The Next Time You Say Forever (Calovan)

[Sondra]

oocIt's bunnying, but the kind I like. It kept with my character and moved the pace along. So it's all good

The residential district the pair found themselves in was orderly but small. Sondra's neighbors were likely bachelors who earned a living doing manual labor or poor widows. Where Sondra stopped them was on the porch of a modest one room cottage, "cottage" being a kind term. It was wood, thatch and stone like most everything else in Syliras. Where others had planted flowers in jugs or made stepping stones on their porches, Sondra had pressed earth. She didn't want anything she could trip over in the dark after a night of drinking.

The Konti pulled her key from around her neck, and fumbled with the lock in the dim light.

"There we go," the door creaked open and Sondra hobbled into the room. Without saying much more she moved to the hearth and began to concoct a fire in its stone mouth. As the kindling caught, Sondra used it to light a candle. A little light was cast around the room.

The Konti wasn't especially neat, but scarcity of possessions gave the room a deceptively orderly look. Papers and pouches were stacked on the small table, and cluster of candles was melted onto the wood's surface. After lighting these, Sondra eased herself onto the bed.

She winced as she slipped off her loose outer coat, cursing a stiff shoulder under her breath.

"Take a sit, Calovan." she blindly gestured to the room's only chair beside the table.
"I'll make tea when the room stops jigging." She pressed her cold hand to her forehead, and cheek.

"So, Kelvic, huh?" Her mouth tilted in a wry look, "Explains a little."
Sondra began to undo her boots, but suddenly made a face, remembering something she had heard.
"Is it true you guys eat raw meat and stuff?"

All elegance and poise, this one.

[Calovan]

Calovan's lips curled at her question, but he deigned to answer it nontheless. She had no couthe, but very few people he met really did. What an odd thing to ask and at the most inopportune time...
"I cannot speak for the rest of my brothers and sisters, but I, myself, am inclined to eat the flesh of other creatures whenever I feel it is necessary. Cooking it is merely a nicety, and one I do not have the patience or the technique with which to enjoy it." He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her, taking her in.

"You and the other normals... Such aversion to the natural order is astounding. You deny your instincts, and choose to obey the laws of etiquette set forth by your leaders. How quaint that you find my behavior to be distasteful."
He frowned, choosing to voice his displeasure with the "normals" in her presence.
"Would you like to know what I think? I think you're like me. You're an animal. A smart one, true- or at least, smarter than most... Be that as it may, you are still a sentient creature, and yet I and my fellow Kelvics are labeled as 'bestial.' How narrow-minded and arrogant I find civilization to be."

[Sondra]

Sondra smirked, "You say 'normal' like the word tastes bad."
Having found out what she wanted to know, there was a vague satisfaction to her expression. She returned to unlacing her shoes.
"Raw meat is too slippery, doesn't seem clean to me. Let's call it a personal preference."

Instead of being affronted, the Konti seemed to like the sting in Calovan's retort.
"As far as the natural order is concerned, I have found it to be nasty and brutish. I don't mind keeping a distance."

Sondra was not a philosopher, but she had a keen understanding of the short-comings of human beings.
"Every creature is 'bestial' in their own way. A Kelvic's way is just more pronounced, or more frequent, I'm unsure."

The Konti stiffly stood and walked to the trunk at the foot of her bed. As she rustled through it for her box of loose tea she continued to speak.
"When there is none to punish him for it, man's heart still remembers it's natural brutality."

Sondra set the box of tea leaves aside and closed the trunk. She looked at Calovan, dissecting a thought in her head. Curiosity won over the desire for serenity.

"Could I have your hand for a moment, Calovan?"

She would see just how different Kelvic and men were when at their worst.

[Calovan]

He peered at her out of half-closed lids and wondered what the woman wanted with his hand. Was it magic? He'd heard tales that Konti had arcane powers that enabled them to see the future, and he had dismissed them as foolish and unlikely. After all, he reasoned, we have a choice. Being able to predict the future means that choices didn't matter, and that just wasn't something he was prepared to accept so readily.

However, she seemed affable enough. He was fairly certain that if worst came to worst, he could always leave. He was, of course, a raven. She was not. He could fly, and she was incapable of such things. He reasoned that he could evade her without causing her harm, and that was important. Needless bloodshed or violence without provocation was hardly his preferred method of living. So, with just a fraction of hesitance in his movements, he wordlessly held his hand out to her and opened it palm up, tensing all of his muscles as though he was ready to pounce.

[Sondra]

Sondra had once met a dream reader. She said moving through another's dreams was like pushing aside delicate spheres of glass and rifling through feathers. Sondra painfully felt the macabre nature of her own gift in that instant.
Reading sins was like following the smell of rot to its source, or letting poisoned blood.

Her hand was cool to the touch, and she made no secret of what she was doing. Eyes closed, Sondra waited, breathing evenly. Purposeful reading allowed her to brace herself, but some visions could not be borne easily. Calovan's was one.

To Calovan it felt like water was flowing to his fingertips. He tasted bile in his mouth as his body reanimated the guilt he had harbored over the sin.

Sondra released Calovan's hand, her pale visage turning gray. She was grateful to be sitting already. The Konti covered her face in her hands, as if physical blindness could darken her thoughts.

At times the world was too much. A distorted, endless thing, like two mirrors reflecting one another. Sondra thought she understood some things only to see them stretch and change over time and distance.
A stranger who was good to her, moral in judgment, yet not beyond slaughter of tender lives and frail bodies. Every potential snuffed. If one saw them before Calovan's animalistic devouring, they would have made a picture of tranquility and promise, something dear and rare. Violence, Sondra knew, was sudden and indiscriminate.

"Yes," Sondra raised her head from her hands, "Kelvics are just as civilized as men."

Sondra had the vision of Calovan's gory sin, but not the reasoning behind it. She always asked herself if it mattered. The thing was done and there was no untangling it.

The Konti was mentally dizzy, but in a place where she had to take careful steps. Whenever she came across desperate, bloody visions, she was the picture of caution around the sinners. Should a temper be roused she had no recourse.

"I'm going to get some snow to boil."

A nice way to excuse herself. Sondra grabbed a bowl from the table and went outside, shutting the door behind her. The Konti heavily knelt in the snow, and blankly stared at the ground.

Another hundred or so years of this. Not being able to touch for fear of wickedness. Believing a thing good then having it ruined. The idea made her so very tired.

[Calovan]

He spat the bile out and swallowed. His eyes were slightly widened, but other than the one facial expression, he bore no more marks of his self-conscious nature, at the moment. He listened to her words over and over again in his mind, hearing her voice echo endlessly in his thoughts. When she had touched him, he felt an impending sense of guilt, and he knew immediately what she had seen. As she recoiled from him, he revisited those horrible memories of his own where he had murdered so many innocents. Their life had meant nothing to him, then, but after it was all said and done... His mind had been broken, along with his spirit. The one thing he had never told anyone for fear of being an outcast, of never having his dream of finding a mate realized.

He had to explain to Sondra. He had to let her know that he wasn't like that. Pushing the memory out of his mind, he tried desperately to ignore the terrified screams and shouts of anguish that were rebounding off the inside of his skull. Clutching his head and covering his eyes, he shook his head to clear it and frowned, his weariness showing through his normally reserved, cool demeanor.
Straightening out, he walked outside to find Sondra crouched in the snow. Taking a deep breath, he made no more motions to approach her, but decided to keep his distance for now and attempt to talk.
"Please..." He muttered. "You don't understand."

[Sondra]

Sondra heard the door open behind her. Contrary to what was wise, she grew very still. Her breath made steam, barely visible in the moonlight. Her fist closed around an mixture of snow and earth, ready to fling it as his face should his footsteps quicken.

Instead he asked her to understand in the same plaintive tone one would ask for forgiveness. Sondra twisted, looking over her shoulder.

"No, I don't. Not this time, at least."

It was a sliver of salvation to not comprehend all the vast wickedness of the heart. Sondra had observed enough motives, but she could not pass the hurdle of having them make sense. Action and reaction seemed disproportionate.

Sondra exhaled heavily, it looked like she was expelling smoke, and her shoulders slumped.
Which part of her would win? Some flicker of Konti still remained, wanting to believe in redemption, but it was tangled by the pessimism of experience. The impulses walked hand in hand for now, neither able to overwhelm the other.

"At least you look penitent. Unlike that man at the tavern. He thought what he did was natural," she almost snarled at the thought.

She began to gather fresh looking snow, piling it in the large mixing bowl.

"We'll have tea," she announced with a strange stubbornness, "And you can talk all you like."

Sondra stood, the bowl tucked under her arm.
"But you'll humor me on some points."

The Konti opened the door and poured the snow into a cauldron suspended on a spit across the hearth.

Sondra pointed to the bed, "Be so kind as to put everything shiny and sharp there. I'll know if you don't."
She actually wouldn't, but the threat seemed to work more often than not. As Calovan complied (or didn't), Sondra moved the chair across the room placing its back against the opposite wall.
"Do sit there."

Taking her place near the hearth, Sondra stoked the fire with a poker. If Calovan tried anything, she'd have decent warning.

[Calovan]

Calovan nodded and went over to the bed. Removing his robe, he revealed that his bare skin had a large, intricate and inter-woven series of blackened scars that extended from his palms all the way to his collarbone and to the soles of his feet. Most of the symbols were indecipherable, but the one on his chest was clearly intended to be a sort of shrine to the Goddess Caiyha. Other than that, unless one knew about ancient symbology, his makeshift "tattoos" couldn't be discerned from simple artistry.

Unfastening the strip of leather around his arm, he took his dagger and the sheath for it and laid it on the bed. After that, he gently toyed with his necklace before untying it and showing its real purpose. The length of the rope that made up the necklace was about a foot and a half long, and every inch of space was adorned with razor sharp teeth from animals his ancestors had hunted. Lowering his arm, the necklace's bottom tip touched the ground and he stared at it. Once again, his animal nature drove him to be clever and disguise his weapons. The necklace was also a vicious short-whip and garrotte, which he had used on...numerous occasions. On his left upper-arm were five arrows kept in place by another strip of leather- hidden ammunition for the shortbow that he kept underneath his cloak, both of which now lay exposed on the bed. He put the arrows on the bed and nodded. That was every man-made weapon he had on him. He still possessed the tools given to him by nature, like his talon-esque nails and mind-bending eyesight, but he doubted either would be very much help in a fight should Sondra become ill-tempered regarding him.

Still clothed, but only barely, he took the proffered seat and looked her in the eyes. His coal black orbs had all the warmth of a spent bonfire, and his expression, or lack thereof, belied his troubled nature underneath his facade.
"Whatever I tell you, know that it is only out of necessity that I acted."

[Sondra]

Sondra watched a veritable arsenal gather on her bed, equating to about ten pounds extra weight.
Whenever she looked at weapons she always briefly wondered what it would feel like to be on the wrong end of them. Calovan's homemade cat of nine-tails put her teeth on edge.

Her visitor was behaving himself, further complicating her picture of him. She recalled something little Vera had said to her: every paragon has a past and every sinner a future. The saying consoled Sondra at times, though she wondered about its veracity.

Calovan's skin was illustrated in meandering black figures, making him all the more alien. Sondra made a brief attempt to interpret them before recognizing them as a personal ciphers.

Perching at the edge of the hearth, Sondra awaited his explanation. Holding still, she began to feel the little chips and pains previously overwhelmed by the tyranny of the instant. Time would mend them.

"Necessity?" Sondra's eyebrows went up, "Yes, Grandma did strike me as a real threat."
The scrapper was showing herself to have her own moral toughness regarding certain issues.
"But I'll play. Elaborate."

[Calovan]

Her words stung like hornets, but he didn't let it show on his face. Instead, he bore them with dignity and composed himself before speaking again. He'd need all of his self-control and personal restraint to keep from lashing out at her should she mock him one too many times.

"Have you ever been hungry, K'Sondra?" He addressed her by the proper name, as referring to her simply as "Sondra" implied that he was familiar with her when he was already on thin ice with her.
"I mean truly hungry. Not that hunger that comes from not eating breakfast, but that which arises when one is incapable of finding enough sustenance for months on end. Do you know what happens to a creature when it is starving? It becomes delusional. It hallucinates, it suffers. I was starving to death, K'Sondra, because as a boy, the other huntsmen in the area were gluttons and kept everything to themselves, save for the marrow in the bones of their kills. I lived off of their garbage for what seemed an eternity, and then... winter came."
He shuddered, still remembering the horrid season that he had nearly died.
"The animals had left Kalea for warmer climates, and the merchants had all but stopped traveling the mountain roads near which I lived. Desperation took hold of me, and it was only when I was on the brink of insanity that I came across those people... Necessity makes monsters of us all, K'Sondra. I will never apologize for what I have done, as words hold so little meaning. I will not disgrace the spirits of the dead with meaningless requiems or prayers, but I will strive to fix that which I have made wrong. I have sought atonement for my actions for over a decade, and I have never confessed my sin to any other living being. What will you do, now that you know of the horrors I have wrought? Will you inform the Knights, and have them take me away, never able to see the light of day again? Or will you remain silent, and allow me to gain forgiveness for my crimes?"