walking in a field of fog

[agentlenpc]

Who: You and Fayura
When: Today, a week after the Strangers' arrivals
Where: The Queen's Residence and the Old Town Bazaar
What: Q&A
Warnings: n/a

EARLY MORNING, THE QUEEN'S RESIDENCE
The morning is cold and dark. Inhaling the frigid air is so shocking that those who aren't expecting it cough and wheeze with their first breath. No one really wants to make their way to the training field. Even the Queen's court moves sluggishly, but move they do with muttered recriminations against Allairavar. Cold weather doesn't stop training.

A warming spell around the field keeps it warm enough to practice, and bobbling witchlights and steady e-line floodlights keep the darkness at bay. All along one side of the practice area are weapons with blades live and dulled. The court eases onto the field alongside the Strangers with sighs and grumbles aplenty. No one likes practice on chilly mornings, but they like Allairavar's retaliation against tardiness even less.

Everyone has paired off by the time Allairavar strides out of the manor home with his arm around a woman's shoulders. In the harsh e-line lights and softer witchlight, it's clear she hasn't been well and still isn't entirely healed. Sunken golden eyes scan the field, and her expression is vaguely nauseated. She trembles, either from weakness or discomfort, as Allairavar pulls away and calls in two bladed sticks—weapons caught somewhere between sword and ax.

"Let's go," he tells her, and she takes one stick from his hand as court and Strangers alike look on.

Another male follows them in, sleekly predatory in his slow prowl around the practice field. A dangerous look glazes his eyes, and he circles the whole field once before making a second, tighter pass around the marked off area where Allairavar and the woman square off.

Members of the court trade wary looks, sharing them with the Strangers. More than a few murmur things like, "Verim will go for his throat if he pushes her too hard," and, "Should she even be out of bed yet?"

It seems Allairavar's rule for training is absolute. Even the Queen takes part. Under his watchful eye and tutelage, they run through a warm up that clearly exhausts her, but when he asks if they should stop, she snarls at him and pushes on for another five minutes. Only then does she sit off to the side of the field and begin stretching.

As she lifts from a leg stretch, she catches your eye and offers a small, shy smile. "Would you like to stretch with me? Allairavar's workouts are always hardest the first day back," she says softly.

Allairavar's exercises may be hard, but she looks like she's seconds from collapsing from exhaustion. If she spent this last week resting and still looks so wan and thin and weak, her initial injuries must have been severe.


MID-AFTERNOON, THE BAZAAR PAVILION
Snow drifts lazily through frigid air. Though temperatures hover around freezing, the Old Town Bazaar bustles with activity. Slowly, people rebuild homes and shops burned by the Hunter Guild, and for perhaps the first time in the past fifty years, sentiment has turned against the Hunters.

Strangers out and about in the Bazaar hear:

A landen woman, to her friend: It's not right what the Hunters did, burning down our homes, too.

A well-to-do Blood male, at a food stall: …believe what that pompous Grand Master has to say about a Queen of the Blood.

There's some commotion toward the center of the Bazaar, where the Queen has settled at the pavilion with a group of landen and Blood children. Her only guard seems to be the elegant man seated across from her at the pavilion's wooden table, his eyes watchful as the people pass by.

The Queen herself looks unwell. Though she wears a bright smile and her golden eyes glitter with laughter, they are sunken and dark smudges circle them. Her arms are thin, little more than skin wrapped around bone. In spite of the freezing weather, she wears a tunic with wide sleeves that pool around her elbows as she holds up a small plank of wood and tugs at a ribbon embedded in it. Here, in the chilly winter morning, the woman who brought some twenty Strangers across the vast distances of many worlds looks very human, very mortal, and very fragile.

Her eyes meet yours as she looks up, and you feel a gentle brush against your mind. No matter how familiar or strange mental communication is, no matter how disconcerting or easy you find it, the touch strikes you as incredibly polite. *We can talk, if you'd like,* she tells you over a psychic thread.

Should you join her, you find respite from the cold. A warming spell makes the pavilion pleasantly toasty, explaining why no one wears a jacket and, maybe, the Queen's clothes. She's dressed plainly in a loose, knitted tunic and fitted breaches. She wears no coronet and no visible jewelry except for a golden chain that tucks beneath her tunic.

Fayura offers a quick smile in your direction as she guides the end of the ribbon in her hand through the thin strip of wood in a twisting loop. She offers a soft-spoken explanation to the children before inviting them to try—and inviting the Blood to explain the magic to the landens, too.

As the children turn to their task, Fayura turns to you. "I'm glad to see you made it through the Hunters' attack relatively unscathed." She sets her plank down and taps her mug. Steam beings to rise from it and she lifts it to her lips with a sigh. "And I apologize that I wasn't there to greet you." A wry smile tugs at her lips; her appearance is, in her mind, enough of an explanation for why. "How have you found Draega?"

Comments

Early Morning

[mint_and_bronze]

Not a morning person, Maeve nevertheless tackles practice with a dogged determination that sustains her right through until she drops into her last form. She's slowly shaking the rust off of her staff-work with the daily repetition, but that's more muscle memory than anything; she won't be entirely awake until the court has eaten. As such, it takes her a good half-minute to realize that she'd plopped herself down next to the Queen who'd caused the kerfluffle when she and Allairavar.

And Fayura looks pretty well like shit--well, no. Scratch that. She's cute as hell, just clearly not entirely recovered.

There is a great deal that Maeve would like to say to her, but Maeve is not exactly a hundred percent coherent and, well, it's way, way too much work after a morning lamenting that she'd lost a hell of a lot of conditioning since the last time she'd kept up with her physical combat skills.

"Good to see you upright," Maeve says, quirking a smile and starting her own stretches where she's flopped. She corrects herself without thinking, "Mostly upright. Or, well, maybe half upright. But if you decide you want to stretch flat out, make it none upright, I won't snitch on you."

[agentlenpc]

"Half upright," Fay agrees with a quiet laugh as she folds herself over one thigh and struggles to wrap her hand around her foot. A week in bed has done a number on her flexibility, and she winces as she overextends. With a sigh, she eases back. She'll get the flexibility back.

"Or three-quarters, I suppose." She smiles back at Maeve, holding onto her calf as she tries to stretch out her thighs and lower back. "Has he—" And she nods toward Allairavar. "—been utterly unbearable with everyone?" She knows how Allairavar can be. How all males, especially Warlord Princes, are. If a witch can't defend herself, Allairavar will ensure that she can with ruthless efficiency, regardless of what she wants. He's very undeterrable in that way.

[mint_and_bronze]

"Truth? No idea," Maeve says. She doesn't quite get in a full shrug as she stretches her arm across her chest and flexes her shoulder a bit. Her tone is a little conspiratorial when she says, "Not really awake this time a day."

Then, with a great deal of seriousness as she tries to keep a straight face, she adds, "But I will say that he makes me feel like a teenager again."

[agentlenpc]

At that, Fay laughs loudly enough to draw curious gazes from the entirety of the First Circle, Allairavar, and Verim, who skulks silently behind her and Maeve with a watchful expression. Tension eases out of him at Fayura's laughter though doesn't entirely dissipate.

"You need to drink more coffee then," Fay says, and she points to a table near the door. Several large pots of coffee steam there, protected from the cold by shields. "Even if he insists on starting us on an empty stomach, he knows better than to deny us our one true love." She presses a hand to her heart and sighs. "Coffee. The only thing blacker than midnight and my blighted soul."

[mint_and_bronze]

"What?" Maeve ask innocently in the face of Fayura's laughter, but something in her eases a bit as well. And the attention that her amusement gets is...noted. As is Verim's watchfulness. "It's not everyday that someone can flash me back to being uncoordinated and questioning whether I need lessons with the staff."

Maeve might not be quite sure what the social dynamics of this place are, but they're dome-closeknit, and uptight like there are beasties at the gates. She knows something about that, then, doesn't she.

"Coffee as available as water. That's what I call a miracle," Maeve says, finishing her stretches and pushing herself up. "Want a cup? Or I'll bring you one."

She offers a hand to Fayura, in case she wants to be pulled to her feet. It's a casual, easy sort of gesture. Maeve's honestly never met a stranger before she arrived, and it flat out doesn't occur to her to treat her any differently than the other Master Echokenners she left behind.

[agentlenpc]

Maeve's never met a stranger, and Fayura is always willing to let someone be a friend before they choose to be an enemy. She accepts Maeve's hand up, clambering awkwardly to her feet on stiff and trembling legs. The balance of another body helps keep her from stumbling and falling over.

"It's one of the few things we have in large quantities," she says as they shuffle over to the table at her pace, slow from both exhaustion and her workout. "And honestly, I'm not sure the court would function without it."

She shakes as she picks up a cup, but she's determined to serve herself. Fay takes her coffee black, and as soon as it's poured, she folds herself onto the stairs leading up to the residence and braces her cup on her knees so it doesn't spill all over her.

After a moment's silence, she asks softly, "What do you think of Draega? What do you think of the city so far?"

[mint_and_bronze]

It's not that Maeve's not concerned about the woman who asked for her help and then ripped from her own dying nightmare of a world, it's just that she's very matter-of-fact about assisting her. Practical. Keeps to her pace as they head to coffee, watches where Fayura puts her feet, presents a solid wall of support in case of a wobble. But she's not hovering. She's just there. This kind of stuff is as familiar as her own magic.

"My home dome couldn't support a large crop of the stuff. We rationed pretty hard."

Idle conversation as she pretends not to notice as Fayura shudders her way through pouring and sitting. But Fayura doesn't fall apart or ask for help, and her shadow doesn't step in, so Maeve just loads her own coffee up with cream and settles herself on a lower step so Fayura doesn't have to crane her neck. Woman has enough babysitters.

"Draega's..." Maeve purses her lips and considers her response. "Big. Divided. Has more to do and see and eat than I've seen in my life. It's. I love it and I hate it."

Not an emotional declaration, that. Maeve simply makes it and sips her coffee and hums with pleasure.

[agentlenpc]

And Fay appreciates that Maeve isn't hovering, ready for any bobble or misstep. She's had nervous males peeking in on her or hovering over her for a week. This is much nicer. But, then, Maeve is female and not completely stupid. She appreciates that, too.

"You come from a small place?" Fay asks, leaning forward. Curiosity lights her eyes. "And there isn't as much division?" She may not have understood Maeve correctly, but she's going to check. Because anywhere there's less division... she wants to know more of those places. Wants to understand them and learn from them.

[mint_and_bronze]

Maeve offers a small salute with her cup. "There were around two thousand of us in the Northwest biodome. A viable population, but we had to be careful."

She considers Fayura for a long moment, then makes a thoughtful noise. Fayura strikes her as both young and not young. Getting into the bloody details was an alcohol and knitted socks kind of conversation, not a coffee and cooldown conversation.

"We had small factions," she says lightly. "Hard feelings. Convictions that we'd be saved doing such and such action that was possibly a risk but would reap great rewards."

Another hum.

"I think...our conflict was more often driven by desperation. What schisms we had were based on survival. Which is why I don't entirely understand yours."

[agentlenpc]

She doesn't understand what a "biodome" is, but two thousand isn't many people. There have to be more than that in Draega, but Fay has never been particularly good at mental math. It wasn't a requirement in her childhood.

"Hatred," Fayura says softy, "is stronger than almost anything else. When you hate someone with everything you are, you no longer care if you survive as long as they don't. To the Council and the Guilds, as long as the other loses, they've won."

It's a horrible, myopic way to see the world; a worldview Fayura does not share.

"The people of Draega... they'd rather burn their enemy's crops than steal their harvest in the night."

[mint_and_bronze]

Maeve purses her lips at that. "Well then," she says, and the word is dripping with censure. "I would prefer they not drive you--us, I suppose--harder toward extinction out of spite when there is still have a chance. If our population was viable with care, Draega's certainly is."

A sigh and Maeve loses most of her tartness. So much for light conversation. "Though we started from a...moment. A point in time we could declare was the moment that everything changed. After that we were as far divided as we could possibly be and coming together was the only option."

With a gesture, Maeve takes in the court assembled for practice. "Not even all your new Strangers have chose to stay here."

[agentlenpc]

Fayura shrugs. "I won't force anyone to stand by my side. The old Queens did that, and that's part of how we ended up here. I'm not like them. I won't be." Defiance mixes with anger and sorrow in her voice. "You're all welcome to do what you think is best, to help in the ways you think will matter most. That's all I can hope for."

With a heavy sigh, she rises. "If you don't mind, I'm going to head inside. Even with the warming spell, it's a little cold." As soon as the words are out of her mouth, Verim is at her side, draping a heavy blanket around her shoulders, his expression intense. "Please, if you ever have more questions, don't hesitate to ask."