ꙮ Morning of the day after Festival. After Qarina and the others returned from the sietch, there’d been a brief moment between Qarina and Ravhi, an acknowledgement with their eyes that– something had transpired, in the sands, that they would talk about when she was good and ready to talk about it. It’s not the first time they’ve had such an understanding. In the meantime, Ravhi waits in his rooms in the Temple. There’s a new tapestry up on one of the walls - softly shining, woven of gnosis itself spun into thread. Salme’s work.
No song playing
Up next: 0 songs
Scene Archives
← Active ScenesWhat She Heard
#yazhn ravhi
#qarina
Qarina walks through the Temple, taking the shortcut that few others do to arrive at Teacher’s rooms. She waits a moment, and knocks.
ꙮ looks up. “Come in, Qarina.” He does not recognise everyone who would knock at his door by their knock, but he likes it when people thinks that he does. He knows Qarina and Dyu both know better than to think that – but he really does recognise both of theirs, effortlessly. He’s already up off the couch in the little alcove, making a cup of coffee for himself and drizzling irmik helvasi with sweet syrup for her when she walks in the door.
: “Shade and comfort, Teacher.” You can tell her heart isn’t all the way in it. Her eyes glance at the new tapestry and quickly go in the opposite direction. “It’s been a really weird few days.”
: “Shade and comfort, Qarina.” He isn’t being very fancy with the coffee, and sets it down, and a glass of sweet juice and a little silver bowl filled with a perfect little orb of sweet, syrup-drizzled dessert for her, and sits down somewhere she can look at him and only look at the familiar hangings on the wall. “Yes, it rather has been, hasn’t it?”
nods, instantly going for the dessert. “I think some of my bad day bounced back on you once we got back for Festival. Didn’t have a real great time out there. There were some Elementals by the sietch…and normally that’d be fine, but it was different this time around.” She pauses, less for dramatic effect, and more because there’s irmik helvasi to be had. “I assume you know about the God-voice thing?”
scrunches up his face a little, which is still a very silly-looking expression on a Kin, even if Qarina’s definitely seen it before. “I feel like I know much less about the God and His voice than I thought.” He looks up. “What happened out there, Qarina? In your own words, as… much as you feel comfortable telling me today, and I can wait to hear the rest, as long as I need to.”
: “Okay, so apparently, all of our Honored Guests can speak in a special fancy tone. I forget the word Salme told me for it. It sounded like Yazhn stuff. Dyu would get it. And, when they use it, it’s cool, and impressive, and it makes them sound…bigger? Grander? But it still sounds like whichever one of them is talking. Some of them do it more often than others. But they started a Rite against the Elementals, and I hung back a little bit, just to see how they did at first. And Luĉja, the big quiet metal one, did a special Rite with that voice. Seems weird. It didn’t even hurt the Elemental. Waste of a Rite, if you ask me.” ⁂
Feel free to interrupt if it's in character, just trying to remember to use glyphs
: “And all of a sudden there was a voice like that saying things about the Elementals. How they were the second scariest thing in the universe. Which, frankly, is terrifying. And then, after that, I started hearing the Elementals scream. Not like usual. We always hear screaming, but it’s just unintelligible hatred, kinda? Makes it easier to crush them. But the first voice, sounded like someone’s voice. Not like, anyone I’d recognize, but it seemed like a person, somehow? Like when Luĉja or Wolf or Salme uses the voice. The Elementals…use the voice too. But it just kinda appears in my skull, and it’s real loud, and I don’t know how I know, but I know it sounds like God. And it doesn’t say nice things.”
looks like he was going to say something about his own experience of that voice and that tone, recognition on his face, but then she continues, and he sips his coffee, instead, listening, and– sets it down, eyes on her and gentle and… trying to understand something, trying to put all the pieces together. Softly: “What… did it say?”
looks down into her dessert bowl. She’s holding it so tight it might fold in on itself. “The Elementals all screamed out at once that ‘my God is a lie.’ But they said it to me. They knew my name. How did they know my name?! They said ‘You feed the fathomless.’ and I don’t know what that means at all. But they know who I am. And I….maybe had a little bit of a hard time dealing with it, went absolutely feral, crushed them all to pieces, and got dragged back to the sietch a sobbing mess and my voice sounds a little different now and it took Salme, Chaya, Dyu, and a couple days to even start unpacking this.”
is beginning to understand what the far-wanderers meant when they said every answer just buds off a whole new branch of questions. “I’m so glad they were there for you, Qarina. I wish I could have been.” Not an apology, not guilt– but he is always honest with her when he feels something deeply, always has been. He holds off any other thoughts, for the moment, nictitating membranes flicking over his eyes.
: “And I didn’t want to really talk about that with anyone, let alone you. You’ve got a whole City to take care of. And it’s a little blasphemous to even consider believing Elementals, even if they use the God-voice. So I thought it out a bit. And I talked it out with people. And…this is gonna sound a little weird, but I don’t care that they said God is a lie? I don’t think it’s true true. I think maybe we don’t understand something. Or we’ve Forgotten something. But it doesn’t matter. I still have to keep everybody safe.”
nods, a little, and– there’s a flash of deep pride in her, in who she is, who she has become, in his eyes that he would not try to hide even if he could. “The Articles of Faith do not say anything about not letting their words touch our heart. Only that we ought not heed them. I…” -he tilts his head, slightly. “Had an… interaction with someone, or something, who travels alongside our friends from afar. He appeared to me in the Bright Hall in the form of a feathered, wingéd thing, and he spoke in what I, at the time, myself, still believed was the God’s voice.” Wryly, “–so you were quicker than me to realise it was just a way of speaking. And prior to that conversation I would have said that only truths could be said or heard in that tone, but he lied to me, on purpose, to prove to me that it were possible to do so.” He exhales. “Which is a long way of saying that I think you’re absolutely correct, and your convictions are true, and–“ –and his voice, very nearly, cracks, here. “–I am so sorry that you had to experience that, Qarina. I do not know why they Elementals hate us and hate the Work. I do not know why they want to harm us. I wish that I did. There is so much that I do not understand.”
: “Oh no, I didn’t figure it out. Salme told me about it when I was having a breakdown.” She takes a drink. “It’s…okay…I think? I mean, I definitely would have rather not experienced it. But as much as it was the worst day of my life…I don’t think I’d trade having them here and learning about so many other good things. Besides, nothing a good cry and a giant hammer doesn’t fix.”
: “Was really hoping you had some sort of top secret Yazhn info that would make it make sense though.” She shrugs. “Nothing doing though.”
snorts, softly, out of his nose, and smiles, warmly. “No, I… understand. I…” -he outright exhales. “Salme took -pictures- of the Sun, somehow. Showed them to me. I’ll be wrestling with what in the God’s name -they- mean until the God’s Day, I think. But I would rather know than not, and I would rather have had the chance to meet them than not, and…” He pauses. “I may have something, actually.”
does the thing where you try to talk and drink at the same time. And she tries to ask “Wait, what?” but the fruit juice means she goes “SPfftwhwhyht” into her glass, accidentally.
gives Qarina a brief, concerned look and slides over a napkin. “That was close to my own reaction.”
: “ thanks “
pauses, continues. “There are things which it is forbidden for Yazhn to attempt. One of them involves… any sort of meddling with Shades and Elementals, because it is known to be a danger to the Work. But…” He looks up. “What I say here, even Dyu does not yet know, and I would… ask that you speak of it with no one but him.” And he gets THAT out of the way: “The Red Column in the Rohsu barracks? It was made when a Yazhn -fused- a Shade and an Elemental together. There was a tremendous explosion, it was. Very early. If something like that happened now, it could demolish the City entirely. But they were desperate, and a little bit mad, I believe. And it succeeded, and wrote a new law that such was never to be attempted again.”
: “But it suggests certain things about what the Elementals are, or were. Things I’ve been wrestling with since I awoke.”
stares
: “Something… happened. Something happened that made them hate us. Hate the Work. I…” He trails off, frustrated, unknowing.
: “ Wait, so you broke the rules to…give me a Brother? If it didn’t work, would you have blown up? “
gives Qarina a look balanced on the knife’s edge of pride and frustration at her quickness. Very softly, he says, “…I failed. I failed many times, Qarina. Fusing a Shade to a human is much less hazardous in failure, and I took precautions. But my failures were not without catastrophic loss.”
does not deny having broken the law in spirit if not in letter, though, and his eyes admit what his words don’t.
looks, in those eyes, like a person who can spell and define ‘regret’, but has yet to truly experience it. Sorrow, yes. Sorrow, and bone-deep terror clenched in a gauntleted claw, his and his alone. But not regret.
: “I was gonna punch you if you said yes.”
: “I would forfeit the Rite if you did.”
: “I’m not exactly comforted…but I’m glad I’m here.”
: “So, thanks for being brave.”
looks at Qarina and that, that of all things, catches him unawares and he- not deflates, it’s not a sad thing that his body does, but there’s one soft, immediate sob before he composes himself, membranes blinking swiftly. Blame the far-wanderers; that sort of thing didn’t used to happen before. “I am so glad, Qarina. I’m glad you’re here, too.”
has no idea how to handle that she just made her Teacher cry, even if only for a moment.
: “Yeah, well, that’s good. Because you’re gonna be stuck with me. Gonna be lonely without Dyu, though.”
composes himself more thoroughly, with a look at her that– it’s not ‘apologetic’, but it’s a little chagrined. “You’re staying, then? I thought you might be.” A pause, that stretches on for… several moments, and then, very solemnly: “I suppose you’ll be needing another Yazhn to accompany you to the sietch with supplies until he returns to us, then. The God knows I can’t replace Dyu, but do you think it’d be too strange if I accompanied you?”
: “Oh Thank God, you did know about that.”
: “Yeah. I’m staying.” She looks glum. “I’m gonna be miserable about it, because one of my two human friends and my best friend are going. But there’s no future where me going doesn’t mean more people here dying. Can’t exactly let the Rohsu go getting themselves exploded on with no backup.”
backs up a minute
: “Wait a minute, did you just say you wanted to go?”
lets the solemnity drop, and smiles slightly, and listens, and– cracks a slightly toothy smile. “Would it surprise you terribly to know that when I was an acolyte I spent nearly as much time at the sietch as Dyu does?” There’s more, he has more to say, but. “It would be good to return.”
: “You could have lead with that! At like ANY POINT! Especially when I was worried about getting caught stealing!”
’s scales around his eyes go a little dark. “I apologise, sincerely. It– never felt like the right moment to bring it up.”
: “I mean, that’s…probably fair.”
: “But, yeah, I wouldn’t mind the company. You’ll drop some jaws showing up there for sure, and that’ll be FUNNY.”
: “I’ve never gotten the Jar Game wrong once, I know more details of… juvenile Rohsu barracks-drama than I’d like, there’s precious little that happens in the City I don’t know about.” He looks amused, and nods. “Indeed. I think– I think time away from the City might be good for me, too.”
smiles, and looks over her shoulder at what could only be Salme’s work. “It’ll be good to spend time with you. We both kinda got stuck here with our Work. You in the City, me outside. Maybe they’ll figure it all out. And then I can go on adventures with Dyu again.” She shoots him the most knowing look, “And you could take a little vacation with Wolf.”
’s scales around his horns go very, very dark indeed, and– he laughs, and shakes his head, and really, he doesn’t have anything to say to that.