Closed A Watery Meeting

[Alses]

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Alses shrugged, the motion sending a small wave rippling outwards from her effortlessly-floating form. Her voice was slow, and soft, and oddly distracted, eyes staring unblinkingly up at the universe overhead.

“It is the way it is,” she remarked. “Unusual as it might seem to you.” Another slow pause, and then a lingering, deliberate blink, nictating membranes sliding up and down just after her eyelids.

“We learned another language,” Alses added, the words sliding only reluctantly from her mouth, pulled out by the starlight and the gentle rocking motion of the springs. “The price for it was the knowledge of all the others.”

That wasn't strictly speaking true; the price hadn't been a prerequisite to being welcomed into Syna's Goldenlands, oh no – it had been, instead, one of the many consequences of the Fall, another thing to make returning to Mizahar even more of a trial, a perfectly beautiful girl in an unfamiliar world, totally bewildered by everything.

However, for a Konti and someone she'd just met, however rude Alses had been, it was plenty sufficient – at least, in her estimation.

Tanell's observation, about finding time – time, of all things, to an eternal Ethaefal! - made her laugh abruptly, a sharp ringing peal. “Time wouldn't be a problem; I have a surfeit of it!”

She sobered quickly, although there was still an amused kink in her lips and a light to her deep green eyes that hadn't been there before. “No, the difficulty – now I know of the lack - would be in finding a tutor who could put up with me.”

Again, the slow regard of the skies, the eyes dragged heavenwards almost against their will, the pale light painting Alses' water-beaded face a luminous silver. “I have driven away two people from these hotsprings and from our acquaintance both so far. One was...strange, even by my standards, covered in scar-work as some form of perverse art. Our acquaintance was not long, and I confess I was glad to be rid of her. The other...”

Sadness flashed across her face, then came back and camped there, her voice taking on an indefinable wistful tone, her mind singing a song of the faintest stirrings of an old infatuation, mostly laid to rest these days. “Deliciously different. Spiky and unrefined. I had hopes, but.” Another shrug, a faint expanding ring of ripples in the pool, as Alses brought the topic of her own rambling, pause-filled conversation back to tutors and tutelage. “I know I'm not the easiest of company to keep, and whilst money buys indulgence to a degree, it can only go so far.”

She cocked her head at Tanell's musings, listening to the morsels the girl scattered into the listening air, sampling the information and sorting it, integrating it into the melting, shifting morass that had to serve her as a brain. “You are quite safe from losing any business, miss. And from being the subject of unkind rumours.” A low, humour-filled laugh. “Why should I wish to spread my own prejudices around? That would not serve me, or my interests, such as they are.”

A wry smile touched her lips as she took in Tanell's words, put two and two together, and made five. “Besides, I'm sure your clientele at the Lantern would disagree. I know the Konti are, whatever my own personal feelings, held in high regard in the Diamond. Syna knows Madame Belladonna tried to recruit me often enough when I first arrived here.”

Even if that had been for reasons entirely to do with her celestial Ethaefal form, rather than the pale fishy thing she became on the dying of the light.
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[Tanell]

Tanell

"We?" The plural was there, finally the hinting about had come to a point where Tanell could politely question, she had hoped such a thing would happen. She appeared to be a Konti, but she behaved so oddly. Her question was gently seeking, mused about and put to the woman gently. There was no push to it, no force to draw an answer she did not wish to share. They were strangers after all.

That was the premise of their entire meeting, wasn't it? The formalities of strangers having been discarded at their first words, then falsely draped back across their meeting, a shimmering haze in the misty air drawn upon and forgotten in turn as it suited their purposes.

See how the tools of society can be put to use. The thought lingered in her mind, one often brought to her attention on the Isle. Rules and values could be manipulated to suit one's own purpose just as often as they could be used against them.

It really didn't surprise her that this woman had driven away people in the past, she was quite odd, and sometimes rude. There was more in her words, and it lingered in Tanell's mind as she created ripples and eddies in the water.

"I am no tutor," Tanell began, hesitant in making her offer, did she really want to see this woman again? See her regularly? She was quite a difficult companion. All the same, it was not in her to deny the knowledge she had when someone else was interested in it. "Perhaps, though, I could teach you the language, if you are interested in learning."

She paused in her stirring of the water, glancing up through her lashes at the woman, seeking some sort of hint of her feeling about the offer. She did not look long before dropping her gaze and releasing the hold of her offer. "Don't answer me now, of course," Her voice freeing the woman from the obligation of an answer once more, "You don't even know if you'd care to remember it, yet."

The woman came to a conclusion, the touch of her words and perhaps Tanell's comfort in her own skin had led the woman to a place that was only logical. All the same, Tanell couldn't hold back a laugh of her own, dry and dismissive.

"Despite what may seem like evidence to the contrary, I am not in the business of selling sex. Perhaps I would make more more money that way, but it is not to my taste." She laughed again, a real laugh, soft as the colors of her appearance. "That is not to say-- well that is a matter of less import. I read fortunes, and craft jewelry and trinkets. To sell a service though, requires selling oneself in a different way than those who work at the Lantern do. My business spreads through the words of clients, and to have them speak poorly of me would hurt business." Her words held the same laughter, gentle, playful.

"You understand, of course, how perceived beauty can change the outcome of an exchange. Don't you?" It had, in fact, worked in Sela's favor this evening. Tanell remained in hopes of learning about her, in hopes of finding common ground. She did not wish to find herself on the wrong side of this woman, beautiful and cruel as she was.

[Alses]

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For a split-tick, Alses froze, a deer in a hunter’s sights, before recovering. “I. Sorry. Spend enough time with someone to whom the personal pronoun is a deep and abiding mystery and you start to pick up some odd mannerisms,” she muttered, looking away for a moment.

A bright silver peal of a laugh, a brief chuckle dancing its way between pale lips, was Tanell’s initial answer to her offer. “I’m a sorceress, amongst other things,” Alses explained, a smile still tugging at her otherwise-distant features, giving them light and life for a few fleeting moments. “I never turn down knowledge that might one day prove useful. It’s not in the blood.”

“If you still wish to tutor me, then by all means, present yourself at Elysium Hall – it's on Tenten Peak, if you didn't know. At night, if you please; my day job doesn’t leave much time for…well, anything else, if I’m honest. I’ll let Silver – that’s the butler – and Alses know. She won’t mind.” It was quite strange to speak of herself – or rather, her daytime self – in the third person.

As Alses absorbed Tanell’s calm and rather collected denial, an unstoppable biological reaction occurred as embarrassment leapt like lightning from one synapse to the next. Indeed, it was one of the few times that true colour hit Alses’ pale Konti face, and when it did so it was the burning crimson of an autumn sunset in full flood, quite a contrast to her usual pallor, only the glimmering opalescent scales making inroads to the spectacular scarlet flush that had conquered all before it.

“And once again I’ve made an appalling fool of myself,” she muttered, frustration – at herself, now, rather than Tanell – making her movements quick and jerky even as she quietly wished her cheeks to stop their spectacular bonfire burn and the earth to open and swallow her up.

“My most sincere apologies. I was – well, never mind; I was mistaken in the worst possible way.” Alses looked away, cheeks still radiating heat fit to boil the waters. “I really should have learned, by now, not to make assumptions.”

Water rippled and surged around her for a moment as she moved, glowingly pale skin emerging from the blue-tinted waters, taking on odd colours and hues from the calias-infused plants all around.

Absently, Alses shook her head and, in one practiced movement, took hold of her silvery hair and wrung it out over the pool, before turning towards the alcoves which heated and protected bathers' clothes from the worst of the spray and spume. “And on that catastrophic note,” she called, voice slightly muffled as cloth slid over her head and spilled down her back, “I think I shall take my leave, and brave the path back. Perhaps if I am the one to leave, then this time I'll have better luck.”

A flash of a smile, small and tinged with embarrassment, still, but more real than most of the ones that had danced and thrummed across her face during their water-filled conversation. “Enjoy the springs - and what remains of your evening, Miss. And as I said – if your offer still stands, make yourself known at Elysium Hall.”

Still replaying her own mortification over and over in her head, the blush stubbornly stuck on her high cheeks, Alses slipped away from the pools as quickly as decency and her footing would allow, every fibre of her being set on getting back to Elysium Hall for a long wallow in her own embarrassment.
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[Elysium]

Alses

XP:
Rhetoric +3
Socialization +3

Lore:
Aurtistics: Identifying a Konti
Tanell, Daughter of Avalis
Language: Kontinese
Rhetoric: How to Eat Crow

★

Tanell

XP:
Observation +3
Rhetoric +2
Socialization +3
Teaching +1

Lore:
Observation: Recognizing Subtext
Sela, the Seeming Konti
Rhetoric: Offering a Different Perspective
Socialization: Niceties

Notes:
This was a very entertaining thread. I'm sad to see it end so soon! If either of you lovely ladies have any questions, please let me know.

and so, the journey continues...