Season of Fall, Day 77, 513 AV
Jorin had tried nearly everything by this point. From haggling to pleading to arguing to even begging, and nothing had worked. He'd run the gamut from the newest stagehands to the most experienced actors and everything in between and had gotten absolutely nowhere. It was like a stone wall had been erected to prevent him from achieving his goal and nothing was working.
Rinya's explanation of what Farline had done, at least to the extent that she admitted to it, certainly made a great deal of sense, but it also gave him very little room with which to maneuver. "Pure politics", was what Laran had called it when Jorin had gone to him for help and advice. He said that like anywhere else, the Amphitheater had its politics and unless he could play the political game for all he was worth, he was not likely to
ever get his job back.
The problem was, Jorin was never very good at politics. Oh, he understood the theory just fine. Political science wasn't much of a science at all in his opinion. Tell people what they want to hear, get as many allies in the right places, choose a side, plant your banner and shout at the wind until it shouts back. The so it wasn't that he was not cognizant of the intricacies, it was that he didn't have the appropriate mindset.
So if he truly wanted his job back he'd have to play Farline's game. Plant little lies here and there, grease a palm or two with some Mizas, get the right allies in the right places, and trade favors until he could find the right person to convince, coerce, or perhaps even outright blackmail into assisting him. Farline had managed to find the right target; the stage master was clearly a man who could be manipulated by a person with her charms.
And it seemed her hooks were still in the man despite her not being there. Rinya's recent actions against the woman had severely scarred her face, and Jorin was fairly certain that if she'd made
promises to the man, she'd not show up to... 'deliver', with a scarred face like that. That of course, assuming that she
ever intended to deliver at all. Jorin suspected she didn't. She'd made plenty of promises when they had been together. Promises she'd never kept.
So Jorin grasped the handle of the door to their condo and pulled it open, a blast of chill wind buffeting him one last time and chilling him to the bone. The day had been bitterly cold all day, and the rare pleasant days had all-but-disappeared as the grip of winter seemed to come early this year. Rinya, as he knew, was not a big fan of winter. She'd said as much before, so he wasn't actually that surprised to find her perched on a piece of wood near the fire, slightly fluffed and seemingly just staring into it.
"Wonderful weather we're having, aren't we?" he asked sardonically as he quickly shut the door behind him. His attempt at levity fell a bit flat, as the frustration and depression from yet another failed attempt weighed down on his mind. He tried mightily to smile for Rinya, even though as a bird she could not smile back he wanted her to be
happy. Or at least, as happy as she could under the circumstances.
"Still no luck," he sighed.
"Thought I'd try a different tact, this time. Go directly to the source. In retrospect that was probably a dumb idea." A
really dumb idea, actually. And it hadn't worked, as Rinya would obviously have guessed. He flopped down into a nearby chair, after having grabbed his poetry book from the table. Normally the book would've been in his room, but recently he'd been keeping it around. Besides just being with Rinya, poetry was another one of his escapes.
But it wasn't working today. The annoyances of the day just kept bubbling to the surface and every time his quill floated over the page, no words came to his mind. It was like there was some sort of block and he just couldn't come up with the words. The frustration was almost palpable and finally Jorin just closed the book somewhat roughly, tossing it almost carelessly aside. he leaned back in the chair and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Going for the stage master... didn't work," he explained, trying to relax himself.
"I really shouldn't have expected anything else. I thought I could talk reason into him, but he wouldn't even speak to me. Laran was there... tried to help but it didn't really do anything."But what else was he supposed to do? And Jorin was running out of ideas. At this point the only options he had left was to either just grit his teeth and
try to play the political game, in which case he'd be going head to head with a far superior opponent in Farline, or just give up. Neither options were particularly appetizing.
Jorin got up, and carefully set aside his quill, not being nearly as careless with it as he was with his book. The quill was, after all, made from Rinya's own feather. It was a piece of her, and he'd never treat it with disrespect. Any more than he'd treat
her with disrespect. He then reached down and picked up the discarded book of his poems. His inspiration for creation seemed to be nowhere in sight. But perhaps he could gain some comfort reading what he'd already written.
Settling back down next to Rinya, he shrugged somewhat helplessly.
"I... guess I'll just have to try a different strategy tomorrow," he mused. Though at the moment he genuinely had no idea what said strategy would actually entail. A detail for another time. With a heavy sigh he cracked open the spine of the book and began reading.
He sometimes grimaced at some of the rather simplistic rhymes he'd used in the past, and was a bit disheartened by just how many incomplete poems there were in the damned thing. He wondered if perhaps he should finish any of these poems, but in his heart he knew if he tried he'd be there all night "finishing" one poem and not really succeeding.
As he sat there, reading his poems, Jorin just couldn't dislodge the sadness and frustration in his heart. It was like, everything he tried kept failing, and he was beginning to wonder if it
was him that was the problem. Sure Farline had initiated his downfall, but perhaps he had finished it? And he knew it was such a poisonous road to travel down but he just simply could not help it. And the thoughts were making it difficult for him to focus on his reading; it took him a few chimes to realize he was actually reading the same passage over and over.
And that was when he also realized that somewhere in there, he'd reached out to stroke Rinya's chest feathers. When had he done that? It was true that in human form, Rinya had often done her best to try to comfort him in these sorts of situations. She usually did so just by being there and letting her proximity be as much of a comfort as possible. He knew Rinya couldn't think of what to say to try to make him feel better, and probably thought "just being there" was inadequate.
But it wasn't the contact that was the problem. Jorin withdrew his hand, and shook his head slightly.
"After all the shyke I gave everybody else about treating you like a pet, and here I am. Treating you like a pet. I'm sorry..." Jorin felt like such a hypocrite. It was something he'd been harping on for Seasons, to anyone that would listen. And it was a prime reason he was not a big fan of Riverfall, or Akalak in general. Their attitude toward Kelvics was a point of rather sore disagreement and he'd made it very clear he considered Rinya a
person, and emphatically
not a pet.
Jorin's hand, now withdrawn, seemed to hover in the air, unsure where to go. Because in truth, stroking her feathers was calming to him. It let him know she was
there, both physically and emotionally. Told him that he wasn't alone, and the fact that she was a bird was irrelevant. But, despite that, no matter
how much comfort he derived from the act, he couldn't treat her like a pet. He
hated that word, at least when directed at his mate. He just hoped she wasn't too angry at him for having done it.
