Belden- (Pre-Beaugro) 1x1 Oriel and Redsparrow

[Redsparrow]

“It was the first time I was to meet Alec, prior to our encounter I had been told he was a fairly rule abiding individual who avoided trouble but who also had a good sense of humor. The perfect pairing of a level head and patients caused me to choose such an adventure. You see by tempting him with something so radical as to re-activate a volcano, well, it would tell me a lot about the man’s mind. Taking him away from work and into the forest for a few days gave us time to talk to in a relaxed setting.”

He seemed amused by her knowledge of the event. “Those were the days when I had agendas and goals, needed to be friends with people, manipulate pieces one at a time as part of some larger game. You can see how well that turned out.” In a moments time he had turned from an explanation to mild aggression. The frustration in his tone was only matched by a deeply held guilt.

Her call of his attention to the jewelry lightened the mood temporarily as he became interested in the manipulation of the gold work. “That is fascinating, the kind of attention to detail so apprised in artisan elementals. However you will find few objects like this in Faypine, here elementals are only valued by power and show in the arena.”

“As for clothing, elementals live in poverty, hardly able to afford to keep food on the table let alone fabric on their backs. We are dressed up in such material designed to show off our element without giving us an upper hand only in the arena. Treated like gods when we are expected to die, some kind of sick sympathy as if a moment in fine cloth or a last meal makes up for it. It’s a symbol of oppression, of ownership over a lesser species.”

Though he spoke loud enough to be heard, those who caught his comment seemed to return glances of approval rather than distaste at his impetuous attitude.

“You will note the lack of elementals in this part or any part of Faypine say the lower markets and slums. If you see an item or fabric designed with such features, it is a fluke that has made its way into Falcon society by chance. All arena formal attire is locked away in the houses of owners or arena managers.”

His eyes wondered the markets, the faces of the people who passed before resting on Lydia once more. “You ask if things here answer to fire, the short answer is no. The long answer is yes.”

[Oriel]

"Then it is little wonder so many artisans have fled to Belden and Esterbrush," Lydia answered his tirade. Alec had escaped the Arena by harnessing a power so destructive it was too dangerous to use near spectators. She benefited both from her family connection to Veres Sirya and the fame of her work. Those few who commanded the highest prices for their art were spared the Arena as well.

Her notoriety had not saved her first husband, nor would she count on it to spare their daughter.

"I'm not here to antagonize you," she said. "It is not so uncommon for wealthy elementals to be patrons in the markets of Esterbrush. Even so, I have made a few like pieces as gifts for my friends. Few of them require more than average power to work. Many are worn or gifted as festival trinkets."

Lydia lapsed into silence. Indeed, she had noticed how little elemental influence and presence there was in the upper districts. Falcon society looked untouched by the fashions she knew and recognized as belonging to her kin. This explained in a moment why only her most expensive works had ever sold to Faypine traders. They would be bought and worn as status symbols.

She spent the remainder of their time in the marketplace in as genial a tone of conversation as she could manage. They found a few gowns she pronounced 'less than horrible' and, while Luke spoke to one of the shopkeepers, she bought a loose fawn overtunic that had been slashed with a darker nut brown cloth beneath, its seams and collar glittering with worked gold embroidery.

Lydia wrapped and hid the garment among the rest of her purchases while visions of wirework belts, necklets, and rings tempted her imagination.

They had returned to the Sparverius household and were on the point of saying polite farewells when she stopped at the base of the stairs and turned to watch Luke with an appraising eye.

"See that you take care of my brother. Make sure he stops to eat and drink."

[Redsparrow]

Conversation with Lydia was pleasant. Though most subjects were polite rather than subjects of substance, lending his mind to wonder back to the serpent who lay in his bed. Idris would be safe in the house, though a tinge of guilt came with the thought of him waking up alone. Luke did not want the man feeling like he had been abandoned after disarming himself.

At the base of the stairs he had been about to make a polite goodbye when Lydia’s comment so sideswiped him he could do little more than momentarily gawk at her. Had his concerned glance in the direction he knew Idris lay given rise to such a response?

“I am poor at taking care of myself, I can hardly be expected to take responsibility for another.” The security of his study was calling him. However her comment granted him a kind of permission to check in on the snake. “Though I think I can make an exception… No promises of course. At least not yet.”

Excusing himself with a nod, Luke attended to the kitchens were he gathered up a small assortment of food along with a pitcher of chilled water. A soft clank came from the bolt on the door as he let himself back into the romantically lit room before once again locking them in. Setting the tray down on a table he looked around remembering some of the colors now lost to him before resting his eyes fondly on the bed were he had left his friend only hours ago.

[Oriel]

Exhaustion colored his dreams with red and gray. Motes of pooled color danced in his eyes and ran from his hands in trails that flared and sputtered into darkness. The gray took on a yellow cast as he woke, the late afternoon sun struggling to penetrate the heavy drapes shrouding the room.

Idris heard the warning of an imminent attack within the echo of the door latch as it fell into place. He feigned sleep while assessing the intruder, a silhouette of someone shorter than himself and burdened with a tray.

"Luke, that you?"

His voice rasped over the name. Idris fumbled with the blankets in search of a knife before he remembered that he'd left them all sheathed and far out of easy reach. Odd to feel naked while still clothed, but his daggers were on the night table and his armor hung from the back of a chair. Mocking him.

When he confirmed with his eyes what his instincts had already known, Idris sighed aloud. "Do us a favor and warn a man next time," he said. "If it weren't so unlikely for someone else to find their way in here, I'd have been halfway across the room and armed before giving you a chance to answer. Trust or no. I'd rather be woken than surprised."

[Redsparrow]

Idris’s breath signified a wave of relief that drove Luke into a panic. He had worried about having Idris wake to an unfamiliar place unarmed, feared even more the idea of someone waking him by surprise. Now here he was causing the very problem himself.

In that moment Luke once again found himself blinded. Stumbling along the damp paths of the swamp, the caw of crows ringing in his ears. Footsteps of approaching figures who would lay hands on him before he had time to respond. Terror of being in unfamiliar places with little to no ability to defend himself.

He felt dizzy. His body temperature was sure to be high, the tightness in his chest suggested he had been holding in a breath for too long. Backing quickly to the door he grasped the handle, twisted and pulled forgetting to throw the latch first. Pain rattled him to his core as the door lock held firmly forcing the strain of pulling directly into his injured wrist.

He couldn’t hold back the gasp and instinctively pulled his arm to his body in a defensive manor. Closing his eyes he focused on slowing his breathing, fighting the anxiety attack that had taken hold.

“I am sorry, it won’t happen again.” He stammered, with his back turned to Idris in a poor attempt to hide his current state.

[Oriel]

Idris held himself motionless in the bed while Luke heated the air in his panic. Whatever he'd done to spark this response, the cause lay buried in his friend's mind. Too-ready concern on his part would only add to the spiral of anxiety and blame.

"Easy, Luke," he said. "I only forgot where I was for a moment, that's all."

What to do now? His eyes lit on the tray. "I'd ask you to bring the tray over here, but that can wait until your wrist's feeling better." Idris used that moment as an excuse to leave the bed and stage a cautious approach directed more at the table than Luke. Better to move slowly and act as if nothing had happened to disturb them, he decided, than try to salvage the shattered peace in any other way.

He looked over the spread, water and various Falcon sundries, with genuine appreciation.

"Thank you for bringing these up."

Many of the dishes tasted unfamiliar to his Esterbrush-trained palette. Heavy cream and generous use of butter took the place of roasted nuts and honey in the spreads, themselves slathered over crisp wheat cakes rather than warm dough.

"Not bad," he offered, his voice low. "Even if it's nothing I recognize."

[Redsparrow]

Easy, easy. The word repeated in his head, each helping to draw in then let out a breath. It was a phrase he used often when working with his horses. “There are few groups of shifters who are treated as lowly as the elemental class. However like elementals, equine shifters are viewed as property. It is rare to see a title held over a horse’s head, instead valued blood lines become tied to their master’s family name.”

Luke had turned to face Idris. Anxiety still nipping at his mind, so used the story as an excuse to distract himself.
“For example the famous line Arnica de la Barre, known for its Arabians, are heavily tied to a family residing in Belden by the sir name of Torrez. So prominent is the tie that you often hear them called Torrez’s Arnica de la Barre. But I digress. I had the luck of growing up as a neighbor to the great House of Peninsularis, feline nobility who at the time ran four of the five most prominent blood lines that the world has ever seen. The master of the House was Baron Iver Peninsularis, I called him the Bobcat for short.”

His temperature was lowering and he watched Idris make his way across the room to eat the food offered.

“Equine shifters are a group that often prefers their animal form to that of the human counterpart. They take the blunt of their master’s frustration just the same as the ordinary plow horse. Much potential can be brought down by a cruel hand, legs broken, backs bent all because someone lost their patients or became afraid.”

Luke made his way to the chair that Idris had draped his vest on, once there he gingerly caring for his aching wrist. “I have looked into the eyes of many trainer and seen more fear in them than in the charge they lay to waste.”

“The Bobcat had a gentle hand, he set clear expectations and punished fairly those who challenged. I saw him bring even the most fragile of minds back from the brink of destruction.” Not quite making eye contact with Idris, he continued.

“My challenge came when I sought after part of a line that held promise. Her master was to attend the show in Snowden prime, it was then that I saw the cruelty that can be applied to shifters caught in a power struggle. The damage done to her was mental and physical, when I inquired about her after the show I was brought to a stall were the horse was bound. He informed me that he kept her tied down when not working or feeding to insure her safety.”

“I lead her out of there, a broken creature who feared touch. We rode as equals in same show stage years later and placed in every event we qualified for.”

He fell silent, allowing the color to slowly return to his face before making eye contact with Idris. “It’s a crummy miss matched bunch of stuff I found in the kitchen, if you would like something else I am happy to try for it.”

[Oriel]

Other stories came to mind as he listened to Luke's account of Snowden's equine shifters. The vipers compared scars and let the memories exist in shared silences.

'What's the difference between a falcon and a serpent?' Idris mused. 'One stops screaming.'

The back of his chair pressed into his shoulders with the first slouch. He sat forward and finished another plate of unfamiliar vegetables coated with spice crumbs. The ending of Luke's story, though not forced, offered scant comfort in a world more like his own where fear was not something to conquer.

He didn't need to remind his friend that he'd spent years traveling the contested border between their two nations. Luke had even been present to witness his interrogation at the hands of falcon soldiers. If Idris thought too long about their eagerness to bind him, he could still taste the blood in his mouth and recall the bite of rawhide in his skin. Their treatment had gone no further than the preliminary torments before Luke pulled down the tent and given him a few precious moments in which to escape. He'd crawled off on his belly through the sand while they cursed first the support rigging and later each other.

"I've treated the few scouts who survived falcon interrogation," he said into the silence. "That was how I knew what they did, even before they caught me. You remember?"

Idris searched for confirmation in Luke's eyes.

"I kept silent through the first because I knew what was coming next. I hoped that by resisting, by forgetting to breathe long enough, I might pass out before they got to the tools."

Even that pain had been only the result of torn flesh. They'd worked on him for hours rather than days, which meant that he'd been spared the worst of the mental trauma.

"That wasn't the last time I got caught," he admitted. "Just the most terrifying. The first always is. But when I think about it, the same fears trail through each. They've grown more familiar with time. Even if I am still afraid of what will happen if I'm captured in another nation's territory, I understand it well enough to finish the job. Keep working when I want to run. Or at least until running is the smarter thing."

Idris brushed a handful of crumbs from his sleeves and crossed the room with the pitcher in hand. He set that on the night table before he came to rest again at the edge of the bed, sated with food and drink.

"You brought more than enough for both of us," he observed. "Thank you, still."

His move left him within reaching distance of both his armor and Luke. Now that an uneasy peace had been restored through their dance of conversation and covert glances, Idris nursed a faint hope that they might resume their earlier closeness.

[Redsparrow]

Luke’s eyes flashed a fondness for the trouble that had ensued after saving Alec’s then kid brother from falcon questioning. At the time He had been fortunate for the falcons were unaware of who they had caught. A black cobra was valuable, and could have seen a worse fate.

“Falcon’s do not take hostages, as you know. Anything you saw during your time on the boarder either escaped or was let go to promote fear.”

He had taken off a jacket upon entering the room this morning, leaning back in the chair he fished it off the dresser top and probed the pockets. Canteen in hand he returned to a level sitting position and drank deeply.

Idris’s words appeared an attempt in saying, bad things happen but they don’t define us. The serpent was observant, and doubtlessly well briefed on Luke’s history. His story of equine shifters had been used as an explanation of a mindset. Here Idris had added the point that some fears never do go away, at least not fully. It was a point he decided to elaborate on further.

“Am I correct in assuming that you may have replaced a serpent who had a pretty rough end rather recently?” At this comment he leaded forward slightly to watch the man’s face.

[Oriel]

"After what happened to Arash, this was strictly a 'volunteers only' mission," Idris answered, grim. "No one else wanted the job. It was either take the risk now or leave you and Alec without hope of a contact in Esterbrush, and the people stationed here with no one to flag. I hate to disappoint you if you were waiting for a higher authority, but I'm it."

He rearranged the pillows to better support his bruised shoulder and lay down again.

"A fine start I've had, too. I let my personal interests draw me into a black market conflict I didn't even know was brewing, fought decoys in an alley where I should never have been trapped in the first place, and then, just to complete my evening-"

Idris looked up at Luke.

"-near broke my oaths of service to treat you. There's precedent that allows for medical aid to foreign nationals in exchange for asylum, but the international military codes have always been vague on that point. Court martial or no, you've needed the relief of venom treatments for years. I'm still healer enough to know the marks of chronic pain when I see them."