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[Caera]

73rd of Winter, 514AV

Caera sat with her legs folded, her right foot resting gently on her left knee, her back straight and her breath coming easy. She wasn't meditating, the crowds surrounding her were too loud and excited for that, but it was a comfortable position to sit in and would ensure no muscles became cramped. It would not do to have to leave the show early.

She looked around, smiling. Children ran around excitedly, darting in between the legs of adults, chattering like birds. Always they returned to their mothers before they roamed too far afield. Very few Akalak children were around, and she looked down at her silver Undan, wondering when she would be called again. Wistfully, she thought of how her own little Ra'dae was doing; whether she ran up to her grandmother with secrets, or if she was quieter, more demure these days. Shaking herself out of her pensive mood, she turned her attention back to the stage, making a note to send a letter to Mura when she had the chance.

The stage was simply laid apart, the greenery casting shadows over the grass where the performers would stand and deliver their art. It was rare Caera came, but with a light work load and no summons to the Oathmaster, she had the evening free. She knew very little about the theatre, but had heard great things. Quietly, sitting alone, she waited for the show to begin, hoping for something spectacular. She could see the shadows in the furthest wings, behind bushes, and assumed they would be the actors. Tonight was supposed to be a drama of some kind, she had overhead from the mothers, but she wasn't entirely sure what the story would be about. Twisting her back from side to side, she released the muscles there, before doing the same with her neck. As the children all ran back to their seats, a hush descended over the crowd, the grass stage filled up with a small performance troupe, and the show began.

The show was quick, a favourite of the crowd it seemed, for the children laughed and clapped quite frequently (often before the punchlines, as if they knew what was to be sad). Caera found almost quite as much amusement from watching their enjoyment as from the show itself, though the performers were extremely talented. The tale was one she thought she knew, an old Rivarian legend, perhaps whispered to her by her mother as a child, but she couldn't quite be sure. Still, Caera most certainly stood up with the rest of the crowd and clapped as loudly as anyone else.

As the crowd began to file out of the ampitheatre, she couldn't quite help but look down at the troupe as they began to stretch and pack up after the show. Besides a few other people who had moved down to congratulate them on their show, as far as Caera could tell the group received little immediate feedback. Looking up at the sky and noting the sun had not yet fallen too close to the horizon, she picked her way down the tiers and addressed the group at large, though she made eye contact with one particular woman as she did so. "Congratulations," she said in Tukant, looking at everyone, before settling her gaze on the blonde, blue-eyed human near her. "Very well done. I definitely enjoyed it. I simply wanted to extend my well-wishes."

x

[Marion Kay]

There was a buzz in the air, and Marion could understand why. Winter had been bitter, colder than what she'd experienced in Sylira and certainly far colder than anything she'd experienced in her homeland. Now spring was around the corner, little more than a fortnight away. Warmer winds graced the afternoon, and with it came hope. Winter was a season of death, spring one of renewal.

She knew she ought to hate it -- the promise of warmer days and all that it represented. Her faith compelled her to rail against it, for hope left no room for fear. But Marion herself had been quite fond of springtime when she was younger, and as she watched the crowds of people gathering and children jumping about on the terraces, she could not help feeling as if she were a child again herself, living vicariously through others as they went about their fun. But this was so different. She'd thought herself happy then, content to experience life from afar because it was all she had ever done. Perhaps she was happy at one point, before she realized that others weren't simply teasing when they called her "artless" or "freak" or the two in conjunction.

But that didn't matter now.

What mattered now was that, no matter how hard she tried, Marion found that she was enjoying herself and the heady excitement that permeated the very air. And she felt ashamed. But such emotions were getting a bit tedious. She'd relished the inner friction at first, but these days it was getting so common that it left a bad taste in her mouth and all she wanted to do was stop. It was getting old. Everywhere she went, she was sure to experience some kind of turmoil, something clashing between what her heart felt versus what her mind told her to feel.

So why don't you stop trying to fight it?

Now there was a thought. Her attempts to contain the conflicting emotions only wore her down and went against her nature, trying to force one side to beat out the other. What was stopping her from embracing it? It was something she'd already been doing for years, following her whims, doing what simply felt right in the moment. Who was she to try and force control? Wasn't she crusading against that very thing? It wasn't until she'd come to this gods-forsaken city that she'd felt compelled to contain herself. This place was a plague.

But she could contemplate all of that later. There was something more eminent to focus on right now, and it wasn't until she felt a strong hand on her shoulder that she remembered what exactly she was here for, and why she was staring at a full audience.

"Nervous?"

Marion calmly turned to see Dirian, unsurprisingly, though his face and shoulders and much of his body was obscured in a rather elaborate, beastly costume. He was playing the monster, the role she'd practically begged to be assigned because she couldn't resist the temptation of the irony, even if she would be the only one to understand it. But they needed an extra female role. So now, despite her assertion that a good actor should be able to pull off playing a female, she stood in a white dress with fur cape to match. The spitting image of purity, in stark contrast to the role she'd played during the troupe's previous rotation. Here, hers was a minor part but crucial to relaying the story. She needed to be focused. She was focused.

"Are you going to ask me that every time I perform?" she shot back sportively, turning her eyes once more to the audience, then to the director, waiting for a cue. The show was going to be starting any tick now.

She could hear the akalak's costume rustle as he shrugged. "You just seem a little distracted."

The director made a circling motion with his arm from where he stood, and began counting down from five on his hand. When ran out of fingers, he made a frantic pointing motion. Go, go, go.

"Nervous and distracted are not synonymous," came her hurried reply, and she quickly flashed him a wry grin before gathering her skirts in her hands and rushing forward. The show had begun.

-

A little more than a bell later, it was finished. Rather short compared to the last show they'd done, but this one contained more action and less tragedy, and one could only stretch out a folk tale so long before it got stale. Marion, understandably, had never heard the tale before, and couldn't decide if it was overcomplicated or simply odd. She didn't bother fretting over it, having come to expect a certain level of oddity from Rivarians anyway. She didn't need to know the particulars of the legend, she just needed to know her lines.

And know them she did.

It wasn't too long after the final scene that the crowd began to trickle away, and the troupe gathered together to receive the praise of those few theater-goers who hailed them afterwards. They were typically one of two kinds of people: those with a keen interest in theater but not the talent, or those with a keen interest in one of the actors they'd seen perform.

Truth be told all Marion wanted to do was retreat to the dressing rooms and escape her dress. It felt all too constricting despite having been worn only for such a short period of time, and the sleeves were too tight at her elbows which made it all the more uncomfortable when she bent her arms to accept people's greetings.

She was about ready to sneak away when a Konti woman approached, waif-like and white-skinned, and drew her back in. The race was just as enigmatic as the Akalak had been when she'd first arrived in this city. But unlike the multi-colored men, who were, after all, like many other men, the pale women hadn't lost their alien allure over the past season. Marion didn't know if that was because there were fewer of them than there were Akalak, or if they were generally more mysterious to begin with.

In any case, Marion would have loved the chance to get to know the Konti better. Or rather, she would have loved to know their anatomy, because those scales were simply fascinating. Not to mention the fact that that she could use them to make a lovely disguise. But there was more to pulling of a good morph than replicating an observation -- she needed to study the creature. It would have made sense to do so with her fellow actresses, but she'd made the decision some time ago to keep her work life and personal interests separate. It was much more convenient in the long run.

The Konti congratulated them in Tukant -- she'd hear the word enough times to understand its meaning by now, but much of the rest was a blur of tongue-twister syllables. She said something about liking the show or having a wish, she wasn't sure. But what she did know was that the woman seemed to be making a point of looking at her.

One of the Konti actresses thanked their sister in the same tongue, trailing into some other language that Marion didn't recognize but knew was not Tukant. As she did so, Dirian, who now stood beside Marion without his mask, leaned into her ear.

"Looks to me like she might want a word with you," he whispered with a nudge.

"That might be a little... difficult," she murmured, pointedly wrestling with the foreign language. Even the one word felt clumsy on her tongue.

Dirian, for his part, seemed mildly surprised. "You don't know her? I figured she's a friend of yours."

"Not yet," she whispered back. Many of the rest of the group had turned to greet the next satisfied audience member, now that the actress who had greeted her fellow Konti had finished, but Marion turned to face the woman once more with a sideways grin.

The Konti obviously had some mild fascination in her -- Marion wasn't blind, and it wasn't something she was unused to. People often felt drawn to her, and she knew it was entirely because of Ssena's favor. A lure. A wolf in sheep's clothing.

"You see much show?" She asked, trying to force the words to sound more natural than they did. Dirian snorted, nudged her, and offered her the corrected phrase for her to repeat. "Ah, many shows? I do not... uh. Uh." her mind drew a blank, but she didn't want to have to rely on Dirian as a translator for the entirely of this conversation. "Oh petch it," she breathed in mild frustration. Surely the woman knew at least some Common. That was the whole reason it was called common, right? "I don't think I've seen you before. Not down here, at least."

Text "Common." "Tukant."