#its a particular kind of frustration that simmers in my gut | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tenspontaneite · 3 years

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The Ceracurist (Chapter 2/?)

Rayla looked, and read the words. SUMMER HOLIDAY GAME NIGHT, it said, and listed a dozen different options beneath. And for all that a few of those genuinely intrigued her, it was the closing words that she found herself lingering on: NEWCOMERS WELCOME.

(Chapter length: 11k. ao3 link)

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I fully expect this chapter to viciously call out many of you.

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Less than a week after Rayla’s daring trip to the horn salon, the first academic term of the year concluded, and all at once she had an abundance of free time and no idea how to fill it.

For the first few days, because it was the obvious thing to do, she threw herself into studying. Unfortunately, given she was not the most academically-oriented of people, it didn’t take long for that to send her running to the nearest training field in desperation. Studying for the usual daily blocks was fine, but more than that and she was likely to go spare.

She went to the bellatorium for its sessions thrice weekly, without fail. That was no different to her term-time routine, and didn’t quite manage to fill her days, either. She went to the training fields more often…but with no one to train with her, that began to feel empty too. She started wandering the city, aimless, aware of a simmering frustration in her chest but not quite able to put it into words. It was something in the quietness of it. Of watching the people in the city, and the students who remained behind, and…not knowing a single name. The same feeling she had at the end of a class, watching the others all dissipate in their chattering groups, flowing around her like she wasn’t even there. That strange sense of distance, wide and yawning.

It was in one of those moods, gut twisted with discontent, that the fresh sheet pinned to the housing notice-board caught her eye. It was printed clearly on low-grade paper, black on white, corners fluttering in the breeze that was ever-present in every Gullcrest hall. It hadn’t been there before, and now it was. That was enough for her to look at it, and then to look again.

So she looked, and read the words. For a long time she looked, conflicted. Indecision snatched at her thoughts, and the thoughts themselves were quiet or unhappy or uncertain. Her eyes rested on the printed words, on the skein address printed at the bottom, on the venue. A thin flicker of yearning threaded itself around her throat.

In the end, she silently memorised the address, and went back to her room.

She looked it up on the mageskein each day for the following three days, until the date had advanced and she would have to make a decision, one way or another. The advertisement was on the skeinsite too, word for word the same. SUMMER HOLIDAY GAME NIGHT, it said, and listed a dozen different options beneath. And for all that a few of those genuinely intrigued her, it was the closing words that she found herself lingering on: NEWCOMERS WELCOME.

It was stupid. It shouldn’t have nagged at her so much, but still…she looked at it again and again, and each time drew herself huffing at herself from the computer screen, with that frustration – that ephemeral sense of distance and disconnect – following keenly at her footsteps.

On Thursday, she called Ethari. The screen rendered the image of him there perfect to every detail, smiling in welcome, the familiar sight of his Silvergrove workshop behind him like a window to home. “Rayla,” he greeted, pleased as he always was to hear from her. Instantly, she felt better. “It’s good to hear from you. Give me a moment and I’ll go fetch Runaan to say hello.” He did precisely that, receding from his computer to call outside; a minute later, they were both there.

Something in her settled at the sight of them, and then settled further at their voices. Her posture loosened from a tension she’d not been aware it held, and she just…talked, hearing the latest updates on daily life in the Silvergrove, speaking of the relief of being done with her end-of-term coursework, basking in the familiarity of the sight and sound of them.

Runaan, as usual, didn’t speak as much as Ethari, though he did make one particular comment near the start: “You visited a ceracurist,” he observed, tilting his head to watch through the suncraft rune that captured the sight of her. “Well done. You look presentable again.”

Rayla rolled her eyes at him. “My horns weren’t that bad.”

He raised a single elegant eyebrow at her, with that same look of parental scepticism as always, and didn’t say a word. His husband shook his head at him from his left, and said into the rune “Don’t listen to him, Rayla, you were managing well enough. Still, I’m glad you finally went. You’re not here for us to take care of anymore, after all.”

For no reason in particular, the words put a lump into her throat. “I know,” she said, grumbling a little. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

His gentle smile said he knew better, but he didn’t contradict her. Instead he asked her how she was occupying herself without classes to keep her busy, and somewhere in the middle of that Runaan was called by one of his squad and had to leave. Almost as if his departure had been some sort of signal, they both fell quiet. Ethari looked at her for a while. “How have you been doing?” he asked, finally, a little solemn, as if he already knew what she’d say.

Her shoulders slumped. “Okay?” She offered. He blinked at her patiently, waiting. She sighed and looked away. “Not sure I’m used to living alone, yet.” She admitted finally. “It’s…weird.”

Ethari nodded, a little sadly, like he’d expected that. “I take it you’ve not been socialising much?”

She winced. “Not really.”

He hummed. He didn’t sound judgemental, for all that he’d said more than once that she should reach out to the others at the bellatorium, or her classmates, or a Circle. “You’ve not tried to join the other bellators after training?” He asked, sympathetic. “They offered once, didn’t they? Did they ask again?”

Rayla grimaced. “No. It’s all very…” she searched for a word. “Professional? A lot like group training at home, honestly.” That wasn’t quite the truth, not really, but – it was at least a little less pathetic of a thing to say.

Ethari pursed his lips, plainly not terribly pleased with that answer. “If not them…are you sure you don’t want to reach out to the local Circle? You love the community dances.”

Her gut churned at the reminder. Three Full Moons she’d passed alone now, skin turning to shadows with only the Moon itself as witness, and it felt wrong. But – intruding into a Circle of strangers, dancing the spells to somebody else’s wards? Joining with a community she didn’t belong to? That would be even worse. “It’s not mine,” she said, almost helplessly.

He looked at her for a long moment. “That’s not true, you know.” He told her, almost gently. “You live in Gullcrest now. It is your community, and you have the right to join it. I’m sure they’d welcome you.” She said nothing, averting her eyes. Eventually he sighed and moved on. “Well, alright. Have you got any plans for the rest of the holiday, at least?” He didn’t ask it as though he expected the answer to be yes, but-

Rayla thought of the sheet on the bulletin board, of the advert she’d looked at for the past three days, and said nothing. Ethari’s eyebrows jumped, and eventually she said “There’s a…thing tomorrow, that I kind of want to go to. Maybe. A…game night.”

He absorbed that. “A game night.” He repeated, thoughtfully. “Board games? Card games?”

She shifted. “Probably both.” She said, then relented “They might have computer games, too.”

His eyebrows went up further, and now he looked a little amused. “Computer games, is it? No wonder it caught your attention.”

Rayla laughed a little, guiltily. She’d done a prodigious amount of begging throughout her childhood for game-capable computing modules, but the answer to that had always been a very firm ‘no’. The equipment needed had been horribly expensive at the time, and even now was well beyond the budget of most households. It was certainly out of her budget. But her ongoing wistfulness remained. “Pretty much.”

Ethari seemed considerably more cheerful with that disclosed, and smiled at her. “Between terms is a good time for you to go, as well, with half the campus away.” He said encouragingly. “Not as many new people. It ought to be a little more open.”

Rayla staunchly pretended that he hadn’t said most of that, and stated “Yep. Better chances I’ll get a go at the computer if everyone’s home for the holidays.” As if that had been the sole reason she’d looked back at the skeinsite every day since she’d first seen that leaflet.

“Make some friends,” Ethari, who very obviously saw right through her, advised. She made a sceptical face at him. In turn he said “Just beat a few of them at Antiquitora and you’ll be fine. They’re game people, they’ll appreciate that.”

She made a dubious sound, but shrugged. “Suppose. If all else fails I can always just steal the computer and run away with it.”

Ethari looked at her with eyes that had thwarted more than one attempted theft over the years. “No, Rayla,” he said, as sternly as if she was nine years old again and in the process of trying to break into the neighbours’ house. His lips were twitching, though.

“I’m not making any promises,” Rayla said, mostly just to mess with him.

He shook his head at her. “Trouble,” he called her, fondly, then waved. “Alright then, you go off and plan your…heist. Let me know how it goes afterwards.”

“My daring computer heist?” She checked, eyebrows raised.

“Your daring raid on the game night,” he clarified, and gave her a very familiar Moonshadow-parent-look that said don’t back out, or possibly see your duty through. She was far more used to receiving it with regards to proper study habits than attendance at social activities, but she got the message perfectly well anyway. Again he said “Make some friends,” this time as if it were a grave and solemn mission for her to bind herself to.

She rolled her eyes at him. “Bye, Ethari.”

“Call your parents!” were his parting words as she dropped the call, leaving her grimacing at the screen. She closed down Sunbeam, and the hum of the magical circuitry swiftly quieted. The monitor returned to displaying its usual suncraft-captured image of the Silvergrove at evening, so perfect that she felt she could reach through the screen to beckon to a moon-moth, or feel the breeze on her skin. She couldn’t, of course. But she’d never quite appreciated how unnervingly realistic a suncraft projection could be until it was showing her something she missed as dearly as home.

Rayla glanced out of her window, and saw the same Gullcrest cityscape as ever, buildings stretching all the way to the cliff-edge, and even beyond. It still looked…foreign. Not unfamiliar anymore, maybe, but…she never could quite shake the feeling that she didn’t belong here.

She sighed, turned off the computer, and then went to find a training field. Needless to say, she did not call her parents.

---

In the end, it was the knowledge that Ethari was expecting a report that made her go. She’d been this close to backing out…but then she thought of having to tell him she’d done so, and she groaned, and wiped a face over her hand, and got ready to leave.

She threw on her darkest teal jacket, resisting the urge to hide in the hood, and gave herself a dubious inspection in the mirror. Presentable enough, she supposed. At least enough so that Runaan wouldn’t scold her for disrespect to new acquaintances or whatnot. She was a little grim-faced, maybe, but that was just because she was tense.

If nothing else, her horns were still thoroughly shiny-looking, which would probably go a long way to making her look better. She still wasn’t quite used to the sight of their gleam in her reflection.

Rayla checked the location one last time, pocketed her keys, then left her room. Her destination was solidly placed in the ‘modern district’, which meant she had a fair bit of walking to do to reach the building. She grimaced at its doors, labelled MAGICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT in four different languages, and pushed into its halls for the first time since she’d come to Gullcrest. She’d never had reason to come here before, but, well. That was different now, wasn’t it?

She oriented herself with increasing familiarity within the Skywing-designed university architecture, and kept moving. Shouldn’t have listened to Ethari, she thought, for the second time that month. He was far too good at prodding or guilting her into things she’d really rather avoid.

It wasn’t as though there was any going back now. She’d still have to own up to her lack of courage if she went home, and besides, she was already here. But, even so, she hesitated when she reached the door. There wasn’t any questioning that she was in the right place. It was slightly ajar, with a quiet refrain of jovial string music audible through that gap, and a piece of paper taped to the door that cheerfully read GAME SOCIETY.

Rayla stared at it for several long seconds. She took a breath, then pushed it open.

She paused, startled. The room was almost entirely deserted, though certainly not empty. There was a bookcase packed with narrow boxes that looked likely to contain game boards and pieces, and on a desk against the wall was the erstwhile computer…and it certainly looked like a gaming computer, what with how the mass of wires hanging off of it almost seemed to obscure its casing. It was entirely quiet at the moment, its screen dark. At a broad wooden table – one of two in the vicinity – was sat the sole occupant of the room: a Sunfire elf, currently in the process of sorting through a set of familiar game pieces. On the table beside them was a fairly battered-looking chipsinger, evidently the source of the music.

They looked up, blinking at her through their glasses. The surprise made them look, for a moment, somewhat timid – then they straightened, offering a small smile. “Hello, there!” They chirped, voice light with the typical Luçais accent, and pushed their chair back from the table. “Are you here for the meeting?”

Rayla froze, nineteen years of social awkwardness smothering her all at once. “Er,” she said, to forestall having to answer. She was fairly certain that anything she said would make it obvious that she had absolutely no idea how to interact with anyone in a social setting. There was a long pause in which she looked and felt extraordinarily uncertain. “The…game thing?” She ventured, eventually, and finally made an effort to square her shoulders a little and put her Moonshadow-face on to disguise the awkwardness.

For a moment, the other elf looked a little spooked; thankfully, it didn’t last. Pleasantly, they agreed “The game-thing, yes. It’s good to have you here! We were worried no one else would show up.” They made a waving-her-in gesture, looking pleased and welcoming in a way that made Rayla feel at least vaguely less on-edge.

Warily, she slunk in, not quite knowing what to do now that she was there. Already she was off-balance. Certainly it was nice to only be confronted with one new face rather than the swarm she’d been worried about, but…it also meant interacting with a strange elf one-on-one, socially, and she had expected there to be more than just one… “’We’?” She repeated, after a moment of awkward standing-around.

“There should be four or five of the usual group here, myself included, when everyone arrives!” They said, waving her over to one of the chairs. Cautiously, she took it, perching on its edge. “Pava is already here, he just went out to get something – he’ll be back soon. The others will all arrive together, I think.” A second passed, and then their hands fluttered up, as if in sudden surprise. “Oh, but I haven’t introduced myself, excuse me! I’m Kazi – I run the society.”

Rayla eyed them with interest. They looked to be in their mid to late twenties, maybe, which certainly seemed old enough to be running a student society. “Rayla,” she introduced, after a moment, and offered a short cordial nod, falling back on proper Silvergrove stoicism to mask her discomfort. After that, she had no idea what to say. Kazi didn’t, either, and for a long pause they stared at each other in mutual awkwardness. “…Are those Antiquitora pieces?” She asked, finally, and knew she’d miraculously managed to say the right thing when the other elf’s eyes lit up.

“Yes! It’s my own set – I bring it here for the meetings in case anyone wants to play. This room has its own, but many of the pieces are missing, so that isn’t any good, of course.” They seemed about to say something else, but jumped at the sound of a clatter from the corridor, as if something had been knocked over, or perhaps dropped. They blinked at the door and said, ruefully, “That will be Pava, I think.”

Rayla was opening her mouth to ask – and then something impacted the door. It was flung open, a Sunfire elf in a hoverchair appearing in a flurry of magelight and colour. He took a moment to survey the room, eyes landing on Rayla, and said “Oh, new person. Hi, new person.” With that, his focus seemed to leave her entirely, and he shot into the room with virulently purple streamers – evidently attached to the hoverchair – wafting along behind him. He made a beeline for the computer and didn’t even wait for his chair to stop before he clambered out and started rummaging around in the machine’s wires.

“This is Pava,” Kazi said to her, a little apologetically. “I’m afraid his focus is very…singular. Until he is done with the computer, he will not leave that corner.”

“’He’ is perfectly capable of hearing you talking about him, though,” said Pava, not missing a beat, leaning into the computer’s casing until most of his head was inside it, his horns catching on the outside. The horns in question, she noted, looked to be decorated with gleaming violet patterns that reminded her disconcertingly of that horn salon’s work. His hoverchair floated placidly behind him, entirely abandoned in favour of the floor.

A second passed. From within the casing there came a click, then a buzz of discharging sky-magic, and a muffled ‘ow’ from the elf himself.

“’He’ is also too stubborn to wear insulating gloves when playing with skycraft wiring,” Kazi said, pointedly, and a hand emerged from the computer to flap irritably at them.

“Psh. What’s a little minor electrocution among friends?”

Rayla shifted in the chair, uncomfortable. The elves very plainly knew each other fairly well, interacting with each other like this, and that was…difficult, to join in with. She didn’t know what to say. She made an effort, though. “I suppose that’s the gaming computer?” She attempted, and received a disgruntled sound from within the circuitry for her efforts.

“Theoretically,” Pava agreed. “But the separator on the primary and secondary sunstreams got buggered up at some point, and if this old dodgy replacement I found doesn’t work, that means no screen, which makes it very hard to play anything. So.” There was the sound of something snapping off, and a moment later he threw a small piece of intricately-shaped metal out of the casing. Another click followed, and then the elf withdrew entirely, his mess of short braids considerably dishevelled. He reached out to turn the computer on, and despite it activating and humming in all the usual ways, the monitor stayed serenely blank…and then, several seconds later, helpfully lit up in a flickering mish-mash of scattered colours and conflicting depths that hurt Rayla’s eyes to look at. “Bugger.”

“Didn’t work?” Kazi guessed, watching the computer promptly get switched off again.

“Should’ve known it would be a dud,” Pava said glumly, by way of confirmation, and leaned back from the circuitry. “Stole it from Tiera’s stuff, and half the shit she keeps in those horrible drawers doesn’t even work. Guess this means we don’t have computing until I can get a replacement in. Sorry, lads.” He looked up, and abruptly seemed to remember that Rayla existed. He blinked, all the irritable urgency that had possessed him suddenly dissipating. “Oh. You. You’re new. Hello.”

“…You already said that,” Rayla pointed out, a little dryly, and settled a little. It felt less awkward to be sitting there when they were actually talking to her.

“Yes, but I was doing something, and now I’m not, so – hi, I’m Pava, just give me a second and I’ll-“ he turned around and hauled himself back into his hoverchair with a grunt, steering it smoothly around to the table. He offered a hand for her to shake, like he was some sort of human villager. Bemusedly, she took it. “Thank you for showing up, whoever you are, because if it was just going to be me and Kazi and no computer then it’d be Antiquitora again for sure, and I’m so sick of getting my archdragon kicked six ways across the table.”

The other Sunfire elf raised one eyebrow. “But perhaps she plays Antiquitora too, Pava, did you think of that?”

Pava blinked, and then both of them were looking at her with interest. “Good point. Do you?”

“Er.” Rayla looked at the game-pieces scattered on the table, cleared her throat, and hedged “…Maybe. It’s been a while. But…” Honestly, being able to play something she was already plenty familiar with was a reassuring prospect. She might not know how to socialise, but she could definitely harass people over a game-board. In an example of staggering understatement, she offered “I’ve…played a few times?”

Kazi’s eyes lit up delightedly, and Pava sighed. “Well, I suppose that’s alright, because this way it’ll still be Antiquitora but someone else can get destroyed for once. I’ll take it.” He shot her a sympathetic look. “I hope you’re either very good, or don’t mind resounding defeats. Kazi is an absolute monster at this game.”

Kazi’s smile was very serene. “Nonsense. It’s her first time here, I will be polite!”

“But not to me, I’m guessing.” Pava made a face at them.

“Not so much, no.” they agreed.

“…Maybe I’ll just…not play?”

Rayla watched this back-and-forth, wondering precisely how good Kazi was. She’d not exactly had much opportunity for any fresh opponents back home, after all. Interest distracted her from her nerves, and her shoulders loosened. “It’s more fun with at least three players,” she offered cautiously, and both of them looked at her again: Kazi triumphant, Pava long-suffering.

“Then maybe you can get one of the others in instead,” he said sourly. “I’ll play next session, alright? But not today, because I’m still not over what happened last time. An elf needs time to recover from something like that, you know?”

She was distracted for a moment by the sounds of footsteps in the corridor, but said after a moment “Why? What happened last time?”

Pava shot Kazi a disgruntled look. They smiled serenely back. “They killed my archdragon,” he complained. “One turn before I’d have completed the move to my Nexus. And then! They stole my heir egg and hatched it and then they had two archdragons, and I’m sure you can figure out how that turned out for me.”

Rayla’s eyebrows lifted. “Nice,” she said to Kazi, appreciatively. That sort of thing was very, very hard to pull off.

They looked pleased. “Yes, I thought so.”

“Well, maybe once your newcomer-immunity is spent, I’ll consider joining a game again.” Pava said generously, after a pause. “That way Kazi will have a new victim to demoralise and I might actually be able to get past the midgame.”

The door creaked open. “Kazi has a new victim? Who?” The new person asked, with interest, and Rayla jerked around to see an inquisitive Skywing face poking in. A second passed, and then the elf spotted her, blinking. “Oh!” She said delightedly, immediately prancing in, jewellery jangling as she went. “Hello! Who are you?”

“She’s new,” Pava offered helpfully, from his lofty position of not having even learned Rayla’s name yet.

“I can see that, thank you, I meant – well, whatever. I’m Nihatasi!” She said, directly at Rayla, having arrived at the table. Finally Rayla looked at her properly, noticing the style of clothing, the style of jewellery, the decorative lines of scarification on the elf’s skin. Nomad, she thought, bemused. There weren’t a lot of those living here. “What’s your name?”

“…Rayla?” She offered, looking at…her? Them? Him? She really wasn’t familiar enough with nomads to be able to figure out what she should be calling them at a glance.

“Is Callum not coming?” Kazi interjected, looking at the newcomer with a light frown. Rayla was distracted enough with cultural confusion that it took her a moment to process the question, by which time Nihatasi was already answering.

“No, he is, he’s just lagging behind a bit. All those game modules, you know.” As if to reinforce the words, there was a clumsy procession of heavy footsteps out in the hallway, drawing closer.

Callum, she thought, suddenly on alert. Obviously, her first thought was of the one from the horn salon. But surely this wouldn’t be the same Callum. What were the chances of that?

What were the chances, indeed.

“He shouldn’t have bothered,” said Pava. “The computer’s fucked. We’re not playing anything on that until we get a new separator in.”

Nihatasi made dismayed sounds at that, but Rayla wasn’t really paying attention, because through the open door came another person, and this one – this one was familiar. She went absolutely still, suddenly hyper-aware of the weight of her horns on her head, half-dizzy from the rush of mortification. What were the chances?

Callum, the ceracurist, staggered through the doorway with his arms full of computer modules, wires slung every-which-way over his wrists in a tangled mass that swayed as he moved. He went straight for the nearest table to set them down, exhaling with relief. “Someone else can carry those next time,” he announced to the room at large, then finally looked up. She watched, still frozen, as his eyes tracked the others in the room, spotting them one-by-one, then, finally-

He stared at her, surprised. She wished she could spontaneously develop the rare Earthblood elf talent of sinking through solid stone.

“Huh,” he said, and smiled. Her pulse immediately went weird. “Hey, Rayla. Fancy seeing you here.”

He’d remembered her name. He’d remembered her name, and that shouldn’t be surprising because it had been written down in the salon appointments and everything, and it had only been a week, but – she fought not to flush, and was uncertain of how well she succeeded. She squared her shoulders. “Callum,” she greeted, a little stiffly.

Three sets of eyes went their way with interest. “You know each other?” Nihatasi asked, curiously, examining Rayla as if trying to detect any hint of familiarity. “I’ve never seen you before. Are you classmates?”

“Please tell me you’re classmates,” Pava pleaded, suddenly alert. “That would mean you’re a mage, wouldn’t it? I desperately need a moon-mage. For reasons. But if Callum’s been hiding a moon-mage friend from me all this time I swear I’ll do something drastic.”

Rayla stared at him in consternation. Mage? She looked sidelong at Callum, struggling to process the implications, and said slowly “No, I’m not a mage. Not…classmates. I-“ She squinted Pava’s way, because that was a tidy distraction from Callum. “What do you need a Moon-mage for?”

He looked shifty. “Reasons,” he repeated.

“He and a friend of ours want to make a game, but they don’t have any moon-mages to do the illusions for them,” Nihatasi interjected helpfully, to a squawk of outrage from the elf in question. “But never mind that. If you’re not classmates, how do you know each other?”

“I’m curious, as well,” said Kazi. “I thought we knew all your friends by now, Callum.” They lifted their hands and made a few quick gestures – was that a sign language? Whatever it was, it made him laugh, shaking his head.

“No, no, we’ve only met like, once.” Callum said, smiling easily, and planted himself down in the seat beside her like it was the most normal thing in the world. He put a hand on her shoulder briefly, shooting her a friendly sort of look. “Definitely didn’t expect to see you here, though. You never mentioned you liked games.”

Her cheeks coloured. “Wasn’t like there was much time for it,” she muttered, embarrassed, and he snickered.

“Yeah, I guess not.”

Everyone was watching them now. “I get the impression there’s something we’re not being told, here.” Pava said, slowly. Meanwhile, Kazi was, speculatively, looking at Rayla’s very shiny horns, then at Callum, and lifting a hand to cover their smile.

Nihatasi’s eyes followed a very similar sort of progression, but their reaction wasn’t nearly so restrained. “Did you meet her at work?” They exclaimed, delighted.

She made a small sound of pure mortification as several sets of eyes all went to her horns. “That does look like Callum-work,” Pava mused, interested. “Though I guess it’s harder to tell when there’s no colours or patterns or anything.”

“Amazing! What a great coincidence!” Nihatasi enthused, plopping down in a chair on the other end of the table. “You’re in great company! He does all of our horns, too.”

Rayla did a double-take at that, eyes flying to everyone’s horns in turn. She’d thought the elaborate metallic patterns on Pava’s reminded her of the horn salon’s work, hadn’t she? Kazi’s weren’t patterned, just polished, but had plainly been cared for recently. And Nihatasi’s were polished and glossy with weird unfamiliar runes etched along their length in metallic sky-blue.

Slowly, she returned her eyes to Callum, staring at him side-long. “They all go to your salon?” She questioned, feeling compelled to ask, though she wasn’t sure why until she took a second to think about it, and then she instantly felt ridiculous. Some small part of her stupid heart, apparently, wanted to know if he did their horns professionally, or – well. Or not professionally.

“They all get a friend discount when they come,” he agreed. “Besides, it’s not like I have the stuff for all the metal inlay laying around at home, right? Mixing that needs special equipment. And things.” He shot Pava a look, saying “I almost made him pay full price, though. Do you have any idea how much of a pain it is to dye metal purple?” That last part seemed directed at the elf in question.

Pava in turn made a very rude gesture with his left hand. “Purple is important. And besides, Nihatasi has colours too.”

Callum lifted his eyebrows. “Hers are aetherium, it came that colour.”

Rayla noted the pronoun with slight relief. And no sooner had she done so than Nihatasi addressed her, bright-eyed and curious. “Do you think you’ll have anything decorative done next time you go?” She asked, as if talking casually about a stranger’s horns was perfectly socially acceptable and normal, and not even slightly weird. Rayla was unnerved. Was it something about being friends with a ceracurist, or were these elves all just really inappropriate? Or…was it a city thing? Were elves just like this in cities? “I hardly ever see Moonshadow elves with anything interesting done, and it just seems such a waste.”

“A…waste.” Rayla repeated, slowly, still trying to process the fact that she was being asked, outright, about her horn presentation.

“Callum has all these designs ready for every kind of elf, but the Moonshadow elves never bloody order them.” Pava explained, with a dismissive flick of his hand. “You lot are really prudish about your horns.”

“You will remember, I hope, that I don’t have any decoration done either.” Kazi pointed out mildly. “Some of us simply prefer to leave our horns as they are.”

“And that’s fine, and normal,” Callum interjected, firmly, before Pava could retort. “No one needs to have fancy stuff done if they don’t want to. So there.” He reached out and tapped one of the computer modules he’d brought, pointedly. “Now, are we going to install any of these, or did I lug them all the way here for nothing?” It was a very blatant attempt to change the subject, and she definitely appreciated it. The more so when it worked.

Pava blinked. “What, didn’t you hear when you were coming in? The computer’s fucked, we aren’t installing anything today.”

��What?” Callum looked dismayed. “You couldn’t have told me that before I carried this all over?”

“I only just found out like ten minutes ago, wasn’t time.” He shrugged. “Just leave it all here, we’ll slap the security rune on the door, and it’ll all be here next week when I’ve got a new separator.”

Nihatasi tilted her head. “Will you have a new separator next week?”

“I have at least three friends and four acquaintances in city limits whose stuff I can raid for one, so yeah, probably.”

Looking a little grumpy now, Callum said “Well, I’m not leaving Imunaviga here. I only just got that.” Rayla twitched, recognising the name. That was one cutting-edge computer game that she absolutely didn’t want to play.

“It’s a really cool game,” Nihatasi offered helpfully. “I’ve been watching him play it. Really lives up to the reputation.”

“I should hope so, with the price of it.” Kazi eyed a particularly large module on the table, which was indeed labelled with the game’s name in blocky letters. “…And the weight.”

“What are we going to do if we can’t use the computer?” Callum asked, still looking somewhat grumpy and discouraged about the whole thing. “That was the entire plan.”

Kazi cleared their throat, and tapped the side of a Skywing Hero token pointedly. “I did bring my Antiquitora set, if you’ll notice.”

“Oh, that’s right, Pava was saying you had a new victim,” Nihatasi remembered, looking speculatively at Rayla. “You play Antiquitora, Rayla? Are you any good? Kazi usually just murders the rest of us – we have to make them play with restrictions to make it more even.”

Given her very limited opponent pool back home, Rayla had very little idea of how to assess how she might match up against Kazi, so she shrugged and said “I’ve never really played anyone outside of home, so…”

Glum looks were traded around the table. Even Kazi looked a little disappointed. “Oh, well, at least it’s one more player. Maybe we can do the full set of five for once.” Nihatasi reasoned.

“No we can’t,” Pava was quick to say. “I’m not playing today.”

Callum looked sceptical. “So what, you’re just going to sit around watching?”

“Watching is perfectly respectable,” he retorted. “Besides, by the looks of things, none of you brought snacks or booze-“ Nihatasi protested here and brandished a large bottle of mystery liquid she’d apparently had under the table. “-so unless you want to send Soren off to get them, might as well be me.” Soren. That was another familiar name. Rayla’s brow furrowed, trying to figure out where she knew it from…and why, for that matter, its owner was an option for being deputised for a snack run.

Whatever the reason, Callum snorted at the words. “Yeah, fair enough.” He acknowledged.

“Did I hear my name?” called a voice from outside, probably not all that far from the door, and she startled, eyes snapping to the direction it had come from. The voice was familiar, too. What…?

“It’s fine! Go back to whatever you were doing!” Pava said back, raising his voice, and received an agreeable ‘okay’ in turn.

Rayla stared. “…Who was that?”

Callum looked shifty. Around the table, everyone else looked amused. “Oh. Uh. That’s just Soren.” There was a conspicuous pause as he obviously tried to figure out what to say. “Don’t worry about him,” he settled on eventually, and reached deliberately for one of the game pieces. “So, Antiquitora?”

She narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious, but everyone else just seemed to instantly go with it. “At last,” Kazi sighed, reaching to the side to unfold the elaborate board on its many hinges. Soon it was covering enough of the table that Callum had to begin hastily scooping game modules off of the surface. “I was beginning to worry we’d never play.”

“Don’t get too excited, you’re still playing Ocean,” Nihatasi said to them severely, and reached out to push the Ocean archdragon figurine over. “And we’ve got a new person, so you’ve got to be nice.”

“I will be perfectly pleasant, I promise.” They smiled sunnily, accepting the figure. “Now then. Everyone set out the tile tokens with me, or this will take all night.” Rayla hesitated for a second, then obligingly reached out to help with the set-up, leaning over the board to scoop a handful of tokens from the pouch and begin setting them out on the tiles. She noted with interest that this was a fancy set, where you had to tap the tokens to reveal what they were, rather than just put them face-down to hide it.

The others obviously knew their way around Antiquitora set-up too, and in short order the game was ready, the neat stacks of cards and dice and tokens arrayed around the edges of the board. “Rayla, you get first choice of faction,” Callum said to her, when they were done, and laid out a neat row of four archdragon tokens. “Since you’re new. You can have Ocean if you want, too, but-“

“No one wants to play Ocean,” Nihatasi agreed, and Kazi huffed at her.

“I happen to enjoy the challenge, thank you,” they said, then looked at Rayla expectantly.

She considered it, but in the end went with what she was most familiar with. She reached out and pulled the Sky Archdragon to her starting tile, turning it over in her hand. It really was a great set; the wooden dragon looked just like Avizandum. “I’ll take Sky.”

“Aww. You took the best one,” said Nihatasi, who was probably biased. “Eh. Vai. I’ll take Sun, then.” She reached out and plucked away the Sun Archdragon by its crown of horns.

Callum considered the remaining dragons, lips pursed. “I’ll take Moon today, I think,” he decided in the end. He flashed her a smile as he took the dragon. “It’ll be fun to see how I do against an actual Moonshadow elf player.”

“She might be terrible at Antiquitora though, and then you’ll wipe the board with her using her own primal.” Pava pointed out, amused. “That would have to sting.”

“Nah,” he looked unruffled. “She has new-person-immunity.” He looked sidelong at her. “That means no one is allowed to gang up on you, you get warnings if you’re doing something risky, and Kazi has to mostly ignore you.”

“Even when they’re playing Ocean?” She asked, a little amused now, and received a set of very serious nods in response. She was beginning to get genuinely excited about testing Kazi’s skill level. It had been so long since anyone was a genuine challenge. She half wanted to warn them that she wasn’t a terrible player…but for all she knew, by the standards of game society city-dwellers, she was. So, in the end, she said nothing.

“Even then,” Callum agreed, and smiled again. He looked encouraging. “So? Ready to go?”

Rayla looked in turn at each of them: her three opponents, plus one observer. With the familiar context of an oncoming Antiquitora game at hand, everything was…almost comfortable. She didn’t feel quite so profoundly awkward anymore. She offered a smile that was really more of a smirk. “Roll the turn,” she said. “Let’s start.”

Kazi’s own smile looked rather frightening. They reached for the largest die. “Yes,” they agreed. “Let us begin.”

“This is going to be a massacre,” Pava predicted.

If only he knew.

---

Pava never did go on that snack run.

By the two hour mark, Rayla’s new-person-immunity had been vehemently revoked five separate times, imprecations had been made against the marital status of her parents twice, and all in all she was doing just fine, thank you very much. She’d stolen Nihatasi’s entire military, Callum’s populace was threatening to defect to Sky territory due to lack of faith in their leadership, and the two’s various cries of dismay had attracted an entire rowdy gaggle of Pava’s tech-department compatriots to the room. For whatever reason, they seemed interested in watching, so they hung around and spectated loudly throughout the rest of the game. They’d brought food, at least, so there was that.

“What the fuck,” Pava said, expressively, his eyes wide and his expression flummoxed. He’d taken up the position of card-reading and rule-announcing, mostly for the benefit of the less well-versed audience. “What the absolute fuck.”

“I can’t even believe what I’m looking at.” Callum stared at the map, which Rayla now controlled a full half of. “What. I. How.”

Nihatasi had mostly degenerated to making indignant noises around the time she lost her War Hero, and had no comment to offer. Kazi, meanwhile, had gone utterly silent and intent in a way that made them look like a shadowpaw on the hunt, lingering motionless with their focus on the board. They barely spoke except to read game events or state their actions.

Rayla was having the time of her life. “Take the card,” she commanded, staring straight at Pava, who’d been lingering with his hand on the event stack for a full minute now, eyes glued with morbid fascination to the game board. He didn’t respond.

“Pava. Take the card.” Kazi didn’t even look away from Rayla’s pieces. Immediately, three or four of Pava’s hangers-on started heckling him with such resounding encouragement as ‘take the bloody card, Pava’ and ‘do it you coward’.

Pava took a breath. He took a card, and turned it over. He stared, with the barest trace of a tremble at his fingers. The entire now-crowded room stared at him avidly, waiting for him to read. Finally, sounding disbelieving, he stated the title: “….Partial World Event: Full Solar Eclipse-“ he’d hardly managed to speak the words before the entire room erupted with yelling, and he had to raise his voice for the rest of it to be heard: “As predicted by the celestial oracles, the Moon will pass in front of the Sun in three turns’ time. The event will last one turn and will affect-“ He reached out and rolled another die. “-Uh, sectors…” He swallowed. Everyone waited. “Sectors one through four.”

One through four. Four, at least, was in her territory. Rayla eyed the map appraisingly while the spectators yelled and hooted, noting the location of Kazi’s army, noting the location of Callum’s dragons. Callum himself was looking cautiously optimistic; he shouldn’t. Not with what she had planned.

Kazi stared straight at her, eyes narrowed. Clearly they knew what was in the works.

“Turn actions, people,” Pava said, and Rayla moved first. She had so many bonuses by this point that she’d have first roll on almost everything, and this was no exception.

“Sorry, Callum,” she said to him, moving her Cloud Wyvern Hero and four advanced sky-mage units directly into his territory; he immediately looked panicked. As well he should. “In my defence, you really should’ve guarded your lair better.”

“I couldn’t, because of the riots that you caused!” He protested, staring at his own units with about three different kinds of pre-emptive grief.

She shrugged, smirking. “Not my problem,” she said, and watched pityingly as his movement turn came around and he instantly, fruitlessly, tried to move his archdragon back…but archdragons moved slowly, and his was too far away by a long shot. Kazi meanwhile shoved every unit they had spare around the coastline, as close as they could get to the Moon Nexus that Callum had made his lair.

It was all in vain. Rayla in the Sky-faction late-game could move units across a third of the map in a single turn; Callum had no hope of keeping her out, and Kazi had no hope of reaching her in time. On the second turn her units confronted Callum’s six; three of them defected on the spot, one fled, and the remaining two were handily dispatched by hers. She snatched his heir egg, assigned it to the Cloud Wyvern Hero unit, and had it half-way back to her stronghold before the turn even changed.

“The Solar Eclipse event begins,” Pava announced, sounding utterly bewildered. “The Lunar Heir egg is currently located in sector four, in the custody of Sky’s units.” He took a deep breath. “The egg hatches to Sky.”

The room erupted in shouts and hollering; Callum stared at Rayla with a woebegone expression that couldn’t quite manage to diminish her triumphant glee. “You’re terrifying,” he told her, in tones of mingled admiration and horror. “How did you do that?”

“I’m just pretty terrific like that,” she said smugly, and shot a look at Pava. “Well?”

He exhaled. “Sky faction must hold the dragonling for three turns to secure loyalty.”

“Dragon loyalty bonus,” she reminded him, because she’d given the egg to a wyvern for a reason. A reason other than the insane movement speed.

He looked pained. “Two turns to secure loyalty.”

After that, Callum’s role in the game was pretty much over. He tried valiantly to reach his dragonling, but she had it back to her lair before he could manage to even wrest his units past the very significant Civil Unrest effect he was currently under. Kazi, likewise, made a very spirited attempt to get their units far enough inland to assassinate Rayla’s new dragonling, but was rather severely impeded by the land-movement penalties. By the end of the two turns the baby Lunar Archdragon was hers, and Callum looked very resigned. He watched the board for a moment, then sighed. “Moon faction submits,” he decided, and reached out to tip his archdragon over.

“Much appreciated, Callum.” She said, and watched as the rolls determined the distribution of state. His territory turned unclaimed; sixty percent of his units defected to Rayla, and the other forty went to Kazi. Nihatasi didn’t get a single one, and looked very sour about it.

Ten turns later, Kazi’s vested invasion force casually destroyed what remained of Nihatasi’s army on the way to Rayla’s, and then they were the only two players left in the game.

Kazi got a foothold on the coast and, tile by tile, wrested every piece of coastline Rayla owned away from her. They slaughtered her Cloud Wyvern families, forced her less-loyal Moon-units into their sway, and finally engaged her in a full-out war of attrition by laying siege to the grand city ringed around the Sky Nexus. They were vicious enough about it that Rayla might have worried, if not for the fact that her Lunar Archdragon was about to age up.

A turn passed. The archdragon’s age changed from ‘hatchling’ to ‘youth’. Rayla ordered it across the map, its powerful stealth abilities enabled. Kazi’s units failed their first espionage check.

Another turn passed. Kazi hurried some units around the coastline back to their own Nexus. Again, they failed the espionage check. Kazi began to look worried. The room went silent, everyone watching with bated breath.

Rayla’s secondary archdragon reached Kazi’s archdragon uncontested, and deployed a sneak attack. Obviously the first thing Kazi did when the stealth effect was broken was unleash a devastating counter-attack on the poor Lunar youngster, and that would have been the end of that, if not for the token that Rayla had thoughtfully attached to the unit. She reached out and tapped it; the image appeared, and Kazi looked at it. Pleasantly, they said “Oh dear.”

“Sky primal stone.” Rayla offered, for those who weren’t quite close enough to see. And then: “Lunar Archdragon breaks the primal stone.”

As it happened, unleashing a hurricane directly inside a lair tended to do an immense amount of damage. Rayla’s Lunar archdragon died, Kazi’s already injured archdragon died as well, and the Leaderless penalty fell across their entire army.

“As you have no heir of sufficient age, you have to wait five turns to promote a Hero as leader.” Pava told Kazi, as if they didn’t know. Kazi looked at the board and laughed.

“Yes, it seems so.” They looked up and offered Rayla a beatific smile. “Well then. Let us see how this ends, shall we?”

Rayla, by way of response, reached for the turn die herself.

Kazi did not go down easily, but the five turns before they could promote a new leader cost them dearly. In the end, two turns after assigning a War Hero as the new leader, they frowned at the board, pursing their lips. Evidently they saw what Rayla did, because they sighed, leaned back from the table, and said “Ocean concedes.”

There was a second of brief, uncertain silence, and then-

Rayla’s head jerked up at the sheer noise of the hollering and cheering that erupted upon her victory, and she noticed for the first time that – at some point – the initial crowd of Pava’s friends had grown considerably. There were now elves crammed into every spare inch of space around the table. “Where did they all come from?” She asked Callum, disconcerted, and he just shrugged helplessly.

“Tech students mostly just camp out here when term’s out and there’s no teachers to kick them out,” he offered. “I guess they all came to see what the fuss was?”

“Why do they care?” She asked, but was interrupted by Nihatasi half-lunging across the table to take her hand.

“That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” she told her, looking absolutely gobsmacked. “I don’t even care that you stole my army, you beat Kazi.”

“Is it really that impressive?” Rayla asked, sceptical, only for one of the raucous gaggle to answer her.

“I don’t even play this game and I know that’s impressive,” the random elf offered cheerfully. “Good job, whoever you are.”

Pava finally looked away from the game board, and seemed taken-aback at the sight of the crowd that had materialised. “Who invited you lot?” He demanded. He turned in his hoverchair, shooting the closest elf a dirty look, and shoved them in the side. “Especially you, Tani. Don’t you have anything better to be doing?”

“No, not really,” said the elf, unruffled.

Pava scowled, and started shooing the lot of them away. “Out! Out, all of you. Show’s over. You’re not members of this society and you’re clogging up the room.” He ignored the protests and swatted one compatriot on the shoulder. “What are you all watching Antiquitora for, anyway? Don’t you all have illegal after-hours tinkering to do? And you call yourselves engineering students!”

“Oi,” said one, weakly. “That’s uncalled-for.”

“You’re an engineering student too,” pointed out another, sullenly. “Shouldn’t you be tinkering?”

Pava stared at this elf, then pointed expressively at the computer in the corner. This seemed to be all the rebuttal needed, because after that, the first of the group did start to file out. This seemed to settle him, because he started clapping various elves on the shoulders as they left, offering friendly parting words like “I’ll drop by tomorrow to see how your project’s coming along,” and “clean up your hair, you twat, you’re a disgrace,” and “I’ll catch you later.” Rayla watched these interactions with bemusement.

“The engineering students are like that,” Callum said sympathetically, at her expression. “Weird and loud and all up in each other’s business.”

“Reminds me of home,” Nihatasi added wistfully, watching their audience disperse. Rayla made a face at the departing elves, then shook her head and returned her attention to the table. There was a game to clean up, after all.

Kazi had been taking the opportunity to start rounding up the unit figurines, quiet and efficient and smiling. They looked oddly serene, sat across that board; utterly contented and satisfied. They noticed Rayla watching, after a moment, and looked up. They inspected her for a moment. “You’re coming back,” they informed her, so matter-of-fact that it didn’t even feel like a command.

Rayla blinked, and abruptly remembered that this was, ostensibly, a social gathering. It had to have been hours, by now. Antiquitora games weren’t short, and that had been a full game. And…she’d been fine. Even in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people…she’d barely noticed the time passing at all.

She paused, and in that moment, it seemed like everyone turned to watch her, waiting. “Suppose I am,” she said, finally, and that stillness relaxed into a series of smiles slung her way.

“Good,” Kazi said, strongly, and then “Do you have a Sunbeam? A farcaller code?”

“I’m in a student housing room, there’s only the main farcaller.” She said, automatically. “I’ve got a Sunbeam, though. Why-“

Before she could complete the question, Nihatasi planted a little sheet of paper and a pencil in her hands. “Sunbeam,” she insisted, already waving a notebook at the others in the room. “We have to get your contact details, right? If you’re coming back.” She looked elated. “It’ll be so good to have someone new in the group!”

“You always say that,” Pava said, rolling his eyes, but he started writing obediently when the notebook reached him.

“New people are always a good thing,” declared Nihatasi, in a stunning example of nomad stereotype, and bounced impatiently as she waited for the notebook to return to her. Warily, Rayla watched them all for a moment, then finally started writing her Sunbeam code down.

“We all meet up at least once a week,” Kazi explained to her while Callum was taking his turn with the notebook. “Though it’s only an official scheduled society meeting, in this room, every other week. Generally, we will visit each other’s houses for games. Mine, for board games. Callum and Nihatasi’s, if on the computer.” Rayla eyed them for a second. They lived together?

“If you’d just get a computer yourself, we could just go to yours every time,” Nihatasi complained, snatching the notebook when it was offered to scribble her code down. “You’ve got a house all by yourself! It’d be way more convenient!”

“You know perfectly well I can’t afford that sort of computing,” Kazi said, serenely. “In any case, I only care about one computer game, and that’s computer-Antiquitora. I’m perfectly happy with that alone.”

Rayla took a moment to be profoundly envious of Kazi. Then, cautiously, she handed the paper over. “That’s my Sunbeam, if you want to contact me?”

“It’s okay if we all write it down, right?” Callum checked, and after a moment she nodded. He smiled, pleased. “Great! Next time is probably going to be at our house, sometime in the week. Tuesday or Friday, probably? Kassa will probably join in, too.”

Convenient, Rayla thought. Those were both days when she didn’t have training. “Who’s Kassa?”

“Housemate,” Callum supplied, and with an exasperated look at Nihatasi’s sudden smug face, added “Nihatasi’s girlfriend. There’s four of us in the house overall, but Kassa doesn’t come to these meetings, and Soren…” he paused. “Well, Soren’s not really into games,” he settled on, eventually.

Rayla shot him a narrow-eyed look. “The same Soren who’s apparently outside the room?”

Callum looked awkward. For whatever reason, everyone else seemed to find this particularly funny. “…Yes,” he agreed, and cleared his throat. Again in a blatant change of topic, he said “Well, er, we’d better get this board packed away.”

She had a very distinct feeling of not-being-in-on-something, watching the way everyone else responded to that. Barely-hidden smiles, clear amusement, a weird willingness to go along with the obvious evasion. She sort of wanted to demand answers, but at the same time, she was all-too-aware that she was the outsider here. “If you say so,” she said, lifting her eyebrows sceptically. He looked embarrassed.

He laughed nervously, and after a moment moved in beside her to help with packing the game away. It went quickly, even with only him and her and Kazi at the task; Pava had already migrated back to the computer to start rooting around in it, and Nihatasi looked like she was in the process of helpfully writing out full names and addresses for all four of the society members present, neatly scrawled beside the Sunbeam codes.

She had the list thrust at her, as soon as the packing was done; Rayla looked at it. Kazi was Kazi of Lux Aurea, Pava was Pava de Artain, and Nihatasi was…Demani-Iharisa-Nihatasi vu Favoni, apparently. Callum, meanwhile, was just…Callum of Katolis, according to the paper, which struck her as odd. Didn’t humans usually use family names, these days?

Well, she wasn’t exactly an expert on humans. She accepted the list and asked no questions, folding it up and shoving it into one of her pockets. “Thanks,” she said, glancing at Nihatasi, and then sideways at Callum. Her memories took the opportunity to helpfully remind her that he’d had his hands on her horns less than a week ago, and she had to quickly look away to avoid turning red. “…Next week, you said?”

“Perhaps sooner, in my case,” Kazi said cheerfully, finally drawing the very hefty box closed. “I will be wanting a rematch at your earliest convenience. I have not had an opponent who plays the game so well in quite some time.”

Rayla considered it. From the way they were talking, she assumed it would be a two-player match, and possibly just the two of them there in general. That was…probably fine. Antiquitora didn’t require social skills, and it had been a good game. She was admittedly excited to see how a match would go, with only them and herself playing. And with Kazi on some less-restrictive faction than Ocean. “What do you usually play as?” She asked, calculatingly.

Kazi smiled, perfectly amiable, yet…sharp-edged, too. “Without restrictions? I enjoy Sun or Earth most, usually.”

“Kazi playing Sun is absurdly overpowered,” Pava offered from within the computer casing, the sound somewhat muffled. “Don’t let them have it. It’s a disaster every time.”

“…No, honestly, that sounds like fun.” Rayla admitted. Callum looked somewhat impressed at this assertion; Nihatasi, doubtful.

“You’re an interesting elf, Rayla,” said the nomad…woman? Did nomads use the term woman? Did it even apply to them? Rayla had no idea. “I really do hope you come by more! There’s hardly anyone here during the holidays. It’s terrible.” She passed Rayla’s Sunbeam address to the side; Callum took it delicately and withdrew a notepad of his own to copy it down.

“You’re from the Silvergrove, Rayla?” Callum asked, an odd note in his voice. She glanced at him, and found his eyes lingering on her name-as-written, Rayla of the Silvergrove, on the paper.

She eyed him warily. “….Yes? Why?”

His eyes flickered up to hers. For a second, they were unreadable, and then strangely curious. Then he shook his head and put his notebook away. “Nothing, it’s just – it’s pretty close to the border, right? I’ve heard of it, is all.”

Rayla observed him steadily. For all that it was said perfectly evenly, there was a taste of mistruth to it that made her suspicious. He shuffled awkwardly under her stare but did not elaborate, so eventually she relented and shifted topic. “You’ve got a computer, then, I’m guessing?” She asked, and nodded to the stack of game modules he’d put off to the side. It was quite a number. She recognised the titles of some, written on their sides, and, well. They weren’t cheap.

He looked sheepish. “Yeah, I’ve got a computer.” He confirmed, and received snorts from literally everyone for his trouble.

“He has two computers, actually,” Pava called helpfully from inside the casing. “And those modules are all his, too. Technically, if you want to count the one I’m shoulders-deep in, he’s got three.”

“Pava,” Callum complained.

Pava was unmoved. “If you don’t want people to know you’re rich, you should have fewer computers.”

“I’m not rich.”

Kazi coughed politely, as if they wanted to refute the statement but weren’t rude enough to do it verbally. Meanwhile, considerably less politely, Pava called “By every possible definition, Callum, you are very fucking rich, now live with it.”

“He likes to pretend he isn’t,” Nihatasi explained, spotting Rayla’s befuddled stare. “But we all know better.”

She absorbed that. “Why do you work at that salon if you’re rich?” She asked, a moment later.

He flushed. “First, I’m not rich,” he claimed. “And second…er. Mostly by accident, honestly.”

“It’s a fun story,” Nihatasi said. “He’ll have to tell you sometime. But for now…” She tapped her hip meaningfully; when Rayla looked, she saw that the chain of a pocket-watch hung there, glittering over the decorative gleam of her embroidery.

Callum blinked, then jolted in place. “Oh. Oh! Right. What time is it?”

“Dunno, but it has to be pretty late.” Nihatasi said, fishing out the watch to peer at it. “…Hm. Yeah, it’s nearly midnight. Kassa’s going to skin us.”

He winced. “At least none of us have to be up early tomorrow? Late dinner should be fine.” He got to his feet, reaching for his bag.

“She’ll probably forgive us if we sous-chef for her.”

“And do the dishes.”

“Duh, Callum.” Nihatasi rose to her feet too, and cast an apologetic look at Rayla. “Sorry, but we gotta go now, or Kassa will refuse to feed us, and that would be basically the worst thing ever to happen to me, because she said she’s making dumplings tonight. I’d love to stay and talk more but-“ she stopped suddenly, blinking thoughtfully. “Unless…do you want to come over? Have dinner?”

Rayla did a double-take, as if to confirm that the elf was actually talking to her. Immediately afterwards a prickle of alarm had her lifting her hands and saying “No, no, that’s…fine. I…” She searched for a good, polite excuse. “I need to be up early?” It was even true.

Nihatasi nodded, and Rayla relaxed at the sign that she’d managed to escape an unanticipated social encounter at someone’s house. “Some other time, then!” She decided, and slung an arm around Callum’s shoulders. He bore this with the long-suffering dignity of one who was very, very used to it. “We’d be happy to have you!”

“We would, it’s true,” Callum agreed, flashing a smile at her. “We’re a pretty social house, and it’d be nice to have someone new over. Especially someone who likes games.” Something seemed to occur to him then. “Do you like computer games? Since you were asking about them? Or are you more of a board game person?” He asked, with considerable interest, then yelped as Nihatasi’s arm hooked him around the neck and pulled him towards the door.

“You can ask her that next week! Or just Sunbeam her, or something!” She said, all aflutter with impatience, and when he smacked at her arm removed it and tugged at his hoodie instead. “Catch the wind, already!”

“Pava, you’re handling the security rune, right?” Callum called, belatedly, as he was pulled over.

A hand emerged from the computer and flapped at them. “Yeah, obviously. You go, I’ll be here a while yet.”

Kazi rose from the table, ostensibly to see the others off. After a few moments, as they were receding through the doorway, Rayla followed. She was slow enough that, by the time she peered out, they were already most of the way down the hall, their backs turned…

…and a third person walking beside them. Maybe just a step or two behind.

Rayla narrowed her eyes, suspicious and alert, but was distracted by a touch at her elbow. She turned and found Kazi smiling at her. “Perhaps we could arrange to meet this weekend, sometime?” They suggested, and she blinked.

It took her a moment to look back, and by then, Callum and Nihatasi – and that new, third person – were gone. Slowly, she nodded. “Sure,” she said, and went back into the room to give it a once-over, to be sure she’d not forgotten anything. “I can’t do tomorrow, or Sunday morning, but the afternoon should be fine?”

They worked out the details of it, confirmed their contact details, and then Rayla finally left. It was a long enough walk home for her to start – at least a little – to process the events of the evening.

It had been…good. Fun. She’d been a little awkward, but…probably not too much so. And Ethari had been right; beating them at Antiquitora did seem to have pleased them.

Moon above, though, she hadn’t been expecting to see Callum there. She was probably going to feel very embarrassed about that once she was safely back home with space to actually think about it. She was already embarrassed about it.

….He’d been nice, though. Albeit suspicious. And weirdly mysterious.

What was with the person who’d apparently been hanging around outside the room the whole time? Why was that name familiar?

…Why had Pava implied Callum was a mage student?

Annoyingly, the mystery only served to interest her more. Rayla scowled at herself, grumbled a little, and determinedly buried her thoughts for the rest of the way home.

Surely, if she was going to spend more time with that group, there’d be answers soon.

---

End chapter.

Okay I'm gonna be real with you guys; a lot of this fic is about the developing rayllum, sure, but a whole hecking lot of it - probably a lot more by volume - is gonna be Rayla and her university buddies doing stuff and being pals. There's gonna be shenanigans. There's probably going to be at least minor digressions into sports anime territory. Antiquitora is definitely going to return. There are nerds everywhere. You've been warned.

If this chapter called you out at any point, tag yourself. I’m ‘Rayla froze, nineteen years of social awkwardness smothering her all at once’, and also ‘Rayla relaxed at the sign that she’d managed to escape an unanticipated social encounter at someone’s house’.

Some details:

Rayla did plenty of combat training as a kid, but without the assassin thing to fixate on, she mostly just became a nerd. She did fixate on some other stuff, though.

Also, Callum has spent the last five years having friends and developing confidence, whereas Rayla has spent the last five years not having friends and developing awkwardness.

The OCs of import in this chapter are Pava and Nihatasi. Nihatasi is native to piaj worldbuilding and existed before this fic, whereas Pava is new.

The glossary of terms this chapter is beefy, but as always, you shouldn't need to read it to enjoy the story. Most things should be inferable by context - in future chapters, if not in this one.

Glossary of terms

(in order of mention/relevance)

Bellatorium: 'warrior-place'; the location where Rayla's chosen sporting activity is trained for or conducted.

Bellator: ‘Warrior’; someone who does the sporting activity Rayla does.

Skeinsite: skein-site; pretty much a direct equivalent of website.

Circle: a Moon-druid magical circle for use as a site for ritual magic. It is common for Moonshadow communities to meet at a Circle each full moon to conduct dances that channel magic in specific forms. These celebrations have great cultural significance. (piaj)

Antiquitora: an old Xadian strategy game with many pieces. Basically a 4x game. You play as an Archdragon leading a fledgling elven civilization to greatness. (piaj)

Elf computers: are weird. They don't have operating systems as we'd recognise them, and also have no such thing as software. Everything is hardware; all programs are physical modules that need to be physically connected to the various parts of the computer. Each module does its own processing.

Sunbeam: A widely-used module used to conduct real-time video calls with other computers. Magic Zoom or Skype, pretty much. The name constitutes a fairly clever piece of elf marketing, because while 'sunbeam' is fairly accurate to the function of the magic, it's also a Sunfire elf term of endearment. It'd be like if we had a version of Skype called Darling, but also it meant 'electronic image transmission' in some vague way.

Chipsinger: A magitech music player that plays music encoded onto small ‘chips’ of metal, which are around the size of a standard SD card.

Luçais: the in-universe name for the ancestral language spoken by many Sunfire elves; French, basically. The source of the common Sunfire elf accent. (piaj)

Hoverchair: like a wheelchair, but it floats. Runs by Sky magic engineering.

Skycraft: Sky magic engineering.

Skywing nomad clans/Brevili people: one type of Skywing elf society; relatively populous in the modern day. These days most clans live shipboard on fleets of airships, and various clans have enormous economic power in Xadia due to their roles in trade and commerce. (piaj; adapted)

Nomad genders: Brevili nomads have different concepts of gender to most other elf or human societies, with a wide range of recognised genders that do not map neatly to any that other societies use. The OC Nihatasi is of the anaïtsi gender, and uses she/her pronouns in Common. (piaj and Brevi conlang)

Aetherium: extremely valuable metal used in most skycraft wiring. A powerful conductor and receptacle of Sky magic. Can only be made at the Storm Spire. (piaj)

Imunaviga: an impressive cutting-edge elf computer game, recently released. Brownie points to anyone who figures out what game it's an expy of, and why Rayla definitely doesn’t want to play it.

Vai: (said by Nihatasi) a common Brevili word with a number of uses. In this context, it’s an expression of acceptance, approval, or agreement – it has pretty much the same feel as ‘legit’ or ‘valid’ here. (The actual meaning is ‘honourable’ or ‘worthy’.) (piaj, Brevi conlang)

Farcaller: what elves call their equivalents of a telephone. They only have landline. Uses Sky magic to transmit audio.

Catch the wind: Skywing elf idiom meaning 'hurry up'.

#rayllum #tdp fic #tdp rayla #tdp callum #tdp kazi #everyone is a nerd and you can't stop me #meet cute #modern au #college au

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pynkhues · 4 years

Note

So i sent a similar ask to megan because i love peoples thoughts on their own fics and i love snippets soooooo👀 I’m curious what your top five moments in the c&c verse are (which have already happened) and top 5 moments you’re looking forward too?!☺️

Ahhh, thank you! This was such a fun one, haha. It got looooong, so I put it behind a cut! [edit: sorry, the cut doesn’t seem to be working on desktop, but it is on phone? tumblr’s being tumblr! Hopefully it fixes soon?].

Top Five Moments in C&C

1. Annie argues with Beth about the security system in I Could Be Your Welcome.

This was actually one of the first moments I wrote in the C&C ‘verse. I can’t remember the exact context around me writing it, but I remember being interested in Beth’s lack of self-preservation / tendency to ignore danger, and had been thinking a lot about what that would look like in an actual relationship with Rio. It sort of manifested in the thread of Rio buying this expensive security system throughout I Could Be Your Welcome and becomes a bit symbolic of the fact that Beth hasn’t really unpacked any of the realities at that point on what a relationship with a man like Rio means.

Beth is such a stubborn character at the best of times, haha, that I knew I wanted her to dig her heels in on it, and I wanted it to culminate in a fight, and I just loved the idea of Annie being the unlikely voice of reason, and how that reason fell out of how much she loves and worries about Beth.

Here’s my favourite part:

“Yeah, and you need to talk to him about that. But he’s not Dean,” Annie interrupts. “Dean lied for Dean. Dean lied to cover up all the ways he shit the bed, and he shit the bed on like, every level. Comforter, sheets, mattress protector, mattress. Bed frame. Floor underneath. I mean, was there a single inch of your marital bed that wasn’t brown by the end of it all?”

Beth gives Annie a look at that, and Annie laughs to herself, waving soapy arms out and letting the suds drift to the floor.

“With Rio, I think he was - -” and her voice cracks then, her bottom lip wobbling, and she looks briefly away, trying to pull herself together. It takes her a minute to collect herself, to figure out what it is that she wants to say, and when she does, her voice is somehow both raw and firm.

“You’re asking me to be mad that he’s trying to keep you safe, and that’s never going to be something that makes me mad.”

It takes Annie a moment to meet her gaze again, and when she does, her jaw is fixed, even as her lip still wobbles, a tear – blackened with mascara – having stolen down her cheek, catching at the curve of her nose, and - -

And just - -

Dammit.

2. Rio realising why Jane’s upset in Two Hands.

One of the things I find most fun in writing the early days of the C&C ‘verse, is that Beth and Rio flat out do not communicate still, hahaha, and they really just threw themselves into this family without fully knowing what that meant.

Two Hands was very much about that, and in particular about the fact that Rio, in the early days of their relationship, treated Beth’s kids ultimately as extensions of Beth. Two Hands for me marks this turning point in the timeline where he started to really think of each of them as their own people, and consciously commits to building individual relationships with each of them.

Also I love writing Jane, haha. Here’s my fave bit:

“It’s not always like this,” he says, and Jane looks up at him, and there are too many expressions that pass over her round little face – disbelief and childish frustration until it finally settles on somethin’ else, somethin’ softer, less certain, somethin’ he ain’t seen on her face, at least not somethin’ he’s seen directed at him.

“You didn’t say bye,” she says finally, her voice small, and Rio exhales, annoyed.

“I did, darlin’,” because he did. Shit, got to fight about it with Elizabeth and leave Marcus red faced and weepy, made sure of that, but then - -

He looks at Jane and any self-righteousness dies on his tongue.

“Not to you though, huh?” he says softly, and Jane shuffles back into his arm, presses her forehead into his chest, out of sight, the nozzle of the sippy cup sucked into her mouth like a bottle, keeps herself looking away from him, and Rio exhales. He looks down at his bruised hands, then at her feet, where the booties of her onesie hang limply down the side of the couch, her feet lost somewhere in the legs of the thing, the hood of it hangin’ so far down her face it almost covers her eyes, and he reaches up to tug it back, just enough he can see her.

“’m sorry. Think maybe I’m still gettin’ used to this,” he says, because he hadn’t said goodbye to any of Elizabeth’s kids. Had trusted her to do it for him, had treated them like they were just a part of her, but - -

They ain’t.

They’re - -

Well.

Fuck.

Jane looks up at him, her eyes a little glassy and just - - he ain’t sure what that is, the feelin’ in his gut, hollowing itself out. “Can you be the first one I say hey to instead?”

She makes a show of turnin’ it over, her squirming against his chest and drinkin’ that goddamn awful drink he’s made her, but then she nods, and Rio tugs on one of her rabbit ears.

“Hey, Jane,” he says quietly. “You been good for your mama while I been gone?”

And she grins a little at that, shakes her head into his chest again, giggling before she can stop herself, and Rio smiles too, but rolls his eyes.

3. Rio’s non-proposal in Stick to the Rivers

I’m weirdly into the thought of Dean getting married a million times after he and Beth finally divorce. I think Dean’s just affable and charming and goofy enough to trick women into thinking he’s a good guy, and I kind of love the idea that it results in this string of short-term disaster relationships that parallel to the longterm stability and true partnership Beth finds with Rio in C&C.

It’s something I’m definitely going to be exploring in future chapters, but it was really fun to start to in Stick to the Rivers, where Dean tells the kids he’s engaged and Beth and Rio are left to deal with the fallout. I also love the idea of Beth and Rio floating concepts with each other as jokes, even when they mean them seriously, haha, which is how this moment happened:

“Thought you ain’t sayin’ nothin’,” Beth says, imitating his voice, and Rio exhales sharply, squinting down at her in that irritated way that he does whenever she imitates him.

“I ain’t,” he says, gritting his teeth, and Beth arches an eyebrow up at him. “But that dumbass ex o’ yours - - ”

“Is getting married,” Beth replies, refocusing her gaze on the ceiling, and at least that’s enough to make Rio be quiet. It was a dirty trick, and she thinks they both know it, but still - - she just didn’t have it in her for Rio to tell her what she already knew, to have to justify (again) her inaction when it came to Dean.

Rio sighs above her, and she can feel him trying to catch her gaze, but she keeps it fixed steadily on the ceiling, briefly wishing for cracks or cobwebs or anything beyond the pristine surface there to distract herself, only something must distract her, because she doesn’t realise Rio’s undressed or even moved at all until he’s nudging her forwards and slipping into the bath behind her. He pulls her gently back against his chest.

“You’re surprised,” she tells him softly, letting her head loll back onto Rio’s shoulder, her eyes slip shut, feeling his hands stroke down her arms, one coming back up to cup her breast.

“Surprised he managed to trick another woman into gettin’ saddled with his ass, sure,” he replies easily, and Beth huffs out a laugh, beyond the point of being offended by anything Rio says about her and Dean’s marriage.

“You wanna beat him down the aisle?”

And just - - what?

Beth’s eyes snap back open, and she spins a little in the water to look at him, and it’s unfair, the mirth in his eyes, but also the - - something. She can’t quite read it, god, still can’t quite ever know him fluently, so she just squints at him.

4. The whole of Louder Now, Help Me Out

We’re extremely lucky in this fandom to have so many writers who are genuinely SO funny (including you!!), and I am not one of them, hahaha. I always feel like I tend to be a bit clunky when I try to write jokes, but occasionally I think I pull it off, and the installment where Marcus, Jane and Emma ask Beth about sex is one I’m pretty proud of. It still makes me grin when I read it, haha.

“Miss Elizabeth, do you and my daddy have sex?”

Somewhere inside, Beth can hear Kenny and Danny playing video games, can hear lunch gently simmering in the crockpot, can hear the faintest whir of the washing machine working through its cycle. Which is nice, she thinks blankly, her smile not shifting as she tries to process what Marcus has just said to her. She can’t quite look at Ruby, who even out of the corner of her eye she can see has her mouth hanging open, and she definitely can’t look at Annie, even if she does see her drop heavily back down into her chair (doesn’t even have to know for sure to know that she’s grinning).

Beth clears her throat, softening her gaze.

“Who told you that?” she asks, and beside him, Jane shrugs, a suspicious look on her face.

“Lucas Bircher. He said he saw his daddy naked and he put his penis inside his mommy’s butt and then his daddy told him that that was sex and it was how they made babies.”

“Not if it’s in her butt,” Ruby says quietly, taking a sip of her coffee when Beth spins around to glare at her. She drops her mouth open, planning to tell the kids what, she’s not sure, when Jane continues:

“But then we asked Kenny, and Kenny said growed-ups have sex because it’s fun and that you and Mr Rio do it all the time.”

5. Beth finds Rio with Marcus comes home after a bad job in Friar’s Lantern.

Angst though is something I think I write well, haha, and particularly crime-y angst. Friar’s Lantern is a story I was really excited to write, particularly in exploring the dynamic between Beth and Marcus, and the history of Rio and Laura. I liked the idea that Rio and Laura care about each other deeply, but that she was never in crime, and that she hit a breaking point with it in a way that made her really demand that Rio hide a part of himself from her.

In a lot of ways, Friar’s Lantern was about Beth doing the opposite, and demanding that he share himself instead. I wanted to parallel the moment a bit with the dubby too – with parenthood being central to both Beth and Rio’s vulnerabilities and something that has often lead to shifts in their dynamic – so Marcus’ teddy bear formed a really fun device in that sense. Also the image of a bloodied and bruised Rio bringing his son his stuffed animal was just the right sort of angst for me that day, hahaha.

His eyebrow split open, blood trickling from the skin there, down his temple. It looks like he’s swiped it back, once, twice, maybe three times, the blood smeared and dried, caking in his hair. There’s a deep bruise at his jaw, a deep, wide cut at his lip, like he was punched by somebody wearing a ring, and Beth’s gaze travels down him, only to have to swallow a gasp at the blood soaking through his shirt.

He watches her watch him, then says:

“Not all of its mine,” like it’s supposed to make her feel any better about it, and she hates that it does, because god, it’s selfish. She doesn’t want any of it to be his. It can all be the other guy’s. She wants it to be. She can’t summon the words to say anything – barely knows what to, and Rio suddenly jerks his head away from her, looking back at Marcus, and Beth exhales a breath she didn’t know she was holding to have his wounds out of sight again, however briefly.

“I won’t be long,” he says, eyes still on Marcus. “Just droppin’ Otis off, yeah?”

And - - what? Beth blinks, steps closer before she can help herself.

“Where are you going?” she asks, and Rio doesn’t pull his eyes away from Marcus, and Beth just - - stops. A foot or so away from him, and here she can see the blood’s thickest at the arm of his shirt, darkening the navy fabric, and it still looks wet, like maybe it’s still bleeding.

“Got a hotel.”

Beth tears her gaze away from his arm at that, looks up at him, watches him watch Marcus, and god, his jaw is already swelling.

“Why?”

And that’s enough to make him look back at her. Beth wets her lips, feels herself tremble, steps forward again, and when she touches his arm he flinches back like he’s been burned.

Top Five Moments I’m Looking Forward to in C&C

1. Finally writing the housewarming in See You in the Light. There will be drama! Beth will try to run away! Rio might break something! (And we all know how that usually ends, hahaha).

2. Beth and Rio getting married. I never, ever thought I’d write them getting married in any ‘verse, but once I realised the plot for it, it’s been stuck in my head. I have a pretty strong outline for the fic overall, so it’s definitely coming!

3. Another thing I never thought I’d write in this particular fandom was a pregnancy scare fic. I got a lot of C&C prompts for it though, and it’s actually teased out a pretty angsty installment in my head where they do have a scare and it makes them actually have to talk about what that looks like. In it, Beth confirms she doesn’t want anymore children, and Rio reveals that he would’ve liked one with Beth, but that he’d figured that it wasn’t on the cards. It ends up being a pretty bittersweet story where they’re both happy with what they have, but wonder what could’ve been, and what a child who was both of theirs might’ve been like.

4. On a much lighter note, I’ve had a ‘five things’ fic for ages which is actually just a time-jump fic with Beth and Rio teaching each of the five kids to drive, haha. It’s ridiculous, but hopefully pretty fun.

5. And there are a lot more too, but to bring this full circle, haha, there is an installment coming where Rio’s away for business, and, um. The security system is actually used. Think Panic Room vibes.

put “top 5” anything in my ask and i will answer ok go

#the center and circumference #this was extremely fun #omg now i want to write c&c fics haha #welcome to my ama #fic memes #bethrio

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dingoat · 5 years

Photo

It took a little bit of searching for Ahuska to track down Ulfran. The man was reclusive, but thankfully not invisible, and his recent passage through the ship hadn’t gone without notice. After only a handful of wrong turns she was able to find the quarters he’d managed to claim as his own aboard the Cicatrice Tyrannis.

“Come,” he responded to her sharp knock on the door, only looking up from his perusal of the ‘net once the door actually opened. “Ah.”

Ahuska immediately felt on edge. She hung in the doorway, staring at the Jedi, her innate mistrust of him and his kind bubbling to the fore. It was far easier to be grateful for his presence when she didn’t have to deal with him directly.

Ulfran squinted at her silence, and tipped his head to one side. “If you’re here to reprimand me…”

The Bothan squinted right back. “Here to what for what?”

“For... earlier…?” He began, cautiously. “For when I forced your hand…?”

It was Ahuska’s turn for dawning acknowledgement. “Ah.” And then she scowled. “That.” It had only been earlier that day, but already her absolute fury toward the man had been pushed so far from her mind. Now it returned, if only a shadow of its former intensity. “Not what I came her for, but may as well cover that too. You know fething well that I’d been in charge then, and you doing that, utterly undermining me in front of that stars-damned bitch…”

“Peace, Ahuska.” Ulfran raised both his hands, in what was supposed to be a calming gesture, but instead it made her reel back with venom in her eyes.

“Put those down and don’t you dare touch me, not with them, not with the fething Force…”

Slowly but promptly he lowered his hands and slid them behind his back, and Ahuska watched his movement with the sharp-eyed caution of a small predator. One with a lot of bite, but painfully aware of its limitations.

Ulfran kept his eyes on her, those strange, pale, reflective eyes. His brows furrowed slightly as he attempted to explain himself. “Please understand, I was only doing as you requested of me.”

“Like hell you were! I told you to protect my fething head from that Sith and warn me of any…” she wrinkled her snout as she waggled her fingers in the air in a farcical imitation of a Jedi hand gesture. “...tricks. Next thing I know you’re freezing my hand and stopping me…”

“From mutilating your daughter’s blood relative?”

Ahuska froze, rage and shame blurring to form a very ugly expression on her face. She drew in a slow, simmering breath, and found herself unable to meet Ulfran’s eyes. So she never caught the way they softened before he spoke.

“Ahuska Crow,” he used her full name only because he was aware of how much it pleased her to hear it. A kindness. “Sith are master manipulators. And they don’t rely purely on the Force to do their dirty work.”

He paused there, watching her carefully, but she remained staring ahead in tight-lipped silence.

“You walked in there ready to hurt, you wouldn’t need to be a Sensitive to have seen that. But she knew exactly how to stoke that anger. She was directing you as surely as you do your varactyls in their harnesses…”

The comparison caused Ahuska to flinch. “To hurt her? Why the hell would she ‘make’ me do that?”

Ulfran snorted and shook his head. “It’s only one of the oldest tricks in the ‘How to Sith’ manual. Manipulate you into doing something despicable. Fill you with shame, make you hate yourself if possible, and then step in. Be the one to let you know what you did wasn’t so bad. That it was justified. Support you. Make it you and them against a world that doesn’t understand.”

Ahuska felt queasy. His words sung so close to home, she couldn’t deny their truth.

“I couldn’t let you do that,” he added at a whisper. “I don’t think you truly wanted to.”

Ahuska hung in painful silence. She wanted to thank him. But her history with the Jedi, that writhing knot of feelings associated with him, more bad than good, choked up her throat and stilled her tongue. It was too difficult to admit something so pure as gratitude.

Ulfran understood her silence, however, and was not so petty a man as to demand her thanks aloud. “So if not that, then why did you come for me?”

“Nela,” Ahuska seized upon the change of subject gladly, and finally turned her eyes toward his. “She said you gave up on her. Abandoned her.”

That had Ulfran pull himself up straight, blinking in surprise. “Pardon?”

She eyed him thoughtfully. “I take that to mean you didn’t…?”

“I’m fairly sure I’d remember something like that. What exactly did she say?”

The Bothan frowned, knowing she wouldn’t be able to repeat Nela’s words precisely, but the teen’s attitude had been powerful enough. “She seemed certain that because you… disagreed with what she’d done, that you’d have nothing more to do with it. Or with her, I guess…?”

Ulfran was already shaking his head before she was done speaking. “Well let me assure you I said absolutely nothing of the sort!! Abandon her, truly? When she so plainly needs direction more than ever… does she think I’d just leave her to mess around with…” he trailed off there, and suddenly stared at Ahuska more sharply. “She showed you, then?”

Ahuska gnawed her lip. “Y-es,” she answered slowly and with considerable caution. The two stared at each other for a time, each trying to read what they could from the other’s expression. Ulfran was deeply worried, the creases in his brow etched deep, while Ahuska was nervous, defensive, and very uncertain. “Just how bad a thing was it that she did?”

Ulfran motioned for her to sit, and then leant forward across the small table that furnished his quarters, resting his bearded chin in his hands. It had been some time since he’d last shaved. “The short answer is, I honestly don’t know, but err on the side of ‘dangerous and potentially very damaging’.”

“And the long answer…?”

“Come back to me in a few days once I’ve had the chance to dwell a little more.”

Ahuska gave a knowing little snort. Some might be disappointed to learn that their resident Jedi didn’t have all the answers, but for her part, she was glad to see him admit it. Then the wariness returned to her tone. “But it’s the same thing she did to Crow, isn’t it? She saved his life, didn’t she?”

Ulfran closed his eyes as he shrugged. “Her methods with the Force are… somewhat new to me. I hesitate to say unique, but the way it moves through her is certainly uncommon at the very least. A great deal of the time I have trouble separating what Nela consciously does from what the Force itself enacts through her, but on this particular matter… it’s definitely her. I’d stake my life on it. But it hasn’t worked out the same way both times, has it? Where Crow’s presence was preserved in its entirety…” he trailed off, and adopted a deeply uncomfortable expression. “Well. You saw her.”

“Kassandra.”

“Yes.”

Ahuska began to fidget her fingers together, thumbs twirling restlessly about one another. “Did Nela… break her?” she asked, her tone impossibly soft, frightened of what the answer might be.

“I wish I could answer that. I hope to be able to answer that before…” he shook his head, lifting his hands hopelessly into the air. “Before what? I have no idea what time we have to work with. I don’t know what’s ahead of us. Kriff it, I don’t even know if it’s already too late. What Nela played with there…” Ulfran winced, closing his hands into frustrated fists as he brought them back down to the table. “There are Sith who’ve devoted their entire lives to exploring methods to preserve their spirits that would sacrifice everything for a shot at what Nela has done…”

“You’re saying that what she did was Sith business. That it was… Dark, or however it is you like to put it.”

“I’m saying that she used aspects of the Force that no being should willingly meddle with, and that we have no way of knowing what the long-term impact on Crow or Ni--”

“She saved his life.” Ahuska cut him short, eyes narrowing and ears jutting tight backwards.

Again Ulfran paused, and answered carefully. “...I’m not certain that was entirely her doing.”

Ahuska felt a little quiver in her guts; a knot of apprehension. “What do you mean?”

“She is reckless and barely trained, and at times will wield the Force like club when a needle would serve better. Her strength is exceptional, but moreso when it’s the Force’s will moving through her. I believe that if she had worked on Crow in isolation, he’d be much the same as our Kassandra. A fractured piece, perhaps little more than an incomplete memory. Perhaps not even enough to physically return.”

The tremble in Ahuska’s guts twisted into a roll of revulsion. “If you’re trying to say that witch Mel’srom is responsible for saving--”

Ulfran held up a hand and Ahuska was silenced, but still glaring hotly. “Mel was doing nothing. I’m suggesting it was you.”

Ahuska’s silence became stunned. She blinked, and shook her head slowly, blinking again with more emphasis as she tried to understand what the Jedi was saying. “I didn’t do a damn thing…”

“You were willing death upon every soldier who opposed you.”

Ahuska’s jaws hung open, and she began to shake her head with disbelief. “So what, of course I wanted them dead, I wanted every chakaare on that ship dead, but I wasn’t even holding a blaster, I-I was carrying him…”

“Imperial soldiers died, Ahuska.”

“From wounds they’d already gotten-”

“From their breath failing them. Men were falling behind you, weren’t you aware at all…?”

“I wasn’t killing anyone,” Ahuska pushed back desperately. “I just wanted Crow to survive…”

“And you don’t think it significant that he drew breath after so many soldiers lost theirs?”

“I didn’t do anything…”

“You absolutely were.”

“We are not having this conversation right now!” A grating screech cut through the air as she shoved back her chair, her lips curled back into a snarl as she finally snapped at him.

Ulfran shut his eyes and turned his head away, giving Ahuska her way. He wasn’t here to fight.

Ahuska continued to stare at him, challenging him to look back at her, daring him to pick up the train of thought. When his silence threatened to drag on endlessly, she finally sighed and sagged back in her seat. “How am I supposed to believe something is wrong if it saved Crow’s fething life? I can’t get mad at Nela for what she’s done, or tried to do, or… whatever. I love her for it. And I’d do it all again if it would keep him with me.”

“And people wonder why the Jedi Order cautions against attachments. Who wouldn’t sacrifice everything for their loved ones? But I guarantee those being sacrificed would not agree.”

Ahuska’s expression turned cold. “If you’re going to keep trying to tell me Crow shouldn’t be here with us, I think I’m done with you.”

Ulfran winced. Once was, he’d have continued to argue the point, relishing the sheer act of debate as much as he wished to help another see the bigger picture. Was he soft, now? Or just tired? Did he no longer care to teach, or was there some part of him that simply wanted Ahuska to be able to enjoy the fact that her small family remained intact? Or maybe you’re still acting selfishly. Maybe you’ve seen their strength working together, and want that strength operating with you. On your side. Because you know what is coming.

Ahuska took his prolonged silence as a confirmation of her words. She stood to leave.

“Wait,” and his almost pleading tone gave her pause. “I’m not sure I’m… qualified to decree what should or shouldn’t be,” he finally said, letting his face rest fully in his hands. “I’m just a man. Who only seems to get increasingly lost in the scope of the universe the older he gets. I don’t wish to lay down judgement, I just want Nela to understand the dangers in what she’s dealing with. And I want to help… restore Nines, if I can. I’ve not given up on Nela, not at all.”

“Good,” stated the Bothan coolly. She gave him a level stare down her snout. “Tell her that.”

Ulfran almost let her leave then, until a nervous thought struck him. “You don’t plan to tell Lyrisal, do you? About Kassandra?”

She spun about, eyes wide. “Of course I do! Stars, Ulfran, she deserves to know!”

“To know what? That some memory of her exists in a void somewhere…”

“How could I possibly keep that from her!? In her place I’d want to know anything, I’d want every scrap of hope I could grab a hold of, I’d…”

“You think she’d want to stare her wife’s image in the eye and not be recognised?”

That struck a deep and painful chord with Ahuska, and a shiver wracked her body.

Ulfran immediately softened. “She can’t afford to hope, Ahuska. She’s said as much, quite plainly. She has a responsibility here, a tremendous one, and there is a powerfully good part of her that needs to believe there is no hope so that she can keep doing the right thing for these hundreds of people. She had already decided that when she ordered your crew to return.”

Ahuska couldn’t fathom making such a decision, and tears struck her eyes at the mere thought of giving up Crow for the sake of countless other lives. “How can I rob her of the chance to bring Nines back??! She’s not dead, Ulfran, I swear it. I believe it, and Crow believes me. Nines is out there somehere, and who the feth but Lyrisal herself deserves to find her, to pull her out of whatever stars-damned situation the Empire has got her in? That’s what she is meant to do, and if she learns that I kept that opportunity from her…!”

Ulfran shushed her gently. “You will not keep that from her. I will. Let the blame rest on me.”

“That isn’t fair! That’s not fair on her at all!”

“And having Kassandra stare at her as though she were a stranger is?”

Ahuska actually whimpered, and Ulfran felt a pang, deep in his chest. “Please, Ahuska. Let me shoulder this burden. It is the very least I can do.”

“Help Nela,” she replied, unable to bear any more difficult thoughts. There would be time enough to dwell while Crow was sleeping; she would not waste any more of her precious time with him on this.

“Of course,” Ulfran said, as the door to his quarters slid noisily shut once more.

---

RP hit a point where my two characters needed to have a talk, and hoo boy did they have a talk! This was stupidly fun to write, because I know them both so well they just rolled off one another and I hardly had to think. THERE IS A LOT GOING ON.

#swtor fanfic #swtor #swtorfanart #bothan #ahuska #ulfran #jedi #mandalorian #rp

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