Reunion, Part II [Khyan]

[Hilana Chenzira]

10 Ash, Year 122

[Closed - Khyan]

Hilana listened to him, and when he looked her in the eye, she didn’t look away. She had known full well that he might haven taken it poorly, though she had hoped he wouldn’t. But she had been there. She had been there. And all she could do was try to explain, knowing he might not get it at all. That she was going to open her mouth and make herself seem more even crazier than she had the first day. But it was a risk she was going to have to take.

“I am not judging you,” Hilana told him as she took Tiaz from his shoulders, letting the python return to her own, draping him there. “I am in no position to judge you, Khyan, because I made my own mistakes, and they cost me about everything I had that was worth living for. My identity, every shred of freedom, access to my friends, my pack, I lost it all because I made my mistakes, and I didn’t listen when I was told to be careful. I do not want that to happen to you, I don’t want anything to happen to you. I am trying to warn you, because I care about you. I care very deeply for you, even though this is only the second time I’ve met you. But I have thought about you every day since we last parted.”

She took a breath before continuing. “When I left you that morning, when I gave you that bracelet, and you looked at me… it was like you saw me, and I saw you. You brought back something that I had lost, that feeling that I had a pack again. In all of the places I would never have expected to, and certainly not with anyone I would have ever expected to,” she let out a quiet, almost embarrassed chuckle. “So forgive me for upsetting you. We are very different, you and I. Maybe too different, because I am just me. Such things of Arcana and Runes, I know very little of. I never got that education, so I am sorry for offending you by not recognizing your prowess. But that is the consequence of a choice I made. I learned that lesson the hard way, like a donkey that needed to be clubbed over the head again and again and again because it was too stubborn to follow the rows in the fields.”

She smoothed her skirts, swallowing. “When I spend this time with you, my Wildness whispers… ‘Oh, there you are’. I looked for you because I care about you. I had hoped I might be able to find you if you had been offered for sale publicly to buy your deed to try to ensure at least your safety and freedom. I was always taught that the pack looks after each other. That the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack. And I am very much aware of how little I can do to help you, should you get into trouble. This isn’t the sands of the Expanse, or even Tertium. I have no status here, I have no others to back me up, I have no magic. And if something happens to you, I already know that I cannot help you, not here, and I hate it. All I can do is try to caution you so that you don’t make the same mistakes I did, and be there for you as much as you want me to, and to try to help where I can.” She finished all this, her chest rising and falling, Tiaz’ tongue flickering as he felt the way her heart hammered under him. “So please understand that when I urge you to be cautious, it comes from a place of love. I am only trying to look out for you, and protect you the only way I can here.”

[Khyan Nykara]

Khyan was prepared to stalk off as soon as Tiaz was reclaimed, and he made for the door, but paused before reaching it. He didn't turn to face her as she began to speak of her sacrifices. His shoulders lost some of their tension, but he remained still, otherwise. Not softening beyond that.

He considered her position. It sounded as though she had as little as he had, only she'd been suffering for longer. Where today was the first time he'd wanted for connection enough to seek her out, she'd looked for him every day since they'd met. Even during his descent, he had access to little lifelines that seemed abjured from her. He looked at his wrist at the mention of the bracelet, and only after that did he turn to regard her once more.

"I am sorry for your sundry losses. Truly." Khyan replied, "But I am no woodland wolf nor desert jackal." To demonstrate, he blinked and squeezed his eyes shut for a lingering moment. When they opened the whites had gone a greenish yellow and a black, vertical slit bisected each one seeming to add an otherworldly intensity to the gaze he fixed upon Hilana.

"And the serpent is strong in solitude." He bared his teeth and his fangs extended. Unable to completely shut his mouth while they were protruding this way, he spoke with a pronounced lisp as he continued:

"The viper's might is in venom, so mark that my words might drip with the same if I am mishandled." Brusque and impatient as Khyan could be with other humans, he was passing patient when handling animals. He gave them the same deference he might afford an elf of Re'ha. After allowing his words to sit for a moment, he retracted his fangs and blinked his eyes back to their normal array of colours.

After a moment, frozen there, he sighed and trudged back over to the table, taking a seat and grabbing the mead bottle by the neck.

"If I want your advice I shall ask for it." He asserted, lifting the vessel and shaking it a bit to assess how much liquid was left within. "As you asked about what to wear in the Umbrium which- I reiterate- not copper, hm?" He took a gulp of the mead, and offered the bottle back over to Hilana.

"We are at peace again. Drink with me and... Ask me questions before launching into diatribes. Or, you know, do what you want, Domina." He chuckled grimly, "I am but a servus." He tapped his finger against a collar forged of enough precious metal to pay for a domus.

[Hilana Chenzira]

Her eyes never left him as he headed for the door, knowing he might full well go out into the night and vanish without a trace into the Umbrium, and she may never have a chance to try to make things right with him, to try to explain. But she had a feeling that he was like her like that, that the school of hard knocks taught the lessons that stuck. And just as her old pack had, she would just have to watch and pray to the Radiant King and Midnight’s Queen that he would escape as she had, if not with more of a margin of safety.

Hilana watched as he turned to face her, and made his stance crystal clear. As exciting and ethereal as that transformation had been, there was too much on the line to let herself get excited about it. There was no point in arguing semantics with him, not now. Maybe one day, she could tell him of the golden maned wolves in the Expanse that would go after adult camels, but that was a story for another time. She knew what her feeling was. She knew what her Wildness told her. Maybe he didn’t feel the same way; but that wasn’t something she could make him want or experience. “You are right. I am sorry,” she inclined her head and conceded. He was right in many counts; she didn’t know him, much less what he was capable of. And she had presumed.

There was still a quarter of the bottle remaining, and the second one was there to be drunk as well. Once he sat, she poured the fragrant tea from the copper kettle, collecting a jar of honey from the little side table, another small plate, a spoon, and a knife. The jar at a visible block of honeycomb in it, and she was quiet once again for a bit. “Not copper, lest I take a pickaxe to my skull. Which would be a very unpleasant surgery to try to fix, but my manners would probably be better for it,” she was wry.

She took the bottle from him once it was offered, and it stopped midway to her lips. “Please do not call me that. You are not ‘but’ anything. You are Khyan of House Nykara.” She was firm on that. “You are more, so much more, than a chunk of metal, even if it is expensive. The wheel always turns. And it will turn again.” She finally took a sip of the mead and set the bottle back down between them, reaching to open the jar and use the spoon to retrieve the block of honeycomb, letting it drip briefly back into the jar before transferring it to the plate. She took the wicked-looking knife and cut a slice off, nudging it towards him. She didn’t know if he had ever tried the waxy treat, or if patricians considered such beneath them, but she was going to find out. “So your primary Rune is… Masquerade, I would think? Or maybe Semblance? If it helps you hide?”

[Khyan Nykara]

"Thank you." Khyan acknowledged her apology with a nod, and found himself reminded of an old Vastian saying about the hot-headedness of their people.

"The Vastii erupt so that Sorokyn needn't." He let out a sigh and shook off the body tension he'd built up in his ire, "I'm only sorry Tiaz had to see me like that." He was half in jest, but he did cast an earnest, apologetic look toward the python.

He did chuckle at her self-deprecating joke about the pickaxe that complemented his less kind jest. But his fangs were retracted now, and laughter was a 'Sweet Remedy' appropriate to their environs to balm rankled spirits.

"You are kind to say so..." Despite of her emphasis, Khyan seemed sceptical of his worth or his potential to emerge from his current situation. It might improve somewhat, it might worsen a great deal, but he couldn't fathom the wheel turning so far that he found himself as high as he'd been. Gods, how he wished he'd appreciated how lucky he was while he was still lucky.

"The wheel may turn, but not terribly quickly... At least not here." There was much he loved about their homeland but, steeped in millennial and older traditions, it didn't often course correct within a human lifetime. "It is of Elven make." And elves had longer lives to amend their ways. It seemed especially unlikely that he would find himself exonerated because he'd been sentenced by the Princeps Prætor himself. This hadn't been some lowly, human magistrate whose rulings might be overturned at the whim of the right Re'hyæan. This was the chief justice of the nation.

"Semblance." He confirmed her second guess. "Had I been more focused, I might have taken up with the Sentinels. That might have spared me my fate, but instead I-..." His eyes fell to the bottle of mead, "Well, I did this." And with that, he downed what remained.

[Hilana Chenzira]

“That is very true. A good thing, considering the smoke that came out of Mount Sorokyn for six days earlier,” she admitted. “Clearly, we are doing a public service.” But there was certainly a tell for Khyan that the python was upset about this turn of events caused by his owner. His lower half was constricting rather tightly around Hilana’s upper arm, and the white and black snake was moving more along her shoulders than usual; certainly more activity than Khyan as seen out of him in their first meeting or earlier tonight. When they were relaxed, Tiaz was relaxed. But once tempers flared and went hot… as calm as the unique snake usually was, this was apparently his form of fussy. “He will be alright. You can give him his rabbit when it is time for him to eat next in a day or two. He forgives everything with food,” she reassured him.

“It is simply true,” she reminded him. He would get through this. She didn’t see him as a servus, but for now… it was as Asher had said. Do what you have to do, so you can do what you want to do. “It may be of Elven make… but it can turn quickly in any direction,” Hilana was gentle. “It turned sharply this time. But it could turn again to correct itself, maybe sooner than we expect. Things can always change. Truths can come out.”

She watched him with the bottle, and with that one finished, she moved the second one into reach for if…well, when he wanted it. “Semblance,” she echoed him. That was safe enough, surely. And even if it wasn’t… she had to quash those niggling worries that came unbidden before they could stick. Hilana just had to trust him and trust in his strength. When he mentioned the Sentinels, she looked thoughtful. “They will take everyone, no? Could you receive a dispensation, permission, from Cetus to apply there?” It wasn’t his old life… but he could, perhaps, improve his position. Another option she could think of, she knew was unlikely to be received well, and she couldn’t see him wanting it. Not with this being the only life he knew… not with the abilities of the military and mages to find anyone they were determined to uncover. But if he had mastered Semblance…perhaps he could simply vanish into the Sands. She knew people and places, after all. But at the same time… she wasn’t sure she could see the Patrician doing it. Not long term.

“We are only young once,” Hilana pointed out. “If you enjoy a good drink, you enjoy a good drink. There are worse vices.” Her own had been adrenaline, especially on the back of a camel… or dealing with animals that could have killed her ten times over. “As you said… you would have settled down before much longer. You couldn’t have known such events would happen. How old are you, Khyan?” She cut off a second piece of the honeycomb, and this time popped it in her mouth before balancing the first slice she had cut on the spoon to offer it to him to make it easier to lift from the plate.

[Khyan Nykara]

“If I can get back here that soon…” Khyan didn’t express any aversion, either overt or subtle, at the notion of feeding rabbits to Tiaz, but he did have to assert the reality that his days were not really his own. The Forum of the Luxium was riskier to both his safety and dignity. He was for more likely to encounter uncomfortable souvenirs from his former life here, to say nothing of the greater likelihood that the eyes of the Argenti were on him so much closer to their demesne.

“I’m the same way with alcohol.” He offered with a chuckle, when it was implied that the way to Tiaz’ heart was through his belly. He’d evinced as much quite recently, having gone straight from mead to amends.

“Well, I wouldn’t say they take anyone per se, but certainly someone of my education and natural arcane talent. If…” And here was the rub, “my life was my own. Cetus does a lot and and already risks his father’s wrath for me. I am rather certain the Consul would not suffer him to release me into the protection of the Vigilia Argenti.” He wrinkled his nose and, indeed, reached for the second bottle after counting to ten.

“I’m nineteen.” He replied, flatly. “What of it?” He narrowed his eyes slightly as he regarded her visage. If she was his elder, he didn’t imagine it was by much. He knew he had a baby face. Likely one of the subtle ways in which his elven ancestry presented itself. His father would have looked young to sire him if he were solely human. He wondered whether he’d have a few extra years tacked on for his heritage. Lately, he wondered whether he’d have even wanted that. If the wheel continues at so leisurely a pace, he might prefer an early demise to extra time in bondage. A thought to drink on, if ever there was one, and drink he did.

[Hilana Chenzira]

“With luck,” Hilana understood, though. She might see him again, she might not… though she rather hoped so. She would still keep an eye out for him, though she would have to go down below more often, it seemed. “Otherwise it may just take that sound you made and some cuddles, he quite liked that,” she offered. When her arm went numb at the shoulder it would be time to disengage the python, but he wasn’t quite at that stage yet. Hopefully he would relax first, but Hilana just knew to give it time. She’d done about all that she could have to socialize the python, but Khyan’s warning display wasn’t something she would have ever thought of. “That’s how two snakes end an argument, isn’t it? They hiss and make up,” she chuckled.

“I should probably keep snacks and this on hand, hm?” She indicated the bottle, though she was clearly teasing and trying to make light of it with him, poking fun at herself in the meantime. But she was solemn as he explained about the Sentinels, nodding slowly. She hadn’t been trying to rub his situation in his face, but to try to understand what -could- be done to improve things for him. She was glad he had taken it relatively well, considering the answer. She picked up her tea cup and had a sip, the spices mixing with the honeycomb in her mouth and helping to melt it a bit.

She nodded. That sounded about right to her, 19. But Hilana was a bit biased that way: with her big eyes and somewhat immature way of dressing, not to mention the way she used cosmetics here and there, she was often taken for a teenager herself and called ‘girl’ frequently by those who didn’t know her. A cheerful countenance, plenty of optimism, and a borderline childishly inquisitive nature helped to sell that even more. “I was only asking because I wanted to know,” she explained. “As you said… I don’t really know that much about you… but I’d like to. So, questions. But for you to have mastered your first Rune, and picked up a secondary one and accomplished quite a bit with that one, too, all at 19 is quite amazing, truly told.”

[Khyan Nykara]

“Not so great a toll, that…” Khyan offered his rattling hiss for the snake’s benefit. Hopefully it would aid in Hilana’s conciliatory endeavours, but it did him no harm either way.

He stared blankly for a gravid moment after Hilana punned, then shook his head slowly- pendulously.

“That…” He began, with an air of solemn candour, “…was ghastly.” And with that his countenance broke in laughter.

“If you ever wish to advance in the ranks of your caste, snacks and spirits ready at hand are fundamental- I dare say paramount!” She’d opened the door with her jest, so he didn’t consider himself a hypocrite spewing unsolicited advice.

“Fair enough.” Hilana’s answer satisfied Khyan that she hadn’t been questioning his maturity with her query, and thus his eyes un-narrowed.

“Well, I suppose I was in something of a hurry…” Not that he’d put any exceptional amount of effort into his Craft. Still, he liked to take personal responsibility for his talents- even if they had come to him as second nature.

“I am only a Dryadalis Quartum…” As good as a full-blooded human in the eyes of the elven elite, “There’s no telling whether my Platinum ancestry will offer me additional years, so it seems wise to make the most of my time in the world as if I might be fed to Sacred Mount at any moment. That’s one lesson I learnt of late and hard came that grim education…”

He shuddered,

“Anyway, what else would you know of me? You know my age, my castes present and prior, my magicks, a bit about my family, my drinking habits and you’ve had a taste of my temper. How may I further accelerate our acquaintance?” He smirked, self-satisfied at his own purple prose.

[Hilana Chenzira]

When Khyan hissed for him, Tiaz’s constant movements slowed, and the thick snake, who has been busy hiding his head within the giant waterfall of curls, peeked out at him from under it. There was the flicker of the python’s tongue in turn, followed by his own soft hiss. But his head returned to Hilana’s shoulder where he could look at Khyan again, and the constriction of the herbalist’s arm was starting to relax. She brought up her fingers to stroke the scales of his underside, encouraging him to relax a bit further.

She did look pretty pleased with his reaction to the pun, because his laughter brought more out of her until her shoulders were shaking. “You know you liked it,” she was grinning. But she considered his advice about social advancement. “Maybe for having some people over,” she allowed, then. She could think of a few. The Elf she had met in the Forum. His partner, Finn, when she finally got to meet him. And Khyan. Khyan had already been to the apartment in the Old City, but Founders alone knew if the Golden Elf might come. “It’s the same in the sands. If you have a fire burning… they will come,” she chuckled. “I’ve never had trouble making acquaintances or even friends, that’s the easy part. But good ones, true ones… that’s harder. And the higher you climb, the more exposed you get, and the bigger the target you carry by those who want your place in the pecking order,” she knew he already knew that. “Still…” she looked at the tea cup in front of her. Before Tertium and Solunarium, she had never hid amongst her own. There was no denying the differences of the cultures between the nomads and those who lived in the cities despite being the same people.

But all eyes were on him as he talked, both hers and Tiaz’s. The python’s head had lifted from her shoulder now, and he was watching Khyan, that long tongue coming out. “I used to say that the soul afraid of dying never learned to live. But that was before life in the cities.” Hilana’s lips quirked, though she didn’t quite smile. Though when he asked her what else she wanted to know, that smile was back, and she made her eyes as large as she could before taking a deep breath. It looked like she might have been planning to verbally assail him with a thousand questions, but apparently, she was only teasing by building that anticipation up. “When is your birthday? Have you tried honeycomb? Have you left the city before? Did you know that magpies can imitate speech and is that one of the reasons you picked them for your third totem?”

Well, he did ask…

[Khyan Nykara]

"I did not." Khyan replied, still chortling. "I did not like it." He shook his head.

"Is it?" He considered her talk of the nomadic life the Old Order Vastii practised in distant desert reaches. Subsequently, he blinked at her volley of questions- He might have expected such an abundance of rapid-fire inquiries when he'd opened the door to them.

"I was a Searing baby." Khyan replied, "I rang in 103 Steel by coming into the world on the First of Sundered Rise." He nodded to the second question, "I have indeed tried honey comb. It was often served with the cheese course at supper, and at parties.

"I've spent passing little time outside the city... We have-... er, well I suppose had- it would be our cousins' property, now. But we used to have a villa in Tertium. Not right in the city, but on the outskirts... The heights right along the beach. Founders, I loved that place. Anyway, we always took barges up the Vasta to get there, so even then we didn't really traverse the desert. I'm a city boy through and through..." He tilted his head, "Although, I did train to ride various mounts, so I've seen more of the desert from above than I have from the sands themselves. The view is glorious on wyvern-back, do you ride yourself? You're a member of the equestrian caste, it seems you should at least know your way around a horse or camel..." He nodded,

"I am aware that magpies can imitate speech, though their physiology is so different that I myself have not been able to form words. I'm pretty sure I tried to speak with you the night you found me, but it's a challenging thing to, um... Speak with a beak." Khyan, it seemed, was not above a bit of a pun himself.