As Alses straightened up from her curtsey and backed away somewhat from the solar presence of Talora – narrowly avoiding a snaking, swaying line of Taiyang priestesses and common Lhavitians dancing their way through the festival's light and laughing heart – she heard her name. Or rather, to be exact, the collection of sounds she'd adopted as a name, a faint and faded echo of the celestial tones which rang in the vaults of her mind. Names were still a sore spot – she'd tried until her throat was raw to use the celestial tongue, to speak to others the name that was the slow dance of the sun and the moon overhead, the bright glory of a sunbeam and the spectacular brilliance and fury of a solar prominence, but the shining cadences had always turned to mangled, jumbled collections of mundane, ugly syllables the instant she opened her mouth. Alses would have to do, the name of a far, bright star high in the northern sky that always followed the North Star. Sometimes close, sometimes distant, but always brought, inexolerably, into its orbit. Turning in confusion at the unexpected sound; in truth, she really knew very few people in Lhavit, and most of her acquaintances knew her as a consequence of her courier work for the Dusk Tower or because she frequented their shops in the Azure Market, Alses' breath caught in her throat as her eyes alighted upon Laszlo. 'Another Ethaefal,' the thought sang in her mind, drinking in his form with the stabbing prickle of sadness and longing needling at her eyes. 'Another unfortunate Fallen.' He was tall, taller than she – although that, at least, was not an uncommon occurrence – and his beauty was of a more introspective, elusive nature than she'd seen in either herself or the few other Ethaefal she'd encountered. Where her skin was flamboyantly aglow, shimmering like fire-opals in every ray of sunshine, his was simply limned in a shifting suggestion of burnished bronze, the final, dying light of dusk, and his horns described a simple, though elegant curve, framing his face. He drew the eye time and again with that subtle beauty, rather than demanding attention – Alses suppressed a flash of envy. His eyes, though, they burnt with the warm glow and scintillating brilliance that was all-but absent from his skin, and were all the more captivating for it, although there was something shadowed and inexpressibly sad about his gaze, hiding on the edge of sight. “Yes?” she enquired, softly but politely, inclining her head in a reflexive gesture of respect. Were this any other day, those few seconds would have given her the moments she needed to master the tragic impulse, to let her look at him steady and clear, but today was Midsummer, and the festival was in full swing. Syna's golden light beamed down, and there was laughter on the breeze – today was not a day for sadness and remorse, regret or contemplation. “Do we know you? Forgive us, but we have – I have – a poor memory for names and faces.” It was just a courtesy, a subtler way of saying 'Who are you and how do you know my name?', since Alses was sure she'd never met this Ethaefal in her life – or rather, her post-Fall life. Others of her kind were rare, and each and every one would surely be burned into her memory on the occasion of their meeting. Curiosity danced in her eyes as they drank in Laszlo's form, committing every aspect of it to memory, and lingered on the strange ribbon of red paper he held, somewhat uncertainly. |