Closed the morning sun

[Sasheizarre]

47th of Spring, 515 AV

The water was calm that morning, as Sasheizarre wandered the beach in plain trousers and a sky blue shirt. Her feet were bare, sandals discarded haphazardly near the docks with a passing word to a nearby sailor to make sure no one thought of taking them - not that anyone would, considering most people either had their own, much larger shoes or didn't have shoes at all, in the case of the Akvatari. The shoes were in the back of her mind as she casually strolled the beach, absentmindedly ankle-deep in the water while trying her best to ignore the fish in the sea and the map of nearby currents that appeared whenever she touched the sea. Laviku's gnosis spread across her calf and part of her foot today, as if it too wanted to play in the water, and it was visible as she folded up her trousers to keep them from getting wet. A waterproof satchel was slung across her shoulders, being filled up with various rocks and shells found along the shoreline.

A tiny hermit crab crawled up from underneath a rock and began to scurry around, and the Dhani picked it up and admired the tiny, red, flailing legs before placing him on the ground again. It was in the morning light that she wished that she, too, had a nice hat to protect her from Syna like the hermit crab did, and she put it on her mental list of things to somehow acquire, probably from a Zeltivan shipment. The Akvatari did not wear much clothing themselves, and most of the things Izarre wore had been purchased either directly from a passenger or from the odd shipment of clothing that was available from a ship stopping in port from say, Ahnatep. The city of Zeltiva itself was a foreign concept to the Dhani, as the farthest north she had ever traveled outside of the Suvan Sea was just below Matthew's Bay, though she herself did not know the name.

Izarre picked up a dead sand dollar, shaking it to hear the clinking noise they always seemed to make, and continued along the beach - still, however, close enough to the docks to be seen.

[Philomena]

What a glory the sun was!

It was the same sun, in Abura, of course, but somehow, it did not seem like it. In fact, she had seen a hundred suns, a different one, it seemed, each day since she had left the cellars. She had seen her dressed in green lacework of the new spring buds in Wright Gardens, seen her cold and nude and severe on the pale grey silk of winter's sky, seen her dancing in a whirl of her own skirted clouds on a blood-soaked horizon of the sea... and all the same sun! The same woman, after all, a goddess, yes, but like Mother Qalaya, a woman too.

And now, in Abura, she wore the sea. Sometimes she wore a stormy sea, and sometimes she wore it like a skirt, or tunic, or sailor's trousers, but always, always, she wore the sea. The rim of her skirts glittered with the pale sand. The sand here was bleak and jeweled, not like dark, heavy grey sand-gravel of the spits in Zeltiva, mired in seaweed and driftwood. It stretched like ribbons of fractured light, here, and was soft to the feet, like baking sugar.

She had her feet bare, like the Akvatari. She'd taken the habit at first because her boots needed mending after a long wet journey, but she began to learn the appeal of it, again, just as she had in her childhood. There was an intimacy it granted you, a kind of knowing that only came by the soles of the feet. The land was still strange, but it grew, slowly, slowly, more like a new acquaintance. Over this, she wore a queer garment, a pale melon color, finely made, but to even the least discerning of eyes, simultaneously near a century out of fashion, and clearly designed for the body of a child: her hips, slowly growing fleshy again, bulged beneath an embroidered pinafore, and the buttons across her bust tugged at each other to keep the fabric strained over her bust.

And while she walked, she sang, in a quiet, nasally voice, not particularly attractive, but intent anyway, a Zeltivan maid's song:

"Her eyes, her eyes, the sailor said,
Her eyes tha' pulled me down,
And I will declare th'truth of those eyes
From the spit to the Upper Town.

I'll sing the eyes soft and deep and sad
and grave - so terrible grave!
I'll sing them until she calls me back to her side
And I leave on a cassy at high-moon's tide
And I sink beneath the waves."

Her eyes were closed by the end, her old, solid feet mincing slowly along the high ridge of a dune. The wind blew her skirts up around her knees, and she smiled, softly, just at the sheer freedom of it, of being alone, on a beach and not worrying, at least for the moment, at being a silhouette on a high dune.

The wind proved too strong, though, or her balance too faulty, and just at the highest peak - likely visible from a quarter mile in the wan morning light, she toppled, and with an ungraceful tumble, rolled bodily down the bank of sand, her bare feet tumbling akimbo as she went, her slowly lengthening hear gathering up the sand.

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[Sasheizarre]

It was the singing that brought her attention, and the sight of the woman whose voice it was that held it.

There had been a particularly plain conch shell in her hands, being held up to her ear so as to hear the sounds of Laviku (despite standing next to the ocean itself anyway) when the quiet song hit her ears, waashed out by the crashing of waves and a few sudden gusts of wind. Sasheizarre had been, at first, under the impression that the sound had come from the shell, though her bout of confusion ended at the vision of a woman climbing the dune directly above the Dhani.

The same gust of wind that sent the woman tumbling down the dune blew hair into Izarre's face and sent herself falling down, landing in the sand and dropping the conch. She left it where it lay, and trekked over to where the woman fell. It was living among the Akvatari that was making her soft - a year ago, she wouldn't have bothered to check on someone falling down a hill, let alone have the faintest hint of concern for them. The sand was pretty soft, but still - she did not quite appear to be the youngest of her race, and as such she'd be a bit more fragile than someone half her age.

She was behind the dune when she found the woman, lying on the ground with sand in her brown hair. A hand was held out to help the woman up, but she couldn't hide her giggle at the woman's appearance. "Are you alright, misss? I could not help but sssee you tumble down the hill." From her positon, shadowing over the woman, it would be difficult to see Izarre's face in the silhouette that Syna provided. Regardless of this, the smile she held was evident in her voice.

[Philomena]

Minnie landed with her head pointed downwards on the dune's leeward slope, but by kicking awkwardly with her legs in the loose sand managed to whirl herself about and into a sitting position, her childish skirts tangling her legs, sandy toes gingerly working at the muscles of foot and leg, to check for injury. Her thin scarf was pulled off by the fall, and it stretched halfway up the dune like a misplaced snake, leaving her throat bare where an angry ragged scar was revealed.

A shadow passed over her, and she looked up to find someone looking down at her - slender, female, and human in shape, no fur-seal tail. Minnie squinted in the bright sunlight, staring up at her with the aplomb of a startled child, her hair, trying to smooth her hair down, though the effort is a bit of a failure.

"I'm... I'm... q-q-quite a'right, I... I los' my footings, I'm...." her voice was a little confused, and thick as stew with a low Zeltivan accent. A little fear made it stumble and tremble, "I'm sorry, ha' we met?"
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[Sasheizarre]

Sasheizarre smiled, her smile real with the squinting eyes and showing teeth, but nothing could hide the naturally predatory grin that her face held. Her hand was still held out in an effort to help the woman up, even as the woman stared at her confused and somewhat frightened. Sand was in her clothes, hair, on her skin, and she seemed to be tangled up in her own clothing. She appeared quite spectacular, in the same way one might say a shipwreck was spectacular. Her accent was recognizeable as the same one that many of the sailors from Zeltiva held, the accent common around the docks and Hospitality House which the Dhani frequented.

"We do not know each other, but it isss good that you are not hurt." She turned her head up the dune, and, spotting the scarf, withdrew her hand and hiked up the sand. She gingerly picked up the scarf and handed it to the woman, her eyes on the jagged scar that appeared on her neck. Her hand was again held out to help the woman up, and on Izarre's face was a mask of geniality.

"What isss your name, if I may ask? I am Sssasheizarre." Her voice, when she spoke her name, could bring up images of a snake hissing, the way she pronounced it. The Dhani's accent then made it as if she was borderline speaking Snake-tongue, though Izarre could not speak Snake-tongue with her human tongue very well, if at all. "Some call me Izarre."

[Philomena]

Minnie took the thin scarf, and with a bit of rose rising to her cheeks, wrapped it carefully around her neck, covering the scar. She took the proffered hand with a ducked chin of embarrassment, and pulled herself to her feet. Her own hand bore an exceptionally soft, well fitted glove, though the other hand was bare. Her skirt hitched and pulled with the movement, and a flash of a curve of black on her skin appeared and disappeared just where the bustline, in an untangled state, would be begin to cover it. The black shone slightly, and sat on the skin's surface, quite unlike a tattoo.

The other woman's accent was strange, and Minnie struggled a bit to pick the words out of it, the hissing quality of the syllables blending with the shift of sand in the sea winds. She swallowed the woman's proffered name as she settled her own clothing back into place and tried - with only mixed success - to brush the sand from her hair with her fingertips. The pocket of the pinafore bulged, and she reached into it, drawing out a little wooden tablet, hinged shut, then a slender wooden stylus. These she hitched under one arm, while she used the other to dump the pocket out - about a cup and a half of fine sugary sand poured out of it, along with what looked like half of a kelp fritter, escaping its grease paper wrappings.

She put the tablet and stylus back in the pocket and blushed, realizing how long it had been since she had been asked her name. She looked again at the woman. Foreigners, she had found, were difficult to ken properly, in terms of their position. So, she defaulted to assuming the woman was go higher status than she likely was, and she went into a clumsy imitation of a curtsy.

"Dr. Philomena Lefting," her voice now awakened to its situation was a little wheedle, with a carefully pronounced, very nasal syllables, in the manner more of the higher folk of Zeltiva, an accent perhaps heard amongst clerks and captains, here far from the University, "at your service, Lady..." she paused a moment, rolling the unfamiliar name on her tongue, but finally dove into with a wing and a prayer, "...Lady Sozhestaire."

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[Sasheizarre]

The gloved hand was a surprise, but Sasheizarre did not dwell on it nor did she think much of the spilled pockets. She assumed the object wrapped in grease paper was food, but it didn't particularly matter what it was or why it was there - the most important part of the situation was her curiosity about the woman herself. The woman's — Philomena Lefting — accent came out in full force then, and while she recognized what the woman was trying to say, it wasn't clear. A laugh came out then, a kind of full force, partially doubled over laugh, at the woman's attempt at saying her name. Ticks passed before she stopped laughing, whether it was at the woman or with her, and she tilted her head to the side.

"You may call me Izzy, yesss? Easssier?" The Dhani knew she would much prefer to be called the bastardization of her name, 'Izzy', rather than whatever that woman came up with. She didn't think she could reproduce the sounds that came out of her mouth. Izzy probably wouldn't sound as awkward with the woman's accent, either, as Sasheizarre would. She towered over the tiny woman, and in a sudden action spun her around and tried her best to brush sand from her clothes and hair. Satisfied, she picked up the unidentified food item and brushed the sand off of it, too, handing it to the woman.


"Would you like to come with me?" The question was offered, but the tone of voice almost made it seem like an order rather than a question, even if Izarre did not mean it that way. She adjusted the bag on her shoulder and found that her gnosis had moved there, splashing and frothing across her forearm and spilling onto her hand, unlike its usual spot of foaming at her throat. "It is nissse out, good for a ssstroll, yesss?"

[Philomena]

Minnie frowned to herself, hearing the woman's laughter, which did not, entirely, strike her as sympathetic in her current state. There was a hint of put-out to the frown, but this was hard to detect to one who does not know her, as it was overshadowed by a good degree of unsurety. Philomena Lefting, Doctor of Literature retracted somewhat, and Minnie, timid creature rose a bit. She nodded politely, "Yes, Lady Izzy." Even the short name she pronounced with an intonation that nearly swallowed the s and z sounds into a whistled the. Her tongue spent most of its time on the vowels, "I'm... I'm sorry..."

The woman now, with a business-like air, handed her back the biscuit, and manhandled her into facing away from her, then began brushing down the back of her deck. Minnie, without quite meaning too, cringed, and sucked her breath in. Strange, strong-handed women touching her was not a situation that inspired in her a feeling of personal safety, and in spite of her mind attempting to override the reaction, her body went taught, pulling her shoulders in and her head down protectively, something like a child waiting to be struck. IT was a tic, and did not last as long as it might have, but it was not in any way concealed.

The woman the ordered her (or at least, so Minnie heard it) to accompany her. Minnie's mind hiccuped over this, and she felt the urge to make excuses, to beg off for an appointment perhaps. But... the woman was so terribly sure of herself, and Minnie now had retreated so far into feeling unsure. So she simply nodded.

"Yes, ma'am."

Her voice was very small, now, and she shuffled along beside the woman with her hands tucked into the sides of her pinafore.

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[Sasheizarre]

"There isss no need to apologizze." The woman appeared timid and frightened, like child separated from their mother, but Izarre could not figure out why. Had she been too rough? It was rare that she tried to be helpful, perhaps she did something wrong in the process. Izarre did not know what she could say to Dr. Philomena Lefting to soothe her fear, and as such, tried to continue the conversation with her somewhat limited Common. "Pretty sshells on the beach, yesss?" She walked over to the conch lying on the beach from before, though part of it had chipped. Izarre picked it up, holding it to her ear for a tick and then proceeding to hold it out to the woman. "You can hear the sssea."

She watched the woman with curiosity not commonly held by someone with two legs, as the Dhani had been forced to spend most of her time on two legs because of the limitations of her Dhani and snake forms, yet she was still unused to such a body. It was not that she didn't know how to walk and move and see other people walk (despite the fact that walking was such a rarity on Abura), it was that it still felt new. She had unconsciously leaned down a bit, now only a few inches taller than the tiny professor.

"Do you like poetry?"

[Philomena]

Minnie stared at the conch. She had seen one in Zeltiva once, in a curiosity display on a mantel, but never actually held one - they did not range so far north. With a cautious timidity, she reached out for the object, but did not immediately set it to her ear. She cradled it, for a moment in the gloved hand’s arm, and tentatively set the fingers of the other hand to the rough exterior, and then the scalloped lip, then into the pearly smooth cavity. Her fingers moved slowly across the white edges, the pink blushing to the color of the inside of her own eyelids, around the furled hearts, into the dark recesses behind the mouth of it. Her fingers ran across the surface in slow perambulations - it was smooth, but heavy and solid, not like the delicate mussel shells she had scavenged from as a girl, and not so gnarled and ridged as shucked coats of oysters.

She set it to her ear and closed her eyes. It was not… exactly like the sea. It was more like a distillation of the sea, like the difference between a chorus and a solo. A single sea voice breathed a low, hollow tone. She wondered, illogically, for a moment, what lay in the very heart, beyond where the fingers could reach, what sat nestled in the center, making the song? It was like a cradle, this shell, a cradle for swaddling an infant wind.

She heard the woman speaking again, and started, remembering herself. The words had entered her mind, but her brain had not been ready to process them, and so she reassembled her face into a submissive stillness, and held the shell to her breast protectively, almost cradling it, before parsing the words. She blinked, once, twice, thrice.

“P-poetry, Madame Ilzy?” She let her eyes widen slightly, “Oh, yes… I like it a great deal indeed, do you? I… I read a… I don’t… don’t know as much of the poetry here, I’ve mostly read the Zeltivan poets, p’ticularly the Early Post-Valterrians, the ‘graffiti poets’ I’ve written on them quite a bit, but also a good deal of the epic tradition, and the lyricists—“

She stops herself, as she’d begun to rattle, and blushes a bit, cradling the shell a bit tighter, “Sorry.”
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