After Session 19 Season 6 Prax at cold and lonely Sun Dome outpost
The sun god sets over Prax. Yelm slips away, and the hard cold of the night begins to hit. Berra looks to the door. “I’m gonna go out an’ patrol, just see what it’s like.”
Maalira nods. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“You’ll get cold,” Berra points out, which is not a no, but is a warning.
“I’m a healer,” Maalira says, deadpan.
“Well, yeah. I want you warm but I want you there, too.” Berra pauses before adding, “It’s really boring.”
“I’ll come along, and then we can build up the fire and have a hot drink afterwards.”
Berra nods, and lets Maalira take care of banking the flames, then slips out into the night.
Maalira wraps her cloak tightly around her and sticks close to Berra’s heels.
The night is cold, horribly so, and the last of the light is fading. Berra walks slowly, looking around, checking on all of the ways through which someone might creep up. As she does so, faint light starts to pick out her padding, under her leather armour. Her wool-wound legs and her trousers are also still clear, somehow.
“Berra?” Maalira breathes the name as quietly as she can. “Are you glowing?”
Berra turns around, and then looks up, and says quietly, “No.” She looks a little more pink than she should, for the Red Moon is far away. The little Humakti stares up at the sky beyond Maalira.1bleysrex: (( Do me an Area Lore (Prax) at 2x your skill? ))amphelise: ((Gimme a second, got to open my player sheet on my phone…))amphelise: ((Special))
Inora’s cloak is spread out on the sky, a magnificent sprawl of green and red with the glimmers of gemstones within. Elsewhere, she is the bringer of blizzards, they say, but in Prax she has always been a goddess of fertility, for the snow falls and melts, falls and melts, and keeps the earth from becoming dust. This cloak, worn over her gown of snow, is one of the reasons she is called the most beautiful of goddesses. The northern sky burns and drips with colour.
It is going to be a cold night. Snow is likely, or ice storms, but for the moment the air holds only the promise of them, and the sky holds the cloak that drapes down to the hills themselves.
Maalira shivers. “We should hurry, before it snows again.” She gives Berra a critical look. “You do kind of look like you’re glowing.”
Berra looks up at the colours. “I’ve never seen that before.” Of course she glows. The snow is reflecting Inora’s glory. The little Yelmalian shelter in the distance is reflecting it. “Is it some kind of big magic?”
“It’s Inora’s cloak,” Maalira says. “She spreads it across the sky sometimes. Isn’t it beautiful?”
“It’s amazing.” Berra’s eyes are wide, her expression astonished. She steps forward a little to see more clearly past Maalira, putting her hand up to the healer’s shoulder as she comes level.
Maalira smiles at the light from the cloak reflected in Berra’s eyes.
Berra watches for a while, as red and green mix, and the sparks of blue and yellow and purple fall sometimes. She does not seem cold, but she never really shows it when she is. The ground is starting to make Maalira’s legs hurt, attacking her warmth through her feet.
Maalira shuffles her feet, and reaches up to squeeze Berra’s hand. “We had better keep moving before I freeze to the spot,” she whispers.
Berra gets in motion once more. The circuit of the area is short, and she pauses outside the shelter. “I want to look a bit longer,” she says. “Will you be alright inside?”
“Of course. I’ll get the fire back up and boil some water.”
Berra opens the door, absently. The fire is already hot, and someone is sitting there.
Maalira goes still, waiting to see what Berra will do.
Berra stops still for a moment herself, and then says, “Well, welcome to our fire, stranger. Got any problems?”
The man feeding the fire stands up and bows. He looks Yelmalian. His spear is against the wall not far from him, but he does not reach for it. “Thank you for the use of it. I am Hacedon.”
Berra mutters to Maalira, “Let’s get you in and keep you warm.”
Maalira nods. The stranger might be dangerous but the cold definitely is.
bleysrex: Berra follows. Hacedon moves towards his spear, but sits down on a bundle there. “You’d be Berra… and?” He looks to Maalira, rather than letting the warrior answer for the healer.
Maalira tilts her head at the stranger. “Maalira,” she says.
“Oh, I’ve heard your sagas!” He smiles behind his trim beard. “I’m honoured to meet you!”
Maalira does not cover her face with her hand. “That is kind, thank you, but I must point out that they are very exaggerated.” She gestures to the fire. “May I…?”
“I’m sorry. It’s yours. I was keeping it while you were absent. A Yelmalian thing, perhaps…” He nudges himself slightly further from the fire, backing up towards the wall. “I came to be sure that the Priestess Berra was not freezing.”
Berra closes the door, putting the bar into place without taking her eyes off the room.
Maalira goes to the fire and begins heating water. She keeps half an eye on the newcomer as she does so.
He makes no sudden movements. “You seem to be doing alright,” he says to Berra.
“Yeah. Um, did Vega or Belvani send you?”
There is a moment of stillness. “It might be best if you did not know, if asked?” he suggests.
Silence from Berra. She is giving him a hard stare.
My, this water is getting along nicely!
Maalira adds bits of this and that from her scrip into the boiling water, and a slight scent of flowers and sweet spices rises from the pot.
Berra says, “I wanna know.”
“I was not sent by Lady Vega,” Hacedon says carefully. “But she knows I am here, or knew I was going, at least. As a militia member of the Yelmalians, to be seen with me is awkward.”
“Well, so’s what I wanna do to Count Belvani with his own spear,” Berra notes. “But either way, I ain’t a political person.”
“What is the recipe for that?” Hacedon asks Maalira. It is not the worst change of subject, given the handicap he is under.
Maalira eyes him, then glances at Berra, as if seeking permission.
Berra sits down by the fire. “He’s not an enemy, but he wants us to be Vega’s friend, or at least, Belvani’s foe. What’s in that mix? It smells good.”
Maalira rattles off a list of spices and flowers. “It’s very warming,” she says, gesturing for Berra to hand over her cup.
Berra does that, and gives Maalira a glance and then a look at the stranger. “He’s here. We should feed him.” She does not seem happy about it.
Maalira repeats the gesture, to Hacedon this time. “There’s plenty.”
He pulls out a drinking horn from his bundle, and holds it out. “Thank you, White Lady. Your mercy shines.”
Maalira carefully fills the horn and hands it back, then fills her own cup and shuffles back a little from the fire.
Berra gestures the man forwards. “So, it’s cold out there,” she says. “And you’d better stay here, but you’re keeping me from doing my work properly, by checking on me.”
Hacedon is smart enough not to argue. Berra moves over towards Maalira, tugging a blanket with her. With Hacedon also closer to the fire, the room is a little cosier. He has thick travelling clothes on, still damp on the outside.
Maalira shuffles closer to Berra, too.
The blanket gets offered over rather than shared. Hacedon glances between the two and his eyes widen. He has just reached A Conclusion.
Maalira catches Hacedon’s look, and her cheeks darken.
“Um,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I had not realised that the lady had…” He is a soldier, and a brave man, but apparently he is also a farmer because he ploughs on. “…made her own arrangements.”
Berra stares into the fire. Her ears are going pink.
“We’re just – it’s cold at night – and we’ve been travelling together for years – like family,” Maalira says, articulately.
“We ain’t sharing a bed,” Berra says, slightly less articulately, but rather more bluntly. “Bu’ a lot of people think we are.”
Hacedon coughs slightly. “I apologise. I was on the wrong foot entirely.” He too is now finding the fire interesting.
Maalira steals a sideways look at Berra.
She is just feeding the fire, despite it theoretically being Maalira’s job. “So you’ve come here to make sure I don’t die, but now you’re here, and I’m fine, and you’re more of a danger to me because of who you are, but you can’t leave because it’s so damned cold?” she checks.
“I can leave tomorrow,” he says. “Morning.”
2amphelise: ((Would Maalira understand why he is a danger to Berra?))bleysrex: (( Do me an Intrigue? ))bleysrex: (( Unless of course you have guesses! ))amphelise: ((Pretty sure 97 is a fumble))bleysrex: (( Heheheh. Being visited by someone who might be her lover, maybe? That would explain a lot of the blushing. ))
“Berra, if you want, I can give you privacy…” Maalira looks around the tiny structure. “…somehow.”
“Nah, anyone who goes outside freezes overnight. Except me, but that’s special. And I wouldn’t have mentioned it only I realised it made the first bit a lie. We’ll just deck down here like normal, he can sleep on the other side of the fire, and… are you leaving before it gets light, so people don’t see you?”
“No, I think with a White Lady here, it is fine for me to have arrived.” Hacedon sighs. “I shall inform the lady Goldbreath that I was not needed.”
Maalira gives them both a quizzical look. “This sounds very political.”
bleysrex: Berra glances at Hacedon, and says, “Yeah. Because she’s the Count at the Sun Dome and Belvani’s the Count stuck in New Pavis at the Temple there.” Belvani, the man who sent her out here. From her tone, it appears that Berra is happy about the being-stuck-in-New-Pavis part.
Maalira sighs. “I wish they hadn’t sent you out here.”
“Count Vega, head of the Goldbreath kinfolk, refuses the word of outsiders in this matter. The Sun Dome Temple has always stood alone.” Hacedon sounds determined, but also like that is a well-rehearsed line. He has mistimed it, almost talking over Maalira, but Berra avoids further awkwardness by ignoring him.
“It was supposed to be a threat, but Belvani’s maybe not met many Orlanthi. Or maybe he has, and this is just the set-up for the threat. He probably thought Varanis would fold, but she ain’t made of linen. She don’t crease up like that.” Berra takes a long drink from her cup, now it is at the right temperature, and then wipes a petal off her lip. It fragments onto her thumb instead.
Maalira nods. “If anything, a threat makes Varanis stubborner.”
“I shall inform the true Count of that,” Hacedon says politely.
Berra shrugs. “Anyhow, it doesn’t matter. I die or I don’t. If I don’t die, I probably get to be a better Humakti. An’ I probably wouldn’t’ve. And anyhow, I think I want to talk about something else. Wanna tell a story, Maalira?”
Maalira has a mouthful of her drink, and chokes on it slightly while trying to swallow. She sputters.
“I could, if you would like? What sort of story?”
“I was gonna say one of your sagas, but not. It could be anything?”
Maalira gives her a look. “I am not telling a saga about myself. They’re all nonsense anyway.”
“That’s why I didn’t say. Uh, something Praxian.”
… Time passes, and overnight something changes. Morning brings a wind from the Wastes, the breath of Storm Bull, to warm the land a little. A terrible winter turns back to a merely cold one, with that.
Some days later, Berra is recalled to New Pavis, and the messenger tries not to make eye contact with the White Lady.
- 1bleysrex: (( Do me an Area Lore (Prax) at 2x your skill? ))amphelise: ((Gimme a second, got to open my player sheet on my phone…))amphelise: ((Special))
- 2amphelise: ((Would Maalira understand why he is a danger to Berra?))bleysrex: (( Do me an Intrigue? ))bleysrex: (( Unless of course you have guesses! ))amphelise: ((Pretty sure 97 is a fumble))bleysrex: (( Heheheh. Being visited by someone who might be her lover, maybe? That would explain a lot of the blushing. ))
