Avishraa Reloaded

Demarath sat out in the common room. He'd remained in Ilirith's room for as long as he'd been allowed, but the healer, Shoss, had eventually resorted to politely but firmly ushering him out. Zadireth had been laid down in a second room, dozing while he waited to be attended to, and Ferleth, so far as he could tell, was lurking in a third, not comfortable around so many people.

He knew he should have tried sleeping himself, but something about the unusual situation kept him awake - some mixture of worry for Ilirith and fascination with his current surroundings. Certainly this place was fascinating, not just in its design and appearance, but in its scale. All his life, he'd lived in surroundings built for people bigger and taller than he was, but here, everything was sized for witches. He didn't have to sit on a pile of cushions to reach the table in front of him, though, truth be told, some cushions wouldn't have come amiss regardless.

The woman, who he'd learned was the mentalist Kurass, came out into the room bearing a pair of bowls. She set one down in front of Demarath; he didn't recognize most of the contents, but it smelled appetizing enough.

“If you're not going to rest,” she remarked with a faint smile, “you might as well eat.”

He squashed an instinct to protest – food would, in fact, be good for him, and his body quite readily said so in response to the scent. He remembered to say “thank you,” before he said “Do you think she'll be all right?” With the question asked, he poked his muzzle down into the bowl, giving its contents a tentative taste.

The stew was not intensely seasoned, but it was savory. And hot, an important consideration; the swamps outside had put a damp chill on him, and though it was warmer in here, it was not quite warm enough for his tastes.

“Oh, I think so,” Kurass replied, putting the other bowl on the table and then strolling around to the other side to sit. “I don't imagine you've come across any lifegivers before, but this is the sort of thing they're good at. It might take a few vigils of work to get her entirely healed, and she'll probably be miserable through most of it, but she should come out of it all right.”

She paused, her head cocked to one side, and then raised her voice slightly. “The other bowl is for you,” she said, “if you want it.”

Behind Demarath, Ferleth poked her head into the room; she looked, for once, less angry than frightened. She glanced at the bowl, but got no closer.

Demarath paused in his lapping of the contents, peering across at Ferleth. He smiled mildly, gesturing once to the food by way of an invitation, but without really expecting an effect from it. Still, he felt an obligation to at least try.

To Kurass, he said: “No lifegivers, no.” Having no idea what else to say, he let his ravenous hunger guide him into digging into the food instead. It was not raw fish, honestly making it the best thing he'd eaten in a while.

Ferleth crept into the room, but remained close to the wall, as if expecting to be attacked from an unexpected direction. She glanced at the bowl, then at Kurass, looking as if she wanted to say something; Kurass gave her a penetrating look, but said nothing, waiting for her to speak first.

Instead, she said to Demarath, “How are you finding traveling with Zadireth?”

The question was alarmingly precise. Not 'How are you finding traveling?', no, 'How are you finding traveling with Zadireth?', as though there was something about the witch that might come to dominate their travel experience. He mulled on the question as he ate more of his stew, trying both to puzzle out why someone would ask it, and how he might answer it.

“He has helped us a great deal in overcoming its dangers,” Demarath said. It was the polite answer, really, the one that didn't at all reflect on whether any of the dangers had been precipitated by Zadireth - though other than the Ferleth intervention, Demarath couldn't think of any that might fall in such a category. “But I don't fully understand where we are going, to be honest.”

Sanctuary, yes. 'Citadel', yes. But there was at least one other place out there that was safe for them, and they weren't heading that way, giving the matter, in the current context, a renewed taste of the arbitrary. And what of these refuges? How many had they passed?

Given that Kurass was a mentalist, she almost certainly saw more of Demarath's thought than he spoke aloud; but, again, she did not speak of it. She simply sighed a bit. “Yes, that sounds about right. I'm fairly sure he means well, but he's not the most forthcoming with information. There's some history there, I daresay - he came to the Citadel from outside, himself. Many who did likewise have had to live bad lives.

“The Citadel is a hidden country, tucked away in the mountains, where only Chosen live. It's not easy to get to, because if it was, it wouldn't stay hidden for very long, but it's possible. It's not the most comfortable environment, it's fairly cold, but there's been a lot of work put in to make it more enjoyable than it was at the start. And at least there no one's trying to kill or enslave you for being able to do magic tricks.”

She smiled wistfully. “Not that being stationed out here doesn't have its good points, but I think I'll be glad when it's time to go back.”

“Are you on a rotation?” Demarath asked between bites, reckoning that it was what she meant with 'time to go back'.

“Of a sort, yes. It's hard to find volunteers that would want to stay out here all the time, so depending on how far out a sanctuary is, they'll send someone out for a certain period of time. I've hung on for nearly a cycle at this point, but I should be getting a replacement in a few turns or so.” She smiled. “Shoss and Shemyl are decent enough fellows, but I'm ready to look at some other faces. Get better food than what I can make here. See how the family is doing, that kind of thing.”

Demarath considered his meal as much as the words. Then: “So Shoss and Shemyl are permanent residents?” But rather than wait for an answer, he squeezed another question in: “Are you Kaean and they're Srian?” It occurred to him a little too late that it might be a private question - he didn't understand the categories well enough yet to have a feel for that - and drooped a little in quiet apology.

Kurass looked amused. “I'm Kaean, yes. And so is Shoss, though Shemyl is Srian. And you don't have to look so apologetic. The question might've been worded better, but it's a good thing to know which one someone is, especially if you're going to be around them for any length of time. Keeps down the misunderstandings.”

She glanced through the door where Shoss was tending to Ilirith. “They're not permanent residents, no, not as such. But I suspect that being out here suits them for the time being. Gets them in the Oracle's good graces. She's got… views about men pairing as a couple.”

Ferleth did not seem to understand the conversation very well. As far as Demarath could remember, she'd never been willing enough to talk to Zadireth to have the concepts of Srian or Kaean explained to her; and it was anyone's guess what she thought about relationships. But the fact that no one seemed to be paying attention to her finally emboldened her to slink up to the table, and, after eyeing the stew suspiciously, to being slurping at it.

Demarath stole a glance and smile over to Ferleth at her approach, but - be it because he realised it would make her uncomfortable, or just because his interest currently lay elsewhere - shifted his attention back to Kurass. “Does she– hmm, what, then? Run the Citadel?” he mused, trying to square both his surprise at the revelation that Shoss and Shemyl were a couple - especially in light of the implied inherent incompatibility of Srian and Kaean habits - with his surprise that they would choose to be a couple in a swamp, and his surprise that it was one person's views that had in part inspired that choice.

“Oh, no,” Kurass replied, “not really. The Council is the highest authority there, though I understand they listen to her advice very carefully - I mean, when someone can see the future, they can give you some good advice. But she does lead the effort to help collect refugee Chosen and guide them to the Citadel. And because of that, she is our superior, in a sense.”

The woman scratched her head idly. “Just between us - she's a wonderful person, very dedicated, very selfless. But she's Srian, and she's… sort of… I mean, if you've ever been around a priestess, trying to keep others on the path of morality and such… she's something like that, if you ever meet her. Tends to sermonize on certain subjects.”

Demarath couldn't remember having 'been around a priestess' quite long enough for it to have left an impression, if at all - socialising had hardly been his strength the past couple of cycles, after all, and his memories were rather overwhelmed with playing refrigerator - but Kurass's description was evocative enough that he nodded anyway, although cautiously as not to give the impression he was pretending to know precisely what she meant.

“I don't understand,” he said, however. “What is her problem with their, ah– their arrangement?”

He didn't have much of an idea what it meant for 'men to pair as a couple', other than that they clearly could not have children, which, he reckoned, would likely sadden them both. In his mind's eye, it was rather more like an intense friendship than anything else, albeit strong enough to preclude the possibility of starting another relationship with anyone else.

Had someone stopped to explain it to him in greater detail, or had he himself paused to think about it more deeply, he might have formed a different hypothesis on this Oracle's opposition, albeit one he would have found deeply strange given the ways that Witches had to support each other - and it would have been quite wrong.

Fortunately, his harmless misconception lent itself to brevity, leading much more quickly into the real reasons, without getting distracted by irrelevant details that his Kaean mindset would otherwise have asked endless questions about.

Kurass made something of a face. “You have to understand,” she said, “that the Oracle has seen that there'll be a time when the Unchosen will make war on the Chosen. She wants the Chosen to be ready for that. And our biggest disadvantage is in numbers, you see. So she believes it's a kind of duty for Chosen who are of the right age to have plenty of children. And two men… well, neither of them will be bearing children, and neither will be a husband to a woman who will.”

Her expression suggested that she was uneasy with this, which she quickly confirmed. “It makes sense, I guess, in a calculated kind of way,” she said, “but it's not the only thing someone has to consider. Not everyone wants children. Some of the ones who want them aren't really cut out to be parents-”

There was a sudden, sharp sound, which both Kurass and Demarath were surprised to identify as a brief, bitter laugh from Ferleth. It was the first time Demarath had heard anything like that from her.

“And some don't get the choice,” she silver girl snarled. “This… Oracle of yours needs to mind her own business.”

Hmm, yes, that might be a problem. If this Oracle wanted people to have children and harassed Ferleth to produce any, it would certainly go badly. But Demarath found himself inwarldy mildly amused at the mental image of Ferleth scorching the Oracle's tail in response. To the outside, he nodded mildly, setting his now-empty bowl aside. “Agreed,” he concurred with Ferleth.