Moonchild [Dhatzu]

[Tamsin]

She smiled faintly when he laughed, and decided it was a good sound. She didn’t think he was being derisive, but that she had surprised him. People were strange. The pale Ethaefal listened, though, taking in his words and noting that bitterness. If she thought him selfish, she gave no indication of it. It was his life, after all, and only he should decide what he wanted to do with it. It was not her place to judge. She would do what she would with hers. She found her own joy in following her God, and furthering his goals and purposes here. Did she miss that previous existence? She felt that she did. But she could either miss it and cling to what remnants she could muster, or she could make a new life here and fulfill to the best of her ability what Leth had asked of her.

She was not forsaken.

Memories flitted here and there, vague and hard to grasp. Clad in silver and white, a many-stoned moonstone necklace...

“What is a dream but a wish your heart makes? When you light a lamp for others, it will also brighten your path,” Tamsin told him mildly. It wasn’t in rebuke, far from it, though her words may have seemed to have core of ice beneath the genial tone. Simple. Factual. “If you derive no enjoyment from that path, no satisfaction or sense of purpose, no lightening of the heart, then that path is not yours to tread right now. We are more like water than the rock that some wish to be,” she lightly nudged a pebble on the path with her foot, letting it clink in the silence. “We are always changing. If something is not happening for you, it does not mean that it will never happen... only that it is simply just not the time for it.”

Mercifully, she didn’t press him for details about the shadows. Nor did she find the statement that the shadows showed him something strange. She figured he was being metaphorical, perhaps, because shadows cloaked and concealed, only to part and reveal what they hid from time to time. But he changed the subject, and Tamsin did not blame him. There were things they all had to come to terms with in their lives, and how fast and how well one did so dictated their willingness to speak frankly, at times. Perhaps another day, if she saw him again, she would ask him what sort of things the shadows showed him of late.

“The changing of the seasons,” Tamsin inclined her head in a nod. “The night when Spring became Summer.” She turned her head slightly to look at him, smiling faintly, the moonlight catching on the glassy, but solid, horns. That had been the day, Dhatzu knew, that Lhavit had been turned more or less upside down in all of its entirety. “Is it that obvious?” She seemed amused by this, at any rate. She didn’t mind, truly told, if she stuck out like a sore thumb - she liked the place, and for the most part, no one seemed to mind her odd ways of looking at things.

[Dhatzu]

Tamsin's cryptic lamp analogy could have been perceived as judgmental had a fellow Lhavitian uttered it. But the words, offered by the silvery-skinned etheafel, had the air of some ethereal truth delivered by an oracle. Dhatzu still foundered in relating to Tamsin. Though they tread mundane streets, she as much flesh and blood as he, the night seemed to elevate the woman to the status of a greater being than himself, though his logic told him she was just another living being, sustained by breathing air, who thirsted, hungered, and indeed was not omniscient. The acolyte nodded, an indication that her wisdom was received and would be considered. But, to the young man's relief, the focus of the conversation swung from his own life to the subject of the ethaefel herself. It appeared the woman had arrived in Lhavit at the worst of times, when both the best and worst of the city were bared for all to see. Dhatzu nodded again, then shrugged as she questioned if it were obvious she was new to the city. "A little, maybe. You did not choose the best time to come to Lhavit." He offered. His glance darted again to the horned woman, unable to discipline himself from the stolen glances. It seemed the glittery eth was a natural compliment to the glow and lights of Lhavit at night, like some piece of art crafted from skyglass to adorn Surya Plaza. Dhatzu suddenly laughed to himself, a snuffle of it escaping. He sounded like a sappy poet. The acolyte reminded himself that Tamsin was just another person. In fact, when daytime returned, did she become just like the rest of them? Still, her exotic appearance and the demeanor of an elder were difficult to disregard. "What have you been doing since your arrival? Do you work? What peak is your home?" Dhatzu kept the inquiries simple, though he itched to interrogate Tamsin on the more esoteric nature of her past. But such bold questions had no place with such a new acquaintance. Unnerving was the fact that he could not place her age. Her appearance was that of a young woman, slightly older than himself perhaps, with smooth skin and clear eyes. Yet something about her, more less tangible, gave her an air of maturity. Perhaps it was nerves that compelled him to quip with a lopsided grin, "And where are we going anyway?"