Condolences and Condemnation

[Mara]

Fall 05 512 AV

Syna had only rolled from the pit of her slumber. She was peering across the stony summits of the mountains, a now serrated silhouette cast along the radiant tips of the rotund crowns of each skyglass embellished construction. The day fetched a new biting. A fresh season had carried the placid breeze from farther north to the city likened to a glasshouse, burning and stifling.

An ireful gust whistled from tapered alleys through the spacious plazas, it tossed blackened wire of hair, tinged with a persistent Vantha highlighting that the dark underworld of Kalinor had stolen in time away from the sun. Still his color was characterless and insalubrious so that nettings of blue vein shown through at the crooks of his arms and the junction between his jaw and collar. Lhavit was not capable of reinstating a healthy glow, or swabbing away the purple shade that settled below each excavated iris.

Their paces were loud, a clamor of slapping feet and wooden heels clacking across the cobbled path. It droned on as if the city never rested, and he could tally each step but his own. The sun ascended, pouring across the over-zealous skyglass frames, flinging grins of light across the lane. It swallowed everything with the unforgiving heat of midday within its sinewy grasp. Marvasa moaned in protest. Among them, perhaps the two Lhavitians he had traveled with were stirred about the thrill of risen voices. The dark tips of his fingers slithered past the sheath of his silken sleeves to shelter his scarlet sights; he could not bring himself to seek them out. If not the sun, he would have found some other reasoning to file past unnoticed. The teething troubles, one's he was expected to find the answers to, were scored across their faces. He was expended of the responses that would subdue their worry. It was his own burden that now consumed him enough for the three of them.

The Library was before him, he had seen these cracks along the finely crafted lane to know the way. He looked up, taking in the sight atop the staircase, before a sigh quavered his lip with its untimely escape. The same marbled steps, the same voices echoing along the courtyard before the structured pillars of the entrance, it was something more than familiarity, more like habit. The Basilika, as it had once been explained to him, a place to exchange ideas. A flatened stony mountain range in and of itself if he was to describe it of his own accord, each time it was nothing more than a meandering obstacle in which to weave in and out from.

"Brothers, Sisters, listen to what I have to say. The time is coming to offer your praises to our fair Lady. Look!" The voice was merely the loudest among the early risers that were flitting overhead. He was a hooded man, with calloused covered fingertips that demanded attention and received his fair share. Mara head tilted up following the man's aiming index toward the sky. "The stars still shine through, and the moon still peeks from the painted sky. It is the hour of harmony in our city.”

The half-blood hummed with brackish satisfaction and persisted up the steps into the courtyard. When he reached the top he lingered, wandering as a lost lamb through the enclosure, with little direction. The hooded creature’s voice still rung from behind him “Rejoice, offer your praises and seek your forgiveness!” Each speaker was different, each enthusiastic in their own fashion, either with the damnation of consuming fire and war or the acceptance of the saintly bargaining equality. It was a stark melody of ideas that he waded through like rows of open books spilling their theories at him eagerly, deafeningly.

Only when an exchange caught him did he halt. It was a young woman, not differing much in age from himself. In her arms she embraced a thick leather bound book to her chest. "What is it that makes us so different?" Her voice was softer than what should have caught his attention. Still he stopped to look her over, her long whitish curls bounced as she spoke with a ferocity that humbled her dainty voice, and light caught the odd texture of her skin. "I say the difference between the races, between a male and a female, cannot be measured in idle assumptions of any book or rumor."

A silent laugh jostled his shoulders, however noble her professions were he found it better to take caution. To preach equality was all well and good, but the unfortunate nature of most races he had encountered were as quick to act upon their nature as they were to follow the mold of their race.

“So you are to preach equality for all even those that would murder and steal by the very contract of their blood? A nature bred into each and every one? Caution! I beseech you, for there are those that wear the face of innocence that may strike a city full of fools so settled on equality! Do not be deceived by such self-indulgent notions.” Her apparent partner in debate retorted with trembling anger, his brows dipped into a look of pleading as if he spoke from experience of what evil laid in the world.

Marvasa sat across the plaza upon a carved bench, his presence hardly noticed between the tossing ideas, he was free to listen and wait to the turn of the debate. His head rolled in his palm as he slouched over his tighly overlapped legs. He was interested to hear what the people of Lhavit truely felt, what they usually only whispered by rumor or childish stare.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

OOCThanks for beginning this. "Kalinor sees about twelve surrogates a year, and the Purging employs no more than five medics at a time. It is a small community." It was a cultured strain of common, spoken in a low timbre and with only enough of the Symenos accent to make it pleasing to the ear. "I know you." There was the subtle implication that this knowledge brought with it a dose of dislike. The disembodied voice rounded the bench and casually took a seat. He wore the costume of his people with enough alterations to make it fit the setting if one didn't look too long. By all standards he was orderly in appearance and manner, bearing only a passing resemblance to the creeping monsters described by Lhavitian grandmothers. "Not that I will try anything." Lest Mara think he was dealing with a kindred spirit, the Symenestra indicated the scene in front of them, encompassing both parties and the people they drew. If Duvalyon didn't want to dispel the happy fiction the woman ardently wove, he'd have to maintain the utmost civility. As the common adage went, you don't harvest where you live, and for now, Lhavit was where Duvalyon both resided and worked. "An interesting topic," he observed calmly. The Symenestra said nothing more, choosing to regard the debate. The Pavilion wouldn't expect him back for half a bell. Why he lingered on that particular bench was for Mara to worry about.

[Mara]

Cognizance in the face of trepidation lit the frayed strands of nerves aflame. A noticeable dip of his shoulders gathered the edges of a gaunt casing against himself. No amicable glance was necessary, though bleaching eyes betrayed self-assurance. The crimson melted from his sight and left a hazy fog of mauve that hid beneath the sheath of slouching eyelids. He was fairly certain who this man was upon the first mention of the Purging, and a pitch of voice that he had been witness to in seasons past. He had hardly expected to find himself sharing a bench with him, in Lhavit no less. The Symenestra tone he was offered held a familiarity he was once well acquainted with. An antipathy draped with the delicate mask of a politician.

"I assume everyone has sympathizers." his eyes skimmed from the foot of the bench toward the Symenestra at his side, an eyeful was enough to assure his suppositions. "They find room for both acceptance and questioning. I find it an admirable, and at times, a naive tradition."

He followed the growling sound of raised opinions in the distance. The plead for understanding became drowned in the dribble of beating cobbles and the rush of sticky warmth from bodies filling the space. His palms ironed the hunch of a pleat from his clothing and there his attention lingered.

"Taking some time off?" feigning subtlety, there was a breathy pause as Mara examined the growing ends of his blackened nail beds. He had never assumed Hellebore's son to be the kind to take a leisurely expedition from the Purging. He was unsure of when Duvalyon had departed from Kalinor. There was not any suggestion that he knew of the means Dra-Marvasa had left Kalinor, all the same, there was none to prove otherwise. He thought it best to hold his tongue until more was exposed to abate the ache in his gut. He had spent the last season feeling the weight of his choice, waiting for the retribution that would find him.

"The Purging must be busy in your absence."