Legend of Ransera

Petra looks at Hozxi in a new light. She saw a human being when the woman walked in. Someone with passions and loyalties, whims and fancies. She saw a wild and refined woman, someone who could be admired and worked with.

Now she sees differently. Beneath the strange clothes and the dark skin, beneath the accent and the scripture, the scales fall from her eyes and she sees.

She sees a kindred spirit. A woman motivated by her own purposes to break from the standard path. She is a woman to whom the tribe is everything, and yet she is not with her tribe. She is a woman made for the desert, living in the city. She is a woman for whom truth is everything, walking in a world of lies. Petra wonders what ambitions moved her. She wonders what passions drive her. She wonders what world this stranger dreams of, when her mind speaks in sleep.

But even beyond that, she sees something beautiful, for a moment. The cold, and precise, and unconscious rationality that she has only seen in one place before. She sees a demon before her. A demon in the shape of a woman.

Perhaps it is fancy. Perhaps it is a lack of judgment. Perhaps it is her simply being lonely, and wanting some excuse for a gesture. But somewhere, within this towering edifice of foreign power, she sees the inferno, and wants to see more of it.

She pulls the knife back out and pricks her finger. Blood runs down once more, right out of the same old scab. The knife is tucked away and her dry hand grabs a sheet of fresh paper. With one smooth motion she runs her bleeding finger down it, leaving a smear of red blood that stains the yellow page.

She hands the marked paper to Hozxi. "Our customs are different. We will each see the sense in them, before long. I hope you understand the significance that holds to someone in my profession. With my particular acquaintance."

Petra sucks her finger dry, and produces a bloodstained cloth from a pocket to keep it dry as it scabs. "Our compact is sealed in blood. You will have a fair share of whatever I earn from the knowledge you share with me. With my blood, I swear it."

There is an intimacy in the gesture that steals Petra's breath and renders her silent. Not that she needs much prompting to be so. She watches the blue shawl be removed, cloth piling on cloth, and finds herself unable to look away.

There is something profound about it. There is something profound about this massive woman in general, an aura that gives the simplest things meaning. Petra can hardly describe it. There is a ritual to her actions, a consciousness of meaning, that Petra finds utterly captivating.

Perhaps it is purely imagined. Perhaps I am just another orientalist, fetishizing that which I do not understand. And yet...

And yet the fixation is real. Here is this outsider, this representative of a foreign land, practicing her rituals with absolute confidence in them. There is a pang in her heart. One she has so very rarely felt. It is the ripple on the water, cause by something beneath the surface that she can only see as through a glass, darkly. Something barely glimpsed, and gone before it can be entirely understood.

Is this how I seem, to others? Wrapped in the colors of a secret people, speaking of blood-debt and carrying a knife for the binding of monsters? Is this a mirror before me, one that has made me look tall?

Petra holds out her hands and accepts the shawl. She folds it neatly on the table, too nervous to try and put it on. "I accept it gratefully." She stops, her hands hovering above it.

"...could you show me how to wear it?"

The thought colors her cheeks. Odd, to see splashes of pink on that wide porcelain expression. Ill-fitting. They almost make Petra look human, something she very evidently does her best to avoid doing. To blush is to admit that, beneath your skin, there is flesh and blood, and not simply the brass and carmine that is used as payment for the denizens of the inferno.

Petra hopes earnestly that Hozxi doesn't notice.

"Demons are our closest relatives. Their wages are our wages, translated." An expected opinion from a demonologist, perhaps, but there is no shame or hesitancy in the claim. Petra is not bothered being compared to demonkind. Her icy eyes own the label. Perhaps they were born to it. On Petra, at least, it fits.

"...though, blood doesn't compare to this. Not quite."

Petra strokes a hand along the oversized garment. She is drowning in it, lost in the fabric. She can only barely see, with her eyes of permafrost, her guest. Translucent fabric shawls her, rendering her face into only a collection of absolute colors - the jet black of her hair and the alabaster white of her skin pattern beneath the fabric, and look almost inhuman. Ill-fitting and out of place. The shawl is not an outsider's garment, it is a garment which makes Petra an outsider.

...it is more comfortable than I expected. I wonder if I could find a way to pull it off. Even scholars need to feel pretty now and then. She admits it to herself without hesitancy. Comprehension of the self is the first gate through which the mage must pass. How else can one reach through and draw the power of the soul?

Petra's smile blossoms. Like the lily in the water, it is dark and rare, and delicately beautiful. She finds the smile resting, calm and easy. Natural-feeling. She does not want it to end, but there is the voice in the back of her head always, and it grows louder with each quick heartbeat.

There is no purpose to this. No need. No excuse. You're wasting time. You cannot yet get time back. Be about your business, Petra, or have you forgotten what happens to the idle?

Her smile flickers, but her enormous new friend rescues her from a return to guarded placidity.

"...I'm not sure it matches my color scheme." Petra glances, sardonically, at her robe. "But I'll treasure it. And keep it safe for you until you return." Petra glances at the door, not having enough willpower to resist her urge to be about her business, and not having the strength to ask such a welcome new friend to leave.

Petra watches the door open and shut. She leaves the headscarf on. Yesod, behind her, shudders in an inhuman display of an imprecise emotion. Most seemed to assume that Petra always knew what the monster was thinking. So very far from the truth. Even her understanding of demonkind is through a mirror, darkly. A faint glimpse, never precise enough to truly comprehend. At least, not yet.

She returns to her work. She tells herself that the fact she cannot focus is just a coincidence. She tastes the tea, and thinks of Hozxi, and then can focus even less. The words blur together on the page. They mingle together in her mind. When she does have them, the moment she looks away they slip from her memory. They are water, and suddenly her mind is far less retentive than it should be.

She makes herself a quick meal, boiled vegetables and rice. She changes her clothes, removing her robe and hanging it up. The scarf remains. She pulls it close around her head, letting it linger in her peripheral vision. It reminds her of being under blankets, or being safe in a little cupboard. A space made for herself, where no-one else can come.

Yesod is displeased. He stalks behind her, metal on the wood. She wonders when she can be rid of him, when she can make her next step up the tree. Suddenly, his expectant, demanding presence seems... inappropriate. Frustrating. Cold.

Her window looks west, towards the water. She can't see it, of course, but it's there. Sometimes the sea air mingles with the baking bread beneath her. Not today, she knows - that doesn't stop her smelling it.

How long has it been since I've had a friend?

Petra decides she needs to go to the fishmarket. Cheap meat, good quality with the evening haul, she tells herself. No other reason, of course. But the sudden loneliness in her heart proves her a liar. So fickle, her mind.

She has spent so long making herself a monolith. She spends every night telling herself that she has need only of power.

But power was only ever a means to an end, an end she never quite understood.

Could my ambition be as simple as having strangers like me? Am I that...

Petra doesn't have a word for it. Best to go find one.

She hangs up her scarf, and slips out the door. A cat into the shadows, chasing its own curiosity once more.

Petra

Lores: (8 Requested, 14 Eligible)
Rhetoric: Small Talk
Persuasion: Friendly Favors
Semblance: Basic Applications
Semblance: Cultural Perceptions
Logistics: Desert Tribes
Linguistics: Desert Tongues
Printmaking: Scrollwork
Printmaking: Restoration

Loot: N/A
Injuries: N/A

Points: 8, 6 may be used for Summoning (Apprentice), 0 may be used for Semblance as Petra has not yet been initiated.

Comments: What a fine read. Petra and Hozxi pair well together, despite being from such different worlds. The dialogue flowed well and easy, the details proper without being overbearing. Well done!

---

Hozxi

Lores: (0 Requested, 14 Eligible )
Semblance: Seeing What Once Was
Semblance: Observing Daemons and Outsiders
Semblance: The Lingering Chains of Summoning
Brewing: Evening Tea
Investigation: Gossip of the Circle of Spells
Cryptography: Basic Ciphers
Mathematics: Calculating Age and Era
Research: Core Techniques of Study
Etiquette: Friendly Conversation
Linguistics: Old Common Tongue
Linguistics: Basics of Kathalan
Linguistics: Academic Kathalan
Tailoring: Fashion of the Zeraphi
Summoning: Knowing Daemons by Sight

Loot: N/A
Injuries: N/A

Points: 8, 6 may be used for Semblance (Semblance [Apprentice])


Comments:Hozxi is an absolute delight, and I love how you write the use of magic and her adaptation to different cultural norms. Well done.