The Pride’s Fall
11 Autumn 218
Talith
Thirteen years of age, Talith slowly closes his bedroom door behind him. Eyes now filled with tears, yet void of life, and body full of aches, the boy drags his feet across the wooden floor before he finds himself sitting on the bed. It’s when he attempts to hoist his leg onto the bed that it catches onto one of the carved out slits along the wooden bedpost. Talith examined his leg to make sure it wasn’t bleeding. Luckily, it was just a tiny scrape on the surface of his flesh. He then allowed his body to fall limp, his torso bobbing up and down ever so subtly from the creaking springs in his mattress. It was only a few moments of silence before Talith caught a slither of white unearthing itself from a slit in the foot of the bed. It continued to slither its way past his fingers and up his sleeve before finally coming to a resting point on his chest. It was a tiny, white as snow baby snake spanning roughly eight inches in length. She had red eyes and a black tongue that would occasionally flicker in and out. Her name was Tsurugi.
Talith’s eyes came to life with excitement as he twirled his finger above her head in a spinning motion. Tsurugi’s head followed his finger upwards before he slowly spun his finger back down with Tsurugi responding by coiling herself back onto Talith’s chest. “Hi, Tsurugi!”. Though beaming with excitement, he made sure to keep his voice down. Tsurugi pointed her head in his direction before flickering her tongue. The boy then began to speak in a high pitched voice, pretending that Tsurugi could speak back to him.
“Hey, Talith!” Tsurugi said. “Ya know, I’m going to die if you don’t start giving me warning before you plop down on the bed like that.”
Talith let out a chuckle. “Oh, sorry! I’m still not entirely used to having friends sleep over so sometimes I forget you’re in there.
“It’s okay! I was just born not all that long ago so if I die, it’s not like I have a lot of memories to lose!”
Another chuckle from the boy, “You’re a funny snake, you know that?”
“Yup! That’s what my mom always told me too!”
“Really? What was your mom like, Tsurugi?” Talith asked.
“Oh, umm…well let’s see. Oh yeah! She was a red snake, a huge HUUUUGEEE red snake, and she had white eyes!”
Talith hoisted his head up as far as he could manage. “Whoaaaa! Okay, so like how huge was she??”
Tsurugi slithered her way up the side of the boy’s face before settling on the crown of his head.
“BIG!” Tsurugi said, “Like really big! Like the size of a mountain! Or…no wait! She was like—no… umm—wait, yeah! Yeah, yeah she was like a mountain and she umm—she had arms—or well— …wait, no, yeah—yeah in fact, she was a dragon!”
“No way! Seriously?? Wait, does that mean that you’re gonna be a dragon when you grow up too!?” Talith asked.
“Probably!” She craned her head over Talith’s eyebrow.
“Tsurugi, this means we could fly around and stuff! I could be like a hero on a dragon and you would be like my trusty steed - or well, my sidekick! And the we could even—”
“Hey, I’m hungry,” Tsurugi interrupted.
“Oh, did you already eat the rat foot I found you with?”
“Yeah, seems like it! I probably ate it all like yesterday so I’m gonna die soon if you don’t feed me, but it’s okay!”
“Well you can’t be a dragon if you die.”
“I suppose that’s true!” The snake had seemed to come to that important realization.
Talith let his head rest back on his pillow as Tsurugi slithered off to the side when Talith turned to face his friend.
“We should probably get some sleep, Tsurugi. I’ll find something for you to eat tomorrow.”
Tsurugi recoiled just a bit as Talith’s words breathed over her.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’m feeling kind sleepy too, but tomorrow, we can—”
Hissssssss Talith immediately felt an unpleasant stinging sensation on his nose before instinctively recoiling away from the pain and sitting up in his bed. Tears welled in his eyes as Tsurugi slithered off back into the slit of the mattress. The snake had struck him.
“Oww” Talith sniffed, “Why did you bite me?”
“I’m sorry.” Tsurugi said from inside the mattress as her high pitched voice began to fade in and out of Talith’s normal pitch, “I didn’t mean to.”
The boy held the bridge of his nose. Sure enough, there was blood. “It’s okay. It’s just, mom and dad are going to be mad when they see it.” Talith’s voice began to falter into broken words interrupted by tears.
“Your mom and dad don’t seem like nice people.” The snake said.
“What are you saying? They love me just like a parent should.” The boy responded.
“Yeah, you’re probably right!” A moment of silence passed before Tsurugi continued. “Maybe you should kill them and bury their hearts in the dirt though!”
More moments of silence followed as blood coursed down Talith’s nose.
“Hey, Tsurugi…”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have venom?”
“I dunno! Probably! Well - no, probably not!”
“Oh, that’s good then probably.” Talith said, “Hey, Tsurugi…coil.”
“What?” The snake asked.
The boy continued, “Latch…”
“What are you talking about, Talith?”
“Coil…latch…coil…latch…”
Talith’s mind phased back into the present as he sat in his new quarters, twirling his finger up and down as a rope magically slithered from coiled to latching onto the bedpost.
“Coil…latch….coil…”
Staring at the door across the room, the man had snapped himself out of the past before stopping to command this magic infused rope. Eyes still fixed on the door, he takes in a deep breath before releasing it and speaking to himself.
“Holding on to and dwelling on the past isn’t going to help you, Talith. Stop it.”
And with that, he hoists himself off the bed and makes his way to Sav’s own quarters. Stopping at the entrance, he knocks to make his presence known.
“Hey, Sav. You there?”
Sav
In reply, the door swings open, somewhat less squeaky on its hinges than the door of the study on the Tide’s Song had been. Nurie’te spins and whistles to greet Talith; Aloysius appears to be elsewhere at the moment. Off on the right end of the room, Sav looks up from where she sits hunched over the table. It hasn’t even been a full day since the transfer had been made, and already she’s managed to cover the entire surface of the table she’d gotten from somewhere, papers pinned down by nails and knives to keep them from sliding with the ship’s movement, a set of vials strung from cord piled on the corner, a stack of books on another corner with a candle set atop it. Instead of a flame flickering on the wick of the candle, the entire candle itself glows with a steady white light, casting a small, even illumination over the table, though too weak to extend much beyond it. Four more similar lights dot the walls of the room; on closer inspection, it looks like nails or hooks that are part of the ship have been set alight, creating a dim rhythm of glows that barely cover the room in a crepuscular wash of light. On the wall to her right is a map of Isendel, rivers and mountains and towns plotted out, cryptic notes dotting the surface. Beneath the map on a large barrel sits what looked like a basket of some sort, lined with a fuzzy blanket and a stuffed fish.
Beyond the table, the low crate she uses as a stool, the map, and the hammock in the opposite corner with Nurie’te resting inside of it, the place is astonishingly bare. It looks like it might have been a store room of some sort before she commandeered it, as the dusty floor shows prints where crates and barrels stood for some time, as well as the trails where they had been dragged out of the room, but at the moment nothing else inhabits the room.
“Talith,” she says, half-acknowledgement and greeting, half-reminding herself who people are as she drags herself out of her study. “What is it?”
Talith
Talith steps in, revealing the rope coiled around his shoulder, tightening his loose cotton shirt. He scans the room from the map on the wall to Sav sitting in the middle of everything. She looked like an absolute genius surrounded with various papers, vials, and other trinkets that Talith hadn’t really ever cared to learn about. The funny part about it though, is that the setup before him sort of reminded him of a director orchestrating her actors and Nurie’te…probably the stage manager. Talith returned a whistle back to Nurie’te as he approached Sav at her desk.
“Well, you definitely seem busy. I hope I’m not interrupting.” Talith took a moment to contemplate as he fiddled with his braid a bit. “Or well, actually that’s a lie. I would have still knocked even if I thought you were busy, if I’m being honest.” He stops just before her desk and scans over the various papers in front of him as he awaits her response.
Sav
Nurie’te tips himself up out of the hammock and floats over to the two, the blue glow of his eye widening a little in curiosity as he describes a slow lazy circle around them. His light tints the papers on the desk to a cooler hue, the diagrams and notes no more comprehensible in his light than in the white glow of the candle - some written in an angular glyphic system that look like those in the aasimar tetrahedron in the mountains, some written in Isendelian but with the letters arranged in a nonsense way, some with recognizable words but strung together in sentences that make no coherent statement as a whole. The one exception is a paper that looks like a shopping list - 3 onions, 10 apples, 3 ft of twine; 2 lbs of gold; gemstones (uncut best); 5oz Karakhan incense; pennyroyal, feverfew, sage; saltpetre, alum, vitriols, lead. On top of the list, acting as a paperweight, is a smaller stone tetrahedron that looks much like half of Nurie’te, a white stone pyramid inlaid with angular gold lines.
Sav ignores Nurie’te’s antics to respond to Talith with a blunt but not unkind, “Ye are, but interruptin’s more likely than no if I’m in here.” The delivery is more of someone just stating a fact rather than chiding him—warning, study in progress. She straightens from her hunch, leaving her hands resting on the two books spread before her—one a neat, perfect-bound book, the other a haphazard mess of stitched-together papers, both showing a similar set of circular glyphs. Her eyes flick to the coil of rope over his shoulder and widen slightly, having forgotten in the furor of everything and the changes in the following day that she’d given that to him. She hasn’t even yet turned her goggles back into their night-sight mode, so it makes sense he’d still have the functioning rope. “There’s no need tae return that, it’d have lost its magic as soon as I drew back its store tae use on somethin’ else.”
Talith
“Oh, I see.” Talith furrowed his brow and gave a subtle nod. “Right, well…I suppose that’s all I came for so I guess I’ll just hold onto it.”
Talith turned and began slowly walking towards the exit. The closer to the door, the slower his pace became. It was an attempt to buy time in order to come up with a reasonable excuse to leave the damned thing. It WAS just a rope and it’s not like he’d never used one before, but for whatever reason, he’d started to associate it with his past and it wasn’t something he wanted in the present with him. Just as he reached the door, he turned around on a dime and quickly paced back to Sav.
His voice carried with it a subtle hint of desperation. “Actually, maybe you SHOULD keep it. I mean think about it, Sav. This rope could save your life if you were to fall into the water!”
He goes to place the rope just in front of her on the desk before realizing that it might be disrespectful to place it in her work. Talith hesitates briefly and then places it over Sav’s head and lets it fall around her neck like a necklace - a big, heavy loose necklace. “Ah, it even matches your aesthetic. It looks great on ye.” Talith hadn’t quite noticed it yet, but Sav’s odd phrases and choice of words had begun to leak into his own vocabulary.
Sav
Sav’s face is a picture of what-is-going-on-here as the hempen coils slither down around her shoulders, thick brows furrowed and the corners of her mouth stretching down in perplexity and surprise. She doesn’t appear to notice the burr creeping into Talith’s voice—perhaps due to the distraction from his odd actions, perhaps just a matter of her dialect not sounding out of place to her ears even when rolling off other tongues.
“Uh. I’ve other options if need be,” she says slowly, eyeing Talith and the ambivalent back-and-forth route he’d taken. A hand rises to rest on one loop of the rope and she glances down at it, then back at him. “Why are ye actin’ weird?”
Talith
Talith pauses for a couple of beats. He really was acting weird and it was pretty obvious, especially if the one he believes to be the weird one of the group asks him why he’s acting weird. Old habits seem to die hard.
“Well…” Talith takes a deep inhale through his nose and lets it leave his lips. Next, he straightens his posture and seemingly collects himself as his demeanor shifts to something between friendly and stern beneath a thick layer of confidence.
“You’re right, Sav, and I apologize for not being more straightforward.” He places a hand on his hip. “To be completely blunt, I am working to not dwell on my past so much and that rope, oddly enough, only seems to remind me of a friend from my past. That said, I have no desire to hold onto it.”
Sav
It’s mildly fascinating to watch the various miens roll across Talith’s face and form, unconscious behaviors giving way to conscious control as he visibly comes to grips with whatever is getting him fashed. She observes it all with pursed lips, folding her arms and rocking back on her crate seat. A light tweak on the Pull between her and the rope, and the rope rises off her shoulders, to outside eyes of its own apparent volition. It settles to the floor next to her crate as she deadpans, “If this is some sortae sex thing I dinnae ken as that I’m the person tae tell this tae. Ye couldae just left it outside ma door.”
Talith
It would have been a lie to say that Sav’s comment didn’t almost cause his face to turn red, but even still, he manages to keep his demeanor before placing both hands on the edge of the desk and lowering himself eye level with Sav.
He allows a deadpan expression to display across his face as well to match Savs’. “Firstly, I still don’t know what ‘ken’ means. Secondly, if this were a sex thing, I would go to - Well, it doesn’t matter because it’s not a sex thing. Thirdly, you shouldn’t be talking like that. Aren’t you like still a child basically?” Fully aware that that’s no longer the case, he allows an amused smile to slip out. “Do you want me to tell your mother what you just said? Cause I will.” Talith does his best to not let a snort escape his lips.
Sav
“Firstly,” she imitates his accent, badly, holding up a finger, “it means ‘know,’ in villager countryfolk talk.” She throws in an eyeroll and a ghost of a superior smirk.
“Secondly,” a second finger, “I’m surprised ye’d shy away from sayin’ who ye’d tak it tae, wi’ the two o’ ye bussin’ away whene’er I round a corner, seems like—” It suddenly dawns on her that the space she’s chosen, at the aft end of the ship, is right below the captain’s cabin. Also known as the cabin that Astarael and Talith will be sharing. In the midst of her good-humored ribbing, her face flares red, her dark skin turning even darker as she glances up at the ceiling and her tongue stumbles to a dead stop. Oh, Torch burn it. She’s going to have to look into something she can cobble together to muffle sound. Or maybe just move to that largest space at the front of the hull, despite it being right next to the common quarters and rather larger than her needs.
A few different responses flit through her head to the last comment. “My mum’s deid” is usually a good one to shut down folks’ blether, but so’s his—and she’s the one who’d burned the last scrap of his mother’s body, to boot. If she stops talking now it’ll become even more obvious than it already is that she got flustered by something, though, so she scrapes together, “If I’m a child an’ still the smartest one here, that doesnae say much about the rest o’ ye.”
Talith
Sav had Talith on the ropes. It’s true that she’s undoubtedly one of the most intelligent of the group if not THE most intelligent. She has a point, what did it say about the rest of the group? His ‘child’ jab certainly backfired, but there was something in her actions that Talith managed to catch. Her glance upward took a moment for Talith to decipher, but the red that stretched across her face confirmed it and he now had it all figured out.
“Okay, I admit it, you’re smart and all jokes aside, you’re not actually a child. That said, I might not be the smartest, but I do have my moments.” A devious grin spreads across Talith’s face. “I guess that since you’re not a child, I really CAN say who I would go to for a conversation about sex.” Talith looks up to the ceiling above. “It would be Astarael. And on that note, maybe I will be needing that rope tonight. Yeah, ya know we just fought a hard battle not all that long ago, so maybe tonight would be a good night for Astarael and I to celebrate being alive.”
He extends a hand outward towards Sav, a devious grin still displays across his face. “So whaddya say? Will you still let me hold onto that rope?”
Sav
She wouldn’t have thought that she could get any redder, but turns out she’s very wrong about that. Clapping her hands over her ears, she reflexively makes the far wall’s Pull on Talith increase dramatically; for him, the sensation would be akin to his back suddenly becoming down, and he’d fall backward away from her desk if he doesn’t adjust quickly enough to brace against the force urging him back.
Regardless of movement or lack thereof, she then snatches up the rope and, with a quick thought, strips the extra Stuff from it that animates it. Hurling it at Talith, she squeals, “Ye can ha’ it so long as ye haud yer wheesht an cease giein’ me th’ boak, ya bletherin’ bawbag, an’ much guid ‘twill dae ye noo!” In her mortification her dialect thickens, becoming nigh-indecipherable. She slaps her hands over her face to conceal—ineffectively—the blush that suffuses her entire body, then a moment later peeps out from between her fingers to check if he has in fact taken it and held his wheesht.
It would appear, on this particular subject, that she can dish it but can’t take it.
Talith
WHOOSH
Talith is sent flying backwards as if he were falling down into a pit. Did he trip on something? Somehow, he had managed to lose his balance and was now felt as though there was some unseen, large hole behind him to fall into before gravity redirected him towards the ground. Almost as if trying to mimic a cat, Talith instinctively rotates his body in an attempt to brace for impact before hitting the floor. However, the change of gravity made it even more difficult to maintain his own axis and it was too little too late as it was the floor that seemed to want to acquaint itself with his face sooner rather than later.
CRASHHHH
Talith’s face decided to take the initial impact of the fall as the rest of his body trailed after. Following suit was a rope, which now loosely draped over and beneath his head and torso as he wrestled himself to lay on his back. He plucked a splinter from the bridge of his nose leaving only a tiny dot of blood. Without even allowing himself a moment to contemplate, instinctive words left his lips. “Oww.” He rubbed his nose. “What did you do that for?”
Talith looked up from his awkward position only to see an upside down Sav peeping through her fingers. A beat lingers in the air before Talith bursts in a fit of laughter. He couldn’t help himself. From Sav’s own remarks to his and now to his awkward position on the floor while Sav peaked out to see what she had done - the sequence of actions from them both was so odd that it quickly felt comical.
Through gaps in his laughter, he managed to get out a short sentence, “You tripped me with your magic, Sav!” And Talith only continued to laugh while lying face up.
Sav
Her hands slide down to the bridge of her nose, then drop from her face entirely as Talith begins to laugh, her shoulders relaxing. She’s still blushing furiously, lips tugging downward in embarrassment, but one corner of her mouth begins to quirk upward as he continues to laugh. “Ye were bein’ a numpty an’ needed a skelpit lug, so’s I gied it t’ ye, is what,” she retorts. “Int my fault ye cannae keep yer feet.”
Nurie’te swoops over to hover curiously over Talith, the blue eye drifting downward to look at him. Sav waves the construct aside as she rises to offer him a hand up, begrudgingly gracious to a downed foe. The rope lifts again with a few more tweaks of her mind, rising to coil neatly in blanket-nest on the barrel like some more nesting material. “I dinnae need a blow-by-blow accountin’ on what ye do in your chambers,” she says, voice still grouchy, face fading a little but still red, if not quite beet-like any more. “Just gie me at least some peace when I’m tryin’ tae sleep, aye.”
Talith
With the help of Sav, Talith pulls himself up to his feet as his fit of laughter dies down, but a smile remains on his face. “Aye.” This time, the word was intentional. “I promise to not actually do… ’that’. I was just throwing a friendly jab at you when I said that, I didn’t really mean it. Though, I suppose I have a bad habit of taking it too far sometimes.” He looks to the floor where he landed and then back at Sav again before taking a finger to scratch his chin. “Well, I suppose we both kinda did that time.”
Talith holds up a hand and gives a subtle wave to say goodbye. “Anyways, I suppose that’s all I came for—to return the rope, so I guess I’ll take my leave now.” He doesn’t even complete a full turn before a feeling of security washes over him and with it, a desire to speak to Sav about his past. Maybe it was because this visit had been more entertaining than he had expected, but he now felt as though he were speaking to one of the friends that he had grown up with in Aelorean’s Crossing. Talith now genuinely and truthfully came to view Sav in the same way that he viewed the companions he had grown up with. And so, without even considering whether or not Sav wanted to continue conversing, his voice, tone, and words connected to his past in a subconscious attempt to connect with his friend. It sounded like a complete contrast to the laughing fit he had just finished quelling.
“Tsurugi,” he said. “That was the name of my snake—my friend.” Talith took a few paces towards the map on the wall and simply gazed at it as though it were a piece of art.
“When I was growing up at home, Tsurugi was the only friend that was there to comfort me each night after my many trips to Hell and back. She was one of the main reasons I didn’t completely lose my mind back then.” The corner of his mouth pushed to a subtle smile as he remembered. “She started out small, but she grew. Every night, she would lay on my chest, lick my wounds—” He chuckled. “—as odd a thing as that is for a snake to do, and she even learned how to do tricks, believe it or not. She grew to be about two and a half feet long, had red eyes, a black tongue, and her scales were whiter than the crystalized snow that covers the mountain tops. My parents couldn’t find out that I had her, and so she mostly stayed in my mattress or she would hide in my shirt so I could sneak her out of the house with me.
“Oh, we would go out to the woods sometimes with some of the kids from Aelorean’s Crossing just to find a dead rat or bird or really anything that she would eat. Sometimes, when I would fail to find anything, she would just slither out of my sleeve and roam the woods to find her own meal and let me tell you—” Talith turns from the map to face Sav and holds up a finger. “There were times that she would slither off and wouldn’t return for days! Every single time, I would worry that something might have happened to her or that she found some new friend or any scenario that would point to her never returning, but she always did—she always came back eventually.”
Talith places his hands on his hips and shifts his weight to favor his right leg. “When the Swans attacked our town, Roux and I had gotten ourselves separated from the rest of our friends. He and I ran into a soldier and needless to say, we were about to die. Roux had been badly wounded and the Swan soldier had me by the scruff of my shirt, his blade pointed at my throat.”
Talith’s eyes drift just off to the right of Sav, his eyes turn a hint of red at the corners as they slightly begin to glaze from tears threatening to emerge. It was as though he were watching the past events displayed somewhere past where Sav stood. His voice ever so subtly cracks while his lips reveal a subtle smile, reminiscent of a soldier telling the story of a lost hero who fell in battle. He continues.
“Lightning fast, Tsurugi darted out of my sleeve and caught the bastard in his eye. I remember seeing the muscles in her body tighten, holding herself aloft by the hooks she had driven into the Swan. She was fierce and she gave every bit—every ounce of strength she had to hold him off. I remember hearing the soldier scream in pain and agony. Got ’em good she did—got ’em real good.
“And like the terrified child that I was back then…” In one quick motion, his eyes still watching the scene replay in front of him, he briefly brings his hand up off his hip and immediately lets it drop, slapping against the side of his thigh. “I took Roux and fled. It didn’t occur to me that Tsurugi would ever—could ever die. But, she did. Tsurugi, a snake that most wouldn’t expect to be in its nature to protect a child, gave her life to protect me.”
Talith lingers in the moment for a few beats, his posture unwavering, before he comes back to the present. He looks back to Sav and then proceeds to cup a hand over his mouth and rubs it down his chin before clearing his throat. “Anyways, as melodramatic as it sounds, for whatever reason, that rope had somehow started reminding me of the tricks that Tsurugi would do and that in turn kept reminding me of her death.” He holds up his palm. “But I’m over it now, I really am. It’s just… sometimes it still comes back to nag at me—the death of a friend, ya know?”
He lets his head slightly bob in a nodding motion as his eyes drift to some random object in the room.
Sav
“Oi, what did I just say—I dinnae need tae ken what ye get up tae or no. Naught wrong wi’ rope but it ent none ae my business,” Sav disclaims, throwing up her hands. Assuming the visit to be over, she’s already started to move back toward her crate seat when Talith turns right around and begins to talk again. Caught in mid-move, she dithers awkwardly between standing where she is and sitting back down, and compromises by leaning her hip against the edge of the table.
Folding her arms, she watches Talith pace past her toward the map on the wall and speak to it as he relates this story from his past. Her initial posture is one of stiff discomfort, the confusion of the socially awkward on what sort of signal had occurred to keep the conversation going, why is this happening. As he goes on about his childhood friend—the sort of childhood friend she can understand, the kind who didn’t speak or jeer but offered comfort and silent acceptance in a tiny form—her eyes soften, her posture following suit as her arms relax and fall to rest on the desk.
At the threatening gleam of tears, she tenses up slightly with the beginnings of panic at the unexpected emotion, uncertain of the best way to respond. Her mind casts back to the examples she’s seen of what to do; Astarael has shown her compassion in similar moments of vulnerability, and so too has Talith himself. She’s given it to others herself when the impulse struck and she didn’t overthink it. Pushing past her hesitancy, she stands and reaches out to clasp his shoulder, saying nothing and letting him continue with the memory.
“She sounds like a right braw wee friend,” she says after he trails off and goes quiet. “Had a few ae those in my day, though doesnae sound like my wee rattie pals were quite so well-trained nor so brave as your lass. Naught wrong wi’ rememberin’ an auld friend when aught happens to remind ye with its similarity. E’en if that happens to be a magical rope.” The last sentence shades a little wry—it’s easy to see how the likeness would call up memories, but it’s definitely not a thing she would have ever thought to come out of the hasty decision to pass Talith a rope that might help him climb out of the river. Life is funny and replete with hidden thorns.
Releasing his shoulder, she tilts her head to the side. “If it’s her death ye keep reflectin’ on, have ye any good stories from her life, that’d keep ye from reachin’ past tae the end o’ her life?” As she says this, she turns around to grab a pencil and a spare sheet of paper. Tapping the sheet with the pencil, an image bleeds out from the tip of the lead, swirling down and almost seeming to soak through the wood pulp until it fills in the image of a lithe serpent, pale against a dark graphite background, about the size and form of a grass snake and coiled up in a curious, alert position with her dark tongue flickering out, tasting the air.
Talith
It was nice. Talith had welcomed the friendly hand on his shoulder. Gestures such as these only reminded him that oftentimes, words were not enough to convey thoughts and emotion. Whereas the tongue can lie, it’s a physical touch or a connection through the eyes that most often expresses truth. This truth that his friend had given him now felt as though she had taken a weight off of him that he hadn’t realized existed in the first place.
Upon Sav releasing, Talith lingers a moment a bit longer before he begins to loosen his lips to speak. Sav still wasn’t entirely finished yet as her words reverberated through his mind before he could even grasp the sentence.
If it’s her death ye keep reflectin’ on, have ye any good stories from her life, that’d keep ye from reachin’ past tae the end o’ her life?
She was right. Though she might not have said it exactly this way, she had a point. Talith found that it was true—his memories of Tsurugi always reminding him of her death. This wasn’t how it should be. It wasn’t so much the past that Talith didn’t need to dwell on, but rather how he allowed the past to manifest in his own heart. The words continue to ferment as Sav taps her pencil onto the paper, bringing the lead to life as it takes the shape of Talith’s old friend, Tsurugi.
Grasping what it is that Sav intends to do, his voice softens and a smile gleams from his eyes. “Yes, I do.”
Talith leans back a bit on the desk with his hands supporting his weight on either side. “There was one autumn evening when I decided to go out to the fields outside of Aelorean’s Crossing with Tsurugi. I remember her loosely coiling around my neck as we watched the grass carry ripples of the wind. The trees in the short distance seemed to dance and sing the song of the breeze as leaves twirled their way past and around us. I even remember the smell of cooked pork mixed with pine that likely found its way to us from the trees and the town.
Naturally, it wasn’t long before I found myself sitting on the ground to watch the sunset. It was so gorgeous, Sav. Tsurugi craned her neck up as birds soared and chirped overhead. And when I watched her reaching up from my shoulder, she seemed to glow. The red and orange highlight of the setting sun caused her scales to shimmer. Her snow white color had taken on the colors of the sunset, but it wasn’t even that which made her glow. It was a feeling. She seemed so happy in that moment to feel the breeze, the warmth of the sun, to have the company of a friend… Yeah, her glow was apparent inside and out. We were only there sitting for maybe five minutes, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world…”
Sav
As Talith begins reminiscing of happier times with Tsurugi, Sav goes to work with the pencil in the old-fashioned way, tracing over the image magically created just a second ago. As she colors in the dark spaces that define the outside of the snake’s form, she listens to the moment he describes; color starts to slowly bleed into the image she’s retracing, rippling scarlet and orange hues down the paper-brown scales. Grass takes shape around the serpent’s body, contrasting against the bright sunset-tinged scales, rippling in the unseen breeze.
As she completes shading with the pencil, her work appears to affect nothing on the sheet, but she looks at it, nods nevertheless, and puts the pencil down. She extends the sheet toward Talith. “The colors willnae stay,” she warns. “I’ve no color sticks nor paints tae set it down, so in time I’ll be tinkerin wi’ something else an the colors will disappear. But the shapes an shadows will stay, unless ye get the paper wet, of course. I hope ‘twill aid in rememberin’ her in a happier way.”
Talith
Gingerly, he takes the paper and handles it as though it were glass on the verge of shattering. A grin forms across his face until it manifests into an ever so subtle chuckle. Talith then begins to trace his fingertip over the now seemingly frozen in time memory of his friend, Tsurugi.
“This is—” With his eyes still captivated by the image before him, he continues, “Thank you, Sav.”
Sav
She ducks her head and looks to the side, lifting a shoulder in a one-sided shrug. “In’t much.” An uncertain expression crosses her face, or what can be seen of it from her posture, but she takes a breath and forges onward. “… I’m sorry ‘bout burnin your mum’s heart.” She thinks about that for a second, and amends, “Nay, that’s not right—I’m not truly sorry about that so I shouldnae say such. But I’m sorry for tellin’ ye in such a manner.” She’d had her reasons for doing so, of course; that her worries proved unfounded did not erase the impact her actions had had, though. She might not change what she’d done, were she in the same position knowing the same information she’d had then, but she could express her regret for giving more to deal with to someone who’d just been through a lot.
Talith
He holds up a hand. “The gesture is appreciated, but now it’s even more appreciated knowing that you’re not sorry. I understand now how it might have looked or seemed…especially with the given circumstances.”
Talith pauses and proceeds to click his tongue. “I was a messed up kid; I can admit to that, and I realize now that what didn’t even register to me as odd or concerning to others, specifically my friends, was a product of that messed up kid. I can’t say that I am entirely a different person than what I used to be, but I am learning and I am allowing myself to adapt to new light that’s been shed as a result.”
He thumps the desk a couple of times. “I guess what I’m saying is that I’m glad that you got rid of the heart.”
Sav
Sav blinks, reviews her words, and has the grace to cringe slightly as she realizes how absurd it is to apologize for something, then take it back a second later. But it was the truth, so she couldn’t have lied about it. On the other hand, she could have probably not said it at all, really. On the invisible magic hand, it does seem like he holds no ill will toward either the tactless way she’d put it or the action itself. A little relieved, she nods and says, “I really figured there was more tae it than human attachment. I’m… glad there was naught else other’n that.”
She smiles a little and says, “I think most of us were messed up weans i’ one way or t’other, e’en if your childhood was—” She searches for a word. “—the most so.” She doesn’t know the specifics, but she’s heard whispers and pieced together clues from what’s dropped in their encounters with the Suffering and his childhood friends’ reactions. “Perhaps no better place t’be a weird one than amidst a passel ae weirdin’ ones, aye? An’ learnin’—if not normality—at least how t’ be ye.” Her smile widens, eyes crinkling at the corners as she adds, “E’en if that ‘how’ includes bein’ a numpty, betimes.”
Talith
”numpty bedtimes…”
Talith hadn’t the faintest idea what that meant. After a moment of thought, he realizes that must be her way of saying that it’s her bedtime. After letting out a forced yawn, Talith says, “Well it’s getting kind of late so I guess I should get some sleep.”
Talith turns and heads to the exit. Without stopping, he continues “Thanks for listening. And also, I’m glad to be part of the weirdo group.” And with that, Talith closes the door behind him.
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S12 E52 - PlanningNext
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