Re: Between Darkness and Light (Altamira)
OoC: As I told you, I'm feeling a little meh about this post, but I wanted to post something, and well...later ones should be better. ^^;;
IC:
I sat on a crate, whistling a song from who-knows-where and swinging my legs in the ocean breeze of the Sereia docks. It wasn’t exactly a pose that bespoke the expected attitude of some mighty warrior prepping for battle; but I’ve never really been one to go around pummeling punching bags, or whatever it is that you’re supposed to do. And, well…the gods knew it’d be the last moment I’d get to take a breather and just sit for a while. So I whistled and sat.
Somewhere beside me, Vargas was fixing some parts of my armor, and possibly taking bits and pieces to use for something later when I wasn’t looking. I knew if there was a long silence, then something that shouldn’t be welded on was being welded on. He’d talked about sticking a scabbard onto the back of the suit before, “incase you a’ need your sword close by, but someone has taken da clothes from you.”
Only Omar would get himself into a situation where someone’s left him with a sword, but thought it was a wise move on their part to take away his socks. He’d probably be more deadly with the socks, actually.
“Goin’ to fight, Signora?” he asked me after a little while, his head popping up from behind his forge. Things were apparently going well with the mythril.
“Hah, yeah, you’d be the one to recognize it, Omar. Got some work to take care of.”
He came out, wiping some metal drips from his hands and hammer, but he wasn’t returning my smile. The big face looked worried. “I thought you said the life coach person, he a’ didn’t want you to fight anymore?”
“Well, the bloody life coach can stick it up his…”
“…Yes, Signora?”
His wiping had paused, and he stood, staring intently, waiting for me to finish.
I shook my head. “Ah, sorry. Last time I started to say something like that, I had a police officer writing it verbatim for the king. They were…a lot of censored letters.”
There was a thoughtful nod, and then the big hands went back to work cleaning tools and polishing metal.
“You a’ remember you’re not supposed to kill in this country no longer, Signora?” he said after a moment.
“Not going to be in this country, Omar,” I said.
I didn’t deny something there—and it always worried Omar when I was intentionally ambiguous. He generally dealt in certainties; metal on metal, fire on steel, it worked or it didn’t work, it cut or it didn’t cut. When you left him with something that could be interpreted in more ways than one; when the metal could be gold, or reddish gold; you started to worry him.
“Cadenza…you didn’t deny that you were going to…” he started.
He still had my armor lying in those big, skull-crushing hands. It seemed best not to mess with his head. “…Not going with the intent to kill either, Omar,” I assured him. “Dionne was the last one of those. At least for a while. You’d recognize it if I were, wouldn’t you?”
“Das a’ right.”
He smiled, and went back to finishing his work. I went back to lazily kicking my legs.
Sometime later, after I had fallen asleep, I noticed that the sun had been blocked out. The shadow above me had a suspiciously familiar dragon-shape. There was no questioning who it was.
“Avello.”
“Ragh?”
I opened my eyes. There were black holes; which soon resolved into flaring nostrils; which I eventually realized meant that the bag of scales was about five inches from my face. A distance that was about four feet too close for my liking. Add in another one or two feet if he had been eating fish.
He breathed, and mentally, I added in another two feet to the distance of preferred personal space I wasn’t getting.
“What?” I asked him, sitting up and shoving his bulk away. He whined.
“You want to come along? Well, I wasn’t going to leave you here anyway. Go stand by the door I made earlier and we’ll go soon.”
“Gragh,” he said, and he fluttered away to the little door to the Dome on the side of a bar. Some bags were left outside the door which told me that there were going to be quite a few lost old ladies I was going to have to round up and direct back home later.
I heard boots coming up behind me, and as I swung off the crates I was perched on, Vargas handed me my suit of mythril.
“All repaired, Signora. Ready for…a’ whatever, eh? Boa sorte.”
“Ah, yeah…gracias. See you later, Omar, and ah…if you see anyone coming to look for their lost abuelas or anything, tell them they’ll be back in a couple of days. Don’t try explaining.”
“All right, my friend.”
Checking to make sure there wasn’t a scabbard welded somewhere, I took my armor in hand and followed Avello through the door to the Dome. Green Hair was probably waiting.
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As I strolled in, there was the general murmur there always is when I enter the Dome. Whispers came from scared messengers I’ve sent to the nurses more times than they can now remember (it tends to be a head injury that they’re sent down there with); from cocky teachers who give you that cold look of acknowledgement you’re supposed to feel lucky to even get as their lackeys fumble at their feet; and from a whole army of students ranging from the terminally annoying (I say terminally annoying because that’s usually the reason these idiots drop out of the Dome so quickly—they realize they’re presented with the choice of either dropping out of the place, or dropping out of life when they push someone too far with their antics and are sliced up for it) to the hopelessly weird (this I can’t even begin to elaborate on.) There were thousands of topics they could have been discussing this time, but I felt like I had a pretty good idea about what that day’s most popular subject was.
Zorlo, was, after all, pretty hard to miss with that battle-ready grin of his and his sword in hand. The monkey perched on his shoulder drew quite a few looks too.
Avello lumbered up beside me and shot the animal a glare.
“You’re ready, it seems?” I said.