Almalexia. (arithmeticks) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-02-27 18:39:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, !log, almalexia lliryn, heron shaw |
The river has frozen over, not a soul on the ice.
Who: Almalexia Lliryn & Fw Heron Shaw.
What: A sombre conversation amidst the revelry.
Where: A balcony.
When: Backdated hereabouts.
Rating: Tame.
Status: Complete!
The opportunity to observe the fete was, admittedly, quite the draw for Lex. Wandering outside the safe confines of the Cathedral had become a growing habit of late, and there were few causes as exemplary as the one presented to her that evening. However, like many other social engagements the mage had chosen to attend, she had felt no great compulsion to dress in such a way that might gain her any modicum of attention. It would not have proved beneficial to her goals, of course, and thus Lex dressed entirely modestly, so much so that it would’ve been quite easy to miss her in the usual crowds. Such was entirely to her liking, and though she had spent the greater portion of her evening enjoying a certain degree of comfortable solitude inside the hall, the need for a bit of a fresh air eventually came to mind. Slipping through the crowds with the ease given to one of such small stature, Lex eventually found the doors leading to the balcony outside. She gazed around cautiously and noted, with some approval, that none had sought a similar opportunity in that same moment. The mage felt content to capitalize on her apparent good fortune and wandered further out onto the balcony, enough that she might take a good glimpse of the gardens below. But while her attention was engaged with this activity, however, Lex was unable to hear anyone else approaching. To be fair, even if she’d been lying in wait, it would have been a challenge to catch him passing through the doors: the sounds of celebration muted the already chalk-soft scuffing of his boot heel on the broad flagstones. He hadn’t meant to duck out so early, but, he was sure, the celebrations would hardly be less merry for the loss of one ex-General. He levered the broad oak door shut behind him quietly, turning the cackles and cork pops and clankings of the fete to burbled, colorful hints of merriment, as though the party had been ducked beneath the sea entire. It took him a moment to recognize Almalexia, silhouetted as she was by the faint glow of the gardens below and the city beyond, a Wanderer above her own sea of fog. Disappointment at finding the balcony occupied shifted into a vague contrition at being the one to split the mage’s solitude. His right hand rested in the small of his back; his left hand, as ever, was deployed around the smooth handle of his cane. He’d considered not bringing it, but the obvious prop felt less obvious than his hobble might have been, especially at his designated place among the Silver Blades and their commanders. A dull gold aiguillette passed across his broad chest in a circumzenithal arc, fastened to a subtle epaulette at each end. The braid was nearly the same color as his hair, especially so now he’d shaved off the short, silver-flecked beard he’d been sporting in the training rooms for months. Tall among the other officers in his dark hunter-green military tunic, he was at first glance an unsettlingly-near echo of his old self. At least, for a moment. He shifted in place, but she didn’t turn. “Seems we had the same idea.” Broken out of her private thoughts, Lex turned to look over her shoulder, one hand still resting resting on the balcony's ornate marble railing. Framed against the bright opulence of the ball each of them had chosen to leave behind, it took a moment for her to recognize the man as Heron Shaw. The cane did not serve to give away his identity as much as the strict posture, the familiar slope of broad shoulders and a voice she was much more accustomed to hear in command of a training class. "Pardon me," she said politely. Feeling briefly as though she had been caught in the act, Lex moved to greet him face to face. It was with curiosity that she noted the transformation in his appearance, from the formal attire to the absence of his usual beard. Recognizing the marks of the uniform that indicated his role within the Silver Blades, her mind wandered to thoughts of another in their elite fold entirely of its own accord. "Were you looking for privacy perhaps?" She herself had enjoyed her small moment of solitude, and as such, was not loathe to deny him the inclination. Certainly not with the enviable view of the gardens below. "No," he said, and it was not quite a lie. The glittering light from the chambers behind him and the luminescence framing her against the gardens beyond made it difficult to see the gradations of minute expressions that passed across Lex's face, but not impossible. In an instant, she'd reassembled her placid, gently curious méin so seamlessly it might never have been askew. "Just wanted to get a little air." Winter's chill still held sway over Emillion, but this night was milder than the stone-cracking cold they'd experienced over the last few weeks, as if the weather itself had decided to give the embattled citizens a night off. And regardless, he'd always preferred the cold. On even the crispest mornings he'd savored the way it knifed into his lungs, shocking every cell, tracing the reflection of a lightning-struck tree in an icy pond. His heart's engine had always run a shade too strong, rendering his body a coil thrumming with heat in any kind of weather. Even if these days the cold touched the broken star of his knee in a way he never thought possible, it seemed a shame to pass up a chance to escape a crowded party, state function or no, for a moment brushing up against the breath of the seasons. "Hope I didn't disturb yours. Privacy. That is.” “Not at all,” she said serenely. Lex had, admittedly, never been so at ease during the colder months as others, and her slight frame did poorly in managing its own warmth through the winter (much time had already been spent lingering on memories of long, summer days, the nostalgia subsiding for a short while as she admired the artistry of the sculptures on display below) . Already the chill had seeped into her fingers, prickling its way up her arms. Were it not for the sake looking unaffected in front of her current audience, she might have indulged the urge to cup her hands over her mouth, cradling the breath that now filtered out in the evening air in a wispy cloud. Instead, she merely crossed her arms--looking now almost as she had when observing in the classroom, her back to the railing now and not to the wall of the training dojo. "It has been some time since I have seen you, of course," she continued, observing and assessing her situation and the company she now found herself in. Her eyes lingered on the aiguillette and gleam of buttons adorning his uniform. "I hope you are enjoying the festivities?" Heron spared a glance over his shoulder at the glowing fete--these festivities. Standing there on the terrace with his quiet, accidental companion, shedding the excess heat he’d built up under the uniform, watching the gilded figures inside glide around under golden light, he found the whole tableau felt vaguely unreal. The affair was framed neatly by the windowsill, covered in frosted glass as though it was a vision from long ago, a memory of a dream. As much as any, he nearly said. “The city needed something like it,” he actually said. An oblique answer, perhaps, but as much of one as he could concede. A breeze tugged briefly at his neatly-combed hair, and, turning back, he caught her eyes on his chest, on the various esoteric sigils of achievement detailed there. “So,” he said, looking down at his left hand as he splayed the fingers and curled them again around the oak handle. “Curious why you never joined a guild.” Thinking perhaps that she had done serviceably in avoiding the subject before, Lex took a considerate pause to assess her prior decision in sharing such information about herself. Certainly she had never been an avid divulger of self-information, but Heron Shaw had seemed (by her observation) to be a trustworthy individual. She turned her gaze away and over toward the sky, blessedly clear that evening, a darkness punctured by a vast number of stars. The moon waxed large, offering a soft glow of light over the icy landscape below. "Perhaps I have been concerned with the possibility of being lead astray," she said quietly, her voice betraying only a sliver of her uncertainty. Was she afraid of wandering away from the Cathedral? Or that she might not return? Lex raised a hand up to touch the exposed skin of her neck (cold now by lengthy exposure to the outdoors), now concerning herself over the question. The gesture seemed introspective as much as it was protective, and it took Heron a moment before he noticed the goosebumps lifting the pale hairs from the skin at her nape. His hand went to his throat, and alighted at the high, stiff collar of his tunic, where it paused, considering. Almalexia Llyrin had been largely unknown to him until his injury, a celestial body orbiting well outside the orderly, interlocking turns of his own confident solar system. And yet, it had hardly taken an hour in her company to note the nature of her mysteriousness: polite inquiries were evaded with a delicate ease, and one hardly dared question her directly, lest she vanish into the hinterlands in a silent flash, like a lark on the wing. And but so: the pause they shared just then, if not quite one of held breath, nonetheless hung heavy in the air. It was as if the old commander wanted to give the weight of her small revelation enough space to properly enter their sphere of thought, almost out of deference. But then, his hand was moving idly down his chest in a diagonal, loosing the concealed buttons that fastened the ceremonial tunic over the thick lining of his doublet, and he spoke. "And of course, it's difficult to know if you're being led astray if you don't have a settled destination in the first place. That what you mean?" He hooked his cane over the gilded railing behind the shivering mage, unknotted the end of an aiguillette fastened at his shoulder, and rolled the felted wool shell off his big shoulders in a deft, businesslike shrug. "Thought my course was set from the start, but even within the guild I did my share of wandering." He held up the coat, an offering perhaps as free of connotation as it could be, considering. "Not sure if you knew." Hesitantly, Lex considered both offerings of coat and revelation of sorts, appearing not entirely certain what to make of either. But the information was, as it was with most knowledge given, inevitably pocketed away for careful safekeeping. And as for the coat--the young woman found that it was both warm and considerably ill of fit. The shoulders were much broader than her own delicate frame, and she shrugged further in feeling both a great deal warmer and also a hint more foolish. Curiosity had won out in the end, however. "I did not," she confessed, busying herself with the many intricacies of the uniform bestowed to her than properly meet Heron's gaze (the personal subject matter, perhaps, causing her own courage to flicker and fade like a candle's flame struggling against the breeze). "Was it a difficult journey, to your eventual destination?" Lex crossed her arms again, the epitome of solemn consideration, hooked in now by the hope of some hint or revelation to her current troubles, those which she had spoken of very rarely to others. She cut no imposing figure in the dim light of the balcony, no soldier's posture in emulation of the man beside her. Instead, she merely ducked her chin deeper into the collar and let out a breath--perhaps another question still half-formed, waiting to take its proper shape. “Of course.” The breeze whipped his matter-of-fact words away, and he turned to lean against the railing at her side, content to let her mull at her own pace. “Don’t come from a family of fighters, much less guild members. I had a talent, and there was--a need.” The pause was almost imperceptible, but then, they were both keen observers. “Eventually I let myself be led in the way I felt was…fated, I suppose.” The article of faith felt suddenly like ashes in his mouth, and he swallowed. Lex was an enigma in her own way, but since the day he’d relinquished the mantle of command, Heron hadn’t busied himself with many chats, either. Spooling out references to his youth made him re-examine foundations that often looked strikingly different than he’d always recalled, and not always in a way he cared for. “A point comes--you realize, eventually, that growing older always involves making a choice that closes a door or two for good. Paths you don’t take blow away behind you.” Indistinct syllables and the clinking of cutlery echoed through the closed gateway before them, and shadows in shade and gold moved across the panes. “Most days I think that’s all it is. Growing old, I mean.” “Oh?” Her gaze had been pulled up at last by the force of her growing interest, as Lex found herself analyzing the texture and scope of each word and pause and searching out carefully for their meanings. Had it been so different from her own circumstances, she wondered, her own necessities? Perhaps she might've felt too that fate had meant to draw her into the arms of the Cathedral, to a holy path. But with a lack of family herself, she had only Faram and His servants to guide her (or so it had seemed). She had yet to wander very from this particular path of hers, chosen what now seemed so very long ago. And the idea that she might stray, that even, perhaps, the road behind her would close--certainly this instilled in her a hesitation, a fear. Lex watched Heron, questions sticking cautiously to her tongue. Do you regret the path you have chosen? Her eyes glanced toward the cane propped against the railing, the light from inside the hall gleaming against its polished surface. "Certainly there is more than that," she said, an attempt to cast another light on this, his personal perspective. "Another path made for each that have closed." “Of course,” he concurred, crossing his arms over his chest and shifting on his feet. “I went Monk before I ever worked toward the knighthood. But,” he added, “you’ll never see the same road twice.” Take it from me. Heron’s big head swung back to meet her gaze, the eerie electric blue of his eyes mitigated somewhat by a lopsided, apologetic smile on his face. “More to the point, the choice is the essential bit. If you don’t pick a path, you’ll find your options drying up regardless.” “I suppose you are correct,” Lex conceded. “Time is of the essence.” Heron had given her quite a number of things to consider, she reflected, finding herself inevitably grateful that she had run into him during this event--as difficult as the topic was to approach. But the continued celebration in the hall they had retreated from beckoned, and Lex supposed that it was likely time she returned inside. Perhaps it was inevitable for the mage to retreat to her solitary observation, to analyze all that had presented to her and to reflect on the conversation. Shrugging out of the borrowed coat (hesitantly, for it was rather comfortable regardless of its size), she held the article out for him to receive. “Thank you for conversing with me tonight. And for...this as well, I suppose.” The rough-hewn edges of his fingers brushed hers for an instant as Heron relieved her of the heavy woolen tunic and folded it over an arm in one easy gesture. “Good luck, Ms. Llyrin.” Not quite ready to reappear himself, the old general nonetheless retrieved his stick and escorted his inadvertent companion back to the ceremonial fray, and inclined his head in a slight bow as he held open the door for her. They’d plumbed the depths, but this particular river ran deep. A beat passed, the gate closed behind Almalexia, and a sigh betrayed its presence in a puff of steam, a dragon hiding in a fog bank. Heron took to the terrace walkway, the soft trio of steps that announced his presence these days the only sound accompanying his looming silhouette down the boards and under the shimmering sodium glow of the lamps. |