"The Shadows on the Wall"

[Arvælyn]

"The Shadows on the Wall"
70th of Searing, 124 Steel.
The Witching Hour

► Show Spoiler

Arvælyn removed a slip of paper from his pocket before allowing the servi to help him out of his jacket. He let them take that and his boots, but waved them away as he padded to his big, neatly made, empty bed. He unfolded the note as he turned to sit on the edge of the bed with a sigh. He regarded Finn's handwriting and traced his fingers across the matted surface of the page. The prince still got anxious when Finn went off on his campaigns of the heart or sense of duty. This one was particularly treacherous, as it would span time, space and other dimensions in pursuit of one of Ransera's most powerful sorceresses and whatever allies she'd amassed whilst they were working at other goals.

He lifted the page to his face and perhaps he could smell Finn's faint scent or perhaps he merely wanted to, as if that would suffice for a goodnight kiss and a warm back at his front. He placed the paper on the nightstand, and did the rest of his undressing himself before slipping under the covers and shutting his eyes. Sleep didn't always come quickly to the Prince Regent of the Umbrium, but tonight it was upon him in the matter of a few breaths.

With Finn on his mind as he crossed the threshold from the waking world to the dreaming, it ought to have been Finn who met him on the other side, but it was not. As his head lay in the Umbrium, it rose on a plainer pillow in another place. Sunlight poured through the crack between the curtains, causing him to squint as he rolled onto his other side to retreat from its glare and there, he found Aurin's face. Blinking in surprise he sat up, and he felt lighter... his balance was off. He glanced over his shoulder and no arcing wings loomed behind him. He ran his hand through his hair and no horns obstructed its path.

"Wha-..." He looked around, recognising the place... Aurin's cottage behind the Velvet Cabaret. He looked to his apparent host who, by now, was stirring to look at him strangely. Had he sidestepped into another reality, as Finn had done? A simpler life that followed closer to the path he might have expected, and certainly more aligned with what he sought in younger days. Pangs of old feelings merged with new ones born of the present circumstances. If this wasn't another dimension, it was surely his subconscious pressing issues he neglected to resolve.

Aurin parted his lips to speak.

Arvælyn woke with a bitter ache in his soul. There had been more to the dream, but here and now he couldn't recall the details, only the feelings. Emotions that he'd felt so strongly in another life were back with a vengeance and present circumstances made even the happiest of those memories sting. Young and busy, he rarely had time for nostalgia, but it seemed part of him demanded it when he was in no position to dismiss it. Perhaps it had been Finn's note that put him in mind of the tapestry of Fate and choices made that had the threads of other lives he might have led. Were he and Finn fatalistically bound together in every version of the world? Or were there realities where he'd never met Finn? Where he'd been enough for Aurin? Where he hadn't so jealous a heart and could brook sharing him with another? Even now, having no claim, his choler burned at the thought... at the memory of being undercut. He'd never felt like less, and he'd had far greater cause to. He sighed out a puff of smoke and wafted it away, rising to draw a dressing robe over his slim form.

"Draw me a bath and send for a Traverser."

Some time later, he was in the Plaza of the Jeweled Arches, his Sentinel escort veiled and warded to blend seamlessly into the surroundings without attracting attention. He used Aurin's 'trick' to conceal his wings, horns and fiery eyes and to make himself appear as he had when he'd left this place. He couldn't, or at least didn't, hide the effects of the time and experiences elapsed since he'd been Arry of Kalzasi.

He found his way to the Velvet Cabaret, lowering his eyes at the string of bad memories that assaulted his thoughts as he looked to his former home and place of employment. Dipping his head, and using his Capital Craft to dissuade bystanders from paying him any mind, he slipped around back. He didn't know if Aurin's cottage was still standing, and he certainly didn't expect the human to still be living there, but the dream had made him feel a pull to see what of that reality remained in the present day. If Finn could flit off in search of alternate realities, so too could Arry, after his fashion.

He smiled to see that the structure still stood. If anything, it looked better than it had, though that made his smile more wan. He wondered who lived there now. Part of him wanted to knock on the door and find out. But no, that was a bridge too far. He turned from the cottage and, after taking one step, heard the creak of the door behind him. He glanced over his shoulder...

[Aurin]

Sleep and Aurin were indifferent lovers. Frequently, the former stood the latter up, leaving him to consider his choices—mostly mistakes if he was being honest—and sometimes, it overwhelmed him like an assault. That night had been one of the latter, when he was worked too long and too hard, taut and resounding as any lute string, and he had found himself abed not long after the sun did.

Elric was opining drunkenly about art and philosophy and aesthetics, and Aurin was letting him. Uneducated, he still knew when to listen. The artistic director spoke of some ancient Hytori philosopher's allegory of a cave, and it was making sense finally, how the shadow puppetry on the wall was not the thing itself and how theater could be like that.

And then Elric was going down on him because of course he was.

"But if the prisoner was freed and turned around to escape his bondage," Elric was saying, even with a throatful of Aurin, which was somehow not strange, "The light would hurt his eyes, and he would escape by turning away to the things which he was able to look at, and these he would believe to be clearer than what was being shown to him."

Heavy-lidded eyes watched himself being adored by the intoxicated theater director, a shadow play against the wall.

But the light hurt his eyes. He looked down and it wasn't Elric. Aurin reached down, one hand cupping a golden cheek, the other pulling the knit cap away to reveal tousled blond hair and elegant elven ears. Arry blushed, rose gold in the ruddy light of the cave's fire, and the golden eyes reflected back a good man.

The rogue woke, hard as anything, and groaned into his pillow. There was a tingle—not sexual—on his inner bicep and he knew it was one of those things, one of those thaumaturgical entanglements as more knowledgeable people had called it, that linked him to Arry via their paired Rune.

And so he rolled out of his bed—wider than the one he had oft shared with Arry, though not so wide as to take up too much room in his spartan abode—and put on the tea.

And so he sensed the draconic elf in the alley, obscured by something divine or something draconic or something else entirely, but still, his arm tickled just so and he knew. And he opened the door.

"Get in here, stalker," he called, voice carefully modulated to carry without inviting any other dangers in. That alleyway belonged to him now, full of his glamours, his alarums, and all sorts of fun things. But they recognized Arry. He was the sort of danger Aurin invited in for tea.

"Desert boys'll catch a chill in a Kalzasern summer."

Silhouetted by the light inside his home, he turned and left the door ajar.

Welcome home, he wanted to say, and, stay, but he didn't because Arry would say it wasn't his home, and he wouldn't stay, and while Aurin could be something of a masochist, it was, like everything in his life, a tightrope act along the edge of a knife.

[Arvælyn]

Aurin would not see the tightening of Arry's lips, due to the angle of his face and the angle of the sunlight above, but he would see a slight widening of eyes of a gold not yet molten.

"No stalker, I..." He protested, a bit more coyly than his usual wont of late, "You'll be happy to know I even refrained from exploiting my 'trick'." It was only then, that he slowly turned his body to face Aurin directly. If Aurin did not exploit his own trick to see through the illusion, Arvælyn would appear as a reverie of his former self. More like the Arry Aurin likely imagined and certainly the version of the half-elf's form with which the impresario was most well acquainted.

"Oh, don't worry about the chill. I churn my own heat, these days, though it still rarely touches my extremities..." He hesitated, before accepting the invitation that had been fair dropped at his feet as the host stalked away. Sighing, he glanced behind him and waved a gesture of dismissal to his furtive guards. They would wait without as their charge stepped through the familiar threshold and, as his eyes adjusted, they darted first to what was new, for that offended the sense of nostalgia that had drawn him here. Reminded him that those memories were just that, never to be recaptured. A pang of something washed over him, and he turned sharply to shut the door behind himself pausing for a minute to process these unwanted emotions while he was still facing away.

"It has been too long since I've paid you a visit. It is strange... Finn doesn't mind such things, but I would if he stopped in to see-..." He winced, before turning back to face Aurin. "Well, do unto others, hm? In which case, I... shouldn't be here, but I am." He crossed his arms or, more to the point, he hugged himself.

"But I didn't come to see you, not really..." His eyes fell to the bed. Not their bed. His jaw set. He'd never had any claim to its predecessor, in truth. It had been Aurin's bed, just as this one was, except that this one had never borne his weight. "I suppose I was feeling nostalgic about scenes and settings once familiar, now..." His gaze rose from the bed to its owner. "...strange."

[Aurin]

The fox-faced man waved off explanations. He knew Arry had so far surpassed him by any metric, even his humble hospitality was nigh pointless given the comforts His Exalted Highness could command. All the same, it was the denial that he even came to see Aurin at all that made him pause, choke down a clever quip, and pour the tea.

For all the apparent power he had held when they had been in more of a relationship, the power had never really been his. Even before he had been force-fed the showing trick, glamour had been a part of the confidence game. He had no confidence; not really. The confidence was a part of the confidence game, a role he had been playing, mutable and adaptable, forever and ever since he could remember.

The exterior of the cottage hadn't changed; in fact, longstanding glamours kept it nostalgic. The bones were unchanged too, older, aching. Sure, the bed was different. The faucet didn't leak. The old, tatty rug that had kept bare feet warm when they hit the ground had been replaced by something more serviceable than flashy. The same weapons, albeit with a few additions, were mounted upon the wall in lieu of decoration.

The bedding only smelled of Aurin now. No doubt he still fucked around, and probably didn't want to deal with the hassle of having someone in his safe place. His fortune and his reach had grown beyond Kalzasi, but his world was just as small as it had always been.

Whether on purpose or not, the tea he set on the table (it had two chairs now) smelled like something Arry had once remarked upon, whether he had liked it because he had liked it or because it had been too expensive for more than special occasions.

The man folded himself into one of the chairs, in one of those bisexual seats that looked uncomfortable to everyone else. One heel caught the edge of the seat and he tucked that knee under his chin. He wasn't naked as he had always slept, but he had only pulled on the barest nod to propriety before opening the door and he made no moves to add to it, not even for His Exalted Highness.

"Well, you don't have to stay on my account, but you are here, so... have a seat if you like. Oh... I have a little scroll for you. Some intelligence from Sol'Valen since I don't imagine your mother's spies have an easy time getting in and out of there." He pulled it out of the seeming aether and tossed it just short of the second teacup. "Nothing so valuable you need to decipher it this instant, but, you know, never know when this detail or that might prove salable."

[Arvælyn]

His sense of smell was better than it had been, now that he’d adopted the attributes of an apex predator. None that showed through his current glamour, but his keen sense of smell only made the sense memory that much sharper as the tea’s bouquet wafted toward him.

“You brewed that for me the morning after I’d had too much fine wine at my first opening night at The Golden Peacock…” He recollected, “You said the cure for good wine was good tea…” He gestured to the empty chair, and it drew back from the table as he approached to claim a seat diagonal to Aurin.

“I had very good wine last night.” He noted as he leaned over the cup that had been poured for him, closing his eyes to take in the smell with more focus. He closed his hand around the bowl of the steaming cup and drew it to his lips for a savouring sampling.

“Ah, straight to business, then. Thank you. In truth I don’t know half the things my mother gets up to. It’s stressful enough to know what I do, and she’s very good about protecting me from things that needn’t concern me. That may sound naïve to you, but it only came with hard earned trust.” He took the scroll and tucked it away as his eyes danced about the room.

“I didn’t think you’d still have this place… or, if you did, I didn’t imagine I’d find you here. I thought it might be a forgotten asset…” He looked from the new rug to the new weapons,

“Or a bedding-down place for some kept creature you collected in your expansive travels.” His gaze found its winding way toward Aurin again, though it didn’t linger on his eyes.

“But here you are, alone. How auspicious for us all…” He crossed his legs and took another sip of tea.

[Aurin]

"Life has given you all I hoped it would," he said quietly into his own tea, remembering the rare vintages served at Arry's wedding reception.

As for business, one shoulder came up in a lazy attempt at a shrug, "I suppose I could just send things directly to her nearest spy, but I liked the idea of you puzzling your way through an old code for a change of pace." His smile, too, was small.

He didn't know whether Arry's words were meant to be barbed, meant to bite. He didn't rise to the bait, however. While his nature yearned either for a fiery fight or furious fucking, he knew that a certain amount of civility would prevent whatever they had from falling apart entirely. He was the elder of the two; he ought to be the more mature.

But Aurin didn't know if that was true. Too often, he dreamed of his traumatic youth, and just as often, he wondered if he had ever really matured beyond that. He would have given a lot to see Jamila again, even if it was only to steal from him or to call him out. There was a streak of emotional masochism to this one. Arry might have noted it, but few others did.

Aurin sipped his tea. His nose wrinkled. It had tasted better on Arry's lips was the only problem.

"Did you see what's playing at the Peacock before you came?" he asked, smirking. "Pure fabrication, the story of a Kalzasern youth who turns out to be a foreign dragon prince. But I don't make artistic calls. Not worth the hassle now they don't benefit your career. Elric keeps talking about meta-theater to the broadsheet journalists... So, I suppose, you're still haunting the theater. Treading the boards in absentia. The reason for the damned ghost light."

[Arvælyn]

"I don't believe you." Arry replied with a wan smirk. Perhaps part of Aurin wished for that, but like so many things with the human it was compromised or filtered in some fashion. "But it is the sort of thing one is supposed to say." He sipped the tea.

"Well, I'm glad to hear you're still savvy enough to change your ciphers more than your addresses." The golden elf sniggered as he placed the cup back down.

Had he been asked pointedly, Arry wouldn't have been able to figure that out himself. If his tongue was sharp, the vitriol was not premeditated. It was opportunistic, rather like this entire encounter... At least so long as one didn't dig too deep beneath the surface of the ostensible motivations, and Arvælyn was not introspective about such things.

He glanced over his shoulder, finding that sliver of sunlight through the curtains that had fallen over his eyes in last night's dream. It was so like that vision that it made it feel less like a dream and more like a memory. Was it possible to relive real moments in dreams? Aurin's question drew him out of his reveries upon reveries.

His eyes widened slightly.

"Oh, I hate that. Hate that. Are you serious, or is that a joke? If that is a real thing, it illustrates why I trust my mother to withhold certain intelligence she's gathered for my own good." He hadn't stopped talking long enough for Aurin to answer, and even now he only paused long enough for his smile to broaden.

"If that is a real thing, I will clear my schedule and you'll escort me to the matinee where we will sit in the shadows of the rearmost box and make catty jokes the whole way through!" His smile faded, "No... no, that's awful, isn't it? I've forgotten what it is to be an actor on a stage... is anyone I know playing the lead?"

[Aurin]

Lately, Aurin found that he had lied so much for his entire life that even when he told the truth, he wasn't believed. Of course, he had also wished any number of other things for Arry. Did he contradict himself? Very well, then, he contradicted himself. If parts of him were small, other parts of him were large, and he contained multitudes.

"I don't think you knew Gerhardt," he mused aloud to answer the question. "Refugee from Zaichaer who opted not to return to the Pfenning Theatre even after they got their shit together over there. Has a slight Kathalan accent when not playing someone else, but when I told him to throw a little Antiris into his Kalzasi, he got some of the dialect down. At least, it sounds more like you when you first arrived. I'm no linguist."

The thing was, Aurin was adept at altering his voice with or without his seeming trick.

"Say the word, and we'll do just that..." He would invariably ruin things, but he did want Arry to stay, even if only for a little while. Sometimes, he would vault to Antiris and pretend not to notice the urchins picking his pockets, hoping they would hold out until an opportunity arose for them to better their stations even if he knew better than to try to help himself.

He figured Arry still blamed him for turning him into a whore, but Aurin had been a whore before, whether for a place to crash, monies for food, debts, drugs, or any number of other things.

Perhaps he should have told Arry his own story.

Then again, he wouldn't have believed him. Sometimes, Aurin barely believed his own memories. They seemed like something someone else had written.

He smirked. "Although I'm sure I'll irritate you long before the matinee."

[Arvælyn]

"I didn't. Zaichaer didn't really start mass producing refugees until after I'd left..." Arry wrinkled his nose, mildly disapproving. "Don't tell me the cast a human and put him in Elf-ear. There are more than enough actors in Kalzasi with elven backgrounds and the elven eye can spot distinctions between the races beyond just ear shape." But then, perhaps Gerhardt had been the other kind of Zaichaeri refugee from before their Blight. Whatever the case, he supposed he oughtn't begrudge an actor an opportunity if he was worth his salt. Arry himself had come from humble beginnings, even if they'd been manufactured somewhat.

He thought, for a moment, as he stared down at the tea in his cup.

"All right, fuck it. I don't have anything today that can't be rescheduled. I shall leave the Senatus in suspense and indulge this whim." He rose to his feet and stretched his arms over his head as he sauntered to the pantry.

"I haven't broken my fast. Do you keep any food in the house these days or is it still all exotic oils and sex toys in here?" He smirked. He was in jest about the sex toys, but it was true that he didn't remember Aurin keeping the pantry well supplied when he'd been here more often.

"Oh, if I was able to put up with you for as long as I did in the past, what's half a day?" Catching his reflection in a window, Arry was startled to see that he was still holding up the Masquerade he'd worn in public. He'd forgotten he was doing that, and wondered what it suggested that he was maintaining it now that he was in private with one who knew better than most the ruse it represented. Still, he held it up, thinking it would be a strange moment to drop it now, as he opened the pantry and perused the shelves.

[Aurin]

Aurin just smirked and left Gerhardt's race a mystery, but it turned into an honest-to-Gods smile when Arry said he would prioritize a random day with Aurin over the needs of a nation.

"Just sex toys and condiments that can lubricate them," he said without missing a beat, "all your favorites and some new surprises."

But there were not, in fact, sex toys and condiments. There were quite a few comestibles, many foreign, even from Solunarium, and other places that hadn't suffered quite so terribly under the eclipse. It was all non-perishable or had a long, long shelf life. The old cottage still held the starving artist ghosts and poor celebrations for achievements that had only mattered to them: the first time they let Arry on the stage at the cabaret; that one time a job in Haqs had paid out better than expected and they had been flush. There had been a lot of joy here over the years.

Suffice it to say, Arry wouldn't have a fresh meal at Aurin's table, but he wouldn't suffer.

"I don't know... you don't suffer fools anymore, do you? You might have lost your ability to cope if you aren't putting up with me regularly."

As he smirked, his face lost some of its ruggedness, devolving back into the face he had worn when first Arvine Venasyr had sought to shove his hand down his pants—for coin, not cock, but still. If the one was going to wax nostalgic, so could the other.

"Fix me something to eat, then."