Minding Manners [Mino]

[Hozxi]

2 Ash 121

Hoxzi turns the flower petal over in her hands.

Blue. Nearly violet, and perhaps in the darkness of twilight that dawn invoked over the garden one might mistake it for a pale indigo, but Hozxi knew colors better than that. It could not hide its true nature. A blue that rivaled the clear skies in the hot Searing afternoons. Oh, that Searing might have continued and the desert native might be spared the cruel cold of the coming Frost.

The idea of the blue of ice in Lake Udori disenchants Hozxi from the color blue at this time and she tosses the petal to the ground.

It was an ancillary garden. One of many in the shadow of Ruk Paresu, the Silk Palace, the abode of the wealthy scions of House Veyl. She had not come to treat with those so completely above her station. However, the garden was open to any wandering soul who passed into the noble demesne, and as such it was as convenient a place as any to meet her new contact.

From underneath her robes, the giant takes a small coin. Childlike to her dimensions. Rolling it between her fingers, the design engraved on its surface is also barely visible in this twilight: three hares chasing one another. Or perhaps three hares each running from a fox, running in circles, fated to be caught between whatever frightened one another.

The instructions were simple enough. If you were looking for work, and did not want or did not need to ask many questions, come to the noble gardens before sunrise and someone will approach you if there is work to be done. That was what the man wandering the city had told her when she had been walking home from another night performing assistant embalming work at one of the many clinics that handled the dead in this town.

Hozxi puts the coin back. Dawn had come. The rest was not up to her.

[Mino]

Recruitment was probably the least favorite part of Mino’s job. For one, he hated the excursion down into the Midden, and he hated waking up before the sun. Generally, he would have liked to feel the rays on his skin, heating it as he chased the remnants of sleep. Even after years of doing this, he couldn’t fall into the routine for the early mornings.

The gardens were nice, though.

That much, he could admire. The scent of the blossoms, the caress of petals over him. He sprawled out over the branch for a moment longer, ears twitching. He’d not been waiting long when someone had arrived. Either they hadn’t noticed him, or they simply didn’t care. Or maybe they suspected he might be there for the same reason. He let his chin rest in the palm of his hand, green eyes on them for a moment. Observing.

They were a large individual. Big; perhaps close enough to the branch that if he reached down he could brush the top of their head. He wouldn’t, though, as tempting as that was. Firstly, it wouldn’t be very polite. And secondly, he was still curious as to whether it would be worth taking them on in the first place.

There were things you could train, and things you couldn’t. There were people you could break, and people who would simply bend until it was the worst possible moment to snap. This one could be like that. Mino had not the fortune of knowing where he could be placed on those scales. He’d been much too young and malleable for that to be of any concern. Sniffing, he let his limbs dangle over the branch.

The Rathari was quiet for another moment before he sat up, cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose you were waiting for me, were you?”

[Hozxi]

"I cannot say. I do too much waiting in this town, I fear I will become accustomed to it even when I am not waiting on anything."

Hozxi stares at the man in the branches. A man in a rather perfectly supine posture, as if it were more normal to be laying upon a branch than sitting in a chair. It is the twitch of the ears that makes her suspicious enough to open her eyes. Hozxi's aether channels into her Cardinal Rune, and the light comes behind her gemlike irises as a small imitation of the dawn. She sees the stranger's own aether and only finds more questions for her to ask herself.

She had heard of Rathari while living with the Tribe. They were cursed, or perhaps blessed, to be the inheritors of a deep connection to the animal energies of the world. Not until she had left had she seen one in the flesh; the first encounter had not been pleasant, as it had been a physical altercation on the train ride into town. Kishoi flesh was hard as rock, but as she had discovered that evening eight months ago, the teeth of a Rathari shark were sharp as steel. Hozxi stands guardedly as she watches him sit up, keeping her wits about her, but letting her eyes do the seeing unaided.

"I need work. Whether or not you accept this coin," she remarks, fingering the coin out from between her knuckles to let it gleam in the lamplight of the garden before twisting her hand and revealing an empty palm, "does not matter to me."

Hozxi did need work, but it was not about the money. Not entirely about the money. She was of an industrious nature and any idle time felt like time stolen by the sand of an hourglass, whisked away into the trickling stream and lost for eternity.

"Something in the higher circles would be preferred. I have need of learning courtly grace, as that is the only path for my future."

[Mino]

Mino hummed softly, swinging his legs on the branch with ease. There was a self-assurance about the stranger that he could appreciate. But perhaps the House itself wouldn’t. She reminded him, briefly, of the meeting he’d once had with Hyoga. He was certain it wouldn’t be as easy to swindle her as it had been him. Eyes narrowed, he leaned back against the trunk of the tree.

“Well, first.” He sighed, crossed his arms over his chest. “You would need to learn to speak with a little more respect. After all, you’re speaking with a lord.” Mino tipped his head to the side, grinned a little wider. As underhanded as some of their work was, they did hold rank. Which had been helpful through the years. It wouldn’t help their reputation if they sent someone who talked any way they pleased to those of a higher station. Not that he cared much. But — there were far more people who did. “You say your sirs and ma’ams to those needed.”

“Lessons we can give you, but the matter of if you learn anything from them is up to you. So let what I’ve said be your first lesson. No charge other than the coin.”

Mino let his head rest against the tree. They didn’t usually take fully grown adults for anything worth being savory, but this woman was a foreigner. Her words accented in a way he’d not heard within the city. She would, surely, be more suspicious of them with this meeting alone, and anything less savory may well push her to the Sky Guard. That wouldn’t be for him to decide, of course. Lady Yellow would have to deal with that.

“To be in the upper echelons of the city, you’re going to be need good at something.” Another swing of his leg. “What do you have to offer that someone else in the city doesn’t?”