• Closed • Like the Dawn, You Broke the Dark (Rose)

[Quiet]

36th Trial of Season, Arc 718


Signing
"Signing while speaking"
"Speaking"

The morning light, typically comforting in its regularity and renewal, baptized Quiet in an unholy light, the sins of the evening prior still fresh on his conscience.

A large part of him knew he did what he must for survival. A part of him excused his behavior. Animals hunt, it’d argue. Animals hunt and fight and claw and scratch to live, and you had done just that. You had done what needed to be done to ensure that this morning light could be seen. There was no sin in your defense, no malfeasance in your survival. It was attempting to consume you, it said. It wouldn’t have stopped, much as you couldn’t have stopped if you intended on living.

But some part of Quiet knew that wasn’t true.

Because Quiet had utilized The Gift to bring on that death. Quiet had utilized that which is sacred to bring upon the death of something innocent. The Gift was not a weapon. It was not part of the natural order. And Quiet existed outside of that which is considered natural for being able to use it. Those excuses - that he had to commit this murder to survive, because all living things hunt and kill to live - was not applicable to Quiet. Nothing about the natural order was applicable to Quiet. The moment he began hearing the voice of the wind, he was no longer a subject of the natural order’s reign, he became the natural order. And although death would be permitted and understood within that order, the order would never be directly responsible for a death. It was not an instrument. It was not a tool.

And Quiet misused that gift.

And it resulted in the death of something innocent.

So there Quiet was, refusing to be baptized in bestiality by the running creek in which he sat, the adolescent Uwär Bysez’s corpse still strewn across his lap, held in place by the quarterstaff which Quiet held before it, ensuring its placement. Its right claw, still hooked in Quiet’s thigh, pulled lightly, but it was a pain Quiet had grown accustomed to after the breaks he had spent meditating on his mistakes in that river. From the mid evening, to the crack of dawn, Quiet was relentless. He begged for forgiveness from a world he knew was apathetic to his grievances and would offer no atonement.

The water ran against Quiet’s right side, pushing the current past him. Quiet felt it. He mourned that he had not been able to communicate with the river when it mattered - when he could have prevented tragedy. He mourned the loss of an unknown beast, its head still radiating slightly from the heat which Quiet had harnessed to burn through its skull, and blood lightly tainting the water downstream, though subtle. Luckily for Quiet, the claws, still stuck within his flesh, plugged the wound, but he knew that releasing the claws’ grip on his thigh would be to condemn himself to blood loss.

The wind blew past his nose, and it smelled as it always had near Desnind. Rich, ancient, and mossy. He had wondered extensively about the wonders that the new city held for him. After Quacia, he prayed for improvement. The greens here spoke to an already vastly separate environment from that of its Western neighbor.

Even so, and being so close, Quiet could not bring himself to leave that creek.

He couldn’t bring himself to leave his mistake as alone as he had found it.

He could hardly bare the guilt of its passing.

But his mourning clouded his judgement.

Where he should be thinking of his companions - of Anya - left behind as he grieved his own mistakes, he could not. Where he should be considering his duty to enter Desnind to continue his work for the Seekers, he could not. Where he should be considering the heavy potential consequence of leaving and releasing the wound to bleed, he could not.

All he seemingly allowed time to consider was his err.

And so, as the river rushed around him, Quiet meditated.

And as he heard footsteps, his sleep deprivation and mild blood loss over an extended period of time had seemingly caught up to him.

He turned his head up, opening his eyes.

“Hello,” he said.

And then he fell over, unconscious.

[Rose Greenwood]

This had been a terrible idea.

She had been such an idiot to volunteer for this. Rose admonished herself as she walked through a clearing of waist-high broom sage that brushed lightly against her legs. She was outside Desnind on a mission to harvest as much willow bark and ginger root as she could carry on the outskirts of the Makubwa Lori. The young healer had been out here since before sunrise, trawling the land for her quarry. Rose was tired and achy although she already had several ginger tubers filling the satchel at her hip that she had found a few breaks ago. The woman was expecting to still be out past dark and had brought along her bow, quiver along with some of her medical supplies in a pack on her back. Just in the case that she was hurt along the way back home. After being chased by wolves in the forest previously, Rose was not going to take any more chances.

The sound of trickling water murmured to her left and the physician turned toward it instinctively.

Willows were supposed to live near the water right?

Striding toward the sound the red headed woman moved toward a shaded area draped in the boughs of elms and ancient pines. Just past the treeline she spied the glittering rivulet of water. A pair of willows leaned in over the stream and her eyes lit up, however her joy at finding the trees was cut brutally short when she caught sight of the man sitting in the middle of the stream. Her jaw dropped aghast to see a young Uwär Bysez drapped across his lap. They were fearsome beasts with poisonous bites if they managed to latch on to you. Uwär Bysez were best avoided, Rose could only look on in utter shock at the scene.

The lizard was long dead. Why in Ralaith’s name was he sitting in the water with a dead reptile? Right then the young man turned toward her and spoke. The Sev’ryn half-bloods eyes widened to saucers as he tumbled sideways and into the water.

Rose heard herself yelp as she leapt into a sprint.

“Oh...no no no.” she muttered between gasps as she dashed into the water, soaking her leather pants and knee length green overdress. The woman pushed through the gentle current, nearly slipping as she stumbled over slick rocks before clawing her way to him. The Uwär Bysez had fallen away and been taken by the current by the time Rose reached him. She reached hastily under his arms and took hold of his shoulders to drag the unconscious man up so his nose and mouth were above the water.

“Oi….you are very very heavy.” Rose hissed painfully as she tried to heave the man up into her arms. Humor was normally how she coped with terrible situations but the moment was shattered when the physician looked down to see the still bleeding wound marring his thigh. It was deep and clearly earned from his encounter with the Uwär Bysez.

Gritting her teeth, Rose threw all her weight into dragging him toward the shore. The water was deep enough at the center to let his buoyancy do most of the work for her, but she barely had the strength to drag him up and onto the shore.

Gasping for air the red headed Strossi girl hauled herself upon onto dry land before grabbing hold of his arms and towing him into the grass beneath a nearby pine. As soon as he was clear of the water she practically tossed her bow and quiver off her back before wrenching her medical pack in front of her. In a panic she dumped the contents onto the ground and snatched up a thick linen bandage.

She had to stop the bleeding first, she couldn’t waste time making a proper packing for the wound. That deep gouge had to be addressed. There was no time for modesty as she grabbed her scissors and cut away the fabric around his thigh, exposing the wound fully to the open air. Rushing quickly and forcing herself not to hyperventilate, Rose wrapped a thick layer of bandages around his leg before leaning forward with the heel of her palms to put pressure on the wound.

After several bits the blood started to clot enough that she didn’t have to hold constant pressure. Rose wasn’t sure how much time passed next but she bolted away to to gather an armful of nearby fallen branches and pine cones along with a fistfull of pinestraw to use as kindling. Her hands trembled with panic while she tried to mimic Ti’niva’s movements from the night she had spent in his camp. He had made starting a fire look so easy but right in that moment she felt like a toddler as she raked her flint against the steel.

What felt like an eternity passed before a shower of sparks flew from the flint and into the pile of wood. With shaking fingertips she gently fed straw into the tiny fledgling fire until it was large enough to sustain itself. Her new paitent needed to be warm and dry if he was going to recover from that gash in his leg. Then there were those burns dotting his hands but they could wait until she had the more pressing concern under control.

The healer shivered slightly against the morning coolness in her drenched clothes before sliding up next to the young man and kneeling at this side. She shook his shoulder gently, he had to wake up and stay awake until he was stable. Death came quickly to those that simply let the darkness take them.

“You need to wake up, you can’t sleep right now.” she whispered worriedly.

[Quiet]

Signing
"Signing while speaking"
"Speaking"


In truth, ‘unconscious’ was too harsh of a word for Quiet’s condition.

He had seen the girl, not while she was approaching, but after she had emerged seemingly from the ether and appeared in the middle-distance of his vision rather suddenly. Although, his perception of immediacy was somewhat inhibited. Not because of any injury. Rather, due to the meditative state he had taken.

When he had fallen, it wasn’t due to the pain alone, and it wasn’t so intense as to force him fully unconscious. He hadn’t completely closed his eyes. He hadn’t lost touch with the world around him. It felt as if he should have. It felt as if he would have needed to, were it not that the intensity of that injury was not dulled by time. He fell due to exhaustion, likely. The blood loss, up until that point, had been slight, the majority of the wound still plugged by the beast who caused it. He kept full touch with the world around him due to focus and focus alone.

When the woman emerged through the brush and into Quiet’s world, however, that focus was lost. It was by no means her fault. Likely, it was Quiet’s, for trying to be polite. He didn’t regret it, however. He hadn’t learned much in his time in Idalos, relatively. He had been trying, but there was just so much to learn and see. He couldn’t simply absorb all the information available. What he had learned, however, is that it would be rude if he hadn’t greeted someone he had just met, regardless of circumstance.

Her concern was… Endearing. Quiet hadn’t met many individuals willing to put aside their personal agendas to assist others. Seeing someone be able to divert expectations Quiet hadn’t realized he had even held was refreshing to say the least.

He knew he should be focused on a great many other things, arguably more important than the impressive morality of the stranger. For one, his killing of an innocent creature, which still sat oblong and painful in his stomach, a truth he did not wish to concede to. As well as this, there was also the wound in his thigh, the fact he had lost his companions somewhere else in the forest, and the fact that today was to be the trial he entered Desnind, and he hadn’t yet even seen the gates.

Even more immediate was his face, half submerged in water, his left nostril unable to inhale anything but the river. Like a reflex, a fly walking on his back, he felt the stranger’s feet find footing on the river’s bed, slipping slightly, but not significantly, on the stones beneath the surface, and as she approached, the beast slipped away downstream, unlatching from Quiet’s thigh, and he immediately felt the repercussions of the lizard unplugging its claws from his side, though, likely, the color of the river felt it more, as an immediate gush of blood tainted its translucency.

Though he couldn’t find himself able to react, he could feel the stranger’s hands on the underside of his arms. It was then that he fell into the daze at its deepest.

Hazy eyes blinked, reopening to the stranger dragging him against the riverbed, obviously struggling. He strained to call the water to allow his weight to lessen, for the earth to raise for him, for the air to allow his body easier movement, but his capabilities were lacking. He couldn’t focus. He couldn’t dance for the elements as he typically could; he couldn’t speak their mutual language.

He silently lamented his inability to assist. He apologized to the elements for his ineptitude, and he mourned his inability to apologize to the stranger.

He closed his eyes once more.

They reopened to the underside of a pine’s canopy, rays of sun breaking through shadows caused by evergreen, standing resilient as the seasons changed the appearance of its neighbors. There were wisps of loose hair around her head, only noticeable when backlit by gentle light. They sprung from her scalp, cascading down to her shoulders, mostly controlled, mostly consistent, but her silhouette revealed human elements of her appearance that otherwise would have gone undetected.

Through blurred eyes, Quiet saw her for the first time. Though great details were somewhat lacking due to circumstance, her prominent features were clearly displayed. He couldn’t see the color closer to her crown due to the blinding morning light, but when his gaze wandered down towards her shoulders, the crimson was evident and radiant. He had never met anyone with hair like this before. It had just been black or brown or bleached. It was difficult to take his eyes off of it.

It took him far too long for him to notice that she was tending to his leg. He felt the pressure against his wound, but felt no pain. Perhaps it had just become numb. He wasn’t sure.

He closed his eyes for a third time.

He opened them, and it felt as if he had blinked, but when he again saw the outside world, a fire had been struck, and the stranger had both of her hands on his shoulder, shaking him lightly.

Understanding common was difficult for Quiet. It was difficult for him when he payed full attention to the words and how they were said. It was difficult him under any circumstance. Now, however, when he couldn’t even summon the conscious power to see correctly, common was simply not an option.

He shook his head slightly, attempting to regain partial sobriety. He tried to sign the words for ‘thank you’, but winced as he flexed his palms, just now noticing the burns along the shafts of his fingers, between the knuckles. He hadn’t been burned like this before. And as he stared at his palms and their injury, he was reminded of the egregious act he committed. He peered at the creek, the beast’s body stuck in a shallow bit of the running water, held between two stones, and pushed against it was his quarterstaff.

As she worked, he urged the water to press the quarterstaff towards the land, and then push the majority of the weapon onto the shore. He couldn’t be without it. Just to cover his bases.

He turned his hands so that his palms faced inwards towards his torso, pushing himself up, sitting against the tree trunk. He blinked a few times, still not fully aware of his situation or the severity of his injury, attempting to focus his vision.

He had to think of something to say. There was so much he didn’t know, so much that he needed to find out. Who are you, for instance? Where did you come from? How far is it from here to Desnind? Where is Desnind?

“Did…”

Did you hurt yourself getting to me? Did you need help with my wound? Did I interrupt your day?

“Did I already say hello?”

[Rose Greenwood]

He was moving, thank Ralaith he was moving. The young healer had begun to think that he was slipping away for the last quarter of a break. At that moment her skin prickled on the nape of her neck where the clockwork mark of the Citykeeper quietly lay.

A hefty, shaggy golden brown from stepped gingerly into the firelight. The gleam of the campfire illuminated the form of the transparent bear spirit, sending spirals of iridescent colors radiating through his body. Týr lumbered toward the man as he stirred before lowering his muzzle to sniff at the crest of his forehead.

“Hmmmm….this one smells strange.” the spirit remarked with his low grumbling voice before moving away and toward the red haired woman.

“Oh leave him alone.” Rose chided softly, the spirit shouldn’t be bothering those that couldn’t see him. Rose often wondered if the Sev’ryn familiars were like Týr at all. No one else could see him, but the spirit had always been a result of Ralaith marking her. She was sure that it was much different with your familiar, they were part of you rather than someone that accompanied you because of an Immortal’s favor. It made her appreciate her companion no less, but there would always be something of a disconnect between them that would likely never be bridged.

Týr slid to the ground at her side, his body curling up at the fireside. Rose wondered if he could even feel the heat, or if he only did it to look like a proper bear.

She reached into the leather satchel at her side and pulled out one of the pale ginger tubers she had gathered earlier. She set to work, using a wide flat stone as a work surface as she crudely shredded and pulverized the root with a sharp edged rock she found near the fire. It was far from perfect. Most of the time you dried and prepared roots over a length of time, allowing them to be powdered and their effects concentrated. The healer didn’t have that luxury to-trial. She hadn’t brought anything to clean or pack a wound with, so she would be forced to improvise.

“He’s awake.” Týr grunted before closing his eyes and seeming to go to sleep.

The inscrutable bear loved to do that. Make a revelation or startling statement just before turning in for some shut eye. He seemed to adore leaving Rose to figure things out for herself by scheduling his naps at inopportune times. The blasted bear.

Rose twisted around, her amber eyes flickering over the shifting form of her patient. He was indeed awake and sliding up into a sitting position with his back leaned against the nearby tree. She set aside her work before climbing to her feet and walking slowly over to him.

“You did.” she responded warily, her gaze looking at him inquisitively just before her lips crooked into a subtle grin.

“Just before you decided to take a swim.” The healer added with a short chuckle. Rose seemed to realize that making a joke about him nearly bleeding to death and tumbling into the stream was probably in bad form.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t say things like that.” the woman said sheepishly.

“I’m Rose, by the way.” Reaching her open palm out as if to shake his hand, the physician let out a soft gasp. “Ah your hands.” she uttered wincingly; Forgetting for a moment that she had spied the burns earlier.

“Is it alright if I take care of those now?”

When he had been unconscious and bleeding out, she hadn’t given much thought to his hands. The burns weren’t life threatening, but now that he was blessedly awake she could take care of them. The red haired woman waited for him to answer, her brown eyes faintly narrowing as she took in his appearance.

He was young, and he had darker skin that her own, even darker than most of the Sev’ryn she knew. His clothes were different than the people of Desnind which likely meant that he was not from around here. Týr had even remarked that the lad had smelled odd.

Who was he and why had he been sitting in the middle of a stream meditating while his wound festered and bled?

[Quiet]

Signing
"Signing while speaking"
"Speaking"



Quiet snickered, proud both for his comprehension of the woman’s humor and for his comprehension of the language she chose to convey it in. He hadn’t laughed often, even when he was able to freely sign in his native language, and he was unsure of why precisely now, and only now, did he laugh. It wasn’t a choice of his. Nor was it expected whatsoever.

Entirely confusing.

But somehow, he didn’t much mind.

She apologized for her verbal jest, and Quiet couldn’t find the words to describe the thoughts that ran through his head, pictures of spring blooms and the rich soil which his home exemplified in droves, matching her hair and her eyes. He struggled typically to translate those thoughts, which had always taken the form of images rather than those of words, into vocality. This, however, was a lack of expression which he had neither experienced before nor was soon to regret. And, in response to her apology, Quiet offered nothing other than a slight, unpracticed, unbalanced smile - juvenile and indicative of his bashful hesitance to truly interact with the woman.

“I’m Rose, by the way.” She offered, holding out a hand, and, although Quiet didn’t quite understand the gesture, he immediately perceived it as incredibly kind.

Rose, he thought.

A name to match those saccharine images of springtime blooms, a sound for the wind to mention, like two ships passing, in the ear in an observer, as it passed through its pedals softly, continuing on its way.

Rose was a word he knew.

He could sign it.

And with that familiarity came fondness.

As if there were not fondness already insinuated by these unintentional thoughts and considerations.

He stared at her open hand, reaching out to meet it tenderly with the wrong hand with which to meet what would have been a handshake, which, to Quiet, was a completely unfamiliar concept. Luckily for him, before the mishap could be detected and commented on, Rose detected the burns on Quiet’s hands.

He turned over his palm on the hand he had outstretched. In his time attempting to practice the talent of utilizing fire within the scope of the Gift, this was not the first, nor would it be the last time, he would feel the effects of overestimating his abilities, pushing beyond the boundaries that the natural world was comfortable setting for him. He was familiar with this pain and knew how to push beyond the pain, allow it to blister, callus, and harden.

So it goes.

“Is it alright if I take care of these now?” She asked.

He hadn’t grown used to the sound of a voice yet. For lack of a better word, it had sounded barbaric to Quiet, ever since the moment he had begun practicing speaking with his tongue. Not even Anya’s voice had become familiar in Quiet’s ears. Speaking with his throat had always been so incredibly unnatural - disruptive of the innate peace nature would provide if allotted the silence of those observing it.

Quiet, however, had never heard music before.

If he had, he would have immediately likened it to Rose’s vocalizations.

His hand, instinctively, signed the word for Please. Catching his mistake, however, he quickly attempted to switch dialogues, opening his mouth to speak and finding both his own words and the suggestions of the wind to fail him. He creaked, producing perhaps something more of a squeak than a vocalization, and, averting his eyes for a reason he couldn’t readily comprehend, he turned his palm upwards once more, exposing it fully to the kindness of Rose.

As she worked, he did what he could to remain silent and polite about the entire ordeal.

He understood that had Rose not found him, he would have likely been in a much deeper predicament than he would have liked. He wasn’t particularly inept with his meditative skills, if he were being humble, but the conditions in which he chose to meditate the night before were not sustainable. The chill had set into his legs, and they were still numb. Truthfully, that is what made Rose’s work on his thigh even somewhat bearable. Still, Rose’s intention was never to assist. She had done so out of strictly kindness. She had not left her home intending to find Quiet, nor to disrupt her routine by assisting him. He was grateful, endlessly so, but at the same time, he’d be lying if he said there were not at least some measure of guilt for disrupting her day. His other hand instinctively signed the words for thank you and I’m sorry.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

It didn’t make sense in context.

Hopefully his accent, thick and impossible to go undetected, would assist him in seeming perhaps a bit more coherent than he was.

In truth, his limited interaction with Rose was the first interaction he could remember where he actively desired to seem impressive.

She, from the moment he could determine her facial features from the sky behind her, was the shape that, for him, broke the dawn.

She was the first light he saw before he nearly faded from this life.