Khy'eras

In the wee hours of the morning she had convinced herself that uncertainty was the curse of lesser men and women than her, and that to hesitate when it was time to open the door would signify a sort of weakness that would be decidedly unflattering to her sense of ego. Slaine was not a coward, nor was she accustomed to the concept of fear. She had read of it, of course - fear was a great emotion and motivated living beings to commit tremendous acts and often seemed contagious. She had sat up late at night with her father reading thrillers printed in paperbacks, enjoying the prickle of irrational anxiety when a curtain fluttered unexpectedly or her mind began to misinterpret the shadows as home invaders.

No, Slaine did not not know fear. Even when Nigel drew his last rattling breaths she had not been afraid for him, or for her. He would expire, the body would be moved, Nigel's remains would be interred per his wishes in his will (no stone), the room cleaned and, well, her... She had meant to set out the next day, or even the next week, but she had found excuses to linger about the gilded cage that her father had poured his efforts into creating. A project of weaving subtle charms of preservation she'd purchased from the paperback seller's special stock (sort of like that decoder ring you buy from the back of comic books! but, like, illegal) had gone awry and required a bit more tinkering than she had initially intended, which of course meant study - years of it, maybe even decades to put right mistakes and to prepare the little home they once shared in the southern reaches of Fellsgard for abandonment. Perfect and orderly, she had hoped it might stay like this, a familiar cage in the event that her father's spirit proved restless, and perhaps in a way she hoped that it might make up for what she meant to do in his absence.

Freedom was sweet - she had read accounts of flight both literal and literary and decided that it was perfect analog. When she wanted sweet dreams, she would pray for dreams of flight, sometimes leaving her window open and hoping for wind. Never had she experienced it, however. In fact, once it came down to it, right down to the hour, she found that freedom was actually quite upsetting in a way that she could not at first understand. It made her angry, short in ways she could not understand as the impending deadline of her departure drew closer - she had dallied long enough and meant to stick to the schedule, having read once that successful people aspiring to be like Cecilia wrote lists and had things like plans and goals - the stuff that someone that had taken the better part of a century to actually fledge the nest didn't find entirely relatable. To her, there was no rush - she didn't wake up one day at thirty to see crows feet or a permanent fissure in her brow from that chronic scowl of concentration she wore while reading or working. Ageless since her early twenties, she had found ways to excuse her lack of initiative, but now some twenty or so years after her father's death there were no more excuses she could tolerate, forcing herself to engage with the unknown.

The unknown was sort of like a wild animal on the other side of the door, fascinating and lovely but in Slaine's mind she quite imagined that it would not hesitate to kill her, or at the very least give her a good maiming. The unknown had kept her up all night and left her jittery, dominating her thoughts when she stopped focusing on any one particular task. Now having stood in front of the door with the trappings of what she thought it meant to live a life on the road for what felt like ages (fifteen minutes, give or take), the unknown made her regret her admiration of the heroic inventor. Had Cecilia hesitated? The book said no, but Cecilia had also been accompanied by an entourage. While Slaine wasn't worried about her safety (she had her trusty stick - what more did she need? She had read all the self-defense manuals and Nigel had even taught her how to use a quarterstaff to some degree in her youth) she did feel that perhaps the now-Idol had perhaps had a bit more external support when approaching the unknown. Wild animals didn't like to attack groups, she'd once read.

Balling her fists, she drew a deep breath and looked back at her home, dim sunlight filtering in through pale blue curtains, illuminating the clutter of decades worth of hobbies and subjects of study that lined the walls and shelves, piled on flat surfaces. She had taken the best of them with her, and the rest she had condensed her notes and memorized what she could. For the tiny woman it was literally a labor of love that she hauled what must have been quite a heavy satchel with only the basics of what she needed to make due and even then she was still carrying too much. She did not think of this, however - there were no mirrors in the main hall of their home and even then she wasn't certain what a real adventurer even looked like. Ridiculous as she might have appeared to literally anyone that had traveled further than the city limits, she convinced herself that she was ready and turned from her home, bundling herself out the door noisily looking like a vagrant squatter emerging from their squat little home nestled among the rest.

They had no yard, no plants to overgrow and she had not let the maintenance of the home lapse since her father's death, but few on the street had seen the practically ageless girl in decades and perhaps had imagined the house to be abandoned or maintained as an estate remotely somehow, so coming out all awkwardly bulky satchels and other general eccentricities might have in fact proven quite startling to her neighbors, though she seemed not to notice, fixing a wide-brimmed hat upon her head to shade her pale face from the sun before closing the door behind her, locking it one last time before hanging the key on her belt.

Ready for anything, she headed out into the city, first for the markets as any discerning adventurer might, seeking food and last minute supplies. She had not been to the markets in what felt like ages - the good old innovative spirit had made it easy for her to become a shut-in for the most part, as had Nigel's mysterious wealth meant to give her a good and long life, though that was running low. Evidently Nigel hadn't expected his runty, sickly, human adopted daughter to live much past her first century if she even made it there at all. In a few decades a lot had changed - Fellsgard had grown up and developed around her as she'd seen from her windows, though she hadn't found the time to properly explore. Finding herself lost and unfamiliar with the landmarks in her own city Slaine began to recognize fear now, the icy cold grip of uncertainty that had wrapped around her guts.

Maybe she was close to the markets, maybe she had gone the direct opposite way - however it happened, the more Slaine walked the more Slaine realized that she was lost. Uncertain where her home was after taking what she imagined to be several wrong turns, she stopped to kneel, brushing her hair back out of her face as she shouldered her pack to the ground with a faint rattle of stuff, digging out a green leather book. Squeezing the satchel between her knees protectively as she crouched, the girl poured over her notes, flicking back to an index written into the front and the numbers written in the margins of each page, her page flipping becoming increasingly frantic as the realization that she had never thought to look at a map of her own city. Everywhere else? Sure, if she could find it! Fellsgrad? I was born here, why would I need a map? "Because I'm fucking lost," she moaned, clutching a palm to her forehead beneath the brim of her hat. "Oh noooo."

431 Tetherpine Boulevard was a residence with a number of notable features, for example: 1), the building had the look of carved stone, the façade a clouded white colour and clearly constructed with care to hide the seams that surely must exist; 2) it was possible to gaze at it, with only the slightest hint of a neighbouring building lollygagging at the periphery of vision; 3) the second floor balcony was as big as Val's entire home was wide; and 4), the meticulously trimmed hedges that acted in place of a gate were moving.

The foliage rattled in a languid manner, a wave of living vigour emanating through it as if the entire greenery was one enormous, slumbering ourobouros just now waking from its rest. Or, as those from just slightly south of this homestead might say: there was clearly some arshole losing a fight with the bushes.

That arshole was Val Bellamy.

'Charmed,' she'd say with a sparkling smile and a cursory glance of personal appraisal as she plonked out of the hedges in style, only she was currently struggling with the tangle of twigs that liked to grab at every strand of hair, the suspiciously meandering roots that she was dead certain actually were moving to grab her feet every other step, and the forest's worth of leaves that were adamant on smothering her to make sure the fugitive at least wouldn't escape alive. She was noticably not struggling with any snagged sleeves or collars. Somewhere in the jungle of trendy property barriers, the captive bard was very thankful that the Emerreau's didn't much care for roses.

"Shitshitshit-" she whisperscreamed instead, a struggling mass of freedom-clawed trouble that barreled for the road and plowed face-first into the stranger on the street for all her effort. What had been cobblestones and charmingly painted architecture jumbled into a swirling clash of sky and street and hedges instead, what should have been 'down' now distinctly 'up' and temporarily 'sideways' and a couple other directions she hadn't been aware existed as both clattered to the ground in awe-inspiring fashion, and that still wasn't the end of it!

"By Bhelest's blasphemy," boomed the voice from the doorstep of the forgotten Emerreau residence, "Come out now and I'll only skin ya' slightly, you gold-digging, virtue-smearing, witch-of-a-" well, the specific words that ended the very-upset-lady's insult weren't particularly important, just that they weren't especially polite. It was apparently too early in the morning for that. The robe-adorned woman standing at her own front door held a handful of clothes aloft, shaking them angrily at the air and venting more of her frustrations on the wind.

... Which is when it should probably be mentioned that the bard managed to keep her head in all of this, somehow. Through a very lucky break, she collected herself in record time and managed to remain awares, keeping her head from rising above the hedges. And... the poor unfortunate soul she collided into, as well. Yes, crouching and crawling were much better ideas! "Hol' up, not so fast - " Val advised, her very professional opinion 'persuading' the stranger to a hidden vantage point up against the hedges and out of eyeshot of the front yard. And by 'persuading,' she meant 'forcing.' Contained whatever calamitous mess she could to keep the whole affair super duper secret, too. Last thing she needed was an explosion of papers giving away their location!

Speaking of, Val remained crouched by the hedges, her hair a scattered disarray from the recent ordeal and a little bit before it, too. She was clutching a leatherbound book she had grabbed in the kerfuffle to her chest, which... very clearly wasn't wearing any clothing. Come to think of it, neither did the rest of her. Her other hand had found a hat. That one was providing her other half with secrecy and keeping the street scene from becoming a little too risqué.

Still lacking any explanation, and with the fountain of anger and vitriol still roaring just beyond the hedges - now with new and improved motion capabilities, reverberating from around different sides of the building! - Val looked her newly involved partner in the eyes and colluded, "Stay quiet, stick with me, and pretend this never happened, and you'll become the proud owner of a whole beer at Rochester's in about ten minutes." The exact specifics of their situation didn't much seem to bother her. Strange. Must be a morning person.

Slaine looked up rather belatedly to the shitshitshitshit- that announced her impe ding upgrade from asshole that stops in the middle of the pavement to wrestle with a poorly organized pack to speed bump, barely able to discern much before finding herself being flattened in a tangle of limbs and unbound black hair. The force of the collision had thankfully not managed to disgorge the contents of her ill-packed bag though it certainly made quite an interesting landing spot. They said that hindsight was perfect, but here Slaine could think of nothing she regretted or had learned from more than the way her many books wedged in with clothes and supplies had dug sharp corners into uncomfortable places and left her helplessly paralyzed by pain while her assailant popped up and away, the howl of a banshee echoing off the pavers and buildings. Somebody was mad... Well, someone other than Slaine, that was.

Groaning she rolled into her side, attempting to escape from the straps of her pack for a solid moment before managing to wriggle away and onto her knees. Shaking a curtain of dark hair behind her shoulders, the girl peered about, searching for her belongings only to find them not on ground, where she might have expected them, but being snatched up by the Bellamy bard as though she had a claim to them. Slaine had only just opened her mouth to voice her concerns when it finally dawned on her that this stranger was very, very naked. Immediately her mouth shut, brow furrowing as she wondered if this was just the way things were since she last forded the social currents of the city. Abashed she looked away, raising her hand to shield her eyes and offer the stranger a bit of privacy as color rose in her cheeks. "A whole beer," she snarked, shooting a mean glare at the bard as she collected what was left of her goods, and what she hoped would ensure that she got her things back - a stick. "How generous."

It was a staff, a simple, standard staff that you might buy on the cheap at the market, a favorite of mobility-challenged individuals, hermits, and monks everywhere. Overwhelmed and not entirely certain what to do when a naked woman steals your hat and book and dignity, Slaine secured her satchel's closure and pulled it onto her shoulders, periodically shooting a perturbed stare when a particularly colorful bit of outrage caught her attention. However it happened, Slaine knew she didn't want to be here when this green-eyed miscreant's ill-deeds caught up with them. "What's Rochester's?" Using the stick for leverage she hauled herself and her things to her feet shooting a red-faced glance toward the bars, and then, as someone who had never drank a beer but felt that perhaps this was a time where she could negotiate, she haggled. "I think you owe me more than a beer. Two beers. And my hat. And my book. And if you bend either-" Unable to look at Val for long before feeling quite awkward about it she instead menaced a rock with her threatening looks.

She was sure the woman got the point.

"Shht, not so loud!" complained the bard helplessly as the collision victim mouthed her disapproval of... basically everything, really. She didn't like being used as an emergency brake. She didn't like having to crouch and hide. She didn't like Val's extremely generous offer for literally doing nothing, nor the woman's current choice of fashions, and perhaps the most ruthless of all - not even the poor garden rock at the corner of the lot seemed to escape her ire! Was this morning truly so disasterly? No, no - this had to be the work of Val's archnemesis: a grump.

"Three beers, plus my shirt back, and you have yourself a deal," Val counteroffered instead. She still had the book and hat, trying to peer through the bushes for a clear enough vantage of their local shrieking banshee, but it proved too thick to see anything more than blots of daylight and far too much green. "But this was Goutier's spring 286 catalogue, I'll have you know! Pfft, as if I have any need to steal your books and things!" Stated matter-of-factly, with a belaboured eyeroll and everything, as though it were perfectly normal to wear the contents of an office as clothing and not supplies.

At least she did deliver the belongings back to the perturbed woman. There had been a large flier caught in the breeze, one moment Val still sporting that ridiculous lie of a getup, and the next, a neat pile of Things That Were Not For Wearing, her backside to the grump now and all interest and focus returned to the estate behind them. Although going off the redness in her cheeks, the stranger would next insist for a new hat entirely and a complete replication of that book's contents on fresh Ajteire-pulped paper, and yet society had the audacity to call her fussy.

"Hm... How well do you think you can pull off a Ninraihi accent?" was the next preposterous statement to leave her lips, a side-eyed glance already assessing how well the woman could fulfill her imaginary role. "You can distract Mrs. Pearl-Clutcher over there, and I'll sneak back in - I mean, in - through the stage left window! Get her talking about architecture if you can, say you've never seen a 'ground-house' before, she'll love that-" It went without saying that Val didn't wait for any other plans, or criticisms, or even a vague acknowledgement that this accidental partner was even interested in her ploy. The bard had little more than said the words and flashed a smile when she was already off towards the side of the building and a precariously billowing curtain, the enraged robe-adorned guardian of the Emerreau estate still foaming at the mouth in an overeager twitchiness for every little sound and shake of leaves about the house.

Oh, and the stick. That was now mysteriously gone. The hat and book remained, as did the pack of all one's livelihood that couldn't honestly be described as 'compact' - but the pointy, wooden thingy was most certainly gone with the bard, and visibly being used to wedge a path between bushes further down around the bend. For now, it was right within Mrs. Emerreau's blindspot, but it wouldn't be forever.