31 FALL 518
Ravok Calendar wrote:31st Day - Early morning, in the Central Plaza, a man dressed in the robes of The Black Sun, is found dead. His name, Hargin, an Acolyte. Such a thing is considered a High Level Crime. Found in the body is part of the murder weapon. Embedded in his side, the broken blade of a dagger baring the etchings of a Sylirian Knight. The Ebonstryfe is investigating.
9 bells at night,
The Spot Tavern
The Spot Tavern
“ you can't just run 'round like a wild thing; you ain’t in the wilderness anymore! If you want to know what’s going on, you need to use these.”
"Ow—" Ruvya hissed as a sharp sting caught her by surprise—Bedivir had flicked her left ear.
"And this." Bedivir rapped her head.
"Ow!" The drykas clamped a hand to her stinging ear and to her sore temple, giving the ravosalaman a scowling look.
"Especially as an outsider." Bedivir said, eyeing her watchfully over the rim of his beer glass as if he was afraid she would run off right then.
The drykas nineteen-year-old groaned and leant her elbows on the worn wooden table between them, as if to make a point of saying, 'look, I'm not going anywhere'.
Ruvya sat on a leather-padded bench across from the benshiran ravosalaman in a cozy booth of The Spot tavern. Part-floating-tavern and part-boat, it was one of the favoured rinking spots for Nicolo's ravosalamen after a hard day's work ferrying Ravok citizens in their boats. Mostly because the prices were cheap and the tavern's offerings weren't bad—well, the food was half-decent, the ale on the other hand...
Ruvya ignored Bedivir. While he tempted fate with the less-than-decent beer, the drykas fetched a small, dark wooden pipe out of her coat pocket, which was rumpled up behind her. Rummaging in the other pocket proffered a small, umber glass snuff box, out of which she took a pinch of the herbal fluff and gently placed it into the pipe. The drykas set the pipe carefully onto the table with a tattooed black hand, while she fetched her flint and steel. Once she had the flint at the right angle, she struck sharply to light her pipe. Bedivir had since returned his azure gaze to watch her, lightly astounded by her habit.
Ruvya hastily lifted the pipe and settled it between her tongue and teeth and puffed a few times. As the herbal smoke filled her lungs, she tasted the heady floral smoke of the Blue Vision, she sighed with relief. It felt like Caiyha Herself eased her gentle hands into the drykas' aching limbs and rubbed them of their throbing. When the young drykas finally noticed her ravosala partner, she gave him a 'what are you looking at' look. The benshiran shook his head and said nothing.
It had been a stressful day—which had started out so ordinary for the ravosalamen...
5 Bells
that morning
that morning
" It is a beautiful day!” Bedivir, the benshiran ravosalaman declared in his rolling Shiber accent. His grin was a pearly sheen amid his dark skin. His luminescent blue eyes glowed with pride as he looked on the lake. He looked like a father, beaming on at his favoured son, Ruvya thought, bald head and all.
The drykas was sitting on the edge of the dock outside Tarsin’s Boarding House where she, along with a rare few visitors, laid her head at night and breakfasted in the mornings. It was a tall building, with some balconies overlooking the canal, which wound right through the floating city to the central plaza. It resided aptly in the Plaza of Dark Delights, where markets and businesses bustled with exotic and oft nefarious trade.
“Don’t you feel it in the air, Ruvya?” Beamed Bedivir.
“What?” Ruvya looked around at the buildings, floating on their wide wooden platforms, which had been crafted right out of the thick, luscious trees grown in the wild woods around the lake. They were painted a pristine white. Not in a glaring shade, Ruvya had noticed, but a soft shell white, like the feathers of a prize swan.
Bedivir lifted his arms and drew a healthy breath of the nippy Fall air. He wore a warm long-sleeved wool shirt under a leather sleeveless duster coat and warm pants and boots this day. It wasn't unpleasantly chilly, though the drykas was glad for having donned her warm wool leggings and grey wool coat as well.
“Rhsol’s blessing, of course!” Bedivir answered, grinning infectiously.
Ruvya couldn’t keep a smile from teasing dimples into her tattooed cheeks. The drykas had to concur with the ravosalaman as Syna inched just a little higher into the heavens and dappled her with warmth.
"We go.” Bedivir motioned for Ruvya to get into her ravosala, which was docked alongside the impressive fleet of Nicolo's ravosalas. A neat row of elegantly carved boats, with tall curved necks and narrow flat bottoms, where a small bench for passengers took up most of the room, was docked, ready for a day's work.
Ruvya clambered into the ravosala that she earned her living in. A black beauty, it had been freshly painted that Summer with pretty, off-white and pink flower petals along its length.
Bedivir was up ahead in a ravosala of his own, the long ferryman’s pole used to navigate the boat already in his skilled hands. The drykas climbed unsteadily, almost on hands and knees, onto the stern of her ravosala, where she hefted up her own ferryman’s pole. It was not a light piece, and Ruvya’s arms burned with the weight of it from the day before. Nonetheless, the drykas shrugged off the stiffness in her shoulders and leaned into the dull ache as they pushed off the docks. They glided silently down the canal, like two black swans.
As Ruvya pulled the ferryman’s pole up and connected the end to the nearest walkway, by anchoring herself against the stern of her ravosala, she strained every sinew she possessed, squeezing in, feeling the burn in her core, joining the chorus in her biceps as she heaved and slid the boat forward. Her arms and back and ribs ached but the every day she was getting stronger.
It wasn’t long before she was sweating and had to shrug out of her coat, stowing it under the passenger bench. When a deep, baritone melody filled the canal, the drykas smiled knowingly and looked up. Bedivir was singing. He sung a slow, melodic, romantic tune. He lifted his ferryman’s pole and pushed his ravosala at a gentle pace along the canal.
He was being kind so Ruvya could keep up, singing, as he often did, to pass the time. “And to attract passengers. Among all these ravosala, you have to set yourself apart to bring in the coin.” He had told her once. Then he had looked her up and down, marking out the intricate spiral of black ink that climbed its way around her body, stark against her copper skin. “Although you don’t need a good singing voice for that, ey.”
Ruvya hadn’t held his look or his remarks against him. The drykas had come to see tattoos were not common among ravokians. Hers were so vast, even in Endrykas they marked her out. The drykas gave it no care, she wore the black ink unabashedly, proudly. It was who she was and where she had come from.
As the morning waned sleepy-eyed citizens poked their bleary faces out through their windows overlooking the canal. Some smiled and waved good morning to Bedivir, who tipped his head in kind, wishing, “Rhysol’s blessing!” on them, before returning to his song as if he hadn’t missed a beat.
it was when they were gliding up to the central plaza that a shadow was cast over the pleasant morning.
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