V2 C160
Has this not gone on long enough?
Beryl played with a small knot at the end of her braids.
Her mothers’ could be heard bickering in the distance, jointly working through papers that would have otherwise been the problem of another, had Hatsumi not managed to steal the week away from the Lord’s employ.
Where did she go now?
Beryl sighed, looking up from a book that she had eyed for quite some time. Elves: An Imperial Chronicle. A historical text, and one involved in an ever-widening birth of texts she dug through in her attempts to answer questions that disturbed her to no end as of late. Initially, she sought answers in much more esoteric texts, ones she’d witnessed Kiyomi burying her head into in her free time on more than one occasion. Religious philosophy, the gods, and localized histories. With the realization that their group may be drawn into a conflict beyond their power, Beryl attempted to move her gaze to the region's history under the razing torches of the Empire. Unfortunately, the most she could manage was ‘The discovery of “The heart of the east”, a tree of almost godly proportion. She was devoid of the capability to focus now, every thought being scattered with incessant pondering, given Kiyomi’s disappearance the day prior. Beryl's mind went through every possible reason Kiyomi could have possibly gone on another overnight disappearing act. She seemed better, for the most part, and now Beryl found herself at wits' end, leaving everything to trust.
“Beryl, dear, are you alright?”
“Hm?”
She turned to see Cressida, one of her mothers, leaning through the doorway of the study.
“I was asking if you were alright. Given Kiyomi’s absence, you seem beside yourself.”
The elder of the two brought herself fully into the room, settling her coils in the doorway.
“Mayhaps you should go out for a spell? Get out of the study for fresh air. It did me good when I was worried for Sophia.”
Beryl shrugged, brushing a fallen strand of hair over her left ear.
“Aye, mother, but I am a different breed. Given that I spend most of my time in the open wilds. Legions or not, I spend enough for my youth already-”
Turning to face her mother, Beryl smirked, closing the book gently as she righted herself over the slumped posture she’d been locked into. Cressida was worried, obviously, and Beryl’s protest only worsened the state.
It’d be best to clear my thoughts, or to run their course. Either way, all I achieve right now is brooding. Maybe mother is right.
Beryl felt the tension release in her back as she rose.
“Gods, a crick in the back! Why can’t our spines be built like our main bodies?”
Cressida rolled her eyes as Beryl turned, the girl mimicking one too many complaints that Greggor seemed to constantly recant.
“You are a young one, Beryl. You’ve another hundred sixty or so odd years to complain about such things. I’d honestly figure you’d have yourself buried in a host of other issues at this age, given you still haven’t dropped any eggs.”
Beryl flushed, but pushed aside the base need to avert her face from her mother's gaze, furrowing her brow instead.
“There are definitive troubles I’d like to avoid exacerbating, mother, including leading to having a child of my own at the same time that you laid me.”
Beryl grabbed at a coat planted at the corner of her desk, feeling the encroaching bite of the
winter air through the exterior wall.
“It’s not about Kiyomi, I’m just-”
Beryl shook her head in an attempt to deflect with her words the concerns of her mother, before being interrupted.
“Lying may befit snakes in the eyes of some, but girl, you forget your mother has an eye for liars.”
Cressida moved aside.
“That aside, I’ve suspected for some time that you know vaguely where your friend is. Do ensure she stays nearby, Beryl. I would like fewer reasons for the lord to point out distrust within his walls.”
Beryl paused for a moment, the memory of her family's standing coming into question still fresh and tender from her stay in Krakow.
“I know well enough.”
—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“The air is still about this place… it would be nicer if I could seem to relax at least.”
Beryl stared skywards, planted in Brenton's central plaza as the crowds shuffled about. She had warm food fresh in her gullet, and the smells and chatter would have done nothing but calm her in any other circumstance. But in Kiyomi’s absence, Beryl’s emotions got the better of the lamia, so that it was physically impossible to relax. She stared at the sky, leaning her back against the offset bench from the plaza’s fountain, the water trickling behind her. She pondered as she rubbed the binding of yet another book between her fingers.
Her memories are returning, and her sudden take to stability. We should have anticipated this, no?
She shook her head, closing her eyes as she breathed in the air.
Kiyomi, why, I want you to flock to us for this, not hide yourself away?
“Why is she so smart and somehow so- so- thick? Hard-headed?”
Beryl asked, cracking her eyes to take in the sky once more, only to be startled by a toothy-grinned human girl standing over her.
“Hi!”
Beryl jolted, her whole body thrown into shock for a moment as her packed coil loosened in her startle. It was a few sparse moments of Beryl wrestling against her own momentum and taking in the coy smirk of the girl looming ever closer before she’d fully registered the first thought that wasn't distracted by her concern. “Do you mind one’s space?!”
Beryl instinctively bit at the girl with her words, a girl who seemed a mockery of two different faces at once.
Why this familiarity?
“You dropped something~.”
The girl held out the book Beryl had taken with her, the Imperial chronicle Beryl had buried her nose in. It dangled from her hand as she smiled, slowly backing up as she beckoned Beryl forward by tilting the book back and forth.
“Wait- give that back!”Beryl had only managed half a meter, a hand raised forward, before the girl leaned backwards, smirking as she turned and immediately made for the nearest alley.
“Hey, that was on loan from the guild!”Beryl bolted forward as hard as she could, her coil setting a pace that she could barely manage as she barreled through the narrow alley, turn after turn of passages made by years of structural extensions to existing buildings, as she chased the girl who had stolen her book. Beryl was fixated on her, the red silhouette of the girl’s dress standing out sharply against brick, mortar, and lumber.
“Wait! Please, if you want coin- I can- “
Beryl struggled to breathe as she pursued, watching the thief turn out of view, nearly losing hope as she was forced to stop. The alley had broken down into a small courtyard, one overgrown in what must have been one of the more defunct of the city's residential areas. At its center stood the thief, still holding the book she’d snatched from Beryl’s possession.
“You stop here? You could've just ransomed it in the alley, why the chase?”
Her tail adjusted itself as she made to correct her balance, her body's length spilling from the alleyway to enable her balance fully and to give some semblance of security that the alley failed to provide in its claustrophobia-inducing tightness. Her breathing leveled, and she patted herself down of dust and debris she’d collected in the pursuit.
“Maybe the ransom I wanted was your time, you know, since I’d robbed you of mine as well. I may as well come to steal yours.”
That voice?
The illusion faded slowly at first, a strange discolored illusion falling away in hues of red and blue as horns appeared from thin air. Blonde hair deepened like bloodied cloth to the telltale off-color red. Amber eyes overtook the thief's gaze, as the barely masked complexion cleared and Kiyomi’s face stood to top the red and yellow accented dress. The sight was a surprise for Beryl, unsure if it was the stress, or her reality, that the girl she’d known to never wear a dress, stood before her, no longer carrying herself like a girl who ran from home.
“Kiyomi?”
Beryl received an oddly gentle nod, Kiyomi’s expression being that of relief and thanks.
“Apologies, you were never one for just following someone into an alley. I can’t really talk to you in the open, so I had to get you here without Vaughn’s help.”
Beryl sighed, taking the book in hand as Kiyomi handed it back.
“Vaughn’s help?”
Kiyomi nodded.
“Well, Dad wasn’t making it especially easy for him before. If he see’s Vaughn out and about, he’s
bound to target Vaughn to find me.”
The demon shook her head in worry, the fact of Vaughn’s inevitable peril anytime her involvement came into question ringing true. Given Callum’s previous treatment of Beryl Vaughn on Kiyomi’s account, it made sense.
“Wait- that aside, illusory magic? How? The mana that just dissipated came from you. I thought you couldn't do mag- Why the disappearing act?!”
Beryl’s mind seemed awash with questions before a sudden and confusing wave of frustration and vague resentment overcame her.
“You said you wouldn't do that again! That you’d come to us with your problems! That you wouldn't keep hiding things from us! And now this?! The nerve of you!”
Beryl grit her teeth, not knowing what words to say, before realising that Kiyomi was content to stand there and smile back, waiting for Beryl to acknowledge a very foreign character that Kiyomi would have usually put off.
“You know, I expected more of a dumbfounded look than that. Does that make me come off as a narcissist?”
Kiyomi picked at the loose hem of the cloak that sat upon her shoulders before looking back up.
“It was commissioned at the last moment, but I thought, why not spoil the surprise just a little bit?”
She said, averting her eyes somewhat. Given the moment, Kiyomi looked back up from her cloak and smiled.
“Now that we no longer want for a moment together, might you sit with me?”
Kiyomi looked to the side, a bench of stone, freshly cleaned, and dried by the sun. Waving to it, Beryl was captivated by the oddity that was the reunion. Moving forward, Kiyomi produced a flower, just a common field flower, in comparison to the one that was still burned into Beryl’s mind. She seemed to smile at it as she held it forward. Beryl reached forward with her free hand, taking the stem in hand, before looking back up, her pulse now stable and calm after the brief chase.
“Years ago, I wanted to bring you Azure Lace… It wasn't until after that Aunt Avery teased me endlessly about the custom, I-”
Kiyomi looked down a moment, and then past Beryl, at the grass in the clearing.
“I’d wondered if it seemed frivolous… unintended?”
She paused again, biting at the inside of her cheek as her brow furrowed. She was considering her words, an effort Beryl knew Kiyomi too well not to understand the weight of the action alone.
“Beryl, I’d felt like I lied, regardless of what sense any of it would have made. Even if you all understand I can’t talk of such things, I understand the feeling of being left in the dark.”
Kiyomi looked back up, a sight Beryl did not often get to witness, genuine pleading in Kiyomi’s eyes, absent of the well-meaning scheming. For a moment, Beryl wavered, a dark part of her mind giving way to worry and the tug of a stone leaning over the abyss of her stomach. Only the next words tilted the stone away and saved the Lamia from encroaching anxiety.
“It’s no Azure Lace, because I understand what that is. It’s a common flower because I want to start anew. No secrets, no hidden pain. All I ask, is a little more time, just a little more if you ask that I share that last stretch.”
Kiyomi’s pleas hung in the air, with no response for a moment, then two. On a third, Beryl coiled beside the bench that Kiyomi sat upon.
“I’ll give you till my birthday, and now I demand a dance as well.”
Beryl seemed proud of herself with the reply, a sense of confidence burgeoning within her.
All we do is worry about her, and she thinks that she owes us more. God’s she’s thick in the skull.
Beryl spun the flower by its stem between her fingers.
“Till my birthday to tell both I and Vaughn anything you are truly holding back that truly matters.”
Kiyomi flinched at the words, but her shoulders lowered some in an evident attempt to relax.
“And anything that doesn't?”
Beryl smirked.
“Is all chaff and sawdust. Unnecessary.”
Leaning over, her head fell on Kiyomi’s shoulder, eyeing what to her was such a more honest display of feeling. The simple flower that Beryl continued to spin.
“Just stop running away for the gods sake, it was like we weren’t your friends.”
Kiyomi chuffed at Beryl’s words before controlling herself. Silence followed, for moment after moment, hour after hour as they sat, until they both woke with the sun glinting in the eyes as it crested the roof opposite the clearing. A shadow disturbed the steady illumination, before a sudden and short yank at Kiyomi’s horn woke her. Beryl woke alongside her, the sudden realization that they’d fallen asleep in some back alley, crashing down like the flick to her forehead from a familiar blacksmith's ring finger.
“Ah shite, that hurt- who?”
Beryl swiped her bangs back over her scalp, falling back down as she leveled her eyes on the perpetrator.
Oh.
Callum and Hatsumi, standing over the two like vultures, Kiyomi’s left horn in the beast folk's right hand.
