At Long Last

[Laszlo]

Fall 80th, 512 Around the fifteenth bell. "Anything about skyglass, please," Laszlo answered, flashing a brief, lifeless smile for the sake of courtesy. The Ethaefal left the city behind him, entering the shadows and the many-colored lights of the Bharani Library. Sunlight slipped in through stained windows and shimmering skyglass, giving a sheltered, yet welcome and inviting atmosphere to the spacious interior. Passing polished, elegant sculptures and flowering potted plants, as well as rows of book cases on the way to the tables, being in the library gave one the same sensation as visiting an elaborate garden. One of the Seekers had been near the door when Laszlo entered, a young girl with a round face and neatly cut black hair. There was an attentive look in her dark eyes, eager to please. She couldn't have been in her twenties. "And something biographical about Zintila," Laszlo added, almost as quickly as the thought had struck him. He spotted an empty table near a large indoor flowerbed, boasting tall orchids and bushy ferns. "Something thorough." The diminutive Seeker nodded, then turned around to trek deeper into the library. Her footsteps on the smooth floor echoed rhythmically around the room. There was something soothing about it. Although Laszlo preferred being outside, the large structure of the library somehow felt… safe. "And, um." She spun around on her heels, having just reached the staircase. A hand went out to the bannister for balance. "If you have anything about the origins of Lhavit…" The Seeker nodded curtly, then began to fly up the staircase with the deftness of routine. Laszlo sank into a chair himself, which creaked under his weight, and leaned on the table with an elbow. He rubbed at his eyes and yawned, realizing halfway through that he had been too tired to remember his manners. He cut his yawn short. "Thank you!" Laszlo shouted after her. A grateful reply sang down from one of the upper levels. Not much later, Laszlo had a book open before him. He rested his cheek on one hand, turning pages with the other, as he began to read some of the recorded history of Zintila. The Lhavitians loved her, as their goddess, ruler, protector, and mother. It was a shame that Laszlo had been in Lhavit so long but knew very little about her. Three other books were stacked nearby. Although the Ethaefal was fatigued, sleep was not easy to come by. Reading through some of this might help relax his mind and fill it with other things, like gods and divine marks, rather than lost daughters and wrongful deaths.

[Albireo]

If one looked, Bharani Library provided one with work. The delicate Vantha busied herself with stacking and reorganizing books on shelves, making sure they were in their respective places, handling heavy tomes as well as thin scrolls, smelling paper and parchment here and there. Oh, the smell. For the last season or longer she had been buried in work, a life between the library and her apartment. Suria welcomed the numb emptiness in her head and its sister, the lack of thought and intense emotion. She appreciated existing without living because it made pain disappear. No answers, but also no questions. She was so deep in waking reverie that it didn’t occur to her to try a different way. And where should she go anyway? Leth didn’t answer. Knowledge of insanity was the only real protection against becoming so, after all. Change in pace came without her doing anything. Syna still accused her through blinding rays, so she hid in shadows cast by heavy bookshelves and behind pages of calligraphy piling up on the front desk. A lack of customers during the dusk rest made her return to delicate lines and shapes on the parchment. Part of her longed for praise from the superior, acknowledging the dichotomy of seeking out a sun child. The next visitor was taken care of before her gaze distanced itself from her work. While dipping the quill into black ink, she looked up … to the familiar sight of horns and hair. Of course, the blazing auburn and milky white didn’t connect to any memories, but the way it fell, the shape and texture of horns woke something. Something she thought had died on that day. Nearly two seasons ago, had it really been that long? With a low snort she went back to work. But of course agitated fingers ruined the next letter. While angry hands crumpled it up into a ball her rainbow gaze became dark and stormy. Faint lightning was dancing in its depths. Seek answers in the spoken rather than in the written word, you.

[Laszlo]

"For Semele," Laszlo murmured as he read, lifting a stiff, old page in his hand. It was littered with rough drawings of skyglass crystal and foreign symbols, nested in columns of neat, compact script. Most of it was in Common, although smatterings of another language were scrawled in the margins. Although this particular account mainly detailed the various properties of skyglass and the power of Zintila's Akarni mark, it also briefly touched on the goddess' sacrifice and fall from power. It was difficult to think of the family ties that might have bound such impossible beings. These were the bonds that shaped the world and brought tides of change, be it through creation or destruction. Laszlo closed the book and rubbed at his eyes. He felt as though none of what he had read was sinking in. His mind was in a dozen different places, grasping for purchase onto something substantial. He could fill himself with volumes of academic knowledge but he still felt as empty as ever. Still, it was better to keep himself busy than letting himself rot back in his flat. There were stories here, divine legends. These were the things that had moved him in several lives past. Even if these weren't his deities, there things worth learning here. Zintila had sacrificed herself to save her mother during the Valterrian, but what could that have meant? Obviously she was still alive, so what had she given up? Laszlo rose from the desk and stretched, then leaned on the side as he turned his head and sought the Seekers. He could have called for help, but that felt wrong, in this grand, quiet library. A lowered head of silken black was ducked over a bobbing quill some distance away, partially hidden in the space between two tall stacks of shelves. The Ethaefal drew his fingertips across the desk as he left it and made his way toward her. Or him. Ah. No. Her. "Pardon me." Laszlo stood over the dark haired woman, maneuvering around so he could see her face better. "Does this library have anything regarding… uh…" As he studied her, the slope of her shoulders and the flow of her hair suddenly became familiar. Bitterly familiar. "Wait, Suria?" The troubled Ethaefal he'd met last Summer. No, was it Summer? Spring? The cherry blossoms were still blooming then. She'd needed a friend, but she had seemed so… unstable. It made him wary. And in the midst of the chaos of his life, it had made him forget her. "Gods, it's been a while, hasn't it? Uh… you look well? How are you doing?"

[Albireo]

A fresh page replaced the faulty one. The words were edged in her mind from meticulous copying, yet she checked with the original before beginning for the second time. An article on Lhavitian holidays littered with the author’s impressions of various festivals would keep her busy for another few days. The first letters erupted on the page in elegant swirls and serpents. Of course his approach was noticed out of the corners of rainbow eyes, yet she kept her gaze down until the title was banned on the page. Splitting her concentration, she allowed only the third part to make sense of his words. That familiar voice evoked memories of their last conversation even though time stood between like walls of thick ice. At last her gaze met his when the words faded away. A name was spoken. “Laszlo,” she replied, olive-colored face blank. “I’m working. Do you require any more books?” Sarcasm well placed, she hoped, yet something winced at the truth it gave away: her ears had heard things. Clutching to indifference, shaky and foreign to Vantha nature, she went back to her work. After consulting the original scroll, she drew a line of the first letter in the text. A small hook at the end got an edge that betrayed her cool façade. Her eyes resembled a beginning storm, so she avoided his gaze. Fingers didn’t tremble, the letter was finished in strong, even lines. The rest featured smaller script and lacked decorations. Releasing some of the tension, she set to working on the main text body. Lhavitians have a taste for festivities, more than any other folk of Mizahar perhaps, so the magnitude of their calendar should not… Whatever Laszlo’s intentions, the storyteller wouldn’t provide any words for his tale. Not this time at least.

[Laszlo]

Although Suria seemed to recognize him, she did not look pleased or relieved to see him. Rather, she seemed to be indifferent to his existence, as if he were an insect skittering up the side of a shelf. Too far out of reach, or she might swatted him. For his fairer form, that was a first. "Suria…" Laszlo sighed, his shoulders slackening as she continued to write. She'd ignored his questions. He'd petched things up with her, too, clearly. At least she was still breathing. "You're angry with me, aren't you?" The Ethaefal rubbed the back of his neck, glancing away. "Suppose that's fair. I did sort of… forget about you, didn't I?" Last he'd seen her, Suria had been so desperate for reassurance, for someone to tell her that her place in the mortal world had a purpose. Her instability had been such that Laszlo feared she could have latched onto him too tightly, and that he might see a repeat occurrence of Siofra's tragedy. The woman who sat before him was plenty self-assured and didn't seem to need him. Perhaps he should have just gone. Then again, Abalia had acted like this on plenty of occasions. Past experience urged him to keep trying. "I'm sorry." His hand slid away from his neck and fell back to his side. "You don't deserve that. I didn't mean to just… shove you aside, but you met me during a very… difficult… um… Someone I cared about very much was…" Laszlo sighed again and rubbed his eyes, stemming back frustration. Some quiet, inner fragment of himself was indignant at having to explain his reasons. After everything he'd been through, it didn't seem fair for anyone to be annoyed with him. Then again, this entire disaster was his fault to begin with. "Never mind. You don't need to be given a list of excuses." Laszlo pocketed both of his hands and stepped back, glancing over at his desk again. He didn't need any more literature. He had plenty. "I'm just sorry. I truly am. If I were you, I wouldn't forgive me either. But I'm here, now, one hundred percent, if you ever do want to pick up where we left off." For some reason, he was less frightened of her than he was before. Perhaps it was because he had more to lose then. Or perhaps helping another Ethaefal would soothe his own aches. "I'm available. A drink, a talk, whatever you like. I'm about." Leaving it at that, he began to move back to his desk.

[Albireo]

He named truths she’d rather hid in darkness and oblivion. Yet she said: “Not angry.” Disappointed. Had he no pride as a son of Syna, no sense of who he was and what others thought of him? It didn’t matter, not anymore. She should’ve known, she of all people, two-faced ghost fallen over the edge that she was. Now she knew, and had paid the price to boot. Her hand moved across the material like an automaton, one of those machines driven by magic, dangerous, but words were slipping from a preoccupied mind. Yet defeat had been cleared from her vocabulary the moment Laszlo had set foot into the library. Pressing her lips together to keep them from uttering written words, she checked with the original more often, every word almost, and it was a wonder that she made no mistakes. His voice drowned the crit crit of her quill on the page. “I don’t?” she asked quietly, too quietly perhaps. He marched on, parading his words like toy soldiers armed with bronze instead of steel. Any Shinya acolyte could handle them with his wooden staff. So she didn’t need excuses, no? Who played the storyteller’s role now? Words were written, carefully and with a certain elegance that came with regular practice, on a piece of parchment. A soft blow dried fresh ink, then the parchment was folded twice. Nobody else was around and the rare guest had retreated behind his paper walls. She stood, went to his place, dropped the folded message on the pages of whatever book he was reading and returned to her desk as if nothing had happened. Only six words: Will you tell me your story?

[Laszlo]

It was difficult, but he'd buried himself once again in the words of others, sprawling texts spilling endless information from someone else's studies and obsessions. Well, perhaps that was a bit dramatic. Laszlo's own halfhearted account he'd written was in this library somewhere. The sheet of parchment slid in front of him before he could think to acknowledge the shadow in the side of his vision that came and went. He lifted his forehead out of his palm, taking the note with his other hand and skimming over the words once, twice, and over again. Laszlo leaned back in his chair, his golden eyes flicking up toward where Suria sat. For a moment he sat and contemplated the idea to himself, wondering how much he wanted her to know. He thought of Alvadas and the secrets he kept then. Things hidden brought him more trouble than when they were exposed. And she was like him, an Ethaefal. Knowing a bit about him might actually help her. Four chair legs made their greeting as Laszlo set them in front of Suria's table. He sank into it, then folded his hands on the table surface. He licked his lips, unable to meet her eyes. "Thank you. For the chance. I'm… not good at stories, I uh, I tend to ramble. But I'll tell you a bit." He swallowed. "Once upon a time," not the best opening perhaps, "there was an idiot. This idiot was an Ethaefal, like you and me. And like most Ethaefal, he started off a bit… lost. What he lacked in brains, he made up for in looks—and this one was quite handsome so you can be assured he had very little brains to speak of. What this idiot also had was a curse, but the curse was so… irrelevant to him that he never really stopped to worry about it. "So this idiot, alone and confused as he was, decided to, I don't know. Travel the world a bit. In search of… meaning or… to find out who he was… or something equally insipid like that. He never found that, but in a city called Alvadas, he did meet this girl." Laszlo paused to smile at himself. The expression was at first warm, but then it soured around the edges. "A few girls, actually, but a human one in particular who was beautiful and kind and… annoying, and all of those wonderful things. Well, the idiot being an idiot, simply couldn't help himself. He fell in love, I think. As idiots do." Laszlo pulled his hands off the table, glancing briefly up at Suria and then back down again. "But he forgot about his curse. Rather, he put it out of his mind, because it was easier to pretend it wasn't there. Until it got to her. Suddenly… she was with child, and it uh… it wasn't likely she would survive. "The idiot, being an idiot, had no idea what to do. He took her across the Unforgiving Mountains, looking for help. A doctor from Kalinor took them both to a city made of diamonds and glass. It was their best chance at finding something to save her. The idiot did everything, everything he could think of to find some cure or some miraculous shred of information that could stop the inevitable, but… eventually he had to come to terms that she was dying, and there was nothing that could stop it. "So he spent the Summer with her, the last months of her life, dedicating himself to making her happy. Everything and everyone else was pushed aside for her, as she didn't have much time left. And then Fall came and… she died. The child was sent to live with a wonderful family, and the idiot was back where he started." Laszlo fell silent, trapped in his thoughts and the memory of his own voice. He wasn't sure he had intended to tell her the truth, that he had a daughter and that a woman had died because of him. He barely knew this Suria. But like Duvalyon, she was kindred in a way, and it was a relief to have someone in Lhavit who knew the whole of his situation. It wasn't something he wanted to broadcast but… well, it made for a decent peace offering. Feeling more numb than self conscious, Laszlo lifted his eyes to Suria again. Her eyes were so strange, always changing color. He thought at first that it had something to do with her being a daughter of Leth, but there was something more to it. It had to do with her dayside from. "That's it for now, I suppose. At least it's… it's where I've been since I last saw you. Really I should have told you then what was going on, I just… I shouldn't have just left you wondering."

[Albireo]

A flinch at the noise of chair legs was the only sign of her attention. The rest was devoted to quill and parchment, responsible for tracing old words with new ink. She had been assigned a task and nothing in this world could keep her from it. So while the quill was marching over the page, Vantha ears listened to another story. This one was different from most of them though. First-hand, neither traded nor paid for – those were most precious of all. She gave herself over to his voice and smiled a little at the beginning. The current rose and fell as he willed it, brought love and loss, joy and sorrow out of that bottomless well, origin of all stories: life. Then it moved on to death, disturbing the hot season like a bad dream, an illusion perhaps. The trickster deity knew its gear, Suria had read about him or her in a book. The tale came to an end, anticlimax, yet nice and round like ends should be. All the while she had been working on words of Lhavitian holidays and festivals. The first page was finished (from introduction to Star Festival), but she had scanned it for mistakes. Deeming it sufficient, she dipped her quill into the ink flask and leaned back. Rainbow eyes were molten lilac and magenta when they met his golden ones. “What a sad tale… But if you are an idiot, I am too.” A pause: Olive fingers lifted the parchment and a careful blow dried the fresh ink. It smelled of ancient times and dusty tomes, as always. She set the page aside. Fingers laced into each other, creating and releasing curious patterns. Who would surface… the obsessed child or the librarian? It wasn’t a question, not really. “Wait for me to clean up this place and we can talk… or would you rather return to your research? This mind has absorbed quite a bit of information too.” Blinking, the Vantha waited for a sign, anything resembling permission to go on. So much time had passed, but suddenly it was as if no time had passed at all.

[Laszlo]

Laszlo shook his head as he rose to his feet. In the cold wake of his story, he had become a sullen creature revisited by his half-digested grief. In another few moments, it would be tucked away again and well hidden. The quiet gentleman would reappear to trade polite smiles for words, but to Suria he now carried added dimensions, depth and experience beyond his meager age. "It isn't important, my studying," he told her, glancing back at his desk. Once again he had left a small stack of things to be cleaned up by the Seekers. He would have felt little remorse over it if he wasn't suddenly acquainted with one of them. "I was just sort of passing time. Lhavit has the largest library in the known world, so I hear. Might as well use it, ey?" At this point, Laszlo wasn't sure whether Suria still wanted to talk for her own benefit, or if this was suddenly an act of pity. Perhaps she thought he needed company. Well, he didn't. If this was turning into some coddling act, he wouldn't have it. He was fine. It was funny. A year ago, he might have felt differently. "Would you like some help?" Another guilty look back at his stack of books, followed by a modest grimace as he turned back to Suria. He couldn't possibly know where these books went, but he couldn't just stand idly by while she picked up her things. "I'm shyke for organization but I respond very well to pointing."

[Albireo]

When he moved, the act carried a weight that hadn’t been there before, or maybe she hadn’t noticed. Even though a part whispered no, it was a fascinating thing to see. Did she appear like that to strangers? Did all of their kind have that look in the eyes of the non-Fallen? “To search for something can be a good thing, but only if one knows what one is searching for”, she replied. The riddles had found her and claimed her tongue back: only ambiguity would come of them. More or less. It always depended on the person and the quality of shared memories and words how much riddle and how much clarity, how they were weighed out against each other. Suria the storyteller let her subconscious, the stories and the legacy of other Vantha, guide her tongue and rarely ever knew what came out of her mouth before she said it… not knowing that others might be irritated. Common sense was necessary for survival though and no Vantha a fool. Moving over to the books, she looked them over, absorbed some titles. “An intriguing research topic. You know what to look for, yes?” While listening, she put them in neat stacks and picked up the volumes on Zintila. “Religion. The others belong to geography and history.” As suggested, a tanned finger pointed into the right direction. After changing in the back room, Suria was waiting for Syna’s son at the entrance. Upon stepping out, they were met by rays of sunlight as well as chill. “Where to go, what to say… where to begin, I wonder?” And wonder she did and for quite some time too.