Solo the way we are.

[Yra]

39 Spring 515

Yra was out of breath, nearly tripping over her own traitorous feet in her hurry, believing in the sentiment that tardiness made her useless to the system she thought she could integrate herself into. Arriving at Alements, not being far from the inn Yra chose to stay in lieu of owning a house, shouldn’t have been as stressful as it was at the moment, however the sun had fully risen already and Yra was certain, so certain, that she would show herself as an unworthy employee.

Much the same way she must have shown Syna she was an unworthy companion-

The thought, as quick as it came to interrupt Yra’s frantic pursuit of her time, was just as quickly crumpled up and discarded. It didn’t belong here. Not today. Not this season. The winter had come and it had gone; Yra shouldn’t dwell on that thought.

She needed to be on time.

With a huff, the ethaefal burst into Alements with a grace lacking both finesse and quiet; she startled a smattering of women deep in tea and gossip nearby into audible gasps and mutters. Apologizing to them, Yra eased the door closed behind her and found the exasperated face of Elise at the counter, cloth in hand and guest waiting on her.

Swiftly, Yra bee lined for her target in the form of an apron dangling off a hook and the very same tray she tried to use every day she came in. As nondescript as the trays were, the ethaefal fancied that she could tell the difference between them, as if there was an actual difference and it wasn’t just her imagination.

"I am sorry," she murmured as she passed Elise, offering the waiting guest a welcoming smile as she took the first order that awaited delivery. It can’t have sat there long, still frothy from being freshly poured. Yra struggled to remember what drink this was supposed to be without leaning in and taking a deep inhale. Before she left Elise’s company, she hesitated and looked back at the woman questioningly.

"Armchair at the furthest window, house special," Elise said, ghostly smile edging across her lips. Yra didn’t return the smile, but the frantic way she carried herself eased slightly. Just a bit, and she thanked Elise before hurrying onwards again.

With practice, Yra had become accustom to the lulls and rises in conversation that Alements stuffed itself with. There were voices that, through the cacophony, were familiar, like hollow echoes of the voices she’d heard in other lives and better days, but when she thought she heard them and she looked up to find them, she found that there were no familiar faces in the mass, and she’d learned to ignore the sound when they came across her. Ignorance paid her better than the roiling disappointment in her gut.

The man that Yra found in the armchair Elise had directed her at was a kindly looking Akalak, his violet skin contrasting the smile he offered Yra when she repeated the order told to her and presented the mug in offering. If her hands shook and her voice wavered, the Akalak made no comment, but he took the mug and handed her a few coins.

"These are for the lovely woman at the counter," the Akalak said in response to the questioning look that Yra had given him, even further confusing the Ethaefal. "Please give her my regards," he tacked on, misunderstanding the Ethaefal’s confusion.

After a tick of uncertainty, Yra smiled. She wasn’t so naïve to take this man’s coin and not understand what he meant, even with her struggling to come to terms with the meaning. Realization dawned eventually sometimes, like the slow sunrise in the coldest part of the winter.

[Yra]

The coin that the Akalak had given Yra was placed carefully in the leftmost pocket of her apron, delicate fingers gently handling the sign of affection the man had wished to dote upon Elise before she excused herself to handle taking the request of another nearby seating.

As Yra took the orders given her from this group of, as she assumed, friends, Yra glanced up periodically to assess Elise’s activities. For her distraction, she misheard the order of one male, corrected only when she took the care to repeat his request back to him. On a slip of paper she kept on herself, Yra wrote down that they wished for a round of ale each, and one wanted Weeper’s Wine. The three of them also requested, as Yra was beginning to step away, a platter of nuts and cheeses.

For a single moment, the Ethaefal hesitated, working out the request with all the haste of thick molasses. In her pocket, the coin felt warm and heavy, urging her to hurry with the order and get to Elise.

After the moment passed, Yra slowly nodded and wrote down that request as well, and then she beat a hasty retreat to the counter, blessed with ease of passage due to the lack of customers in the centre of the establishment, unquestioning as to why that was when she had her own strange little quest to do at the request of a kind Akalak man.

When Yra met with the counter again, she discovered for a brief moment that she couldn’t decide what was most important: a customer’s request or an order for food and drink. In the end, she decided for consecutive order, digging into the left pocket in her apron and fishing out the small amount of sparking silver and copper she’d been given to present to Elise.

"Armchair-Akalak wanted you to have this," she told Elise. "And he wished you to know that he sends his regards?” The Ethaefal tacked on the final statement as something of a question, losing sense of what that actually meant when there were more sensible ways to send a woman a compliment. However, she didn’t wish to actually not repeat what message she’d been given to the best of her ability to memorize… even if she believed compliments to be better worded.

The expression Elise returned at the sight of the coin was one that told Yra she’d likely encountered this before, and not necessarily in a pleasant way. Her hand outstretched, allowing the gilded hand that offered the coin to pass them along, the weight and heat of the cool metal leaving with them.

"If he asks," Elise began, chewing the words in her mouth slowly as if to taste what would be polite and what wouldn’t. "Inform him of my gratitude, but don’t give him the impression that I am interested." Her voice had grown stern with that, eyes lifting to appraise the Ethaefal and share the importance of her own request. Yra thought that maybe Elise would have preferred to inform him herself with the way in which she delivered her request, but Yra wasn’t going to actually let down her own employer’s friend.

"I will let him know,” she said, offering Elise what she thought was a sincere and kind smile. The edging darkness of winter lingered in the way that Yra curled her lips. "There is also this," said the Ethaefal, suddenly recalling when she’d looked down from Elise after noting how hollow the smile actually felt and seen the scribble of food on her slip of paper. "Left and centre table would like ale, a Weeping tincture, and large platter." The list of items rattled through her mouth, dead now that the excitement of the day had passed when Elise had taken the coin in return for rejection.

"Come on and give a hand," Elise jerked her head swiftly to beckon Yra closer as she herself took Yra’s slip of paper and began writing numbers alongside the different orders.