An Uncomfortable Reunion

[Jirai]

ELLIOT BROWN

It had been over a year now, a year full of a few highs and many, many lows, full of meeting so many new friends, peers, and mentors, and watching so many of their corpses go up in flames. Throughout all of this, the young squire persevered. He moved forward in life, one step at a time, knowing well enough not to look back. That path led only to despair. Anyone who was Myrken-born would know that deep down in his heart.

Unfortunately, a true Myrkenite's heart knew another truth, to never take lightly the unbreakable bond of family. In watching his adoptive family, the Shepherd Knights of the Silver Staff, fall and rise and fall again, the boy began to once again long for contact with his parents, his uncles and cousins and his siblings. He had been sending money home ever since running away in the midst of the drought and famine, but these packages did not include letters and he did not receive word back.

For months, however, this urge was hammered down by everyday life in Myrken Wood. There was an endless amount of daily tasks for a squire, as many as one could manage or want. On top of that, he was a young man in the midst of a city full of haste and commerce. Myrken was almost never restful, if one knew where to look. Depending on one's point of view, Myrkentown could be a place of endless adventure or of endless horror. It was easy to put any such longing aside for truly any length of time.

...Except for it was no longer easy. Word had finally come to the boy. This summer had not nearly been as harsh as the last but it had been harsh enough. During the morning's usual toil in the field, Elliot's father had died of overexertion. It was a rarely common fate for Myrken's farmers of a certain age. Elliot was one of the youngest children in the family and therefore did not have the same sort of connection to his father as some of his older siblings, but the right thing still needed to be done. He had to come home and pay his respects, perhaps not as the knight he one day hoped to be, but at least as a young man well on that path and not the boy he had been when he left.

It did not make it any easier. And that, perhaps, was why he was sitting across from the scarred girl now. Did he want the scars to distract his family from his own prolonged absence? Perhaps. Perhaps not, though. He had known her for a long time now and barely saw them. Her attitude would be distraction enough, but even that wasn't his intent. He just wanted some level of support, someone to come with him and truly, there weren't many others left alive to perform that role. "So you'll come?" Elliot had explained the situation to Niall in the broadest of terms to say the least: His father had died. He had to go pay respects. He wanted her to come. Usually, the whys of the matter only confused her. He could try to explain that part, perhaps, after she agreed. For now he just looked at her expectantly, awaiting her reply.

NIALL

Her attitude would probably more than just simple distraction. Social situations were never her forte - and let us define social situations quite broadly in this case! The scarred girl blinked once at the end of the squire's generalized explanation and his question. She could ask questions in return, but really - why bother? His answers to her questions would almost certainly make even less sense. The squire did not understand her, nor did she understand him. They seemed to have reached some sort of balance, despite that. And so she shrugged.

"I'll go." She agreed easily enough. "Just don't tell Her." Kyra, that was. 'Her' always referred to Kyra, since Niall preferred not deal in names.

It was agreed. Now to see just how much of a fiasco this might devolve into.

Elliot

So there it was that the two of them were walking through town toward the outer wall. Moral support was welcome. It was a question then of whether or not to tell her more about his family. He wasn't entirely sure it would matter, but at least it would pass the time.

On the other hand, passing the time by asking her about that last comment would be far more interesting and far less tedious. It's not like explaining his family would help at all, not with her. "I don't understand why you don't want her to know that you're coming with me. She'd probably see it as a good thing, no?" Offering support to a friend who just lost his father seemed to be a good thing in his book. Granted, her book was written in some sort of strange language anyway, but it's not like he could read in the first place, so it hardly mattered.

Niall

One booted foot scuffed at the dirt, sending a small rock skittering ahead. It was expression of a sort, a movement she would never have made even a few months ago. How long has she been here, anyway? Tracking time is not something she's ever been concerned with, but a while. Almost a year, maybe. Someone else would know. People here were so concerned with breaking time down and tracking it oh-so carefully. As if a week or a month or a year made any difference at all.

"I do not need, and I most especially do not want Her approval." Her approval is a thing to be avoided at all costs, a betrayal of everything the scarred girl with the oddly colored hair has been taught.

"Besides, she wouldn't understand." She would come up with all sorts of reasons that Niall was doing this, and none of them would be correct. Why WAS Niall doing it, anyway? That would likely remain a mystery. It was entirely probable that the girl could not answer the question herself, and even if she could, she would not.

Another scuff of her foot. As they walked towards wherever it was they were going the girl was alert, dark eyes flickering here and there. It was nothing out of the ordinary though - she always acted as though she expected to be jumped from behind.

Elliot

"I'd give her a piece of my mind." In a lot of ways, Niall was so much easier to trust. She acted so strangely but at the same time acted so understandably so far as Myrkeners went. Kyra just came in wanting to help everyone, a lot like that creepy artificer. Now, he was glad that she helped, but still, anyone who did so much for so little? HERE? You can't trust that. You just can't. Magic was generally scary anyway.

Niall was scary, too, but it was easy enough to deal with that. You just ignored it. Otherwise, there was no point in dealing with her at all. Squires were supposed to be brave and whatever else, right? Funny, it was a lot easier to believe that BEFORE he became a squire. Now? Now he just did his best. He just did things. That's how you survived in Myrken. That's how you helped make sure everyone else surived as well. Maybe that WAS being brave, but it didn't feel it.

It didn't feel it now and he was absolutely just doing things, in this case going home when he didn't want to, simply because he had to. That didn't make him feel any braver either.

"I know you wouldn't want me to talk to her, though. You make it seem like she's barely worth either of our time anyway." Apparently, though, he had strange ideas of what WAS worth his time. The girl wasn't exactly surrounded by admirers. Not that strangely, neither was Kyra, though from what he could tell she at least had some friends.

By now they were just about outside the wall. "We should get there by nightfall. I didn't send word that I was coming but they'll know I am." Some things were just done the right way, especially in Myrken. "I just hope they don't want me to stay." The last bit was barely audible. Dealing with that possibility was certainly his largest concern right now.

[Jirai]

Niall

Actually, you could trust Kyra. Not that Niall would ever say it. Kyra didn't lie. Ever. It was that simple. Niall, on the other hand? Well, she probably wouldn't lie, mostly because she didn't consider it to be worth the effort. But neither did she really care about anyone here - with the possible exception of the squire whose company she was currently in. At least, she seemed to make some small effort to not completely alienate the boy. He reminded her of someone.

"She's not. She'll do what she'll do, for all her talk of listening." Oh, she talked scornfully enough about the blind sorceress, but for all that she had taken up residence in Kyra's newly constructed house.

"You think they'd want you to walk home at night?" Myrken wasn't necessarily a safe place.

Elliot

"I'm not surprised." Elliot usually didn't have too many bad words for anyone, but in this case it was personal, except for, of course, it wasn't personal at all. He had barely even met the woman. "A lot of people say one thing and do another." People in power and witches especially. That was one good thing about Niall. She just said what she was going to say, no matter what might happen. You always knew where you stood with her. It was the sort of thing that gave a boy confidence despite her scars and markings.

She had asked the squire a question though, and there was no way around it save for lying and he couldn't well do that after the speech he just made . "Oh. No." A slight pause followed while he got his wits together. "I didn't mean it that way. Uh, see. They might want me to work the fields now. To stay and do some of what my pa did before he died. They didn't need me much before but now..." There was a round shrug of his shoulders. What more was there to explain, even to someone who didn't rightly understand families in Myrken?

Niall

"Oh." Well, she'd certainly misunderstood that. Her brow furrowed slightly, thinking about this from a new angle. She thought... but no, what she thought was often completely wrong with these people, better to ask.

"You don't want to stay?" Best to be safe and check that fact before saying anything else, right? Much of Myrken - but especially family - was just alien to the girl who looked at things in a completely different manner.

[Glenn]

Elliot

It was a good system they had. When Niall didn't understand something, Elliot explained it as simply as possible but not in a patronizing sort of way. She was probably a little older than him, certainly full of dark magic, certainly scarred inside and out. He was only beginning to collect such things. It had been a hard year, but he had come out the stronger for it. Still, here he faltered a bit, and gave her his first response. "Would you?"

There was a short pause before the boy realized his oversight. "Don't answer that. It's just..." Plain and to the point. "I've spent over a year training to be a knight. I left for the right reasons, I think. I guess, maybe, I don't want to see all that time go to waste?" That was the problem with saying things plainly. Sometimes, the real truth was just impossible to say that way, at least all in one go, so he'd sigh and keep putting one foot in front of the other. "That's not all of it, though." Maybe she just wouldn't ask further.

[Jirai]

Niall didn't understand a lot of things. So Elliot did a lot of explaining. Often his explanations did not make that much sense though, and this was one such time. If she were to take the squire as an example, perhaps it was a good thing she'd never known her parents. Made things less complicated, anyway.

"It isn't that far." She pointed out. "Why is it one or the other?"

[Glenn]

"Do they have farmers where you're from?" It was a stupid question, mostly. He hadn't worked out too, too much about where she was from, but from what he did, it wasn't a very nice place. But they had to eat something, right? Niall didn't seem like a cannibal. Well... maybe a little.

"Don't answer that." It seemed like half of his questions to her lately were not meant for answering. "It's more than a full time job. It's a lifestyle. I'd be spending all day and a good part of the night living that life." That wasn't good enough though. "When I left, it wasn't selfish to leave, Niall. I was another mouth to feed and not all that much use since the weather was so bad anyway, and I could channel money back to them, a little at least. Now, staying away if they want me to come back is pretty selfish. I just don't know if I can live like that again, though, not after what i've been through."

[Jirai]

"We don't farm. Not like you do, here." Not at all. Nor was she a cannibal, thank you very much. She was quite capable of doing her own hunting. Oh. She wasn't supposed to answer that. Ooops.

So the scarred girl simply listened as the squire continued, offering a slight shrug of one shoulder. There were several responses she could have offered to those words, but either she'd developed some level of thought for what came out of her mouth or her normal taciturn nature was taking over again, for the thin child did not respond at all to that - though he did receive a considering look from those dark eyes.

[Glenn]

Being capable of hunting didn't mean someone wasn't a cannibal! On the one hand, if anyone he knew WAS a cannibal, it'd probably be her. On the other, well, it was all pretty unlikely in general. Still, she was looking at him sort of strange now.

He'd just scramble and shrug. "I don't know. It's not like the knights or Myrken NEED me, but sometimes I think they do." The knights, that was, not Myrken. "There's been a lot of people lost and.. well, I've been there. We're building something. But.. people just don't do this. They don't leave the farm. They don't run away and join knighthoods. They don't. That's not how life works. You're born. You work there. You die. That's life. And it's not like it's a BAD life, not compared to what you had, right?"

[Jirai]

"Oh. So leaving isn't normal. But you already left. I guess you just didn't go far enough." That was one way to solve the problem, right?

But here his words venture a bit closer to uncomfortable territory - the girl does not speak much about herself, or her life. Not to anyone. And so she shrugs a bit. "No. Much more boring, though." Life in Myrken tends to be.

[Glenn]

There was a glance at her as they continued to walk. Elliot seemed unsure of what she just said. It was dangerous to read into anything Niall said. She was usually rather literal. Still, there might have been something there.

"Are you saying that I should just go home because it's not all that bad, compared to where you're from?" He was hoping that wasn't what she was saying.

[Jirai]

"No. I don't know what you should do." She glanced sideways at him, lips twisted in something that was certainly not a smile, but might be as close as the scarred girl ever came.

"I've never been asked to go back. Because if you keep going far enough, how can they ask you?" Again, she shrugged.

[Glenn]

"Well I don't WANT to go far enough." He frowned and looked at her again. This was his home and he did want to see his family again. He just wanted to VISIT, maybe. Or... he didn't want his father to be dead. That was for certain.

"Why don't you want to stay here, Niall? I know things are different here, but isn't it better in some ways?"

[Jirai]

Was he really that oblivious? She stared for a moment. Several moments, in fact, before she was able to formulate appropriate words.

"Would you want to live as the only human in a place full of dwarves, only dwarves, all dwarves, who have never heard of humans?"

[Glenn]

He didn't seem chastised by that. Granted, he hadn't thought about it on those terms, but now that he was, the young squire held his ground, and hard. "It depends. If I had friends there. If the world I came from was as bad as you make yours out to be sometimes. Then yeah, maybe. We're not that different, not really."

[Jirai]

She was silent for several long moments, no longer looking at the boy. Almost long enough that one would think she had chosen not to answer. But eventually she spoke, still without looking.

"It's not all bad. There's a safe place, see?" The words came slowly, carefully chosen. Her scarred face was blank. "I got there, just before I ended up here. But to stay here, while so many of my people are trapped back there, dying? No."

[Glenn]

"Oh." A safe place. Sort of like home. And he couldn't go back there. Because there were people who needed protection. With the knights. Right? That was straightforward. That's exactly what she said. Right?

Though it wasn't so cut and dry. It would have been nice if it was. He had responsibilities at home as well. He'd just have to balance them. "I'm going to tell them that I can't stay. I can come back now and again. But I just can't stay. It won't be pretty. Are you sure you still want to come with me?" She better say yes. He needed the moral support.