out from her center to her entire body. A soft burp escaped her before she could stop it. "That's good stuff, Sondra; try it! They brought out the best for your last night in Mura. And ooh, look, there's your bowl of vian fruit. I wish I'd thought to order that myself, but I suppose I'm still too conventional, ordering regular food before dessert. Still, that berry salad looks good, doesn't it? The fruit looks as fresh as though Pu'veo just picked it from a bush, not that I can never imagine her kneeling in the dirt and getting herself dirty doing that. They remind me of those glass berries I bought from the House of Glass and put in a platter at the Harbor for sailors. You should have seen the looks on their faces when they picked up a berry and bit into the hard glass..."

Her eyes sparkling and her tongue running freely under the wine's influence, Avari chattered on as they both drank and ate from the offerings on the table. Slowly but surely, the dishes on the table vanished as they dipped their forks and spoons into each plate, only to be replaced with more plates and bowls as they ordered more food. The bittersweet melancholy of Avari's mood earlier in the evening melted away like mist. Before long, she had gotten her own bowl of stewed vian fruit and was fondly recalling an autumn afternoon in an orchard outside Mura as she nibbled merrily away.

"...exploring outside the city and we found that old orchard, remember? It looked like no one had been there for a year, urp, excuse me, and there was a whole pile of vian fruit just lying on the ground. Only most of them were too hard to peel open, so we started pelting each other with them. I hit you square in the nose, and then you bonked me with one while I turned around, and before I knew it, vian fruits were flying in every direction. Like sky-blue, urp, arrows." Avari giggled at the memory.

The hours melted away and the wine flowed freely from the first bottle, then a second as a server unobtrusively brought it to their table without a word. As the moon rose higher outside their window, casting his silvery rays through the curiously-carved window, Avari plopped a final spoonful of fragrant rice into her mouth and sighed contentedly. The amount of wine she'd drank had ruddied her cheeks and eroded away her already tenuous grasp on proper comportment, and she unabashedly laid her head on the table to rest in unladylike but extremely comfortable fashion.

"Oooh," she murmured. "I really hope you don't feel like dancing, because I don't think I can possibly keep my feet straight at this point. I'm soooo stuffed. And I think I might, urp, be a tiny bit drunk. Just a tiny bit." Her eyelids fluttered.

"I'm going to miss you, Sondra. Miss you so much. You're my bestest friend, and you're always going to be, forever. You know that? You're the bestest ever. Urp."

by **Sondra** on October 27th, 2011, 1:28 am

“Oh gods, the orchard. I almost forgot about that!”

K’Sondra guffawed, half of the sound coming through her nose. Her laugh had always been disarmingly goofy sounding, ever at odds with her strong features.
“By the end we looked like we’d been in a row. I told everyone at lessons I got the bruises from an ill-tempered seal. Looking back, I don’t know which story was worse.”

Food and wine was pushed and poured between them. K’Sondra frequently insisting Avari “had to try” something mixed with something. The elder had a dangerous penchant for spice and salt, so each combination brought with it a dose of caution.

“Remember when we found all that twine and decided to tie it criss-cross to the furniture legs in Eunoe’s parlor?” K’Sondra asked between bites.
“We made that ankle high spider web and promptly forgot about it until we heard K’Lora crash with all her books. We were already in the other room pretending to be philterers or something. We were always making ‘traps’ in that house.”

K’Sondra huffed a laugh, “I swear a bit of the twine is still wrapped about the leg of that violet chaise.”

They ticked through their personal “legends” tracing their adventures (and misadventures) into the semblance of adulthood they had now. Laughingly accusing one another for being the reason their brilliant ideas didn’t work out. “If you weren’t so afraid of the tide,” “If you had only smiled when you said it,” “Why on earth would you pick the one covered in bees?” and so on.

Finally Avari was spreading herself on the table, quite spent. K’Sondra had turned exceptionally merry, but, as usual, was the more cautious of the two.

“Dance?” K’Sondra echoed, “Ukalas, no. Pu’veo would be fishing our sloppy bodies out within the bell.”

When Avari confirmed their friendship, K’Sondra smiled and sweetly pet her cousin’s resting head. She would miss this more than she could yet understand.

“Course I’m your best friend. No one else could handle you so well.”

Beginning to slip her arm under Avari’s shoulder, K’Sondra began to straighten them up.
“If you’re only a ‘teensy bit’ drunk, then the night is not over!” Occasionally, K’Sondra was terrible.
“Plus I have a marvelous idea,” her voice grew hushed with the weight of a secret.

A bit less elegantly than how they arrived, the cousins left the Forest Meridian, K’Sondra purposefully leading the way. She nodded at well-wishers that passed with a smile made moony by the wine, but only spoke to her cousin when others seemed out of earshot. Her plan came in snatches.

“The cards, Ari – Eunoe’s beautiful set -- the ones she keeps for company near the tea tray.”

They had progressed to lonelier paths, so the ideas came out more fully formed.
“It’s high time we had a proper, unbiased reading, don’t you think?”
K’Sondra’s eyes glittered and darkened with the thought, sparks of moonlight on an evening sea.
“I’m not the finest with the cards, but I can do in a pinch and you can read for me. The cards even tend to do all the work for one... Maybe Eunoe will sense my unskilled fingertips on them when she next opens the box.”
Her laugh was quick and shallow, “A souvenir from her favorite granddaughter.”
The Konti tilted her head, seemingly bemused, “Or are you her favorite? I can never tell.”

by **Avari** on November 2nd, 2011, 3:52 am

OOCI really don't want to know what story is behind "Why on earth did you pick the one covered in bees?" But on the other hand, I really, really do.

Supported by K'Sondra's arm, Avari couldn't help gasping and then giggling wickedly at the plan that her cousin had dreamed up as they left the Meridian. At the idea of appropriating Eunoe's most treasured tarot cards for themselves, even for a single evening, her eyes also lit up with glittering mischief. Even now, woozy from the wine, Avari could close her eyes and envision how delicately Eunoe handled the lovely, unique cards as she slipped the deck from its ornately carved wooden case, shuffled it with slender white fingers, and slowly turned over each card to reveal a painted masterpiece of pasteboard artistry as she gave someone a reading. If she tried, she could even imagine the melodic lilt of Eunoe's voice as she reverently explained each brilliantly-colored image and shed light on its meaning.

The daring of K'Sondra's simple scheme drew another excited giggle out of her. While no one had ever expressly told them they were forbidden to touch Eunoe's precious tarot cards, Avari had always known that they were reserved for the most skillful and privileged of fortune-tellers. This trespass would be as deliciously dangerous as sneaking out of the house as adolescents ever had been.

In answer to her cousin's wry query, Avari chuckled. "Why, of course, we're both her favorites...to lecture and scold, that is. And she'll do plenty of both if we give each other these 'proper, unbiased readings' of yours.

"But it'll be worth it. You know I'm game." She stuck out her tongue playfully at K'Sondra, her head drooping unsteadily to one side. "I only wish I had your genius for coming up with these cunning plans of yours. It's not fair that you're not only braver, but you're also smarter and more ingenious. Mura's going to be so quiet without you around."

As the two meandered down an isolated pathway lined with fragrant Nootka rosebushes that positively trembled under the weight of hundreds of huge, frothing blossoms, Avari caught sight of the back door into the Kore manse. Lurching toward it in unison, the cousins managed to unlock the door and make their way into a long, dark hallway. The walls echoed with their giggles and grumbles as they bumped into each other, zigzagged into end tables, and nearly lost their footing on the slick, polished floor once or twice. Finally, they meandered into a storage room that led, judging from the savory aromas issuing from the doorway, into the kitchen.

"To the left, I think," K'Sondra whispered into Avari's ear, clearly guessing where they were in the large, gracious house. "That's where the tea-room is, isn't it?"

They turned that way and found themselves in a small, dimly lit room with soft, deep rugs covering the floor and low tables set around the room with careless elegance. Lilies floated in glass bowls upon the tables, perfuming the air with their heavy, sweet scent. Somewhere outside the room, a small fountain played. The cousins' eyes moved swiftly to the central table, which held an elaborate silver tea tray and a small, richly curlicued wooden case, just the right size for holding a deck of cards.

With a high-pitched giggle, Avari detached herself from K'Sondra's arm and tiptoed quickly toward the table and the deck of cards. Nervously, she picked up the wooden case, then set it back down again, but then hesitantly lifted it again, as though handling a highly desirable burning brand. She glanced over at K'Sondra, and somehow the eye contact seemed to give her courage. Slowly, Avari opened one end of the case and tipped their grandmother's most cherished tarot cards carefully onto the table. With soft whispering sounds, the cards slowly slid onto the table's surface in a haphazard fan pattern.

"I…I can't believe we're doing this," she whispered, taking a deep breath and darting glances from side to side. Though she was smiling, her movements had an edgy quality that betrayed her anxiety at touching Eunoe's beautiful cards. "I don't know if I dare to touch them, just yet! Do…do you want to go first?"

by **Sondra** on November 19th, 2011, 1:01 am

OOCLol, less interesting than one might hope

but inspired by real life. As young children they're riding along with other cousins and pass through a large edible garden. Avari dares K'Sondra to steal some food, K'Sondra declines, but for once K'Sondra's sisters are in agreement with Avari and egg her on. Avari is given the task of choosing the "bounty". She points to the small patch of vineyard and asks for grapes. K'Sondra begins to make her way towards the vines, but it's suddenly apparent the owner is coming. Now going at a feverish pace, the young Konti is racing to complete the task, only to find the vines are filled with bees. In the meanwhile, Avari is trying to pull a pumpkin loose, now learning they have incredibly thick stems. Hilarity ensues.

K’Sondra swept the cards together, but her hands were slower than expected as she separated the minor arcane from the major. There was a weight to the deck and she could not help but show the exquisite objects some reverence.
She gently spread the major arcane on the table before them:

The Fool, the Mage, the Priestess, the Matriarch, the Father, the Priest, the Lovers, the Chariot, the Strong Wave, the Scholar, Ovek’s Wheel, Tyveth’s Hand, the Hanged Man, Dira, Gnora, Rhysol’s Mizas, the Watchtower, the Stars, the Moon, the Sun, Lhex and Semele.
Each was intricately depicted with a sea change.

K’Sondra gathered them again after letting their hungry eyes see all of the painted deck Eunoe had so covetously kept. Part of her felt a brief disappointment, the mystery had been abolished and with it some of the intangible arcane. They were as beautiful as she had hoped, but now her old imaginings had to give way to knowledge.

“I was never much good with these,” she admitted with her head tilted, as if the adjustment of her vision would elucidate the cards’ meanings.

“So a simple pattern for you. The past, present and future. Maybe double on the future, because there’s more of it.”
Not a very studied understanding of an array.

The Konti gently shuffled the cards, letting them slide gracefully between another. They whispered like satin, the sound evoked Eunoe, making K’Sondra all the more nervous. Much as they did not care for their Grandmother, she was a force to be reckoned with, all a Konti was intended to be, and what she and Avari were decidedly not.

The cards were laid face down in the awkward pattern. K’Sondra’s eyes raised briefly to her cousin’s, she might have been holding her breath.

The first card, the past, was slowly turned. Though she was a terrible tarot reader, K’Sondra did have a little talent for the theater that surrounded it.

“The Priest, inverted…”
It was a priest of Laviku, draped in a stone colored robe, his bare arms wound with kelp and his lips painted blue. His long beard had crabs and shells clinging to it and craggy coral circled his head. He stood unmoving as the sea rose around his legs, threatening to engulf his proud shape.

K’Sondra was fumbling for a meaning drilled into her head eras ago, ruining the brief air of mysticism.
“Negativity?... No -- that’s the Watchtower… It’s um…”
The light of knowledge spread over her smiling face.
“Rejection of convention or family!” K’Sondra laughed.
“Maybe this isn’t as tough as it looks.”

Still beaming, she went to turn the card for the present.

“The Sun, also inverted.”

The golden orb was rising over a sea horizon. White gulls flew amidst the rays and the blue world reflected the sun’s face in amber ripples. K’Sondra stared at the card, but it wasn’t with confusion. She suddenly laughed and announced in a trill.

“I’ve plain forgot! Good thing it’s the present. You’ll find out soon enough.”

Moving on quickly, K’Sondra turned the two cards of the future. Despite her hurry, Avari could see a faint tremble in her hands.

“The moon, reversed.”

The moon was high in the heavens, tinting the scene in purple and pearl. Beneath the moon, waves struck the shore, flinging white sparks of water into indigo sky.

“For you…” K’Sondra was peering at the cards bright face, “I would say it means illusion.” A quick smile as she continued excitedly, “Perhaps one day you shall visit Alvadas!”
It was a generous interpretation, colored more by K’Sondra’s faith in her cousin than an understanding of the portents of the cards. If she had the talent to read them, K’Sondra might have known the inverted white visage spoke of deception and hidden forces.

The last card was turned with slightly more confidence, though the bravado was short lived as it slipped from K’Sondra’s fingers. She felt a stab of something beyond crude recognition of symbols. Her mouth had the bitter pang of tasting saltwater and steel: her body’s interpretation of knowledge.

“Rhysol’s Mizas.”

A submerged chest of treasure was buried in sand, a corpse’s hand caught under its lid. The skeleton’s mouth was open and its rotting eyes were becoming pearls. Around the scene, the ocean swelled with all its bright fecundity, clotted with anemone, urchins, and vivid creeping things.

“Want. Lust.”

K’Sondra had nothing more to give for the card. The words fell out of her mouth like stones.

Gathering the cards up again, K’Sondra murmured apologies.
“I was always terrible with these things.”

by **Avari** on November 22nd, 2011, 8:42 pm

Rich and strange, the pictures on the tarot cards returned Avari's curious, searching gaze with painted inscrutability as she squinted her eyes and scrunched up her features at them in a vain attempt to divine their significance to her life. Her knowledge of reading tarot was even patchier than K'Sondra's, so she listened trustingly and uncritically as her cousin revealed and interpreted each card. She laughed along with K'Sondra when the first card asserted her rebellious nature, and her cousin's prediction that she would someday visit Alvadas made Avari chuckle, though the macabre image of Rhysol's Mizas caused the younger Konti to frown with confusion and interest.

"Rhysol's Mizas, oh my," she said, peering at the portrayal of the drowned skeleton still reaching, even in death, for the riches inside the treasure chest. "That looks ominous. No wonder Eunoe kept these cards from us. She probably wanted to protect our innocent eyes from scary images like that."

Looking apologetic and slightly troubled, K'Sondra started sweeping the cards back together. Avari regarded her admiringly.

"I don't know how you remember all the symbols and meanings and keep them straight in your head," she remarked. "Especially with three-quarters of a bottle of wine in you, no less! Tarot cards are pretty, but so inexact. So many possible meanings for each card, even without the inversions. Easy to read, but hard to interpret. Nothing like my dice, which are harder to figure out, but easier to interpret. Bah!" She waved her hand dismissively.

"They are very pretty, though," she conceded, picking up the deck that K'Sondra had stacked atop the low table. "And I guess the cards we draw still mean something, even if we don't immediately get the meaning right."

In an uncertain echo of the ceremony Avari employed with her dice, she made K'Sondra hold the tarot deck in her hands until the cards had taken on her warmth. Then she took them from her cousin and shuffled them clumsily, the cards tumbling awkwardly against each other. With a self-conscious giggle, she pushed the cards into a semblance of order and solemnly followed K'Sondra's example, drawing the top four cards and laying them face-down on the table. With her ignorance of tarot cards, she thought the pattern of four cards for the past, present, and future made perfect sense.

"So, for the past..." She slowly turned over the first card. "The Mage, inverted."

The card showed a Reimancer standing at the shore, one arm raised toward dark storm-clouds above and the other arm extended toward the swirling, churning waters at her feet. Bright sparks of lightning glittered at her uplifted fingertips, while her other hand was surrounded with a translucent glow as she pointed toward the vortex formed by the stormy sea.

Avari's brow furrowed as she struggled to reason out the card's meaning. "Uh, so the Mage is supposed to be a conduit of power, right? Don't mages use Res or Djed or whatever to do magic? So, if the card is upside-down, then it means..." She drummed her fingers on the table, and then her face broke out into a grin. "Aha! Inability to use your powers and reach your potential! Well, that makes sense."

Before K'Sondra could say anything, Avari raised her hands defensively. "No offense! You know I don't mean your mirror. I just meant...well, you know. Sinspeaking. Well. We've been over that."

She coughed discreetly and proceeded to turn over the next card.

"The Fool, upright."

The card depicted a beautifully detailed underwater scene filled with with colorful corals, tremulous anemones, and silvery schools of fish. Upon a sharp ledge, a single swimmer seemed to be swaying in the current, poised at the edge over a dark, shadowy sea valley where the creatures of the deep ocean dwelled. Above the swimmer, the glimmering shallows were dappled with sunshine. An errant ray of light illuminated the swimmer's face, revealing her serene, almost blissful expression.

"The Fool, eh? Well, these cards are blunt!" Avari commented with a wry chuckle. "Oh, I know, I know. The Fool is supposed to stand for innocence, but also risk. New beginnings, new journeys. That's very fitting, considering your Call."

A tiny sigh escaped her lips. Her smile fading, she turned toward the next two cards. When she saw the first one, Avari suppressed a groan.

"The Lovers, upright."

On the card, a pale Konti woman was holding hands with a dark-skinned, powerful-looking Akalak man. They were standing together on a sunny, golden beach, and flowers were draped around their necks and shoulders. Behind them, the foamy surf crashing against the shore had thrown up a curtain of rainbow droplets, veiling the landscape behind them in softly luminous mist.

A sharp dart of jealousy bit at Avari's heart. "Well," she mumbled at last, "I guess you'll find love. That's nice. It's what every true Konti wants, isn't it?"

Not looking at K'Sondra's face, for fear of the radiance that she was certain she would see shining in her cousin's eyes, she hastily turned the last card. She frowned in confusion when she saw the image, not sure how to pair the unexpectedly violent image with the name of the card.

"The Watchtower, upright."

Shaped like a lowercase "h," a tall, white tower stretched skyward above jagged rocks, topped with a massive, brilliant gemstone that sparkled like a diamond at the crown of the Watchtower. Around the tower, however, violence and destruction raged. Bolts of yellow lightning split the heavens, plumes of smoke poured from earth and sky alike, and a conflagration of blazing lava and blood-red fire scorched the tower, blackening its bone-white stones. Parts of the tower had already collapsed, toppling in on itself. From the fire and lava alone, Avari guessed that the card was referring to the Valterrian, which had destroyed many of the ancient Watchtowers that once had been scattered all across the continent.

At once, the painful prickle of jealousy was numbed by the chill of Avari's sudden fear. She swallowed around a large lump in her throat, reluctant to speak. Originally, she had thought the Watchtower would symbolize strength and fortitude, but the destruction portrayed in its image stunned her and gave her pause. For a moment, she remained silent, just trying to find words to accompany the card.

"I guess it means change," she said at last, inadequately. "Major change. That seems obvious. But...but the tower is still standing, so that means the change isn't completely destructive! It might not be a bad change, either. Just a big one."

It wasn't clear if she was trying to reassure K'Sondra or herself. Even with her meager ability to interpret Tarot cards, the last one seemed to promise disaster and upheaval of the most violent sort. Avari looked up at her cousin, worry plain in her pale face. The last thing that K'Sondra needed in her life was more hardship. Hastily, she clutched the card in her hand and turned it back over, as though in denial of its predictions.

"Probably they all mean something that I don't remember anymore. It's been so long since the last time Eunoe tried to teach me about the tarot." She smiled weakly. "Besides, I've never been much good at fortune-telling. So, who knows what it all means?"

by **Sondra** on November 28th, 2011, 7:08 am

As Avari read the cards, her cousin’s focus was fixed more on her than the deck. K’Sondra admired the art and smirked or smiled over the interpretations (there was an audible snort when the Lover’s card was turned) but she was looking more at Avari’s face for the meaning of it all.

“Perhaps you have a talent for them after all, Ari. These cards have powerful meanings attached to them.”
K’Sondra reached casually forward and rubbed the Watchtower with her fingertip. Her eyes were half lidded as she considered the card.

“I can see why Eunoe prefers such a ‘loaded deck’. She has persuaded even me with ideas too bold to be fabricated. Or at least I hope. Love, change, power, blood… broad swaths of a life.”

Removing her finger from the ominous card in Avari’s hand, K’Sondra fell out of her meditative gloom.

“Now I know I’ve had too much to drink.” She looked at Avari, sputtering a laugh she had tried to restrain.
“I’m getting melodramatic. Next I’ll be channeling Akvatari poets. ‘Oh silver-gray, like streams of stars’…”

K’Sondra’s arms made a circle on the table and with a child’s disregard for propriety, she sighed and rested her chin on them. Her voice was mumbled by the forced clench of her jaw.

“No wine in Avanthal. I’ve got appearances to keep up. Might be nice to be taken seriously by others. Oh, I’m taken seriously now,” she assured with a wan smile, “But in the way you take an illness or wound seriously. Something to be watched.”

The alcohol was finally blooming in her blood, and stoic K’Sondra was slowly drifting into smaller vulnerable pieces.

“Did you know I was five when my mother had to explain the idea of rape to me? I was at the harbor, probably trying to ‘fish’. A group of visitors passed, jostling me a bit and there it was.”
K’Sondra breathed deeply, exhaling the memory and with it a portion of herself.

“If there’s a use for that in Avanthal, then maybe all the joy it has eaten will be redeemed.”

She reached up limply toward Avari, immediately forgetting she had spoken too much. Perhaps it was an ungainly fumble to acknowledge her younger cousin was growing older, and K’Sondra didn’t need to be the tower of strength anymore. She would miss the proper years in which to express this. All the torches had to be passed in one painful tempest of fire.

“Take me to bed, cousin. It’s your turn, now. I’ve got my sea legs. Stay in my room tonight.”

K’Sondra smiled in a way that was hard to resist.
“Like when we were younger.”

by **Avari** on December 2nd, 2011, 1:58 am

Of all the myriad emotions that had blossomed and faded within Avari's psyche throughout this precious last evening with K'Sondra, the deep, wrenching sorrow that gripped the younger Konti at the thought of her cousin's past tribulations and unknown future was by far the most painful. It was that sorrow that made her acquiesce to K'Sondra's request to go to bed. If the decision had been up to Avari, they would have stayed up all night. The buzz of the wine and the excitement of reading Eunoe's forbidden tarot cards still filled her with restless energy. But now K'Sondra had responsibilities, and they couldn't play like children anymore. Her cousin would have to get up early tomorrow and board the ship to Avanthal, preferably not throwing up her guts before the voyage even started, leaving Avari behind.

For a moment, her eyes fell to the Watchtower tarot card still gripped in her hand. She let it fall onto the table, willing the action to forcibly dismiss the card from her thoughts. It was just a card, after all. How could it carry any weight, compared to K'Sondra's powerful hopes and desires for Avanthal?

She reached out to take K'Sondra's hand in her own gloved ones. Grandmother Eunoe had never liked either of them wearing gloves to muffle their gifts, but she had always been stricter on the older, more senior K'Sondra with her more troubling gift of insight. Besides, as the inverted Priest that K'Sondra had drawn showed, Avari had no love for the restrictions laid by family. She was proud that her fingers didn't tremble as she held K'Sondra's limp, languid hand in hers and drew her gently to her feet.

"I guess we've played at being rebels long enough, stuffing our faces all evening and getting our dirty fingers on Eunoe's cards," she quipped. Unlike her hands, though, Avari's voice quivered noticeably with too many unfamiliar and uncomfortable emotions. She tried a brave smile. "T-to bed it is, cousin. Maybe you can dream of...of handsome Vantha men with snowflakes in their hair, or some such."

Of course, all Konti were light-boned, but K'Sondra felt as though she weighed as much as a feather as Avari supported her with an arm. On the whole island, I'm probably the only one who thinks of her as fragile, she thought uncharitably. Dimly, she sensed how K'Sondra bore her gifts like wounds, their agony unable to be cured, only endured at best and torn open further at worst, and how it had led the rest of Mura to view her the same way. Gently, when she believed K'Sondra wouldn't notice, she stroked her cousin's head. Will the cold of the North make her hardier or shatter her like thin ice? I wish I knew.

Involuntarily, the image of the burning Watchtower swam forth in her vision. Fiercely, Avari shook away the vision and concentrated on navigating the dim, shadowy manse. They stumbled and tiptoed through the corridors and richly decorated rooms, until they finally arrived at the spare, simple bedroom halfway up the northwestern tower. Only hours before, Avari had flung open that door and barged roughly into the room demanding answers. Now, she reached a hand out to nudge the door open, revealing the half-packed trunk in the center. Stray shafts of moonlight shone through a gap in the curtains, illuminating the bedroom with an unearthly silvery glow.

Pulling herself free from Avari, K'Sondra dropped onto the bed with a sigh. Her eyelids fluttered closed and she seemed to fall asleep in an instant, breathing deeply and regularly. Avari stole around to the other side of the bed and climbed in, listening to her cousin's slow breaths. Under the blanket, she held her cousin's hand in hers again, clasping it tightly.

"I'll miss you," she whispered, hoping her words would somehow enter K'Sondra's dreams without waking her.

Then she turned over and curled up on the other side of the bed. Hours passed in silence. No matter how long she listened to K'Sondra's breathing, though, or stared into the moonlight, or played games in her head to lull herself, Avari couldn't fall asleep. She kept hearing her cousin's voice in her head, murmuring about the tarot cards they had drawn for each other, repeating the words, "Love, change, power, blood." And the more she tossed and turned, the more she kept seeing the image of the Watchtower card, promising violence and destruction somewhere in K'Sondra's future, a future that Avari could never share with her or try to help her endure.

It's not fair! she kept thinking. It's too soon for her to be leaving. Why does she have to leave like this, anyway? Why does it have to be a Call, a higher purpose, because Eunoe wants her to do it?

And what if the Watchtower card was right? At this thought, Avari lay stock still in the bed. The cards don't lie; Eunoe's told us that enough times. Whatever cards we draw will answer our questions, but the real skill is in figuring out the answers. I'm sure I read the Watchtower correctly, though. The burning, the smoke, the lightning...it's the Valterrian, the purging, the catastrophe! What if that's what Sondra has to look forward to in Avanthal?

Her hands clenched into fists. It's not fair, it really isn't. Hasn't she suffered enough? The cards don't lie. Fire and horror...is that her fate? Love, too, I suppose, but maybe that will only make it worse, if the catastrophe takes love away from her. She's had to be so strong; I don't want the catastrophe to burn away her strength and make her crumble like an ancient tower!

The horror of the thought was so strong that Avari couldn't lie still any longer. She sat bolt upright in bed and turned to look at K'Sondra in the bed next to her. The older Konti's ivory-white features were still and peaceful, her lips curved in what, at least in the pale moonlight, appeared to be a tender smile.

She's so beautiful and so strong, she thought, feelingly. She thought again of the destruction and upheaval that the tarot card had promised. Was it the wine that was making her think like this, or was she on the brink of an Avalis-given revelation? Her thoughts chased themselves round and round inside her mind, but one resolution rose above the rest like a clarion trumpet note above a clamor of jumbled shouting: I can't let this happen to her. I can't let her be hurt any more.

Slipping out of bed, she bent over to retrieve her gloves and shoes. She couldn't just lie here and let her own cousin, dearer to her than any sister, walk right into further suffering. Avari had to do something, even if she had no idea what the "something" would be. No one else, not even K'Sondra, would act, so it was all up to her to help K'Sondra or get in the way of whatever dreadful future awaited her cousin.

Creeping quietly across the floor, she pushed the door open and snuck outside, while K'Sondra still lay in bed.

by **Sondra** on December 18th, 2011, 8:29 pm

The bed exhaled as Avari slipped off of it. It shifted the sleeping K’Sondra, whose eyes fluttered then chose to forget what they saw until the dream ended. The dreaming Konti was somewhere bright and cold trying to discern where her pale form ended and the crystalline white began. The dream’s conclusion had neither comfort nor warning, it existed just as she did, without certainty.

When the dream ended, K’Sondra slowly resumed the thought cast aside. Avari was gone and it was almost time to meet the ship with its tall masts to Avanthal.

K’Sondra sat up in bed, aching for something. Her hand pressed over her heart, trying to loosen a new tangle of strings that constricted it. Many bore Avari’s name and the significant days she would miss in her life. One of the old knots and bindings had her unknown father’s name, another her listless and impotent mother’s.

Mura had carried all K’Sondra’s eras and now she was leaving it. To hate Mura was to hate her own life, and K’Sondra still loved her life and the few bright pillars she had used in its framing. Of course she would understand this only now, as she was about to depart. It was a flaw of mortals, only grateful when faced with loss.

Her other hand pressed on the rumpled space Avari left, willing blessings upon what it represented.

“Fair mother,” she prayed, the awkward break of her voice made lovely only by the feeling leaning into it, “Give her good knowledge to guide her and hard truths to try her. Please, walk with her part of the way since I cannot.”
She thought of her cousin’s powerful inner tides and her own struggles with the duality of traits.
“Keep her desires from turning into lusts and her strength from becoming force. May she follow a good path with her courage and meet detractors with kindness and resiliency.”
K’Sondra’s words stumbled as she felt this was her last opportunity to beg benediction for Avari in Mura’s hallowed air.
What did one do when you desired so much for another and had only words to express it? Her hand pressed harder on the now cool imprint Avari had left, as if the earnestness of her gesture could encompass what the tongue could not.

“Bring her the love I bear but can no longer show. And Father Laviku, bring us good currents so we may soon meet again.”

There was some comfort in that. Even flung as far north as Avanthal, there were ample eras for them to find one another. Konti lives were so very long, or so K’Sondra felt in this cusp of youth. They would have another season, perhaps sweeter than the clumsy search of childhood.

Breathing deeply to bolster her nerves, K’Sondra finally left the bed to prepare for the morning. She assumed Avari would manifest at some point, though she wished her cousin had remained for this last, quiet communion.

The rest of her family’s pale faces floated into the hall, blankets still around their shoulders in the dawn cold. All bid her goodbye, clasping and kissing her, dark K’Sondra who had finally shouldered what was to be the glory of the Kore name.

Last of them was Eunoe, who held her granddaughter’s face and looked at her with the weight of stars in her eyes. The full power of Eunoe’s searching glance was a terrible and brilliant thing. K’Sondra felt as if she was being hollowed out by winds. Her grandmother’s farewell felt like a Queen’s edict.

When released, K’Sondra reeled, remembering how few her eras were.

The walk to the harbor was solitary. The hand that didn’t drag the cart with her trunk tingled, wishing for another’s to keep it warm. Where was her cousin? Would she hide in this final hour to nurse her hurt or meet her at the gangplank despite the pain of goodbye?

by **Avari** on January 10th, 2012, 9:11 pm

It took Avari a whole fifteen minutes after she had fled from the warmth and comfort of K'Sondra's bed to realize that, for all her zeal and enthusiasm to spare her cousin from a horrendous future, she had no idea where she was planning to go to accomplish that. The realization hit her just as she was pelting through the ghostly nighttime streets of Mura into the chalky circumference of Unity Circle. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked around herself in consternation. Considering how blindly and frantically she had been running, the young Konti counted herself lucky that she hadn't gotten herself lost in the Silverwood or run completely off the island.

Off the island… Avari pursed her lips. She glanced once toward the west, where lay the white harbor. Yes, there was only one place where she could go to save K'Sondra from the fate the Watchtower tarot card had promised her. If there had been more time, perhaps, she would have visited a shrine to Avalis instead and offered prayers for their goddess-mother to grant visions of knowledge to her cousin. But only a scant few hours separated the present from the morning of K'Sondra's departure. Avari knew she had to act swiftly.

She took off running again, this time toward the White Isle Harbor, her feet following the pathways that she knew so well. For as long as Avari could remember, the harbor had been her preferred playground, her favorite refuge in all of Mura. She arrived breathlessly at the docks a short time later, scanning the ships in port anxiously.

For today, she would not be requesting fantastic tales from sailors or wondering about the wonderful lands that lay at the edge of the horizon. She hurried along the wooden platforms stretched over starlit waters, looking for the biggest ships. Avanthal was a very faraway city, after all, and no mere fishing boat could take K'Sondra all the way there. Even in the predawn darkness, seamen and captains were already awake and laboring busily over their ships. Avari lost no time questioning the sailors about their vessels' routes and destinations and in short order found the one bound for Avanthal that very morning.

The captain of the ship, when she found him, was understandably nonplussed by the strange Konti girl who fearlessly accosted him and demanded that he give up the cabin reserved for one K'Sondra Kore.

When he found his voice, the huge, red-bearded man roared with laughter. "Who are you anyway, little one? What are you doing here at this hour? And what do you care about that cabin?"

"I'm Son- I mean, K'Sondra Kore's cousin," Avari responded heatedly. "And it's an emergency! She can't go with you on your ship! I read it in the cards!"

The big man shrugged. "It was reserved for the lady, and it is there waiting for her. If she chooses to occupy it, then there is nothing I can do about it. Is your cousin unable to make the trip?"

"No, she's fine," Avari answered, with a note of despair in her voice. "She wants to make this trip. That's why you have to tell her you can't let her take the cabin. You have to tell her that the cabin is damaged, or the ship is leaking, or the voyage is too dangerous. Anything!"

"And why would I be telling a customer that?" the captain asked sardonically. "How do you think I'd look if I told people I let my ship break down or I couldn't make a voyage that I promised them? It'd hurt my sterlin' reputation as the boldest sailor on the sea and a man of my word. No, I'm not telling your lady any such thing."

Seeing her face fall, though, his expression grew canny and shrewd. "But there is one thing, maybe, that I can tell her that'd make her go runnin' from the ship, without hurting me in any way."

Avari immediately looked up, almost vibrating with hope. "You can? What is it?"

The man eyed her, his eyes drifting to her pockets. "I could tell her the cabin's been bought out by someone else at a much higher price, a price I couldn't refuse. So, there'd be no room for her to go. But I'm only going to tell her that, little one…if you buy out her cabin. Think you can do that?"

The question made Avari gape widely in astonishment. "But I…but I…" I don't have that kind of money! What kind of madness is this? But Sondra…

Her hands dove into her pockets and pulled up the pouch of mizas from yesterday. Her aunt had given her some to go shopping at the Bountiful Sea, but she had never purchased anything after she'd heard the news about K'Sondra's Call. The pouch held maybe fifteen mizas in total, but that wouldn't be nearly enough to pay the passage-price for a cabin all the way to Avanthal. Frantically, she dug deeper into her pockets, searching desperately for a stray coin. Instead, her fingers struck smooth, polished whalebone, carved into small, perfect cubes. Avari lifted her hand from her pocket, revealing her special set of dice.

A few months before, a few sailors had taught her to throw dice and play games of chance with them. She had picked it up quickly, considering her particular method of fortune-telling relied on dice and she had always had deft hands and fingers. Avari ventured a smile up at the captain.

"I can't pay for all of it, not yet," she said clearly. "But I can play you for the passage-price."

The man stared at her, as though she had just grown a second head, and then burst into another huge round of laughter. "Oho! You've got spirit, girl! Well, I suppose I can't lose with this proposition. Either way, I get the passage-price paid, and one more or less passenger doesn't matter too much either way. Let's play!"

And so the unlikely pair hunched over a pair of crates at the end of the gangplank and rolled their dice together, one furiously intent, the other grinning in unabashed amusement at his small opponent. Each of them had wagered exactly half of the passage price, so that if Avari won, she would pay her winnings to the captain and he would give half of K'Sondra's payment back, along with the news that her cabin had been bought out. If she lost, the captain would take her money and leave the cabin open for her cousin. The dice clattered loudly against the rough wood, causing one voice or the other to shout loudly in triumph or bemoan their ill luck.

Thanks to Avari's particular method of fortune-telling, though, the pile of mizas before the Konti slowly but steadily grew taller as she and the captain continued to play. It was gradually nearing the amount she would need to buy out that all-important cabin on the ship bound for Avanthal. The thought made her giddy with anticipation, wondering if she could truly avert the fortune that Eunoe's tarot cards had shown with a few lucky rolls of the dice.

"Aha!" she cried, after one particularly excellent roll. With covetous hands, she raked in another few mizas into her pile, while the captain groaned. Heedless of the footsteps behind her, she exclaimed loudly, "I've three-quarters of the sum now! Only a few more rolls, and Sondra won't ever have to go to Avanthal. And it'll all be because of me!"

The captain opened his mouth to reply, but then looked behind her, and his mouth simply stayed open in an "O" of surprise. Dropping his dice onto the crate, he shot to his feet and gave a sketchy salute.

"Y-you must be the L-lady Kore that I've heard so much about," he stammered. "I hadn't expected you so soon."

Avari's chest tightened, dreading the sight of Eunoe behind her with eyes darkened by wrath. Slowly and painfully, she turned around. What she saw there, though, was not her grandmother. It was even worse. There stood K'Sondra on the dock, dragging a cart full of trunks behind her, her face as white and still as death. Avari jumped to her feet.

She wanted to say, "Look, I can explain," or "I was just trying to help you." Instead, though, the only words that emerged from her lips were, "I'm sorry…"

by **Sondra** on January 27th, 2012, 3:13 am

What was most devastating about K’Sondra was her utter lack of anger. The Konti stood there, drowning on air.

“Can I not hope, little cousin?” she finally asked, bled by grief.
“Or shall I be tethered here by guilt and fear, forever?

K’Sondra faded into weariness before their eyes, and Avari might wonder if the color would ever return to her cousin.

Lifting her eyes to the ship, K’Sondra imagined her life like a boat kept in the harbor with sails forever furled. Fear could keep her anchored here and she could shut her mind to the wild world. It would never break her or disappoint her. The Kore achievements could loan her enough credence in her old age. And all the sins of the world would stay hidden and quiet, poisoning only the hearts that bred them.

K’Sondra looked at her bare hands. They trembled and she wanted Avari to hold them and tell her Mura was enough.

But she would hunger for meaning and one day dissipate, as the cup of her life dried up before she ever took a draught. The long decades would lose distinction and blend together, and the Konti gift of years would mean nothing. She would become a creature her cousin should never respect or emulate: a woman who would give anything to not feel afraid.

“Even if the cup is bitter,” she decreed, “It is still mine, and I will taste it, Avari.”

K’Sondra summoned all the power the blood of gods lent her and commanded the captain with a look. Hail Laviku, god of depths unknown and relentless tides, hail Avalis, goddess of mystery and ever seeing.

The Captain paused then respectfully made way for the white witch of Avanthal.

Don’t look back. Don’t look back at her, or you’ll never go, her heart warned.

And K’Sondra didn’t, not until there was nothing to see but ocean.