[flashback] sound and fury. (duvalyon)

[Dor]

Timestamp: Summer 507 AV I do not know what day it is, or even the hour. Daylight spills through the open window, turning the clovers spreading over the blankets to a lovely hue to sting the eyes with beauty. My eyes squint against the brightness and slowly, testing the limitations of my body, I shift up and feel ghost pulls of pain from thinly wrapped arms, feel other aches, bruises that have nothing to do with the skin, bleeding that has little to do with vessels and veins. My physician sleeps, curled up in the chair beside my bed and I look uncomprehending at the garden that has flourished within this room. A tilt of my head and leaves crumble down. I watch them fall, floating through dust motes to come to rest on my pillow. I'm in the serpent’s lair. It is a haunted house of memory for me, this bedroom I shared for so brief a while with my wife. One week, to be exact, on the return from the front. This was the room they chose to make my prison? I wonder. It was cruelly chosen, if so, and wisely. So wisely. There are moth wings of memories against my cheeks, the kisses of children, and sea drops of my sister’s tears on the backs of my hands. Faces blur. My feet find the floor and everything protests. I catch myself against the edge of the mattress, careful with my breathing. I do not wish to wake the physician. I do not want to wake the serpents. I want to wake nothing in this enchanted room that feels as though it sleeps as I slept, all the hums of day to day life so very distant as if echoes of longing in a bard's mournful song. The dark is still inside of me. The tides still washing up against the rich soiled shore, receding and taking pieces of me with it as it goes to swirl, swirl and be sucked down into the giant's blood of the great depths where there are creatures with neon eyes who have lived forever and never known the light of day. I've known it. It is on me now but it feels so far, so very far. Slowly, carefully, I shift, I move. One foot before the other and, there, I see my gauntlets. Scarred, battered things. They hold the marks of a lifetime and I am yet young, or I was. I can hardly recall. I sink my back against the wall by the table, breeches hanging from my hips, soft cloth, shirt unlaced and wrinkled from the bed. I should reek of sweat and blood and wasting. Instead I smell like flowers, like green things and fresh cut pine. Verdant earth and summer skies. I inhale and try to work the first gauntlet on. It doesn't want to fit over the muslin, but it hangs loose, untied. At least it is back to being a part of me. Breath caught, stolen, I stumble and creep towards the door. The entire room spins and I have to catch myself against the door frame, one gauntlet still trying to be worked on and it is there that I catch my reflection in the polished mirror of the sitting room. I don't recognize myself. The self I see there does not belong in this place. Pallor lays against this self's skin, the skin itself stretched too tight across the razor bones and noble plains of a face that has, in this doing, been rendered so blatantly my lineage. Deep shadow score beneath my eyes and my cheeks are hollow, my eyes dark and glittering like the distant lights of a ship lost in the fog at sea. I look like half of myself, but I can see there is still beauty. The beauty of the distilled, the stark and the honed down. Hunted. I shudder and move on. I do not know how I made it into the corridor. There must have been people I passed, maybe someone in the sitting room, certainly either or both jailers or ordermen at the outer door. I am not entirely certain why they did not stop me, why no one grabbed me, urged me back to bed; or maybe they tried. Maybe they spoke words that I did not hear, maybe they stepped in my path and I walked right through them, brushed right past. Or maybe there was no one there at all. Maybe it was all my imaginings that I was not completely alone on this empty shore, one foot planted in the sandy earth and the other being washed by the waves. Maybe I was dreaming. The thunder of hooves filled my head and a wolf howled at the tree line. I could feel the adhesive of the flattened needle's end against my fingertip and the cold of iron in my hand. My kelvic wife’s lips whispered past mine and I whispered one word, one word I don't think I ever actually uttered. Mercy. And a baby's cry split the night with a rush of feathered wings. I did not stop, my feet could not fail me now, and I kept trying to fit the second gauntlet onto my arm. It wasn't far. Of course it wasn't far. The study that had belonged to the man I once was, right around the corner. Green man. Green blood. Brought to dust, risen from dust. But brought to dust first. Then I was there, standing in front of the window I had flown out of as if I had wings like my wife had. It was fixed now, of course, but I could still feel the jagged edges of glass ripping into my skin, the feel of Wesley’s surcoat in my fist as I jerked him back and out, with me. The shatter had been so loud, the sound of wind in my ears; and I had run. I have not stopped running since. It is there I sag, breath and strength lost again, against that window sill. An elbow hits it and I sink slowly, letting my back slide down the wall as blood once did, listening to the shouts of friends, the screams of family and the song of steel. It was all the past. It was the breaking. The shattering and the sundering. It lives in me. I close my eyes, fingers going still on the laces of the gauntlet I still could not fit over the bandaging. Mercy. I hear the tide, the hooves and the shadows of wings quieting the forests. I feel the forest beat inside of me and mourn the loss of wife and child I now will never know and feel the stir of my hair as another slender, tiny vine tries to sprout, spreading up the wall, against the window my entire life once fell out of. - - - Every morning, without fail, he asked of his guards when they opened the door for his breakfast to be brought in, "May I go outside?" Every morning, without fail, he was not allowed to go. Seven months it had been according to Rahel. She visited him as often as was allowed, but it was not nearly enough and never could a true conversation be had. Of late, it had disintegrated into his silence and her words, telling of bright things, green things, and ultimately lost things as she tried to draw him out, tried to uplift him. She would sit in a chair while he sat before the hearth, his favorite spot, and she would play with one of the blooms that had grown and sprouted through the room and sometimes he would give her a posy or a bouquet and others he did not want her to touch them. They grew here in darkness, in chill candlelight, with nothing but the far away sound of winter's wind to keep them company and his touch, of course, his unceasing presence. It disturbed the guards, but he did not care. He was not telling the plants to grow, they just did. Every day, he did endless amounts of sit ups and push-ups. He was trying to stay in shape, and failing, an endless game of failure every day because there was no replacement for fresh air and sunlight, no replacement for the practice field and real weapons in hand. Today was a bad day. The months had hollowed him, hardened him. He didn't know his eyes had seemed to take over his face, skin growing paler and paler with the lack of sunlight until the shadows of his bones could be seen beneath. Dangerous, was what he looked, and magical. Blazing, as in blazing out while winter howled, all of him vanishing towards shielding and nothing replacing what he was losing. He wanted to go outside. He needed to go outside. He had to, had to go outside. It was sharp pain driving through his temples, like icicles stabbing through weakened armor. It was impossible to get warm, but in his gravitating towards the hearth formed the madcap plan. Within minutes, all of the sheets and blankets and pillows on his bed were piled in the middle of the room and smoldering, leaping to flame. Smoke began to fill the room as the fire spread across the rug, towards the stripped bed, and he backed up to the wall beside the door, covering his mouth and nose with a strip of cloth dampened in his wash basin. He waited, shivering despite the increasingly destructive heat, and dreamed of sunlight. - - - The winter wind beat battered fists of frost against the weathered walls. From a distance, the light in the windows seemed like stars or serpent eyes, golden and gleaming, filled with fire yet far away as heaven. Snow piled high, icicles chiming from barren branches, as the night sighed a lullaby to all children, dark and bright. Within it would be warm, food plentiful and secrets sprouting. It was the season’s sanctuary for the order, clandestine markers left in forgotten crossroads, half phrased answers to the riddles you had to already know dropped in ears of barge men and inn keepers. Shattered pieces scattered, dropped in seeming disarray so as to never appear whole again. He had found them, followed them like bread crumbs through three long months of travel between earth and sky; and now he stood in the shadow of a sentinel pine, the reins of the mount he'd won at a hanged man's tree from a poacher with a family caught in a hand bound by a fingerless glove. He stood there for a long time, solitary, and realized he knew no other way to be. Forgotten, maybe, company along with trust, warmth along with heart's ease. A lack of pain, that he had forgotten too. He frowned from the shadow of his hood, the dark of a five o'clock shadow marking his cheeks, his jaw; and he watched the smoke rise, twisting towards the sky as the wind softened, letting the snow float daintily down rather that slap sharp and sideways. At least it was warm enough to snow, he thought, and knew to be grateful for that. It had been nearly four years, and that seemed remarkable to him. It meant he was five and twenty, father of nine, one fallen of whom he knew and long mourned. It was a constant shock that he was only that old. It seemed too young, the age of his bones, in comparison to the aging of his soul, born already ancient as cycle. While he stood, while he watched and admitted to himself was bracing himself, truly, he thought not of those whom he might soon see, but rather of those he knew he never would again. Hope, he had learned, was a very dangerous thing; and so he horded it, horded both hope and sanity, for the times he needed them most. There in the cold and the starlight, he could feel them, lingering with him, loitering though they had long passed into the Ukalas through Dira’s gate and back out again, waiting to see, waiting to learn, with him, always with him, forever guarding as they had so died. Holding their memories close to his heart, afraid to hold those whose fate he did not know, he finally made his way limping down through the snow, not first for the house but rather the stables, empty yet warm, hushed with the wickers of horses, to unsaddle his own. Now that he had finally found them, now that they were at last within reach, he found that he needed, amazingly, just a little more time. So he took his time brushing the sweet mare down, filling her trough with hot gruel and selecting an especially thick blanket to toss over her back. There was nothing left to use as delay, so he tucked his hands deep into the pockets of his ragged split coat, hunched up his shoulders and ducked his chin into the turned up collar and made his way like the ghost he was across the yard to the door. A part of him knew he could just walk in, that this was his place, his people, his order; but another part of him had his hand rising to knock, to listen while all within fell silent, surprised. A knock in the new night, at the end of a blizzard just died, at a place kept both secret and safe. He listened to the soft creak of footsteps, the low murmur of voices picking back up, and then the sliding of a bolt. He sucked in his breath. - - - Far, far away, as far as far could see and in a year lost, deep in the permanent gloom of a subterranean city, Liet Hardai finally understood that her husband and her world believed her dead. She began to dream instead for her children’s escape so that they might know what it was to stand beneath summer skies.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

…Patients will often protest to this method but do not let them. When using maggots to treat the contamination of flesh, it is preferable to breed one’s one strain to avoid the spread of contagions the insect may carry. Now, the particulars of keeping a good strain… good strain… particulars… Duvalyon’s tired head bobbed into the precious pile of wadj paper as his arms began to spread across the desk. Sleep was a tide pulling his head down towards the deeper murk. The urge had slid in and settled without address or argument. His sliding elbow knocked an opalgloam stone to the ground. Its sudden crack on the hard floor jerked him away. The Symenestra opened his eyes wide several times and leaned back in his chair. What bell was it? They all merged together in sunless Kalinor. His medic schedule did little to alleviate the confusion. Gods, Duvalyon looked around his home, I used to keep an orderly space. Another casualty of his pursuits and Old Hellebore’s exacting nature. Over were the dinners, the books, the wine and the leisure to talk to fair faces. He knew he enjoyed these trite vices and vanities, but he was surprised by how much he missed them. He missed sleeping too, but that was a lesser concern. What was he reading about? He reordered the papers. Oh yes, maggots. Charming. He recalled the first time he’d seen this method used. It was a surrogate who had tried to escape and killed an Ochya in the process. This turned the surrogate into a wash instead of a boon. The taking of her arms at the elbow had been sloppily done giving way to infection. By the time they were using maggots any protest had been bled from her. Even Duv recognized it as a nasty business. A robust surrogate was always preferable but the other harvesting fools would get them too headstrong. You wanted one with innate cowardice, even a touch of melancholy. Easiest to manipulate. “Duv?” He almost shouted for surprise at the sound, but his sister just laughed at his startle and subsequent look of annoyance. “Knock, Melia. What if I was in the middle of something?” “I did. How could you not hear me, Duvy?” she smiled, “You’re a bit thick for this hour. It’s mid-morning.” “Only boring people are brilliant in the morning --- what in Mizahar is that?” Duvalyon suddenly saw the thing cradled in Semelia’s hands between folds of silk: a small bird covered in gray down, its pale bumpy flesh showing through the scant fluff. “It’s hideous,” he flatly observed. “Duv! You’re terrible,” she chided. He stood and began to walk about the room, looking for something to serve his sister. “Why did you bring it? If that’s breakfast, I think I will pass.” “No, it’s not breakfast,” her voice shed some of its silvery buoyancy. “Duvalyon,” He froze mid gesture and turned. She never used his full name unless things were dire or he had done something especially cruel. “Father was going to kill it. He said we shouldn’t waste resources feeding it.” The explanation started pouring out faster. “I came to the place of purging for some more of my medicine and he had it on the floor. The surrogate that arrived here with child—“ Duavlyon sniffed a laugh, how stupid that harvester had looked. “This is her child,” she finished solemnly. “I assume a Kelvic unless we’ve degraded to harvesting birds,” Duvalyon dryly observed. Semelia nodded. “Father put a cuff on its leg so it can’t change.” “For the best, they are nothing but animals in either guise. Happy to just eat and make offal.” “If that’s so, then it should be easy to take care of.” Damn. She had caught him. “What do you mean?” he asked slowly, knowing full well what she was getting at, but hoping he was wrong. “Father wants it dead, doesn’t he?” Semelia nodded, “But it doesn’t seem right before Viratas. Letting it live will not harm us.” She looked at the baby bird intently, “It should be saved. This is more than just a bird.” Her gaze lifted to Duvalyon and he felt his resolve begin to weaken as he looked at her compassionate face. “Please, Duvalyon. Father won’t let it be in our nest. He doesn’t trust it.” She lifted the sour looking glob of gray closer to his face. “You always wanted a pet.” “I wanted a hunting hound, not an irritable chicken.” “Please, for me.” He sighed and pointed to a shelf carved into the wall. “There,” he finally croaked. His sister began her raptures but he was already dead to them. Another stupid indulgence, things would be much less complicated if he didn’t love anything.

[Dor]

It had been well over a week since Duvalyon removed the cuff around the leg of the eyas. Far more weeks than that had come and gone, taking the flimsy straggles of nestling feathers with them and allowing time to sleek out dark patterns of color in sleeker form and ruffle constantly shedding fluffs of down. It almost made the ugly little creature cute. Almost. The entirety of the baby bird's life thus far had been spent within the curving, silken walls of the physician's home. It had been explored with awkward, hopping steps and waddling scurries in full circumference. Once she had tumbled off the soft indention woven in with the wall that acted as a makeshift nest and for about half a heartbeat flown. Fortunately, the floor had been soft when she had thunked down to it. Anything that was left on the floor fell to the mercy of the eyas, curiosity too bright for her to leave much of anything alone for long. Books, chair legs, satchels and shoes were all ultimately pecked over and explored and she seemed to take particular pleasure out of wriggling into Duvalyon's shoes and leaving bits and pieces of down feathers inevitably behind. The larger world was an unknown entity as out the roof-side door she had never ventured, not yet having quite learned to fly and her reluctant caretaker not being too inclined to cart her about with him. Perhaps it came then as no surprise when, though the cuff about her leg was removed, the bird failed to be anything but a bird. As a kelvic, she had to possess the ability to transform into human shape; but either she was lazy or simply could not figure it out. Finally there came an evening when Duvalyon returned from work to find a little girl appearing roughly six in human years sitting bare assed naked on the floor. One of his medical books was open in front of her in display of some exceptional illustration work on biological diagramming. Upon his arrival, the girl looked up from her perusing of the pretty pictures to peer with a falcon's lightless eyes through tangles of murder colored hair. After a beat, she dimpled at him.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

As Duvalyon looked at the pink creature on his floor, it was entirely apparent that although he dealt with children on a daily basis, he was completely unprepared for this. Despite the momentous aspect of the occasion, all he saw was clammy little fingers hovering over his precious (and borrowed) tome. It made his blood shudder. "Don't touch, Dor," there was latent hypnotism in the phrase. He spoke common to her, only reverting to Symenos when overwhelmed. As of now she was well versed in Symenos swears and even endearments. The divide enabled him to keep her somewhat oblivious. However, he suspected she picked up some of his mother tongue despite. Kneeling down, he kept his burgundy eyes glued on her while slowly reaching for the book. Once his clawed hands touched it, the book was hastily shut and set on the table. Ah yes, the table, now scratched and dented by eager little claws and beak. He knew the pet was going to be a pain, he had just failed to gauge the scope of that pain. It required special food (tiny rodents, fish, lizards) and preferred them skinned. It made noise at all hours and teared things to tatters in its curiosity. All things considered, he should have known it was a female. Duvalyon turned to look at the child, trying to adjust to the situation. First order of business: clothes. Without saying much he unlocked his chest of personal belongings and fished out a silky tunic. There had been a time when Melia was small and he had helped keep her out from being underfoot. His father had little patience for a spindly girl with a weak constitution. How did this process go then? "Arms up." He helped Dor's hands where they slowed and pulled the tunic over her head. The horrific tangle of red hair confronted him. That was going to require his sister and her braiding capabilities. As he looked at her dimpled face, he couldn't help but say, "Hello, Dor. I'm Duvalyon, your...." The Symenestra had to think about this one. "Keeper."

[Dor]

Don’t touch, he said and her hand had drawn back from the book as if from fire. Dimples temporarily disappeared, but they crept their accidentally adorable way back into place when Duvalyon approached with the tunic. Haste left her bouncing to her feet and shooting the book – now on the scarred desk – a only somewhat sly look. “Up,” she echoed him, her first word thus achingly poignant and appropriately muffled as the tunic was drawn over her head. Small hands clutched at the smooth fabric of the tunic, bunching it up to draw away from her skin then release, bunch and draw again, then release and so on in a baffled motion while she stared with clear fascination at Duvalyon. Though she had no way of knowing it, her mother had named her in full, granting her all the names of her lineage; but they had been slimmed down to Dor, far more appropriate a name for a pet. "Duv," she promptly shortened his name while beaming up at him. Dark eyes widened as if she was surprised by the sound of her own voice framing his name. Names granted power. It was something she already understood. "Hello. What are the things in the book?" She meant the written words. Probably.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

"Dew-val-yawn," he corrected, "No one calls me 'Duv' except my sister and mother." They actually called him 'Duvy' more often than not, but he wasn't going to give her that idiotic abbreviation. Duvalyon settled back on his haunches and just stared bemusedly at Dor. It was unnerving to have a pet answer back and unpleasant to have a muddled humanity attached to it. Where before he didn't much care what the bird saw or heard, this girl-thing was different. He was a monster by human standards, but he wasn't one by Symenestran standards. There had to be some measure of discretion with this thing. No illustrations of dead bodies splayed open. He finally spoke, his usually crisp tone faltering. "Those are words and pictures of humans. Mostly. The words are made up of letters that equal sounds." The Symenestra sighed, annoyed at the lack of depth he was providing. "It's complicated, Dor." Rolling his eyes, he gave way to an unspoken request. "Don't move one feather," he warned. And Duvalyon was off, scaling the wall towards the highest shelf. From high above, he dropped a memento from years past, one of Semelia's illustrated "books". With the scarcity of actual literature, aspiring artists would fill journals with pictures and stories. There was no particular quality to them, but it was good enough to pay for and good enough to entertain a child. This one had always amused Semelia as the images were of human children. She thought them rosy, round and quaint. Duvalyon crept back down, an unsettling sight if not accustomed to Symenestra locomotion. "Right then, while I'm away, I might as well leave you a way to entertain yourself that does not include pissing on the floor." He reminded himself to revisit the concept of a chamberpot with her later. Duvalyon sat on the fabric filled floor beside the book and opened it gingerly with a claw. He thumped the ground to show where he wanted Dor to sit. He read one page, an inane bit of common fully illustrated. "B," he pointed to the letterTechnically common isn't english, but bear with me , "As in bird." He flipped a few more pages covering 'G', girl, and 'S', spiders (a personal favorite). While Duvalyon did not prove the most sympathetic teacher, he did prove a consistent one in the time to follow. He also turned out to be rather particular about certain rules. Dor was given the freedom to venture into the main cavern as a falcon for limited times, but any further was forbidden. Clothes were a bit of an argument. Why wear them if she wasn't cold? Because it's civilized... and little girl-birds who didn't wear them died painful deaths in the black gorges of the cavern. (This was a frequent answer to many of her questions.) Also, "Human" Dor was banished from sight when all but Melia visted. The first time Dor asked why she needed to hide from other Symenestra, Duvalyon grew particularly irritated and pinched her for her impudence. Afterward he was in a black mood for days.

[Dor]

"Duv," sounded the terrified gasp. "Duvduvduv." There were clutching hands shaking him out of sleep and the scent of fear unfamiliar when keyed as it was now to the ever undaunted peregrine. Nothing, in fact, seemed to scare her; but then she lived a strangely sheltered existence beneath Duvalyon’s auspices. The occasional threat of little girl birds being tossed to the monsters living in the black gorges at the most fallen bottoms of Kalinor would subdue her for a time, only the power of that too had begun to fade as evidenced the last time the Symenestra physician had claimed to not have time to help her read. Dor had looked her keeper dead in the eye and flatly claimed having heard unhelpful spiders were sometimes thrown into the cavernous abyss. Duvalyon had stared dumbstruck at her for a long minute, just about as long as it took the giggles trapped precariously behind her teeth to make good their escape. Finally, the physician had chuckled and shook his head, causing Dor’s heart to surge. What spared Duvalyon from having to deal with an endlessly unruly and feral child was Dor’s consistent need to please him. It was when she grew distracted, bored or excited that she failed and broke rules, bent boundaries and generally acted like a cross between an interminably curious bird and a brightly energetic child. Reprimands, however, made her instantly contrite. She never initiated a hug because he did not invite touch. Thus, she had never been hugged. She called him Duvalyon because she had been specifically instructed. Thus, she never felt the shape of an endearment in her mouth. She never conversed with anyone save for sometimes his sister because his firmest rules ultimately prevented it. Thus, she learned to be wary of everyone and the construct of her character was sewn from the material of her and Duvalyon’s relationship. She never wandered. She never strayed. Until now. Duvalyon had given her books and patience with learning. The gift was insidious, a drop of knowledge spreading to ultimately corrupt the silken borders of safe ignorance. It left her listening when perched on a stall in the Orchard Market, hearing things of foreign cities and up, up, up where there were things called skies and sun and they were illuminate. Words like harvest and surrogate and poison were learned in the same manner. Now she was returned from a flight, the elflit eruption of her transformation from speckled falcon youth to girl on the cusp of flowering crackling and abrupt. It had her thudding to the floor, scrambling until she was reaching for where Duvalyon slept with heart racing too hard. “Duv, wake up. Duv, please. Duvduvduv,” she begged with an alien tremor to her words as well as her form.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Slumber was a rare state for Duvalyon, so he cherished its arrival. Dor's first urgings were met with a clumsy hand batting her away. "Not now, Dor. Keeper's very tired..." Was it another question? Viratas... he didn't want her stupid but how could one very busy and rather run-down Symenestra explain the world in a matter of months? He'd forgotten how much shyke one learned during childhood. It was hard enough making sure no one caught on to his pet's unique ability to transform into a ready made surrogate. On the second plea, the note of panic finally reached his ears. He sat up in his nook and pushed the curtains aside. The more upset Dor became, the calmer Duvalyon grew. It was a habit ingrained by the Place of Purging. Surrogates there had a tendency to get out of hand, and dumb panic could cost you. Placing his hands on what was becoming Dor's shoulders, he steadied her and looked at her dead on. "What is it, Dor?"

[Dor]

"Up," she said. Those black, black eyes were glassy as they hooked upon him, breath rushing out of her when familiar, clawed hands settled on the slope of her shoulders. "Up, up, up," she repeated in a gulping rush. Porcelain hands reached, grasping and sliding over the bones of his wrist as she leaned in. Clots of eternally tangled hair drifted forward, framing a face that was caught in a scattered, rippling expression of dividing fear. It was potentially more alarming to Duvalyon who had the unfortunate and singular ability to recognize that such an emotion had never before conquered her. "I was flying," she said, still grappling. Given the allowance of scarce minutes, she would end up huddling in his bed. "Down. Downdowndown. Past the gloams, where there's only black and I lost.. I couldn't tell.. Duv. Duv. I didn't know which way was up. Towards the sky. I couldn't.." Breath came short and she attempted to swallow it, choke back down the ambush of panic that had chased her finally, finally back home to him. Up, she said, and sky; as if she even knew the meaning of the latter word or had the scope to appreciate at all the finer, underlying evidence all of this presented as to damages wrought upon her soul.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Duvalyon's expression move from dumb surprise into bridled anger. His voice was even, but the tell-tale sign of his fangs said otherwise. "You went where?" The last word was venom and lead. As Dor crept into his bed, he was too distracted by her first offense to do anything about this second impropriety. "Boundaries, Dor. I place them, you follow them, that is the system." And it had worked up to this point. She cowed under pressure and he kept her controlled with no more than threats. It wasn't easy but it wasn't impossible. Now he had collected himself a fraction to create distance. A new shade of annoyance flickered across his brow as he hastily got out of the bed, leaving Dor alone in his previously forbidden personal space. "I'm sensing a theme in your behavior today," he muttered darkly. Duvalyon began to slowly pace, now she'd done it. This was agitation. The only further step was yelling. She'd seen him do it once, but not at her. It was at the older one that looked like Duvalyon. The argument had started shortly after Dor came in from the dark, startling the elder Symenestra. He seemed upset by her presence for some reason. Duvalyon had physically thrown Dor out before she could watch the conclusion. When she returned, Duvalyon was in his studies, looking as worn as the table he leaned against. No, Duvalyon didn't yell, he glowered and gave cold proclamations. Many would prefer an open loss of temper. "Sky, Dor?" he had noticed the word, "You shouldn't be finding that for a while yet." The Symenestra stopped to conclude his thoughts. "Keep out of the gorge. Today was a mercy. There are worse things than drowning in the dark." He took a step closer, his burgundy eyes like coals. "Do you understand?"