dark side of the sun. (ifran)

[Caelum]

PermissionsVarious and sundry granted by Fallacy. a stubborn heart remains unchanged no harm, no life, no love no stranger singin' in your name dear god, I've sealed my fate runnin' through hell, heaven can wait for every piece to fall in place forever gone without a trace your horizon takes its shape long road to ruin there in your eyes - foo fighters - Timestamp: 23 Fall 511 AV Syna buried Her bright face in hands made of storm clouds which were swollen with threat of rain. There was hope of Her return, but it would like as not only be after thunder had applauded the ever entertaining roil of Ionu's favored city. Shadows threw as consequence across the Garden of No Return, bleeding the color from those most precious of blooms which existed as the only source of stability in an eternally altering maze. The hedges rustled beneath an unseen hand, reversing the route for the third time (which was supposedly charm) behind the idling eypharian who wandered even the tricksiest of paths with a bearing unspeakably noble. It may have been the distancing of the sun Herself that allowed an unexpected figure to step out from the beneath the boughs of a pomegranate tree the exact moment in which Ifran of the Northwinds found his foot caught on a root that had not been a blink ago. He was sent sprawling, but there was grace even in his fall. A pair of spit-shined, delicate sized boots planted themselves firmly as flower roots in the grass in front of him; and when he followed them up with a roll of his eyes it was only to discover that the woman looming uncharacteristically above him was incapable of appreciating the rich, mediterranean blue of his regard. A scarf of dove grey silk shot through with darker sparks of fading patterns was tied neatly about her eyes. Palest hair spilled about her shoulders, creeping down the snug fit of a wine colored velvet jacket. It flared past her hips, slender as the rest of her, and did a rippling of scales or the glowing lily of Avalis hint out one might believe her to be a Konti. Maybe she was. Maybe she was not. Regardless, she was standing in the middle of Ionu's maze with her eyes as hidden as Syna's face. What madness was this? Or what trickery? "You are not often in a position to be looking up at someone, are you?" She inquired in flawless Arumenic. It was accented in its center with something that had little to do with deserts and river gods, however. "Is this breaking some unspoken racial law? Here --" And the smile to spill across her rose bud mouth was nothing if not wry. She offered down a hand gloved in supple, black leather. "Allow me." A fall down, a hand up. The maze was still with waiting around them.

[Ifran]

you ordered me off my knees into your arms. wasn't to beg that i knelt; only to see you once from below. tried to say something that filled my mouth and longed to rest in your ear. don't dare write it down for fear it'll become words, just words. - viggo mortensen - Of course he wouldn't heed the warnings of danger within the maze, or thought he could handle himself, or perhaps that Ionu would come to him finally when beset on all sides by -- weather threatening weeping, tricksome tree roots, and beautiful women. One of the first things he had learned to do was to fall, and so while he felt something tear or strain in his ankle, he relaxed in all the right places and moved to minimize the other damage such a fall would cause. He looked up at the woman, a blind seer -- the best seers were blind, they said, and the best of the best, if legend and poetry were to be trusted, and who didn't trust poetry, were those who sacrificed their eyes to Vision -- and considered her for a moment. She seemed kind and friendly enough, but seemings were not trustworthy even outside of surreal Alvadas. "The wise man looks in all directions," he responded, quick as an assassin's blade, "and from all positions." But he accepted her hand up with good grace, though to be sure, he put little weight upon her, pushing up with his lowest set of arms and balancing on his undamaged ankle. His eyes raked over her for a moment more, though he had learned to take a reading of a person with but a glance. Then quickly he looked around, wondering how sentient this place was, whether it was an extension of Ionu Itself. Down, up -- those could be directions in a maze as well, the question being whether it was the truth path. "Thank you," he added with fulsome graciousness. "You speak well for an outlander." The word he used was the most polite term in Arumenic for one who was not Eypharian, but where it might have sounded brittle and false in the mouth of another, it rang true in his. The blood of extinct rivers flowed through his veins, though, and he could speak in the soft, susurrous whispers of the desert sands or sing high as a clarion call. "I should seek a healer."

[Caelum]

"And you speak rather freely for a man trapped in a maze," the lady returned in a trice. It was with words wrapped around the lesser constructs of the common language, having apparently decided to have a falling out with Arumenic the very moment Ifran had complimented her security in its syntax. The smile she offered him curled coy, leaving one with the impression of fragile china -- thin as breath at its rims -- laid over steel. She may well have fit in his viper's nest of Painted Faces and politics where fortunes -- both those of gold as well as those of future fate -- were gambled and won by wit and wile. The wind bucked up, chopping against the rounds and spikes of leaf patterns topping the walls of the maze. Sunlight skittered with slippered feet, racing ahead of tormenting clouds. It rippled over Ifran's imagined seer, drawing no gold from palest hair, no blush from fairest cheek. She snaked her arms about herself and kept her chin cocked as if through the blindfold of her scarf she cold still stare down her oldest opponent. Unflinching. "Fuck," she swore, the foul word decadent as Lhavit's richest sweets in her mouth. "Why did you have to ask for --" "Is something wrong?" A new voice trespassed from a green-bough archway that had potentially been ten minutes before (and was unlike to be so again five from now). The long shadows framed the ethaefal -- another one of the gods' descendants if the Eypharians were to be believed -- so that he glowed within the ill light. The downward turn of pronged horns dripped iodized copper against his shoulders which were, in turn, slumped. Then a son of Syna could slump and slouch all he cared, but insolong as She ruled the sky Her grace emanated from his flesh so vividly even the blind could feel it. "That," the woman finished with a note of disgust that may well have been spurred by the shock equally as evident in her tone. Caelum cast the pair of them a quizzical look, mobile mouth turning down until there followed his eyes to make study of Ifran's injured ankle. He could detect the swelling from where he stood.

[Ifran]

If she thought those were free words, well, her ideas of things were different than his. Her smile came quick and fled as quickly, her flashfire mask heralding the new voice. His head turned toward Syna's son as gracefully as a sunflower sought out Her face, and his clever eyes noted Rak'keli's mark immediately. This was curious, of course. He had learned to traverse Alvadas by keeping his goal in mind and letting the illusory path lead him where he wanted to go, but this was the first time his will had seemingly summoned a sentient being to his aid. Was Ionu watching? Was one or both of these people a manifestation of Ionu? The maze had a mystique built around it, even moreso than the city itself. He did not know why she took umbrage with the Ethaefal, but figured he would exploit the gnosis while waiting to see if that secret revealed itself to him. This place was crawling with Ethaefal, it seemed, and he had to wonder what was calling them hither. "I seem to have sprained an ankle," he said mildly.

[Caelum]

It was a wonderous strange sight for Caelum to behold, the gilded skinned Eypharian and the blindfolded woman from whom the sun seemed not to love. He could sense a tension in her, slender arms crossed beneath the swell of her chest, her clothing saturated with color while the rest of her looked robbed of it. She shivered. He blinked and looked back to the Eypharian. “Shame,” he commented. The bubbling tree roots had sunk back into the hold of Semele when he stepped forward. With him came the scent of the wind, a different sort than that which walked and whirled the crumbling opulence of Ahnatep streets. His had teased the stalks of tall grasses and flirted with campfires of the damned. “Fortunately for you, I’m a physician,” and here he offered the sort of smile that was best described as self deprecating, as if the fact of this amused him. He spread his hands between them, lacking their gloves therefore displaying the sepertine twist of Rak’keli’s blessing stretching its wings across the back of his right hand. The lady snorted delicately. “How much?” She demanded, head tilting toward Ifran in a manner that shouldered up against defensive. “Have a care,” this second part was delivered Ifran, an eyebrow rocking prettily upward above her blindfold. “His sort will steal the sun from your eyes if they can.” Sharp features settled into a scowl as Caelum shook his head. Without hesitation, however, he sank down to a crouch in front of Ifran to give his ankle a visual examination. “No charge.” “He lies,” she retorted.

[Ifran]

Ifran quietly observed the banter between them, attempting to suss out the subtext. If theater was life without masks, then here he would study the masks and attempt to peek beneath them. With the woman focused on the healer, and the healer focused on his ankle, they were distracted from him, their ability to hide things from him diminished. But one had to be wise to know what they saw, and Ifran had never claimed to be wise. Quite the opposite, his mask was that of the dilettante, the rich man's son, the aesthete. Such a man knew nothing, of course. "No charge," he observed. "I have your word?" Once healed, the situation managed, he might repay the Ethaefal in some way. Ifran knew that equilibrium must be maintained; the woman was not wrong, but anything could be interpreted any number of ways. Eypharians were past masters at interpreting things in the way most advantageous for their own purposes. Here in Alvadas, Ifran had few allies. Hasre might be trusted to pick him up and help him to a healer, but his brother was not here. Aru had been sent back to Ahnatep, lucky slave, to keep an eye on things, to remind Izdihar that he lived somewhere in the mysterious beyond. At least if there was no acknowledged charge, Ifran could repay the favor in a manner of his choosing. This one could not demand the sun of him, nor anything the princeling did not want to give.

[Caelum]

Amusement crouched in old, amber eyes when they turned up to Ifran. The line of his mouth twisted, creating all too human of an expression for a face far too fair for the mortal world. "What word would that be?" The woman interjected, creeping closer with a tilt of her head and a tickling of hair against her throat. "Don't be obtuse, Rahel," the ethaefal muttered and offered his patient a shift of his shoulders that would have to substitute for manners. "You have it. Here --" He unwound to his feet, made buoyant by purpose. The action forced the woman to go still, lips still suggesting a scowl the scarf tied about her eyes otherwise hid. "You should sit first," Caelum said, offering an arm, a shoulder of support. Though his frame was lanky, too trimmed down and diminished for the typical vigor of his heaven-spat race, there was an accent to the wear in him that suggested strength.

[Ifran]

Syna was well-regarded in Ahnatep for all that the majority of his race were less than religious. Perhaps he should turn his face away from this Rahel as Syna had turned Her face away from her, but would She approve of his trucking with one of Her fallen? Did he care? He thought for a moment whether he was the sort of person She would care to mark, then wondered if he would even want it, what with the time he would have to spend covering it on stage every night. Then again, power was power, and there was at least one similar need shared by artists and politicians: vision. Ifran thought all his ankle needed was a proper wrapping, and he would have to rest it well. But if he had a reputable healer on hand, he supposed he should do as he bade him do, despite the fact he could have easily balanced on one foot for half an hour if he needed to examine it. With a sigh of acceptance and an eye on both of them, he sat upon a nearby stone, crossed his calf across his knee that the ethaefal might better see it. "I do love a good theatrical," he said wryly, "but the suspense is killing me. What secrets lie between you to harbor such animosity. Tell me the story, please. Perhaps I can immortalize it in song and script someday, this epic battle of barbed wits and sharp tongues."

[Caelum]

“Your mockery is wasted on him,” Rahel professed. As though one or both of them were the moon and she the tide, she turned to follow them with a swelling stride that ultimately trespassed upon both of their shadows. “He just doesn’t care.” Caelum slanted his eyes sideways, summing up the woman before dropping once more to his knees before the Eypharian. The grass smeared against the cloth of his trousers and the maze seemed to sigh around them, air still beneath the massive shadows falling from the sprawl of still deliberating storm clouds. “I’m Caelum,” he introduced himself to his patient. Warm fingers, calloused yet gentle, slid across gilded, swelling skin, tracing the grace of the bones beneath and seeking the source lines of muscle abuse. “And that is Rahel. We’re a giant farce, sir. So opposite that we are nearly alike. There are no straight lines. Eh?”

[Ifran]

A dark, strong brow rocked upward at her accusation. She spoke with such vehemence, and he was still paying as close attention to the both of them to try to suss out the subtext. So close did he pay attention that he paid little effort in attempting to hide it. They had his interest and it was plain. But she spoke of caring, and he had to wonder whether she thought he himself cared about anything in particular. But paying attention bespoke a certain amount of care. He had asked for a healer and the maze provided; he had asked for an explanation, but that seemed less forthcoming or, at least, it would take time to work itself out and make itself known. "Rahel, Caelum." Their names were memorized and spoken with a subtle understanding of the cadences in which they both spoke. His ear was trained to music, his mouth to making song. "It is a dubious pleasure to meet you both," he said with a lilt of humor. Rahel, after all, was dooming and glooming, and Caelum had only come as an answer to the need of his injury. "I am Ifran of the House of the North Winds, more recently of the Crooked Playhouse. And now the labyrinth." He managed a bow that left the lower half of his body supremely still, the better for Caelum to judge his ankle. "A farce, then," he agreed. "With wit and humor, you will explicate some social or political dilemma too painful to look at straight on, you clever sidewinders, you. And two extreme opposites," he said, two hands forming a circle, two index fingers traveling from the bottom up either side to meet at the top, "always meet in the place of extremes. It is known."