The Twilight Hours. [Lysander]

[Seodai]

82nd Summer, 511 A.V. The adrenaline of the night had carried them away from the Captain's Hall, had enabled them to carry out her orders. Lysander felt weak beside of Seodai, often stumbling, but the farmer was a sure presence near him - quick to right his step, to offer a shoulder for balance and support. The acolyte was silent, perhaps numb, as he trudged on - staring at the night sky as if it might open up and give the stolen treasure back again. Seodai didn't disrupt his quiet - he had no words to offer. And so it wasn't until the young man was deposited safely in the chapel that the farmer turned to face the companion Zahari had given him. He may never know why they had been chosen, the pair of them, for that walk on this night. It did not seem to matter much now, in the face of the chaos and dramatics all around them. It certainly didn't seem to matter as Lysander, looking worse for the wear, wavered on his feet. "Lys? Sit," Seo demanded, reaching out to help as the ethaefal obeyed in a crumple. "Oh, you look terrible..." he murmured, bright eyes flickering across all of the caked blood visible in torchlight. How he envied those brittle scabs forming all on their own, stemming the flow - even if Lysander had already lost enough to be woozy. Seodai knew that feeling well, but at least he didn't need to worry about stopping the bleeding. The sight of it made him a bit queasy, despite (or perhaps because of) his overexposure. "Lysander?" he said again, reaching out to gingerly touch the worst of the wound on the fallen one's head. There was a weak torch flickering behind him, but otherwise there was little to see by. "Can you hear me?" When his fingers found the source of the wound, he discovered that it hadn't patched itself up so quickly after all. Head wounds were the worst, he knew, but this felt especially deep and his fingers were quickly wet. The liquid looked black in the night.

[Lysander]

Lysander could not remember how he’d come to sit on a low stone wall ten paces from the door of the Chapel, nor could he snap back with a witty retort when the man that had all but carried him through the tiny seaside town called his appearance terrible. He could, however, recall the events that had lead him to the Captain’s Hall—the utter madness of a panicked crowd, the glowing hands of a town’s beloved leader, and the familiarity of this blond farmer, who had been a stranger bells before.

“Yeah.” The short response seemed suitable enough in his mind, but the bony digits that lingered in his hair and encouraged a face-crinkling sting when they dove into the gash behind one green-gold horn seemed to demand for more. “I can hear you, Seodai.”

A single hand settled on the hip of the man that loomed over him, and as he closed the gap between them, bleary-eyed world turning to blackness and the smell of sweat not his own, the fingers gave the linen-wrapped skin a single, reassuring squeeze. Labored breath broke hot through the thin layers of the farmer’s clothing; the Ethaefal’s face had fallen comfortably against his stomach, and the rounded dual curve of horns pressed to a pronounced ribcage. Incarnadine stains bled onto linens already marked by the earth in their hasty retreat from the Labyrinth. He would have apologized, had he been lucid enough to notice.

“It’s stopped.”

Lysander’s voice was muffled by the suffocating warmth of another living body. His hand finally retreated from the hip of his companion, but he remained crumpled and leaning forward on the man—if not for comfort, then to simply keep himself erect.

‘It’ insisted reference to the mysterious lights that had descended from the sky and taken innocent Denvali away; to another life, or to death, he could not be sure. He had not seen Sitkanis since the midnight event, and for a moment, suffocating tendrils of panic gripped and stopped his heart and he inhaled a sobbing gasp. The hand, and its partner, shot back to the body where his head lay and wrapped around it in a vice-grip attempt to squeeze comfort from it.

“It has stopped, hasn’t it?”

[Seodai]

Seodai sighed with relief when Lysander spoke, that voice already becoming a familiar one, his perception of it heightened by the night's events. The fingers probing along the wound remained focused, purposeful, but when that beautiful figure crumpled into him and his other hand lifted, it was of far more affectionate motive. Those fingers buried in the silken hair that crowned Lysander's head, stroking through soft tresses for no purpose other than comfort. For himself, or Lysander? Perhaps both. Seodai skimmed along moist hairline, over delicate temple, and then upwards again until they were buried in such angelic hair, marred with dirt and blood. The farmer opened his mouth to speak, to probe further perhaps, about Lysander's state of being. The words stalled on his lips when that weary head bowed against his own torso, hot breath seeping through his clothing to warm a place low upon his stomach. Were the circumstances not so profoundly disquieting, Seodai might remember this moment forever after as the very first moment he craved Lysander's breath, the warmth of his breathing against his own skin. As it were, he very quickly derailed that physical response. Or, he tried to, anyway. "I believe so." His voice was ragged, uneven, thick with something. Concern and a brand new, strange affection mingled with a hundred other emotions. Seodai was all to accustomed to picking through such things because of bloody wounds, though, and so he dropped the hand that wasn't covered with blood to the nape of Lysander's neck. His fingers skimmed over the clammy flesh there, and down along the curve of the ethaefal's shoulder. An attempt at comfort, perhaps. A connection between them, skin to skin, even if it were only his fingertips. "Lysander, the bleeding... it hasn't. It hasn't stopped." Even as he pointed out the problem, Seodai was moving to remedy it. He pulled a very small vial from a hidden pocket, and then disentangled himself reluctantly from those clinging arms. Only to sit beside of the wounded one, though. His bloody hand reached out, smearing the dark liquid across Lysander's shoulder as he coaxed his newfound friend towards him. "Lie down. Please..." And, barring any major protest from the stranger turn companion turn patient, Seodai situated the beautiful man so that his head rested in his lap. Seo gently coaxed Lysander into pushing his face more towards the taut firmness of his thigh, and that exposed the gaping, angry wound on the back of the skull. "This'll sting a little." It was impossible to see that the concoction he produced was a strange purple, dark as it was. But, when Seo poured it directly into the wound, it began to bubble and fester and fuzz about. It looked terrible with no light to chase away the shadows, like the wound had come to life. Seodai knew, however, that the opposite was the case. Having nearly died, Cian Noc had patched him up once, sacrificing his own wellness to save Seodai's life. The healer had also given him this precious, precious gift. A tiny vial of life-saving liquid that Seo could carry with him. It was inevitable, wasn't it, that he would be injured when no one was around to save him? And this, ugly, hissing purple liquid would have given him another life then. Saved him. But Seo chose to use it, instead, upon the very injured Lysander, who would only feel the puzzling burning for a moment yet. And then those bubbles, strange as they were, began to slide through that pretty hair because there was no longer a hole in which they could reside. They had raised the flesh to the surface again, whole and well. Besides that, it had a strengthening affect. Seodai bled so quickly that merely mending the wound would have been useless for him. He would have died of blood loss. And so Noc, in his clever wisdom, had made it regenerative too. The incredible weakness of Lysander's state would soon fade. At worst, he may feel like he had enjoyed one too many drinks the night before. When the pain subsided, and the strength returned to his feeble limbs, he'd find Seodai watching his young face - a silent sentinel, trailing the only clean fingers he had left along the angular line of his jaw, and back through that bloody hair. Theo had always comforted him with touch when he was so close to death. Without thinking, Seo treated his new friend to the same affection.

[Lysander]

A suitable angle proved difficult for Lysander, one horn jutting out into the soft flesh of the nearest thigh, distorting it, threatening discomfort against a thin linen cover. Finally, he managed to situate himself in time for the tingling burn of bubbling fluid to sink its unnerving fingers into his skull. Tight-lipped and barely lucid, a strange noise rose in Lysander’s throat before it was cut off by a gasp that filled his senses with that familiar, sweaty musk. The peculiar sensation seemed to last only seconds—seconds that were years in the Ethaefal’s mind—and then subsided, and with it, washed him of the pain and grogginess brought on by substantial blood loss.

“Seodai.”

The voice that rose from the mass on the farmer’s lap was oddly clear—free of the panic, confusion, and pain that had occupied it for the majority of their short acquaintance. Lysander rolled over onto his back, examining the face that belonged to the hand’s comforting touch, then through it to the sky, where lambent stars blinked and the scarred white face of the moon stared down at them. Only now, had he realized he’d forgotten a smile. The wan expression carved itself across his flushed lips, and his honey-pale gaze settled on the blond brow of his savior.

Then, he sat up. Shoulder pressed to shoulder; the farmer had done an unspeakable courtesy to his oblivious fallen friend. “Thank you,” Lysander murmured beneath the brightening smile that had now turned crooked and childish, a habit that had never been broken in his short life. “Are you a healer as well as a farmer? What else can you do?” it ticked over into a wide grin and threatened to spill out laughter despite the events that had brought them together.

Ultimately, the man child was selfish. Lysander didn’t wait for Seodai to respond to his query, before reaching out for one lithe arm. It was warm beneath his touch, and sported a small line of dirty scrapes, not deep enough to break the skin and let hot blood spill out, but noticeable all the same.

“I’ll show you what I can do.”

Without the forced decency of Zahari’s company, or the distraction provided by mind-numbing fear and confusion, the Ethaefal had relaxed into his blithe countenance. Even thoughts of Sitkanis’ whereabouts were pushed to the back of his mind, when the twin oceans set deep in a sharp-featured face stared back at him. Hot lips met Seodai’s arm, across the line of scratches that marred milky skin. Unlike a mother treating a crying child with the comfort of her kisses, Lysander’s touch successfully pushed the blemish beneath the skin. Waxy scabs were left in its place and whatever sting of pain throbbed there had subsided; he hadn’t healed the wound, so much as aged it a single day.

“I wish I could do more,” the skin left his mouth and he eyed Seodai’s bare arms, where a few more tiny scratches had left their mark in their frenzied escape from the Labyrinth. A dirty blonde mop covered a furrowing brow, crinkled in a moment of confusion; the queer stirring in his stomach forced his eyes away from the farmer’s beautiful arms to swim in the vastness of sky above. “Sorry.”

What he had apologized for, Lysander was unsure. For failing to heal more, or wanting to touch him, or simply craving more of some intangible stirring in his gut that he could not explain—whatever it was, was based in selfish desire. He allowed his head to find the curve of the blonde’s nearest shoulder, hoping in vain to hear a beating heart.

[Seodai]

Seodai might have told Lysander all about Cian Noc, who put his body to rights and gifted him with the purple liquid which had been deployed not to save his own life, but to restore the bright-eyed ethaefal who was, gods help him, only more beautiful for the return of his heath. He opened his mouth to do that, too. But Lysander stole his words, his ability to produce coherent sentences at all. As if the heat of his breath against Seo's lower stomach hadn't been enough, now there were lips. Beautiful, perfect lips that brushed against Seodai's skin like a brand. So very hot, so very soft, Seo could only watch as Lysander used those lips to soothe the minor scrapes he had received, making them nearly go away. And he wanted more. As the gentle kiss moved from shoulder towards elbow, Seo found himself craving the next touch. What would they feel like, those lips, inside the curve of his elbow? Lower still, how would it be to feel them against the inside of his wrist, across his palm? What if Lysander were to open those pink lips, to take one of Seodai's fingers into the engulfing heat of his mouth? If his lips seared Seo so, what would that wet tongue feel like...? Seodai made a little noise. It was low, and deep - a noise that was something in between a sound of pleasure, and one of strangled relief. Lysander's voice cut through the haze his lips had woven over Seo's mind, and the farmer dropped his arm back to his side. The skin was aflame, and his fingers curled to press tightly into his own palm. "Don't be," he half murmured, surprised to find that lovely head tucking into his shoulder again. He wasn't sure why Lysander was sorry. He wasn't sure why Lysander had stopped there, with the rest of his arm still scraped, and another left untouched. Seo wasn't certain why he felt the sudden urge to point out every tender place he could feel, so that he could have those healing lips upon him. He shifted the smallest bit, finding it necessary to readjust. "Lysander," Seo said quietly. And then those eyes turned up to him, and he wished he hadn't said it. The farmer looked away, back towards the chapel, and let out a long breath. 'Thank you' would be entirely appropriate and was a most earnestly felt sentiment, but Seo couldn't force it to come out. It was like a more suffocating thing had arisen between them and wound it's sticky fingers around the moment, so that the fuzz in the farmer's head would not clear. Seodai was hardly ever self-motivated. Tonight might prove different. The handsome, dirty child of Bala glanced aside again, where the ethae still peeked up at him. Why? Making inventory of the wounds on his face? Measuring the mere human's imperfections against his own beauty? Seodai didn't know, but he shifted the slightest bit so that Lysander had to lift his head again, away from the supporting shoulder.The same shoulder that had been most offended in their escape efforts. As the trio had stumbled out of the labyrinth, the acolyte had stumbled. Seo, reaching to support him, had received the weight of a piece of the crumbling wall into his chest. It was hardly a terrible wound - an exaggerated scratch. The skin was offended just enough to ooze the slightest hint of crimson. On a normal man, it would have long since dried. On Seo, it simply lingered. It began where the line of his clavicle ran across his chest, and extended down onto his breast several inches. It was this cut that Seo lifted one hand to expose, tugging the fabric of his shirt back just enough to do so. "Make me better?" It wasn't fair, this demand, because it was essentially disregarding whatever it was that had compelled Lysander to stop in the first place. And if the ethaefal could be selfish by nature, then Seodai was apparently capable of exhibiting the same emotion, albeit against his normal character. The fingers that held the fabric away from his chest were dirty and covered with Lysander's dried blood, but the ones that lifted to delve into messy blonde hair were cleaner, gentle as they curled about the curve of Lysander's head. "Please?"

[Lysander]

Lysander straightened, honeyed glare fixed on the reddened and dirt marred skin that should have healed long ago—insofar as his mind’s half-blind eye told him. He instantly regretted using his limited gift on such a trivial scratch. Night after night he had tried to hone the aging touch; a practice in futility, it seemed, as the young Ethaefal could never manage to duplicate the enchantment in a single moon’s turn. A thumb lifted to trace the claret line where rock had broken skin to wipe the blood away, only to have it instantaneously return. Brows furrowed, Lysander rocked backwards on the wall to fold his legs beneath himself and examine the smudge of red that stained the tip of his thumb.

“What’s wrong with you?” The accusing question and his following retreat from Seodai’s grip seemed harsh, void of understanding, though a tone of concern softened the unintentional blow Lysander had dealt. “Your blood doesn’t dry and your skin won’t scab, and it’s just a little scrape.” He lifted his hand, showing Seodai the blood as if it was as much a revelation to the farmer as it was him. Was the man broken in some way? Was the stone that caused the wound enchanted? The list of possibilities Lysander was compiling in his mind was cut short by a shudder of cool air and an unwanted memory.

“What’s wrong with him?” A voice—his voice, he realized, as the question fell from his insolent lips and gained him a well-aimed smack. It echoed off the walls of that tiny dark room he had visited once before in a bloody daydream. The offending hand receded from his throbbing cheek, bony and spotted, and pointed sharply to a heap of dirtied linen.
“Wrap.” The old man’s reply was heavy with unreadable emotion. When he threatened to beat the boy bloody for hesitating, his voice cracked.
Strip after blood-stained strip wrapped a gouged shoulder, still crawling with here and there a hungry maggot. Everything smelled of death; it lingered in his nostrils long after they were finished, he recalled.
“He will not live, his blood is thin and stubborn and refuses to clot; he’ll continue to bleed through those bandages until there’s nothing left but a husk.” He remembered the old man murmuring and sucking his teeth after they left the slave quarters—not even a private room, the soap-skinned man was left stinking and dying with young, healthy men. He felt hot streaks staining his face and he lifted a hand to smear the wetness across his cheek. “Stop your sobbing. Men die, Rees, it is a reality of our profession. It is better to learn to deal with it young; I should think you would rather them be dying than you.”

Rees? Lysander looked as if he’d really been hit; his face paled and the twisted confusion on his face was difficult to miss. “I’m … sorry, Seo,” he finally murmured, his features softening into a bleary-eyed stare that looked all too human on the fallen one’s face. It was defeat. “I can’t make you better. I was taken away too early, I didn’t learn enough to be able to fix … this.” The bloody thumb took another sweep of the stubborn cut as if to punctuate his shortcomings. Leth give me strength.

“I have linen bandage at home,” a feeble offer and a hopeful smile tried in vain to break across Lysander’s tired mouth, “it’ll stop infection, if anything. Are you thirsty? I have tea.” The moon child stood, straightened, and offered a clean hand to his farmhand friend. His second attempt to clear his face of the morose mask was successful, and he grinned, pushing away the stench of death and memories half-forgotten with it. “And honey to sweeten it!”

[Seodai]

And just like that, it was gone. Like a swirling mist, the collapse of heat and flame, the shattering of night in the face of dawn. The all-consuming, intense something of the moment before vanished. The night was cool, the air tingled with the hint of danger, and Seo felt his imperfections acutely. He felt the knot on the inside of one knee, the myriad of other bumps and bruises. He felt the grime on his skin, the exhaustion in his limbs, the weariness in his thoughts. It was as if some spell had been broken and he had been rudely deposited into a tired body, and a jarring moment. “What’s wrong with you?” If Lysander had made a study of Seodai, of his life and his past, of his every conscious thought, he would have found that no four words could have made a better weapon than those. Falling from those lips, the bitter sting of them was somehow worse. How many times had he heard it, from his own mother, his father? How many children? The sum of who he was as a young man revolved, almost entirely, on the existence of those words. It was easier to retreat, to hide from people than to deal with that question. Seodai flushed red, but it wasn’t a pleasant sort of blush. It was mortification that colored his cheeks, that sent stinging eyes to the earth at his feet. He swallowed the sudden lump in his throat, and didn’t move for the moment that Lysander’s thoughts had apparently drifted. It wasn’t until Lysander touched him again that Seodai responded. He lifted one arm quickly to knock Lysander’s away, and he stood just as abruptly. He readjusted his tunic self-consciously, so that the oozing scrape was hidden. “The farm is closer,” he asserted, though he really had no idea where Lysander slept. He only knew that, wounded as he was (and not physically), he needed the familiarity of home. Besides, he had responsibilities. Somehow he had lost sight of them in the golden depths of Lysander’s eyes but now, with a stinging heart and shattered pride, he was able to think more clearly. He needed to be sure the animals were all well, to tend to the farm. Who knew what was happening in the rest of Denval, after all? “I have tea,” he said as an afterthought, with a backward glance that wouldn’t quite meet Lysander’s. It skipped across smiling face, and then he turned to lead them away. In one hand he still held the empty vial, the precious liquid he had given to heal Lysander all gone. He rubbed his thumb across its end, however, hoping for even a droplet. The barest hint of moisture upon padded tip, he subconsciously lifted it to swipe across the cut on his chest. Futile, likely, but Seodai would have given anything to be whole in that moment. Normal, like everyone else.

[Lysander]

If the despair on Seodai’s face wasn’t enough to convince Lysander something had gone terribly wrong, the force of the farmhand pushing his consoling hand away had thrown a heavy stone into the pit of his stomach. The muttered apology seemed to do little to placate the man that was now leading him in silence to his farm—at least; Lysander had assumed he was being lead. Perhaps he was only following, further kindling the fire he’d unintentionally lit in that set of bold blue eyes. Several times on their short journey back to the farm, Lysander would reach out for Seodai’s arm, his wrist; when that failed, he’d mutter the child of Bala’s name—nothing seemed to rouse the blond from his purposeful and silent path.

Despite the silence, Lysander was offered all the comforts of a guest in the modest farmhouse. He found himself perched stiffly at a table while Seodai filled a kettle with water before setting it atop the iron top of a pot-bellied stove where a fire reached out and wrapped its warm fingers around the room. In all the warmth and comfort the room with Seodai offered, Lysander shivered. The face of the moon loomed over them from the other side of a glass window, hanging low in the early hours of the morning and offering to wash the kitchen with a cool, silvery light to combat the warm orange glow of the candles and hearth.

“I didn’t mean to make you mad,” irritation had begun to replace reservation, jamming its rot into the corners of Lysander’s mouth and tightening his lips. “I can only do that once a night. Had I known you were bleeding ...” The Lethborn slumped over the thick wooden table in defeat, letting his gilded gaze fall. A fingertip lifted and traced the grain in the wood, while his opposite elbow propped up the side of his head that had formerly been bleeding. A nail scraped dried blood from his scalp, and the green-gold base of one horn as he reflected on the uselessness of a gift, chimes ago, he thought divine.

“I’m sorry.” A line drew itself between his eyebrows as he furrowed them; that must have been the tenth time he’d said it. The night had been long and confusing, but Seodai had been a stranger turned friend through it all. Had he lost him so soon?

A chin lifted, hopeful in a sudden thought and offer, “I can still patch you up, you know. I … I know how to do that, at least. You shouldn’t leave your wound open like that.” His voice cracked when he added, “I don’t want it to get worse.”

[Seodai]

If Seo was brusque, distant, even cold it was hardly intentional. In fact, he was too caught up in his own dreary thoughts to focus overly much on the source of his injury. For the whole of his early childhood his parents had made him feel like the worst sort of mistake. Oh, they were never abusive, per se. But wounds were treated with tight frustration, and where gentle words of soothing would have been appropriate, the tiny bleeding child had been met instead with huffs and stiff warnings to be more careful, more aware. He had lived inside a bubble of bitter protectiveness, stifled in nearly every endeavor lest he fall into harms way. He had been his own best friend and it wasn't until he had finally been allowed to leave behind his mother and father and move into the care of his uncle, Theo, that he had ever really been able to connect with the world outside of their disapproving stares. That had been a rocky road from the outset. Children could be cruel sometimes, especially when someone was perceived as different or 'other'. Seodai was both, of course, and made an excellent target for their bitter words and teasing laughter. Lysander had unwittingly stepped into the shadow of misery that had been set in motion long before the farmer's pale blue eyes had fallen upon his face, had softened in abject wonder. The son of Leth had managed to choose the most jagged shard of Seodai's broken pieces, and wound him with it. Seodai's silence was, mostly, the result of these conflicted emotions. It was the shield behind which he could hide his shame, his awkward uncertainty, his tremendous longing to be whole and well. He didn't speak because he didn't trust his voice not to quake, and bringing more humiliation upon himself didn't seem like the best choice. With boiling hot water Seodai presented tea. As much as he would have liked to flee, he forced himself to sit instead. Directly across from his new 'friend', as difficult as that was. He pulled his bloodstained tunic aside and found that his desperate attempts to convince the wound to close had been half successful. Now only a few tiny droplets of blood managed to ooze out of the cut, minor as it was. Seodai was nonplussed by the damage. "I'll see Noc on the morrow, have him heal it. I'm not mad." Eclectic collection of words, perhaps. Seodai sweetened his tea, and took a sip. Night was quickly slipping away and he felt exhausted, and shaken. "I'm not mad, Lysander. Only broken. But Cian Noc will heal me, and it will be fine. I'll be fine." Seodai gave thoughtful pause before he reached out, capturing one of Lysander's hands against the tabletop. "I didn't really want you to heal it, anyway. I wasn't thinking. I only...Tonight was insane, and that made me forget. It made me feel good. I'm not upset that you couldn't heal me." And I forgive you those ugly words, Seo thought, but didn't dare voice.

[Lysander]

The wall of realization that materialized in smudged violet, haphazardly closing here and there a spot along the lengthy cut Seodai’s on chest had hit Lysander hard. His fingertips dug into the blond mass of hair beneath the base of his horn where he’d cracked his skull and bled to near unconsciousness, only to be brought back by the miraculous tingling, bubbling vial of liquid—something that was undoubtedly dear to a man whose blood refused to stop flowing. It was Seodai’s life, and he’d wasted it on a near-stranger.

“You don’t look broken to me,” the Ethaefal murmured, finally letting his hand fall into his lap after groping for scabs that were not there, “Just scratched.”

Steam swirled from the mug that was set before him, its lazy upward drift cooling and fading, leaving a moist trail beneath Lysander’s jaw when he leaned forward to stare thoughtfully into the deep crimson of sweet-smelling tea. He almost offered to patch up the wound himself come morning, but caught his idiot tongue before he let out little more than an awkward chirp and an inward sigh. The Ethaefal would be gone come morning; he reminded himself, to be replaced by a boy: a grubby and scarred slave boy with dull brown eyes and skin that always looked to need a good hot scouring. Lately, his own identity had come into question. Was he that boy? Or was he this man, too beautiful to be human, but still made of the same flesh, bone, and blood? Sitkanis had often called him childish; that was something he could not deny. And whatever fourteen years of experience he had in the world, he could scarce remember.

Seodai seemed to like Leth’s Lysander well enough.

“It should have something on it, at least while you sleep,” he insisted, wrapping both hands around the soothing warmth of the mug. The hot relief and the realization that his tired muscles screamed for respite was instantaneous, “You do plan on sleeping, right?”

While the night seemed to have lasted a season already, Lysander had little want for rest (to the dismay of the ache in his arms and legs), having been invigorated and wired on adrenaline and swirling confusion. The selfish part of him wanted his friend to spend the early hours of the morning awake; they could make a game of something, he knew, or they could merely talk. Talk, play, until the sky turned pale grey and he had to leave for a boy Seodai would not recognize.

Lysander lifted his mug, and sipped.