No Place Like It

[Palla]

Seven’s hands met Palla’s shoulders for a brief moment, bringing the light of joy to her eyes. Teaching time! She could hardly wait. He dug into his large wooden box, withdrawing the brown cloth. He tossed it in her direction, but she merely flinched as it landed at her feet. Her eyebrows furrowed in a nervous expression. Throwing things at one another? Was this custom? He explained the concept of clothes delicately, but it escaped her grasp. What did she care about clothes?

Making Seven happy. That seemed legitimate enough. She bent down hesitantly and sniffed the brown shirt. It was musty, and smelled of dust and stale air. She plucked it from the ground with her thumb and forefinger, twirling it to get a better look.

”She’s an animal. She knows what sex is.”

Palla’s attention turned from the shirt to Victor, and she asked, ”What’s a sex?” Her head was spinning. So many weird words were being spewed, like the fall leaves onto the ground. The words were as complex as their ever changing colors. No two the same. She watched carefully as he slid the shirt over his arms. Looking back down to the shirt, she feebly attempted to mimic him. Proudly looking down at the open shirt, she couldn’t know that it was both inside out and upside down. Awkwardly, she awaited her next task.

Victor’s swift, steps landed him before her, and he looked into her rusty eyes with his own. His hand found hers, and lifted it to his shoulder. Almost subconsciously, she attempted to withdraw from him. It was a tentative gesture, and one she would not follow through with. Seven wanted to teach her clothes, so she had better make him proud. As Victor widened the mouth of the pants and instructed her to insert her legs, she tried to remember how he had put his own on. One foot after the other, but which ones? She had four, and there were only two holes. Victor had only put his two-legged feet in.

Swallowing nervously, not entirely sure if Victor was to be trusted, she placed her other hand on his opposite shoulder. Lifting one leg up, she wobbled. Quickly, she set her foot back down on the ground where it belonged. She shook her head and tried again, this time supporting her weight on Victor’s shoulders. Her little feet slipped down into the fabric of the pants, and she lifted the other leg. Carefully, she repeated the motion. With two feet in, she looked to Seven for approval.

"Like this??"

[Seven Xu]

“Like that.”

Seven had found his spot on the bed again; two white and clammy bare feet were drawn between his thighs, soaking up the lingering warmth from their nest of bedraggled sheets. A relieved smile tipped the wet corners of his pink lips. As he reached for the narrow corner of his lazy eye to painfully wipe away a gritty collection of sleep, a breathy laugh stole across the cool damp air. “It seems you’ve learned pants.”

With nothing to hold its interest, burning pink had grown tired of painting Seven’s cheeks and receded back down his neck. It set to work on filling his fingers and toes with tingling heat and forced him off of the bed to pad across the short span of slatted wood that separated him from his skinchanger and his human. For a moment, he looked content to stand at Victor’s side and offer his new pet a sweeping gaze, and then another laugh emerged from the bobbing apple of his throat when he noted the twisted mess that called itself a shirt draped across her shoulders.

“Here,” he murmured, reaching forward to snag a few bony fingers in the wrap of fabric around Palla’s forearm. “This isn’t how shirts are worn, but I can fix it.”

Seven urged the ginger-haired girl’s hand from Victor’s supporting shoulder to free one arm and then the other of the snarled shirt. “Sex,” he exchanged a mutual glance with Victor, intent on dismissing the topic before his charismatic other half could draw amusement from it, “is nothing important right now. You’ll learn when you find a mate, another … cat-thing.” He groped for a taut neckline, twisted it around and draped it across the narrow span of Palla’s shoulders. “The shirt folds over where the hole for your head is. See?” Seven gripped the shirt’s worn collar between thumb and forefinger and offered his bondmate a reassuring smile. “Now all you need to do is button it.”

The hand dropped away, slithered into the tender hug of a deep pocket. Seven chewed his bottom lip while his eyes dipped back to arrest a pair of ever-vigilant grays. “She’ll learn to be like us,” reassurance ran thin on the tip of Seven’s tongue, but he donned a prideful grin, crooked from a pointed tooth’s residual grasp, “I can teach her, you’ll see.”

[Victor Lark]

Victor hesitated to step away as Seven approached, to relinquish one intimacy for another. His fingers lingered where they had fastened the button at her waist, perhaps in some last, unconscious effort to seduce the blind beast out of her inexplicable fascination with his dearest companion. But then they let go; he yielded the topic that discomfited his fool, instead watched him fuss and button and teach. His smile gave its best attempt at encouragement when Seven asserted that half-hearted optimism.

“Do you know how to fasten a button?” He asked politely, if only to contribute his piece. He reached vaguely for her corrected shirt and his knuckle accidentally brushed the inside of her breast. It satisfied him to see her as a toy, a project to be completed and eventually forgotten.

And yet he did not take his eyes from her; when he looked at Palla, Victor could not help but be fascinated. She was like the other one, devoted and curious and stupid. But she had her own ticks and charms, her own version of innocence. What could possibly have crossed her mind, to throw that parcel of food at him, instead of eating it herself? What could have possessed her to remember Seven among a thousand people, and seek him out in a city that would have rather lost them both? Why did she feel the way she did, she who seemed so absurdly inhuman and somehow potentially so?

His life’s djed stirred in his passion, swarmed around him with nothing to take hold. The answers were inside of her, but he was still deliberating how to get them out. The invisible, untouchable fingers of his intent reached for her, tickled the freckles on her face and the bend of her brow, memorized the color of her eyes. They poured those auburn pools into his own, as if the colors could somehow lend him knowledge and manifest as understanding. As a half-mask of Palla’s ruddy skin and eyebrows painted the flesh around his widened and browning eyes, Victor smiled sweetly and folded his arms. Victor could not see himself; he knew only his own curiosity. If nothing else, Seven would appreciate his apparent interest as he inquired idly, “Are you from around here, Palla? Or did you come from far away?”

[Palla]

Palla stood awkwardly still as Seven rearranged the mess of fabric wound around her pale body. She wriggled, bobbling her head to see what his fingers were accomplishing. The sex commentary escaped her, in one ear and out the other, lost. His hands dropped as he explained her last mission was to button the shirt. She looked from the shirt to his crimson eyes, and back.

She'll learn to be like us. I can teach her, you'll see.

A mess of twittering noises left her mouth as she smiled back at Seven. How pleasant this feeling was, an inexplicable jumble of happiness and satisfaction and hope. It stemmed from Seven’s own combination of feelings, but she couldn’t quite grasp the concept of their bond yet. Her smile faded slightly when Victor asked if she knew how to fasten a button. She shook her head, fiery red hair falling into her face as he reached out to her. The brush of his knuckle against her chest elicited little to no attention from Palla. At most, chill bumps erupted across her freckly, fair skin.

It was only when she looked up that the rosy hue in her cheeks faded nearly to green. Before her was not Victor, but a semi-shadow of herself. She jumped back with an irritated hiss, scrambling for something, anything to climb. Her back found the nearest wall and she shrank down, pointing at Victor.

”W-What, why – why did he do that? Make him stop, I don’t like it!” The magic was unlike anything Palla had ever seen, and it did not tickle her fancy in any way, shape, fashion, or form. It was evil, and confusing, and she would not be any part of Victor’s teasing her with it. Her shaking hand jabbed a nailed finger at him again. ”Put it back! Put your own face back!” She felt her own face with her free hand. Had he taken hers from her? Had he taken something of hers? Everything felt in place.

”Stop it,” She rolled over onto her side, and pulled the shirt over her eyes. She drew her knees up to her chin and growled, heart racing. Sometimes, she felt like Victor could be very nice, very kind. But at the same time, there was something about him that seemed off. Seven didn’t act nice to her one second and then mean the next. Why was Victor? Why was he using her face? She peeked over the hem of the neckline of the shirt at him, brow furrowed, hoping to find his face back where it belonged.

[Victor Lark]

Palla’s brow furrowed on Victor’s face, projecting his confusion at her retreating form and asking silently for an explanation. His face, she said... his hand rose from where it had been folded in his other arm, and he touched idly at that which he could not see. His cheekbone protruded slightly further than he had anticipated, and the skin over it was vaguely drier and more frail. He recognized the feel of it from his previous explorations of the girl and her body, on a rooftop so many hasty strides away. He realized what was happening, but he did not care about its consequences outside of those which moved in Palla. Would looking like her, he wondered, make him feel like her, too?

The hair that drooped before his orange brow became singed with matching curls; pinkish flesh poured over the rising bridge of his once olive nose, rounding out its end. Lips that were still his own grinned as white fascination glared around brown eyes. He stepped towards her suddenly, harshly, reminding her of that which had frightened her less than a bell before.

And yet his palm was open, as if Palla could know the gesture for peace. He reached down for her, without the care that should be taken in the presence of the startled animal, watching closely to detect what she thought, what she felt. The façade of compassion was hard to hold in the distraction of desire; he needed to know what it was that drove such a reaction. It pulled him too quickly toward her, so that he might tip her hiding expression to where he could see it before she could resist. “What’s wrong?” He asked, more accusing than curious, and more deliberate than that. “Are you afraid? Why are you afraid?”

[Seven Xu]

Annoyance swelled in Seven’s throat and turned sour beneath Palla’s influence. When she balked, a wave of prickling hot fear drove through his chest, escaped and tingled through his fingertips, and he let out his own groan of displeasure. “Stop it,” he echoed, barely a mumble, before two loose collections of fingers tightened into fists and he gave chase to Palla and her curious doppelganger.

“She doesn’t know what a mage is,” Seven joined Victor at his side and clapped his shoulder with one hand, more to balance than dissuade. Whether it was some forced empathy or some self-conceived apprehension in Victor’s kaleidoscopic mien he could not be sure, but the Kelvic had turned a hopeful smile into an acerbic frown. Mottled fingertips tripped across a shoulder, scrutinized an open collar, and laced around a growing collection of burnt orange. The mélange of the girl’s features with a familiar face were unsettling, at best, and Palla’s skittish sway on his nerves was doing little to quell his churning insides.

“It’s fine.” Narrow-ringed reds turned on Palla, a frown was pulled back into a wary smile. “Victor can change his skin, too.” A pair of blonde brows tipped upward, towards a roof-slanted ceiling as he added, “Take it as a compliment.” After all, his bird seemed to only trade his mask for another when he discovered something more than fascinating.

Seven wrestled with the knot in his stomach, attempted to replace it with his typical uncomfortable calm. There was no reason for him to be afraid, after all. “Come,” he stepped between the pair, cocked his head towards the door, “There are things to be done,” he should have said learned.

[Palla]

Throwing her hands over her face at Victor’s advance, she peeked from behind them only long enough to offer him a hiss that screamed, Get away! Her face was creased into a defensive snarl. How he had managed to steal her face, she wasn’t certain, but she found herself feeling her skin to be sure it was still there. As he reached down for her, she swiped at his hand, batting it away.

Stop it, Came Seven’s voice. Her eyes could not be drawn from the threat before her, though. She doesn’t know what a mage is.

Mage? He was right; What was mage? She groaned, displeased with the situation. Was to mage to steal someone’s face, their hair, their eyes? Seven explained that Victor could change his skin as she could, but she shook her head.

”N-No, he stole my face. He doesn’t change like me.” When he beckoned her, though, she stood. Her knees knocked, but she leaned back on the wall for security. With a rude pointing of her finger, she gestured to Victor. ”Don’t do that.” She’d meant for it to sound threatening, but it came out more of a request than anything. She pushed herself to Seven’s side, eyes still scrutinizing Victor’s cruel trick.

[Victor Lark]

Victor heard the words they exchanged, but they turned to echoing memories behind the greater game at hand, muted by djed’s concentration. His lip twitched as he watched her snarl; he tried to imitate it, but when it proved that could not empathize with her confusion, he faltered and tried again. Alas, he was not given the chance to turn his mouth into hers. There was a vague sensation on his shoulder, and then soft white and glaring red stepped between them. Starved of his subject’s fear by his fool’s defense, Victor straightened.

He glared at Seven with his bondmate’s round browns. “I’m a mage like you’re a wizard, darling,” Victor spat belatedly, and the familiar word was weighted with that frustration which he could not quite express. Still, he could not deny the inferred request in his friend’s diversion; he turned his unspoken compliance toward the mirror on their desk, resisting the urge to reach up and touch his face again. If he concentrated, he could feel the line between them just by moving the muscles in his face, like an almost-healed blister creasing on his skin.

The sight startled him. He had anticipated that he would look different, but he knew as much about the change as the djed that fueled it. The faces came and went with his selfish observations, the whims of his life’s energy—not by any effort or concentration. He rubbed his face as if he could wash it away with the oils on his hands, but his mind was still curious, reaching out to the murmuring female that had somehow earned Seven’s affection and trust. He did not understand it, and he hated it. He shoved his knuckles into his eyes and, suddenly, a face from his past occurred to him: another woman, with bright gold eyes and dirty yellow hair. He had never liked her, but he had felt connected to her, if only because he had known her for so long. He hated her, too. He hated them all, because they did not know what they had. They did not know how lucky they were...

As his mind turned to himself, Victor’s furiously scrubbing fingers seemed to find a way to wipe away the pink on his cheeks and the red in his hair. The mirror showed the colors escaping, wilting toward his eyes; as the last of hard grey swallowed bold auburn, Victor thought he saw another face in the mirror. A flash of a man that shared his eyes, someone he knew and did not know. And then he was himself again, excusing the blackness that tugged at his vision’s corners for a night’s worth of fatigue. He leaned heavily against the desk and said, “Happy now?”

He staggered toward the bed and sat. He might have collapsed into sleep then, if only Seven were there to witness him. He would not show such a weakness to even the pathetic thing that cowered beside him. He could not, however, stop his eyelashes from convulsing for an instant. “Go ahead without me, Seven. Teach her to eat and dress and read. I’m sure you can make her into a proper lady. One that doesn’t fear, or hate, or think, or get her hands dirty.” He scoffed. “Make her into something she isn’t.”

[Seven Xu]

Darling. The word spun through the air as a rusted dagger, contented to harm, tear at his wits, make his blood run hot. He hated that word, as much as that goading human loved to throw it. Seven’s lips parted, tongue poised for rebuttal with a mouth tipped in a half-scowl. Then, his bird molted the girl’s face. He exchanged it for another of unfamiliar gold, before that too was sloughed off for a mask of age, and finally, with the heated effort of clawing fingers, his wavering djed released the softened features of the Ravokian noble.

Seven’s fingertips pressed into his palms until it hurt. His countenance flattened. The unwelcome wrap of anxiety that held his chest had loosened, grown cold, allowed him to gather his thoughts without being plagued by a thumping heart and a whimpering mass in the corner of his eye.

“Palla, go downstairs.”

The command was thrown over his shoulder, “I’ll be right behind you,” he added, this time, softening his voice, though he did not offer the ginger-haired girl the consolation of his touch. Instead, his bare feet padded a trail to Victor. Wooden slats beneath a feather mattress griped against the weight of a second body.

Reaching for a spent jaw line, Seven’s shoulders sagged beneath a defeated smile. A white thumb traced olive flesh along a cheekbone, where exhausted arms could not dismiss him. He wished he could coax a flare of red in those steely grays, but could only offer the glassed-over stare of his own. “You think I’m wasting my time,” He accused, before letting his fingers drift away. “My father never wanted me to have a pet, either.” This pet was different. This pet could learn; she had already learned, before their very eyes, and it was no mundane sit or stay command that befit a slavering hound.

The door thumped shut after a freckled hand, pursued by the patter of footsteps down a creaking staircase. Blind contentment swelled in the pit of Seven’s stomach, the irrevocable knot tied by a bond, easily mistaken for a moment’s intimacy; he wrapped his djed-spent companion in a brief embrace, dipped his chin to a shoulder and exhaled a laugh. It was easy to wash away the green taint of jealousy, when the object of his bird’s ire was out of sight. Cloying fingers drew the sleep deprived Ravokian backward, into a sun-drenched mess of linen.

What was this Palla, this cat-thing that had followed him, obeyed him, provoked such frustration? Kelvic. Victor had accused him of being Kelvic when they had met, when he had no word for the halfblood. He had so many words, now. What would Palla become?

“She will learn everything I teach her, you’ll see,” He began; watching sleep knit heavy lashes together, steal Victor’s stubborn lucidity, before it came for his, too. For an instant, Seven’s blond-rimmed eyelids faltered. He found his pillow, stifled a yawn, spoke to no one, as his only set of ears were now deaf to the small world around them. “Today, she’ll learn patience.”

EndIf this is not a suitable ending to either of you, let me know. I figured I could finish it up here, instead of dragging it out into a teaching thread sans Vic. Cheers!

[Bedlam]

Thread Completed!

Seven

Experience:
1 Teaching
2 Persuasion

Lores:
Palla, my Pet

Palla

Experience:
1 Persuasion
1 Acrobatics

Lores:
Seeing my Mirror
What Clothes Are

Victor Lark

Experience:
2 Morphing
1 Intimidation
1 Teaching

Lores:
Wearing a Girl’s Face
Palla, my Victim

Notes:

It’s refreshing to see a kelvic who is as clueless when it comes to human matters as kelvics are supposed to be! It’s a remarkably rare thing to see.

Your threads are always interesting to read, and Palla is a good addition! Not the least because it causes some real tension between Seven and Victor. There’s a lot of potential here; their conflicting goals makes the situation between the three of them very interesting. Seven wants to care for Palla, Victor wants to know her and for her to stop interesting Seven, and Palla wants Seven, whether that’s as a bondmate or some other reason I can’t say quite yet.

At every turn they disagree, that makes for a good story. Fitting, after the mess with No One, the last time a kelvic was brought into the picture. I can’t imagine that Laszlo will understand when he learns that a kelvic is being taken care of by Seven, after what he’s seen.

So much potential for story here! I’m happy for you all. Just sad I couldn’t give you more points for it, as usual. Especially Palla. But this was mainly a social thread, and the development done was of characters are relationships more than skill. I hope you can all forgive me for that.