Best of Coincidence [Issima]

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"I can't imagine but you would age well yourself," he said, head almost ducking with adolescent shyness, but not quite. His was young, but not of tender years. Life had hardened parts of him that some of the softer parts might remain protected. He wasn't a carefree young man, but he wasn't solid through and through. His soul had grown armor. "I think perhaps Menali would want to wait, remain a girl for a few years... I can see why a young woman would want that." But there was a note of longing in his voice all the same. The life of a Watchman was fraught with peril, and if he died, so too would the dreams of his pavilion without an heir to carry on. "It just hasn't gone well," he admitted, "finding a wife. Perhaps my time away has made me unsuitable..." There was the falter of doubt in his voice now, his dark eyes shadowed. "Not Drykas enough. Not man enough. Not Ankal material... Potential perhaps, but not realizing itself fast enough. I don't know. I will keep building my pavilion and hopefully a wife will come, and many wives, and children and laughter and sorrow and... life. Again. I would like to be surrounded by life again. The knot of lives interconnected to which I belong."

[Issima]

"You speak as a kind young man who does not know my cousin at all," Issima said with a sideways smile. "She has ideas for names for the first dozen children she longs to give you, Sama'el. I believe Uncle will give her to you soon, if only to give the pavilion reprieve from hearing your praises dust to dawn." There was a definite note of teasing in her voice, though Issima certainly meant it. "You seem so certain of yourself. Of what you want. Perhaps... perhaps it is just the wisdom of Eyris which delays you. Perhaps there is a better plan for you." In the quiet that came after her words, Issima decided that they may have sounded one way when she intended another. "Not that," she interjected softly, "your dreams are wrong. That is not what I mean. But, perhaps you would have married some of the girls who came before, and lost them. Perhaps they would have been barren or ill or terrible cooks," she said, her smile returning. "Just.. perhaps your dreams will come true in a time that is not your own, but better than you'd have imagined." Issima felt like a bit of a hypocrite after giving her little speech, as her own feelings about the future were far more bleak. She felt as if life were pulsing on all around her, but she had been unplugged. She could only sit and watch as people lived that laughter and mourning. And though sometimes she wished to be a part of it again, she mostly wanted to escape. To breathe air in a world that didn't belong to the Drykas. To feel herself, in her own skin, someplace that didn't scream of all that she had lost. Sama'el seemed to be trying so hard to come home, and all she wanted to do was to escape it. "Why are you traveling to Riverfall?" she asked, providing a subtle diversion of discussion in case he wanted to escape the one they'd found themselves in.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

As he listened to her talk, he felt a vague smile taking over his face like a thief in the night. The boy in his arms stirred, then shifted in his arms, trying to find a more comfortable position against a body that had little softness yet. Sam's face was still baby soft, but the baby fat had been boiled off of him by years of hunger and hard riding. Again that smile shifted into an ineffable longing, the gentlest face of a paternal drive. The heat of the summer day and their combined body heat made the little fellow sweat a bit in his sleep, but the damp heat was reminiscent of the comforts of the womb. "One door is closed that another might open," he said, almost dreamily, but at least he had been paying attention to her. The rumble of his voice in his chest made the little one burrow against him all the harder. "In Riverfall... When I traveled there earlier this year, I met several Drykas who have a Sanctuary outside the city of blue men. They raise horses, raptors, and such. I promised to return in the Fall. I hope to trade horses with Kavala Denusk, swap secrets with Riki Stormheart, and possibly trade for a kestrel with Raiha... Building a pavilion bit by bit."

[Issima]

Issima shifted the small rabitt she held, holding him instead in the crook of her other arm. He seemed to be an especially tame little thing, especially if she stroked between his ears as she spoke. His weight was all of nothing, especially when compared with the sleeping child she had handed over to Sama'el. The watchman's tender treatment of her cousin did not go unnoticed. It would please Menali to no end, Issi thought, to know that Sam could be so gentle. There were many different types of fathers among the Drykas. Her own had been the overly kind, indulgent sort. Her uncle had notes of that in him, but he was generally more firm and stern. There were foreboding fathers, too. The kind who only ever spoke in reprimand, and whose hand a child only ever associated with punishment. Issima was pleased to know that, if her intuition was correct, Sama'el would not be one of these fathers. What it mattered to her she could not say, except perhaps that another cousin might find happiness with such a man. However she justified it, Issima liked it. She enjoyed watching him handle a sleeping babe that was essentially of no matter in his life with so much regard. How would he behave, then, if it were his son in his arms? How much love would he give to a smile that matched his own, to silky locks the color of sunshine, like Menali's? That image didn't seem correct in Issi's mind. She imagined that Sam's children would all have darker hair. Hair like sleepy earth, like crumbling bark. Hair like his. Or like her own. Issi, having caused her own self to flush for no reason Sam would be able to recognize, dropped her gaze to the familiar path at her feet. She may have never walked this way precisely before, but she may as well have. It was all interconnected somehow, all a part of the land that belonged to her mother and her father, and their ancestors before them, and so on. "It sounds like a good trip for you. When will you leave?" As much as she may have wanted to interject a we into her last statement, Issima held her tongue. After all, she didn't want to seem desperate. And besides, it sounded so much more appealing when he said it. When they, together, were somehow equated to a unit, and that simple word fell from his lips.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"Early in the Fall," he said. "But I don't know the exact day yet. My life belongs to the Watch for now, and the scheduling of things is rather strange. People get injured and the rotation tightens up to make up for that. I have been sick so I haven't ridden circuit as much as I usually do since earlier this summer. But I have been teaching younglings how to ride and how to fight in the meantime, and walking the Web. That is one more thing I will have going for me. Every Ankal knows enough to tie people and things into the Web, but all my work with the Watch is pushing me farther in that..." He smiled and shrugged one shoulder so as not to rouse the little one. "Is there a day that suits you best?"

[Issima]

"Any day is as good as the next," she replied lightly. In truth, she'd have liked very much to walk the toddler back to his mother and say her goodbyes before nightfall. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate or care for her family. She was blessed in that way. It was something else entirely. A restlessness conceived in sorrow and nurtured on loneliness. "Can I really go with you?" she finally blurted, a bit against her normal restraint to speak so plainly. It just seemed to good to be true, after all. Why should he care that she wished to travel? She was a good rider. She wouldn't hold him back, she expected. But still, another person only made a journey more complicated. Why was he willing? Was he really so kind? "I will have to find a tent," she tacked on, musing aloud at that point. "But Aponi and I can keep up. And I can cook. Good things," she promised, selling her point, her hopes.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

He almost laughed, but kept it reined in because she looked so serious, so hopeful. She and Ronan and some others he had met seemed so excited by the idea of leaving, and certainly he understood the joy of freedom, but he had worked so long and so hard to return that he couldn't quite understand what drove people to leave. Even Eldon, whose loss was obvious, had gone followed by Sam's confusion. To lose a father is terrible, but part of life. He would not find his father in Syliras. "You can really come with me," he assured her. "Riverfall won't be far once Fall comes, but it's a whole different world so close to us. You'll have to stay close and perhaps pretend to be my sister or my betrothed so nobody thinks to make you a Nakivak, but we could rent rooms at an inn. You could sleep on a bed surrounded by walls, sheltered by a ceiling." He grinned. "I always preferred a tent, but I slept inside when I could during Syliran and Talderan winters."

[Issima]

"Oh, Menali would kill me if she knew," she said, and she couldn't help but grin. She loved her cousin and things were not unpleasant between them, but the pretty blonde was a bit haughty sometimes, if unintentionally so, and Issi couldn't keep back the amusement that reached her eyes. She plunged on quickly, apparently at ease with such a suggestion. "I can hardly imagine anything so... permanent. Walls, I mean. It must be fantastic. And Sam, what is a Nakivak? I will find a way to pay you. For your escort." Issima's quiet did not last long before she spoke again, the sheer delight at his serious proclamation unable to be contained. "Who will be coming? Who will care for your animals and things while you travel? How long will the journey be? Are there strange things to eat?" Issima scooped the bunny up closer to her face and nuzzled into it's soft fur with a pleased murmur. Even the rabbit would have to endure her delight, it seemed.

[Sama'el Sunsinger]

"A Nakivak is a woman they keep to breed with," he informed her, chuckling softly at her excitement and the barrage of questions, but careful not to wake the boy. "Freed slaves or women fleeing persecution, most of them. It's a little like another kind of slavery, but the ones I met seemed happy enough. I just wouldn't want them... accidentally taking you for an Akalak's bride. You never know with Akalaks. They all have that dark side brimming near the surface, it seems. "But you don't have to pay me. I'm of the Watch; it's my duty to protect you. If you left now, I'd be honor-bound to follow." He winked at that; it was true enough as far as it went, though he hoped she could contain herself until the Fall because he had much to take care of yet. "I think it will be just the two of us, though one or another of my friends might want to come too. I have a servant who can tend to things, and my friend Denen camps with me too. So the animals will be fine. We could gallop there in a day with Striders... break our fasts in Endrykas and dine in Riverfall. They have the ocean right there, and the river, so lots of fish and seafood. Probably some things you haven't had before, different spices, ways of preparing things... "Do you really think she'd be angry?" he asked, latching onto something she had said before all the questions. "I mean, I'll still take you whether or not she is, but..." He didn't really know Menali all that well yet.

[Issima]

Issima hung upon his every word, her wide eyes nearly fixed upon his face as he spoke. The idea of having breakfast in the fields of grass and dinner in an entirely new world thrilled her to distraction, so she was slow in her repsonse to his question. When, at last, it did sink in what he had asked, she laughed a little - though there was a hint of bashful awkwardness in her voice. "Not that I'd be going," she insisted. "Nor that you'd escort me. I was only referring to the notion of.. ah, if I were masquerading as your bethrothed. Menali is a good girl," she assured him, as if worried that she had cast her cousin in a negative light. She was, after all, a prospective bride to the handsome Watchman beside her. "My cousin is passionate, I think. When she wants something, it is with every inch of her being. Uncle is usually stern, but Menali is beautiful and kind, and he has spoiled her. She isn't too accustomed to denial. And she is determined to have you, Sama'el. It'd horrify her to imagine that I had gotten something she wanted so very much, first." Issi mulled over her own explanation, hoping she hadn't painted Menali in a bad light. "Menali is like the wind. Powerful in her passion, but a bit... everywhere all at once." Issima supposed that she was more like something more stable. Something like a river. Held neatly within its banks, obedient, yet constantly running away, running towards the freedom of the ocean. "I feel as if I am hardly painting this picture fairly. Have you spoken with her at any length, Sam? What do you think of my cousin?"