Klaudia insists on waiting until she's sure her pupil has gathered herself after the emotional conclusion to her first hunt. Rothram Kuenn seemed satisfied with his exchange and departed without another word, the women not seeing him again once they returned to the road. The walk is leisurely now without burdens to carry, disguises to maintain, or a target to hunt, and there are enough places to rest and resupply along the trade road that there isn't a great need to hurry. The occasional travellers pass in either direction, politely offering brief greetings or ignoring them altogether. Beyond the abandoned town at the Fork, some of the forest thins out a little into green hills, allowing some sunlight to chase away a little of the gloom.
While the young huntress had kept to herself after her initital words on departure, slowly, but surely, she's returned to her old talkative self as the road wore on. The matter of the hunt itself was avoided in favor lighter topics: people, towns, the forest, and so on. But even that gave way to deeper things as Lilac recovered herself. Hours later she touched upon the hunt, inserting it in to a comment about the weather, and now she's turned to brush it again: on the matter of Rothram Kuenn.
"I can't believe I was actually attracted to him," Lisandra "Lilac" Dragomir blurts out after stretch of silence that followed mentioning how the two hunters met. "It must run in their family!" She tosses her hands in the air, head shaking.
Von Horne has kept a good pace, and while she's sparing with her words she still gamely chats, mostly letting Lilac do the talking offering her opinions or knowledge when it's called for, apparently listening closely. Other korv might have had difficulty walking this far, most used to flying for trips of this length, but the distance doesn't seem to bother the relatively rugged avian. At this latest turn in the conversation, Klaudia tilts her head a little quizzically, looking at her companion out of one eye. "Were you? Why was that?"
"I don't know!" Lilac admits, hands falling to her side. She adjusts her weapons unnecesarrily as she walks, watching them as her lips purse in thought. "I suppose it's his ruggedness? And though it's embarassing to admit, my time being like them seems to have made me appreciative of Jupani. It's like I can read their faces, their the way their tail hangs -- I could even tell their scents before!"
The korvess taps her shoulder thoughtfully with the haft of her spear, the hinged beak swinging a little. It's a tic she seems to have picked up when her wing-claws are too full to tap her beak. "Well, there's nothing wrong or embarrassing about appreciating jupani," muses Klaudia philosophically. "However it may be that you picked up that trait. As for Rothram, I imagine there are other women who would find him attractive for their own reasons."
"Well, his coldness would be perfect in the Savan. Maybe he'd make a good stop for a door, or ... Or I should stop talking about him. It's unbecoming." After taking a deep breath, the young human exhales, leaning her head back. When she speaks again, her tone has shifted, along with her choice of topics, "You know, Klaudia, I enjoyed that hunt? Not ... not the ... " the younger woman shivers, wrapping her free arm around herself as if struck by a bitter wind, " ... The ending, but the rest ... The rest I did. Did you really follow me the entire time, so close?" She turns her head to face her teacher, lifted.
Von Horne shrugs her one good shoulder. "It's true that many of the Kuenns are like that. I wouldn't underestimate any of them, though. I understand that being reared among them is harsh and competitive. I don't think that any that make it into the public eye can be taken as lightly as a doorstop." At Lilac's change of direction, the korvess nods, looking back toward the road again, following a bend in it along a low stone wall. Someone has taken advantage of the fields out here to run a farm. "I'm glad you found something to like in it. I've known a lot of hunters to feel exhileration in the hunt, and a sense of satisfaction on success. They're not all like that, but then not all of them are so tragic as this one turned out to be. Some really are just beasts, no more intelligent than the bromthen boars that I hear are hunted across the sea." At Lilac's question, there's a small crinkle at the corners of Von Horne's eyes, and a quirk at the edges of her beak that the once-bardess has come to recognize
as her smile. "I did, Lisandra. Please don't think it was a mistrust of your abilities. There's always risk, and first and foremost I wanted you to do this for yourself, but everyone makes mistakes sometimes. I wouldn't have left you to suffer them if it became especially dangerous."
As her mentor relates about the Kuenn's, Lisandra's expression falls until she end sup looking quite guilty, indeed. "I ... I know," she admits, sounding apologetic. "I was just mad, I suppose. It's not as if he didn't speak of his time with Borham, and I should be the last person to condemn another for what fate placed in their hands. Forgive me."
The young woman stops long enough to bow her head anc collect her thoughts at her teacher's reply to her question about following. So she had been there ... The whole idea her mentor was behind her all that time is quite startling, both because she had not expected it and because she hadn't detected it. Head rising, she admits as much. "I'm not offended, Klaudia. I'm actually very flattered you watched over me so closely. Not even Ummy watched me that closely! And, well, I'm also a little embarassed I didn't notice. You're really a very scary hunter. It hasn't been so long since I feared you, it actually gives me chills!" She smiles a little, revealing her good humor at it all.
The short stone wall follows the road, and sections off a fruit orchard nestled within the bend, the branches heavy with pears. Across the road from it are a few more pear trees growing wild. There's less fruit on these trees, as travellers seem to enjoy some of it instead of picking from the orchard, but there's enough for Klaudia to poke her spear at, sticking it firmly enough to pull it off its stem. She takes this pear off the spearhead with her beak, then jabs another and offers it to Lilac. "Don't be embarrassed. I kept my distance, it was raining, and you were busy with something else... I wouldn't have expected you to see me even in better circumstances. I think Rothram suspected I was there, but I don't think he spotted me either," she says, talking oddly around the pear held in her beak. "Ha, well, with familiarity fear tends to melt away. I'm sure the better you get, the more my mystique will wear off. Though it is worth noting fear can be a useful tool."
Lisandra stops to watch as her mentor picks the pear, then another, turning to regard the orchard and its quiet bounty with a soft smile on her lips. When the skewered pear appears at the corner of her vision, she gladly accepts and and begins to nibble at it as she resumes walking at her mentor's side. "There is that; you're right. I do take a certain pride in my ability to hide, and to find others, but I can't very well catch everything at all times. And I'm still adjusting to the loss of the senses I had used to be much better, so there's that, too." She takes a few bites, then has to scramble to rub her chin as juice threatens to run down it and under her collar. She sputters, then laughs a little after she cleans herself off. "I still have a hard time seeing you beside me. Sometimes I look over and wonder, did that all really happen? But here you are!" She smiles wider.
Lilac says, "And as for fear, that's something I know. I had a lot of time to think of what fear meant, when I was the thing peopled feared in the night. It seems to me fear is the strongest weapon most monsters have. A bandit is dangerous, but an equal monster is dangerous and terrifying. And if they can lurk, so much the more so. I think if one had a mind to, they could make much of fear against an opponent who could be swayed by it. And fearful monsters, and people too, make mistakes.""
"Quite true," the korv agrees. She pushes her spear back further along her shoulder so she can keep it held with the crook of her wing while she has a 'bite' of her own pear, gouging it with the tip of her beak to peck morsels off the core and toss them back into her gullet. "Fate can be strange, sometimes. I'm glad it turned out the way it did, however. It turned out better than I could have hoped."
"I have to agree, even with so much unanswered. I had faith that you were a good person, and that you had a connection to the Pieksvaldts, but I couldn't be sure. I almost gave up, in the face of my doom, but I didn't and I'm glad for that." Being human, Lilac munches with a much more direct bite and chew, her mouth space coniderably smaller. She glance's at her teacher's beak as she eats, wondering what it must be like to have such a solid, sizable organ on one's face. Even her beast's muzzle wasn't nearly so wide. The matter of fate isn't so easily dismissed, however. In short order Lilac finds her mind returning to it, because much is unanswered, and much more could still ruin this brief peace they have won.
"I ... Well," she begins again, her voice hesitant. "We're friends, aren't we Klaudia? Maybe closer than friends, with all that has happened?"
The reflected sunlight on Von Horne's beak is broken up by numerous scratches on it, but it seems plenty sturdy still, and the korv uses it with remarkable dexterity. She pauses in digging at her snack to look over at Lilac, and cocks her head a little. "Of course we're friends, Lisandra. It came about under unusual circumstances, but a bond forged in adversity can be a strong one. I think in teaching you, it could only have deepened. I owe you a debt of gratitude, but it's not one I carry grudgingly. I would like to see you succeed, to find what you're looking for."
"I ... " How do I say what I've done? Isn't it enough that I was once a monster, can one person carry so much monstrocity and still walk like they were? Be seen as they were? At times, it feels to Lilac she's not really human at all; she's merely a reflection of a human who once was, twisted and turned about by greater powers. She can even almost believe she's what she once was, but there's always something to remind her her life isn't quite right. Like a flawed painting, or an off note, it's never quite like it should be. All of this makes her hesitate enough where she decides to work in to what she was going to say.
"That is, I, um ... Well, I seem human, don't I? I, well ... That's not exctly what I mean -- well it is. It's just not quite ... right." The young woman sucks in a breath, then exhales. After biting her lip, she admits, "You see, I ... I need you. I may not have much time left to me, and I'm afraid and those that could have helped have moved on. I thought it might be alright, but the ... Time has made be worry; maybe motherhood? I just know, that I haven't ... Haven't left the woods just yet. And I worry, for my child."
Von Horne tilts her head the other way, one round black eye peering over the ruff of fur she wears over her neck. "It's obviously troubling you a great deal. Is it that you fear some part of the curse lingers, makes you less than human?" She studies Lilac a few moments. "There's nothing obvious to me about what it is, though... you seem quite human to me, but that can mean a lot of different things. If you fear some magical remnant remains, we will get to the bottom of it somehow. There are experts in the bigger cities, scholars and mages and engineers. I will help you however I can, so long as you need me."
"That is ... Is a worry, yes, yes ... Yes it is," Lilac stammers, suddenly finding herself flushed and a little dizzy as she gathers and recollects all that has happened to her. After a furitive glance around, she spots a tree stump and walks over to it, settling herself down and leaning on her spear as she forces herself to steady her breaths. Telling her will help, she won't be betray me. Not after coming this far! I have to believe in her -- in someone! Ummy is too far away, and they is no guarantee of the time left to me. Ugh, I have to breathe and ... and focus. She's silent for nigh on a minute as she leans on her spear, rocking and gathering her courage. Until, at last ...
"The curse of Castle Pieksvaldt isn't the ... the only ... Only way that I have been changed," she breathes, staring down the length of her weapon and in to her shadow. "Not unique in it's nature ... Mmm." She turns her head now, out, to look across the soothing orchard. So peaceful and ordinary ...
"My child isn't ... Isn't human, Klaudia. Nor quite am I, to carry it." She stares off at the orchard. So peaceful. Ahh.
The huntress follows, looking on concerned, but patiently waiting for Lilac to collect herself. She sits slightly awkwardly on the ground nearby, laying her korv-headed spear in the grass and craning her head up, listening carefully. "You've mentioned your remarkable travels across Sinai, with your other friends. Something happened...?"
"Something did," Lilac agrees. She doesn't look back, not wanting Klaudia to see the fear in her eyes, that lost gaze as she recalls those days. But this is important, she knows, and so she soldiers on. The relative tranqulity of the orchard helps her hold on at least, the view giving her something natural and harmless to grasp on to. A balm, on her frayed nerves. "I told you of Dragonfly, didn't I? That I nearly killed her? That ... That was a lie." She can still remember the woman's face; whitening eyes, that souless stare, an expression of surprise too late ... "I murdered Dragonfly with my own teeth. I thought she was ... Well, that doesn't matter, does it?" Her head shakes; excuses don'tbring back the dead. But it wasn't an excuse that she sought then. "Below that place were ruins, and below them was ... something ancient. The ruins I had read, and as I read that woman's diary I ... I knew my mistake. But I wasn't helpless. I carried her in to the depths."
The more she talks about it, the less Lilac begins to feel. Each memory and admission is like a new bruise, but just as with pain, a limb can only feel so much. So too, the heart. It is enough that she is able to look back, her gaze distant, face a mask. "I made a deal, you see."
Von Horne nods quietly. She keeps her gaze on Lilac's face, but it's not the penetrating one she seems to have when she deals with someone else. It's not cautious either. It's watchful, as though she was waiting for some moment her support might be needed, whatever that may be. She doesn't speak, just listening expectantly.
Lilac stares back, and like her mentor her expression is abnormal. Normally vibrant, even in sadness, she seems much subdued now. There's little emotion in that pale face, save for a slight crease in her lips; a shallow, empty frown. "The pictoglyphs showed me the way. I followed as those had before me, down in to the water ... Down where ... It ... It was." Her gaze dips looking to her hand as she brings them together, spear falling to rest against her shoulder. "Kantemir thought he was great ... But there was greater. The Temple of Being. I'm the last, you know? Thousands of years, and I'm the last ... " She looks back up, hands spreading, "Can you imagine, centuries upon centuries alone in the deep? It consumed its people ... made deals with them ... And I am the last. Her life, for ... For me."
"You're the last what, Lisandra? The last remnant of this... temple?" Klaudia doesn't seem sure what to make of it. "Some person, some being? It had the power to restore life, and so you beseeched it. You mentioned your child... it... came from there? What happened to this... entity?"
Lilac reaches up to her face, rubbing at it as a headache begins to build. "I am the last to .., To make a deal, Klauida. A pact he ... she? It? ... What do you call a god who has consumed an entire people, outlived mountains? Maybe older than the stars?" The rubbing helps hide her face. The numbness remains, but despite it the young woman finds her face wet. "Stupid." Her mind murmurs. "I shouldn't cry for it. Or me." "It was as Kantemir was. No, as our Lady. Wrought from life itself, from the essence of Being as the emptiness was of Void. We spoke, you see. It cared little, not until the end ... Not for me, even then." Lilac bites her lip, then sucks in a breath as the numbness begins to crack; suffering she can endure, has endured, but to matter so little?
"A life for a life, Klaudia. I didn't want to be alone, I said that, didn't I? I was alone and my monster seemed to have finally have me ... I gave to it myself; it remade me. Wrought me, twisted me ... " Another shudder, a tremor that shakes the young girl's spear down her arm. "I we ... we lied together? ... " A swallow, hard and choked. "Dragonfly lives, ... and I am with child. And I am afraid."
When Lilac hides her face, she can feel a calloused hand lay on her shoulder, squeezing it a little. Von Horne has stood up and crouches by the stump her companion sits on. "I see. I understand. Shh, it's alright." A wing settles over Lilac's back like it did when she ended her first hunt, black feathers shading her. "You met something greater than we, like Our Lady did. I understood you and your friends had been in pursuit of things like these, and you were touched by it. But Lisandra, you have the ability to keep your head. You know what makes you human, what makes me a korv? What makes us different from monsters and animals and Borham? It's not shape or ability or lineage. It's that we're intelligent, civilized, conscientious, capable of acting above our baser instincts. We will learn what we can do about this, and whatever time you may have, you will live it out as a person. As long as I draw breath, you won't face this alone."
It seems to take the young girl everything she has to listen and hold herself together. She doesn't speak, but she does nod ever so slightly, seeming to agree. But when Klaudia speaks those words ... "You won't face this alone." ... Lilac seems to lose her struggle with her emotions, breaking down in to sobbed tears. But, there is a difference from her tears only hours before. This time, she doesn't rally, she doesn't offer any words or hold anything in. She sob like a storm had broken in her, a flood washing everything away in a sea of pent up misery and pain.
The wing around Lilac pulls her closer in, hugging her to the huntress' chest and blocking the world out. For as long as the young woman cries, she's held close, buried in feathers and furs, in the faint scents of leather and weapon oil. Klaudia's gravelly voice rasps, "Cry as hard as you can, Lisandra. Don't talk, cry and let it out, as long as you have to, don't try to stop it. Cry as I did when mother passed on, when it came to me to face her legacy. You'll be exhausted, but so will the hurt and fear. You can't see it now, but I know."
Wether Lilac hears her mentor's words or simply cannot stop herself, she sobs with all the pain in her heart. She had broken down before, but never so completely. There was always someone there she had to be strong for; or if not strong, not a burden of tears and broken memories. Even alone, it was never quite the same. There was no one to care for her, nothing to lean on but olden pillows, nothing to hear but indifferent, empty halls. That someone cares, that she isn't alone, means everything to her.
It is nearly a half an hour before Lilac's tears come to a close. Her face is wet now, hair matted and slick where it fell between her hands and her face. She stares down at the ground with eyes puffy and bloodshot, but the crying has stopped for sure. Emotionally spent, she leans in to her mentor, just watching that honest earth, that simple ground that has taken her tears. As with storms, there is silence in her mind as there is from body. The clouds are lighter now.
Klaudia lets Lilac up when the last tears flow, her dark wing drawing away to let the light back in. She produces a kerchief from one of her many pouches, a roughly calloused winghand gently wiping at the young woman's cheeks, and then given over. She doesn't ask if Lilac feels better, or if she's done, she just watches over her student closely, a talon carefully clearing Lilac's bangs out of her face, and stroking her hair. At length, she says, "Let's stop here for the night. I'll ask at that farmhouse if they'd be willing to put us up for a few tenners."
For her part, Lilac doesn't resist, or even seem to register much of the world around her. Several seconds pass before her gaze trails away from the ground to the kerchief at the edge of her vison, and several more before she reaches to take it without a word. It's only when Klaudia begins to walk away to see about their lodgings, that the young woman stirs. From behind, Klaudia can her her apprentice call out.
"I ... I can cook."
Logfile from Envoy. (OOC) Log start: d:\logs\2010-07-13_lilac_klaudia_chat.htmlKlaudia insists on waiting until she's sure her pupil has gathered herself after the emotional conclusion to her first hunt. Rothram Kuenn seemed satisfied with his exchange and departed without another word, the women not seeing him again once they returned to the road. The walk is leisurely now without burdens to carry, disguises to maintain, or a target to hunt, and there are enough places to rest and resupply along the trade road that there isn't a great need to hurry. The occasional travellers pass in either direction, politely offering brief greetings or ignoring them altogether. Beyond the abandoned town at the Fork, some of the forest thins out a little into green hills, allowing some sunlight to chase away a little of the gloom.
While the young huntress had kept to herself after her initital words on departure, slowly, but surely, she's returned to her old talkative self as the road wore on. The matter of the hunt itself was avoided in favor lighter topics: people, towns, the forest, and so on. But even that gave way to deeper things as Lilac recovered herself. Hours later she touched upon the hunt, inserting it in to a comment about the weather, and now she's turned to brush it again: on the matter of Rothram Kuenn.
"I can't believe I was actually attracted to him," Lisandra "Lilac" Dragomir blurts out after stretch of silence that followed mentioning how the two hunters met. "It must run in their family!" She tosses her hands in the air, head shaking.
Von Horne has kept a good pace, and while she's sparing with her words she still gamely chats, mostly letting Lilac do the talking offering her opinions or knowledge when it's called for, apparently listening closely. Other korv might have had difficulty walking this far, most used to flying for trips of this length, but the distance doesn't seem to bother the relatively rugged avian. At this latest turn in the conversation, Klaudia tilts her head a little quizzically, looking at her companion out of one eye. "Were you? Why was that?"
"I don't know!" Lilac admits, hands falling to her side. She adjusts her weapons unnecesarrily as she walks, watching them as her lips purse in thought. "I suppose it's his ruggedness? And though it's embarassing to admit, my time being like them seems to have made me appreciative of Jupani. It's like I can read their faces, their the way their tail hangs -- I could even tell their scents before!"
The korvess taps her shoulder thoughtfully with the haft of her spear, the hinged beak swinging a little. It's a tic she seems to have picked up when her wing-claws are too full to tap her beak. "Well, there's nothing wrong or embarrassing about appreciating jupani," muses Klaudia philosophically. "However it may be that you picked up that trait. As for Rothram, I imagine there are other women who would find him attractive for their own reasons."
"Well, his coldness would be perfect in the Savan. Maybe he'd make a good stop for a door, or ... Or I should stop talking about him. It's unbecoming." After taking a deep breath, the young human exhales, leaning her head back. When she speaks again, her tone has shifted, along with her choice of topics, "You know, Klaudia, I enjoyed that hunt? Not ... not the ... " the younger woman shivers, wrapping her free arm around herself as if struck by a bitter wind, " ... The ending, but the rest ... The rest I did. Did you really follow me the entire time, so close?" She turns her head to face her teacher, lifted.
Von Horne shrugs her one good shoulder. "It's true that many of the Kuenns are like that. I wouldn't underestimate any of them, though. I understand that being reared among them is harsh and competitive. I don't think that any that make it into the public eye can be taken as lightly as a doorstop." At Lilac's change of direction, the korvess nods, looking back toward the road again, following a bend in it along a low stone wall. Someone has taken advantage of the fields out here to run a farm. "I'm glad you found something to like in it. I've known a lot of hunters to feel exhileration in the hunt, and a sense of satisfaction on success. They're not all like that, but then not all of them are so tragic as this one turned out to be. Some really are just beasts, no more intelligent than the bromthen boars that I hear are hunted across the sea." At Lilac's question, there's a small crinkle at the corners of Von Horne's eyes, and a quirk at the edges of her beak that the once-bardess has come to recognize
as her smile. "I did, Lisandra. Please don't think it was a mistrust of your abilities. There's always risk, and first and foremost I wanted you to do this for yourself, but everyone makes mistakes sometimes. I wouldn't have left you to suffer them if it became especially dangerous."
As her mentor relates about the Kuenn's, Lisandra's expression falls until she end sup looking quite guilty, indeed. "I ... I know," she admits, sounding apologetic. "I was just mad, I suppose. It's not as if he didn't speak of his time with Borham, and I should be the last person to condemn another for what fate placed in their hands. Forgive me."
The young woman stops long enough to bow her head anc collect her thoughts at her teacher's reply to her question about following. So she had been there ... The whole idea her mentor was behind her all that time is quite startling, both because she had not expected it and because she hadn't detected it. Head rising, she admits as much. "I'm not offended, Klaudia. I'm actually very flattered you watched over me so closely. Not even Ummy watched me that closely! And, well, I'm also a little embarassed I didn't notice. You're really a very scary hunter. It hasn't been so long since I feared you, it actually gives me chills!" She smiles a little, revealing her good humor at it all.
The short stone wall follows the road, and sections off a fruit orchard nestled within the bend, the branches heavy with pears. Across the road from it are a few more pear trees growing wild. There's less fruit on these trees, as travellers seem to enjoy some of it instead of picking from the orchard, but there's enough for Klaudia to poke her spear at, sticking it firmly enough to pull it off its stem. She takes this pear off the spearhead with her beak, then jabs another and offers it to Lilac. "Don't be embarrassed. I kept my distance, it was raining, and you were busy with something else... I wouldn't have expected you to see me even in better circumstances. I think Rothram suspected I was there, but I don't think he spotted me either," she says, talking oddly around the pear held in her beak. "Ha, well, with familiarity fear tends to melt away. I'm sure the better you get, the more my mystique will wear off. Though it is worth noting fear can be a useful tool."
Lisandra stops to watch as her mentor picks the pear, then another, turning to regard the orchard and its quiet bounty with a soft smile on her lips. When the skewered pear appears at the corner of her vision, she gladly accepts and and begins to nibble at it as she resumes walking at her mentor's side. "There is that; you're right. I do take a certain pride in my ability to hide, and to find others, but I can't very well catch everything at all times. And I'm still adjusting to the loss of the senses I had used to be much better, so there's that, too." She takes a few bites, then has to scramble to rub her chin as juice threatens to run down it and under her collar. She sputters, then laughs a little after she cleans herself off. "I still have a hard time seeing you beside me. Sometimes I look over and wonder, did that all really happen? But here you are!" She smiles wider.
Lilac says, "And as for fear, that's something I know. I had a lot of time to think of what fear meant, when I was the thing peopled feared in the night. It seems to me fear is the strongest weapon most monsters have. A bandit is dangerous, but an equal monster is dangerous and terrifying. And if they can lurk, so much the more so. I think if one had a mind to, they could make much of fear against an opponent who could be swayed by it. And fearful monsters, and people too, make mistakes.""
"Quite true," the korv agrees. She pushes her spear back further along her shoulder so she can keep it held with the crook of her wing while she has a 'bite' of her own pear, gouging it with the tip of her beak to peck morsels off the core and toss them back into her gullet. "Fate can be strange, sometimes. I'm glad it turned out the way it did, however. It turned out better than I could have hoped."
"I have to agree, even with so much unanswered. I had faith that you were a good person, and that you had a connection to the Pieksvaldts, but I couldn't be sure. I almost gave up, in the face of my doom, but I didn't and I'm glad for that." Being human, Lilac munches with a much more direct bite and chew, her mouth space coniderably smaller. She glance's at her teacher's beak as she eats, wondering what it must be like to have such a solid, sizable organ on one's face. Even her beast's muzzle wasn't nearly so wide. The matter of fate isn't so easily dismissed, however. In short order Lilac finds her mind returning to it, because much is unanswered, and much more could still ruin this brief peace they have won.
"I ... Well," she begins again, her voice hesitant. "We're friends, aren't we Klaudia? Maybe closer than friends, with all that has happened?"
The reflected sunlight on Von Horne's beak is broken up by numerous scratches on it, but it seems plenty sturdy still, and the korv uses it with remarkable dexterity. She pauses in digging at her snack to look over at Lilac, and cocks her head a little. "Of course we're friends, Lisandra. It came about under unusual circumstances, but a bond forged in adversity can be a strong one. I think in teaching you, it could only have deepened. I owe you a debt of gratitude, but it's not one I carry grudgingly. I would like to see you succeed, to find what you're looking for."
"I ... " How do I say what I've done? Isn't it enough that I was once a monster, can one person carry so much monstrocity and still walk like they were? Be seen as they were? At times, it feels to Lilac she's not really human at all; she's merely a reflection of a human who once was, twisted and turned about by greater powers. She can even almost believe she's what she once was, but there's always something to remind her her life isn't quite right. Like a flawed painting, or an off note, it's never quite like it should be. All of this makes her hesitate enough where she decides to work in to what she was going to say.
"That is, I, um ... Well, I seem human, don't I? I, well ... That's not exctly what I mean -- well it is. It's just not quite ... right." The young woman sucks in a breath, then exhales. After biting her lip, she admits, "You see, I ... I need you. I may not have much time left to me, and I'm afraid and those that could have helped have moved on. I thought it might be alright, but the ... Time has made be worry; maybe motherhood? I just know, that I haven't ... Haven't left the woods just yet. And I worry, for my child."
Von Horne tilts her head the other way, one round black eye peering over the ruff of fur she wears over her neck. "It's obviously troubling you a great deal. Is it that you fear some part of the curse lingers, makes you less than human?" She studies Lilac a few moments. "There's nothing obvious to me about what it is, though... you seem quite human to me, but that can mean a lot of different things. If you fear some magical remnant remains, we will get to the bottom of it somehow. There are experts in the bigger cities, scholars and mages and engineers. I will help you however I can, so long as you need me."
"That is ... Is a worry, yes, yes ... Yes it is," Lilac stammers, suddenly finding herself flushed and a little dizzy as she gathers and recollects all that has happened to her. After a furitive glance around, she spots a tree stump and walks over to it, settling herself down and leaning on her spear as she forces herself to steady her breaths. Telling her will help, she won't be betray me. Not after coming this far! I have to believe in her -- in someone! Ummy is too far away, and they is no guarantee of the time left to me. Ugh, I have to breathe and ... and focus. She's silent for nigh on a minute as she leans on her spear, rocking and gathering her courage. Until, at last ...
"The curse of Castle Pieksvaldt isn't the ... the only ... Only way that I have been changed," she breathes, staring down the length of her weapon and in to her shadow. "Not unique in it's nature ... Mmm." She turns her head now, out, to look across the soothing orchard. So peaceful and ordinary ...
"My child isn't ... Isn't human, Klaudia. Nor quite am I, to carry it." She stares off at the orchard. So peaceful. Ahh.
The huntress follows, looking on concerned, but patiently waiting for Lilac to collect herself. She sits slightly awkwardly on the ground nearby, laying her korv-headed spear in the grass and craning her head up, listening carefully. "You've mentioned your remarkable travels across Sinai, with your other friends. Something happened...?"
"Something did," Lilac agrees. She doesn't look back, not wanting Klaudia to see the fear in her eyes, that lost gaze as she recalls those days. But this is important, she knows, and so she soldiers on. The relative tranqulity of the orchard helps her hold on at least, the view giving her something natural and harmless to grasp on to. A balm, on her frayed nerves. "I told you of Dragonfly, didn't I? That I nearly killed her? That ... That was a lie." She can still remember the woman's face; whitening eyes, that souless stare, an expression of surprise too late ... "I murdered Dragonfly with my own teeth. I thought she was ... Well, that doesn't matter, does it?" Her head shakes; excuses don'tbring back the dead. But it wasn't an excuse that she sought then. "Below that place were ruins, and below them was ... something ancient. The ruins I had read, and as I read that woman's diary I ... I knew my mistake. But I wasn't helpless. I carried her in to the depths."
The more she talks about it, the less Lilac begins to feel. Each memory and admission is like a new bruise, but just as with pain, a limb can only feel so much. So too, the heart. It is enough that she is able to look back, her gaze distant, face a mask. "I made a deal, you see."
Von Horne nods quietly. She keeps her gaze on Lilac's face, but it's not the penetrating one she seems to have when she deals with someone else. It's not cautious either. It's watchful, as though she was waiting for some moment her support might be needed, whatever that may be. She doesn't speak, just listening expectantly.
Lilac stares back, and like her mentor her expression is abnormal. Normally vibrant, even in sadness, she seems much subdued now. There's little emotion in that pale face, save for a slight crease in her lips; a shallow, empty frown. "The pictoglyphs showed me the way. I followed as those had before me, down in to the water ... Down where ... It ... It was." Her gaze dips looking to her hand as she brings them together, spear falling to rest against her shoulder. "Kantemir thought he was great ... But there was greater. The Temple of Being. I'm the last, you know? Thousands of years, and I'm the last ... " She looks back up, hands spreading, "Can you imagine, centuries upon centuries alone in the deep? It consumed its people ... made deals with them ... And I am the last. Her life, for ... For me."
"You're the last what, Lisandra? The last remnant of this... temple?" Klaudia doesn't seem sure what to make of it. "Some person, some being? It had the power to restore life, and so you beseeched it. You mentioned your child... it... came from there? What happened to this... entity?"
Lilac reaches up to her face, rubbing at it as a headache begins to build. "I am the last to .., To make a deal, Klauida. A pact he ... she? It? ... What do you call a god who has consumed an entire people, outlived mountains? Maybe older than the stars?" The rubbing helps hide her face. The numbness remains, but despite it the young woman finds her face wet. "Stupid." Her mind murmurs. "I shouldn't cry for it. Or me." "It was as Kantemir was. No, as our Lady. Wrought from life itself, from the essence of Being as the emptiness was of Void. We spoke, you see. It cared little, not until the end ... Not for me, even then." Lilac bites her lip, then sucks in a breath as the numbness begins to crack; suffering she can endure, has endured, but to matter so little?
"A life for a life, Klaudia. I didn't want to be alone, I said that, didn't I? I was alone and my monster seemed to have finally have me ... I gave to it myself; it remade me. Wrought me, twisted me ... " Another shudder, a tremor that shakes the young girl's spear down her arm. "I we ... we lied together? ... " A swallow, hard and choked. "Dragonfly lives, ... and I am with child. And I am afraid."
When Lilac hides her face, she can feel a calloused hand lay on her shoulder, squeezing it a little. Von Horne has stood up and crouches by the stump her companion sits on. "I see. I understand. Shh, it's alright." A wing settles over Lilac's back like it did when she ended her first hunt, black feathers shading her. "You met something greater than we, like Our Lady did. I understood you and your friends had been in pursuit of things like these, and you were touched by it. But Lisandra, you have the ability to keep your head. You know what makes you human, what makes me a korv? What makes us different from monsters and animals and Borham? It's not shape or ability or lineage. It's that we're intelligent, civilized, conscientious, capable of acting above our baser instincts. We will learn what we can do about this, and whatever time you may have, you will live it out as a person. As long as I draw breath, you won't face this alone."
It seems to take the young girl everything she has to listen and hold herself together. She doesn't speak, but she does nod ever so slightly, seeming to agree. But when Klaudia speaks those words ... "You won't face this alone." ... Lilac seems to lose her struggle with her emotions, breaking down in to sobbed tears. But, there is a difference from her tears only hours before. This time, she doesn't rally, she doesn't offer any words or hold anything in. She sob like a storm had broken in her, a flood washing everything away in a sea of pent up misery and pain.
The wing around Lilac pulls her closer in, hugging her to the huntress' chest and blocking the world out. For as long as the young woman cries, she's held close, buried in feathers and furs, in the faint scents of leather and weapon oil. Klaudia's gravelly voice rasps, "Cry as hard as you can, Lisandra. Don't talk, cry and let it out, as long as you have to, don't try to stop it. Cry as I did when mother passed on, when it came to me to face her legacy. You'll be exhausted, but so will the hurt and fear. You can't see it now, but I know."
Wether Lilac hears her mentor's words or simply cannot stop herself, she sobs with all the pain in her heart. She had broken down before, but never so completely. There was always someone there she had to be strong for; or if not strong, not a burden of tears and broken memories. Even alone, it was never quite the same. There was no one to care for her, nothing to lean on but olden pillows, nothing to hear but indifferent, empty halls. That someone cares, that she isn't alone, means everything to her.
It is nearly a half an hour before Lilac's tears come to a close. Her face is wet now, hair matted and slick where it fell between her hands and her face. She stares down at the ground with eyes puffy and bloodshot, but the crying has stopped for sure. Emotionally spent, she leans in to her mentor, just watching that honest earth, that simple ground that has taken her tears. As with storms, there is silence in her mind as there is from body. The clouds are lighter now.
Klaudia lets Lilac up when the last tears flow, her dark wing drawing away to let the light back in. She produces a kerchief from one of her many pouches, a roughly calloused winghand gently wiping at the young woman's cheeks, and then given over. She doesn't ask if Lilac feels better, or if she's done, she just watches over her student closely, a talon carefully clearing Lilac's bangs out of her face, and stroking her hair. At length, she says, "Let's stop here for the night. I'll ask at that farmhouse if they'd be willing to put us up for a few tenners."
For her part, Lilac doesn't resist, or even seem to register much of the world around her. Several seconds pass before her gaze trails away from the ground to the kerchief at the edge of her vison, and several more before she reaches to take it without a word. It's only when Klaudia begins to walk away to see about their lodgings, that the young woman stirs. From behind, Klaudia can her her apprentice call out.
"I ... I can cook."