Sleeping w/Strangers

[Achievement: I'm Inn, Ciaran]

Verdant Row can be chaotic or peaceful to a fatigued adventurer. Managed by spirits, this town serves as a temporary stop for a person to rest and eat. If there is no trouble about, a stay here is lovely, due to the nearby picturesque scenery. Read more...
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Yeva
Character
Level
01
24 / 24 HP
20 / 20 MP
0p / 0g / 0s / 50c
Race: Human
Class: Wizard and Alchemist
Posts: 1
Joined: January 3rd, 2020, 4:24 pm

Sleeping w/Strangers

Post by Yeva »

Early Fall, 288AON

There was a pig in her room.

Blotched with white and grey skin, its hooves clicked with each step and snot smeared across the old wood floor, snorting and grunting in feverish hunger. It was looking for food, crunching on a head of lettuce and scraps sprinkled around. In the corner was a pile of hay and Yeva couldn't tell if she felt sick from the betrayal or the smell.

"You bought a pig?" she asked her mother, trying to stop the accusation in her voice, "Momma, that's my bed!"

"You're brother won a pig," Camira muttered, crossing her arms over her chest as she regarded her daughter with a tired expression. How had they allowed this? "We had it outside but it got sick. It's only temporary, I promise."

Yeva stared in horrified disbelief, rage building as a howl of laughter echoed from her brother's room, "Shut up!" she screamed, only amplifying her sibling;'s mirth. She took a deep breath to remind herself she was an adult, that this wasn't a dream. Each of her knuckles were white as she clutched the suitcase in her hand, "Where am i supposed to sleep? I can't stay in there."

"Darling, you didn't write. We had assumed..."

Assumed.

Assumed that she had found arrangements in Fellsgard. That she was an independent woman now; That she had a career and a future, but it didn't feel fair. It didn't; It should have. They had only believed in her success, not her return to Verdant Row or her home, the only place she felt she could study magic in safety; the only place she could be herself. She had only needed to visit, to remind herself where she came from and what she was working towards There would be plenty of time before going back to the big city, where more employers could turn her away from a lack of experience.

Where am I supposed to sleep? I can't stay in there."

"Oh, Yeva, you'll think of something. You're such a smart girl."


She walked up to the front counter of the Heartbroken Socks Inn, glancing at the window where she had found that note so many years ago and smiled politely at the inn keep. He recognized her, commented on her growth since last he saw her and asked her about her family, "They're doing well," she answered, pointing towards the stairs leading up to the sleeping quarters in an effort to shift the conversation, "I was actually wanting to stay here tonight, if you have any availability."

He whistled, hands working on polishing the rim of an old mug, "Busy tonight and all. My men are running ragged. It's a full house."

"Please-" their eyes met from the sharp desperation in her voice, "I.. I had a disagreement with my brothers. I just really don't want to go home right now."

Behind her, the piano began to play and a few of the patrons cheered, some getting up to dance beside the staircase leading to nowhere. Scratching his neck, he sighed and went to pull his record book from under the bar. Her flipped a page, ran a finger down the ledger, "I might have an extra bed," he commented, "It ain't much.... How bad do you need it?"

"Bad," she answered without hesitation, then cleared her throat, "H-how much?"

He hesitated, "Five copper."

"I'll take it."

Yeva reached for her bag and began rummaging for the money, missing the look exchanged between the barkeep and one of the servers, "Room's upstairs," he said, "Second floor, third on your right." He slid he key across the counter and turned quickly, nodding to himself when she showered him with 'thank-yous.'.

"Don't thank me yet," he whispered, too low for Yeva to hear over the sound of jaunty music.

Key and luggage in hand, Yeva bounded up the spiral stairs and slipped the key into the lock. A perfect fit, it swung open and she leaned over to gather her things. Inside was a spare bed. Two in total. One safely on the floor and another, suspending on the wall in strange whimsy. More shocking than that, however, was the man already inside.
Word count: 704
User avatar
Ciaran
Character
Find the Balance
Level
01
23 / 23 HP
19 / 19 MP
0p / 0g / 0s / 50c
Race: Elemental and Lumeacia
Class: Monk
Posts: 5
Joined: January 3rd, 2020, 8:02 pm
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Re: Sleeping w/Strangers

Post by Ciaran »

As familiar and comfortable as Fellsgard had become despite it's restrictive and almost oppressive realities for Ciaran, he was always reluctant to leave it. He'd written instructions—in triplicate, to be fair—and handed two of them out to the most responsible of his young charges—Freja, a human girl who'd proven herself both a promising martial student as well as keen on all the dusty scrolls on history tucked away in one corner of Vesivus and Sons Books; and Niall, a lanky Kerasoka who had a knack for shepherding the younger urchins who came and went through the back of the book shop tucked away in their cozy alley than even the half-elemental himself. The third copy he tucked away in the counter, just in case, and after making sure the larders were full and spare coins well-hidden, Ciaran set about preparing for his journey.

Others would have booked a train or purchased an airship ticket—travel was safer that way, they would have said. Or at least faster, they would have suggested, seeing only the tall, pale elvish Aural visage that had come into ownership of old Vesivus' store of ancient and obscure and probably mostly contraband books just a year prior. Ciaran looked forward to the journey alone instead: stretching out across the night sky in Focus form or flitting through the wilderness' shadows.

It was only to deliver two books this time, this jaunt to Verdant Row, but he'd delivered all sorts of strange volumes to this client before over the years and Ciaran was sure the woman was some sort of wizard or sorceress, though he made a policy of not asking questions.

This time the payment was an exchange—obscure literature for obscure literature—and the half-elemental was rather curious about just what kind of interesting volumes she'd be bringing him from the cold of the Irtuen Reaches. Old herbology and alchemical volumes, leather bindings once crusted and peeled gold foiling all restored by Cairan and Freja's careful hands were wrapped and packed along with dried foods and a few rather minor supplies—the tall, pale half-elf preferred to travel as light as possible.

He would have gone over all of his lists again had Niall not shooed him from the shop, grinning and threatening to start tossing things at the man the youth was almost taller than already, hefting a book and shifting into a familiar stance.

Ciaran knew the alleys and side streets of Fellsgard like the callouses on his Aura's hands—once a street rat, always a street rat, honestly—and it was easy to slip his way through dull morning shadows between buildings toward one of the quieter gates, eager to be out on the open road and more eager still to be far from the watchful eye of those who considered magic so ridiculously wrong.

The half-elemental had learned to hide his nature over the years, it was true, and he'd taught himself ways to be subtle about using his abilities even here in the city, but ah, how nice it was to travel! To truly be himself far from the risk of arrest, of interrogation, of far worse fates he'd managed thus far to avoid (though arrest was unfortunately no longer a mystery).

Daylight saw him tall and pale, just a displaced Lumeacia tucked beneath earth-toned layers of linen and a hood, walking with almost meditative contentment at an easy pace until the so-called safety of Fellsgard's walls and patrols had long faded from view and the sun began to set. Once the shadows were long and the first stars were wonderfully visible, Ciaran could finally—finally!—unravel the finely spun moonlight that seemed to make up his Aural form and reach upward—literally and figuratively—into a gigantic swath of darkness that was his Focus form, a form he'd once feared and now embraced as his other half of existence.

A mixture of magic and flight, jumping between shadows like they were doorways and drifting through the air like he was some star-filled comet, the half-elemental was perhaps not as forceful as a train nor as swift as an airship on his own, but he was still a far sight quicker than anyone on foot or carriage.

The journey was still a long one, quiet and freeing for nearly half a day, but not without dangers. By the time Ciaran arrived, he was weary in a way that was not unpleasant, though Verdant Row was already a strange enough place when not travelworn, built as it was by the hands of the dead and yet strangely offered as a respite for the living.

His meeting place was always the same—the Heartbroken Socks Inn for some tasting of well-aged something interesting while exchanging well-aged books—but when the half-elemental arrived, his client had not. He was sure he'd left in plenty of time, and so assuming he'd arrived a day or two earlier than arranged instead of a day or two late, Ciaran arranged a room for himself, careful to request the second floor, given his height even back in Aura form.

Perhaps it was luck to receive a room for himself, though he was thoroughly warned it could change at any time—just like everything else here in the city of spirits—but he was almost too tired to care.

Almost.

Twice the stairs led to nothing and he was only going up one floor. The first door he tried was not the right one though the numbers looked the same until he noticed it was simply that the 9 had fallen and hung like a 6. The door to his room, when he finally found it, was crafted too low and the tall sliver of elf-shaped moonlight had to bend himself just so to duck in, careful not to bang his head on the threshold. The small room was cramped by two beds—one incredulously and creatively suspended from the wall and one more familiarly on the floor. Both looked suspiciously too small for the elf, though not uncomfortably so. He set his things on the grounded bed, shrugging off the warm outer layers of his clothes and tucking his sandals away.

Ciaran hunted for the washroom, remembering to duck again, only to find someone sleeping in the tub and the sink sideways. He'd have to find a solution later, he decided, unsure of how to ask for things that the ghosts who crafted this place obviously didn't consider necessary or didn't remember in quite the proper way.

Returning to his room, the half-elemental let his colorful gaze wander over the beds again, unsure, before he chose to sit on the floor, stretching slowly both because his lithe muscles begged for it but also because it was his habit to relax into meditation before sleeping, especially in the comfort of Ny'tha's familiar darkness. Having just spent the past few hours free in his spacious Force form, he was grateful for the focus back on his smaller, fleshier Aura, which always felt so heavy after too long spent free as some primal force of the universe.

Ciaran was deep into a state of balance between physical and immaterial, between light and dark, between flesh and ether, crosslegged in the middle of the small room's floor, and he didn't hear the key in the lock or the door open. He didn't see the surprised face of the young woman in the threshold, but there was something about the faint flicker of movement on the other side of his closed eyelids that slowly brought him away from the stars and the moons and the comfortable night of his mind and back into the present,

"Oh—" The tall elf inhaled sharply, blinking eyes that were mismatched gemstones, tiny galaxies beneath pale eyelashes, "—am I in the wrong room?"

There were two beds, but then again, there were so many strange things about the Heartbroken Socks that he'd admittedly not given it all a second thought. Exhaling slowly and stretching again before he made the purposeful motion to begin to stand, the half-elemental spoke with quiet levity, clearly still gathering his glittering consciousness into this singular moment,

"I don't think incorporeal beings have a handle on populating the rooms here."
Word count: 1378
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