Open Kelvic Twins

[Arianthe Swansong]

Time: 27th of Winter 512 AV - Early Morning
Where: The Fur Market - Close to the Docks
Tagged: Open

Arianthe was sitting on one of the piers, huddled against the cold, her blank book in her lap, writing.

"We play at being bohemians.
At the strings of a lute and hands of a clock,
Turning them backwards with dirty-nailed fingers,
We play at picking locks."

She murmured this to herself then frowned with frustration. It just didn't work in her mind. She stuck her head up and swept a golden honey curl out of her dark brown eyes, running them along the horizon. Goodness. It was beautiful. Much too beautiful. It made her feel so insignificant and small. It was enough to make you happy to be alive, feel more alive than ever, but it also made you despair of the futility of your own life. You against the world. She loved the colours, she loved the way the ocean seemed as though wild white horses were pulling it in to crash against the rocks and the solidly built hides of the ships attached to a post, as unmoving as an implacable whale.

But her fingers were starting to feel numb - very numb - and slowly, languidly, she stood up and straightened her skirt then put up the hood of her cloak. As she turned around, Arianthe was immediately hit by the sight of the eyes of a small naked girl.

All the while, not far behind her, the fur market had been roaring in trade. Some seasons it came for a while, some seasons it came for a couple of days and some not at all. This season, it had just arrived, and only the wind could tell how long the big troupe of travelling fur merchants would stay. Arianthe was in two minds about them. Some of them were lovely, if a little gruff and rather rough, but down to earth. But others were horrible. Last year, one of them had brought a dancing bear, which in itself was only a social convention, but the way the merchant had tortured it then skinned it in front of the crowd before shouting something lewd and explicitly suggestive at the horrified Arianthe, had left her feeling quite mentally scarred by the experience.

This year, it seemed she was facing something quite different.

The small naked girl looked terrified and visibly freezing in the midst of the chilly Zeltivan Winter. She had smooth, dewy golden brown skin, high cheekbones, a small full mouth and large dark brown feline eyes rimmed with Kohl that seemed to eat up her face. She was tiny, but Arianthe guessed she was older than her size suggested. Maybe eight or nine.

"Help. Help." It was a small, quiet voice. Musical and low for such a young child, "Help."

She had a foreign accent to this word, and Arianthe guessed she knew little of the language.

"Help me."

Responding to some sort of instinct, the first thing Arianthe could think to do was remove her cloak and wrap the girl in it, forgetting that she was now void of any sort of protection against the cold.

"What is it?" She whispered, bending down, hoping the girl had not suffered too badly.

"They... hurt me." The girl seemed like she was struggling desperately to find the words. She was pointing back at the market, "They hurt... brother."

"Brother?"

"My Brother."

"What is your name?"

"I... many names." she paused, looking pensive, "Mika."

"Mika... I am Arianthe. Where are you from?"

"Everywhere." she pointed back towards the fur market, looking desperate "My Brother. You Help."

[Tyrell]

Tyrell leaned heavily against the peer, gazing out at the hussle and bussle of the Docks a long pipe clamped between his teeth.
He was in a particularly annoyed mood, Why? for a very good reason, a very great reason, a very important reason!; Because His pipe had unlit itself he didn't have any matches on him. Oh how he cursed the day that he hadn't chosen fire as his first element when he had decided to be a Wizard, Oh curse that day! He tried to calm himself down. It wasn't that bad the cold tobaco still had some taste...Bah.
"Help me!"
Tyrell looked up...Oh! Surely this was a day to be praised! Surely this was a Brilliant day! With a very good reason, a very great reason, a very important reason for being happy! For there ahead of him was maybe the most beutiful girl he had ever seen petite but with wonderful golden hair and deep choclate brown eyes. Absent-mindedly he stood up and started flattening his hair.
Then he remembered why he'd looked up in the first place. there in front of the blonde was a child calling for help "help help!".
He felt this unusual fatherly feeling in his chest telling him to help the little girl!(silly feeling why should He help!)-and also he remembered his master warning him about those feelings "silly dangerous things only benifiting the other person and not yourself". But then his master had been a lead-brained idiot...of course he must help.

[Philomena]

Of course, in retrospect, Minnie should have known the place would be deserted.

Each morning for the last two weeks, shed taken her daily constitutional along the strand that led past the wharf and the fur market. She gave herself many excuses, of course: the air from the sea was purer here, there was more morning activity with the marketing and shipping, so it was safer to walk, the sun shine bright enough to make it somewhat warmer. All these, though, we're excuses: the reality of it was that she walked this way because of the coffee stall.

She could not say why - it was not of her nature to understand the whims of style and popularity - but somehow, one of those small stalls clinging to the edge of the fur market had, somehow or the other, gathered that most glorious and elusive title: a place to be. She knew this not because she was in the circles where one knows such things - on the contrary, it was perhaps one of her greatest wishes to be so, and therefore it was unlikely she ever would be. She knew, rather, because by accident she had turned this way one morning, and her constitutional had led her past, and she had seen the Bohemians there, clustered about, posturing, drinking (frankly foul smelling) coffee, grumbling over the results of the nights debauchery.

And she had not stopped.

Oh, how she had WISHED to stop, to casually saunter up and order whatever it was they were decanting from those battered samovars, to lean back, perhaps to interject some witty repartee about the theatre. But she hadnt. These things took her time. So every day she would walk by. Watching the group, picking out less threatening conversational prospects, strategizing, considering, and most of all, building up the courage. Today, she was ready, today she had brought a teacup - stylishly battered, of course - and a few bits of tin, and she was ready. Today, she would walk up, order a coffee, and maybe, MAYBE, find a chance to interject the witty repartee she had been carefully working out the wording of the last few days.

And today, it was gone.

All such things, these crystalline palaces of the essential now, are ephemeral, and this one, somehow, had dissolved. Not the stall itself, of course - it still stood. But the clientele was gone. Only sailors and traders, and the occasional customer now lounged about chattering over their coffee.

She sighed. It was always like that.

She stared around bleakly instead. A fellow with a pipe? A student, maybe. But pipe smoke tickled her nose unpleasantly. A young girl in fancy-dress sitting on a pier? Poetic, yes. But she was writing. No one liked to have that interrupted.

A naked littl girl.

Well.

With a start and a cough, she stumbled down the stone flags of the promenade toward the wharfs, unbuckling her cloak - she was hot anyway, having been unable to decide between the coat and a velvet riding jacket, and settling on both. The girl, though, turned first - Minnie liked this about her, immediately - and set to wrapping the child up, murmuring words that the wind of Minnie's bustle obscured.

"It is too cold, girl! You need a coat!" She thrust her own forward about 500 feet away, still running - then tripped, flopping face first into the mud-slush of the wharf boot walkways. Ouch.

[Arianthe Swansong]

Arianthe rubbed the girl a little, in case the blood was not circulating properly and was about to pick her up, march over to the fur market and demand an explanation, when she heard an odd commotion behind her. At first she thought it might be the sailors unpacking cargo but she realised quickly that it was coming towards her, with the intention of talking to her. With this in mind, Arianthe turned around hearing a shout and a splash and noted a woman, a small woman who, if she had not caught a glimpse of her face, she might have thought a child. She had fallen down face first and Arianthe was overwhelmed by empathy - it was just the sort of thing which she would have done. "Stay here. I will be straight back." she murmured to the little girl before running off towards the woman. "Are you alright, Madam?" she held out an arm to help her up, "Are you hurt?" On closer reflection this woman must have been in her forties and Arianthe immediately liked her. She did not have any superficial beauty, nor any great beauty at all. Rather a great presence and kindliness in her face. It was a lovelier face than any other cold beauty. Cold beauties which resembled each other so peculiarly with their perfect, tall bodies and symmetrical faces with high cheekbones. Boring beauties with their toned arms, generous bust and light curves; their even, blue eyes and aquiline noses. What was that quote? After a certain degree of prettiness, one pretty girl is as pretty as another... well, that was certainly true. An interesting face was of so much more value than a classically beautiful one. "Are you hurt?" she repeated it and, without waiting for a reply, proceeded to try and help the woman wipe some of the mud and water off her clothes. Strange clothes. Nice clothes.

[Philomena]

Minnie pulled up quickly to her knees - her spectacles fell off in the fall, so her first priority was finding her glasses, which she scrabbled across the ground for. Her hands made contact with the glasses, and picked them up, quickly wiping them off and stuffing them back on her face - still a bit smeary on the lenses. She stood with the girl's help now - the cloak had flown to the side, and she ignored it for a moment (as well, shamefully as Arianthe, for just that moment). Instead, she pulled her small leather satchel around from her back, and started cleaning mud off it with a certain desperation, then opened it, revealing… a clutter of things, but mostly, two wax tablets, a heavy book, and a smaller book, along with a pot of ink and a few battered quills. She pulled the ink out quickly, testing it for leaks. There were none, and she relaxed noticeably, looking up finally at the woman, Arianthe.

Her own face was a bit banged up by the fall, but nothing serious - a scrape on her cheek, a bruise across her nose. Her face visibly recollected itself, the various muscles of her face, one at a time, gathering into the present, the mouth tightening slightly, the hand on her arm was startling, but amazingly pleasant, and subconsciously, she leaned into it slightly, exhaling softly. Then, her face finished reassembling and she started, looking at the girl's bare arms, open neckline.

"No, no! You must put a coat on, I'm fine, you must…" she leaned over to grab the cloak, and fussily shook it out - it was in remarkably better shape than she was, her tartan green dress smeared black-brown, the nap on the velvet (velveteen, and cheap, now, close up) likely ruined, the sash around her neck drooping slightly, revealing the corner of an angry red scar. Then, she started trying to lay it across the younger, considerably taller, girl's shoulders.

"And the girl! What is happening, she is not yours? We must see to the girl! She has no shoes..."