Under a Different Light [Laszlo]

[Seven Xu]

Fall 29th 511 AV

Seven had neglected his appearance since the stone mouth of Alvadas had opened itself to him. This was a reality he found himself cursing as thin steel passed along his lower jaw, painfully scraping away a growth of measly fuzz a proper peach would be embarrassed for. It took the youth nearly ten chimes to smooth his face with minimal remnants of waterlogged pink trailing down his chin. Each drop fell with an audible smack into the basin below, rippling and distorting the moon-pale face that stared up at him. When he lifted a hand to brush back the mane of white, the figure in the basin did the same. Together, they began to remove handfuls of soft hair where it had grown too wild with the same razor that had righted their face. By the time he was finished, he was alone, having left his doppelganger beneath a thin layer of ivory tresses that mingled on the water’s surface.

The focus of the halfblood’s free time was piled generously on a nearby desk: a ratted notebook, buried by parchment of map after hasty map of an ever-changing, ever-infuriating city. The hope was that eventually, Alvadas would offer him insight on a pattern to its shifting streets; a vain notion that had expired with time and clean parchment. It seemed hopeless, this quest for some equation in the puzzling dance of avenues and alleyways.

“I’m going out,” he murmured to the deaf pile of maps and his suffocated double.

Alvadas’ Cubacious Inn left little to be desired to one that really cherished a good night’s sleep; the building itself was known for ponderous shifts of its own accord. Sometimes it felt like little more than the earth shaking, Ivak turning over in his prison; other times Seven had fallen out of bed entirely to be rudely awakened by the floor. One such shift ended as his feet made contact with the ground floor of the inn—rather gracefully for a halfblood who had the poise of water in his gestures but that of a mule in his feet. Seven had dressed himself appropriately for a night on the town, that is, monochrome layers of smallclothes, a tunic, coat, breeches, and scarves in the case that he could not find his way and was forced to spend the night wandering the streets.

A figure caught the vapid garnet stare of this cynic as he passed through the lobby. Its hazy outline sharpened with his attention, and a pair of horns caught what dim light the inn’s windows and dying sun afforded to draw him in immediately. Seven’s eyes narrowed inquisitively as the man approached him, and he worked on his own end to close the gap that would inexorably widen again as the pair passed each other. Instinctively, Seven’s mind wandered to the sharp retribution of a self-righteous Lethborn and the scars on the palms of his dearest companion. Where a soapstone face could mask an expression, the unnerving garnets set within were incapable of deceit, now matter how he tried. The curiosity in his crimson-wrapped pupils turned sour and where a polite smile may have greeted a fellow patron lay only the cold pressed bow of pale lips as the two men went their separate ways. He thought he heard a greeting, but his mind and body had already moved far away from the son of Syna.

The door of the Cubacious Inn swung open, and then it pulled shut, as Seven stepped out into the breezy fall evening to find a meal, some bitter ale, and a retreat from a maddening search for order in the City of Illusion.

[Laszlo]

It had taken Laszlo the better part of the afternoon to find his way around Alvadas again. The streets were new and unexplored every morning, and every useful corner of the city was once again hidden away in a charming labyrinth of illusions and distractions. Most of the architecture in the city was gorgeous, with its tawny bricks, dark roofing, and odd eclectic structures snugly fit in between. It made the Alvadas look beautiful, honest, and innocent, but she was a devilish trickster. It had been fun for about the first week, but now Laszlo couldn't decide if he'd grown used to it or had gotten tired of it. Right now, however, that wasn't the point. Even if it did take him all afternoon to find his way to the Bizarre, it took him all of five minutes to realize he hadn't brought enough coin with him once he got there. So what was more pressing now was remembering his way back to the Cubacious Inn. As he trudged his way along the darkened evening roads, Laszlo sent a passing glance to the tired red sun sinking low to the ground. By the time he returned to the marketplace, he would look different. Well, no matter. Then at least no one would wonder why he came to the Bizarre twice today, and he wouldn't have to explain his sorry ineptitude. Nearing the inn, he saw an unexpectedly familiar frame exiting the building. It took Laszlo a moment to realize that the stranger was Symenestra. At first glance, he almost mistook him for a malnourished human youth, but his movements were smoother and more graceful than most humans could manage. That hair wasn't bright blond; it was white. Laszlo hadn't expected to see any Symenestra in Alvadas, even if it was one of nearest cities to Kalinor. As racial pride goes, Laszlo had none. He didn't consider himself as belonging to a race of any kind. "Ethaefal" was just a name for the unfortunate. The Symenestra though were the closest thing to kin Laszlo had. Even if this one did look a little diluted, he was pleasantly surprised to meet him. "Good even…ing…?" Laszlo trailed off when his friendly greeting was met with a harsh, crimson glare. Bewildered, he slowed to a stop, watching the Symenestra pass by. Those eyes had been a more vibrant red than Duvalyon's, and though younger, so much more bitter as well. The Ethaefal lingered for several long seconds as he watched the young Symenestra trek further into the darkening streets of Alvadas. The shadows were growing long, but surely his vision would adjust without any trouble. Well, that was odd, but the Symenestra weren't exactly a jubilant lot. Shrugging off the strange encounter, Laszlo disappeared into the inn. A few minutes later, as the sun was finally setting, a bright flash of light shown through the windows of his room as he switched forms. The transition was always reminiscent of a shard of glass briefly reflecting the glaring sunlight across its surface, perhaps as an ode to Syna, or just Laszlo's associative imagination. When Laszlo saw the Symenestra again, it was well past nightfall. The Ethaefal was parked on a bench outside a shop that had just closed for the evening. It was the same shop that Laszlo had wanted to visit, but wasn't carrying enough money. He had no idea that the place kept such tight hours, or he wouldn't have wasted the trip to the Cubacious Inn and back. So now, in private humiliation, he decided to stop for a snack and reassess his plans for the evening, trying not to hold a petty grudge against the shop for closing early. Laszlo's keen amethyst eyes found the Symenestra youth walking nearby, and he batted a lock of dark silver hair out of his view to get a better look at him. There are you again, he mused quietly, feeling doubtful about the existence of coincidences. He found himself mildly eager to form an acquaintanceship with the man, motivated again by superficial racial pride. Laszlo was wearing a different face now. Might as well try it again. "Ho there, Widow," he called to him sardonically in Symenos, recalling the way his first Symenestra friend had referred to him as "azo" when they had first met. There was a noticeable accent in Laszlo's use of the language, which could have meant any number of things, but in truth he had only learned the Symenestra tongue over the past year. Deciding he wouldn't allow the stranger to wonder about it, he held up an overripe nectarine in his black claws. He spoke again, reverting to Common. "Hungry? I bought more than I can stomach, and I hate to see it go to waste." Leaned back comfortably on his bench, Laszlo waited to see if his words would have the intended effect. Shamelessly he had inserted a minor compulsion to the word 'hungry,' which would ideally produce the sensation that he was. It was a petty and probably unnecessary way of ensuring their interaction, but Laszlo was already in a sour mood and his conscience wasn't saying much about it.

[Seven Xu]

While the streets were ever-changing, the upturned blue-black bowl that spilled out countless stars every night remained devoted and steadfast. It wasn’t until the blackness devoured the last wisps of twilight and navy bled through violet and orange streaks at the horizon that Seven found himself rather in the dark. Odd. There was usually a source of light somewhere: a torch, a street lantern, the lustrous glow of the moon. Leth’s embodiment was merely a sliver in the sky tonight, muting the rooftops and cobblestone beneath his feet to tones of dreary grey and black. Seven had to squint through the darkness, despite his natural aptitude to pierce through it better than a human’s eyes would allow.

There was a rustling in a nearby alley, a shadow moving from one side of the street to the other—then another, and another, and another. Soon, shadows surrounded him in a great silent torrent, inspecting him, and following him as he walked. Seven picked up speed, walking hurriedly towards what soon materialized as a distant light. Yes, finally. The halfblood held his breath as he was forced through the thickest of the sea of darkness, only to emerge on the other side unscathed. The yellow-orange glow of street lanterns returned, and the street itself seemed to bend and exhale with Seven in relief.

His heart was still fluttering in the cage of his chest when the deriding Symenos pricked his ears. “Ho there, Widow.”

Seven straightened and turned. A few strides away, reclined on a bench beneath the drawn windows of a closed shop, sat the gaunt figure that had addressed him. He managed to lift the set of thin white brows that lay above that bold set of crimson eyes almost incredulously. “Well met.” The Symenos he responded with was thick in the Common accent, but comprehensible; he had been practicing since the return of his beloved notebook in the summer. And where he could roll Common off of his tongue and shape deception or consolation within its syllables with little effort, there was a flash of contempt in his voice and his undeceiving almond-shaped eyes.

That, however, did not last long.

A hand grasped his roiling stomach as the elegant stranger lifted the nectarine between a set of nimble white fingers. Seven hadn’t realized how hungry he was until food had been offered—when did he last eat? Malicious intent failed to cross Seven’s mind as he approached the offering, extending one arm to take it when he was finally close enough. “Thank you.” Sincerity flowed from him now with the emergence of a smile. Puckered white lips tested the skin of the fruit before his infantile canines afflicted it with a bite; it was overripe, and sticky warmth trickled down his chin to be caught by the sleeve stretched across the back of his wrist. The youth swallowed, and then a small pink tongue lashed out to clear sweet juice from his bottom lip. “It’s good,” the dull remark was returned in the Common tongue.

The bench creaked and sighed as Seven wordlessly took up space beside the Symenestra. Only when confronted by a pureblood did Seven look an awkward mess; surrounded by humans, he was the picture of fluid grace in his motions, even if he was no natural acrobat and would sometimes neglect his own toes and trip over them. The nectarine found hungry lips again as his chin tilted up to the blackness of space, lit only by a crescent wedge of moon and speckled by stars.

“At least they never change.” Seven murmured, more to himself than to the stranger on his left. A moment of silence passed, then another, and eventually his head lowered and he discarded the remains of the nectarine: a pit that still clung to a bit of yellowed flesh. For all his book knowledge, Seven had a dreadful knot in his tongue when it came to idle conversation. His head lilted in the stranger’s direction as he attempted to arrest the dim flecks of violet that resided over a demure face. “Thank you again for the fruit … I’m sorry, my name is Seven. And you?”

[Laszlo]

Laszlo had to tame his look of satisfaction when the Symenestra youth took the fruit from his hand, masking it with a passive, cordial smile. He rested his cheek in his empty hand, with his sharp elbow anchored on the arm of the bench. Crossing his long legs, he watched in the side of his vision as the young man took a seat and indulged in his snack. He was happy to remain in the affable silence, knowing that idle conversation was inevitable. Feeling as though he were the older one present, he felt a calm, comfortable sense of authority over the stranger, a sense of security and control. In the Symenestra's company, there existed a façade of warm understanding between them, almost like camaraderie. This was the lie he could briefly sustain in Kalinor, feeling as though he belonged to a community that accepted him. In the floating city, however, Laszlo was always the inept one who barely spoke Symenos and knew nothing about the Symenestra kind. This scenario was different. He appeared to be full blooded, older, whereas this young man looked more human, and was just as clumsy with Symenos. He probably hadn't even noticed the accent. Laszlo felt he had control over the situation. This was an incredibly rare sensation. However he knew that this moment would be fleeting, and soon he'd reveal himself for what he was: a fraud. In quiet frustration, he pressed the nail of his ring finger into his palm to the point of pain, but didn't break the skin. As the stranger remarked on the stars, Laszlo's amethyst eyes angled upward at the dotted sky, his gaze inexorably drawn to the crescent sliver of Leth's vigil. "I've heard that Leth hates to be alone, so he surrounds himself with Syna's likeness, but nothing can compare to her radiance." His eyes dropped back down as Seven introduced himself, focusing squarely on the white haired man. The lady Orthilia had hair like that. Much longer, though. "Seven? That's peculiar, isn't it?" Almost girlish. "No, it's fine. I like it. Mine isn't any better. I'm named after a dead bird." Laszlo punctuated his remark with a smile and a brief, nasal laugh. The expression fell prematurely, as it often did in his night phase. It was difficult to keep up a smile for long. Vethis did have such propensity for being melancholy. "I didn't expect to see any Symenestra away from Kalinor. What brings you this far east?" A mischievous half-smile appeared. "The harvest, perhaps?"

[Seven Xu]

Something resembling a vacuous smile twitched at the corners of Seven’s mouth as the conversation sputtered and lurched into motion. When his head rolled against the cool slate of the wall they leaned against, a current of rebellious alabaster fell across his forehead. The slapdash razor cut had done little to curtail the unruly mass of hair that sat atop his head as fine as spider’s silk. Instead, it had provoked a cowlick that lifted an awkward fringe across his brow.

“That is not what stars are,” he replied curtly, “they are things far beyond this world, further than anyone could know. It is said they knew before the Valterrian, but the secrets of the stars were lost with the world. They aren’t there because some god is lonely.” Seven’s head pitched away; despite the harsh logic he’d spat in response, his once vapid countenance had grown facetious. He ignored the jape about his name—a rhetorical question that was no stranger to him—thankfully, it was as quickly disregarded by the stranger who had carefully sidestepped Seven’s own request for a name.

“The Harvest?”

The word gathered no more bearing when it was rolled around and spat out on his tongue. It was bitter; if it were capable of leaving a chalky film and sour taste in his mouth it very well may have. Seven straightened. Being labeled as Symenestra was uncomfortable. It conjured memories that had been pushed into the depths of his mind in the hopes that time would forget them. The company he most often kept was human, and in turn, he had come to identify himself as such—and bugger a little diluted blood, albinism and all the ferocity of a hot pepper beneath a set of unassuming plush lips. He let a moment of silence pass between them to compose a response.

“I can’t say that I’ve ever been to Kalinor, let alone participated in a Harvest. I’m a rightful bastard in all my ignorance,” a careful grin was pushed onto his face, “but I have done my fair share of being guilty of Symenestra tradition.” Seven wasn’t sure he could write it simpler; old wounds went deep, and this stranger immediately jumped to wriggle his black clawed fingers beneath old scabs. He made himself look at the man again. Crimson pooled into violet, a hue that reminded him of a softer, younger face that had shared so much with him in the blink of his mind’s eye. It may as well have been a lifetime ago as Seven struggled to remember the young Symenestra’s finer features.

The halfblood was loath to elaborate on his mountaintop home or the eastern fortress city from where he had more recently traveled. Not to this man, who dodged something as simple as a name after his had been so graciously given. If it was an unspoken game of rhetoric, Seven had lost track of whose turn it was. “I have not been here long,” he admitted, “do the people here fear you—the Symenestra—as they do in other parts of Kalea?” Do they mock you; do they blame you for their dead? Seven held his tongue. “I’m sorry, that’s hardly an appropriate question.”

[Laszlo]

Leave it to a skeptic to suck all the fun out of a child's bedtime myth. Seven's stubborn reaction was almost charming, like he wanted to prove something by acting the wiser. Laszlo briefly flashed a hurt smile, keeping his amethyst gaze locked on him even as he ripped his away. The Ethaefal held a deceptively sleepy look on his face, his head so carefully leaned on his long fingers, watching Seven the way a housecat watches the occupants in a quiet room. Symenestra tradition. What did that mean? Did the young man kill his own mother, like nearly all his kin do? That must have been what he meant. There was venom in Seven's voice, a deep-seated bitterness that ran to his very core. Laszlo didn't know much about being a Symenestra, even with his stolen memories of another life. Self-loathing and contempt, however… that, he understood. When Seven turned to face Laszlo again, the Ethaefal blinked slowly in acknowledgement. Yes, I'm still watching you. His long eyelashes obscured his purple irises, but his pupils caught the dim moonlight easily, and reflected it brightly when viewed at the proper angle. The night was dark, but his keen vision made out every detail on Seven's young face. Upon closer examination, he was older than Laszlo first thought. There was such ire under those thin white eyebrows. What from, he wondered? "I keep my head down," Laszlo responded, his voice hard, though he didn't appear to mind the boldness of the inquiry. With his free hand, he gently lifted the hood attached to his cloak to display it as evidence, then dropped it back on his shoulder. "I've not been here long either. I've met at least one person who doesn't seem bothered by what I am, a human. Curious thing, he is." Finally, Laszlo's eyes drifted elsewhere, straying onto the road as he began to pluck out a memory he usually tried not to think about. The reflective light vanished from his eyes. "Back in Syliras, I once met a man so terrified of me that he immediately tried to kill me." Lifting his head from his hand, Laszlo felt at his throat, remembering the feeling of hands crushing his windpipe. "Of course, you could hardly blame him. He found me in a room with his daughter." A shadow of a smile ghosted upon Laszlo's lips. "I was so foolish then. I don't think he'll be forgetting me." It was only a year and a half ago. Almost two now. To anyone mortal, that would be recent. To Laszlo, it was his entire life. It somehow felt so long ago. He had learned so much since that day, but he still felt as though he knew next to nothing. Laszlo exhaled slowly as he attempted to rebury the memory. His face was the last thing that man ever saw. Of course he wouldn't forget him. "Forgive me, just reminiscing," Laszlo said after a noticeable silence. The conversation was growing awkward. "You're a bastard then. Just as well, my Web more-or-less cast me out. At least I don't belong with them. We're both wayward. Are you here alone, Seven? Come to see Ionu?"

[Seven Xu]

There was a foreboding that hung over the stranger’s account like a grey cloud fat with rain, drawing color from the earth below. Where the Symenestra deliberately omitted the fate of this man whose daughter had come into question, Seven had to force his whirring mind to shut down. A question rose above a din of unnerving conclusions, and it took a second for that vacant stare to fill with acknowledgment.

“Me? No,” Seven shook himself of his silence and planted both hands firmly at his sides, finding it necessary to adjust. The bench was hardly comfortable. He twisted his spine and rolled his shoulders, attempting to shake away a dull ache. “But if I did happen to find Ionu and gain their favor …” he trailed off, grinning at the list of possibilities that was populating itself between his ears. With the gift of illusion, he could change his appearance; he could become human, appeasing to the eyes, legitimate. Though there existed one pair of eyes—like dancing hot mercury—that would loath to see such a change, and they mattered so much more than judgment-passing strangers did.

Seven grasped for the threads of conversation he’d dropped in a moment of thought. If the snowy introvert emerged from his shell to voice even half the thoughts that swarmed his mind, he’d be like to never shut up. “I came with a friend,” Seven found the term lacking in describing the Ravokian he’d met a season and a lifetime ago, but a ripple of pink warmth washed over the youth’s moon-pale face and caught fire in his eyes, pushing him to continue with heartened enthusiasm. “From Syliras,” he added, after a beat, “He is seeking Ionu; I came because Syliras offered little for me.”

Again, Seven found himself pushing bitterness from his tongue. A line creased between his brows for a brief moment before it smoothed again above a complacent smile. His trip to Stormhold Citadel was a melting pot of mixed emotions, but past was past. A set of bony white fingers lifted to grapple with one of two scarves he had wrapped around his neck. “I never caught your name,” the comment was half an accusation—what was he supposed to call a man named for a dead bird? Seven shifted again, drawing his legs beneath his small frame. He seemed unable to fix his gaze on the stranger’s pallid face for long, often drifting past him or above him, ever attentive of street and star alike.

[Laszlo]

Just watch the poor thing. Seven looked so nervous, blushing at the mention of his friend and playing his his scarf. To his surprise, Laszlo found himself averting his eyes and uttering a quiet sigh. The Symenestra in him was supposed to enjoy this level of control, but the Ethaefal in him—the whole of who he was—relented. His conscience became a powerful force at the forefront of his mind, and Laszlo felt guilty for keeping the friendly stranger in suspense and toying with him. That wasn't the sort of man he wanted to be. "I'm sorry, yes." Laszlo looked back into Seven's vibrant red eyes and extended his clawed hand in a very human gesture, one of the first he'd picked up in Syliras. "I'm Laszlo. I didn't mean to be rude. I don't make friends so easily, so I stopped handing my name out at whim. Gets too… complicated." Pulling his hand back, he ran his fingers through his graphite hair and pushed it back behind his ears. He sat up proper in the bench, leaning back and staring up at the sky. Leth was slowly sliding along his nightly path, resembling the edge of a fingernail, scratching across the sky. Laszlo's stare remained steady and solemn as he compared the white light of the moon to his goddess. He wasn't her. Laszlo had a different name once. How he wished he could remember it. "I came to Alvadas to…" There was a noticeable pause as he groped for words. It became clear that he never had any idea how to end that sentence. "Well, it was the closest place, and it was enticingly called 'the City of Illusions.' I thought it might amount to one big game. Suppose it has. Just not what I expected."

[Seven Xu]

“Laszlo,” Seven repeated the word, letting it roll about on his own tongue before he spat it back out. There was a moment’s hesitation, then Seven’s brows knitted together and he donned a furtive grin. “What sort of person names a bird Laszlo?”

The burning tide of pink was receding down the halfblood’s pale column of neck by the time he unwrapped one of the layers that surrounded it. His frame was more linen and wool than it was flesh; the sweet-smelling knitted scarf—dyed the most vibrant scarlet—was rumpled and passed idly from hand to hand as his toes curled against the worn leather of his boots. A sea of shadows and an intriguing stranger had nearly made him forget this evening’s objective, and the revelation was apparent in the astonished spark that lit his pallid face.

“I hear the city isn’t wanting for good entertainment,” a veiled offer stood behind the flippant comment. After all, with his other half indisposed, the youth had little source of amusement. An intricate cube sat neglected on an unmade bed somewhere in the labyrinth city; the pair had spent an entire moon’s turn trying to decipher the vexing puzzle before the sky turned pale and it was abandoned in favor of sleep in a mutual embrace.

Footsteps on slippery cobblestone caught Seven’s attention, growing closer at an alarming rate. There was no figure to accompany them; only a breeze of cool air passed the bench-warming spiderkin when the sound—that had turned to a thunderous stomp, hurried and angry—passed them by. The halfblood’s fingers dug hard into the scarf, as if seeking comfort from its body-warm knit. “I hear stories about how brilliantly quirky Alvadas is,” his ragged voice was barely a whisper and the facetious smile was gone, replaced by a mournful stare that was fixed on nothing in particular, “I’ve only been unnerved by it.”

Seven let himself draw in a long breath before he stood, brushing dust from his backside and turning to peer over his shoulder at the crouching Symenestra that called himself Laszlo, after a dead bird. He cleared his throat, and let the hand that clutched the bundled scarf dangle limp at his side. “Do you like wine?”

[Laszlo]

"An eight year old," Laszlo shot defensively, glowering at Seven with sudden ferocity flickering in his amethyst eyes. It faded quickly when he saw that the young mixed breed was smiling, but still looked mildly offended. "What's wrong with Laszlo? Can't a child have an imagination?" Courtney Fenwick. Laszlo wished he could remember the young girl for who she was: a spirited, kind little girl who had treated the young Ethaefal as if he were a part of the family. She had adored him like an older brother, dragging him by the hand to all her favorite hiding places, and candidly telling him her hopes for the future. She was lonely, with both her father and sister busy with other things. Laszlo connected with that. But it wasn't her laughing, smiling countenance he thought of when that name crossed his mind; it was the terrified, confused look of horror she wore as she gazed upon her bleeding father and screaming sister. She didn't recognize Laszlo in his Symenestra form. Maybe she never knew what became of Laszlo who fell from the sky. Seven got up off the bench, and the new movement pulled Laszlo out of his thoughts. Laszlo looked up at him, gripping the arm of the bench in preparation as he hesitantly sat still. "Not particularly," he replied with a calm smile, proving that any ire caused by Seven's impertinent question was already long gone. "I prefer a pint of bitter. Is that not classless?" He laughed softly as he pushed himself up, inviting Seven to fall into gait beside him as he began to move down the road. The Withering Rose wasn't too far from here. "I'll buy," he added. "Maybe you look at it all wrong, this city," Laszlo mused out loud, lifting up his hand and placing one of his sharp nails between his lips, tasting the sweet, sticky nectarine juice that had dried on his fingertips. "It wasn't your choice to come here, didn't you say? Perhaps the city is just as unnerved by you, being so leery of the place. You should embrace it. Have a little fun." He rolled his eyes, shoving both hands in pockets. It was cooler tonight, and Laszlo had forgone his usual jacket, but he weathered it if only for appearances. The only pockets he possessed were in his breeches pushing his cloak back and revealing his thin dress and slender form. "I should talk. I rarely go out at night, and during the day all I do is shop and loiter in the streets. I've never gone into any of the establishments here. Worried about ghosts in the dark, I suppose." Laszlo needed a segue. Something to stem the tide of deception before he let it get too far. He briefly searched the sky for something appropriate to ask. "Are you staying at the Cubacious Inn for your visit? I don't suppose you'd fit in with the lot at Wolf's Cave."