Completed [Ayatah] A Certain Slant of Light

[Philomena]

Winter the 41st, 512 AV
Just before sunrise
Student Housing, University of Zeltiva
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The first boiling forewarnings of the sun lay over the coarse and slush-frozen earth, the frigid air of the winter sea crawling cloudlessly in from the breakers like the finger of a quiet hate, to run its cutting nails beneath the chins of the balconies at the University housing blocks. It was too slow to howl, but it hissed through drooping stonework, whined through the leaking chinks and spit venom upon whatever skin the sleepers within might leave exposed from outside their sheets, blankets, most of them even on a night like this, their wool cloaks, and heaviest clothes. This early hour was the vicious, hopeless apex of the cold's sway, struggling to leave a few more angry wounds before it was forced to turn and struggle with the brave, quixotic sun.

It was too early yet, even, for the charwoman to be up, and yet, one was, woken not by the golden sun, but by a handful of much colder, more tangible copper rimmed ones. Most of the charwomen of the student district were married or old - the young ones found that their was work with fewer nuisances than might be offered by the late night returns of carousing students. Normally, then, the servant's chamber stood empty, especially in winter when fuel was so expensive, for the women would trudge down to the city and sleep huddled close to husbands and children in their own homes. But, as with every corner of Zeltivan life, the plague changed things. The very narrow solitude of these chambers tempted now more than one sagacious servant to simply stay at work. Some perhaps it was simply cold-blooded calculation. Others, with husbands laid low with fevers and pox, or even lower in the tombs of the cemetery, stayed perhaps to try to keep some stream of ready mizas into the house, some desperate hopeless offering to midwives, to herbalists, to tincturists. To the gods, above all of these.

She who was awake was one such - but her wakefulness was the exception, for while acute terror might keep one wide-eyed of a night, the protracted terror of the crisis had become habitual, so that sleep was a welcome and ready escape. It was a healthy one too, for sleep was a medicine itself, and with so many ill and dead, there was more work to do for those remaining. The charwoman's work was particularly difficult this way. The work of the infirmary folk are always well recognized in a plague, but the work of the charwoman is just as brave during these times, for sickness is a messy business - and the messes here breed death.

But this one had been awoken an hour earlier by clumsy steps on the stairwell. She had tumbled out, quickly. The light then was so pitch that only the dream of a sun kissed the deepest corners of the Eastern sky, and the charwoman had been frightened - desperate men, it was said, unable to afford the necessities of the sickroom, had taken to robbery to supplement their needs. But, taking up a stout pole she kept in her rooms, and peeking through the little circle of isinglass on her door, she had seen, only, a very tiny, somewhat old woman there, crouching in a ridiculous bundle of cloaks, shivering on the long, exposed balcony that led to the second floor rooms she kept clean. At this she stumped out.

The cloaks were shabby, and the woman inside of them looked something of a fright, her hair askew, her eyes rimmed in red, her hat a battered mess. The charwoman prodded her cautiously with the stick, "Who are y'then?"

The little bundle turned its shivering face up to her, "Doctor Philomena Lefting, Department of Literature. I am waiting for a student." Her voice was tired, worn. The little waver of someone who had been crying.

The woman frowned at this, "Its a wee bit early for a class, Doctor. Are you quite alright then? Do you need me to call the watch?"

"No, no. I don't… have an appointment… err… I had one. I missed one… I had one but I missed one, and I need to meet my student, to apologize, it was very--"

"Well, you are nae likely to meet her at this time o' night, doctor."

The woman shook her head, "I don't… she is Myrian. I thought, perhaps, they might get up earlier than normal folk, goody. And I dun want to miss her."

"Well, what do ye intend on doin' if she dun get up for three hours? You're like to freeze in the meantime!"

"Oh, I brought… some coats, and I have a little tie o' hot rolls, I…"

The woman swore irritably, wrapping her housecoat about her, "WEll, its clear that ye need somewhere to be sitting in the meantime, and I dun have the time to let you meander 'round to that point. So, three coppers, Doctor, and get inside o' here."

IT had taken a few more execrations after that, and to be honest, the old charwoman probably wouldn't have even asked for the mizas, had she not thought the woman thanking and apologizing would keep her on the cold landing longer. But finally, the woman, numb from the cold, but numb too in her eyes, thumped down by the door, with mumbled thanks and peered through the isinglass. The charwoman lay down again to sleep, but the sensation of having the woman there, in her rooms, staring out her window was too weirding to the senses to ignore. She tossed about for a few minutes, before giving up, lighting a reed-taper, and setting to mending her wool stockings in an irritable quiet.

Minnie, for her part kept her eyes trained on the window. She turned once, to offer the charwoman a roll. The charwoman went to say no, but seeing fine white rolls from the faculty dining, she found herself saying yes. Minnie undid one and gave it to her, then left the rest of the bundle, awkwardly on the woman's bed, as she watched her ravenously wolf down the one she had. Then, Minnie went back to the window. And watched.

[Ayatah]

Myrians were not incredibly known for their punctuality. But in Zeltiva, people were, and timing was possibly the only aspect of non-Myrian life that Ayatah embraced fully. She had not once missed an appointment, and very often turned up early instead. She would be greeted by surprise, respect, and even a joke about savagea being able to tell the time. (she would laugh politely, but imagine how the joker would look with twenty arrows through his heaving chest).

And Ayatah expected the same attempt of punctuality from the people with whom she was meeting. And up until the day before, she had been pleasantly surprised with just how on time people were.

But yesterday, Ayatah had had an appointment with her new tutor - Doctor Lefting. Her new professor was a woman she had met a few days ago, and despite the initial blunt racism and fear from the older woman, the two of them had found a shared interest in history and literature. A conversation led to an offering of tutorship, and Ayatah had happily accepted. The woman had reminded her a little of her own Great-Grandmother (albeit a few sixty years younger), despite the fact that Doctor Lefting and Quinneth of the Scattered Bones were completely different in some aspects, too.

But her new tutor had not shown up, and Ayatah had waited a good three bells after their meeting time. At first, she had assumed that the somewhat scatter-brained woman had forgotten, or was running late. But after the first bell, she began to question whether the woman had simply… joked with Ayatah about tutoring her. And by the third bell, Ayatah was waiting there more to give the older woman a piece of her frustrated mind, rather than to learn.

Eventually, she had returned to her room in the student housing, and continued with her own self-led study. Her feathered friend, Kiwi, had returned home within ten chimes (Ayatah told him to not spend so much time outside the room with the plague sweeping the city - whether or not he listened or even understood was a completely other thing). And Ayatah had certainly shared her frustration with the bird whilst he preened his orange feathers.

She had gone to be a little dejected, though the Myrian within her would never let herself admit this - not even to Kiwi. Instead, the Myrian within her wanted nothing more than to grunt and ignore the old woman’s dismissive attitudes, and simply move on with life. But the Eypharian blood within Ayatah had her chase knowledge, and knowledge would come from the professor - even if they did not favour each other personally.

I will have to find her tomorrow, she had thought as she drifted to sleep.

The morning came sooner than Ayatah would have liked, and as her room faced Eastwards, the sun soon filtered through her window. In the jungle, she would wake almost at first light to begin the day’s chores - and old habits certainly die hard. She woke, dressed and began to organised herself for the day.

Approximately half past the sixth bell, Ayatah left her room.

oocI thought Minnie could see Ayatah leave the student building and chase her down? Seeing as she is in the charwoman’s room, Ayatah possible wouldn’t know she was there until Minnie made herself seen. Hope this is okay!

|| Ayatah's speech || Ayatah's thoughts || Others' speech ||

[Philomena]

There are few things so dreary, or so trying to both nerve and wakefulness, as sitting, staring after something when you've no idea when they might come. The isinglass was not ground perfectly, and had been cracked and patched down the center, long ago and unskillfully, and the waver of its imperfections combined with the faint brownish hue of it began to gnaw itself into Minnie's eyes, giving her a headache.

//Bird… bird flying off… blowing leaves (where did they come from this time of year?)… bird again. Dirt. Very small dirt. Icicle drops. Woman.//

It was lucky for Minnie that the foreign girl DID wake early. IF she hadn't who is to say how Minnie would have ended up? Even as it was, she took a full four beats of staring dully through the window to start and realize at what, precisely, she was staring.

Then, however, she was awake - wide awake in fact. She leapt to her feet with a speed that startled the now tired and irritable charwoman into a choked cry of alarm, and a faint clatter of tumbling knitting needles. Minnie was blind to this, however, at this juncture, stumbling up awkwardly to her feet with clumsy speed. She caught the heel of her boot askew, wrenching her left ankle at an uncomfortable angle, and kept herself from falling only by quickly grabbing the doorknob with her bandage wrapped left hand.

It was thus that she tumbled onto the landing - clutching a doorknob in a hand clumsily swathed in a white linen bandage, her hip striking the door frame with a thump, as she stumbled onto her left ankle with a limp. Her eyes were rimmed with heavy grey-violet bags, now, and her hair had frizzed into a penumbra of mouse-brown strands around the clumsy, partly unravelling braids. Her right hand mashed down on her battered felt hat as she entered the cold of the winter winds, and her voice came out - she intended it as a call - as a dry, clattering croak.

"Miss Ayertah!"

She bungled the name - it would perhaps have been embarrassing had the power of this verbal clumsiness not beed utterly overpowered by the accoutrements of her situation at large - what, after all is a droplet of embarrassment in a sea of humiliation?

[Ayatah]

The air was cold, and Ayatah tugged her leather jacket tiger around her shoulders. Oh, how she missed the clammy humidity of Taloba. In the jungle, a person could build up a sweat whilst taking a stroll, and regardless of the seasons, it was so hot.

But Zeltiva was entirely different. Her dear Great-Grandmother had told her that the climate changed throughout the year in the port city, that it could be blisteringly hot, or freezing cold. Although Ayatah knew what seasons were - the idea of them certainly confused her. Taloba was hot, wet, humid all year round. To imagine anything else would be simply… unnatural.

Still, as soon as left the jungle, Ayatah had seen exactly what her Great-Grandmother had spoken about. And upon arriving in Zeltiva, for the first time, Ayatah had felt cold.

Hell, she could even see her own breath clinging to the air before disappearing in front of her dark brown eyes.

"Miss Ayertah!"

She turned around towards the sound of the voice, more annoyed by the mispronunciation that confused as to why someone called after her.

Who Ayatah saw certainly took her by surprise:

”Professor?”

She tilted her head to one side - an old habit of hers - and watched as the older woman hurried towards her. She was dressed in a rather… impressive amount of layers, a little like a baby in a swaddling cloth. ”You’re here…. Why?” The dismay in Ayatah’s voice and on expression was blatantly obvious; she did not even try to hide it. Her tone was not rude, merely inquisitive and full of confusion.

|| Ayatah's speech || Ayatah's thoughts || Others' speech ||

[Philomena]

If the doctor had some immediate plans that went past 'burst out of door, hail student in bad accent,' they were either forgotten in the bustle, or were not particularly precisely formulated. The charwoman, perhaps, had less compunction - or made more useful her time for reflection - as she, with mutterings under the breath, did execute a plan - namely, she stood, moved to the door and shut it. Dr. Lefting, perhaps, had only the weakest option of retreat before this gesture - she was then left without even the psychological illusion of one. Her hand, with no clearer orders, wanders inside her unbuttoned cloaks. to grip at the seam of the neckline of her dress, clearly a habitual tic of some sort. Her other hand gripped at the strap of her satchel. She was silent for just a beat longer than one ought to be. "Ex… excuse me, Miss… "A beat, "Ayeh-tah." The foreign name clearly boggles her tongue a bit, "I… "

She takes a deep breath, flexing the muscles of her calf, to rotate the wrenched ankle subtly underneath the layers. She presses her spectacles up her nose - they are slightly crooked, and bring attention to her exhausted eyes. She looks down for another beat, as if gathering her thoughts, the slightest curl of confusion wriggling through her brow. The bandaged left hand twirls the cloth of the neckline almost viciously now, for a moment. Finally she looks at her potential student, her face red, a mixture of cold and embarrassment, "I am… I am sorry… to be very late now, for our appointment, Miss. I am… I am not… not usually so poor in my promptness. Perhaps… this explanation does not work so well, for being two thirds of a day late, however?" Her accent is controlled, very proper, a touch of the highbrow to it, even, as she speaks. Her eyes meet and lock shamefacedly on Ayatah's own.

[Ayatah]

The older woman was so… nervous.

It was almost entertaining to watch for Ayatah, if the awkwardness of the other woman wasn’t so intense that even Ayatah wanted to somehow soothe her. A wry smile crossed her lips, and she slowly shook her head.

The doctor stood quiet for a few bells, before bursting into animated chatter. Ayatah quietly corrected her on the pronunciation of her name, ”Ai-yar-tah,” but it seemed that the older woman had already started apologizing profusely for missing their prior appointment.

"I am… I am sorry… to be very late now, for our appointment, Miss. I am… I am not… not usually so poor in my promptness. Perhaps… this explanation does not work so well, for being two thirds of a day late, however?"

How could Ayatah remained annoyed by her tutor? The woman seemed genuinely ill at ease for being so late, almost uncomfortable with the very idea. It must have been a genuine mistake, she thought to herself before finally speaking

”You needn’t apologize.” She said with a reassuring smile that would have looked incredibly civilized for a Myrian (even one with Eypharian blood). ”I am happy to make up for our missed appointment another time. Are you free this morning?”

|| Ayatah's speech || Ayatah's thoughts || Others' speech ||

[Philomena]

The soldier - the frightened soldier, mind you, not the ideal one - when called to battle goes through a number of stages. Mustered in the ranks, along the march, if news were to spread that the enemy had surrendered its position, of course, it would be a dream come true, the culmination of prayers. Waiting in the camp the night before the battle, the same would be true, even taking formation on the front lines, even tightening the helmet and raising the pike. During any of these moments, news of peace is an unalloyed boon, for while the likelihood of this news decreases with each second toward the culmination of preparation, the terrified mind is willing to accept the possibility of hope.

But when the pike is set, when one's fellows have grown silent and grim, when the enemy's forces are visible moving forward from the opposite ridge, when the gallop of the horse's hoofs rises beneath the cries of the charging men, somewhere in this moment, the mind is forced to abdicate. Hope is relinquished. And if the surrender is called at this moment... it would be inaccurate to say that the soldier would be disappointed, but he would have the air knocked out of him by the suddenness of providence, by the sudden shift from doom to life. He would, for a moment, perhaps, clutch the pike all the tighter unable to accept the reality of peace.

So it is, in this moment with Dr. Lefting - her shield is raised, or more accurately, she has mentally fallen into a cringe on the floor, with her metaphorical back stripped bare, and with the whistle of the lash being drawn back to fall on her - and she has accepted, even, the justice of the lash, the utterly terrible rightness of an undesired justice. And then, the lash clatters carelessly onto the ground. Her mind reels beneath the suddenness, different parts of it struggling to make sense of the shift.

"You are angry, I am... I am very wrong to have... you are angry. You are angry. I'm very sorry, I did not... I am not late, I am almost never late. I ... it was a shock, yesterday, I had a sock, and everything just began to stop making sense for a time. I'm sorry..."

These are not so much sentences - if it was possible for the mouth to sprout multiple tongues, Minnie would have stumbled out every word of the clumsy simpering speech in one heavy, cluttered breath of sound. She pauses at the end, and her eyes, imploring and confused blink twice, still meeting Ayatah's.

"You are... not upset."

The words are a comment, not a question. They neither demand or expect response.

"I... I... my day... I have emptied it, my day, I have emptied the morning, because I did not... know... i did not know when I could make up for it, or how... you still... you wish a lesson?"

[Ayatah]

"You are... not upset."

I was, Ayatah answered in her mind’s voice. She had been terribly angry, and frustrated. Almost…. Betrayed. The first time she had met the woman who was now her tutor, the woman had ben terrified of her Myrian self. It had been nothing new to Ayatah, but the circumstances under which the two women had met had meant that Ayatah had tolerated the older woman’s attitude for longer than she otherwise would have done.

And when the two of them had gotten to chatting about the university, and the commonalities they shared, Ayatah had been hopeful. She craved to impress the academics at the university more than she would admit to herself. They would be the ones to decide whether it was worth her leaving the jungle to come to the academic city and learn.

”No, professor. I’m not angry.” She gave a small smile - just to prove this fact.

"I... I... my day... I have emptied it, my day, I have emptied the morning, because I did not... know... I did not know when I could make up for it, or how... you still... you wish a lesson?"

Ayatah nodded her head, half desperate to make the other woman calmer, to stop her chattering needlessly. It was hard to imagine that the woman was as academic as Ayatah expected her to be.

”That would be fine, professor. I have no plans this morning.” Her own voice was calm, almost slow. It was as if she was trying to calm a frantic child who was terrified of monsters under their bed. Despite being a Myrian, and half-enjoying bringing pain and death to her enemies, there was nothing challenging or dangerous about this woman - it would be almost cruel to treat her any different.

|| Ayatah's speech || Ayatah's thoughts || Others' speech ||

[Philomena]

IT would be inaccurate to say, perhaps, that Dr Lefting was an idiot. IT would be arguably astute to say she is a fool. Minnie herself knew this, perhaps, it showed in the regularity and smallness of her habits - the unexpected triggers the worst instinct of the fool. She looks up at the woman, and gobbles up the smile, indeed, something like a hungry child. Her resultant smile - genuine if cautious - is the smile of a child who is clusmily trying to please a distraught mother. And the surrender of the woman's morning to her, with no further ado than that sends her into a poorly supressed paroxysm of surprise and relief. The pardon on the gallows. The embrace of the dying estranged.

"The... this morning. Yes. Yes! We should go to the library. I wanted... do you mind? It is something of a field trip... I..." she looks at the woman, her eyes, behind their exhaustion, desperate for something distracting and pleasant. They plead for permission to be happy about something, "That is... I hope you don't mind, this is not a usual class, and I... I took some liberties with building a curriculum, you know?"

The only apparent problem to this plan, of course aside from any personal objections, would be that it is still so terribly early. The library would not be open.

[Ayatah]

"The... this morning. Yes. Yes! We should go to the library. I wanted... do you mind? It is something of a field trip... I..."

Ayatah smiled faintly. The library would not be a new scene for her. As soon as she had officially become a student of the library, Ayatah had dived into the world of books, pouring over them like a starving child. She had started with the books on her own race (or rather, her favoured race which made up her dual heritage) - the Myrians. There were sadly few books, and most of them portrayed her people in an ‘unpleasant’ manner… unpleasant being an extreme understatement.

She had then moved onto books about Eypharians.

There were plenty more covering her father’s race, and initially Ayatah simply looked at the pictures, tracing the six or four arms with her finger, bewildered. If she saw a picture of a male, she would inspect him carefully, looking for any features that she could recognize from her own face. She never did - but perhaps that was more from her not wanting to see the similarities that she undoubtedly had with the Eypharian people. Her longer limbs, sculptured face, soft skin that was fairer than Myrian.

”The library… will it be open?” She asked cautiously, not wanting the poor woman to become anymore stressed and flustered, ”if not… we could go back to my room? Or… your office?”

"That is... I hope you don't mind, this is not a usual class, and I... I took some liberties with building a curriculum, you know?"

Now it was Ayatah’s turn to be relieved. She had not known what to expect with her tutor, and certainly not how to plan the topics they would cover. ”That is… perfect, thank you.”

|| Ayatah's speech || Ayatah's thoughts || Others' speech ||