Atlantic Roleplay Community Boards

[Arahim]

---

"I cannot do what you ask, " she said, eyeing the young man and his child evenly.

A dark, and shifting liquid brown, those eyes, that were anything but ordinary, and marked her blood. Playing with shadow and candlelight, and never leaving her two guests.

She wore her hair in a series of pulled back tails tightly braided, and ornamented with miniature wood carvings of birds. In the small light within her vardo, it seemed a muted brown, though in truth was closer kin to an earthy red. Like the clay beneath failing grass in Summer.

Arahim kneeled in front of Christopher and carefully brushed the snow off of the shoulders of his long, high collared coat.

"Don't touch anything," he said quietly.

Shifting her weight to one leg, the gypsy woman sighed audibly, and crossed her arms defensively beneath her breasts. Her mouth a tight line.

A practiced pose.

Walking past her, further into her home and workplace, Arahim spoke calmly. Playing her game, and intently showing her his back with the greatest of indifference.

"But you've already been paid, Cousin."

"And I say now...it's past my talent," she replied, "You can have back your damned gold."

Turning slowly, running his hand across a tall table, Arahim lifted his chin towards Christopher who began to button up his coat in response.

"Send a boy with what I've paid you. That white silver as well, I suppose you will no longer need it."

[Arahim]

---

Outside, snow fell slowly.

White Winter moths pinned upon the evening's air, lending an ethereal feel to the quiet like the whole World held It's breath.

"She's cold." Christopher stated flatly. Worry at the edges of his voice.

"She's cold right now. She -says- she's cold, and no one listens."

"I'm cold too, Christopher."

"Not like her you're not!"

"Put your gloves on. We'll find another way."

[Arahim]

---

Without complaint, Christopher strode in step with his father.

Pensive, and quiet.

The thin moonlight casting silver and crystal at their feet. Icy diamonds tightly scattered, yet vast, braiding the clear dark skies above in a milky luminescence.

Dreamlike, flakes fell heavily and thick.

A shower of starfall.

Eddies and vortices of white petals, as though Autumn's last blooms dimly remembered, made real a season too late.

Born on northern winds, clean and cold.

Musical light heavenly flit through green pine needled bough and branch laden with snow. Breaking up the night piecemeal, and parcelled, with a ghostly, new life.

The Serpent hung low, hugging the horizon. Writhing. Wrapping itself around the land. Hinting the briefest glimpses between the breaks in the forest where tree and bush paused to take in the breath of the world.

The Serpent's eye brightest, tinged a hot blue-white, and watchful.

Without pause, or comment, Christopher marked the constellation, and The Hunter who rode high above as well.

They kept pace with the dolorous gait of the snowfall. A soft sqeak with each booted step. Their going sure, but far from brisk. Living players walking through reverie.

Arahim knowing it could never last.

Christopher smiling faintly to himself. His bright green eyes faraway.

The world remained the world, and silent.

A silence spun from the spectral threads of frost, as lay down the land to slumber, and long grew the days' shadows before night.

Sleep and tomorrow not far off.

Campfires in the distance.

[Christopher Sherwood]

---

White
Wisps
Rise
Wary
Wildflowers
Rustle
Whispers
Wend
Round
Winding
Road
Woods
Song
Woven
Winged
Shorn
Bereft
She
Waits

[Arahim]

---

Al'lyria ground her teeth in consternation, staring through the darkened vardo's recesses at her front door. Her stomach a snarled jumble of anxiety and frustration doled out in equal portions and unremitting.

She could not now return to sleep, despite the hour, nor would she give voice to her mounting anger or discomfort.

She would not give him that satisfaction.

Five heavy footfalls sounded upon her porch. Solid boots upon wood. A pause...then another five further. The hollow, methodical noise that much louder in the still and isolated enviornment she so purposely chose to eke out her trade, and live her life.

Wind and trees her only neighbors for miles.

The coals within the brazier of beaten brass still glowed a heated red-orange, filling her tiny corner with it's flicker. Warming the narrow expanse of her home completely. A comforting feeling she could no longer take comfort in.

"Not now," she thought, glaring at the door, "Not with that!"

Five heavy footfalls sounded upon her porch. Solid boots upon wood. A pause...then five further.

The round, blue-tinted window adorning her entrance at eye level shadowing briefly as her visitor strolled slowly past. Never changing his pace once.

The assiduous patience displayed was maddening to her!

Growling softly to no one, Al'lyria kicked off her tangled shroud of blankets. Silently she reprimanded herself for letting this man, near twenty years her junior, so thoroughly dictate the terms of their meetings. And to do so with such laconic persistence he almost certainly regarded as courteous, was nearly too much for her.

Her unspoken hopes that the forest cold would drive him back to camp, or simply kill him, were destroyed beyond any hope of repair now.

She was up.

"He will still wait on me," she whispered angrily, and began to dress.

[Arahim]

---

Al'lyria watched the door's window darken before shoving it open and making a strong showing of her exit into the dying Winter night. The ornamentation in her hair clicking together with the very sudden movement. The sound would have sang musical under any other circumstance.

"The word 'fool' comes to mind for a man who strays so far, and for so long away from his own hearth," she spat as she crossed the porch's distance to emphasize her anger, and insinuate herself into his space.

"But to drag that boy from home, and through the cold and the wilds? There is no word descriptive enough for that!"

Arahim did not shy away from Al'lyria's proximity, nor did he flinch under her remonstration.

"Christopher is fine with travelling, cousin," he said quietly, "The World is his home."

"The World is his home," she laughed sardonically, "How lovely a thought. But this...this is my home! You have no business here, and certainly not at this hour!"

"We still have business cousin."

Al'lyria slowly ran her tongue over her top teeth in frustration. The slight scratching on the sensitive organ felt good compared to the distant, muted throb she felt while talking to her young cousin. His face placid, as if politely attempting to mask his obvious obstinate determination.

"You take issue with my giving of a simple gift?" he asked.

"Your gift is far from simple. And it is not the first, I'm told, that you have given...she is incapable of giving back. She is not cold, Arahim, as your boy says. She is lost."

A pause hung uncomfortably in the air, like smoke in a small, confined room.

Shifting.

Lingering.

"Will you do what I have set before you, or no?" Arahim asked firmly, willing to accept the finality of the unspoken answer, no matter how it fell.

"...I will."

[Arahim]

---

Arahim flinched as Al'lyria slammed the door on the outside world behind them, and roughly brushed him aside as she passed him to a wide, oddly shaped worktable.

If there was any order to the tumult of items and scraps of paper upon it, it remained far too cryptic for him to decipher without risking a closer viewing.

The small space smelled strongly of cinnamon and coriander. A pervasive warmth provided a much needed welcome that his cousin would not afford to him as she stalked around the vardo. Her movements clipped and economic.

The clatter of metal tools upon each other or the rustle of parchment being ushering aside in irritation vied for aural dominance with her low mutterings, and curses.

"...haunt my damned doorstep..."

Stooping suddenly behind a low standing, cherry dresser, Al'lyria pulled every drawer out quickly, and began to rummage. Tossing clothes to either side of her with both hands, she worked her way from the floor to the top drawer before emerging with a thick square of weathered burlap.

Dropping the parcel at Arahim's feet with a heavy, metallic clang, muffled in the coarse cloth, she turned and headed to the far end or her home, setting aside a chair, and dropping to all fours to peer under her bed.

"Open that," she called to him without looking back or taking her head from under the blue quilt that had spilled over the side of the bed as she rifled under it.

Kneeling, Arahim did as she asked, slowly unrolling the package on the floor, unvieling a small, but sturdy headed hammer, a handaxe, and six steel spikes the length of his forearms.

Popping her head from under the bed, her braids a tangled creature hugging her face, wooden bird effigies clicking together happily...Al'lyria found what she sought.

Tossing what looked to be a gut sac of some over large animal next to the tools that Arahim was carefully rewrapping, she purposely stood looming above him as she began her instructions.

"You can figure out the use of tools?" she asked smirking.

Arahim nodded as he looked up at her, gathering the items at her feet, and standing again.

"You find ice. Deep ice. Unmuddied,so that you can clearly see your own eyes within...without any trouble. This ice cannot have ever known the touch of snowfall. Do you understand so far?"

Although Arahim nodded quietly, she did not see him as she turned her back to pick up a long crowbar. Proffering it, she continued unabated.

"You pull out the Heart of Winter," she said, motioning to the tools tucked under his arm, "You place it in that sack, and bring it to me as quickly as you can."

Al'lyria smiled with no levity, as she cupped her hands, fingers pointing to fingers, to indicate the size that would be necessary.

"That much?" Arahim asked.

"If you intend to give this gift, you will give with both hands, boy, or not at all."