Home Is Where Your Hearth Is

[Laszlo]

Winter 1st, 511 Half past four bells. Laszlo hated the cold. He associated it, of course, with the day of his "birth". It had been his good fortune, or perhaps Syna's design, that the young daughter of a Syliran fisherman had found the Ethaefal washed up on the shore of the Suvan Sea, naked, freezing, and barely conscious. And, recalling distant memories belonging to Vethis Orthilia replayed in his dreams, he could almost recall that dying must have felt even colder. Siofra would know, her soul free now to find new purpose. The beginning and the end, why were they both so cold? Sopping wet, Laszlo stumbled along the dark Alvadas street, his soaking cloak clinging to his back and legs. Both arms were crossed tightly over his chest to cradle what little warmth he could keep as the rest of his body shivered madly. Every shred of clothing he wore was heavy with salty Suvan water, savagely stinging the gash along his side, though Laszlo was too cold to care. The gravelly road under his boot heels seemed to mock him, rolling and rippling like the surface of the ocean, but still as hard as the earth. Laszlo could barely concentrate, his mind numb from the shock and the cold, and aching from trying to keep his teeth from chattering. It was all he could do to focus his halfway open eyes on the movement of his feet, trying to keep himself conscious as he prayed for Ionu to bring him back to the tavern. The cool winds that licked at him through his clothing brought muted groans of pain from the Ethaefal, but he kept moving. His only other choice was to collapse here in the street and perhaps die. He didn't want to die. Goddess, he just wanted all of this to become memory. Adding to his silent prayers to Ionu, he mumbled pleas to Syna under his breath, pleading with her to guide him home and promising to be a better person. To be honest, Laszlo wasn't sure why he so desperately clung to life when Siofra was so ready to throw away hers. He had told her several times: we are the same. She always insisted they weren't. Maybe she was right. It didn't matter. He couldn't think about that now. All he wanted was to get back home. The toe of his right boot caught on the road, and Laszlo tripped. Uttering a soft grunt, he fell first onto his knees, and then his hands—one of them flat and the other balled into a fist. The cold ground was unforgiving, rough, and painful against his skin. His body quaked in what might have been a sob. "Gods," he muttered through his teeth as he painstakingly pushed himself back up to his feet. "Please… let me go home…" If I die, let me die in my home, his tired mind pleaded, consciously irrational and overdramatic, but not caring. Let someone be there with me. I don't want to be alone. Laszlo dwelled on that for a moment, listening to the shuffling steps of his waterlogged boots. Forgotten. The indigo sky was turning grey with the promise of dawn by the time Laszlo found the Sun and Stars Tavern, nestled snugly between two much larger buildings. Shouldering the cold just a little longer, he staggered up to the front step and reached for the handle. Locked, of course. The tavern was closed, and Laszlo hadn't brought his key out with him when he stepped out for a breath of fresh air. The façade of the tavern somehow became unwelcoming, trapping Laszlo outside in his soaking wet clothes and leaving him to shiver. Bam. Bam. The side of Laszlo's fist shook the door, striking it a little harder than he had meant to. He couldn't quite control his muscles and make them do what he wanted them to. It didn't matter, as long as someone heard him. Laszlo tried to dig into himself, to draw out his djed and compel his housemates with a dose of hypnotism, but he simply didn't have the energy. "It's me," the Ethaefal shouted (or came close to it) through the door, his tongue flicking through two fangs. He was still Symenestra, but he'd be his more natural horned self again within the hour. He banged on the door again. "It's Laszlo. I don't have my key. Please let me in. Please. Seven? Victor? Either of you." Giving up quickly, the Ethaefal shut his eyes and leaned against the cold, hard door. His wet cloak provided zero protection against the cold air and the sting of his freezing clothing, but he huddled under it anyway. The trick was not letting it touch his skin.

[Seven Xu]

The Sun and Stars had closed long before dawn had even thought to grey the sky and chase off its nightly gathering of stars. Its door had opened once since then, by a waiting hand. That hand now grappled for a smooth, steam-kissed window, clutching its slick surface, drawing wobbling lines down the fogged glass. A second followed; then, a third.

“Gods, I’m coming!” The rasping growl was a stark contrast to the noise that had escaped the depths of his throat chimes earlier as the disheveled halfblood heeded the desperate call of a familiar voice.

There was a halting grind of iron on iron, and the door swung open. Seven’s twisted and tired mien suddenly soured into a frown; blackened hair clung to clammy cheeks and twisted in a shabby mass across his forehead; his waxen skin was still stained from his forehead to his neck with some heated effort. A paint-stained black linen shirt hung loose across his shoulders and what buttons had found holes, were not in their proper place. White flared around thin pools of crimson, and for a heartbeat, Seven’s diminutive frame blocked the threshold and sweet warmth from a man that had left a lifetime ago to get some air.

“Go for a swim, on your walk?” The door shuddered into its frame and the hearth, still smoldering, reached out with hot fingers, making an effort to brush winter’s frozen embrace from the cloak-wrapped Symenestra. Seven gave Laszo a sweeping gaze, before pushing himself from the door and its draft. His arms found the crooks of his armpits, and there his fingers dug into the thin layer of black as he sucked in his bottom lip. He let it free with an audible pop, and managed to snake past Laszlo to get a better look at him.

“You said you wouldn’t be long,” he remarked, a brow turning upward beneath an affronting leer. The cadence of the Lhavitian’s voice had risen in his annoyance, and the apparent collection of injuries the Ethaefal was sporting had done little to quell it. “You show up at the crack of dawn with no key banging on the door, interrupting our sleep,” his nose wrinkled, and his eyes darted upward. Victor was like to be genuinely sleeping, by now; they certainly weren’t, when the raucous banging and muffled voice turned recognizable in Seven’s ears.

“Where in the name of the Gods were you?”

[Laszlo]

Once Seven was out of the way, the warmth of the tavern engulfed Laszlo as he finally stepped inside. He wasn't sure how he'd expected either the halfblood or the human would react to seeing him this way; rather he hadn't put any thought into the hypothetical at all, at the time more concerned with how cold he was and the flecks of blood still lodged under his fingernails. Seven's irritation had caught Laszlo offguard and, aside from a deadened look of relief, tired purple eyes glad to be seeing a familiar visage, the Ethaefal focused entirely on the hearth on the far side of the room. His voice caught in his throat several times as he struggled for a reply. "Sorry," he said first, deciding it was what Seven most wanted to hear. He raked his brain for something more useful, but it was still numb and blank. He just wanted to be warm and not in pain. "It wasn't my fault." It wasn't, it really wasn't. That woman wanted to die. Laszlo was only defending himself. He'd done nothing wrong. Nothing. Several clawed fingers fumbled with his cloak's silver clasp. After loosing the wet article's grip on his shoulders, it became a soggy pile of wool cloth heavy on the wooden floor. Laszlo's slender frame remained, long and graceful, even as he dragged his boots across the floor with every step. He had some trouble unfastening the buttons on his shirt, his fingertips still cold and mostly numb, but the shirt was opened by the time he reached the hearth. It still glowed, eager to burn something new and fresh. "It was an accident." Laszlo continued cryptically, not sure which pieces of tonight's events he was willing to share just yet. Grabbing from a pyramid stack of chopped firewood, he picked up a dry, cleanly chopped log half with one spidery hand and tossed it in the fireplace. Two others followed soon after, and soon they began crackling upon the embers. With a new fire in the making, Laszlo pulled his wet shirt off his shoulders and began peeling it from his torso. The soaked fabric had retained its cold discomfort, and it was quickly driving him mad. Shaking the shirt's inside-out sleeves from his wrists, he discarded that piece of clothing as well. With the slash torn in the side, it was ruined anyway. It was the memento gray shirt that Mr. Fenwick had given him. It was a relief to get the saltwater away from the fresh, angry wound on Laszlo's side. It was a superficial tear in his flesh, but it hurt anyway. The blade had bitten deep, but it had mostly stopped bleeding by now. It marred his otherwise unremarkable upper body, a lean and unworked torso clothed in pale, gray skin. Without a shirt to add bulk to him, it became clear how thin he really was, which seemed to make his thin arms look even longer. A bony hand pulled a chair from the top of a nearby table, and dropped it loudly onto the floor nearby. He slid it over in front of the hearth, and gratefully sat down. An arm curled around his body to gently hold his injury. He began to shiver then, cold and half dressed here in the tavern area, but the fire would warm him soon. "I'm sorry," he repeated, staring into the reddish light of the fireplace. He longed to reach for a fire poker and adjust the wood, to help it burn faster, but he had spent all his energy. "For… everything, really. How I've acted these past few days, the way I judged you over Roxanne, I… I didn't…" He closed his eyes. Some part of him had truly believed he would die tonight. His petty problems seemed so small, now. It didn't matter what differences he had with Seven, all he knew was that for now, he didn't want to be alone. Making amends seemed like a good idea. Victor… well Victor still bothered him. He'd deal with it in time. "I hadn't meant to go anywhere, but I saw this woman. Siofra, an Ethaefal. She's been in here a few times, you might have seen her. The road was breaking apart like glass and I thought I'd run to make sure she didn't… fall through. Gods, who knows what would happen if either of us had." It would have been easier if one of them had fallen. He rubbed his forehead with his free hand. "Followed her inside… she petching attacked me. I thought we were friends or… lovers, I don't really know. Ugh… she was just insane. I think I understand now why you don't like Ethaefal." Laszlo opened his eyes again, his gray eyebrows set low in a scowl. "I shouldn't have stepped outside."

[Seven Xu]

It wasn’t my fault.

It was an accident.

Seven’s brow itched to crinkle and he obliged, furrowing above a pair of scrutinizing reds that were fixed on the shivering, raving, Widow-clad Laszlo. Fire licked around dry logs, flared hot against his cheeks, and chased off the wet night’s chill Laszlo had let in. Blood rushed to greet the orange glow, and the end of his nose tingled. Seven sniffed, lifted the back of his hand, and wiped a wet line across his stained shirt’s sleeve.

“What does Roxanne have—” Seven’s words were swallowed by the pop-crack of a burning log, and Laszlo’s reluctance to arrest the torrent of explanation that poured from his chattering mouth. Though, by the time the man was finished, and silence plagued the warm air between them, Seven had forgotten whatever it is he wanted to say. His heart was thumping against the narrow confines of his chest, hot panic had grabbed hold of his gut and turned his joints to jelly.

“Wait here,” he managed to mumble, took a stumbling step backward, and turned, before fumbling for the latch on a time-worn door. The door creaked open, swallowed the halfblood, and thumped shut. The rhythmic thump, creak, thump of a staircase preceded a shuffling of leather-bound feet and muffled, confused speech above Laszlo’s head. The staircase repeated its whining chorus before the door swung open again. “Take these.” An armful of fabric was tossed in Laszlo’s direction: a shirt, no doubt belonging to the red-eyed Lhavitian; a bundle of white-and-red linen, former sheets on a newly made bed; and a second blanket, clean, and free of the burden of death.

“Bandage yourself. Get warm. Get dressed.” A second chair screamed a trail across the floor as Seven made his seat at Laszlo’s side. He sat, rested his elbows on his lap, and stared into the fire. For a few heartbeats, Seven said nothing, he just stared into the fire; but, above that flat expression, wrapped in the pallid folds of narrowed eyelids, silent deliberation carefully forged words like sharpened steel.

When he finally spoke, his voice cracked, as if it had fallen into disuse. “So you’re a sinner, then, come to atone for what? Leaving? Killing?” His fingers laced together, “I mean, that is what happened to the girl, right? You killed her; you answered her plea for death. But of course, it was an accident.” Virulence rose and fell on the halfblood’s tongue and he licked it away with a sweep of his bottom lip. He turned from the fire, attempted to steal a violet stare. “This all sounds so familiar.”

[Laszlo]

Seven's offering landed heavily next to Laszlo's chair, kicking up a gust of air that assaulted the fire in the hearth and chilled the Ethaefal's calves through his wet pant legs. He shivered, but sent a grateful grimace and a nod in the halfblood's direction. Unlacing one of his arms from around his bare chest, he leaned to the side and sent the long, slender limb down to begin sorting through the fabrics, employing his set of long, black nails. Laszlo swallowed bitter saliva along with a grain of his pride; Seven's smug implication had struck a nerve, but it had been kind of him to get these things without being asked. "I have nothing to atone for," Laszlo mumbled insistently, his voice becoming more level and controlled now that he was out of the Winter chill. He lifted the shirt off the pile by the collar, realizing belatedly it was Seven's after he noticed that it looked a little small. At that moment, he began to feel a little warmer, and a smile played at his lips, albeit unsuccessfully. Laying the article over one of his bony shoulders, he wondered if he was reading too much into it. Seven was typically not an openly affectionate person—at least not to anyone aside from Victor—but giving Laszlo his own clothing seemed like a profound gesture, cleverly disguised in wordless nonchalance. That would be like him. Laszlo felt some piece of him grope at that idea, hoping and wishing that Seven cared more about him than he let on. He surrendered, letting himself latch onto what could very well be a selfish delusion. He would take what he could get. "She tried to kill me, and she brought it on herself." Laszlo lifted a portion of the discarded bedclothes, pausing briefly to regard the browned stain which represented a physical memory of Roxanne's existence. "Unlike your Kelvic I didn't lead her somewhere to die. It just happened. But I… I didn't realize it was so easy to end someone's life like that. So irrevocable." Using his sharp nails, Laszlo tore into the cloth, tearing off a long strip of unsoiled linen. At first he cautiously dabbed at the open wound in his side, which only drooled blood and some other sickly fluid. He flinched visibly, unprepared for the shock of pain that jolted through him as he did. There was still salt in it. "The way things happened… I didn't understand that part of it. I assumed when I shouldn't have. I've not even been walking this world for two years, I shouldn't presume to understand anything. I don't have that life to reflect back on. It's easy to forget the way decades separate us." This was going nowhere. These had been the thoughts incubating Laszlo's mind as he had carried Siofra's body to the water and laid her to rest. He should have been thinking of her and himself, but it had been too poignant. With only a vague idea of what he was doing, Laszlo began wrapping the strip of cloth around his waist, pulling back his lips and hissing as he braved the pressure against his torn flesh. It was going to leave a scar. Pulling the fabric taught and flat against his skin, he was thorough in laying the first layer of cloth protectively over the wound. Watching its color seep through the white, he began the second layer. "Seven, I thought I was going to die. Even worse than that, I feared that it would barely make a difference to anyone if I did. I used to think that shouldn't matter to me, but… it does matter. It means everything." Even Vethis was still alive, back in Kalinor. His memory had been instilled in his progeny through Nassanye. There was more to a person than only his soul. "I lied to you." After wrapping a third layer, Laszlo ran out of material. He deigned to tie the bandage there with a double knot instead of tearing off more. His left hand fetched the shirt from his shoulder, fingertips still aching and half frozen as he fitted both arms into the sleeves. His wrists reached out past the cuffs, and he looked ridiculous. It didn't matter. He took a moment to warm his hands beneath his underarms before feeling brave enough to lift the heavier blanket waiting for him. The heat from the fire whispered against the outer angles of Laszlo's form. "About your father. You already knew that, but I'd prefer to be honest with you. It might sound random, but I wanted to tell you this, because you deserve to know. I've never mentioned it to anyone else. The only one who knows about it is the man who instructed me. I'm a Hypnotist. It's a sort of magic which allows me to influence people, even control them if I apply enough pressure." In another moment, that blanket was draped around his slender form. Feeling heavenly warm and safe, he clutched it tightly around his aching form, chair and all, shivering powerfully one final time before releasing the last of his discomfort in a long, refreshing exhale. "It's not as sinister as you might think. It was learned in Kalinor. I used it to help calm the surrogates who…" How much did Seven know about true Symenestra? "Patients who were sometimes hysterical. For their own good, and the physicians'." He paused. "Thank you."

[Seven Xu]

“I know what the fucking Harvest is,” Seven snapped. He groped at his hairline and found it moist, tendrils of black clinging to his forehead. The air in the room was suddenly very hot; it teased pink across his cheeks, stole the air from his lungs. A hypnotist, a mage, a wizard, a skin-changer, a shadow-maker: another name was thrown into a chasm that he would dip into, when he needed a word for the perversions of djed. “I know that it’s a poor change of subject.”

Seven gave Laszlo the effort of a sidelong scrutiny; he looked stupid in his shirt.

“So you gave yourself permission to pull things from my mind that were better off staying hidden. Or, maybe you planted them yourself, because you were bored, or because you wanted to see how I would react.” His words were malicious, pregnant with a resentment that had been given leave to flourish beneath new revelations, and spat with intent to wound, “For all I know, none of this was our idea. The tavern, the Kelvic, this …” Seven’s hands flew into the air, “This! Where do you get off, fucking with peoples’ minds? Tipping the scales in your favor?”

A chair clattered to its back in Seven’s sudden flourish to his feet. A leather boot found the heart of the fire and stomped it out, quashing a flame to red coals and a half-ravaged log to blackened splinters. With the bulk of his rage lying scattered across a dying hearth, Seven’s form sagged, and he pressed his palms against a pockmarked stone mantle.

“And you’re thanking me,” He croaked; his voice had lost its hot anger but retained a crooning condescension, “For what? Being a good pawn?”

Seven’s heavy-lidded stare was trained on the coals at his feet. It was hard to tell if the sound that erupted from the halfblood’s lips was a laugh, or a sob, as those shoulders wobbled beneath the weight of confession. “Tell me,” he muttered, giving the charred remains another kick, “Tell me everything, or steal my will and lull me back into submission and let me forget you said anything.”

[Laszlo]

Laszlo had expected backlash. Still too cold to be anything other than stoic, the Ethaefal hardly moved, only listening to Seven's understandable frustration. Laszlo had made an error, explaining the magic in detail before going into why he had used it. The halfblood's accusations were wild and, alarmingly, about half of them were correct. It was only when he stamped out the fire did he finally merit a reaction from the thin Spider. As the cold air swept in to drink the heat away from Laszlo's pale skin, his large violet eyes fell shut and he let go of a slow, irritated sigh. Despite his exhaustion, the seed of annoyance grew, hastened by his Symenestran aggression, and while he tried to quell it in favor of a reasonable apology, he felt himself losing to the anger that began to burn in the pit of his chest. "That's right, Seven. I did it all. Everyone and everything moves according to my design. You've figured it out." Rolling his amethyst eyes, Laszlo rose from his chair, employing several quick shakes to free the wooden chair from its grasp. It hung heavily around his shoulders and gave him the appearance of being rotund: a more comical lie than all his other ones. "Look at me, dra. I don’t have a shred of dignity left, standing here before you. Do you think that's how I want it? For all my supposed arrogant delusions that I'm the tavern's high lord, don't you think you'd be more convinced if I wanted you to respect me?" Not that he didn't tip scales in his favor, occasionally. Even that, though, came down to a matter of convenience. There were probably many who used the magic maliciously, but even the Symenestra who used it for the Harvest were cautious with it. Overusing it had dire consequences. Standing above Seven, with his violet eyes boring into his unkempt tangle of false black, put a restlessness in Laszlo's bones. He didn't want stand here and take this abuse, and Seven was so much smaller than he was. Just as he had with Siofra, he wanted to take the smaller creature and hold it still. Perhaps shake it until it understood. When the image of her glinting knife appeared in his head, Laszlo's eyes darted away in shocked apprehension. "I don't use it like that. I couldn't even if I wanted to. I'm really just a novice." Well… "But if it can stop a man from strangling me for looking like I want to rape his daughter, then I'm glad to have it." With familiar resentment simmering beneath his carefully calm words, Seven's shirt began to feel heavy on his skin. Much of him didn't want the favor anymore. "It was an accident. I didn't want to know about your father. Goddess' sake, you were soulless." Hefting the blanket more stably on his shoulders, Laszlo began to drift toward the bar, using a moment of silence to draw the memory from where he had carefully shut it away. That laugh. He shuddered. "That woman's murder troubled you. You spoke of that dream, and I thought… I could help. I only meant to relax you, perhaps help you forget. I had done it before, with others. I barely knew you then, and I was still trying to befriend you." But… "But magic isn't so clean. When you began telling me about it… I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it… the arcane pulls you. There seems to be a point at which it has a life of its own, and you become the tool." Laszlo sent a half-hearted glance to one of the kegs along the back wall, but thought better of it. Bundling his blanket, he sank onto a bar stool. "It's not an excuse, I know. I had no right to tamper with your thoughts, but I did. That's how I know. I'm sorry." A flash of violet sought Seven's bloody eyes. "What else do you want from me? I feel petching awful. I can still smell her blood on me, and it's petching freezing in here."

[Seven Xu]

“It was real,” The halfblood grunted, too low and too clumsy for a pair of ears to pick up anything more than unintelligible garble, “Good to know.”

Anger still roiled in his stomach, but it was quickly growing stale in Laszlo’s compliance. Seven’s back met the mantle as he turned to stare down the corridor of a room. In its darkness perched the spider, peering back at him with eyes he knew cut the black far keener than his could hope to. The embers still glowed orange behind his feet, hugged their warmth around his knees, and left his arms cold in contrast. One after the other, the paint-stained shirt was rolled down from his elbows, and secured at the wrist.

“It was an accident.” Whether Seven believed the explanation or not, he made sure he sounded the part. His lips hinted at the curl of a smile, awkward, but there; his eyes made an unconscious sweep of the linen-wrapped figure on the bar stool. “Accidents happen.”

Respect, to belong, that’s what he wanted; the same thing that nagged at Seven every night, until the wild lands spit a dark-haired and delirious human at him. Little did he know the same thing that quenched the fire in his gut and filled the hole in his heart, had wriggled into the deepest reaches of his mind, saturated the very fabric of his wits with his influence; it was devotion, in its truest, unaffected form, and it had changed him. What would Laszlo have thought of the Seven of Lhavit, the meek, the observant, the outcast? Why did he care?

The halfblood groped through the darkness on a slow path towards an angry Symenestra. A predator, an ancestor, and a mask he wore in mockery, and shunned for the guise of humanity when he found it convenient. “I don’t understand you,” Seven admitted, one elbow finding the edge of the wax-slick bar and bearing the weight of his right side. “And sometimes, I don’t like you. But, you’re also a lot like me. We want a lot of the same things.” His left hand made a blind sweep of the soot-black space between his thighs and beneath the bar, before his index finger hooked and retrieved a stool of his own. It did not protest, when he sat.

“We’re both prone to accidents.” A slender black brow rose beneath a swarthy curtain, but his smile had long faded. They were at the edge of the fire’s last light, now, and the cold of winter was spilling in through the doors and through the imperfections in the great wide window that adorned the front wall. “We were both put together wrong in the womb and flung into a world we weren’t meant for. We’re both stubborn mules that want that world to change for us.”

Seven stole a sidelong glance at the same barrel Laszlo had eyed moments before; he stood, hoisted himself onto the bar, and was over and gathering two wooden mugs for filling in one fluid motion. “You’re going to stop using your magic on me, and on Victor,” volatile white seemed to glow against a black backdrop as the foam-riddled tankard was pushed in Laszlo’s direction, “I’m going to stop looking at you as if you petched my mother.”

“Drink to it,” Seven hoisted his own mug in the dying orange of his latest victim, “Then you can warm and clean yourself, if you want to leave.”

[Laszlo]

Slipping a hand from the warm confines of makeshift blanket-shroud, Laszlo reached for his mug and hooked its handle with a clawed, bony finger. Its bottom skidded noisily across the bartop until he lifted it and poured the bitter amber past his lips. It was cool at first, stinging his tongue and throat and making him shiver. Once it passed his gullet, it left a warming sensation that began to ease the chill in his slender form. "Deal," Laszlo replied, diminutively staring down his mug. His ashen thumb rubbed at the lip of the glass, watching his miniature reflection dance inside of it. Eager to feel warmer, the false Symenestra quickly took another gulp. Relief was mingled with the deceptive warmth of the alcohol. Though he felt more vulnerable allowing his magic to be known by another, it was good a tradeoff knowing that their friendship would become less turbulent. Secrets had been uncovered, and now together they sat, more civil than ever. This was a good direction to go in. "I'll finish this mug," he added, though he'd already emptied half of it, "maybe have another. And then I'll draw myself a boiling hot bath and soak in it for one, maybe two days." Laszlo emptied the mug a little more. "I'm glad we could get a few things out in the open, Seven. It's long overdue. And... so you know, hypnotism doesn't work on people who are aware of it. Not that I would renege on this agreement, but consider yourself immune." He needed not mention that the magic was usually so subtle that hypnotism subjects wouldn’t know when they were being hypnotized, unless they explicitly figured it out. Laszlo would likely not have a reason to use the magic again—he hadn't needed to for some time now—but in all likelihood, it would still be effective if he tried. Laszlo stared at his drink. To his surprise, he found that he didn't want to try. Perhaps trust would be enough. He drank. Perhaps.

[Bedlam]

Thread Completed!

Seven

Experience:
—

Lores:
Laszlo the Mind-delver
Siofra’s End
The Secrets Laszlo Keeps
Why Surrogates Don’t Run

Laszlo

Experience:
1 Medicine

Lores:
Seven, My Confidant
Why Mirrors Are Bad News

Notes:

I debated finding some skills to throw in there, because I did enjoy this thread very much, but like you said there wasn’t a lot of actual action in it. Not a lot of skill-oriented things, just talking and watching the story unraveling. Which I found fascinating; the conflict between Laszlo and Seven has intrigued me ever since I rated the thread between you two and Victor, with the kelvic. It’s nice to see that progressing.

But it’s not easy to find skills in it. There wasn’t a lot of convincing by either party, so I couldn’t justify persuasion or rhetoric. If I was going to give you points, it would have probably been in socialization.

I know you don’t want that.

Putting this kind of ratings makes me a little jumpy, sometimes, so I want to make it clear again that if you feel slighted in any way, you can come to me.