[Flashback] Second Chance (Poison)

[Laszlo]

Winter 2nd, 510AV One Bell Past Midnight The local cuisine, like all things Symenestra, had taken some getting used to. It had become quickly necessary to eat like the natives, as Laszlo could not get his sustenance in his Ethaefal form during the day here in this cavern. Even now, however, as his bowl sat empty and his stomach full, there was still a hollow, weary feeling in him. This was not new. It had started a few days after he'd arrived in Kalinor, months ago. He hadn't quite identified the reason for it, but it was inescapable and bothersome, and served to paint his mood as almost invariably melancholy. Even now, as he sat quietly at the bar in Hunter's Gather, he played silent spectator to the mild commotion at the far corner of the room, unwilling to ask what all the fuss was about. The center of attention was apparently a man named Nedra, who was presently dealing hands of cards to others at his table. The word 'harvest' was coming up repeatedly, but Nedra was only smiling and shaking his head. Laszlo was amused enough to watch this play out, knowing he had only a few hours left before he shifted back into his day phase. Reaching the Hunter's Gather, and nearly everywhere else in the city, was impossible in his celestial state. Laszlo had adjusted his schedule so that he was more active in the barely recognized night hours of Kalinor, integrating almost seamlessly with the other Symenestra as one of them. He didn't make conversation enough to make himself look inept about Symenestra customs, though sometimes he managed it anyway. When asked, he would even openly reveal that he wasn't truly one of them, but an Ethaefal with an unfortunate night phase. Tonight however, he didn't feel much like talking. He sat comfortably at the bar by himself, his amethyst eyes looking dull and almost lifeless in the glow of the opalgloams. Dark silver hair shimmered like spidersilk as it sat lightly on his shoulders, tucked lazily behind both ears. He didn't have a drink in hand, as he didn't care for the way alcohol exacerbated the tired feeling he constantly felt in his bones. With his meal finished, Laszlo was only here now to observe the Symenestra in their element, fascinated by the way the light sparkled in each of their reflective eyes. Perhaps in another hour, he'd order seconds.

[Poison]

The Hunter’s Gather was crowded even though it was already past midnight. In a city like Kalinor where the sky was never visible night and day or the passing of the seasons were of little significance. The world of the Symenestra was always the same, shrouded in a kind of twilight that was hard to bear for those that came from the surface. The goddess whose realm Laszlo had fallen from never showed her face here. It was neither warm nor cold. The city of the Symenestra was as far as possible from the world where he had come from.

The tavern was filled with the smell of smoke, mixed with the slightly musky smell of the earth and something a little more unusual, something slightly sweet. One of the main ingredients of Bruka, a popular and traditional Symenestra dish was blood.

The Symenestra that were gathered here were laughing and joking, and one of them was even singing a song, a slightly melancholic song of the great jungles of Falyndar where their ancestors had had their home.

In the eyes of those that lived in the world above they were murderers, evil beings that abducted innocent women, raped them and condemned them to an early death, monsters that were beyond redemption, but they enjoyed much of the same things that humans did.

They laughed, they cried, and they wept for the loss of those that had died in the continuing struggle against extinction, much as those human parents that mourned the loss of their daughters at the hands of the Symenestra.

A man sat down next to the Ethaefal, barely paying attention to him. He cared only for the drink the bartender handed to him. There was something vaguely familiar about him, about the way he held himself, about his silver hair, the look in his eyes, but Laszlo wouldn’t be able to tell what exactly it was. There was just the awareness that he should know him ...

„I swear the matriarch is growing senile“, the man muttered somewhat bitterly and took a sip from his glass. „She insists that her husband has returned to Kalinor and will join her again, but he died decades ago! It’s about time her son took over. I’m tired of serving a woman that has lost her mind.“ He emptied the rest of the glass in in one go, hardly noticing the shocked look the bartender gave him.

„Psst, Vikenti“, the bartender whispered. „She’s here. You shouldn’t talk bad about people when they can actually hear you.“ He pointed at a place somewhere near the door, but Vikenti only laughed and shook his head.

[Laszlo]

Laszlo found himself staring at the stranger who sat down next to him. Everything about him felt strikingly familiar, in a way that captivated the young Ethaefal's candid attention. Much of Kalinor inspired the same feeling, as did hundreds of other little things, and it happened so frequently and so powerfully that Laszlo had to force himself to ignore it. Never before though had he felt this sensation so strongly with an actual person. Perhaps it was nothing. Maybe the man resembled someone Laszlo had once known. Even so, explaining that to someone who would consider him a complete stranger would be difficult to manage. Still, he couldn't resist. "Buy you another drink?" Laszlo offered to the Symenestra beside him, following the bartender's gesture across the room to an older woman sitting by the door. His eyes lingered on her curiously, now that his eavesdropping had identified her as Vikenti's matriarch. Vikenti. That name was familiar too, damn everything. Laszlo tried to shake it off. "I feel like we've met before. I'm Laszlo. Is that your matriarch, there?" He never took his eyes off the woman. He felt as though he should know her name. "What would make her say something like that?" Laszlo finally turned to Vikenti, making eye contact. He crossed his arms over his chest and studied the man's face. "You'll pardon me, but that just sounds downright insane." Laszlo waited for his answer with baited breath. He wasn't sure what sort of answer he would get, whether it would be a laugh or a blow to the chin. This felt like something he should investigate, however. His heart was beating a little faster than it should, and he wasn't sure why. He was just going with gut feeling, at this point.

[Poison]

„Another drink? Sure!“ Vikenti replied and grinned. He turned to face Laszlo and took a closer look at him, narrowing his eyes as he did so. The fact that the man had offered to buy him a drink had instantly brightened his mood and distratced him from the matriarch and her growing senility, but his words confused him. „I don’t think we’ve met before. I’d remember you. Maybe you have met my father. We look quite alike, although he is a fair bit older than me. To be honest, I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not. It either means I look like an old man or he has found a way to stop aging and is favoured by the gods.“

„But yes, that’s the ...“ He turned towards the door, and his eyes widened. He had thought that the bartender had made a joke, but she was actually here! She was here! Vikenti instantly tried to make himself smaller and hoped that she wouldn’t notice him. What if she had heard him? He had insulted her! She could throw him out for that! She would kill him and stick his head on a pole and do all kinds of unpleasant things to him!

„... the matriarch“, he finished the sentence and shuddered. „Don’t tell her that I said that about her!“ he whispered. „I’ll do whatever you want. Just please don’t tell her that I called her senile. Maybe her husband returned from the dead, right?“ He gave Laszlo a weak smile and tried to focus on the drink that the other man had hopefully bought him by now, still praying that the old woman would overlook him and sit down as far as possible from him. But unfortunately she was walking directly towards Laszlo and him.

She appeared to be in her eighties. She had shrunk a little with age, and her skin was grey and wrinkled, but her eyes were still the same, made of brilliant, liquid gold. She was dressed in a silk robe, and her feet were bare. Although she was nearing the end of her life, she still moved with a certain grace. In her youth she she had practiced the aerial dance, and it was still noticeable.

It was her, the woman that Laszlo had loved a lifetime ago, his wife, and she stared at him as if she had just seen a ghost.

[Laszlo]

They did look alike. Laszlo didn't catch his reflection enough in his night phase to get a good image of how he appeared, but the eye and hair color, the shape of the jawline, and the angular sweep of hair from the peak of his forehead, they were all familiar. A number of wild possibilities appeared in Laszlo's head to explain it. He was once Symenestra. He must have had roots here in the city. But that would have been ages ago, wouldn't it? Anyone he might have known in a past life would be long gone by now. Swallowing, Laszlo forcibly cleared his head, lest he get caught up in any fanciful notions that would make him look the fool. Laszlo followed Vikenti's eyeline back to the matriarch, breaking out into a helpless grin as the man suddenly panicked at the idea of being overheard. The smile faded as the woman began to approach them, as Laszlo fed off of his acquaintance's fear. Was she really that terrifying? Though he felt sorry for Vikenti, he couldn't keep himself from being incredulous at his pleading statement. "I don't think so. That sounds a bit…" He couldn't stop himself from watching the woman approaching them. Despite her obvious age, she moved with such dignity, such fluidity. It gave her a sense of intrigue, but there was something more than that. Laszlo knew those movements. "A bit…" he stuttered helplessly, his violet eyes locked on her amber gaze. She was captivating, but all of his male instincts were telling him that she was far beyond her prime, and he shouldn't have been remotely interested. But… he wasn't seeing her, exactly. There was an image of a lithe, tall, spidery woman twisting and curling in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. In Laszlo's mind's eye, she was there, her long alabaster hair flowing around her like silken ribbons, as much a part of the dance as her limbs. Shaking his head, Laszlo looked down and rubbed his eyes, purging the images from his head. They couldn't be memories; they were too immaculate, too powerful, too beautiful. He couldn't take the possibility that something like that had once existed, and now lie out of his grasp forever. And never, in a million years, could that woman become the crone that was standing in front of him. Filled with a new reserve of bitter contempt, that such a sweet thing would be cast in front of his vision and cruelly pulled away, Laszlo regarded the woman a slight scowl. Her eyes were deep and inviting, and seemed to go on forever, into the very center of her soul. The rest of her… hung off her bones like a worn out rag. Her husband has returned. We look quite alike. Maybe you have met my father. It couldn't be. Laszlo wouldn't believe it. He told himself that he was conceited, that he was drawing false conclusions from incidental evidence. Vikenti could be playing a trick, or Laszlo could have been reading far too deeply into what he'd said. But the image of that woman… no. That couldn't be her. That wasn't her. This was impossible. Laszlo couldn't be him. This wasn't what he wanted. "Can I help you?" Laszlo asked the woman gawking at him. His expression remained cold and disapproving. He had hoped whatever family his former self had was long dead, that they were names on a page written in some archive. A name he could claim, an afterthought of belonging, a source of origin. Never did he want to meet face to face with… this. "Have I wronged you somehow? Why are you looking at me like that?" Laszlo narrowed his eyes. "I've never seen you before in my life." Technically speaking, that was absolutely true.

[Poison]

The woman was still standing there, staring. She seemed to have frozen. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Next to Laszlo Vikenti looked very, very uncomfortable and confused. Neither the matriarch’s behaviour nor the way Laszlo returned her look made any sense to him. Maybe they had both lost their mind. „Why is she staring at you like that?“ he whispered to Laszlo and nudged him a bit to get his attention, and then he decided that he might as well take the opportunity and disappear. He emptied his glass and tried to sneak away.

It was then that the matriarch finally started to move again. Her hands trembled a little, and she clutched her chest as if it hurt. Vikenti looked from her to Laszlo and back and then he rushed to her side. Even though he was afraid of her, he didn’t want anything to happen to her. As he wanted to grab her arm, she shook his head and pushed him away. She didn’t need him anymore. She was feeling fine again. It had only been the shock.

She had seen him in her dreams, had had visions of him, she had prayed that they would come true, but she hadn’t believed it would actually happen. Seeing him in front of her now, as young as he had been on the day he had died, was almost too much for her. How could it be that he hadn’t aged a single day while she had become an old woman?

She ignored his questions for now, but simply came closer and extended his hand, touched him as if she needed to make sure that he was real. „It is you“, she whispered, and her golden eyes were wide with surprise. „You are really back. But why are you telling me that you’ve never seen me before? Don’t you remember me? You were everything for me. I almost gave up when you were taken from me. By the gods, what have they done to you?“

A single tear made its way down her cheek.

[Laszlo]

Though Laszlo let the woman touch his face, he recoiled gently as soon as he felt her fingers graze his skin. He nudged her hand away with the backs of his fingers, his claws glittering in the light in the corner of his vision. A shiver went through him; her skin felt as thin as paper. "I don't remember because we've never met," he insisted, resentment growing in his voice as he stared hard at her. "I don't know what you're talking about." Laszlo wasn't an idiot. He knew the woman must have recognized his face, saw someone that she once known, probably when she was much younger. Before now, however the Ethaefal had only be teased with small, fleeting shadows of his former lives. Edges of memories, dreams of other worlds. Never anything tangible, or lasting. This woman before him was on the precipice of death herself, and in the broad spectrum of things, probably fit the description of a fleeting shadow as much as anything else. But she was alive, here and now, and if she really did know this shape Laszlo was wearing, then she held from him a cache of lost memories that he so badly wanted to take from her. Still, he couldn't believe it. He wouldn't believe that she really knew him, not until she gave him something concrete, something he could grasp onto. Laszlo would make her work for it, make her prove that she really was a part of his former life. A feeling very much like fear clawed at the pit of his chest: this was it. This was the moment he never thought would come. This was when he'd learn who he was. Syna, please let this be it. "You're mistaking me for someone else, woman." Laszlo glanced at Vikenti warily, giving him a look of uncomfortable impatience, then turned back to the old woman. The weight of her words pulled at his mind. You were everything. "My name is Laszlo. I don't know you. I'm not even native to Kalinor; I'm only visiting. Who could you possibly think I was?" A name, woman. Give me a name. Tell me who I am.

[Poison]

"That cannot be", the woman said and shook her head as Laszlo claimed that he didn’t remember because they had never met. "I may be old, but my memory is still clear, no matter what they say."

There was a hint of bitterness in her voice. Her own people, members of her own Web, claimed that she was suffering from dementia, that she wasn’t able to take care of the Web any longer. But she knew the truth, and she would prove it to them!

"We have met before. I don’t know why you don’t remember or why you haven’t aged – I can’t even begin to imagine what you have been through – but this cannot simply be coincidence."

As he heard this Vikenti quietly made his way to the door. It made him uncomfortable. To him it was prove that she really was losing her sanity. Even though he’d tried to help her just a moment earlier, he wanted to get as far away as possible form her now.

As Laszlo suggested that she might be mistaking him for someone else, she furrowed her brow for a moment as if she were considering this possibility, but then she shook her head again.

"No, I don’t think so, unless you’ve fathered a son that you never told me about. Your name is not Laszlo. You are Vethis Orthilia, and you are my husband."

She pointed a bony hand at him. The tip of one of her black claws was touching his chest.

[Laszlo]

Your name is not Laszlo. Those words had power. The Ethaefal had of course chosen the name himself, as a fond memento to that bright-eyed young girl who imposed herself as his first friend. Yet as this world felt artificial and foreign to him, so did the name 'Laszlo'. It was never his true name—that name was lost to him since leaving the ukalas. He knew it, but to mortals it never made any difference. To them, names were just a pattern of syllables used to identify an individual. But to hear someone actually tell him, for the first time, that his name was not Laszlo, filled him with a desperate and helpless feeling. Of course, this woman was unaware of all that. She didn't see Syna's fallen standing before her, she saw her husband, Vethis Orthilia. Laszlo merely blinked in solemn silence as the name passed his ears. There were no alarm bells that rang, not like he expected. Perhaps the woman really was losing her wits. A moment passed as she reached out toward him, her black nails brushing against the fabric of his shirt. Laszlo stood rigid, watching her, ignoring her hand while he batted that name around in his head like a frayed piece of string. Vethis Orthilia. He mouthed the name, tilting his head in incredulous scrutiny at her. Violet eyes narrowed as they bored into the golden stare of the old woman. And untold number of years had worn down her features, etching away any youthful beauty she had once held. Yet those eyes… they retained a familiar almond shape. That rich, sparkling amber. Laszlo closed his eyes. Vethis. Flashes of a pale face passed through his vision. Thick, alabaster hair poured over her shoulders and hung around her face, barring her glistening golden eyes. She was crying. Vethis! Please, please hold on. Feeling a whisper of pressure against his abdomen, Laszlo lifted his hand to his side, uttering a soft noise as his eyelids lifted again. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. Quickly as always, the memory was already fading from his memory. Desperately he clawed at it, trying to remember what he said to her. Please hold on! "Nassanye…" Laszlo looked back up, meeting the woman's eyes. For the first time, pain was etched across his decidedly young features. A wealth of emotion began to swell in his chest, but the Ethaefal didn't understand what it was he was feeling. It was a mix of so many things, fear and devastation, a sense of longing that was tinged with a brand of relief. It made him lightheaded. "I was dying… No… I died. In your arms, I died." Tentatively, Laszlo took a step forward, placing a hand on the woman's frail shoulder. His violet eyes batted back and forth as he looked into both of hers, wearing a mix of disbelief and a deep desire for answers. "It was you. In all these dreams I've had of the white haired woman… she was you. Nassanye…" The barest hint of a smile shadowed upon his face. "Finally, I have a name. But… you've grown so old. How… how long has it been? Since… since I…" Vethis Orthilia. Yes, it sounded familiar now.

[Poison]

Nassanye looked at him as he said her name, and her eyes widened in surprise. He did remember after all! He recognized her! Maybe not everything was lost then. Maybe the gods had decided to have mercy on her and given her the one thing she yearned for the most, one last glimpse at her husband. She didn’t understand what had happened or how it had happened though. She had watched him die, and now he was standing here again, in front of her. She didn’t know why he was still so young. Gods, couldn’t they have made him an old man or her young again so that they could spend the remainder of their lives together? What kind of cruel joke was that?

„You were dying“, she confirmed. She could see the pain on his face, and it nearly broke her heart. Again. She wished she could comfort him and ease his fears, but she didn’t know how. How could you comfort somebody that had returned from the dead, that had been living a nightmare for the past couple of decades for all she knew? She didn’t know if she should laugh or cry. She had been a strong woman all that time. People had respected her and feared her. They hadn’t dared to criticize her because they were afraid her reaction. She had always been in charge, but she didn’t know how to deal with this, even though it was a dream come true, in a way.

„You died in my arms, because of her.“ She was referring to the surrogate. Did he remember? „But now you are back. How did you defeat death? Or was it Viratas himself that listened to my prayers?“ As he asked her how long it had been, she sighed and averted her gaze for a moment. „It has been half a century, Vethis. I was forced to live most of my life without you.“ She felt close to breaking down as she remembered what it had been like, the first days, the first months, the first years without him. She had been forced to raise their children alone, and she had never remarried.

„Come home with me, please, Vethis“, she pleaded. She didn’t know what the children would say, how she would explain his presence, and she didn’t care. All that mattered was that he was here, despite the fact that he looked like her son – or her grandson. She was afraid that he would disappear again if she left without him.