Harvest While Ye May [Sivan]

[Rivin]

41st Searing

War had come. That is what was said, but, other than an unease in the streets, a pinched or worried look in the faces that filled it, Rivin did not notice any change. Turmoil in the government meant nothing to him. If anything, it meant that Ilex would have a much harder time locating him.

The demon with which he shared a bond still mostly left him be, a situation that had at first been comforting but was now worrisome. And there were nights now, when he lay down to sleep and woke in the morning but his body did not feel rested, and he had trouble keeping his eyes open throughout the day. There were people, once in a while, who nodded to him in recognition that he knew he'd never spoken to. It was a problem that he would have to deal with, but his lessons with Sivan were progressing well and the more he could learn before he had to confront his aidolon, the better. It was causing him no real issues, they seemed to be in a truce, neither attempting to interfere with the other, so, it could wait.

He was walking down the street in the part of the city where Sivan lived, which he had memorized now, every thoroughfare and alley. He had just started to explore the rooftops, finding it thrilling in an almost uncontainable way. It felt like freedom. He'd been outside of slavery for two full seasons, but it hadn't felt like freedom. Not until he'd climbed atop a roof and let himself take his first untethered leap from one to the next.

It was the middle of the day now, though, and being seen springing from one building to the next in broad daylight made the minds of the people turn to thievery and mischief. He whistled an old Rivach song as he went, thinking that he should pay Sivan for teaching him the language of his fathers as well as Summoning, if the elf would take it. Stopping by a group of stalls he bought a sack of fresh Searing apples off the back of a farmer's cart, then added various vegetables, still warm from the soil they'd been pulled from. He still had no idea how to cook, but Sivan might know what to do, and if he didn't they could eat raw carrots and such. It just felt nice, buying things so recently grown.

He knocked on the door to the cottage but waited only a moment before calling out and letting himself in. Since he'd been present at their bonding both Exael and Sivan seemed comfortable with him just being around. They had a lesson scheduled anyway, so it wasn't as though Sivan would be tangled in bed with his blacksmith friend. Lover? Hmm.

Sivan wasn't immediately apparent, so perhaps he was setting up in the basement for the lesson, or perhaps he was out in the garden. Rivin would have been heard either way so he set his sack down on the little table and said, loudly,

"They were selling the years first harvest in the market so I got... some."

[Sivan]

It was only then that the sounds of a fight came trickling in. Steel clashed with steel, and the door out to the garden was slightly ajar. There were grunts and the sound of a man's voice, sonorous, sardonic.

"Clever," Laurevere said as Sivan held him at bay at the moon gate between the elven lord's yard and Sivan's garden. The line between the two was beginning to blur, the wall notwithstanding. Vines on the other side of the wall peeked over the top—green had moved from the garden outward, not the other way around. The silver elf sheathed his katana and unsheathed his wakizashi so fast that Sivan could do naught but feint with his longer weapon. "Now you see the problem?"

Sivan was sweating from exertion. He had backed into the moon gate hoping to mitigate some of Laurevere's advantage, narrowing himself as a target as Laurevere's katana became less effective. But the shorter, straighter blade required less room to wield.

The younger elf was still a novice with the elegantly curved blade, but he was making it more difficult for his instructor to master him. That said, his instructor's wakizashi was better suited for this exchange, changing his advantage to a disadvantage. He didn't know what else to do but keep backing up into his garden, trying to assure the spirits and the bees that he was not actually in danger so they wouldn't converge on his neighbor in an attempt to distract him from Sivan.

Had he any attention to spare on the spirits, he might have known that Rivin had arrived, but he had lost track of time, not knowing that he ought to have been done sparring some time ago and preparing for his student.

[Rivin]

The sound of steel on steel had Rivin alert immediately, his brain filtering the sound and coming back with the lack of anything frantic about it, the calm tone of the voice when it spoke. It was the neighbor's voice. If things were amiss, the sounds would have been different. Stepping forward on the balls of his feet, silencing his tread, the Lysanrin peered out of the space where the door had been left a little open.

Sivan was there, and the other elf, older. They appeared to be sparring. A note of jealousy entered Rivin's thought patterns. He'd never been allowed to touch anything that he thought of as a weapon without severe consequences. To see the two men honing their skills without a whisper of fear twisted inside him, but he tried to unknot the feeling. It was no fault of theirs. He stood, fascinated as they moved back and forth, attacking, countering, defending, his own muscles twitching in sympathetic movement. After a few minutes, he decided two things: First, that he needed to find a tutor to teach him the use of at least one weapon. Second, that Sivan would want a bath when he finished. The heat of the season wasn't overwhelming, but it was still heat, and the physical exertion had soaked sweat through the elf's loose clothing. Moving away from the door he went to where the washing tub was located and tried to communicate with Zin.

The little tri-spirit did not seem to want to acknowledge him when its master was not present, however, so, after a few moments of attempting to coax it, he closed his eyes and concentrated on summoning a sprite of his own. He was there to get better at Summoning, after all, and while he felt competent at such minor summonings now, practice couldn't hurt.

He made a connection fairly easily, only having to cast himself a little way out before a willing and rambunctious wild water sprite lept at his offer of a little aether in exchange for a bath's worth of cool water. It flooded into the house, setting the longer-term residents aflutter, before practically dumping gallons of water into the tub. It was, as requested, cool, chill, almost, like from the bottom of a deep well, and some splashed out over the floor before the little being devoured his offering and disappeared whence it had come.

Rivin was looking around for something to clean the mess when he realized that, offended, Sivan's sprites were taking care of it, Khal steamed it, Zin moved it, and Geb blew at it. Nut seemed just as offended, but content to let its brethren take care of it.

When Rivin heard Sivan approaching he turned quickly, feeling, due to the sprites' reactions, like he might have done something wrong.

[Sivan]

After a little while, the elegantly curved scabbard of his katana hooked the door open, though Sivan didn't see him right away as his free hand was in the process of peeling his shirt off and over his head. His physique belied his training and all the heavy lifting that was the less glamorous part of his work. His skin was flushed and his hair askew as he blinked, taking just a moment to process Rivin's presence.

"Oh, hullo. I didn't realize how time had flown."

The elf didn't bother closing the door behind him. The outside and inside of his home were of one piece to his mind, and the squealmouse scampered in behind him, leaping up to the top of his boot and clambering up him to leap upon the table, sniffing for food. Nut swept crumbs from a counter up and over to feed the detritus to the hungry rodent, who lived under the elf's protection.

He eyed the tub, already full. Rather than taking offense, he smiled in gratitude. It meant Rivin had practiced and it meant Rivin felt as though he wanted to help, which was nice. It was a sign that he wasn't corrupted by his infernal aidolon—at least to Sivan's mind.

"Do you mind if I...?" Then he saw the look Rivin gave his sheathed blade. He felt a thrill of something from Exael along their bond, but he had chosen to radically trust Rivin. It seemed the only way to build and keep his trust and hopefully protect him from the deal his berserk self had made with the devil. "You're welcome to look at it," he said, putting the blade in the Lysanrin's hands. "I'm not very good at it, but they say war is coming and apparently I have offended people, so it seems wise to know how to defend myself in as many ways as possible."

His hands free, he pulled off his boots and then shucked off his pants and climbed into the water with a relieved sigh. He didn't mind honest sweat, nor honest aches, but as he became more connected to his body through training, through lovemaking, it felt even better to take care of his body when it needed something. It was more than just a vehicle for his spirit.

[Rivin]

The Lysanrin raised a brow when the little creature not only followed the Sivan inside, but used him as a ladder and then was provided food by the bound spirits of the house. Not sure what to make of it, or if the squealmouse was a pet or a wild animal, he eyed it warily for a moment before turning his attention to being spoken to.

He shook his head at first, implying that he did not mind, then, not sure if that was getting his meaning across correctly he nodded instead, motioning with both hands to the tub.

"I thought that you might like it cool, after the exercise."

When the blade was placed in his hands he blinked and it was an effort, causing him no small anxiety, not to drop the thing immediately to the floor. It was a weapon, there was no other common use for such a blade, no excuse he could have for holding it. Closing his eyes while Sivan readied himself for the bath, Rivin walked himself through the mental litany of information he'd been trying to get himself to believe since he'd left slavery behind.

He was free.
He could choose what he did, where he slept, who he spoke to, who could touch him.
He could hold weapons.
He was allowed to defend himself.
He answered only to himself.

Not all of it was completely true, but as much true as it was for any free man under the laws of the city state of Kalzasi. He was also free to leave the city should he decide that it's environs did not suppose the life he wanted.

Opening his eyes he allowed himself to examine the saber, letting his mind wonder how fine the work was, how good the steel, if it was a practice blade or if it was sharp enough to kill. He touched the point tentatively and found it sharp enough. Setting the sword down carefully he turned to where the elf was and suddenly realized that the other man was naked, climbing into the bath.

Turning his back again he decided not to even try and untangle the mess that his mind made of what he'd seen, instead saying,

"I was hoping that you might show me some of the meditation of your people that we have spoken of."

Having learned all he knew from books about controlling both his rage and his connection to the natural world that came with his father's blood, Rivin got along well enough, but he was hoping that Sivan could give him something more.

[Sivan]

Rivin's reaction to handling the katana was odd, of course, and his aura sharpened, grew spiky with anxiety. He wasn't attempting to get him to divulge his secrets, but it gave him some clues as to the best way to train him to be a summoner in control of himself rather than under the control of whichever spirit was most powerful and had their hooks in him. When Rivin put it down, it was well enough. Sivan had what he needed, though he colored a little at Rivin's reaction to his body as he slipped into the cool water.

But he couldn't help but sigh as the cool water leached excess heat from his skin, began to slough off the accumulated salts of his sweat, and eased whatever impending aches he had earned for his troubles.

The elf nodded quickly.

"I had intended to teach you to meditate," he said, "both because you have inherited Dratori passions and because it is always best to go into a negotiation with a cool head. Even spirits kindly disposed to working with us are known to toy with our emotions in order to strike a more favorable bargain."

After a pause, "I apologize. I grew up in Dalquor and our people aren't shy about their bodies. If it makes you uncomfortable, I will warn you before I get out of the bath."

Silence followed, and Rivin's attention might have been startled by the sound that came from Sivan, strange and resonating in his chest, his throat, and his sinuses at one time. The elf's eyes were closed, his hand perched over the tub in a strange gesture. A drop of water fell from his longest finger and time seemed to dilate. When the drop hit the water, the elongated note shifted into a slow, sonorous chant. This was not the elf's speaking voice, but it didn't sound as though he were singing either—not exactly.

The words were in Rivach.

"Let the Studies that we together undertake be effulgent;
Let there be no Animosity amongst us;
Peace, Peace, Peace."

Then, once more, that sound.

See what he sees, Exael sent directly into Rivin's mind. Then, he saw the water as Sivan saw it, not with his eyes but through his runic connection to the aether. The water had a pattern. The Dratori chant had changed the water's aetheric pattern. It was beautiful. It was calming. It was a lesson, though perhaps too complicated for the moment. Hopefully, it could be taught.

[Rivin]

Rivin shook his head, raised a hand in what was intended as gentle denial,

"No, it is your house, I am..." How to explain the oddity of his childhood? Not knowing all the ways in which it was different himself yet did not make explanations easy. Taking a seat, still with his back to Sivan, attempting more to give him privacy than to keep himself from seeing him bath, the Lysanrin tried,

"I did not grow up around... others. My mother and I had no secrets," Not for a long time, "But other than her, I had never seen another person's unclothed body until I was an adult. The man who... Who owned me, he kept me separated, alone, mostly. There were guards, but they rarely spoke, and, after my mother was taken away,"

Here he shrugged one shoulder, hoping it conveyed as much as he wished it to, "It was just the Doctor who I really spoke to. He taught me how to deport myself, in company, and I attempted parties, dinners, meetings, but they were tests to me. The people I interacted with, I did not interact with as myself, and I did not see them as people."

He hoped that made enough sense, it seemed to, but sometimes his grasp of Common was not as good as he believed it to be.

"So, you see, I am not used to even the social acceptances and restrictions of the place I was born, let alone the place where you were. I would like to learn, but, often, I do not know how to ask for the things I am missing. When I even know I am missing them. If you see that I am not doing what is expected, what is considered normal, I would have you tell me. I will pay more for this."

When Sivan began to... hum? Resonate? Rivin did turn, curiosity pushing aside any weirdness he felt about bodies. He had seen lots of sentient beings clothed only in their skins, but that had been as specimens for the experiment, and he had never had a personal response to them. So, as Sivan began to teach him something new, his eager mind slipped into information gathering and forgot to be uncomfortable.

Words followed as time seemed to still. Riving slipped from the chair to the floor, taking the posture he used to meditate, legs folded before him, hands resting in his lap. The Rivach words were complicated and he did not know most of them. Maybe he had read them, but he did not know their sounds. Still, he let them calm him, draw him into the state he thought of as meditation. When the voice spoke into his mind, like, but also wholly unlike, the voice of his demon, when it spoke to him, he would have jumped up had he not already been sinking into that place.

Water filled his eyes, filled his mind, it rippled though and around him.

[Sivan]

Sivan hadn't ignored Rivin as he explained things; he would respond in the fulness of time. But for the moment, they existed in a trance, meditating upon the water not just in his bath, but in their bodies, in the air between them. Exael provided the bridge between their consciousnesses. They didn't merge, but they shared in the sensations provided by Sivan's rune.

Water could be excited, brought to a boil, or rage in a storm, but in its natural state, it sought calm. It flowed down the path of least resistance and gathered, adapting its shape to whatever held it. There was wisdom there, perhaps.

Neither Exael nor Sivan kept him in that trance, but when Rivin came to, Sivan was standing up in the tub, a towel wrapped around him. His modesty—or Rivin's—addressed, he stretched, catlike, arching his back and one arm overhead, twisting, and then relaxing. Water spirits under Zin's direction rushed the bathwater down into the garden to feed the foliage. He stepped out onto a sheet of stone that wicked away the water from his feet, then sat next to Rivin, their knees touching.

"I am considered a strange one here, as well," he admitted. "Strange in Sol'Valen, strange in Dalquor, and strange everywhere else. But in Kalzasi, I have made friends, made connections, and so I suppose it feels like a home now of sorts, though it is the people—including the spirits—that makes it so. I will not accept money to help you fit in, but if you will be my friend I will try to help you feel more at home here. And when you are in my home, I hope you will be yourself, be at ease. I will try to steer you away from any social gaffes, of course."

His smile was faint, but easy. Rivin was strange, but Sivan wasn't feigning that he had taken a liking to him. Perhaps he could introduce him to his other friends, but that might have to wait a while yet. Small steps were best placed.

[Rivin]

Water filled everything, for a time, and though there were no more words, it was as if he could feel the concepts flowing with it. Turbulence came to every being, but it could be weathered, and, once it had passed, water returned to it's path. Not always of least resistance, for water could overcome stone, given the patience of time, but it always sought it's goal, and, eventually, achieved it.

There were many lessons to absorb from contemplating the element without judgement, likely from any element studied in utter calm of mind. Rivin took the lessons of water, and the greater idea behind it, into himself, to hold and think on more. He needed to spend more time in meditation alone, but it was hard to get himself to relax and enter the right state of mind when he was in places he did not trust. Almost all places were ones he did not trust.

Waking slowly he blinked up at the elf until the towel-clad man came to sit near him. Very near him. The touch was not unwelcome, though it hadn't been invited. Rivin was neutral to it. His emotions were trying to settle on a way to be about it, and he would leave them to it.

Raising a brow at the idea of Sivan being an unusual example of the society of Kalzasi, and mentally chagrined that he hadn't been able to discern even that, he listened. Conceptually, he understood what friendship was. At least, in as much as reading books of both fiction and biography could tell him. But each friendship seemed different, with its own set of rules, so he asked,

"What would friendship, between you and I, entail?" The assumption that the negotiations for this type of relationship happened, but merely outside of the scope of the books he read, because it was known to anyone who read it that it happened, had not yet been questioned.

[Sivan]

"That would depend on what we want, I suppose," he began carefully, "and how things develop between us."

Sivan tried to consider his friendships. Flower needed him. Destyn liked him. Torin jived with him. Urs wanted him. Jacun taught him. They had all had inciting incidents and then grown like living things.

"Friendships are like plants, I suppose," he said, eyes turning to a seedling in a glass bowl nearby, not quite yet ready to be introduced to the garden. "You plant a seed with some loose expectations, but then they grow depending on how they are raised. There are already some seeds, I think? I like you. I care about your wellbeing and education. I hope those things would be reciprocated. We have some trust, but that would grow, as well. It is something we could discuss from time to time, as well—things we are discovering, things we want to change, directions we want to move. It shouldn't feel like an unwanted yoke, but a bond that strengthens us and improves our lives."

He paused.

"Sometimes, the odd ones find each other and connect... because of that shared experience. Perhaps sometimes you could visit just because... not for a lesson or anything in particular, but because you enjoy my company. If you enjoy my company."

There was a shift in the room as Exael departed; or, rather, he retreated to incorporeality within Sivan's mind as he had done for most of their tenure as workmates. It was still a comfortable place for him now that they were bonded aidolons.