[Flashback] You Mean We Can Do That? (Pash)

[Lilium]

21st Day of Autumn, 398AV - Worlds End Grotto, Just After Sunset... The Worlds End Grotto had stood since before the Valterrian, of that much the were-creature knew. It had withstood the destruction and mayhem and become a sort of haven for those who need a place to see friendly faces and drown their fears. She had wandered here, as she had done so many times now in the past ninety odd years, to gain her bearings and perhaps a little coin. As she wandered the streets her autumn features melted away with each slow almost surreal footstep, like so many dried up dead leaves lost in the wind. She was left in her konti skin, and breathed a low sigh of relief. Entering the establishment, she moved towards the bar, seeking out the inn keeper with a wide and bubbly smile. The previous keep, and the keep before had known her by face, but he had gotten older and older and eventually a new face replaced his. This face was not familiar, but had certain features of familiarity. A relative, or son perhaps. "Good evening sir, I hope I find you well. Perchance you are looking for an entertainer for the evenings? I am a songstress, and I ask only for a meal and a place to sleep for my pay." Smiling on at the man, she blinked softly as he looked at her with a solemn face. "Nope, not currently. Ain't needin' anyone. Got 'im." With a raised eyebrow he pointed at the small seedy man sitting at the fireplace, plucking painfully on an out of tune lute. His voice was that of gravel rolling down a mountain. Turning back to the innkeep, she shrugged. "Well, I suppose if you have him..." Pausing, she tilted her head and raised a finger with curiosity. "You look awfully familiar..did your father work here before you? I remember he was a lovely man. He had me perform for a whole season once." Allowing her words to work on the keep, she turned her head to feign interest in the lutist. It always happened like this. They said no, then they got remembering and nostalgic. Then they recalled a woman singing when they were children. Eventually they gave her a chime. That's all the time she needed. Everywhere she went, it always went the same. As she looked on at the lutist, Lilium ignored the patrons in the bar. They were always the same people, different era's, different problems. Her eyes didn't even pick out faces anymore, just...people.

[Pash'nar]

The Grotto wasn't really Pash'nar's favorite place to spend time in Zeltiva, despite it's historical significance and varied patronage. However, his adoptive family's sons and cousins and nephews and such all really seemed to enjoy the place. Almost as much as they found it fun to take the tattooed man drinking before the sun went down just for something to do. Getting the ethaefal drunk was a joke with them, and one Pash didn't always mind humoring, especially when he didn't have to pay for all his drinks. It'd been a long night at sea the evening before. They'd made a good haul of fish, no thanks to his help. He'd spent more time studying the stars and taking notes than fiddling with nets and lines. They humored him, though. That was kind. Then, it'd been a long morning preparing their catch and bringing it to market. Their profits had been mostly put away, with the exception of enough for the rest of the afternoon spent drinking and petching around playing cards. The dark-haired false Svefra wasn't too good at cards either. Sunset began to approach and Pash found himself very drunk, still sitting at their table with two or three of his companions no longer awake. The rest of his familial entourage decided it was time to head home and sleep off their wasted miza and folly, but he found he wasn't quite in the mood to leave. He let them carry the others off, making quite a foolish, drunken scene as they laughed and tripped over each other and some other patrons, apologizing with slurred speeches and goofy grins. He remained, letting the sunset claim his tanned flesh and replace it with opalescent paleness while sitting in a far corner, mostly unnoticed. He could feel his shift in height, watching his body stretch and lengthen, bronze-tipped horns stretching from his temples. His raven hair faded into the shades of a harvest moon, still contained in a messy top-knot. The shift made his stomach lurch and his vision blur, not because it was at all painful so much as the contents of his stomach were no longer being processed. A bit of the slur in his thinking faded, the soft edges of things coming just a bit back into focus as his drunkenness slowed, but, gods, he was still hardly sober. It was an odd feeling, trapped in the middle of wastedness and sobriety. Suspended until sunrise. Pash'nar doubted anyone noticed, settled into the back of the tavern as he was with so much of the less-than-sober patrons staring at the rather mediocre performer instead of at his suddenly dramatic form. He sighed, cerulean eyes traveling across the room as the weight of familiar melancholy settled into his beautifully carved chest. Oh, Leth, how many more nights would he have to endure in a body that mockingly reminded him of home? When would this be over? He clung to the hope that his pale, moody god heard him, saw him, doted on him, but on nights like this, alone and far from sobriety, he doubted deeply the truth of his own heart's desires. He sighed, straightening in his seat to his full height for a moment before settling down again by resting his chin in his palms, so listless but having nowhere to go. Maybe the shyke musician needed some more drinks to get better. Or something. He had no desire to go home. The mortality of his friends only depressed him further under the stars. If Leth cared so much, why would he even be here? Gods, being drunk at night was petching stupid.

[Lilium]

"Fine." Turning her face back to the keep with wide eyes and false surprise, Lilium pressed her hand to her chest gently. "Really, are you sure? I don't want to impose..." Even as she was saying it, the ethaefal was moving towards the front of the tavern smiling at the lutist. As she approached him, she touched his shoulder with a soft hand. "You were lovely. Perhaps I could cover for a while whist you have yourself a drink? I'm sure the keep won't mind." Patting his shoulder as the lutist stopped playing and nodded, Lilium took her rightful place and breathed deeply. Around her, disinterested faces chatted into their mugs and chewed on their meals. Softly, she started, her heart in every word she sang - uncaring whether she touched the mortals around her or not. She sang, because she remembered. Songness : "I close my eyes, only for a moment and the moment's gone. All my dreams pass before my eyes in curiosity. Dust in the wind. All they are is dust in the wind. Same old song. Just a drop of water in an endless sea. All we do crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see. Dust in the wind. All we are is dust in the wind." As she sang, Lilium glanced across the room, her icy blue eyes catching something in the low light. Something that caught her voice in her throat before she could start the second verse. Horns, carved and refined features. A slight skin tone not unlike her own during the light of day. Syna be damned, damned for all she was worth. Another, her kin. Gods...gods it was another. Unable to move, scared to blink lest the creature was merely a mirage, she looked at the tavern. People were looking now, mortals waiting for her to continue, their attention drawn to the almost white creature that offered a little better entertainment than the lutist. Licking her lips, Lilium continued, her gaze on the creature at the back of the room. "Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky. It slips away and all your money won't another minute buy. Dust in the wind. All we are is dust in the wind. Dust in the wind. Everything is dust in the wind." The lyrics of the song dripped with sincerity, her blue eyes locked on the ethaefal. As the song ended, she didn't hear whether she had been applauded or booed or asked for more. Duty forgotten, Lilium left her post, shifting through the faceless people to approach the creature, fallen to the land and stripped of divine glory. Her mind raced, her heart beat almost out of her chest. She wanted to speak, but the words would not come. Finally, she let out a sound. "Where have you been?" It was a whisper, a trembling and almost broken sound.

[Pash'nar]

The Konti was staring at him. He'd induced a moment of uncomfortable silence in the pale woman, noting the quiet discontent of the crowd once she paused in her singing to let her gaze linger on his Leth-changed form. He shifted in his rickety seat, cerulean eyes meeting pale blue ones. Was he supposed to smile? He looked away once she began to sing again, pale finger tracing gouges in the worn wood of his table top. His moonlit celestial form always drew strange attentions. At first, they were novel, and he didn't mind, but over the years, he wasn't sure if he always enjoyed the extra long looks or shy smiles or stupid questions his opalescent skin and ornamental horns elicited from simple fishermen or random townsfolk. Some people knew to say nothing—a handful had actually met his kind before, but they were rare gems, university students or professors mostly. He hardly had an opportunity to mix with their like, so it was the idle stares of the ignorant he received most often. Some people were actually afraid, as if he was some god deciding to walk among them. As if. Maybe if he had willingly been allowed to slip from the heavens instead of been so rudely dropped and forgotten. No, if he had his way, he wouldn't be walking here among the dying. He had no petching interest in godhood unless it meant he could go home. Home. Thoughts of his dwelling alongside his god filled his mind without his permission. He wrestled with the overwhelming sense of longing they stirred up in his alcohol-laden system. The Konti was finishing her song and he was hardly listening, desperately attempting to put away tumultuous memories of the Ukalas that still sometimes haunted his slower-moving thoughts. He didn't want to see that, not even in his mind's eye, for any imagination of the place was still a pale comparison to the reality. It made his heart ache, reminding him that he'd been stuck in this place for several turns of the seasons now and all of them ended the same way—with him still here and Leth still so strangely distant. His thin lips curled a little with his pained memories, and he was startled out of the faintest inklings of the growing self-loathing that would later over-burden him completely by a quiet, unexpected question. The ethaefal blinked, disoriented, and looked up to see the woman who had been singing staring at him again, standing now at his table in uninvited proximity instead of at a comfortable distance across the room. "Where, what?" He managed to blurt a confused echo of her question with his best, totally unrefined Common, clearing his throat and making only a half-hearted attempt not to slur any words. Blearily, he focused on her scaled features, but if the intensity of her attention was truly on the shard of moonlight, it would be obvious he wasn't quite sober, "I ain't sure what'cha mean. I been 'ere, drinkin'. Do I know you?" Pash'nar let a lopsided, flirty grin crease its way into his aquiline features. If the woman wanted to be distracted by his moonlit form, he was inebriated enough to enjoy playing along, "It's a shame if I've gone an' forgotten a pretty face wi'a pretty voice."

[Lilium]

Lilium blinked at the horned being, her crystalline gaze confused as he spoke, as though she expected he would recognize her and see who she was. Uninvited, the konti sat down in the seat beside him and shook her head. "I thought I was the only one. Wretched and cast aside and sundered by the vile transformation that stupid mortals would call divine. They wouldn't know divinity if it appeared before them and slapped them in the face." Her nose wrinkled in vehement disgust as she spoke, pale gaze hard and angry. The mortals disgusted her with their false sense of worship and passion. Silly stupid corpses, living and dying in the blink of her eye. Fading into nothing and forgotten within chimes. It was then she seemed to realize where she was, and what time of day she was in. Or rather, night. The woman reached out then, touching one finger ever so gently to the back of his hand. "But I see you, and your real. You just like me. Sometimes I see others, but they are shadows and ghosts in my mind. They trick me, and they disappear when I run to them. I don't run to them anymore. No more." Taking a deep breath through mouth nose and gills, the platinum haired girl looked at him with an earnest face. "Are there more? Of us? Of you? Where are they all? Are you..." Suddenly Lilium paused, pulling her hand back and narrowing her eyes. "Are you drunk?" It was an incredulous statement, as though she couldn't put the idea of drunk and being in his changed state together. She'd been chained to this bland, barren land for just over ninety years...and not once had she been intoxicated in her demonous state.

[Pash'nar]

At first, the inebriated ethaefal couldn't quite follow the Konti's implications. She spoke as if they shared origins, as if they were the same kind of creature, but as sure as Leth hung in the sky outside tonight, the pale woman that sat next to him uninvited was not the same as he was. She had scales and gills, not luminescence and ornamental horns. Was she confused? Was she crazy? The only … what? Cerulean eyes widened as she touched him, and he withdrew his opalescent hand as if she had cut him instead. Her words were at least somewhat sobering, if only in their shock value. He'd washed ashore just two years ago and had honestly never bothered to wonder if there were any more of his kind … well, not really. Maybe once. Who would wish such a curse on one of his brothers and sisters? Surely, not him. He wouldn't wish this on anyone. If he was a child of Leth, what was she implying she was? The shard of moonlight stared without answering for a long time, studying the woman for some hint at what she was talking about. "Oh, aye, Imma lil' bit," he finally answered, raising the hand she'd touched to make a squishing motion with his fingers as if that indicated with any accuracy the level of intoxication he was currently experiencing. The grin on his too-perfect, aquiline features bordered on some mix between proud and humorous, "But it ain't th'same—you shoulda' seen me b'fore sunset. I's really petched, but when everythin' stops workin' I—" He paused, inhaling angrily. His mind had wandered, distracted. Tide pool gaze narrowed and his hand balled into a fist, dropping to his lap, something coming together in his slurred brain, "—wait. I ain't like you. Not unless—" The ethaefal blinked slowly, "—you're a child of Syna?" He exhaled, words hanging between them with the unspoken weight of timeless expectation.

[Lilium]

Lilium scoffed, lip curled in disgust and head shaking slightly. She sat back in the chair, placing her hands in her lap and regarding the inebriated ethaefal with a curious look. In his surprise, the younger creature had offered an answer to her question. There were no others, it was she. And it was he. If they did exist, he knew not of them. Something akin to grief swelled in her breast. "A mother does not abandon her children to rot in filth. Syna is a vile and cruel deity, she looks down on me and laughs at my despair. The light of her touch turns me, reveals the beast that dwells within." Holding her tongue for a moment, the pale skinned konti finally leaned forward again. "I am one of her own, fallen from grace when the world was split asunder. I remember slipping through gentle fingers, our brothers and sisters holding me. But they could not stop me, I fell. I awoke in the darkness of an ocean I knew a long time before, another lifetime ago. I've been wandering, lost, for so many years." She searched his face carefully with icy blue eyes. There was still something there, beneath the alcohol and broken common. A faith...some little hope that he would somehow find his way home. She had figured it out long ago, his existence only confirmed it. There was no going home. "Leth was your father, he commands your change now with his pale and luminous face. And how long ago did he cast you down, spew you forth from the heavens? How long have you been on the mortal plane, begging him to take you home?"

[Pash'nar]

Pash'nar's expression of curiosity soured at the kind of disgust that the false Konti described their situation as being in. He had struggled with this new reality, surely he had, but he hadn't fallen into the kind of contempt the woman had settled herself so firmly into. Not yet. Would he? Was it inevitable? Did too much time here, away from his pale, luminous god, mean he was really doomed to fester in the kind of bitterness that revealed itself in her eyes and clung desperately to her tone. The moonlit ethaefal sank visibly in his seat, leaning away from the woman as she leaned forward and letting an arm dangle over the back of his rickety chair, "Two full turns o'the seasons, s'all." His cerulean gaze traveled from her paleness to his own, looking down and the revealed opalescence of his chest and arms in the warmth of the tavern, unable to consider his celestial memory given flesh a beast. If anything, Syna's light revealed much more a beast than his once heavenly form. Sea trash. Flotsam. Tattooed and distrusted. Thin lips curled in uncomfortable distrust. Maybe this Konti was just attempting to confuse him. Maybe she was hardly an ethaefal at all. Had he begged? Pleaded? Yes. That much was true, and she knew, or seemed to know, with sincerity those struggles of his heart and faith. But in her time here, Syna hadn't answered her voice. Did that mean Leth would never answer his? The very thought made his chest ache, dropping anchor on his hope. Pash looked away from her then, muscles of his jaw working as too-perfect teeth clenched, "You sayin' you've been 'ere longer?" Cerulean eyes narrowed with suspicion, but he refused to look back at her, "An' nothin's changed? Syna ain't answered you neither?" It was obvious he was suspicious, doubting her, the alcohol that was suspended in his system clouding his judgement but deepening his feelings. "You're petchin' with me, an' I ain't sure I like it." He added, a flash of anger like a storm in his eyes, an indignant hope still clinging to the darkening places in his heart, "I didn't think I'd be waitin' this long, sure, but I bet there's a reason. Leth knows'm'ere an' I ain't alone."

[Lilium]

The blonde creature felt for him then, hearing his questions more as unbelieving statements that he wanted her to deny. There was a desperate tone in his voice, a wish that she would suddenly pop up and let him know that it was all a facade and that things would be exactly how he wanted. Putting her hand on the table, Lilium lent down to try and catch his eyes, fingers curling into a gentle fist. "When I first woke cold and spluttering in the waters of the Isle, I had some hope that perhaps this was all just a terrible tragedy. That somehow I'd slipped through a crack and if I waited long enough and prayed and sang to her, that surely soon Syna would lift me from this world and raise me back to my place among the choirs of heaven. But I waited and I prayed and I cried out. I made offerings, I asked for forgiveness for what? For...being cast down like some faithless vile heathen?" Regarding the man for a moment, the womans ice-carved gaze shifted down across his skin, seeing without seeing. "Those first few changes, I shifted with the seasons...like you. But with Syna's light I felt less and less the feel of her love. More the burning of silence as she greeted the world. The beast found herself in places where people were fighting each other, a silly war for a silly land for a lifetime gone in a heartbeat. Sometimes I felt for them, I pitied them. But their faces, and love and passion. Too much they reminded me of what I lost. Their faces..." Sighing, Lilium closed her eyes against the dead staring faces in her mind. "I have been here, for nearly one hundred mortal years, one hundred years on this plane...and Syna has not spoken to me once. Not once." Laughing, she sat up and stared at the ethaefal. "You believe that? That Leth is watching over you....that he'll take you home? Tell me, when one hundred years pass, and you watch people you make friends with or care about...you watch them shrivel and die. You tell me then that its all for a reason."

[Pash'nar]

Maybe she'd done something wrong. Maybe that's why she'd fallen from the Ukalas. Maybe Syna had let her go on purpose, and that's why she hadn't answered. She was clearly … off. Had he done something wrong to deserve the same fate? Was Leth's silence a sign he'd turned his back on his own for a reason? The ethaefal's heart sank deeper at the thought, the chasm of doubt in his mind already inky in its depths. Surely, there was some other cause for both their plights. Maybe their gods didn't even know they were missing? No, that was foolishness. How could beings so powerful not know? Not know for decades? For a hundred years? Petch. Pash'nar stood then, indignant and pained, "I-I ain't sure I believe you entirely." Could they be the only two? How long would they be stuck here, suffering? Why was there so much time between them? Too many questions swirled in his alcohol-fuzzed brain, stuck at a level slightly below capable clarity, and it hurt. He had more than a handful of ours before dawn proved whether or not this pale, sad Konti was telling him the truth or not. Only Syna's light would reveal a change in form for the both of them, or one of them if she was lying, petching with him. Her words made him think of the kind fishing folk who'd taken him in, who'd let him share their roof, who'd already called him family. They shared their wages, let him work for his keep, gave him something to do. They laughed with him, took him drinking, and if they judged him at all for being some fallen celestial, they'd done a decent job of keeping it to themselves. Sure, there was discomfort and friction, sure the false Svefra was moody, confused, longing. But so far, they'd sought his betterment, not his detriment, and he could do nothing but be appreciative of that. The thought of them a hundred years from now, being human and short-lived … that thought stung deeply. He was already attached to them, some more than others. They were part of his new identity. They would die and he would not? He stood there in silence, towering over the Konti at his table, staring at her with doubt in his tide pool gaze, "We're all part o'the cycle." He offered meekly in his defense, "Even those who go an' die come back, jus' different. But you're sayin' you ain't sure you're gonna die? We're gonna die? Whassat s'posed t'even mean?" His aquiline features were a scowl, longing to know and yet afraid of what the pale woman claimed to be her discovered truth, "You're gonna have't prove to me we're even th'same. For all I know, you're jus' a petchin' Konti who thinks it's fun'n'games to perch with folk." He sneered then, obviously hurt, and tilted his finely ornamented head toward the door, "I'm leavin'. S'long as you're not waitin' to stab me in th'dark with more'n'your words, we can walk a bit. I'll keep you up 'til dawn if'n I have to." There was no mischief in that, though, had the situation been different, the ethaefal may have meant something entirely different with his words. It was too stiffling in here now, with her revelations weighing him down amongst all the mortal flesh that still sang and drank and filled the tables of the Grotto surrounding them. He needed to get out. He needed to see the stars. And the sea. And feel something familiar. This was wrong, but he couldn't tell why. His now were too heavy with doubt and pain. Her words had burdened him greatly, and yet the emptiness in his chest begged to hear more.