The Glint In Your Eyes Matches The Glint Of Your Steel

[Kavala]

When Ronan spoke, Kavala met his eyes - focused on them intently - and let their penetrating gaze drag her somewhat back to herself. The pain felt good and she shook with the pleasure of it, but there was something else here... something more. The man in front of her listened. He didn't judge and he didn't even accept it. Instead he simply listened and in telling him it unburdened her a bit. She bent, scooped up her discarded tamo dagger, and ran her thumb down its blade tracing a pattern in the small droplets of Ronan's blood on the sharp metal.

She never once broke her gaze with his as she did so.

"The days are not grey though... not ever. Not any more. They are so bright with promise. They always have been since I've come here. They are even brighter with you, Ronan." She said, her voice coming out a frogs' croak as she caressed the blade with her thumb and let Eryis' power wash over her, distracting her with memories of the dagger's making and even Ronan's last thoughts before he'd shed the blood on her blade. Usually Lykata distracted her, buoyed her up, but this was Ronan and it was worse with him - a great deal worse - because there was so much more there to begin with than there ever would be with a stranger.

She wanted him - hard, fast, dirty - in a way that no lover should rightly want another. It didn't matter they were in the training circle. It didn't matter there was nothing but the floor. Kavala's instincts were in high gear and she was trembling with need. With the biggest effort Kavala had yet exerted over her power she reined it in, deep breathing until her panting smoothed out and the air within her lungs giving her more reasoning power than instinct. She would not, no absolutely refused to, let the past dictate the future. And only when she was more in control did she step back forward, closer to him, because that much she could give herself in a face of all the emotion she had.

She caught his jaw in her hand, ran the pad of her thumb down his cheekline, and left a light trail of his own blood painted there. She made no attempt to wipe it off. She was still intent on keeping his gaze, but her words when she spoke again were more controlled.

"Tell me what you do to live when things get too hard? Tell me why your days are so grey?" She said, stepping even closer, wanting to know. She wanted to know him. Kavala was still on fire but she was under more control. Not everyone would get such a reaction from her. For one she refused to put herself in compromising positions with strangers or people such things would be awkward with. Ronan, though, needed to know the whole of it... and she had no qualms about going from calm to this in front of him. She had no desire to hide anything from him in fact. And someday, maybe as a sort of therapy, she'd give in to what she felt when he blooded her. Maybe that would break the cycle. Maybe not.

[Ronan]

He smiled, but she seemed wild. Lost in something deep and unfathomable. Those eyes were... wanting. Regaining her breath, she stepped close to him again and spoke in only a way she could.

"Death, loss, fractures... nothingness. That is why my days were grey Kavala. I had nothing, and it wasn't just what lay behind me that was burnt and destroyed. I felt like... I felt like the path ahead was all ruin too."

He lowered his head a little, loosening his hold on his dagger, feeling the warm blood on his face. The smell. Metallic. But oh so alive.

"Perhaps..." He looked at her. He really looked at her. Her temple pulsated, her heart racing, blood staining her flesh, hair stuck to her face with sweat. Nobody could call her a meek Konti. She was so much more than that. She had been conditioned by the grasses, by her brother. She was fierce a Drykas as they came. "Perhaps they are brighter with you, Kavala."

He nodded, firmer, surer of himself. There was somthing there. Something more than the ordinary.

"Let's help each other, yes? We add a splash of colour every now and then. We get rid of all that grey and black and white. We brighten each others lives."

He touched his dagger, pressing his thumb against the warm steel. If his brother had taught him anything, it was to be. Simple, to be.

[Kavala]

Kavala nodded, forcing herself to breath in and breath out, concentrate on the sound of his voice. She said nothing more, having said all she really needed to say to him, instead fingering the tamo daggers that were sheathed into themselves. She concentrated on what he said, about the death and ruin and destruction behind him. And she thought about the path forward for him, being filled with all the same. The sadness of what his life must be like with that outlook bothered her. It bothered her enough to bring her back from the darker parts of her soul where she found herself trapped.

She nodded slowly, absorbing what he said.

Kavala sheathed the daggers in her weapons harness along with the second set and stepped back, dragging in another breath. Her lungs were leveling out now, drawing air in steadily so she wasn't panting anymore. The wild bestial look had left her eyes and she blinked, trusting herself more.

"I'm sorry for what you must have gone through and have been going through every day." She said, understanding that she truly knew nothing about loss, not like he did. Kavala had a family growing up, a father, additional mothers, and siblings that supported her. Ronan had been on his own.

She drew her hand through her sweat slicked hair, the straightness of it plastered to her skull. There was nothing attractive about her now, drenched in sweat and wearing both his blood and hers. But it was an honest look, one that made her feel all the more real.

Kavala hoped things were brighter for Ronan with her, but she said nothing when he spoke. He seemed to not be finished, not at all, and so she remained stoic, watching him, listening and letting him finish releasing the thoughts locked inside his head. Once tangible, they became more real, because cast out into the world he could never take them back.

He wanted to help her... wanted them to help each other, but had he really listened to her? She saw no grey in the world. She'd told him there was only brightness for her. And that was so true. To her the world was full of promise. But it was promise that came about because of her actions not because she'd sat around waiting for someone to change her fate. People made their own pathways in the world. And truthfully happiness depended on ones internal view, not someone else's helping hand. Kavala had learned not to wait, hope, not to count on things. Each of her Tavis' had taught he that. Would Ronan be different? Kavala dared to hope.

So what she heard him say was that he wanted her help, not that he could help her. That Ronan felt she could change his grey. Kavala wasn't sure how she could do that, but she was willing to try. And so she nodded, offering him a smile.

"I think we could work something out." She simply said, not having anything more to say. Kavala had already done a lot of talking.

[Ronan]

Ronan smiled gently as Kavala agreed with him. She looked tired, sheathing her own weapons. They had danced with the daggers for a long while. In actuality, opponents were not often evenly matched. One combatant would fall within moments, cold steel pushed into flesh. They were the weapons of killers, but also hunters.

“Then that's what we’ll do.” Ronan said, nodding. He had no idea of Kavala’s misunderstanding of the situation. The tragedy was silent, masquerading as an offer of help.

A burgeoning hope filled him. Helping someone else... Well that would help him too. Shared experience. That was the crux of it all. Drykas were not born to be alone. At the very least, they had their Striders, and beyond that, family was vital. The integrity of the pavilion...

And so it was that Ronan thought he could help the both of them, and his naivety left him oblivious to Kavala’s feelings in the matter.

Thus, another knot formed in the twisted tale of the Konti and the Drykas.

[Kavala]

Kavala walked away frustrated, truthfully, trying to wrestle between the need to understand Ronan and what he'd just been through and temper her own needs. It would have been different, she thought, if he had said anything at all or reacted at all to the deepest darkest parts of her that she'd revealed to him. But instead he seemed to ignore her words, moving on to his own issues instead.

In a way it hurt, deeply, because she'd expected some discussion or perhaps some comfort or even a kind but firm response. Raiha knew, of all the people in The Sanctuary, the Akontak had guessed that Kavala had a major problem and her friend did all she could to try and help. But Kavala was starting to think that men lived in their own worlds, locked in their own needs. Experience had taught her that. None of her Talvis' had given anything to her. They'd all taken, sometimes violently, and no one really had any idea of how deeply scarring that was. Sometimes the Konti was weary of taking care of everyone, of being their shoulder and caregiver, when she herself had similar needs.

No one ever told her it would be okay. No one ever sent her to bed when she was too tired or stopped to make sure she ate when she forget because she was too lost in the magic she'd been loosing herself in over the past seasons rebuilding The Sanctuary. Truthfully, sometimes deep in the dark of night when she couldn't sleep but simply stayed up holding Tasival as he slept, she wondered what she'd do when The Sanctuary was done. What purpose would she have then? She even wondered if she could stretch it out, make it last, just so she'd have more time on this plain of existence, because truthfully the rebuild had become her whole world. Lars Varkas had warned her. He had told her magic had its price. But in a way it gave her something that so far no one else had. It wrapped itself around her, obeyed her wishes, and saw to her needs forming just as she asked it too and being just as beautiful as she needed it to be to hide the ugliness inside her.

And it hadn't turned from that ugliness. It hadn't ignored it. The magic certainly wasn't more concerned with itself than with her. As Kavala's weary steps took her from Ronan and the training circle and towards the bathing chambers, she simply shook her head, and reached up wiping away a bit of wetness from her forehead, and then more from her cheeks not comprehending the dampness was tears. Kavala had not realized how much she'd set stock in the fact that Ronan would understand and accept all of her, even the dark parts. She'd thought a million times about telling him the things she'd told him tonight and that he'd tell her it was okay. That he'd face the darkness in her and examine it for what it was and perhaps shine some of his light on it. That they'd get through it.

But he'd said nothing. Something, anything, would have been better.

Perhaps it was unfair to him. He had his own problems and his own needs. The Konti nodded, convincing herself that she was being selfish. With each step she took away from him she pushed her own needs deeper, dismissing them because everyone else had. After all, Kavala had the magic, and that was more than most had. The magic would comfort her and see to her needs. The rest was unimportant. It had to be. Everyone - absolutely everyone - had to be right. She'd never speak of it again. She'd battle her own darkness in her own way in her own time alone. Her mother had once told her that everyone, regardless of race, age, sex, religion, or any of it came into the world alone. She had also said they left it alone. And that the secret to happiness in those two facts was being happy with being alone, with being simply who you were with yourself. And honestly Kavala was.

[Gillar]

Great character development and interaction. I particularly enjoy training threads that dig deeper into the character. The interaction between the two characters during a knife fight lends to a unique state of character development. Kavala: Dagger: 5 Endurance: 1 Lore: Ronan: Inner Torment Lore: Unrequited Attraction Ronan: Dagger: 5 Endurance: 1 Lore: Kavala: Pain is Her Pleasure Lore: Maintaining emotional neutrality amidst emotional diversity