Mid Spring, Year 17 of the reign of Emperor Fiederis
Morian leaned over her twin's shoulder and stared down at the dye-cards that he was holding. Behind them, the fountain splashed gently in the midmorning quiet -- too early for most children to be free of lessons, and too late for the morning market. Their heels thumped against the cool stone of the fountain with each restless swing of their legs.
"I just can't see the difference!" She groaned. "Why's dad keep saying there is one?"
They had escaped the house with just a promise to study the dye-cards, something about how everything looked different under the sun. She wanted to run, to use this brief moment of respite from their father's strict lessons to explore, but...
But if they just abandoned the task set before them, then their father would know, and then he wouldn't let them free again! Not until they were much older, anyway, and that wasn't fun!
"I... I really don't know," Beirin hesitantly answered. He fiddled with the cards, shifting them around as if an answer would miraculously appear. "They're both green, like tree leaves."
"The one in your right hand will fade before a year's out," a girl's voice interrupted them.
Morian and Beirin jumped, both of them taken by surprise.
A girl with messy black hair stood in front of them, dressed in the pale blue of a bardic trainee from the College. She had a small lute slung over her back, and a rolled up hide in her left hand.
Two boys hovered just behind her -- Morian was a bit surprised that neither of the boys wore the bardic trainee outfit, since they were clearly friends with the girl. The boths were clearly twins, with their nearly identical appearances and heights -- in fact, the only difference she could see was that one had slightly darker red hair than the other.
"What do you mean?" Beirin eventually responded, after the two groups had finished sizing each other up. "What's a baby bard know about dyeing?"
"Ah," a faint blush covered the other girl's cheeks. "S-sorry for interrupting you. It's just, you asked your question and I recognized the color, and last week Bard Laiwerd was discussing dyes--"
Morian scoffed. "So you think you know about dyes just 'cause you listened to a lecture?"
The girl frowned, her eyes narrowing in anger. "No. But I know enough to recognize the brown edges around the green patch on the card in your right hand."
Morian exchanged a glance with Beirin, then both of them examined the card again. There was a brown border around the dyed patch, and a closer look at the other card showed none.
"So, a cleaner dye?" Beirin murmurred, as he tilted the card again.
Morian hummed. "Less bleeding effect -- maybe that means the one with the brown is less colorfast?"
"Wait, look." He tilted the card so that they were looking across the surface, instead of directly at it. "See the way the sun reflects off of it?"
"It's browner like that," she agreed. "Think that was what dad meant? About things looking different under the sun?"
They exchanged another glance, silently speaking between themselves.
Beirin sighed and grudgingly nodded at the girl. "Thanks. We've been trying to figure it out for a candlemark or so."
She beamed at them. "No problem! I'm Sencia, and the two behind me are Alchany and Lygarde. Alchany's got darker hair than his twin. Who're you?"
Another exchange of glances. This time Morian gave way.
"We're Beirin and Morian," she said, though she didn't indicate who was who.
"Uhm, so I was wondering," Lygarde spoke up, as he looked between the two. "Are you girls or guys?"
"And what happened to your hair?!" Alchany exclaimed. "You both look like you lost a fight with sheers!"
"Morian is a girl and Beirin is a boy," Morian answered a touch evasively.
"And our hair looks just fine!" Beirin shot back. "Mom says boys should have short hair, and girls need long hair, so she's getting both!"
They had not started out trying to confuse people, but they'd learned early on that people tried to separate them if they knew who was who. Something about girls needed to learn to be proper girls, and boys needing to learn a trade -- it was confusing to them. So they made it confusing for other people, by dressing and acting alike, and by never admitting to being one or the other.
The only person they knew who could instantly tell them apart was their father -- something about the shade of their eyes being different.
Alchany backed up a bit, his hands raised in front of him. "Alright, alright, sheesh. So, uh, what're you doing? I mean, I know you're looking at colored cards, but why? That looks really boring. Wouldn't you rather be playing? It's a really nice day out, and we came out because we've got time and our family let us go out and Sencia's only got lessons this afternoon so she'll have to watch the sun a bit more than we will so she's not late, but--"
"Breathe, brother," Lygarde chided with a smile. "So? Will you play with us? Games are always more fun with more people."
"Well..." Beirin glanced at her, then down at the cards in his hands.
Morian shrugged, as she considered it. It wasn't like they hadn't solved what their dad had sent them out to do. And he hadn't told them when to come back...
"We could," she offered. It might be nice to have a larger group, but this was Beirin's day to be the leader, so she left the final decision up to him.
He frowned, then shrugged. "Well, okay, we'll play with you. And we're looking at dye cards 'cause we're going to be dyers when we grow up like dad!"
She accepted the cards from her twin, and tucked them away in her pouch with the rest of the cards that they'd been given over the last year. "He's teaching us to see diff'rences in colors, so we can be good dyers when we grow up!"
"I'm going to be a herbalist like mom, and Lygarde's learning leatherwork!" Alchany started to chatter away, as he darted forward and grabbed each of them by a wrist. "And obviously Sencia's a bard. So do you have any fun games you like to play? We usually just run around and play tag or something, but Sencia's been getting snotty about it--"
"Am not! You're just mad you can't catch me anymore!"
"--so we're trying to think up something new to play," he continued as if Sencia had never interrupted him, as he dragged the two of them across the square and over to a stack of crates. "They usually don't mind if we climb all over this, but we have to be careful not to knock anything over or shift it too much or damage the crates, but that's really hard cause they're all made of melai wood."
"Try not to stub your toe on them," Lygarde broke in dryly, as he pulled himself up the first one then peered over the edge back down at them. "It really hurts."
She met Beirin's gaze, both puzzled and wary -- what had they gotten themselves into with this trio?
Late Summer, Year 18 of the reign of Emperor Fiederis
Fangeris eyed the group of five children thoughtfully, watching as they raced about the fountain and laughed. Two sets of twins and a foreigner, clearly close friends all, though the set of twins with red hair and the outsider girl with black hair did seem to know each other better.
So... childhood friends and the brown haired twins were new to their circle?
He scuffed a bare foot on the smooth cobble of the road. What to do, what to do...
He'd never seen these children before; his parents lived on the other side of the city. But anything was better than being forced to follow the family trade, even if it meant he had to escape to the other side of the city on occasion because his parents were getting to know his normal hide outs. And he really didn't want them to find the old cult complex he'd found a year ago. It was the only thing he could really claim as his, after all, and there were only so many paths out of the city. In the end, even his dull parents would realize that they merely needed to wait at the eastern gate to catch him.
Suddenly, an arm draped over his shoulders, and a much taller frame leaned on his. Startled, he looked up.
One of the red haired twins - the one with darker red hair - grinned brightly down at him. "No need to be shy! We're playing bandits and guards, come on!"
Before he had a chance to protest, Fangeris found himself dragged out from under the overhang and into the square itself.
"I'm Alchany, and that pretender with the lighter red hair is my twin Lygarde," the boy chattered, as he started to point at the other children who had stopped their game and gathered around. "Sencia's our only real girl-"
"Hey!" yelped the brown haired twins at the same time. "Don't we count?"
"No, because one of you's a boy!" Alchany stuck his tongue out at them.
Fangeris eyed the two. Really? One was a girl and the other a boy? He made a noise of disbelief -- he'd never heard of identical twins (because they were, even down to the absurd hairstyle they sported - one side cut down to barely an inch, and the other side left long enough to fall in messy spikes as long as his hand) that were different genders.
The brown haired twins looked at each other, then shrugged.
"I'm Morian," the one on the right said.
"And I'm Beirin," said the other.
"I thought it was the other way around," Lygarde said, as he glanced between the two with narrowed eyes. He then turned his attention to Fangeris. "We really don't try to keep them apart."
"That's right!" Alchany said. "We just call them the Rin twins. Morian's the girl, but we can't really keep track of which claims to be who. So we usually just say names instead'a saying 'him' or 'her', or just use 'them', or Sencia's been taken of calling them 'xem' cause she says that's the only word for him and her in Drokak and everyone uses it to refer to everyone no matter gender--"
"Breathe, Alchany," Sencia chided gently. "Let the poor boy absorb what you've said."
Fangeris warily eyed Alchany for a moment longer, waiting to see if the older boy would start babbling again. When he merely smiled sheepishly and shrugged, Fangeris turned his attention back to Morian and Beirin.
On second look... nope. He still couldn't tell the two apart.
"Which do you prefer?" he asked the two.
They blinked and shared a look of surprise. Had they never been asked that before?
"We like xem," the one on the right said.
"Yeah," agreed the other, "Sencia explained about it, and it's neat. It just means 'person'. "
"So! Who're you?" Morian asked.
Fangeris scuffed his foot on the cobble again. He rather hated his name these days - Fangeris was so easy to mangle into a nickname, and the kids near his home were always calling him 'Fangie' or 'Baby Tooth'. Finally, he replied, "Geris."
"Alright!" Alchany was practically bouncing on his toes. "Come on, let's play! Me'n Lygarde and Geris are the red-headed bandits!"
He didn't even have a moment to understand before Alchany's insistent hand had wrapped around his arm and started to drag him off.
"So we usually make that stack of crates base," Alchany chattered on. "An' the other's've gotta catch us - that archway over there is guard base, and if they catch us we gotta sit down with our backs against the arch until another bandit comes and saves us. Course, we can catch them too, but we usually just poke'em and say 'dead', then they gotta sit on the edge of the fountain for a sixthmark until they can get back in an' they can't help their team by calling out either, cause really what bandit catches a guard anyway?"
"Don't forget that they can 'dead' us too, after we've done it to them three times," Lygarde broke in, voice dry. "And we have to wait a fifthmark, not a sixthmark."
Alchany pouted. "Yeah. It's really unfair!"
"Then... why don't you just catch one and use them as bait?" Fangeris asked, puzzled. It seemed like the better solution to him, especially if the Rin twins were as glued at the hip as they seemed. "Just... catch Sencia and lay an ambush for the twins?"
"Because they're slippery," Lygarde answered. "I can usually 'dead' one or the other, but Alchany can't lay a hand on either of them, and by the time I've gotten one, the other's gotten Sencia free and we're all caught."
"Oh..."
Alchany grinned brightly. "Hey, don't worry about it! Now come on, games about to start again!"
What followed was hours of barely controlled chaos in Fangeris' mind -- the Rin twins really were that slippery, especially the one he was pretty sure was Beirin. Whenever he got close enough to 'dead' xem, the twin would twist away and somehow manage to turn the encounter around so that he was caught instead!
And Sencia... well, Fangeris would never underestimate her again. She was amazingly devious, and set up a trap in their own base that caused all three of them to be caught.
It was great fun, even if they did end up rough-housing next to the fountain at the end, causing all of them to fall in (with only a tiny bit of help from him -- but really, Morian deserved to be pulled in, after xe had toppled him into the fountain first. That Morian had brought Beirin with xem, which caused Alchany to trip, bump into Sencia and topple both of them in, well... that wasn't his fault. And Lygarde jumped in on his own, anyway.)
Yeah, he could get used to these people.
Mid Summer, Year 20 of the reign of Emperor Fiederis
Reveri looked up through her bangs, fingers continuing to deftly stitch the pillow together even as she observed the boy -- as she observed Fangeris-call-me-Geris, as he'd introduced himself the day before -- who had actually stood up for her.
He was restless, constantly glancing out the window he'd long ago claimed as his seat. Even from here she could see that the seam he was sewing was hardly straight -- if she was being generous, she'd call it decorative... but really it looked like a drunkard's path, wobbling all over the seam without rhyme or reason.
"I want to be an adventurer!" he'd proclaimed to her, after he'd beaten the other boy black and blue, all in the name of protecting her from being bullied. "I want to travel the world and see everything. Wouldn't that be so neat?"
His eyes had practically glowed with the strength of his dream, as he'd stared off into the distance. His hands had traced paths through the air, as he excitedly described lands and creatures she'd never even heard of before. A cloth had been wrapped around his left hand, the pale green fabric stained with blood from where he split his knuckles open in defence of her; a cloth that was the project their Master had assigned to him days ago and would demand to see at the end of the day. A project which was now ruined.
"I... I could sew your project for you..." she'd offered, disused voice catching in her throat. She expected him to accept, to demand it -- all in payment for saving her from the other bully. The other bully that had been trying to force her to do his work for him.
"Nah. Master'll be angry, but it's not like he'll get rid of me," came the sour response. He then softened it with a wide, toothy, vulpine grin; inviting her to laugh with him at his misfortune. "Master actually owes my parents his life. He can't get rid of me without my parents say-so. And they want me to be a tailor so badly that they'll never let me go."
And it was true: when they finally returned, there had been yelling and a few thrown objects that Geris had adroitly dodged, but little else. She'd been admonished to 'stay away from that riff-raff' and told to report any problems with bullying to him when they happened, then released to go home.
"I've had enough," Geris calmly said, as he set whatever he was working on aside and stood up. "Come on, Revi, let's go somewhere else!"
Startled at being addressed so directly -- and with a pet name at that! -- she jerked her head up and stared openly. Around them, the other apprentices had paused in their own work, and the stares and whispers were starting.
Geris stood next to her, his hand out in offer to help her up and that vulpine grin stretching across his face again.
Reveri hesitated. Glanced at the others. Looked back up at Geris. At the boy that had stood up for her and then not demanded anything in return. Except perhaps companionship?
His grin didn't waver, nor did his hand.
He had stood up for her.
Her loyalty had been given to him in that instant, she decided, as she set her work aside and clasped his hand. No one else, not even their Master, had said or done anything to help her, and yet this tiny boy -- he was shorter than her, and she was only a bit over four feet tall -- had fought off a bigger and older boy to protect her.
Laughing, Geris led the way to the window and heaved it open. "It's a bit of a climb, but the stones are uneven enough, and I'll be below to catch you if you fall!"
Reveri watched as he scrambled up onto the high sill and then vanished. Breath catching in her throat, she darted up onto the sill as well and leaned out... only to see him clinging like a lizard to the stone wall as he scuttled down with practiced ease. The distance suddenly hit her, and she swallowed uneasily; could she really do this? Could she really climb down this wall to play truant? She wavered, glancing over her shoulder at the others who were unabashedly staring at her. Unlike Geris, she liked sewing, and before this her only dream had been to become a respected seamstriss and to sew the type of grand dresses that the noblewomen wore to parties.
But she remembered his stories the day before. Stories of places and peoples she'd never before heard of. If those were in bardic lays, then what else was out there?
"Don't be afraid, Revi!" Geris' cried, as he stood in the street below and waved up at her. "It looks more difficult than it is, just give it a go!"
Reveri firmed her chin, took a breath, and reached...
The stone was hard under her fingers, the mortar crumbling as she dug fingertips in. Her arms quivered. Fear. Fear-fear-fear. Scramble-reach-slip-grab.
"Hey, hey, it's okay. C'mon Revi, breathe, you're on the ground," Geris' voice broke through her spiralling fear. "You did wonderfully -- I fell further than that the first time I climbed out."
Awkwardly, Reveri unclenched her hands from Geris' shoulders as she finally found her balance. She licked her lips and tilted her head back to stare up at the wall she'd just climbed (partially) down. It seemed... absurdly unmarred by what she had just gone through.
The grin he gave her this time was softer, less vulpine, but it warmed the places in her frozen by fear. When he offered his hand again, she accepted without a second thought.
She'd follow him to the ends of the earth, she silently swore.
"I want to show you a secret," he said softly, as he led her down a twisting path from the store to the outer reaches of the city.
She stared around in fascination, having never been this way before; the houses were made of unpainted wood and thatch, greyed by age and weather, and the cobble streets were narrower and darker. It felt both oppressive and freeing -- so different from the airy streets and painted houses with clay roofs where she lived, or the gigantic streets and stone buildings with stone roofs of the trade district. Children in many-patches clothes raced about in play, or tailed after their parents. The air smelled of dirt and animals -- in the distance she heard a rooster crow, and a flock of pigeons scattered before the rambunctious play of a few children. A pig squealed behind a fence as they moved passed, answered by the tiny cries of piglets.
The city walls soared over her head as they approached one of the great gates, casting huge shadows even in the morning sunlight, shadows that reached far across the green grass of the common land that stood between the last row of houses and the walls. They paused briefly to one side of the gate, and Geris watched the traffic with a practiced eye.
"We're going to slip out with that group right there," Geris told her softly, as he gestured to a group with a wagon. "The guards won't give us a second glance then."
She frowned, puzzled. Did guards normally care about children leaving?
"I might be a bit notorious," Geris answered her silent question sheepishly. "My parents are really strict, and have been pestering the guards a lot lately."
He tugged at her hand, guiding her to fall in step with the wagon and the other people around it. One of the women gave them an amused glance, but no one said anything, and soon they were through the gate and away from the walls.
It was... amazing. She paused at the side of the road and took a moment to just... take everything in. The sky seemed so open, unimpeded by roofs or walls, and the land was dotted with scrubby bushes and tall reeds. In the distance, she could see a dark line -- perhaps the northern forest she'd heard the older apprentices talking about?
Geris smiled. "The land's a bit marshy around here, so there's no cows grazing. Follow carefully, or you might step in a hidden pool."
Reveri nodded, gripping his hand tighter as he led her slowly across the land. The ground squished between her toes, cool mud seeping up and around until her feet were as black as midnight. Errant strands of grass clung to the mud as she kept walking, until her feet looked little different from the ground she was walking on.
When they finally stopped, Reveri looked around curiously. There was nothing about this patch of ground that seemed any different from any other patch, but Geris had dropped her hand and crouched down, fingers probing through the mat of grass until...
Until with a powerful heave, he pulled a trap door open, revealing stairs down into the ground lit by dim glowstones mounted into the stone walls.
Another vulpine grin, all teeth and mischief. "My secret lair!"
He gestured for her to follow, as he led the way down the stairs. When she stepped down until she was on the same stair, Geris moved back up a few steps and reached around to pull the trap door closed again. The dull thud of the lid slamming down echoed through the stairway, eerie and chilling, throwing them into complete darkness but for the dim glowstones.
"Put your hand on the wall and wait a moment for your eyes to adjust," Geris suggested. "The rest of the place is a bit better lit, but I've never been able to get my hands on any new glowstones, so it's all a bit dim."
"We... we can get back out, right?" Reveri asked, her voice trembling faintly.
"Of course we can," he replied. "It's actually easier to open from this side -- just put your shoulder against it and push up."
By this point, her eyes had adjusted enough to see his outline, and they resumed their descent into the darkness. Except it wasn't true darkness -- true to his word, the light started to get brighter as they reached the bottom of the long stairway and entered the first small room. It was bare of everything, except for the handful of glowstones mounted on the walls and casting their pale blue light over everything.
"I haven't really done much but clean some of the rooms up," Geris admitted as he led her through chamber after chamber, some with nothing in them and some with scattered pieces of ancient furniture. "This is actually a huge complex, and I think only the distance to the city and the trap door has kept wildlife from getting in here to lair.
"But it's my place. And all this isn't really what I want to show you," Geris said. "Here, this is it. I think this room is the center of the complex, but I haven't really tried to map the place out."
She stepped into the room behind him, and immediately froze. There was something different about this room, a lingering trace of cold that teased at the very edges of her senses.
It wasn't much different from the other rooms: just barely small enough for the dim light of the glowstones to reach every corner -- except there weren't any corners, it was an oval, with even the floor and the ceiling curved slightly. And in the center rested an arch, so tall it nearly reached the ceiling even with the curve, a deep dark color that she couldn't quite make out in the dim blue light.
"I think it's green," Geris admitted, as he led the way to the arch. "At least, it looks about the same in this light as a green shirt does."
"What... is it?"
He shrugged, looking up at the arch as he rested a hand on one side of it. "Not a clue. Look, it's covered in these weird sigils, so I think whatever group made this complex was trying to do some sort of ritual with it."
Reveri bent closer to the surface of the arch, squinting in the dim light. Geris was right, it was carved with sigils that spiraled around and up the arch, then back down the other side. She'd never seen sigils like them before either -- all sharp angles and smooth curves that ran one into the next.
"I think I've found what they are," Geris said. "I found some old religious texts that were being pitched out, and it almost looks the same. Except this is all written together, and the texts aren't, but it really does look the same."
She accepted the heavy vellum that he handed her, and held it up so the light would actually fall on it. Reveri frowned, looking between the text and the arch, then finally nodded her head. It did look similar to her.
"So, want to help me translate this arch?"
Her hesitation was brief, a bare heartbeat of indecision-fear-reluctance before her loyalty -- and newfound curiousity -- spiked and she gave him a sharp nod.
Geris' bright grin was her answer.