World Spins Madly On

[Laszlo]

Fall 13th, 512 Third bell. Summer had gone, and it had taken so many things with it. Fall had arrived and killed Laszlo's superficial sense of security, bringing the promise of tragedy. For Laszlo, the panes of reality had shifted and splintered, leaving him split in spiderweb cracks. It had happened, and he could still remember the precise momenta of shattering. Abalia of Alvadas was dead. The day that Laszlo had been dreading with every inch of his being had now come and gone. Somehow, it became yesterday, and then the day before, but the bloodstained memories were still vivid under his eyelids and played in his ears. Abalia had always said that the dread was always worse than the moment of reckoning, but she never understood how vicious and painful her death would be. Laszlo had known. She had been so wrong. The crushing guilt and sorrow that mixed weighed so heavily that Laszlo could not even comprehend the size of it. Despite his efforts, he could not have prepared for this. Abalia had even convinced him not to try so much, so that their last days would not be overshadowed by what loomed in front of them. Everything she had ever said or done now existed only in past tense. She had stopped. There was nothing of her left. Even Laszlo's promise to her now felt more like a promise made to air. And in her place there was this tiny person. A sleepy little girl. Laszlo was much more manageable the day after she died. All his energy had been expelled, and in its place sat emptiness and paralyzing shock. The Ethaefal lived in a haze, as if he'd fallen out of the world and landed someplace else, but left his body behind in Mizahar. Although he seemed aware of his newborn daughter, Laszlo appeared to have difficulty processing her existence. When he looked at the infant, he saw everything she meant in the past, present, and future. The purpose of Duvalyon's staying in Lhavit made itself clear then. He had come to help Abalia as well, assisting in prenatal care and monitoring, but at the end of everything there was always going to be an infant Symenestra in need of nurturing. Though Laszlo showed some willingness to help, Duvalyon stepped cleanly into the role a parent was meant to fill. This state made Laszlo difficult to look at, but he retained enough cognizance to follow direction. He was good for fetching things from pantries, or visiting the Plaza to pick up items and necessary supplies. And when he became especially annoying, he could be sent to his room and he wouldn't be seen for hours. Reality was gradually crawling back into him as time slid by at a steady pace. She was crying again, awakening something in Laszlo he couldn't recognize, though not for the first time. Alone in his room, sitting somewhere on the floor and leaned against a wall, he lifted his head. The crying changed direction, accompanied by the bass of footsteps through the apartment. It moved to the the sitting room, and eventually silenced again. He stared at his door. Some minutes later, Laszlo's door opened, and a tall figure materialized in the doorframe. One clawed hand rested against the side, perhaps for balance, or more likely the desire to hold onto something solid. He lingered there for a moment, like an animal too shy to leave its hiding place, but eventually the willowy creature came into the main area, stepping cautiously. He was wearing different clothes than before; that was an improvement. "Is—" Laszlo's throat caught, too dry and in need of lubrication in order for a voice to pass through. He paused to swallow and rehydrate his airways. The pause lengthened as he swept his silvery hair out of his face and aimed a glance at the floor. "Is she alright?" The Ethaefal looked at the child again.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

"She's fine, Laszlo. Go back to bed." The answer rose from a corner near the pantry where the Symenestra sat cross-legged. He was rhythmically patting the baby's back with a rag draped neatly over his shoulder. An open jar was next to him, filled with the strange paste he created daily for the child and a water skin was slung around his neck. If not for his loose hair, he appeared ready to take a brief trip. When Laszlo didn't immediately retreat, Duvalyon spoke again. "Or you can come take a look." The Symenestra had the courtesy to stand, so Laszlo wasn't forced to the ground. The baby fussed with the transition, prompting Duvalyon to rock her to some degree of quiet. It was unbearably strange to see Duvalyon handle a child with relative understanding. There were easy reasons for his knowledge. He had dealt with infants for years in the Purging and was an uncle several times over. But it still didn't fit with the dour persona that had shared over two seasons with the Ethaefal. "Here." Without asking Laszlo's opinion on the matter, Duvalyon passed the baby off to its father. "Don't drop it. They're expensive." Even at third bell, he managed to be glib. A small pink scratch was on the baby's cheek, dangerously close to her eye. Before Laszlo could remark on it, he realized Duvalyon was gone. The Symenestra rematerialized after a chime, holding a pair of Abalia's wool socks. "She did that to herself," he explained preemptively, "I'm used to mine. I'll fix them in the morning. For now..." Duvalyon began to put the socks over her arms, as Laszlo kept her relatively pacified. The socks were too big, but it was better than letting her claw at her face for the rest of the evening. Satisfied, Duvalyon retreated and began to clean the small mess he had made around the pantry. He freely inhabited every dimension of the space, moving soundlessly from one shelf to another. Duvalyon had abandoned pretense since Abalia's death. If Laszlo hadn't been so consumed by grief, the medic's reversion to his natural state might have startled the Ethaefal. Candles weren't lit, curtains were drawn and furniture was largely ignored. He ate what he liked, when he liked and made little attempt to be discrete. Fatigue had erased his inclination to be circumspect around Laszlo. It wasn't as if the Ethaefal didn't know what Symenestra looked like, but there had always been a sense of chagrin about the race's more grotesque attributes. Duvalyon had tried to obscure them, but was beyond it now. "Do you want me to take her?"

[Laszlo]

The infant was wordlessly accepted into Laszlo's arms, and immediately his focus went to supporting her head and keeping her wrapped up. Although he'd held his daughter before, he was still surprised at how small and light she was. She couldn't even wrap her hand around his thumb. He could fit her into a pouch on his belt. She fussed briefly, wrenching her face at Laszlo's chest and flexing her limbs against her new guardian, but ultimately accepted this new position and settled down. Standing quietly in the comparatively dark room, still in the corner where he'd received her, the false Symenestra stared down at the true one cradled in his arms. Upon discovering the red mark on her cheek, Laszlo narrowed his eyes and parted his lips. He looked up, then turned around, but discovered he was alone in the room. "Duvalyon?" It wasn't an accusation, but it almost sounded like one. The Ethaefal looked down at the baby girl again, running the backs of his fingers over her cheek near the small abrasion. Her first injury? She was going to have so many firsts. Oh, gods, he was not prepared for this. She was so tiny. The medic reappeared, explaining the cut and producing a temporary solution. Laszlo reflexively straightened the socks upon his infant's arms, then took and held one of her covered, clenched fists in his fingers. She tugged back feebly, as did one corner of Laszlo's mouth. "Hn." It might have been a laugh. While Duvalyon busied himself, Laszlo crossed the room at a slow, meandering pace, trudging through his thoughts and trying to keep from disturbing the newborn girl. A lead weight sat in his chest, becoming gradually heavier as Laszlo neared the rounded chair in the center of the room. Several moments passed in silence until Duvalyon finished what he was doing and offered to take the baby back from him. "No. It's fine. I have her." Laszlo carefully sank down into the cushioned chair with a very humanlike posture. Although his present seeming closely resembled Duvalyon's, he was very much the surface dweller and had become habituated to positions and behaviors that accommodated both of his shapes. Duvalyon could keep his reversion to his more natural Symenestra mannerisms. Laszlo had long ago abandoned efforts to assimilate. "It's a little cold, isn't it?" It wasn't rhetorical. Laszlo was uncertain. He was accustomed to enduring, and in his present state, had lost track of minor physical discomforts anyway. His violet eyes flicked upward to the shadowy, unlit hearth. Autumn was a fortnight old, and the ashes that last burned there were even older. Normally, Laszlo might have used this as a reason to give the infant back to Duvalyon so he could busy himself by being productive and lighting a fire, but he made no move to get back up or surrender the infant. Instead, it seemed like Laszlo was making a thinly veiled request. Very possibly a dangerous task. Duvalyon was not a house servant. This boldness was either progress on Laszlo's part, or early insanity. "A bit cumbersome at first, aren't they?" The Ethaefal drew his thumb over his daughter's padded hand, feeling her tiny claws snag at the wool. "Not good for the eyes. One of the first lessons I ever learned, too." He smirked with a note of bitterness, but the expression was mostly warm. It faded gradually. "Gods help you if you are anywhere near as clumsy as I am." Laszlo lifted his head, returning his attention to Duvalyon. "You're very good at this." The Ethaefal had been noticing this for quite some time. Both he and the newborn were fortunate that someone as experienced as Duvalyon was here. If ever before Laszlo had doubts about involving the medic, they were long vanquished now.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

It was third bell, he was wearing a rag damp with milky vomit and he had spent the last twenty chimes trying to feed a squirming baby paste. Duvalyon didn't look particularly keen on anymore menial work. Whatever strange logic or principle bound him to this endeavor continued its work though. Golem like, Duvalyon never ceased to be useful. A calmer audience might have worried over what kind of a man could be so quietly driven for so long. He tied his hair back and began to arrange the wood into a pyramid. There was something fastidious to his effort, like he had spent more time reading about the mechanics of starting a good fire than creating one. Kindling was stuffed into wooden tent and the next few moments were filled with the click of flint and steel. It took longer than either were used to, and Duvalyon spent a fragment of the time swearing under his breath. When the fire flowed upward and over the wood, Duvalyon didn't withdraw. He fixated on the hearth's blue heart; nothing in his expression save the fiendish reflection of flame. He rested his hands against the light, making macabre shadows. Laszlo murmured behind him, and Duvalyon heard only noise until his mind reconfigured the sounds. The Symenestra shrugged, indifferent to the compliment. "I have some experience," he answered without feeling. In the usual cadence of their conversations, it would have ended there. "Dor grew quickly. Still does." Duvalyon stood and retreated from the frantic flaps of light and Laszlo's line of sight. There was something familiar about the dim, so the Symenestra sought it more frequently.

[Laszlo]

The fire crackled in the kindling before it began to light the room. Laszlo's violet eyes flickered upward, quietly examining the Symenestra's lithe frame silhouetted against the glowing hearth. His spidery shadow began to draw across the floor in long lines. His race was not meant to be shrouded in light. Even with Abalia gone, Duvalyon still found ways to look startlingly out of place in the surface world. What would be eerie to most was pleasantly familiar to Laszlo. "Thank you, Duvalyon." Whenever the medic was coerced into doing something he didn't want to do, the best course of action was always to offer him due and swift appreciation. Still, however strategic it might have been to soothe Duvalyon's pride, Laszlo was usually earnest in his appreciation. When he wasn't, Duvalyon knew. Laszlo's attention returned to the peaceful newborn in his arms. Now that her needs had been attended to, she was content and resting. There was a pang of guilt as he looked at her, either for depriving Duvalyon of the reward for his care and sacrifice, or knowing that the care he gave her should have come from her father. But there was always guilt, and shame. Abalia's death remained a lead weight in the pit of his chest. Usually, Duvalyon's remark about Dor would have merited a curious response from Laszlo. The Ethaefal felt the usual questions rise in him, but they shriveled away quickly. Recently made a father, among other things, his personal unrest outweighed his interest in Duvalyon's inner workings. In retrospect, after time had diluted the pain, that remark would linger in his head for years. "That's right." Laszlo hadn't forgotten that Duvalyon had raised the Kelvic from infancy, but it hadn't occurred to him in quite a long while. Even so, comparing the tiny Symenestra girl to a human-shaped animal felt somehow vulgar and inappropriate. Though in infancy they mirrored each other, the disparity in their races was too different. There was an interesting inverse between Dor's origins and the birth of Laszlo's daughter. Dor was born deep underground, far from where any bird belonged. The infant Symenestra began her life in Lhavit. Neither was destined to remain where they began. The infant stirred. The light from the fire was bothersome. Laszlo shifted in order to better encase her in shadow. "You're…" Something bitter lodged itself in Laszlo's throat. It felt angry, but he wasn't certain of where the anger was targeted. "You're still… taking her. To Kalinor." His mouth widened in a sullen smile. "I promised that her child wouldn't grow up underground. But it's better that way. I'm not…" Equipped. Not by far. "That was our understanding." It was difficult to speculate whether Abalia ever understood the arrangement that Duvalyon and Laszlo had agreed to, concerning their daughter. It would not have been hard to deduce, but she had never brought it up between the three of them. A strong woman, accustomed to the comforting illusions of her home city, she had probably tried to put it out of her mind. It was the easiest way for anyone to make peace with inevitability. Laszlo swallowed, then turned his head to search for Duvalyon in the periphery of his vision. "When?"

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Duvalyon floated further into the borders of Laszlo's sight and sat. He was trying to present a more manageable version of himself for the conversation Laszlo seemed on the brink of beginning. The Symenestra listened without looking at the Ethaefal, perhaps wary of what he would witness. "Whenever you're ready." He was hoping to avoid the snows, but was careful with his luck. Both it and Laszlo were constructed of thin glass. The crackling of wood and snap of sap comfortably warmed the silence, so neither had to be conscious of it. "She will be happy," Duvalyon decreed in a low tone. "Kalinor is terrible only to rest of the world. Much like us." 'Us'. She was Duvalyon's kind before she was Laszlo's. Miraculous Ethaefal could not be made anywhere lower than the stars. Sunrise would never redeem her and paint her in warm tones like her mother and father. This was a dusk child doomed to fade and bury herself in evening. Perhaps part of Duvalyon's lingering presence was to prove the worth of the race; to console Laszlo with the knowledge he did not hold a creeping monster in himself or his arms.

[Laszlo]

Laszlo pulled in a slow, steeping breath—a cleansing one, the kind meant to chase away stray thoughts and realign him to reality—and let it escape. "I know that." For a few moments at least, Laszlo returned to what might become a dialogue. There were questions that needed answering. Ones he'd carefully avoided for the sake of sanity. Not that they would be any easier to face now. That was fine. Sanity only mattered when Abalia was here. His violet eyes shifted away from infant, wanting toward Duvalyon's general direction. It was difficult to look too long at either Symenestra, but it had little to do with their race. It was more their reasons for being in this room with him. It was everything, this whole situation. He caused it. "Not as if that matters, anymore," he muttered, bitterness seeping through. "She's dead, right?" Uncharacteristically wise, Laszlo killed that budding tangent before it had the chance to fly wildly out hand. He had spent days washing over every regret, every way he'd destroyed her. That part of his mind was already beaten, tired, and empty. He drew his eyes back across the floor, toward an unoccupied corner of the room. "What I meant was… what happens from here? She goes to Kalinor, and then what? I don't know if I could s… stay with her." What little reputation Laszlo already had in Kalinor, held by those who remembered him, was badly tarnished. But that was the least of his trouble. Locked away from the sunlight to which he was so closely connected was miserable and potentially excruciating. He'd endured it for a year. He wouldn't survive through someone else's lifetime.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Years of exposure to dying women wild with grief had shaped Duvalyon into a creature able to summon indifference in the presence of emotional turmoil. His father had called the talent "fortitude". A younger Duvalyon was sometimes unsettled by the honorable connotation of the name. In the quiet hours he understood how this implacability could shift to cruelty within him. How long until it manifested unbidden? Until practice became instinct? In the last season he had caught himself slipping from calm into something more calloused. He could not summon the proper feeling, so he bent his actions into a nobler shape. As Laszlo unburdened himself, Duvalyon struggled internally to make his answers not sound as calculated as they were. The Symenestra held in his thoughts a concept of the kind of role he wanted to fulfill, of what Laszlo required in the moment. As always, the Symenestra tried to inhabit the part to the best of his abilities. The words were delivered in his usual steady tone. "You can stay as long as you need. As for her," Duavlyon looked at the baby. "Melia and Isidor would welcome another child." He addressed a looming question within a natural flow of conversation, "They have experience. It will be their second." Duvalyon almost sounded heartfelt as he continued. They were touching on some of the foundational beliefs of his existence. "All Symenestra are adopted. It means nothing to us. She will be loved and provided for like any other." Duvalyon rested on that point. He had delivered the plan made two seasons prior and could only wait for its reception.

[Laszlo]

"Your sister?" Laszlo brought his attention around again, finding the pale shape of Duvalyon's face, almost illuminated by the contrasting dark around it. He was looking for a badly placed joke or a missed string of information. It wasn't that Laszlo was opposed to the idea, but he struggled to make sense of it. "Your own family, Duvalyon? Not the Orthilia Web?" Again his eyes slid off Duvalyon like drops of rain after hesitating on a pane of glass. He swallowed. "Suppose they aren't really mine. Surladiv is a decent man, but if I gave her to him I'd never see her again." It was reasoning Laszlo could understand. Penance too, possibly, but no one wanted to live with someone else's punishment if they could instead choose their own. "And raising her myself is out of the question, isn't it?" Laszlo looked down at his daughter again, wrapping his second arm around the tiny girl and lighting his fingertips carefully over the feather soft layer of hair at the top of her head. His heart was full of so many things, flooded and ruptured, and at times he couldn't feel it at all. The Ethaefal saw the infant and felt… love? Maybe? There was something. A duty, a connection, but it was soaked in Abalia's blood. It was hard to know what lied beneath the pain. It could one day become love, he supposed, once other wounds had healed. If he had raised the girl himself, the precarious bond he shared with her would have time to solidify and become sacred. Given to another family, it would develop differently. Perhaps become unrequited. There was physical ache in the pit of his stomach at the thought. A good thing, probably. "You'd never be rid of me if the Hellebores adopted her." A bit of sideways humor. It was one of the only ways he and Duvalyon could communicate about more vital issues. Making Semelia the mother of Laszlo's daughter would create an irrevocable connection between the Hellebore Web and the Ethaefal. If he did not stay in Kalinor, he would be returning often to see her. It wasn't as if giving the infant to Duvalyon's sister was the same as abandoning his only child, but she was a part of him now. Leaving her in Kalinor would mean breaking a piece of him away and giving it to someone else to care for. Even if it he had never asked for it, and had been initially horrified by the idea of fatherhood, Abalia's gentle persuasion had helped break him into the idea that their daughter needed him. Even if all he could do was watch over her from a distance. "Would your father even approve?" Not of her, but Laszlo.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

"The Orthilias?" Duvalyon sounded incredulous, "They don't even like you." His surprise did little to make him sensitive to Lazslo's already destroyed sense of self. As confused as Laszlo was by the arrangement, Duvalyon was equally perplexed that it didn't already occur to the Ethaefal. Of course she was going to his family. It wasn't Surladiv who'd made the trip to Lhavit or sat in this grief ridden room. "You're worried about Svorador? By Viratas... I don't think you understand the magnitude of a child in our community." Feeling the heat diminish, Duvlayon took the poker and began to move the logs about. It was an excellent channel for the minor frustration he felt. The logs gusted orange and gray ash as they hissed into place. "And Svorador barely tolerates me. I wouldn't hinge anything on his approval." Sitting again, Duvalyon let enough thoughtful quiet settle to add to the weight of his answers. "If you want to raise her, it is your right. But what I offer is stable. It is an entire family that will be just like her." They would grow older with her, understand her needs, give her siblings, and never see in her a reminder of anything except joy. Duvalyon's pensive tone sank to a dry rumble, "Your enduring company is simply the steep price that must be paid for the privilege of her. May the future Hellebores and Caladiums forgive me."