Crossing the Sun (Dor)

[Haeli]

Kelvic.

Kelvic.

Kelvic.

Natural but not. Person but not. Bird but not. Haeli thought the girl was a morpher. She just thought she had a different style, like Brig had, but different attitude. Had Haeli ever used Nura on Brig, the shock would have been similar. Tampered with. Unnatural. Conflicted. Slave. Slave. Slave. Haeli had no knowledge of what one was before she touched Dor. Dor hadn't really spoken to her, not as a response, not as an individual. But the entirety of the kelvicness in her rose up and screamed to Haeli's being about who and what she was - her kind, her essence, her purpose - and shocked the witch to the core.

Caiyha had no hand in these creatures. There were bits and pieces of her in them, but their true essence was something else. Haeli wanted to shriek with the pain of the desire to search she felt bone deep and to her core. A face came to mind, not Dor's, but a female face lost to time and space somewhere off world in a way that Haeli barely understood. The whole core of Dor's nature, beyond searching for a bondmate (which was something Haeli understood since she'd bonded with Brig) was designed around the search for a woman someone was conducting somewhere... even still. The whole of the kelvic she touched was atuned to this, so even if she bonded, the restlessness would always be there. Hunt. Seek. Retrieve.

Love lost. Haeli knew so little about love, especially sibling love, but Dor knew a whole lot about it even if she herself didn't realize it. Even while Dor was busy protecting her identity, Haeli was busy reading her blood and her soul, something probably even the kelvic was unaware of.

When Dor pulled away, Haeli was relieved. She curled her hands up and looked closer at Dor, almost apologetically. She would touch Brig with Nura. Definitely. Next time she came home so she would know if it was just Dor so deeply programed or if it was all of the kelvics.

The thought made Haeli shudder. No choice. No will. Nothing but ownership and purpose. Tools were built for a purpose for people to use by people. Animals, creatures like Dor, should not be built like she had been. Haeli wanted to weep. She wanted to reach out and break the ties that bound Dor to what she was and reconnect her to Caiyha as she was meant to be. But the witch was only a young girl, unskilled, and there was nothing she could do to right an entire cultural wrong carried out by someone who was definitely not a God. When it came to Gods and Goddesses', things flowed. When it came to men, things jerked along unnaturally.

Haeli wanted to vomit. She dragged in deep breaths, blinked back the tears in her eyes only after a few flowed free, and stammered.

"I'm ... sorry. I didn't know. I didn't understand what a kelvic was... I've never touched one with Nura." It was all she could manage, but she was sorry nonetheless. And she was glad, at the same time, she hadn't been born with a kelvic burden. Humans were free. Haeli could decide. Haeli could make choices. Dor...

Haeli wanted to reach out, offer her comfort, tell her it was going to be alright. But the witch wasn't so sure. She needed time to understand what she felt, what she knew, and to let Dor calm if she was going too. Instead, she dropped her head and began to pray to Caiyha, willing her to show her what was the right way to proceed and what she could do, if anything, to help.

[Dor]

A jigsaw piece of bark scraped off beneath the scramble of a bare foot. Dor had fumbled sideways, knocking loose glossy leaves beginning to green with summer's bright beckon. Goosebumps rippled over pale, pale skin even as her spine straightened against the stronger backbone of the tree cradling her. She sank once this broader roost was obtained, folding in on herself as one might imagine the wrapping of wings. Arms snaked about up-drawn knees and teacup shoulders hunched as she pressed her cheek against the bark. There, from the corners of her eyes, she watched Haeli below. Stricken silent in the aftermath of divinely aided communication, she huddled and seemed afraid. Fear was not an emotion often detected from her, it requiring a typically more insightful soul than those she stumbled across. Yet it soured the air now, her fear, weighing her tongue in her mouth and rubbing fingertips across the dull shine of a silver pendant dangling between the swell of her breasts. It was far, far longer than was polite that she spoke, husky voice soft with words like footsteps tip-toeing over ice. "What is a kelvic then?" She asked, waiting warily to be dropped into the chill waters of killing truths below. Love and brutal truths were both things she knew too much about even if she did not always possess the capacity to recognize it. Only Haeli had touched her, had peeled away a layer of the world to increase nature's volume and immediately thereafter begun to cry. It rattled Dor, pestering a dangerous curiosity. "And what are you sorry for?"

[Haeli]

Haeli winced at the damage Dor did to the tree. She felt its pain as acutely as it was feeling the kelvic's weight. Unnaturalness flowed through Haeli, the feeling Dor gave her when she'd spoken to her through Nura still lingered. A true falcon would have never damaged a tree with the carelessness of borrowed human feet. A sadness filled Haeli, replacing the feeling of something being horribly 'off' about the kelvic. She wasn't in touch with her world. Lost. Part of neither humanity or the wild, they were fringe walkers in all things. Haeli was almost loathe to touch her again, to speak to her, to even be in her presence. But she understood now, at least a little, what their servitude was about.

It would take some getting used too.

Haeli scurried down the tree, gathered mud in her hands, and crawled back gently into its arms packing the scarred back with mud to shield the exposed flesh below from insect attack with a quietly whispered apology to the tree. She left Dor's question unanswered for a time, not sure how to speak what was in her heart or if she even should.

"What's a kelvic? That's like asking what is the sky or the mountains or even what this tree is. There's nothing that will define it right and true. I'm sorry Dor... I can't answer that. Not really." No, not ever, at least not to her or any other kelvic out there ever. Some things are best kept in the heart. This was one of them. Haeli had never used words to wound and she wouldn't now nor ever.

"I'm sorry for touching you... for using a language you knew nothing about. I didn't mean to scare you. You seem frightened. It won't happen again." The girl said, glancing away and across the little valley they were on the edge of. By Caiyha she missed the swamp. Everything there had its place. There was order and purpose to every action and reaction. Here, nothing made sense to her.

Haeli shook her head then offered Dor a smile.

[Dor]

The whole of Dor's origins was woven of half truths and lies. The unveiling of them had resulted in a conflagration that lit the black of Kalinor in the color of blood. It was but one part of her nature that had been manipulated, corrupted, tangled and knotted out of one shape and into another. It had left her shrewd, far more shrewd in such matters than others of her kind were like to be; but then a bird's curiosity constituted suspicion in some forms. Today fear felt thin and cold in her chest. "Then why did you cry?" She demanded. "Did it hurt? Are you hurt?" Worry shot through that last question as the possibility of pain was realized. She did not move, however. Not yet. It was a protective huddle that held her, frowning in the face of that sunlit smile. "I didn't mean to hurt the tree," and that was awful, wasn't it? It was also what had her uncurling degree by degree, feeling no longer worthy to use the tree for shelter and roost now that she had caused it harm. "Is your Caiyha mad at me now?" What are you not telling me? What is the world keeping from me again? What? What? What? Those questions were all too often the source of her multitudes.

[Elysium]

Character: Haeli
XP:
Flying +2
Morphing +2
Socialization +3
Observation +3

Lores:
Studying vs. Stalking
Meeting an Equal
What is a Slave?
Dor the Lonely Falcon
Kelvic are not of Caiyha

★

Character: Dor
XP:
Observation +1
Flying +2
Socialization +3

Lores:
Haeli is Not-an-Egret
Lore of Caiyha
Lhavit: The Gilded Cage
Tree Roots are Veins
What is a Kelvic?

Other: I enjoyed the read; the imagery was quite vivid. Very nice job, ladies.


and so, the journey continues...