[flashback] the scholar and the pirate (nel & hadrian)

[Hadrian]

13th Summer, 507 A.V.

The sun was out and it was the first truly hot day since he had moved to Zeltiva the previous year. As such, his student robes were left at home and he was sunning himself at a rocky bit of beach near the harbor. Quietly worshiping Syna, he squinted into a book because even during a break from his official classes, he didn't want to stop learning. He was finally in his utopia, and it only seemed to get better and better as time went on. Fully immersed in magical studies now, he was not taking a season off to visit home. It would be more likely for his parents to find out and try to put a stop to things.

When the heat grew too much, he set the book aside and jumped into the water, letting the chill salt water leech away the summer sun. Then, lolling on his rock, he let the sun reclaim the water. He watched the ships of all shapes and sizes come and go, knowing enough about trading vessels from his father to identify types and likely purposes.

Once dry, he began to read again, but after flipping over onto his back, the book gradually drooped until he decided with all his drowsy wisdom, that it would be acceptable to shut his eyes for a moment or two. A little nap never hurt anyone. The cool parchment pages settled onto his face.

[Nel Sayo]

The young wizard would likely come awake sometime thereafter when a narrow shadow spilled itself across his face, obscuring the red heat of sunlight.

A drip. Plop. Onto his chest. And then another, onto his face.

When he opened his eyes, he'd find himself the curious study of a pair of bright blue eyes, set in a sylphan face. The girl stood above him, dripping wet as though she'd just come out of the sea itself, peering down at him most ponderously, between the spilling tangle of silverine curls that clung about her shoulders.

A smile flashed brief and quick, like a glance of sunlight off the point of a rapier, and she crinkled her nose.

"You're red as a lobster," she informed him.

[Hadrian]

As luck would have it, the book had fallen off his face and he was almost as shocked by the face in his as he was by his sudden thirst and the burning sensation over the anterior half of his body.

He had been dreaming of Caelum for some reason; it must have been Syna's way of punishing him for aiding her forsaken favorite. He had done some further research and based on the ethaefal's coloring, he had fixed somewhere between autumnal and winter plumage.

But that was hardly the point. Blue eyes, wet, white hair, and a smile. In his face.

"What? Unh... I must've... SHYKE! OW!"

He proceeded to groan.

[Nel Sayo]

Nel covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a giggle at his sudden reaction to the tender flare of his sunburn. Nel was a white, white creature, more prone to bleach beneath the sun than brown; she knew a thing or two about sunburn.

"Here, don't struggle," she laughed quietly, sinking down into a crouch beside him with a creak of the leather trousers she wore. Elbows slung across her thighs. Her clothes, notably, were dry. She fished a small pouch from one of her boots and held it up before the lad, letting it dangle off her forefinger. "Put this on the worst spots, it'll make it feel better."

Within the pouch were a collection of sticky leaves. The leaves oozed a goo that got all over everything, but gave off a sharp, clean smell. Tucking a spill of pale hair behind her ear, the girl continued to smile at him. She might've been even more amused if she'd known about whom Hadrian had been dreaming; she hadn't known what to call the ethaefal when first she'd fished him out of the sea. Autumnal was a good word for it.

"And you might wanna get outta the sun for awhile, mate."

[Hadrian]

"Yes," he agreed, "you're probably right."

Holding the pouch, he got up gingerly and pulled on his tunic and sandals, wincing at what he imagined would end up being the selfsame 'worse spots' she mentioned, but he would have to find a mirror to be sure. The closest mirror was the sea, but it didn't look calm enough for that. Which left his cottage in the university district.

"Thanks for this," he said, lifting the pouch, unsure if she meant him to have all of it. "Come on; I'll put it on and feed you. It's the least I can do."

Her humor, though, was infectious and he was trying not to smile because that was more painful than the pained frown he currently wore.

[Nel Sayo]

"Oh, I --"

She was going to say that she couldn't go with him, because she didn't know him. Sound logic. Don't follow the strange Sunburn Guy into his wherever-he-lives, Nelly, because you've only just met him and don't know whether or not he will cleave you to pieces with a giant axe once he gets you alone. But they were already alone. And he was all...red and pathetic-looking. And then he offered her food.

"-- great, okay. I can help you if you want, with the salve. I'm Nel. It's petching hot out here, you might wanna fall asleep in the shade next time, you know? Obviously you weren't planning on falling asleep, I'm just saying, if it was me, I'd curl up under a tree instead'a on rocks in the freaking blinding sunlight, just 'cause well...you're awfully pale. Or I guess you were. Now you're...not. Anymore."

She flashed him a grin and gathered up the lengths of her dripping hair, wrapping them about and up into a bun that would surely tumble loose in a matter of moments. But it was out of her face for the time being.

[Hadrian]

He turned around so she could see the pale stretches of skin only kissed by the sun, not bitten, then half-turned to nod to her as he picked up his book and prepared to go.

"You're right of course. Anyway, I have cucumbers and fruit, which will help with the heat."

Danger was of the internal variety at the university, he had found. The Regents were powerful, and the streets of the Old Quarter were safe as far as city streets went. Even beyond the campus, he had found that student robes lent a certain amount of protection and deference; the people here knew how much they owed to the presence of the University, with its money and its knowledge and its power. Without his robes, he still felt the confident hand of Big Brother University on his shoulder.

"It's just that we haven't had such hot weather yet this year," he said, trying to explain away what was, in fact, plan folly on his part.

[Nel Sayo]

"Yeah, sure," Nel was saying, bobbing her head in agreement, except as he started walking she scrambled about to get in front of him, pacing backwards ahead of him. "So do you have a name?"

Cucumbers later, introductions first. She needed a name in case he turned out to be a bad sort of person, so that Sy could find him and snuff out his life force. But she was smiling, because he didn't strike her as a bad sort of person. Not that Nel was a particularly good judge of character, but there wasn't anyone presently around to remind her of that unfortunate truth.

She was a preposterous sort of creature, all long limbs and white skin, pale hair and wearing blackest black, even in that bright sunlight, sleeves to her wrists and a high collar, gloves half-covering her hands. Maybe that's why she'd been swimming.

Her heel caught on an edge of uneven cobbled stone and she stumbled backwards, but just laughed over it and straightened up, swinging her arms as she walked.

"Not that I need your name to eat your fruit and stuff, but it makes sense to start with names and move on from there to fruit, not vice versa, though I suppose it's not a hard and fast rule or anything."

[Hadrian]

"Oh, sorry," he said, squinting in the sunlight. "I'm Hadrian. I'm a student at the university; I guess they don't teach common sense, huh?"

He smiled despite the flare of pain in his cheeks. She seemed nice enough; pretty, too. Sometimes classes got so intense that he would not interact in any meaningful sense with anyone outside of the academic bubble, but the young summer sun demanded one go outdoors, and live.

"Shyke, it's like Syna gave me a big fat gnosis mark on half my body, but all it's going to do is remind me that I'm an idiot."

[Nel Sayo]

"What do they teach instead?" Nel wanted to know.

Nobody'd ever taught her anything...with books. These sorts of thing didn't so much intrigue her as they were mysterious. She stopped walking, and reached over, snatching the pouch of salve out of his hand.

"Hold still," she instructed, fishing one of the leaves from the pouch. Close up, she was very pretty indeed. Strikingly so. But in the way of a girl unaccustomed to being told as much, from the way she dressed. She squeezed some of the leaf's gooey inside onto her fingertip and leaned in to Hadrian, bright eyes on his face, and carefully applied some of the goo to the reddest stretch of skin across his cheeks, and the bridge of his nose. The touch was light, like a cool brush of satin, and the soreness no doubt dissipated immediately. "If you can't even smile, we're not gonna get anywhere."

She held up the pouch for him to take again, eyes still scrutinizing his face. A wrinkle of her nose in thought.

"What's a gnosis mark? And really it's just a bad sunburn, which doesn't make you an idiot at all. It'll fade."

Like that made it all better, she grinned again.