SUMMER

Angkar: Wet season. Precipitation is common during the late afternoon and evening hours. Vegetation grows significantly during the summer, but flooding is a danger due to the monsoons that ravage the country. The rainforest sees evenly distributed rainfall throughout the season.

Ashoka: Desert: Extremely hot and dry. Violent, heavy downpours following long dryspells. Jungle: Hot and humid with frequent, violent rainstorms.

Morrim: Relatively hot and dry, but with a chance of thunderstorms from time to time. The heat may cause forest fires.

Soto: Hot and humid, tree cover is dense while ground growth is restricted. Thunderstorms see the most amount of rainfall during the season, and it can be very windy. On occasion, there are flash floods that can destroy homes and farms built on flood plains.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

March 30th, 2018 As you might have noticed, Elenlond has changed hands and is now under new management! If you have any questions, please direct them to DaringRaven! As for the rest of the announcements, including a season change, you can find them over here at the following link!

January 16, 2018 As you might have noticed, Elenlond has a new skin, all thanks to Mel! Don't forget to check out the new OTMs as well!

December 2, 2017 Winter has settled on Elenlond, bringing sleep for some and new life for others.

September 26, 2017 With the belated arrival of autumn come some interesting developments: new OTMs, a Town Crier and the release of the Elly Awards winners!

July 14, 2017 After a bit of forum clean-up, Elly Awards season has arrived! Head on over to make your nominations!

May 31, 2017 Summer has arrived and so has activity check! That's not all though – we also have some new OTMs for you and some staff changes!


WHAT IS ELENLOND?

Elenlond is an original free-form medieval fantasy RPG set on the continent of Soare and the Scattered Isles, which are located to the south in the Sea of Diverging Waters. The four chief nations of the western side of the world—Ashoka in northern Soare, Soto in western Soare, Morrim in eastern Soare, and Angkar, the largest of the Scattered Isles—continue to experience growth and prosperity since the fall of the Mianorite gods, although power struggles within the countries—or outside of them—continue to ensue.


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  • CURRENT EVENTS

    Angkar: To honour the reinvigoration of the ancient city of Mondrágon, the majestic Queen Eulalia has permitted the opening of a Coliseum where people from around the world and all walks of life can test their combat skills against one another. Many have already done battle in search of honour, glory, prizes and money.

    Ashoka: In an otherwise peaceful times, Ashokans are beset with the relatively minor inconveniences of wandering undead and occasionally-aggressive giant rock worms. There has also been some controversy over the recent re-legalisation of human sacrifice.

    Morrim: Rumour has it that Emperor Leofric de Hollemark is mustering forces for a war. Though the threat from Soto’s forests has passed, the forces previously employed in watching the forest now linger at the border. Rumours also circulate of a small group that has been dispatched to make contact with the tribes of the Do’suul Mountains.

    Soto: The Sotoans have defeated the fey and liberated themselves from Méadaigh’s oppression! Preliminary efforts have been made at rebuilding the city of Madrid, which had been captured at the beginning of the war. However, the Sotoans are hindered from recovery famine. Méadaigh’s magic caused summer to persist in the Erth’netora Forest through the winter. Her power has been withdrawn and the plants die as if preparing for winter – even though it is now summer. The Sotoans must sustain off what food they can get, what creatures they can kill and what can be imported into the city from Morrim and Angkar.

    For a fuller description of our most recent events, check out our most recent edition of The Town Crier!

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    Elenlond is an original medieval fantasy RPG with a world that's as broad as it is unique. Calling on characters of all kinds, the sky's the limit in a world where boundaries are blurred and the imagination runs rampant. Restrictions are limited and members are encouraged to embrace their creativity, to see where they can go and what they can do. It's no longer just text on a page - it becomes real.

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    Looking for a Spot to Drop; Phaedrus
    Topic Started: Feb 15 2016, 11:42 AM (519 Views)
    Nevneni
    Member Avatar
    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    Summer, 9AR

    Nevneni ran. When the Skepian ranks disintegrated, she ran. She could not justify it, the fear that drove her away from the healers' outpost, slipping away from the sight of her comrades and charges, the dying-soon-to-be-dead writhing in blood and pain and swathed in the bandages put on by her own delicate hands – she left them!
    She had a mantra, a question become a mantra become a funeral dirge beating, beating in 3/4 time, a syllable a step:
    How could I?
    How could I?
    How could I?
    How could I?

    A set of words that carried her across unroaded Morrimian fields, into little shadowy copses where she tried to rest but could not, for the mantra that so incessantly pounded on in her heart, in her aching head. The solemn dance that carried her right into the ancestral forests of Soto, for she was from Soto, and she was from Morrim, the one Nevneni had left behind; who knew what had happened to her?
    How could I?
    How could I?

    How could I?
    How could I?
    I am a coward.

    A 4/4 march accompanying her in the rippling, horripilating depths of her sleeplessness, the nights that went on and on, populated by phantoms of everything that she had ever run away from...
    I am a coward.
    I am a coward.
    I am a coward.
    I am a coward.

    Then on the fourth night, when she walked alone on the Sotoan road, the chorus of crickets rising about her ears, singing from every corner of this forested cathedral, there came that booming pronouncement:

    THEY WILL CATCH YOU.
    Oh, horror, horror!
    THEY WILL CATCH YOU.
    Horror!
    Some saw her on the road during the day, for who could make good time walking in the forest? She had to get away, she had to risk being seen to speedily make an escape. So they saw her, flocks, or juries of travellers with curious eyes; Nevneni felt that they were surgeons dissecting her. Did they know, OH GODS, DID THEY KNOW?

    DID THEY KNOW?
    But who could have known, looking at this little healer marching along to the beat of her wooden staff, marching dead-eyed as if towards her grave, who could have known from the braid running along her spine, from the skinniness of her shoulders and her wasting-away paleness and the way her face shone with a film of duress like a smooth pumpkin skin – OH, WHO COULD HAVE KNOWN WHAT A SEA she kept inside her, that surrounded her, drowned her in a sucking tide of memories and mantras, oh,
    How could I?
    How could I?
    How could I?

    How could I?
    How could I?
    How could I?
    How could I?
    BUT I, I AM A COWARD
    A COWARD

    A COWARD

    A COWARD
    THEY, THEY WILL, THEY WILL CATCH YOU
    THEY WILL, OH THEY WILL!

    You are a coward

    a coward

    a coward
    a coward
    a coward
    How could I?
    How could I?
    How could I?
    How could I?
    How could I?
    How could I?

    I miss her...
    I miss her...
    I miss her...


    The worst moments were when she remembered Juul, for, let it be confessed, she was so scared and delirious that she often forgot. Up from the asphyxiating ocean of her mantra would rise the thought of their limbs locked together, that thought that built itself up around her like a sacred temple, wafted with the spicy, sweaty, smoky, alcoholic incense of their love. Oh, how her heart bled, so cruelly lacerated by – by – by herself! Her own actions, her

    COWARDICE.
    That was the worst, when her body burned with loathing and longing, a strange confluence of self-hatred and self-respect, and she repeated in her mind with more passion than ever that horrible mantra
    How could I?
    How could I?

    Perhaps Juul was lying in a grave, her thicket of red hair tangled with the dirt, her salty skin adhering to her bones and then rotting away. Perhaps she rotted in the open, her remaining eye picked out by some bird, perhaps those strong arms and legs were bound in shackles and chains and whatever her fate, Nevneni was not there with her, but instead witnessing the death of another Sotoan summer, slowly slowly wiling itself away while the ranks of insects sang in the trees just like they did back home, back home.

    The road wound to Madrid, and there it disgorged her into the sights of many people who hopefully did not know what she really was inside, though if they did, IF THEY DID, surely they would kill her, surely! She longed for that, oh gods! It was a warped fantasy from that self-hatred and self-respect, a fantasy that the natural-physical love of life could not assent to. Her heart beat with terror, her burning-sleepy eyes expected rage in every passing face, she expected and hated what she thought was her likely end.

    The sun fell on Madrid – it was such a beautiful morning! The cobbled streets bore so many people who bore so little! Her feet, the memory in her feet, led her towards the marketplace and then scampering away towards the only friend she knew, towards the house she had once visited, the one with the red door and the knocker. Suddenly deposited there, she knocked it – shocked herself with that booming sound, for she herself had made no noise in days – and, trembling, waited.
    (OFFLINE) PROFILE QUOTE GO TO TOP
     
    Phaedrus
    Member Avatar
    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    {tw: suicidal shit

    GOD THIS GOT SO LONG & AWFUL GOMEN}


    Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
    To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
    From darkness to promote me?


    Somewhere in his kitchen, the peal of the teapot was a far-off scream. The necromancer did not move from his spot on the couch, eyes chasing the page open at his thumb.

    Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
    To mould me man? Did I...


    He knew the passage by heart. He knew the lamentation by heart -- the howls of that golem, pried and pulled from the earth by a god and then cast aside when it saw a life outside its Creator. Shaitan, devil; Shaitan, enemy of mankind; Shaitan, cast into hell and punished only for expressing his will, his desire to be free. Doomed to die, made to be crushed under the heel of a godson.

    Ah, he’d smiled at that. A wry, blackened smile he swallowed like a cup of worms, a weight that plunged and plunged, suffused through his bones until the book had gone limp in his hands and he did not recall staring at the ceiling, his mind a blank haze.

    It had -- he recalled -- made him weep. The entire poem had, by all accounts -- he had never felt so much in kind with another creature; long-maligned, poor, cruel Shaitan indeed. Made and broken by a mad god, sent to dwell apart forever from divinity. That someone had written an entire defense of his soul had moved him, immeasurably -- and he found himself going back and back to that passage, the corners well-thumbed over the years.

    Now his mind could scarcely focus on the words. A thick haze had rolled over his brain-- his eyes chased each word fruitlessly, assembled them into a senseless puzzle.

    Did I solicit thee--
    Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay...?

    To ---

    Maker...


    Frustration mounted in him. The passage had become illegible -- the Ashokan mad whorls on parchment, barbs of ink that clustered like thistles.

    And the teapot screamed, on, and on.

    “Caulcis, seven hells, get the tea,” Phaedrus exploded, almost flinging the book in a pique of rage. All told it was rather impeded by the swaddle of linen around his broken arm, which gave an angry throb in response to his sudden passion; the necromancer grit his teeth, knuckles whitening where he clutched the book in his good hand.

    The scream cut off abruptly.

    The silence was a sudden blessing -- a parlor for his rage, the throb-throbbing of his arm, the thousand desperate thoughts that lived inside him. He felt like a house propped up on sticks--foundations wobbling desperately, ricketing, a hair’s breadth from collapse; and if he might just stay still, still, it would not careen to its death. Phaedrus stayed frozen on the couch, caught mid-lunge, not breathing for fear of disrupting that stillness, though he wasn’t aware -- exhaled long and hard and deep, settling back into the couch like a doll made of glass.

    A small void appeared above his coffee table, and from it a teapot, first -- then a fine doily; a small plate of hastily arranged biscuits; two delicate vessels for cream and sugar; a silver spoon; a saucer; and finally a wide-rimmed porcelain teacup, decorated with tiny robins.

    The void disappeared.

    Hand trembling, the necromancer placed the book back down on his lap, face-open. A line jumped out at him like an animal.

    Farewell happy fields,
    Where joy forever dwells: hail, horrors!


    Something twisted in his guts -- went cold, cold; he closed the book between his legs and shooed it away to another side of the couch, hunching over to trouble himself with the tea instead.

    A sturdy earl grey. He could smell it even as his hand shook on the handle of the pot, pouring the tea into the cup. A bit sloshed over the side, trickling in brown rivulets down the porcelain. Uneasily, the necromancer set it down, turning his eye to the cream next.

    There was a ritual to all of this. There was simply a way things were done. His broken arm impeded things. Linen rustled against him, every movement brought pain, an unending reminder of what had happened -- heavy even as he focused on the cream, the cream, the bloom of it that suffused to caramel, little tendrils of white that bled to the edge of the cup. It did not care. All the while it gave its mantra.

    You jumped, it screamed. He was pouring too much cream; it was turning far paler than he’d like.

    You JUMPED, it continued -- this time as he fetched the spoon, as he caught a glimpse of himself in the silver, a butchered, swollen, ghastly apparition.

    YOU JUMPED! and the spoon clattered thunderously -- a cacophony against the porcelain, a leviathan stirring whirlpools in the sea, the sea, the sea.

    He could still smell the salt. Feel it in his hair, his clothes. The impact, jarring his body -- the impact, a shuddering boom that shattered the void of his memory; a punctuation from the time he’d sat down in the baking cliffside and pulled out a bottle, to being jostled in a stranger’s arms, brief, strange, alien memories of a conversation -- a healer’s -- and gods only knew...

    More tea slopped over the side, pooled in the saucer. His mouth turned very, very white -- very, very straight, a bloodless slice in his face, a coroner’s incision on a corpse.

    Going to Etruria had been a mistake.

    He couldn’t remember half of it -- not nearly -- not when much of the time between wringing his hands and interrogating poor passersby had been spent in the bottle and in a hookah, drowning the month’s revelations.

    But the beach -- the beach, toe to toe with the iron giant; that had seared into his memory.

    I understand better than you, the howl went -- echoing again and again in his skull, crying out at him from his bookshelves and quiet moments at his washbasin, shrieking at him mid-breakfast, waiting for him when he closed his eyes. He relived that conversation again, again, again -- the portentous horror of the Bayt; the old things, all rising from their graves, all squabbling to get out, and Glede--Glede--its very manifestation. The shadow of the giant falling over his boots, the very mention of that name catching in his throat. He had tried so hard to escape it. He had tried so very hard -- and here they were, full circle; it would never leave him, never, so long as he lived.

    The encounter had caused him deep unhappiness -- and the next day, he’d devised to leave Etruria and go back to Madrid; to leave dead things be, to not probe any further, lest they stir. It was a mistake, a mistake, a mistake. To ask, to probe, to hunt the past -- it had done him no good, not in these decades, not ever to come.

    But he couldn’t. When he packed his meager belongings and thought on returning, facing his red door, facing her, his mind went blank. Instead he had resolved to watch the sea -- he had gone to those cliffs with the kernel of harm, and the liquor had watered it; and the pulse of the waves had become his heartbeat, the tides pulling him to that edge, the salt air so bracing, clearing, whispering one thing.

    Jump, jump, jump...

    Mingled with the darkness were mad glimpses of impossible things -- a beating dragon’s wing, a great red eye, a spider that was actually a man. Waking dreams. Was he going mad? Likely, likely-- he felt like an unwinding spool, his thoughts a cluttered attic, a stranger in his own skin.

    He wished he could feel fear. Instead he faced exhaustion -- a deep, crippling pit of it, sucking at his bones. If he was afraid it was trapped under that numbness, pounding to get out -- out, out, but it didn’t know how; he didn’t know how. He was on a track, a circle, round and round and round -- a repetition he didn’t know how to break, a cycle of days that always ended the same way, until it finally ended.

    And he would not even know when it did. Out of himself, out of his skin, out of his actions. If Etruria had taught him anything-- he would not even have the dignity of choice.

    The porcelain jumped wildly on its saucer -- a scraping, skittering rat made of white bones; and to his humiliation he could not even hold the plate in his left hand, hunched like a beggar over his table, pinkie out ineffectually, slurping the too-hot liquid.

    I could’ve died. He closed his eyes -- exhausted, stinging, heavy -- but it didn’t help, only brought back the salt and darkness; only brought flashes of an orange dripping off a black helm, of hanged men’s mouths, parchment fingers pointing to a door flanked by pagan gods; dark halls, dark halls, and he wished to weep, could not stand it anymore; being awake, being awake, exhausted but worse off for sleeping, exhausted but worse off for mixing nightshade and wine, punished in wakefulness and punished in stupor, no matter what he did, it was the same.

    He hadn’t told Bast any of what had happened, or what he thought happened -- told her as much that he’d gone to Etruria, had slipped down a hill and made an arse of himself; mentioned nothing of a cliffside, nothing of pounding waves and a siren’s call. And she’d raised her brow, looked at him with concern in a way that humiliated him, sent his ears ringing, because the subtext was there, screaming -- you were drunk, weren’t you?

    Drunk. That’s most of what he’d been, these past years -- perhaps an entire decade; every day smeared into the next, with bits of lucidity between. He had floated through those years -- ridden a current above the earth, outside his five senses, stumbling instead of walking, laughing hard not for joy but for drunken raucousness; sleeping with whatever moved, all else but his base natures put to bed. Debauchery had soothed him, at first -- now it had become a chain of destruction, of embarrassments he could not fully recall. Devils knew what he’d done in his worst hours.

    Waking up in jailcells, waking up with his cheek to vomit, else in brothels stripped of clothes and coin, in strange beds and stranger cities, wandering the streets in a detached haze; waking with a knife to his jaw, mysterious wounds, mysterious notes and coins clutched in his hands, no direction, head pounding, always pounding -- waking up bruised, tumbling through a laundry list of paramours, broken promises, causing chaos and then running with abandon, never the same person from day-to-day...

    Those recollections peppered him through the night -- the sleepless night, an empty one, staring across at empty sheets and torturing himself with thoughts of where Bast might have gone. Shutting his eyes only to open them again in panic, staring at shapes resolving themselves in the darkness, too hot, too cold, feeling the skin of his back crawl as he stared at the ceiling, the t-th-thump of his arm driving him mad.

    And again, like in all nights, the birds began their chirrup, making his guts sink like a stone -- sunlight crept into his bedroom, over his face and unblinking eyes, still fixed on nothing, and it was time to get up.

    The necromancer stared into his tea. His eyes glazed, watering from the steam; a fleck of earl grey clung to the film of tea, floating like a lone oarsman, spinning senselessly in the midst of...

    BANG.

    Phaedrus jumped; tea slopped wildly out of its cup and splashed upon his chest, spreading like a stab wound. Cursing, the necromancer set it down--the knock still thundering through his body, snapping every nerve; his eyes shot to the door as if it might attack, and a great, shaky breath left him.

    The necromancer stared at it a moment -- then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, breathing another curse. His muscles felt too warm -- limp, shot through; weak as he got to his feet, eying the door like an enemy. He felt no small amount of dread, an anxiousness that gnawed at his heels.

    It’s probably Bast, he assured himself, and yet -- was it an assurance? Everything had been so shaky lately, strange, complicated.

    “Coming,” Phaedrus cried vaguely at the knocker, and did not even hear himself. His lips mumbled together, composed. “Coming...

    He was still in his pyjamas. He hadn’t washed yet, his hair tousled from ‘sleep,’ down to his shoulders in an unkempt mess -- shadows ringed his eyes, left them a lurid cat’s yellow. The necromancer’s house slippers shffed against the floor as he neared the door, a tense expression on his face. As he clutched the handle, door flung open, the words came tumbling of their own accord.

    “Where the devil did you run off to? I was worried ab--”

    Phaedrus stopped. The person on his doorstep was not Bast. In fact, he hadn’t been able to think outside the possibility -- hadn’t accounted for any other resident of Madrid, and he certainly would not have thought on this.

    The necromancer cut off mid-sentence-- stared instead, mouth still half-open like a dimwit, his sluggish mind trying to readjust to the circumstances. Phaedrus scrubbed his eye with his good hand, peering down at the moonish, familiar face upon his doorstep. Weary, half-hidden by a mess of brown hair, a body swallowed up by clothes and turned into a wraith.

    The same, then, that had been here years ago. Was it years? The passage of time startled him -- seemed to have gone backwards, confused itself. Another Phaedrus knew Nevneni. Another Phaedrus.

    He looked like rubbish. They both did, on further reflection -- he hunted for a smile somewhere inside him, rummaged for a coquettish little thing, the titter that would have spilt from his lips. Instead his lips twitched a bit, exposing a glint of teeth.

    “Oh,” the necromancer began, genuinely surprised -- though it sounded more like confusion, a slow, addled realization. “It’s Nev--it’s you, Nevneni? How have you been?” The inflection, all wrong: false to his ears, absurd. She looked the worse for wear -- she could have only ‘been’ one way. Her eyes said everything -- red rimmed and sleepless, gaping like two holes. Phaedrus abandoned his smile, hand slipping off the door, creeping unconsciously to the tea-stain still seeping like blood, lukewarm at his fingertips.

    “I was... just having tea.” He said it like a man barely recalling what he ate last week, frowning. Studied her face, eyes whisking over the sign of long travels and troubles -- the weatherbeaten dress and dusty shoes, too many nights spent sleeping on the sides of roads. The necromancer moved aside, exposed his parlor, forced to gesture awkwardly with his unbroken arm.

    “Come in, please. Sit. I’ll fetch some biscuits, then.”
    Edited by Phaedrus, May 1 2016, 01:48 AM.
    (OFFLINE) PROFILE QUOTE GO TO TOP
     
    Nevneni
    Member Avatar
    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    (Crow, if the end bit is inaccurate, I can change it!)

    Nevneni waited for a thousand long moments at that red door, realising No, he is not coming, he's not here, there's no one here, no one in the world who can do anything for you, coward, coward, coward, COWARD. There were people bunching up behind her, people that knew. They waited to strike her with knives, with fires, with all the tortures she had been waiting for – but when she checked over her shoulder with wide porcelain eyes, there was no one there.

    Yet the delusion continued: she thought she could hear their shuffling feet on the cobblestones, but when she looked around the street was empty, and she made herself so frantic thinking all this that she was about ready to cry when the door opened because she had decided at that moment that she had to turn around and go, she couldn't stand standing here any more, gotta GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO–


    – and that was what her mind was doing when the door opened and there he stood in total disarray.

    Reality became real to her at that moment, because she had expected somehow to find someone better off than her. Had even feared, in one of the thousands of thoughts streaming through her mind each damn second, that she would find another laughing jury member, one of those people who bore so little. But he looked so horrible. Tea-stained and disheveled and still in his bed-clothes, his eyes as haunted as the cathedral on the Kaadian Way and, worst of all, his arm swaddled in linens. This, in particular, sent a twist of sympathy through Nevneni's heart.

    So, she wasn't the only one.

    Phaedrus would have seen her change from the moment he opened the door. At first she looked like something dying on his doorstep, an animal that stared up with terror, twitching and readying itself to fight for its life, though it lay there dying. When she saw him, however, her expression changed entirely, and this dying thing, with her deranged eyes, her hair coming out of her braid, her shoulders drooping like hanging laundry, turned all the force of her sympathy on him, saying, "Ohh, oh no."

    Humanity and Nevneni-ness returned to her. Here was a soul in need of help, medical help, and that was the one sort of thing she knew how to do. The invitation to tea thus seemed to come from another world, the sort of world where they were the sort of people who bore very little, and they came upon each other in a friendly, not desperate way. It seemed like a cover story for what she was really supposed to do, which was help him in secret, so the rest of the world would not know how desperate they were, because, if they did know, she thought, they would tear at her and Phaedrus with hatred.

    She came in without really saying anything, slipping past him into this warm, open wound of a house. She saw the tea table from afar, next to the comfortable little sofa where she had fallen asleep once with, with – her eyes stung, she did not want to think about it. "There's already–" the word took a long time to come to her while she stood there staring, her mind already beginning to work on something else: the problem of his broken arm. Finally, she remembered. "–already biscuits."

    When the door closed, she turned to him and asked him, "What happened? Your arm – did the healer use comfrey?" There was a part of Nevneni's mind, the healer's part, that functioned mechanically, and could do so no matter what. It was a machine worked under water, under the duress of the strongest storms, it broke through all walls of mantras and had a clever little device for puncturing and deflating her emotions. "Comfrey's the best thing, I have some. Even if the healer used it in your cast, it could help to have a little extract put in there, helps with the healing. Yes, I have some, hold on."

    She sat down on the familiar little sofa, swinging her pack off her shoulder and onto her lap in one smooth, practiced motion. She began to rummage through it, then realised she had sat on something, and so was forced to stop to put the book aside, onto the table. She pulled out blankets, uneaten food, rags for bandages, pots of ointments and powders, brown bottles of tinctures. She smelled little sachets of herbs and put them aside. She even thrust, in a smiling way, the almost-empty bottle of rose oil into Phaedrus' hands. "Smell this, you'll like it," she said, not quite herself. She hunted through her pack with voracity, then growing desperation, and when she finally reached the bottom, with bleakest despair. The clever mechanism that worked under all conditions collapsed.

    "I'm – I'm – I'm sorry!" Her hands flew to her face, which bubbled with tears, and her shoulders rattled with sobs. "I don't have it!" She sank into him, buried herself into him, sobbing into this, the first friendly body she'd met since leaving Morrim. When she realised what she was doing, she felt sick at herself and wanted to pull away, but he, with the arm that he could spare, would not let her, and so she wept into his tea-stained pajamas, messily and horribly. Sometimes she muffled dreadful animal cries in him, her hands gripping at the silky fabric of his pajamas; sometimes she laid there weakly, whispering to him, or to herself, or to everyone who could not be there, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
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    Phaedrus
    Member Avatar
    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    Devils, but she looked like an animal.


    All matted hair and wild eyes -- like a cat he’d once found under the hydrangeas, a wounded mother crawled there to die. He’d tried for an hour to coax her out with milk and a spot of fish, but she’d only yowled and yowled and uttered such guttural, terrible death-cries he backed away; and at dusk she’d died, poor thing, her proud coat all dark and stiff with blood, her kittens still suckling at a cold teat. He’d gathered the lot up in his cloak, those blind, stumbling, mewling things -- and it was with the same sympathy he’d felt then that he looked upon Nevneni, something folding within himself.

    Ohh, oh no.

    A lump caught in his throat. For a moment he could not look at her, could not accept her concern -- felt suddenly, acutely, vilely aware of his condition, as though she could see past the paper-flesh and into him, damned creature, vile creature. Again his lips attempted that futile twitching -- he grasped at decorum, grasped at it, struggled for idle chatter as she slipped past him and into the house. When the door clicked he felt he’d locked himself into a lion’s den, realized his mistake when he turned, zombie-like, to face her.

    There’s already biscuits, she said.

    “Oh?” Something almost like horror crossed his face. He felt all his little machinations failing -- naked without that carefully cultivated mask, that tittering devil’s face. He had made armaments of his silver spoons and forks -- great bastions out of tea-time cake and earl grey, empty conversation and emptier smiles still; and now his entire army had deserted him, all the legions of politesse and generals of polite society -- he could not muster them, scraped dry at the ground, left standing blank and pale.

    “Oh there’ssss--ss--already biscuitsss--how silly of me,” the necromancer stammered, standing like a stranger in the foyer of his own house. At length he moved away from the door, padding quietly towards the chaise.

    What happened?

    “I...” I do not know. I do not know. He almost flinched; the question was like a blow. “...I fell,” Phaedrus remarked quietly, his eyes dancing away from the healer’s stare. Comfrey? He blinked, his eyelids ponderous, heavy. “I’m... not sure, really. I was... unconscious.” Drunk, his mind corrected, and an acute anxiety welled up in him, flickered in his jaw and went tapping down his foot. He could not stand the subject of himself -- wanted to thrust it off as quickly as possible, but the healer already got on ahead of herself; Phaedrus floundered, sitting down on the couch and vaguely waving his good hand.

    “Oh--oh you needn’t trouble yourself, it’s really--” he watched helplessly as the pack flew off her back and she worked in a whorl. Soon all of its contents populated his sofa and the table, a seemingly endless array of little phials and satchets and pots, like an apothecary had burst in his living-room. At one point she pressed a bottle into his hand, and looked up in her smiling way, her sad eyes like melting-chocolate, before hurrying back to her bag.

    Carefully, the necromancer uncorked it -- raised it to his rapier of a nose, at once transported to Madrid’s summer gardens, the air heavy with flowers; a great courtyard where the walls were alabaster, threaded with thorns and bloodred faces, the sun brutal on his back. He saw it drizzled on pasties, rose-water seeping into knafeh, a kissed pink in the midst of an Ashokan delight -- and the memory fled like a nymph, leaving a warm, aching hole in his chest.

    “Rose.” The fragment of a smile twitched on his face, the first all day. This, this he could natter on. He latched to it, carefully recorked the bottle--marked its near-emptiness, shaking it. “I have some more, if you should like. Every time I go to Ashoka I--” he cut off like a hanged man. Suddenly he could not speak -- swallowed the words like sand, looked helplessly at the bottle before he set it down amongst the rest, hand curling in his lap.

    He watched as the girl tore through the last of her belongings -- till at last the bottom scraped empty, and when she looked up again it was with despair.

    “It’s--” quite alright, he meant to say, but the words turned to ghosts -- and of a sudden she burst into tears, throwing herself into him. The necromancer’s eyes widened -- her emotions had come upon her like a storm, seemed like they would break her frail shoulders to pieces; he could smell the road on her, the grease-stink and panic and sweat, felt her face buried in his chest. For a moment he simply did not know what to do.

    Oh. Oh dear.

    “Oh no,” he breathed, barely audible even to himself -- a dreadful animal wail came from her, climbed into a gurgling sob, and something wrenched within him. “Oh no... oh no, shhh...” A slag of iron burned in his throat -- in his chest, and part of him wished to writhe away -- you don’t know, it screamed. You don’t know, you don’t know, oh gods. Oh gods and devils, you would not weep into me if you knew what I am.

    But here she was. A soul on his doorstep, the most miserable-looking creature on all the earth, had come to him. Had come to Phaedrus, had come to whatever he had been before this cursed year, that creature without a name, in all its blissful ignorance. It made him feel human. Like something other than that nether-Thing.

    A lump flew to his throat -- a sudden heat and tightness erupted in him, flooded his chest, and he blinked overmuch, trembling.

    Awkwardly, stumblingly, he put an arm around her -- devils! how skinny she was under those clothes, all spine and shoulder-blade, like a mouse -- and held her. The sight of his foyer misted, and then blurred--I’m sorry, she cried again and again; and gods his chest ached, gods he was sorry too -- he was sorry, he was sorry, but a thousand repentances, a thousand sorries would not make a thing like him right again--and his arm tightened around her, tightened for himself as much as for her, and before long he clutched at her as much as she clutched at him, two drowning things both sinking.

    Perhaps that was the only thing the lonely and fearful creatures of the earth could do -- they could only hold each other.

    “Shhhh, nebet-habibi, shhhh,” Phaedrus managed, when his voice at last crawled past that slag in his throat, the Ashokan slurred. The sobs continued; his free hand found her greasy, flyaway hair, smoothed it back in a rhythmic motion. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. When at last it seemed to taper off he let her lay there, his chest aching -- his hand still rested on the crown of her head, firm and solid.

    A horrible, shaking breath drew into his lungs -- coarse and uneven, verging on a weeping spell of his own; but the necromancer swallowed, letting his hand slip off to hunt around his pockets, dying for wont of something to do. At last his fingers clutched at a floral, pink handkerchief -- drew it out in a jerking, awkward motion, trying not to disturb the girl overmuch.

    “Here.” A dreadful awareness of what the situation must look like filled him -- his eyes darted to the door, as if he expected Bast there at any moment. Then, then -- back to the dying thing on his chest, this poor trembling creature. “There’s lavender in it, good for the nerves.” Shakingly, he pressed it into her hand -- his an awful, dead-white thing next to her tanned, earth-covered fingers. The necromancer managed a watery sort of smile, his face terribly sad.

    He didn’t know what to say. Perhaps there was nothing to say -- he could only look at the misery in her eyes and helplessly return it; felt his smile crack in half and twist into a grimace, his face suddenly crumpling like a napkin.

    “Good thing I have another,” Phaedrus choked, his voice high as a woman’s, and scrabbled in his breastpocket; out came a cloth stained with something like ink, and he dabbed furiously at his eyes, hiding all the awful twitchings and spasms of his mouth, his face contorting like a beast meant to burst forth from it.

    “What dreadful messes we are,” he squeaked. And it was the truth; that, perhaps, was all he could say.

    An awful, sudden sob vomited from him.
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    Nevneni
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    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    With time, Nevneni, wrung out like a cloth, ran out of tears. She came to on Phaedrus' pillowy chest, his hand on her head. Sunlight cut its way through the gaps into the curtains, streamed out onto the floor. It illuminated the dancing motes of dust and the patterns on the Ashokan rug and it cast all else into dimness. For the first time, Nevneni realised that it was a lovely day outside, and she was almost on the verge of wanting to go out and breathe it in.

    Still, she felt how hot and wet her face was and she had to breathe through her mouth because her nose was plugged up with mucus. Phaedrus shifted and searched for something in his pockets. Nevneni, staring with glazed eyes at the dance of dust in the sunshine, did not even think of what he was doing until the napkin appeared before her face. She blinked, then took it slowly. Her shoulder was wedged between Phaedrus and the couch, one arm trapped under her body. Trembling with exhaustion and emotion, she pushed herself up and sat hunched beside him, lifting the handkerchief to her nose, but of course smelling nothing.

    She glanced nervously at Phaedrus – Should I? She saw his face twist with distress and he said in a high, cracking voice, "Good thing I have another." This, despite his obvious crumbling upset, gave Nevneni permission. Gratefully, she blew her nose her nose as quietly as she could and folded the napkin over the slimy load, even as Phaedrus dabbed at his eyes with an apparently ink-stained handkerchief. Feeling weird, Nevneni smelled the lavender on the unsoiled parts of the handkerchief, her eyes once again caught up in the spectacle of the dust and the sun.

    A few words interrupted the blank space in her mind: "What dreadful messes we are." Nevneni looked around abruptly, eyes wide with concern, just as Phaedrus choked out a spattering sob.

    "Nooo," she cried, now reaching out to take him in her arms. They were at odd angles to each other – she twisted around on the couch, he facing ahead, but still she clung to him. Now it was her turn to stroke his hair, bed-tangled through it was, to cradle his cold cheek. "Phaedrus," she crooned with the instinct of a woman who once comforted her sisters, "Oh, Phaedrus."

    Well, she had thought she was dry of tears, but pity brought on a fresh storm. Eyes stinging, she stared now at the red door, cast in shadow, or else down at the hunch of Phaedrus' sobbing body – the beloved back that shook, the gauzy white cast on his arm. Tentatively, she touched it. More out of forgetfulness than anything else, she asked him the same question: "Oh, Phaedrus. What happened?" Then, from a thrust of instinct, she added: "What did you do?"
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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    tw: suicide mention, ye olde depression stuff.

    What did you do?

    She asked, she asked. She clutched him, warm against him, tangled and messy— her palm felt like a small heater on his cheek, a live hand on disgusting, cold, dead clay, clay. He was a bundle of nerves flying apart at the seams, a broken tapestry, a thousand pieces that could not possibly hold themselves together.

    What had he done?
    What had he done?
    What had he
    not done?


    Somehow, the question broke him.

    Did she know? Did she know, could she sense it? Surely--surely everyone knew; surely everyone knew what he had done, surely everyone knew what existed inside of him, had heard of the Bayt Ifrit and the black deserts and the demons that lived there, knew of Alloces and his dark, knobbled hands, knew his Master's rheumy eyes and his calm, level voice, how he could convince you to do anything, anything at all, present it as the most reasonable thing in all the world -- kill them, Malakar, he said, and he would; Nasir al-Din is a traitor, blood-of-my-blood. He plots against me in those dark places. Go and wrench the truth from him, Malakar, and he would; I want the sultan of Iyabet to know we are not to be trifled with. Send him his daughter's head, Malakar, and he would, and he did, and he had, and he knelt by his Master's feet and he remembered the way her head rolled across the sandstone, blood matting her hair, her dark hair, her beautiful raven-dark hair, and he bowed from the shadows as all the men of the court choked, all their breaths sucked away by the sultan who loosed them in the scream of a father, a father, a father---

    He sobbed, sobbed in a way that came from outside of himself -- like a great hand squeezed his chest open and shut, forcing dreadful, choking, spluttering noises from him -- his mind barreled down dark halls, lost from his grasp. Unlike Nevneni, his sinuses did not well; there was nothing to clog that awful sound, to soften it to putty, so it remained the sharp scream of a creature being killed over and over.

    The healer's touch tethered him faintly to his parlor, her body so small and warm against his, and he clutched blindly at the stick of her arm like a drowning man, handkerchief pressed to his face like a veil. The storm passed through him, and he shook, shook.

    He was hyperventilating. The handkerchief fluttered wildly, billowed and clung to his nostrils, shutting his breathing off-on, off-on. Bile burned the back of his throat. There was a darkness that welled up in him and pressed on the back of his eyes, curtained his vision, filled his head with so much pressure he felt he might explode, else pass out. Every breath felt like it'd end in a retch -- he saw, when he closed his eyes, matted hair. Matted hair.

    Gradually his diaphragm stopped spasming, kicking like a frightened horse. His parlor resolved itself into some sanity. Sunlight trickled through a window, dancing with motes, and he could see rings of light around them, rainbow haloes, and hear a high, tinny ring in his ears. Phaedrus pressed the handkerchief to his face like a man trying to smother himself, not realizing he'd stopped breathing. Something tickled his hair, disembodied -- Nevneni's hand, some numb part of him realized. Her hand was in his hair. She stroked it rhythmically, slowly, occasionally struggling through the brambles of his bedhead.

    The necromancer let out a puff of air he'd been holding -- it sounded like the final breath of a corpse, that last sigh after a body expired. It went on and on, like his lungs were emptying themselves, collapsing to nothing. It sounded like he would never be able to take another breath again.

    But he did. Miraculously, somehow, he did. He buried his nose into his handkerchief, inhaled. Vanilla. The motes danced in the air. He had clutched Nevneni's arm too hard; he had left the ghost of his fingers on her thin, frail arm, vivid stripes of yellow, and he released it with no small amount of shame.

    "Sorry." Choked. He shook out the handkerchief -- folded it best he could one-handed, the rectangle all crooked, shook it out once more, folded it again. He breathed like a man who had just run up ten flights of stairs. "Um."

    What did you do? She’d asked. What did you do?

    Phaedrus returned his handkerchief to his pocket with a hand like a clumsy brick. Everything felt surreal, suspended -- amniotic, a stillborn world about to flush away. He swayed vaguely, felt almost drunk -- his mind spun like a puck, lips detached, so numb that nothing had weight. He was not even sure about the truth of his own experience. It sounded unreal to him, felt like it had happened to someone else. And Nevneni, though he would call her a friend, was a creature that danced in and out of his life with impermanence, did not live with him, did not sleep with him. She did not carry the weight of consequence. And so -- and so he could say it, the admission coming out with an eerie casualness, news to himself.

    "I tried to… ah... I tried to kill myself," the necromancer put quite bluntly, and cleared his throat. A pregnant pause swelled in his parlor. And then the words caught-- burnt through him like an ember through a fuse, igniting the realization in his chest, and his pallid hand flew to his mouth.
    Edited by Phaedrus, Aug 14 2016, 12:48 PM.
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    Nevneni
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    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    This simple question struck Phaedrus down again. Carefully, Nevneni collected him in her arms, squeezing him some to let him know that she was there, that she was really there. She murmured little things at him, such as his own name, such as "Oh, darling" and "Lovely man," and "It's good to cry." Already, she suspected the answer to the question because the answer was reflected in herself. She, too, had done it: swallowed water and lost memories and incurred damage in surviving her pursuit of death. Patiently, she waited for him to recover and say it, subtly sorting through his tangles with her fingers, breathing in the sweet reek of his miserable skin.

    Finally, he straightened and apologised, wiping tears from his face, which quavered like a pudding. Nevneni looked at him all big-eyed, her mouth set in an odd trembling line, waiting with held breath. Finally, uncomfortably, he said it: "I tried to...ah...I tried to kill myself." Hearing those words out loud hurt him and he raised a hand to his mouth to contain an oncoming sob.

    Nevneni stretched herself forward in a gesture of supplication and she held his face in her hands, looking up at him with her great melting eyes. "I did it once too, Phaedrus. No, not once - twice. But more than that because sometimes...sometimes it was every day....Like when we first met...Like it is now..."

    Nevneni let go of the tension in her body. She sank onto him, her arms draped about his neck, her head resting on his chest. She stared at the patterns on the couch, which were blurred with tears. "Oh, Phaedrus, I wouldn't want you to die. Whatever it is, you needn't die for it." Even as she said it, she could not imagine how those words could apply to herself. Surely she was an exception to the rule of life for all, surely what she had done was heinous enough; she knew this because she saw it and lived with it every day. A deep sigh ruffled the landscape of Phaedrus' breast and then she propped herself up to look at him with deep trust such that she felt like a baby in its momma's arms.

    "If there is some things you wish to say, I can listen," she said, "I don't mind listening. If it would help with your burdens to speak it, I am here. But I shan't pull it out of you either, not if you don't want it."
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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    Twice? Twice? It hurt to believe—in a way, he couldn’t, that such a sweet thing as Nevneni ever could. More than that. His heart wrenched, sunk—now it was his turn to return her murmurs and cries, his hand cradling her cheek as if to shield both of them from that awful, awful reality.

    “Oh Nevneni,” it was his turn to gurgle, the words sopping with tears, “oh, Nevneni, no, no...” Like it is now. His lips pressed, quavered— the meaning of her tattered clothes and tear-streaked face cruelly clear, the stink of the road and bone-thinness under her baggy clothes. He tried to imagine what would make such a sweet girl wish to die, such a sweet girl with such melting-chocolate eyes — and came up clawing at nothing, shocked by the hatred she could visit on herself.

    He realized she had sunk into his dead chest long enough to note its silence — realized, at any moment, she might realize — and realized in himself, he no longer cared. He no longer felt afraid. Not from courage but from exhaustion, his insides dried and wrung like a husk. If her next words pealed into a scream, he would have deserved it, deserved every screech and recoil and spitting tongue. He’d always been monstrous in make—but now he knew he was monstrous in soul, too, and he had no defense against people any longer, no weak cries of well, if you knew me, because if they had known him, truly known him…

    Oh, Phaedrus, I wouldn't want you to die. Whatever it is, you needn't die for it.

    Something like a cry and a laugh left him—a short, sharp, dying thing, void of mirth, a kneejerk kick of denial. You don’t know. You have no idea. Again he felt his throat closing, hot as an iron—he shook his head as his eyes burned, squeezing them shut as he sunk into the woman’s shoulder. A few more mirthless, muffled laughs died in his throat, threatening to brink onto sobs. And he waited. He waited, in the snug, warm circle of Nevneni’s arms for the scream, the punch to the side of his head, the sudden smack and flail of limbs.

    It did not come. Instead a deep sigh ruffled the silk of his pajamas, and she sat up with a rustle, looking at him no differently. If anything she looked more open, kind, unfolding like a book. He could not take her kindness. It killed him. It hurt worse than anything else in the world, like she had shoved a brand deep into his chest, cauterizing everything in it. The necromancer took a deep breath, suddenly unable to meet her eyes.

    "You would think I am mad." A coil-tight smile twisted his face. On impulse he took her hand, all frail bones under his, and squeezed it with a fleshy palm. "It is all, so very..." He forced himself to look down at the girl's eyes -- they would have been soft and innocent like a child's if not for the bags under them, the swollen, weepy red tracing her lashes. And he knew he could not betray that girl on his lap, could not say the things in his heart, because he had no words for them. It had no beginning in his mind, no end.

    His life was divorced from Madrid. It defied all reason; it lived outside the realm of most human experience. It was not fair to inflict it on Nevneni. It was not fair to open the door to that world-- to let in the black sorceries and demons, the souls torn away from their bodies and abused like clay in the hands of a Master. He could not invite the walking corpses and homunculi into his parlor and into her mind.

    Instead he looked down -- at nothing, at the fabric of his pyjamas gathered about his lap, the entwining of their hands. The pain of it bubbled in him—a great, welling, awful thing, sudden, shaking, bursting out of his chest.

    "There was a man." A good enough start: a start. He shook Nevneni's hand, huffed, gave a watery smile. And his expression changed, abruptly, as if someone had whisked his features off like a cloth. "No, not a man." For a moment he couldn't go on. Phaedrus licked his lips, looked up at the ceiling, suddenly fascinated with every inch of it.

    "Oh gods." A dying smile writhed on his lips. "Oh gods, Nevneni.” He bent his head low, so all the woman could see was a wild shock of hair. The world threatened to swirl away into that realm again -- but her hand was warm, kept him anchored, tugged him down, down.

    "Men do not do those things and can still be called men.” The words were panicked, odd, jumping erratically like hares. Devils, no. Devils, no. Why are you doing this to her? Why are you doing this to her, why are you saying these things?

    "When I was younger--“ what a concept! Had he ever been young? It startled him. He felt ageless, eternal, unchanging. But he supposed he must have been young once, if not in body then in mind. "—I... served him. A sorcerer. He taught me everything I know.” He still couldn't look at her. The ’everything' loomed about them—in the strange titles upon his shelves, the oddment of books and baubles, all the subtle whispers of a sorcerer’s house.

    "Things, no one should know. Things that--? They have no place, Nevneni, they have no place, not here, not in this world, but he wanted to know them, and— the things he did to find them. The things he did to me.” The words came out in a babble, a slurred mumble, the same servile, shrinking voice a servant would admit things to an angry Master.

    His hand shook terribly in Nevneni’s, as if instead of his parlor they had been whisked back to that frigid grove. He felt cold, cold, trembling with it, his throat frozen over. At last he gathered himself, throwing his head back, sniffing sharply.

    "He's dead.” The necromancer’s eyes looked glassily up to the ceiling. "But people like that never truly die. I cannot believe he is dead. He feels very much alive, still, it's been years, but he's not dead.” His voice quavered wildly. "How can he be? I see him when I close my eyes. I see him in markets. In people’s faces, some of them. I see him when I wake up."

    No one knew the depths of his fear, no one. How his life had been shaped by it, driven by it, how much he bent around those moon-silver eyes and gnarled hands, how for years people drawing knives or the flash of a cat's eyes in the dark would send him to another place, heat flushing his face and shuddering down his entire body, the endless nights he'd woken up with the sheets constricting his legs and a frozen mind, choking on the sight of a shadow at the end of his bed, so scared, so scared, wishing only for the memories to stop, to stop, to stop.

    Oh, and how he had to appear strong. He could not let anyone witness his terror -- if they knew they would unthread him, pull him apart. If they knew, they would know him, they would know what a fragile thing he was under all his sneers and fopperies, magics and experience; how it was all a paper shell in the end, and he was nothing. If they knew, they could crumple him.

    Nevneni's hand, fragile as it was, felt rough. Gentle as it was, his fingers trembled over callouses and threadbare skin, felt a life of plucking weeds and attending to the ill, decades of repetitious work.

    His lips pressed, jumped—his face trembled with the effort of keeping tears at bay, brows crumpled low, sniffing sharply. Glede wavered in his mind like a mirage, here and then, in his kitchen, on the beachside—Bast, crying in the groves, licking with lurid, blue light, saying his Name— both of them unraveling a sick tapestry of sights and sounds.

    But he couldn’t hide the ugly wateriness from his voice.

    “And things I haven’t thought about in ages—things I never thought—I thought they were behind me, Nevneni, thought they’d never find me here— they have. And they’ve made it all real again, it’s as if I can’t — I can be countries away, ages away, and still? Still?” The words came thick, gurgling, tight with the threat of panic. “Nowhere is safe for me.” He squeezed the girl’s hand, unconsciously rocking back and forth.

    “Nowhere. Doesn’t matter.” Phaedrus choked, throat closing with the truth that cornered him like a beast. “It doesn't matter, because he's with me, always. I can't rid myself of him unless I die. I can't make what I did go away, unless I die.”

    All rivers lead to the ocean. He hated that aphorism, hated it, and he attacked it with spite, as if it would make it less true. “No matter where I am— I am still in his House. And he died—he, he gets to die, when he took my life? When he took my whole life?” He wasn’t sure to whom he was speaking—Alloces and Nevneni, he supposed, rambling nonsense, voicing the hurts that had no closure. That was the madness of it, a dog gnawing its leg again and again, never truly absolving the itch but only infecting it.

    “I was just a child.” It came out falsetto-high, cracking, killing him.

    Because perhaps that was what he’d be mourning for, all these years — there had never been a period of goodness for him, a foundation of love and warmth, a pole by which to measure all else. In a way, yes, he had been a child, a nascent mind, knowing nothing, knowing no better. Perhaps ignorance had been kinder. He didn’t fully grieve his loss until the world put a name to it, until he had time to stop, think, allow it to sink into him.

    He was not happy, never, but when he saw the differences in the world, when he saw how others lived in light and freedom, his heart broke. And it grew angry in its brokenness. It sought justice in its brokenness. He wanted to rob people of their joy, to wrench them from their lives and put their noses to misery, shrieking here, here, look. Spite often took a foothold in his heart, never far from jealousy. At points it made it impossible to sit in high society, to talk to anyone, to get out of bed and live and walk amongst those who bore so little. He could not get close to anyone; else they’d see his breakdowns, the howling, nervous, dying wreck he truly was.

    He realized what he’d been doing, stopped rocking.

    “Gods. Sorry,” Phaedrus muttered. “Sorry. Gods, I’m sorry.” He couldn’t stop saying it— just apologized, over and over, some of them only half-audible, as if a wall of sorries could stack between them and he could brick away everything he’d just said from her. Tidy up the unreasonable, hurting parts of himself and slide them away, out of sight.

    He suddenly weaseled his hand out of Nevneni’s to palm away the growing moisture in his eyes, sighing at himself. A long, painful silence stretched before him. The necromancer's throat bobbed vaguely, jaw grinding, hand pressed to his eyes. The quiet became unbearable.

    "When we met," Phaedrus started, haltingly— he lowered his hand, strange eyes dancing over hers. Again he took her hand -- for her or for himself, he wasn’t sure, tentative, afraid. "In that forest, yes. I saw something… I just—I know that face. I know how it feels to run from something.” Someone? He stared, not unkindly, not intrusively, but with understanding.

    "Whatever it is, I needn't know, if you don't wish to tell me. Nonetheless, you are safe here. You're welcome to my pantry. I've a spare room and clothes; I can draw you up a bath." The notion of hosting calmed him -- the practical diversions of taking care of someone, the short, simple directives of filling bowls with stew and cups with tea, rifling through a trunk for dresses and heating water in a copper pot. Yes, he could see those things very clearly, in the order they must be done.

    He paused.

    "But if you do wish to tell me, there is nothing you can say to frighten me. My soul belongs to Khalid, my dear."
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    Nevneni
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    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    He said she'd think he was mad, she said, softly, "I'm mad, so we're the same."

    Then he began to tell his story, haltingly and in fragments, like a cart's wheels dragging over humps in the road. The story she got from him, after all the groaning and hand-wringing and gasping for air, was that he had served a sorcerer once, that he had been tortured by this sorcerer in some sense, and that, though he had escaped, there was no true escape, that the past tormented him in the present. Whether the threat of being followed was a true one, whether this sorcerer was actually dead, she could not tell.

    The entire time she merely listened, knowing that nothing she could say would be a comfort. It was the act of speaking that tended to be its own comfort, being an act of release. She stroked him, she cuddled him to her when appropriate, she provided a warm space in which to think. In doing so she alleviated some of her own suffering, lifted away some of the great burden of her self-hatred. She was doing something for another; this made her worth some of the air she breathed.

    After it was done he began apologising. She reached out to him when he wiggled away, arresting his wrists with gentle hands, trying to make him meet her eyes. "Don't say sorry." Then, ever the physician: "It needed to come out."

    She shook her head when he hurriedly offered all the comforts of his home, saying, "Later, later." Then he asked her if she wanted to speak of herself.

    He had done so for her, shouldn't she do the same?

    Yet part of her crumpled like wet paper. To say or not to say? She was torn apart: she should not speak of herself, for she was not worth speaking of, and yet she should because she wanted to, because she was labouring under such a crushing weight. Now it was her turn to be choked, tears stinging her eyes.

    Finally, the measly words forced their way out. "I was with Juul." It was clear from her intonation what she meant by with. "In Morrim. Part of a rebellion. We lost the fight. I...ran away."

    Nevneni buried her face in her hands, too choked to even cry. Pressure built up and up; her dirty fingernails dug into her forehead, her breath ran ragged. Finally, the dams burst and she tore her hands away from her hands.

    "I ran away from that, and from the refugees, and from home, and from Aravin after I killed him!" She stared at Phaedrus, her lips thin with rage. Jaw tight, she said, "Killed him...for what he did to me." But she didn't care today for that same old lump of tragedy she had dragged behind her for so many years. "Yet – I never served my sentence! I never paid for any of it. I'm still free, and I should suffer and die for it!"

    Well, now she was truly lost. Her voice became a harsh cry as she held her wrists out to him. "Come on! Chain me up and take me to the prison! The judge will have me hanged after ten thousand lashes – it's all I deserve!" She stared at him, jaw jutting out, her eyes wild and seeing some other reality.
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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    Don’t say sorry. But how could he not? It felt like a disgusting, filthy thing — offal pushing out of his mouth instead of words — a den of flies that had waited in his throat. He wished only to melt into the couch, disappear, sweep up the mess he had spilt. The woman crooned and comforted him, a solid, warm presence, cuddling him and holding him like a counterbalance in that storm.

    Infinitely more than he deserved.

    Her hand caught his wrist. Slowly, like a reluctant cat, he swallowed and forced himself to turn, to look at her, flinching from her gaze.

    It needed to come out.

    He didn’t trust himself to speak yet. Instead his brow screwed up and he swallowed, gave a brief jerk of a nod, something like a pained smile curdling his lips.


    Later, later. She cast off his offers and he paused, unsure of what to say now, what to do. Suddenly he felt naked, alone with his own discomfort. The necromancer struggled to swallow — but the healer looked worse off, a tight knot of pain. For a moment he wasn’t sure if she could even speak — as if he’d swallowed up all the words with his own story, left no room for others — and blinked, until at last they came out in a quiet peep.

    I was with Juul.

    He blinked rapidly. That bitch of a soldier? The one in his—? But the how did not matter; his dislike of the woman was irrelevant, a brief stumble pushed away by the healer’s present pain. Just as she had comforted him, he shuffled to be in a better position to hug her, should she need it — but then her demeanor changed, turned sharp and bristling.

    The sudden violence startled him. It was as though a beast burst out of sheep’s clothing — an explosion of anger tearing through her quiet, sweet exterior. He drew back, froze; Phaedrus’ eyes widened and he pressed into the back of the couch, giving her space — allowing that fury to lash out, those coils of self-hatred to finally strike with a hiss, flying out of their buried dens.

    I should suffer and die for it!

    And then she threw out her hands to him — demanded punishment, penance, cruelty — and her eyes flashed like an animal’s, mad and desperate.

    Now it was his turn to soothe her.

    "Shhhh," Phaedrus managed, his brow crumpled in concern. "Shhh, shhh." He took one wrist, gently lowering it back to Nevneni's lap.

    "Oh, Nevneni.” The necromancer stared at her, at the mad fury of her eyes and quivering face, her mouth pressed to whiteness. Sucking in his lips, Phaedrus placed a cool hand over hers, holding her twitching, tense fingers at her knee. "Look at me." He shuffled a bit on the couch, leaning forward ever so slightly, and scanned the healer's face.

    "No one is coming to get you," Phaedrus emphasized, looking into her eyes. His brows raised a fraction. The words came slow and gentle, but firm. "I shan't send you to prison. There will be no judge. There will be no hanging."

    Absently, he stroked her knuckles with his thumb, waiting till some of the healer's nerves subsided and her eyes refocused on the room.

    "You have my word," he promised, brow furrowing. Were people truly after her? Was there a warrant for arrest? Paranoid, the necromancer looked to the door, as if he expected guards to burst through it at any moment. Was it locked? The curtains were asunder, the kitchen visible...

    Phaedrus jerked his chin at the window and a shadow licked into existence, closing the curtains with a shff. The house grew dimmer.

    He turned back to Nevneni with parted lips, wondering what to say. Oh, he could imagine the crushing boulder of guilt. He could imagine the pain it must cause her, the constant ruminations, the what-ifs this-and-that, wondering what one could have done differently, what one should have done…

    Had he not felt the same on the beach with Glede?
    The shame of it assaulted him. He had been ready for the giant to get his justice. To decapitate him. And yet he offered forgiveness instead — an option impossible to conceive for himself; it had taken another to give him permission.

    "Every creature in this world wants to live," Phaedrus began, pausing a moment as he read the tired lines in Nevneni's face, the living trip-wire of her lips and mad, red-rimmed eyes. "Every single one." He felt the need to repeat himself. Sometimes in a state of madness, things were not heard the first time, if at all.

    "You did what you had to to survive." This he stressed, squeezing her hand. "You cannot be faulted for that. If we cannot fight, we run. If we cannot run, we fight." He shook his head with a bounce of curls, wondering if those words meant anything— if they were more than meagre arrows against an iron shield of pain. "Nevneni, but you are suffering for it. Perhaps not in the hands in a gaoler. But in what you do to yourself."

    Is that why she starved herself? Beat herself? Wandered into icy woods to die? Slept not at all, rejected every comfort and goodwill?

    Because she felt she did not deserve such a thing?


    "What could you have done, Nevneni? You are no fighter. You couldn't have—picked up arms and fought the rebels." He shook his head at the ludicrousness, shrugging. "They would have killed you. Else taken you prisoner. And then what? What happens in wartime?" He regretted asking; how condescending that must be, coming from him! Coming from the man she must have thought him to be! A spoilt fop removed from reality! For surely she knew. Her eyes told him that she knew.

    "You fled, yes. But it would have been senseless to stay and die. You cannot make amends when you are dead. You cannot save people when you are dead. You cannot find your--love, when you are dead." He frowned, biting his lip, and traced the hillocks of her knuckles.

    Killed him. For what he did to me.

    The words were chilling. For what evil could a man visit upon her to make her kill him? Nothing in her make told him she was a killer. He did not sense disingenuousness from her, fake innocence, a manipulative persona of a sweet, helpless girl. No: she looked like a long-suffering creature, no different from the weary-eyed in jail forced to serve a long penance.

    The necromancer leaned forward a bit more, his voice dropping to a murmur.

    "Why do you deserve to die? Because you killed a man who hurt you?” He questioned gently, tilting his head. Phaedrus' eyes narrowed, brow furrowing. "No. You were protecting yourself." The necromancer jostled her hand in emphasis, lips twisting. “Perhaps the law says he should live. Perhaps it calls it murder. But if we follow the law, what then? He lives to hurt you again? To hurt other people? He lives, goes without a trial, and you suffer?” A scoff made it quite clear what he thought of that. It turned into a horrible, bitter laugh, dying as soon as it escaped him.

    Imagine! If he had taken his master to trial! If he had waited for guards to seize him, for others to execute him! It simply would not have been done. He was the only one who could possibly kill him, give the sentence and punishment he deserved.

    “Bollocks. The law does not serve us. The world does not care for us. Justice is a weathervane that swings towards people's pockets. Judges do not hear the truth. So then what do we do, Nevneni? What do we do when no one helps us? We help ourselves." He twined his fingers in hers, looked down at the brown and white net of them.

    "Stay," the necromancer decided, raising his eyes again. "Stay here, as long as you need. Have whatever you wish." After a moment he slipped his hand out of hers and stood, pausing. Her face was a sticky mess from crying, strands of hair plastered to her cheek, and he reached out and brushed a lock behind her pointed ear. The necromancer put his hand on her head and paused a moment, smoothing back the crown of her greasy hair.

    "Perhaps we need something stronger than tea," he half-mumbled to himself, dropping his hand back to his side. Phaedrus turned away from the forgotten biscuits and cooling ceylon, feeling like his morning tea was a distant, fake affectation to get through before he got to what he really wanted. He felt gummy, rubbery -- as if all the strength had been sapped from him, his insides replaced, legs numb from sitting so long.

    The necromancer tottered into the kitchen and ignored the mess of it, opening a cabinet. A row of wine bottles glimmered back at him like a waiting smile, and he swallowed, feeling shame prickle his back.

    It can't be later than ten o' clock, surely.

    Closing his eyes, he bulled out a breath and seized a bottle, as if it were a cumbersome, unavoidable task he had to do; he could taste last night's on his tongue, and the night before that, and the night before that -- a vague, uneasy acid in his throat that had simply become the background hum of his existence, along with a fuzzy head and tired limbs and soupy laziness.

    Phaedrus bit the cork and pulled it out in a deft motion, not bothering with glasses. Why? Why pretend he wasn't a desperate drunk who didn't chug it from the bottle in his bathroom, or his closet, or the middle of the night? Who, precisely, was he trying to fool?

    The necromancer took a drag of it as he walked back into the living room, lowering the bottle as he stopped before the table. The wine gave a little slosh and gargle; Phaedrus made a face and offered it to Nevneni, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

    "Have at it,” he coughed. "Plenty more where that came from. Or I have whisky, if you really need to get blaggered."

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    Nevneni
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    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    Gently, Phaedrus pressed Nevneni's hand back down her lap. Thus, destroying her position of supplication, he caused the rest of her to relax. She still looked at him with deranged eyes, however, and mentally she fought him. Did he not understand that punishment was not just what she deserved but what she needed? She thought she would simply die from her own self-hatred. Malignant phrases passed through her brain in response to every thing he said – he simply did not know how bad she was, and that was why he could extend forgiveness to her.

    Even so, his words slowly reached her: she had been doing what was necessary, she had taken an evil soul out of the world, she was – and don't you see that I am so tired of this? Nevneni was created at a time when I needed sympathy for what had happened to me. Part of her purpose – though admittedly a small part – was to gain that sympathy for me by proxy, and for a long time she has been stuck in that mode. After a point, this had more to do with her than me: her sufferings are greater and more sympathy is needed to fill that wound with flesh. Here, she is still bleeding.

    There comes a day, however, when sympathy is no longer needed. The ritual dance of asking and receiving has become tiresome and emulated because it is practiced out of habit. Just because one day it is so does not mean it was bad to have ever asked. To speak and be heard is to confirm the suffering's reality. Knowing this, and learning from others that you are not guilty for what has happened, makes that suffering something that can be swallowed, digested. There comes a day when it is accepted as the fabric of one's being; this is the day when sympathy is no longer needed.

    Nevneni still has a ways to go. The day will come for her about a year after this one.

    Today, however, Phaedrus has given her what she needed. Feeling shaky, but like her feet had hit solid, if uncertain ground, she squeezed his hand. She nodded tearfully at his invitation to stay and watched Phaedrus wobble his way into the kitchen. Waiting for him to return, she cried silently at the gratitude she had been shown and then, remembering how she had once fallen asleep on this very couch while Juul stood in that very kitchen, she cried for that as well.

    Phaedrus surely did not understand why she had been with Juul. They had argued over breakfast that morning. Nevneni wanted to explain it to him somehow, to put it in terms he would understand. If she told him about how Juul's hardened exterior opened up to reveal an unparalleled gentleness, if she told him about how the soldier could make her feel comfortable with herself, about storms moving in across the fields and the light falling upon them and the grass where they tumbled, laughing – then he might understand and she might make something right with herself.

    When he came back with a bottle of wine, she was blowing her nose surreptitiously into her last, ragged handkerchief. She wiped her puffy eyes with it and gave him a weak smile. Her hand went out towards the wine bottle, and then retreated: she'd caught sight of the biscuits sitting on the table. Tentatively, despite growing consciousness of her gnawing hunger, she took one and ate it.

    Then she turned to Phaedrus, who was still standing, and got up on her knees on the couch to be more at a level with him. Her face was serious, her eyebrows peaking with concern, as she took his cold face in her hands and said to him, "It doesn't mean anything that he was your master. He doesn't get to ruin your life. You were given life, but it doesn't mean it's his to take. You're you, see? You're only yours."

    She looked him in the eyes for another moment and then settled down like fluffy skirts falling to the ground. Now she took the wine and had a sip, but winced. "Maybe, before this–" at this moment, her stomach growled, making it abundantly clear one thing she needed. With a self-deprecating smile she gestured at her own belly and peeped nervously, "You said something about a bath as well?" Unconsciously, she touched her cheek with her fingers, which only served to make one conscious of just how grimy she was from the road.
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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    The girl rose to her knees.

    His eyebrows raised as she lifted her hands to his face — small and rough on his cheeks — and stared at him with such intensity he felt she looked into his soul. Pinned, the necromancer could only swallow: and her words came like the declaration of a sage, the prophecy of a sibyl, solemn and real and true.

    It doesn't mean anything that he was your master. He doesn't get to ruin your life.

    But he had. For in his mind, Alloces was to blame for everything — if he had not suffered so, he would have never picked up a bottle to forget; if he had loved him, he would not have gone chasing after skirts, lapping up affection like a dying animal; if he had been true, then he would not turn on people with vicious paranoia; he would sleep; he would not throw himself out of windows and off cliffs and drink nightshade; he would be a fine, upstanding man; he would be this person he conjured in his mind, a pinnacle of trueness, some unreachable self. If, if, if!

    Alloces had cut his heels before he’d even started running. Surely he had no chance. He’d never catch up with the rest of the world. So why bother? He was doomed to live like this, perhaps to die like this—as a useless drunk, forever unhappy. The unfairness of the world slammed into him like a bitter tide, sweeping him up in it as a drowning martyr.

    But he did this to me. He ruined my life.

    He already took it,
    he wanted to cry. What can I do with it now? For no — it seemed impossible that things could ever turn up, ever be well, that he could pull himself out of his own mire — because it was going to be like this forever, wasn’t it?

    One of his hands alighted on Nevneni’s, lips twitching as he fought those words.

    You’re you, see? You’re only yours.

    Phaedrus' face twisted, and of a sudden he could not look at Nevneni at all, blinking madly past her. Trembling, his fingers curled around her wrist, as if weakly trying to slide it off; for a moment it seemed his mask would break again and the floodwaters would sweep the pieces away.

    You’re only yours.

    He couldn’t swallow; could only nod, bowing his head and closing his eyes so he didn’t have to look at Nevneni, sucking in his lips as he tried to bat it all down, down.

    “I have never felt like me,” the words escaped miserably, squeaking past the tightness of his throat. For there never was a him. There was the thing Alloces wanted him to be — there were the things Alloces wanted him to do, to say, to feel, and those eclipsed whatever shred of himself held on through the storm of the drow’s will. And eventually those rubbed away like so much chalk, till he was nothing but Master’s mouthpiece and hands and cruelty.

    “It is unsafe to be me,” Phaedrus mumbled, only half-audible, perhaps not even in Common at all. Nevneni’s face had become a vague, moonish blur, a star above a different world — when she pulled away, he felt like a man rousing from sleep, unfocused and confused. The warmth of her hands left his face, leaving a palpable emptiness. Absently, the necromancer brushed his fingers to his cheek, but it wasn’t the same — his were tepid, soft, repulsive to the touch.

    And then she flopped back down, looking like a stigma of a flower emerging from a ruffle of brown petals. He woke up, blinking away the mist and walking, dreamlike, into reality. The girl’s stomach growled, and she looked up at him imploringly. There was a Nevneni. A Nevneni that needed food, and drink, and a bath. This Nevneni was on his couch, in his house, in Madrid.

    Slowly, laboriously, he blinked, sniffing and wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

    "I don't have much in the way of breakfast, I'm afraid," the necromancer sighed in apology. After a moment he took the wine back and slammed back a swig, shaking his head. After putting it back down on the table, he gestured for Nevneni to follow, shuffling back into the kitchen.

    It was a mess. Gone was the tidiness of Nevneni's first visit. The cabinet was ajar; dirty plates and teacups cluttered the washbasin and counter; flowers wilted in the middle of the table, forgotten in their vase; all around were abandoned things, stray cutlery and wooden spoons, disorganized jars. The necromancer stood in the middle of it, disoriented as though he had wandered into another man's kitchen. He hadn't cooked in days — a week, perhaps? More? -- living on biscuits and cheese and things of minimal effort. Mostly wine.

    Blowing out a sigh, Phaedrus tucked a curl behind his ear, unsure of where to even begin.

    "Um." He walked over to a cutting board, one that seemed to be clean. A start. Next he retrieved cheese and cured meats from the larder -- jam and preserves -- summer fruits -- the remaining biscuits and sweet pastries — seed crackers -- a platter as vague and disorganized as his kitchen. This he set on a relatively uncluttered part of the table, along with a cutting-knife.

    "Have whatever you want," the necromancer gestured. "I'll prepare your bath, then." Sniffing, he crossed to the dim fire and prodded at it till it woke again. Next he took a big pot and filled it with water, hooking it above the flames with a scowl and a grunt.

    His broken arm throbbed, painful and useless, and fresh annoyance broke over him. Wiping his face, Phaedrus blew out a sigh, regarding Nevneni with weary eyes. He managed a faint smile, happy to have some distraction. In truth he wanted nothing more; he wished to slip away to grapple with her words in private, be alone with the tangled, suffocating feeling in his chest.

    Quiet, the necromancer tramped up the stairs, his eyes unfocused. His fingers brushed the railing, and he hissed as his foot hit the familiar notch in the wood, sending him stumbling.

    He caught himself and headed to his room, mind buzzing, tears threatening to swell once more.

    ***

    He had plenty of dresses. Some he had bought on a whim -- some were intended as gifts to lovers -- some were Bast's -- some were clothes left behind by paramours, of all shapes and sizes and colors, each with their own story.

    Perhaps she preferred tunics? Those he pulled out, too -- from their graves in the back of his closet and the bottom of trunks, laughably small. I shan't ever fit in them again, frankly. Why he kept them, he didn't know -- they were hardly of sentimental value -- instead it was rather like a recording of history, annals he could flip through, a magpie's impulse to hoard. Proof of himself.

    He raked through them all, throwing them on his bed and analyzing their dimensions. Given that the healer’s clothes swallowed her, he could only guess at her frame, but he supposed her to be rather thin under all of that. At length he chose those he felt suited her, hooking them under his chin and over his good arm, bumping open the door to the guest bath with his hip. He threw them all onto a counter by the towels and soaps, stopping to wince at the throbbing of his forearm and cradling the cast uselessly. A cold sweat broke against his brow and he leaned against the wall, face pressed.

    To hell with this.

    He felt sick with pain, swallowing bile, and wiped his hand over his face, suddenly struck with his confession and Nevneni’s confession and the sins that burst from them like offal and the chord she struck with her words and—

    A sniff came from him. Then another, and another, and soon enough he blinked rapidly at the ceiling, swallowing the feeling only to have it bubble up again in a moment of distraction.

    You're you, see? You're only yours.

    ***

    The necromancer came back downstairs again, announced himself with a heavy tramping on the steps.

    It felt like he’d walked miles — the morning’s events had wrung the strength from his limbs, left him feeling numb and exhausted. The pain hardly helped, a constant throb-throb, throb-throb that antagonized him, robbed the little color in his face and left it strained.

    At length he made it into the kitchen. As Nevneni looked up, he forced the barest flicker of a smile, dragging himself towards the healer. Much of the food had disappeared, a fact he noted blandly, and he resisted the instinct to whisk it away and mechanically scrub it.

    “It’s about ready,” Phaedrus managed, gaze wandering off the healer and to the pot that swelled like a beast in his fireplace, an impossible obstacle to bring up himself. It overwhelmed him of a sudden, became an insurmountable task.

    “—would you help me?” The words felt foreign on his tongue, almost wrong. Never did he want to rely on others. Never did he want to show a shred of weakness, to be less than a stalwart pillar, a monument to independence.

    And now he could not even bring up a pot of hot water for a bath. In such a state magic felt impossible — unhooking it and tramping back upstairs felt impossible — how weak, how pathetic! — and his face screwed up in a flash of shame.
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    Nevneni
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    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    Nevneni felt her failure bubbling up through her skull as Phaedrus went off to the kitchen. She wondered what she could do, what she could say to heal him – for she still believed that it was only a matter of the right words or actions, and she would justify her existence and her need to eat, she would therefor have won the right to be.

    Nibbling regretfully at a seed cracker, she watched him struggle with the big pot of water with eyes as wide as two moons. See, if only you had asked where everything was so you could do it yourself, said that insidious voice, Or if you had offered to take a look at his arm first. It was too late now. He disappeared up the stairs and, on his way, stumbled. Nevneni startled, but when she heard his steps again, she was too afraid to come and ask if he was alright.

    Now safely alone, she turned her attention to the room around her, comparing it with her memory of the house. Phaedrus now lived in a forest of mess – at least she didn't think it was this messy last time – and there was the faint rankness of immobility and alcohol rising from the carpets. Yes, yes, she could see it now: he spent his time unable to do what must be done, languishing alone in this place while plates and glasses and broken quills and empty inkbottles and scraps of paper piled up around him and became covered with dust. She had seen it before, had been called in to help people who, some would say, had lost their souls. Personally, she had never been in such a state, goaded as she was to walking, but she knew what was needed: chase-devil, motherwort, eleuthero and the like, taken daily and combined with the cessation of all intoxicants. Depending on the situation and the locale, there may be various rituals to call the soul back into someone's mouth or capture it in a net.

    Between bites, she took to rummaging weakly through her pack, wondering if she had any herbs that would be helpful. Her blanket spilled out onto the sofa, unravelling to birth a small purse with a few Morrimian coins still in it, a dried up bottle that used to hold rosewater and a tiny pot of arnica ointment, now mostly empty. Her hands came across various little bags: comfrey, but not enough to be of any use; yellow dock, now atrociously dry and crumbly; the ever-present bag of yarrow, which she had absentmindedly stocked on her journey here; and then bag after bag containing only unidentifiable crumbs. No chase-devil, no motherwort, no eleuthero. Not even any peppermint. The best she had was some lavender oil, but against such a vast wall of misery, what could that do? She could always try to call his soul back to him – but no doubt he would insist that he had never had one.

    Phaedrus' footsteps sounded from above, a distant rumble of thunder. She began cramming everything back into her bag, but did so messily, so that the end result was like a milkweed seedpod that had begun to split and spill its contents. A wan smile passed his face as he went by – was that good? Then, with a strain in his voice that suggested the words were rung out of him, he asked for help.

    "Of course," said Nevneni, springing to her feet. She regretted moving so quickly, of course: a vague nausea took her over, and for a moment she wondered if her stomach would immediately reject such a foreign notion as food. This passed quickly, however. Still feeling dizzy, she made a gesture at the pot, expended an effort, and thus made it lift itself into the air and float off the fire. "I've gotten better at this," she said with weak pride, making reference to the trick she had done with the cake when they had first met.

    She moved around so as to direct the pot ahead of her, and sent it floating up the stairs. Of course, once she was there she did not quite know where to go. "Oh, which room?" she asked, confused and misremembering the layout of the house from their last visit.

    Eventually, they figured it out, and with a last surge of magic, the pot was tipped over into the tub and, now empty, pushed out of the way. Exhausted from her efforts, Nevneni sat down on the floor to collect herself for a moment. Her head swirled with eddies, like the confusion of a rocky stream, and for a moment she lost consciousness of the fact that Phaedrus was there, probably looking at her, and slipped sideways into a daze. She woke from this quickly, of course, and the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was the wine bottle dangling from Phaedrus' hand.

    What foresight he had!

    She saw that he had brought some glasses as well, deftly carried in his fingers. With a tired smile, she gestured at the arrangement, and then scooted across the floor on her butt to pour the wine herself, rather than asking him to awkwardly do it with a broken arm. She handed him a full glass and sipped on her own.

    Sliding over towards the tub of hot water, she said, "If you don't want to go far away – I mean, if you want to keep talking...you don't have to go all the way downstairs or anything." Her cheeks flushed with colour. "Just don't...look."
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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    He watched in fascination as the pot levitated through the air, drifting up the stairs like a spirit. The pride in her ability warmed him just a little, though his gloom gave the memory a dark tinge. The crackle of fire and shared cake had faded, overtaken by grim winter and the arrow trained on their hearts. Whyever were they doomed to meet in tragedy?

    Still, he gave a thawed smile, brushing his tunic.

    “Second to the right,” Phaedrus explained. “Past the bronze... um… sun thing.” To this day he really didn’t know what it was. The scrolled disk was just one of many things the last owner left behind, abandoned in a heap in the cellar: somehow it felt wrong to simply throw out the deceased old woman’s things. To his understanding, her grandchildren were unsentimental, eager to sell her valuables and the house. He’d saved her odd bits of cutlery and a cozy, faded rug as well, and he liked to imagine it made her spirit happy to be remembered.

    As she disappeared, he took his time fetching glasses, lost and slow. Multiple times he forgot what he meant to do, then stared with a bolt at the wine bottle. Oh, yes… Thought of tramping upstairs again made him procrastinate. For a moment he felt too old and too heavy and too tired, blowing out a sigh as he struggled to clink the glasses together and cradle the bottle.

    At length he dragged himself up the stairs, the clink-clink-clink announcing his arrival. Mercifully, she’d left the bathroom door a crack open. The necromancer pushed it open with his shoulder and found her sitting on the floor, eyes closed. He felt he’d interrupted a private moment; but her eyes opened, and she smiled, and relieved him of his burden.

    The wine gurgled, tickling some Pavlovian itch in his head; he took it obediently, watching her scuff along the floor like a dog wiping its arse. Ah, well. At least there was some solace to be taken in company as tired as himself. Phaedrus lifted his glass in a distant toast and took a sip, turning to leave.

    He was halfway to the door when she offered, her voice timid and sweet.

    “Oh,” Phaedrus blinked. It was unexpected; it wasn’t until she said it that he realized, yes, I would like to. Well, perhaps not necessary to be in the same room, but at the very least sitting outside with the door cracked…

    He sensed she needed it as much as she. And it lessened the strangeness knowing she preferred the company of women. He hoped she assumed he liked men, and that would vaporize any lingering discomfort. Plenty assumed such.

    “Ha—alright,” Phaedrus conceded, almost amused. Then, “I mean… if you’re certain…” she looked as uncomfortable as he felt. If he had a drop of blood in him, he would have blushed too, but instead he glanced away a moment, blinking.

    “I shan’t,” the necromancer promised, managing a weak smile. Exhaustion won out over discomfort. Walking downstairs would be tiring, and then the chaos of his kitchen would overwhelm his senses. His bedroom was no better. But the guest bathroom — untouched for months? More? — was clean and orderly. It gave him space to breathe, reminded him of what a house ought to look like.

    Glancing about, his eyes fixed tiredly on a half-accordioned partition in the corner. The man reached out a pale hand, dragging it into a wooden wall between them. It was carved in south Ashokan fashion: each pole drifted up gracefully, the crowns carved in the silhouette of a lotus. The panels were a delicate symmetry of flowers from the banks of the Origa River; they were netted together by a honeycomb of wood. It turned Nevneni into stars of color, leaving only her silhouette.

    That done, he gently scooted the wine bottle with his foot so it was in easy reach for both of them.

    Sighing, the necromancer sat down clumsily and slumped against the wall, kicking out one leg and keeping one knee up. He was grateful for the screen, so Nevneni did not see him lean his head back and shut his eyes, face wilting. Behind the wood his profile was a pepper of white and red.

    “I left out some floral oils and salts. Use however much you want," he explained distantly, in case the woman was too timid to explore the smattering of colorful bottles. One guest had been petrified to touch them, given his profession. The memory brought a faint snort, though his voice fell flat of a cheery quip. “They won’t turn you into a newt."

    Steam was beginning to fill the room. The air became hot and stuffy, frizzing his already messy hair and dampening his face and neck. Flapping out his collar, Phaedrus tried to twist his mat of hair and put it over one shoulder, but it disobeyed, springing right back. Frustration coiled in him: he took a sharp breath, picking up the wine glass with a shaking hand.

    Once he might have appreciated the vintage. Now it was just like slugging water. A sharp bouquet of cherries and honeysuckle filled his mouth as he took a great swallow, draining it.

    “So,” Phaedrus broached after a beat, swilling the glass. Their conversation had halted after the intensity of downstairs, interrupted only by splashes of water and the occasional sniffle. It was hard to speak after all that: he felt wrung as a rag, too tired to tread on the old hurt again. Wine gurgled as he poured himself another glass. Should have brought two.

    Belatedly, he realized the only threads between them were tragedy; he knew little of the woman herself, her life, her likes, Nevneni beyond a bleeding, weeping thing always in need of shelter. “You’ve been practicing magic.” A start. “Where did you come to learn such a thing? Unusual, for a healer.”

    He hoped it wasn’t an ill topic for conversation.
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    Nevneni
    Member Avatar
    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    Behind the partition, Nevneni undressed. She lifted her dress and shuffled it off her body so it fell on the floor in a heap. Naked now, and conscious of her own smell (the reek of road dust and sweat), she felt Phaedrus' presence on the other side of the screen like a pin in her flesh. Yet he must be there, for if he was not she was sure she would be swallowed up by some great abyss – yes, she would fold inside out and be sucked into herself, gone forever.

    She took another sip of wine to steady herself.

    At that point Phaedrus brought up the scents she could use for her bath. As if he had directed her with a motion of his hand, her eyes immediately fell on the collection of brightly-coloured, if dusty, bottles. "Thank you," she said as she tinkled amongst the bottles, uncorking them to smell them. She was relieved to find things of use: epsom salts for the ache in her muscles, lavender and bergamot oil to soothe and something harder to identify, something foreign and sensually floral, that she added just because it smelled nice.

    At long last she stepped gingerly into the water and eased herself down. The heat stung her feet a little but the rest of her body responded with delight – so much so that she was unable to keep herself from letting out a relieved sigh.

    She drank more wine before responding, folding the flavour over her tongue for a moment while she plunged back into memory – years back, soon after she had first begun traveling. It was so long ago – so much had changed – yet sensation and emotion came back so clearly that she almost began to smell that spring again, here in this bathroom.

    "I learned the levitation from this woman in southern Soto. She had no means of paying me but saw that I had the ability, all I needed to do was know the tricks. I was treating her for a pain in her stomach or – no, wait –" Apparently some things did not come back so clearly. She thought she had known – how could she have forgotten? "–was that the other lady who had that? And this one was smitten with constipation...? Oh, I can hardly remember. It's a strange thing. Well, sometimes people will offer to teach where they can't pay, so I picked the ability to make fire from...someone.

    "But my mother taught me things too. It's not all too stranger for healers to know these things, practical things, but she taught me to heal a little, and I've learned on my own, and from other healers. Euphorbia especially – she lived in Fairin. I wonder if she still does..."

    Nevneni's eyes went vague with thoughts of Euphorbia and that little house on Magpie Lane, where Vorkael would sometimes come to visit. The thought of him brought a sudden sting to her eyes, so she drank more to distract herself from it.

    "Well, it's you know – healing stuff. Like if you had bone fever I might be able to fight it off myself. But I could look at your arm, you know. When I'm out of the bath." She let out a nervous titter. "See if I can speed things up? I don't know what kind of help they gave you when you broke it but it doesn't hurt to have someone else's opinion." She hesitated, a whirring of anxiety building in her chest. To diminish it, she said, "It's up to you of course."
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    Phaedrus
    Member Avatar
    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    He listened to her meandering, only half-listening, but a smile did brush his lips.

    It was refreshing to hear of the lives of people who simply didn’t live in the hustle and bustle and inanity of Madrid’s upper circles; people with more problems than what dress to wear at a gala? or their rich husband’s poppy addiction. It was like a gleaming tooth rotted to its root on the inside, a buboe of putrefaction hidden under pretty red silks.

    It made him remember the sort of people he used to take company with on the roads: interesting people, real people, from goat farmers to sorcerers to mummers and humble innkeepers. Somehow he’d wandered all the way down here and gotten stagnant, bloated with pretty screen dividers, and sun-somethings in the hallways and more cutlery than a single man could ever use.

    “You’ve traveled much, then?” Obvious enough. Phaedrus shifted with a rustle of clothes. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to Fairin, actually, well… hm…” perhaps a boat? Crossing through Morrim? No, he hadn’t, come to think on it. “I traveled much when I was younger—“ Younger? Pah! What a word! When he thought about it, it wasn’t so terribly long ago, was it? “—though I stuck to the Kaadian most times. I think I’d puke myself to nothing if I went on a ship. I’ve always wanted to go to Angkar, but all that open water…” A shiver wracked his spine. No, no, don’t wander over there. His thoughts kept circling like vultures, closing in on the very spot he’d just escaped.

    Sea-salt, wind, sea-calls, pain…

    Healing stuff, she said. Healing stuff. He tried to reel himself back, blinking, and massaged the stiff bandages at his elbow, driven mad by the itch of it. “Fight it off yourself? How do you mean?” He leaned forward and drained another cup of wine, exhaling as the familiar buzz settled in him. “You must be very talented indeed.”

    He hoped she smiled behind the screen. Phaedrus leaned forward to pour himself more, stopping mid-stretch. He was glad for the barrier, so she didn’t see the splash of anxiety on his face.

    “Um.” He swallowed, clearing his throat. “Ha.” He blinked overmuch, fingers sliding back from the wine. Shame twisted him, curdling his features. “Well… that’s just it… I don’t remember very much.” I was drunk as shite. “Just pieces… the healer was very cross, I remember that. And I remember—“ bile almost hurled itself into his mouth.

    “My hand was… uh…” Had he imagined it? Tide lapping the beach. A strange, crackling presence—a man?—and then he looked down and—

    Phaedrus hiccuped, putting his fist to his lips. He grimaced. “It was… backwards. On… backwards. Maybe I… misremember.” A shiver went down his spine. He considered, then. It hurt terribly. And he hadn’t gone to any healer in Madrid out of terror that they might discover his unnaturalness. So he simply sat and suffered and tried to sleep and suffered and prodded at the sagging bandages that wanted changing, ignoring it.

    “It does hurt quite a bit,” the necromancer admitted in a small voice. “If you’ve anything for pain and… if you’d like to take a look… I don’t see why not.”

    He reached for the wine.
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