▼ Zekiel

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Silver In The Black ▼

“D’you talk?” Jevan’s inquiry was curt. A single mouthful.

You think a word too loud, and I toss you to the sea. Y’hear?

Rain had seeped through most of Zekiel’s clothing by now, and the cold was following, chilling his skin in what felt like successive layers. It had been quite some time since he’d been truly cold, and he wondered if he might get there tonight. But that was not what held his tongue. He supposed he had meant to answer. It had been long enough now, his life distinct enough, independent enough, and so untied to the man before him that threats over a decade old ought not have rendered him mute. And Jevan wanted him to speak. Skepticism and foul mood aside, he did not seem to recognize him, leaving the slate between them ‘clean.’

And yet.

“Marleya send you?”

Zekiel blinked. The question was — while not ‘gentle’ by any stretch of the word — less harsh around the edges than those prior. And tired. Beyond that, for now at least the opportunity to answer without his tongue was most welcome, and Marleya had directed him there, even if only due to his own inquiry. Zekiel nodded.

“Crazy old woman…” She was perhaps ten or fifteen years older than him at the most. “Those are her knots.” His words devolved to muttering after that, “thinks I need keeping after,” “send a kid at midnight…” stray fragments of thought strewn between grunts and other less intelligible words as he began removing the rest of what would need to be emptied from the boat before it could be left for the night. At least when Zekiel knelt to aid him, Jevan gave instructions (in the form mostly of non-verbal cues, but useful just the same), instead of dismissing him.

And fortunately, it was a reasonably brisk process.

Still, as Zekiel rolled, folded, fastened, and toted as needed and eventually followed after the man towards his ‘home’, he could not help but dwell on the sheer immensity of the gap between what his life had become, and what Jevan’s still was. After everything was set where it needed to be, Jevan’s eyes bore into him, weighing their options. Rain still poured actively overhead, and even if it had ceased, the hour was late. Far too late to send anyone away into the night and expect them to be safe—and yet, Zekiel did not know what he expected to hear after the frustrated growl of a sound Jevan gave.

“‘M not payin’ you.”

Zekiel shook his head instantly, and this, at least, seemed to slightly relax the set of the man’s shoulders. Zekiel’s own felt well on their way to shaking from the building chill, but he held himself and his teeth still.

Jevan moved to the door, fiddling with the metallic clink and clack of keys and and a bolt lock before creaking hinges and the groan of old wood took over as he opened it. He paused with one foot on the threshold, his back still to Zekiel. “If you have anywhere better to be…git.”

One breath turned into two. Then three. Zekiel did not move or speak, but neither did Jevan, frozen in the doorway as though awaiting any sign that he did not need to look back. But then, finally, he did. Unsurprisingly, he did not look pleased.

“If you don’t have anywhere better to be…” It sounded as though the words gave him great struggle to voice. He grit his teeth. Another sound filled in where perhaps a word was originally intended, and Jevan strode into the hut instead of finishing the sentence, leaving the door swung open wide enough behind him to bat against the wall. Zekiel waited, watching the empty doorway and listening as something was dropped and then shuffled about within.

After another moment, Jevan re-emerged. “In.”

Zekiel took that as cue enough, and obliged.

Jevan again was muttering. “Shouldn’t,” “city boy,” “Marleya,” and “stupid” were favorites of his among the stray words Zekiel caught. It appeared, from what he could gather, that Marleya sending ‘aid’ to him in various forms, if perhaps usually only to gauge his general health and affirm that he had not died, was not completely unheard of, and Jevan seemed to mistake him for an especially persistent, poorly timed, and odd variation on this theme. Eventually, he received sharp instructions as to what to do with his boots and soaked things before being tossed a thin heap of cloth and directed to a corner. “Stupid” featured especially frequently while Zekiel wrung his clothes out into a basin and began to dry himself. As he did, he assumed the other man was by then preparing for sleep as well in the darkness—until a small red-orange glow flared from near the far wall, shedding light on both Jevan, and the tiny firebox he was working to stir into life.

That was a surprise. But perhaps it shouldn’t have been. Zekiel remembered cold seasons and minimal insulation, but having grown he knew that what he remembered was mild as compared to more recent winters, and this was a new structure. Somewhere in the time between, Jevan had finally chosen to invest in an item of comfort—or, if he made a habit of risking deathly cold by plunging himself into the frigid sea, perhaps one of necessity.

Regardless, Zekiel found the development to be immediately comforting, and he settled in silence to the floor with the blanket given to him, and shut his eyes. It was a dim, low fire, designed once underway to simmer for the night, and as it did, Zekiel’s breathing eased and slowed, his pulse steadied to the gentle, occasional crackle or pop of a spark and the subtle undercurrent of a smoke scent amidst the rest of the other varying (mostly sharper) odors of the space. Come morning, he would need to depart the earliest he could — he would already be gone from the capitol a day longer than he originally intended — but for this moment, those thoughts could wait.

Jevan seemed content enough to forget his existence for the evening, and that was just as well because between the hour, the near-darkness of the space, and his exhaustion brought upon him by the events of days and hours past, Zekiel was asleep near instantly.

Result: After aiding Jevan in docking and unloading his fishing skiff, Zekiel is permitted (with some reluctance) to spend a night on the floor of Jevan's hut.
Jevan does not recognize him, and takes him for a peculiar stranger.
Cast: Zekiel, Jevan, Marleya ||Word Count: 1,087

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ In A Crevice, In A Corner ▼

It was winter.

That time of night wherein the hour had grown late enough that it was edging near ‘early’ again, and the frosted winds twisted and tangled like cold-sharpened ribbons around the stone walls of Yael’s Sanctum. Outside, the weather’s channels hissed over the dark sea and tossed the waves with messy, relentless persistence onto the island’s bare stretches of sand and rocky shore alike. Inside, hundreds of the gods’ chosen slept. All but the handful of restless wakeful souls studying into the night or staring sleepless at the stars lay folded into their bedding against the chill awaiting the morning. Among these, Zekiel was no different. He slept soundly.

Then, somewhere, someone screamed, the sound echoing down a near hall.

Zekiel stirred amidst his sheets.

So brief was it initially that when he first began to pull from the foggy webbing that was his unconscious dream state and toward the reality of the waking and living, he couldn’t have said what it was that woke him, and in that indeterminate in between, his mind wandered. Perhaps it had been the wind? Now whispering secrets of the sea to his windowpanes. Or perhaps a dream itself? As dreams were sometimes prone to do, stirring their dreamer to wakefulness when they became too startling.

Then, he heard it again.

This time more awake, he pushed upright into a sit atop his covers and listened. Instead of a single scream, now it was a small scattering of lesser outcries, along with the subsequent creaking and clacking of opening and shutting doors. Then footsteps, and voices. The ‘screams’ had simmered down to intermittent outbursts swallowed within the growing murmur of discussion and inquiry.

Though it no longer sounded dangerous outright, something notable was occurring out there, in the dark, in the thin hours of morning. Zekiel shifted, and dropped his legs over the side of his mattress before slipping out of bed. After fetching his nightclothes, slipping into them, and checking to satisfy himself that it wouldn’t be inappropriate to step out in them, he opened his door, and peered from the threshold down the hall.

There indeed was a ruckus.

Over what, he couldn’t surmise yet from his vantage point, but — curling his toes once against the chill of the cold floorboards beneath his bare feet — he stepped gingerly from his room, shutting it behind him, and wandered nearer.

“—is it?”

“Did it bite her? Oh! Gods what if it—”

“Dafiel protect us…”

“—that, and why are they coming inside? Oughtn’t wild animals be kept out? Surely, if we cannot even be kept safer than this—”

Recognizing the length of precisely-cut, deep purple hair which hung straight just past the boy’s familiarly-narrow shoulder blades over his nightshirt at eleven and seven-sixteenths of an inch, Ze inched forward and rest a hand on Azlas’ shoulder.

“Aaah—yyhh?” Immediately, Azlas yelped and hopped, half jerking his way around to face him and then blinking, wide-eyed, as he spotted him. And recognition hit. “Zekiel? Zekiel. Gods be with me. Must you always cause a fright? What are you—”

“What is this?” Zekiel’s tone was casual and quiet, as compared to his former roommate’s hissed and anxious whispers. “And I am sorry if I frightened you. I had only woken upon hearing noises from my bedding—”

“What is what?” Azlas asked. At Zekiel’s glance and gesture to the gathered crowd, Azlas frowned with understanding. “Oh, right. Ah…well, there’s a—it seems an animal got in, from the outside. And not a rich woman’s trained and kept thing, either. Wild. Some think it came in from the cold, since it’s a particularly sharp winter, and others said it was poisonous, or worse. A girl woke up with it in her bed. Began screaming—we all heard it. A snake, I think they said, frightening pale and massive it was, and she said she woke up with it between her legs…”

“She woke with a snake between her legs?”

“On—over, that is- Atop. Atop her sheets, it was…” Azlas’ mouth seemed to open and close more often than necessary in that particular exchange, and why his face began to pinken, visible even in the dim light of the hall, Zekiel couldn’t have begun to say. Azlas diverted the focus of his gaze back to the crowd. “But…yes, that. There is a snake, in the building, here with us. And we might die.”

“Oh, we are certainly going to die,” Zekiel said, smiling to convey his point (though Azlas did not seem entirely reassured). “But when and how is the will of the gods, not a snake. Is she lonely?”

“The…” Azlas frowned, turning as Zekiel moved past him to weave through the crowd, towards the beast—now cornered against the far wall. “The girl? Or the—”

“Babasa,” Zekiel supplied unhelpfully.

Though there were several scattered objections or warnings as he did so, Zekiel paid them no mind and stepped from the final ‘ring’ of the crowd which had formed a semi-circle barricade around the foreign beast, and into the space between. In front of him lay the largest, palest lavender keldari he had ever seen. Not that he had seen many. This one, though, seemed an especially welcome sight, and he beamed at her.

“Oh, you are wondrously beautiful,” he said. “I suppose someone may have told you so already, but you should know it just the same.” Lifting his hands, he began to unfasten the top buttons of his nightshirt as he took another small step forward. “Do you like the name Babasa? I could give you another. Or a substitute if you prefer, but I have been told it’s pleasant to be given a name so long as the intentions behind it are good and it is well-received…”

From the crowd, someone hissed at him.

“Zekiel—”

“Zekiel, what are you doing?”

Ze glanced, spotting Azlas, but did not cease his activity and shrugged out of his nightshirt as soon as he finished with its buttons. “Giving her something warm to nest within,” he said. “I think if she is willing, I will bring her to Edeline. She has had some experiences with animals and is quite fond of them, I think it would please her.”

“She—who? Zekiel, you must consult-”

Zekiel crouched, lowering himself more to ground level and laying out his nightshirt as he voiced quiet, aimless encouragements to the keldari. There was more being said of course — by the crowd and by Azlas in particular, and some of it may have been directed at him personally — but Zekiel’s focus had moved and remained fixed: on the sheen of the keldari’s white-purple scales, on the glint of her eyes and the flick of her tongue as she tested the air before slithering forward an inch in curious inquiry.

He did not know how long he spent there, sharing aimless one-sided conversation with her and coaxing her nearer, crowd forgotten. But by the time he had her—toting her substantial weight into his arms and over his shoulders with his nightshirt draped and wrapped about her middle like a grossly undersized sized swaddling cloth—the crowd had grown, and several variations on, “You’re going to be bit—” “He’s going to get bit-” bounced from mouth to mouth like a contagious yawn, but less useful.

It must not have been that long, however, because no figure of real authority seemed to have appeared yet. Sleepy prentices, for the most part, with a scattering of acolytes from his end of the hall. With his most recent ascension to cleric, official only as of this very morning, it made him — technically — the most senior of the bunch.

“Zekiel…” Azlas looked paler than usual, his eyes particularly round and fixated on Zekiel’s bridal-style snake package, “…that is a serpent. It’s a—you realize—? Oh, gods it must be over sixty inches long and four and a half fat, but the snout-”

“Do you like her also?”

“Don’t bring it closer to me-”

“Oh.” Zekiel paused, adjusting his hold as Babasa shifted herself. “I am sorry,” he said. She seemed content to lay very still atop most anything, including, apparently, himself, so long as the position didn’t disturb her. “Her scales were quite cold, though I think she will warm now that she is in our walls. Shall I take her from here? I think most everyone would do well to sleep more now, and they do not seem pleased to have her about, so they and you may be pleased not to have her about?”

“I-” Regardless of whatever he had intended to say, Azlas’ breath hitched to a sharp and abrupt halt when Babasa’s tongue flicked, and he sputtered something beneath his breath before nodding hastily, making a symbol of divine protection over his chest before addressing the others. “Zek-” Azlas cleared his throat, and spoke louder. “Newly esteemed cleric and brother Zekiel—”

“Azlas-”

“—has captured the beast and will be delivering it to a secure holding. We are all therefore relieved of any remaining duty to tend to it for safety reasons and are dictated by the hour to return to our beds barring any further emergency, please, everyone…”

Azlas, an acolyte still himself but on the brink of progression, having grown up in the same section of prentices as Zekiel, spoke — at his loudest — only with modest and hesitant authority. The handful of others their age looked unconvinced that anything official had been decided upon, but the younger ones among them were quicker to scatter. The original girl who’d been scared from her bedding by it seemed to have long since fled with her cluster of fellow priestesses in training back to their quarters. And eventually, whether due to a penchant for good behavior or simply boredom, near everyone was gone.

After nervous inquiry from Azlas as to whether or not Zekiel needed any further help with his snake — it looking the whole while as though his former roommate very strongly hoped he did not ‘need’ help — Zekiel happily informed him he would be very well and good as he was without any extra aid. He knew where he was going.

Azlas bid him a visibly relieved goodnight.

Zekiel made his way down the hall.

There were latches built onto the doors of sleeping quarters, at least for those who had progressed beyond their earliest years in the Sanctum. Much of the time, however, they were left unused. As a unit, they were the disciples of their gods, and for the most part, there was little active need or even want for the levels of privacy that required lock-supported exclusion. Most belongings of the Sanctum were communal — their bedding, food, shared spaces, books, and so forth, all belonging to and being provided by the church — with only a select few personal items, in most cases, being true property of the individuals. There was nothing to be gained by stealing or causing trouble amongst one another before the eyes of the gods. Some still chose to use their locks for their own reasons, of course.

But Edeline, fortunately, was not among them.

Result: In an otherwise quiet sleeping hall within the Sanctum, a young acolyte screams out in the night at having found a snake in her bed.
The snake, which Zekiel retrieves upon waking for the commotion, he names Babasa, the keldari having apparently fled inward
seeking shelter from the cold winter. Zekiel resolves to seek Edeline's assistance.
Cast: Zekiel, Azlas, Babasa, Edeline ||Word Count: 1,904

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ There's A Snake In My Sheets ▼

Edeline’s door gave without trouble, opening inward at a simple turn of the handle and revealing a darkened room. She, like Zekiel now, had a space of her own, having progressed to an age and rank where that was deemed appropriate, and he could just make out the shape of her atop her mattress beneath the sheets as he stepped in. He pulled the door shut behind him — or nearly so, leaving just a sliver of space to cast a dim thread of light inward that he not trip over anything in the unfamiliar space as he moved towards the bed, Babasa still draped about his shoulders like an exotic ornament.

When he arrived at the edge of her mattress, he spoke quietly. “Edeline.” And then, when she did not stir, very slightly louder. “Edeline…” Nothing. He leaned forward, one knee onto the mattress in order to reach and touch a hand to her shoulder, unintentionally looming now over the bed with a snake as long as he was tall perched with him. “Edeline—”

And that was when she woke up.

Beyond the fact that she woke up, Zekiel wasn’t clear on the exact sequence or specifics of the events that occurred in the subsequent few moments, because ‘a lot’ seemed to sum it all up most accurately. She was clearly surprised—or he was fairly sure, anyway. There was a sound that was almost a scream, and a jerk and flurry of movement. A good many words were spoken very quickly all run together so near to one another at first he didn’t recognize them as words.

Until he realized she was praying. Very, very quickly.

“Edeline…” A pinch of heat warmed his cheeks as he spoke softly over the continued rapid, muted stream of what must have been every incantation and god-plea for divine protection they’d ever been taught to recite since childhood. “Edeline, I am not a spirit demon.”

She was by that point clutching to her pillow like a final ward against impending doom, but at his words, finally, her eyes snapped open: wide and brightly aglow as two stars pulled fresh from the heavens and into the darkened room. A long pause followed wherein all that could be heard was their breathing. Then: “Zekiel.”

“That is one way to say my name,” he admitted. It was a bit sharper and more like a startled curse than he’d heard it said in recent memory but it was at least comforting to be recognized.

“Oh—oh-oh-oh…” She sounded rather more concerned than he’d been anticipating. “You’re in my room.”

“I am, yes. I-”

“You’re on my bed, oh—you have a snake, Zekiel-” She shook her head, squirming to a more upright position as her eyes darted from him to his beast and back. A great many different feelings seemed to flit across her face then. “What are you doing in my room? Where did you find it? What are you doing in my room? Have you named it? What are you doing in my-”

“Oh, yes!” he said, immediately pleased that at least part of this was easy to address. All of it, even, though he wasn’t sure why the first sentence bore repeating. “This is Babasa. She woke a girl after coming in from the winter cold, and I took her to me so that she would not frighten the rest of them. Isn’t she wondrous? I am here to bring her to you because you understand them better than I and I thought it good that I know what best to do with her as soon as I might. Are you well?”

“Oh.” Edeline frowned. “Oh.” She glanced to the snake, the frown temporarily easing up in face of curiosity but then, again, her breath petered out a short puff. “Oh.” She seemed to ponder for another long moment before gradually nodding. “I see, but…Zekiel, you’re in my room.”

Ze studied her. Clearly this was a point of interest, and if he just paid close enough attention, eventually he hoped to find out why. “Yes.”

“And you’re a boy.”

He blinked. That was, if nothing else, unanticipated, and he couldn’t say he’d ever had to give deliberate thought to the matter, but: “Yes…” he agreed eventually, slightly slower than before.

“You shouldn’t be in my room.”

“I’ve been in it before.”

“At night.”

He wasn’t sure as to the reasoning behind the distinction.

“This is how girls get pregnant, Zekiel.”

He blinked. His expression brightened. “Is it?”

The sound she made was hard to pin down. “You needn’t sound so excited about it,” she quipped.

He blinked again. “Oh.”

She puffed. A moment passed. Eventually, she sighed. “Not quite like this. Fortunately. And I know better and can control myself, so we are both very lucky. But you should know that.”

“Very lucky,” he repeated, nodding. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to feel lucky for, but he did generally consider himself quite fortunate so that was enough for him.

“Well,” she said at length, “if you want my help now you’d best get your snakes off my bed.” She made a shooing gesture to the side as she edged off the opposite side of her own mattress, standing and stretching her arms above her head when she made it.

Zekiel obeyed, but it felt pertinent to add: “I only brought one snake.”

She ignored him, moving instead to stoop beside her bedside drawer and pull out several folded articles of clothing, which she set atop the bed. Then, she looked at him. Expectantly, almost. He waited. She waited. Finally, she spoke. “Are you just going to stand there?”

“Do you wish for me to do something else?”

“I am going to dress. I need to remove my nightgown and put on something more suitable if we’re going to leave the room with your beast and get it what you need for the night.”

He nodded. That all sounded very reasonable.

She waited.

So did he.

She frowned. “Are you just going to stand there, Zekiel?”

Zekiel was genuinely puzzled. It seemed if they were going to go anywhere together and do anything with Babasa, it made sense that he be near and ready for when she was ready, and since she hadn’t suggested he do otherwise, it was all rather confusing that she seemed to expect something else. But, surely it wouldn’t hurt to repeat: “Do you…wish for me to do something else…?”

Her stare was intent for all of a handful of seconds before she snorted. “Shut your eyes.”

He did.

“And keep them so until I say.”

He did, listening as there was more shuffling. Babasa fortunately seemed so content with whatever position she’d worked herself into that she might as well have been a sleeping dead weight. A half moment later, warm cloth dropped in a tangled heap atop his face/head, dropping lopsided there like something thrown poorly at a clothesline. Given the texture and the scent and the temperature, he gathered it was likely her nightgown. But he kept his eyes shut. That mystery could be solved in a moment.

There was the sound of a match. The clack of a candlestand. The shift and shuffle of more cloth. Approaching footsteps. Then, from directly before him: “You can look.”

When Zekiel blinked his eyes open, the first thing he saw was a view partially obstructed by — as suspected — laced white linens, but her fingers helpfully lifted that aside the next moment, her silver eyes peering up at him sharply now from behind the frames of her thick-rimmed glasses. She was fully dressed.

“Most girls,” she said, “will not want you to see them without their clothes when they change. It’s not appropriate.”

“Oh.” To be fair, while there were hints of this in his life, it had never really become an issue. “When I roomed with Azlas and Warrek and Rekal, sometimes we would dress before each other.”

“That is because you’re all boys, it’s different if you’re all the same.”

He and Azlas and Warrek and Rekal were most certainly not all the same, in Zekiel’s humble opinion, but he kept that detail to himself and instead asked, “And you?”

She frowned. “I’m not a boy.”

“No,” Zekiel said. “You said that ‘most girls’ would not wish for me to see them without their clothes on-”

It was really too dark to tell, so it was likely some trick of the shadows that her face seemed to color then. She snatched up her candle stand, perhaps only just gently enough not to knock the light out. “It doesn’t much matter whether I wish for you to see or not. It isn’t appropriate. And it is how girls get pregnant,” she said, strutting past him with the light.

He trailed on her heels out the door.

Result: Zekiel brings his new keldari to Edeline (in her bedroom, in the wee hours of morning) hoping for assistance. She instructs him that 'this is how girls get pregnant'
but is not more specific, and Zekiel remains confused, but grateful that she seems cooperative and excited just the same.
Cast: Zekiel, Edeline, Babasa, Azlas, Warrek, Rekal ||Word Count: 1,523

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ What's In A Kiss? ▼

Edeline was a reedy girl, straight laced and small with large, dark glasses, short, straight hair of night-sky purple that barely reached past her chin, and angular features, too sharp to be traditionally ‘pretty’ but not odd enough to be notably unattractive. Average or ‘ordinary’ were words she might have picked to describe herself, but ‘different in a not-unpleasant way’ was closer to the truth.

All of these factors were beyond Zekiel as he walked behind her.

At her instruction, he delivered Babasa to his own room for the time being and left her atop his bed to rest, closing her in that she not disturb anyone else before leaving with Edeline into the dark halls of the Sanctum to fetch whatever it was they needed. She hadn’t said yet what those things were, and it certainly was an odd time to being going about it, but the timing was neither his fault nor hers — or even Babasa’s, at least in any intentional form — so he didn’t concern himself with the oddity, but rather enjoyed the moment while it lasted. It wasn’t every day he found a snake and had the opportunity to wander down empty halls at night with his friends. Surely there was something to be appreciated there and whatever it was, he was appreciating it.

Bedding, food, and a towel and cleaning cloth that he might rub her down and see to it that she wasn’t bringing infection inside their walls. From time to time, Edeline told him as she produced a key lead him into supply room of some variety — from the looks of things — that only came into view when she lit an interior lamp, residents of the city would come to the church with concerns about various animals. Sometimes it was simple; they believed their livestock to be cursed or under a bad luck charm due to its illness or twisted leg and they sought the blessings of the gods to lift it. Other times they brought concerns about beasts that, in their view, oughtn’t be on the island to begin with.

Like Toko, Zekiel thought, though he didn’t say it aloud to her then. It seemed that Malta was caring for him well enough despite his foreign nature and though Edeline might be helpful, he did not want to draw more attention than necessary to something unproblematic which might draw alarm from the church, if they knew. For now, he simply listened, watching as Edeline moved about the room and fetched what she said he would need.

Caring for an animal was not a simple task, evidently. And she seemed fairly certain he wouldn’t be permitted to keep Babasa with him in the long term—or, not in his room at least. That, though, she left to him and the ward of his hall. After she had everything together on a table, she paused, seeming to hesitate. The light from the lantern she’d lit danced across her features.

Zekiel watched. “Is that all she’ll—?”

“Do you like girls, Zekiel?”

Ze blinked. “Yes, of course.”

Though he couldn’t know what she wanted him to say, it seemed clear this wasn’t quite all the answer she might have hoped for, and she took a moment before clarifying. “What I mean is, as opposed to boys. Or not being interested in either.”

“I like both,” Zekiel said without pause. “Girls and boys.”

Again, however, this didn’t quite seem to satisfy her. “When I say ‘like,’ what I mean is…that you would like to do things with them, with someone, that you…wouldn’t do with other people.”

This gave Ze pause. At length, he asked, “What sort of things?”

Finally she looked relieved. “Like…hugging, or holding hands or going places together or…kissing.” There was a half-second pause. “On the mouth.”

Zekiel had been very ready to respond until the last addition, which gave him more to think about. Still, it seemed simple enough after a moment. “I think I would be happy to hug or hold or go places with anyone who wished it and would be pleased by it,” he said. “I have never kissed anyone on the mouth.” Now that he thought on it, he couldn’t precisely say why except that it seemed to be a very particular ritual that only some persons engaged in and he wasn’t aware of the rules or guidelines for when it might be appropriate. Generally, it never occurred to him. He said as much. “I do not know who it would please for me to.”

Edeline huffed. “But what about you. I am not asking about what would please anyone else. Wouldn’t it please you to kiss someone?”

Zekiel considered it. It seemed obvious that he couldn’t know for certain, since he hadn’t tried it, but that didn’t seem to be the gist of the inquiry. Would it please him to try? Did he want to? He glanced to Edeline’s lips. “Would you like for me to kiss you?”

She held his gaze. Took a moment. “Yes,” she admitted finally, “but-”

She made a soft sound against his lips when he kissed her. Something nested between surprise, frustration, and something else altogether, slightly more inviting, if nothing else. Her fingers were pinched to the front of his nightshirt, perched halfway between gripping and pushing. Zekiel wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Nothing, perhaps was most accurate. A brief moment of contact that pleased Edeline because she’d asked, and then nothing. But that wasn’t what he got.

Instead, quite the opposite of ‘nothing’ seemed to happen, and in rapid succession. It was as though some part of him which had been all but entirely dormant most of his life was now stirring within him, roused to attention with the curious realization that there was more to notice—about everything. The heat and texture of her lips was new, soft, fascinating, and it came packaged with her breath against his mouth, and how near to him the rest of her was, now that he thought about it. It hadn’t seemed important before. Now, every detail felt critical: where their legs were bumped together, where her hand touched his chest, where her chest was against his—different from his—and how her exhale felt as it skittered over his skin when she pulled back.

Like Azlas’ had been earlier that night, Edeline’s cheeks were flush with color. He realized belatedly that his, too, were warm. She opened her mouth.

“I like kissing you,” Zekiel concluded aloud.

She shut her mouth. Whatever color was already in her face intensified, and her gaze dropped from his eyes, to somewhere in the vicinity of his chest level. Her grip on his clothes did not release. “Yes, well, I…that’s…I’m happy that you do.” She drew a breath. “I like it as well.”

“May I again?”

She glanced up. “We…should pr-”

Though perhaps it wasn’t what she meant, at the time, ‘we should’ felt like answer enough to Zekiel, and in his defense, she did not take issue with his interpretation. If anything, the enthusiasm seemed appreciated.

And Zekiel decided he liked kissing. Not just one moment, but all of it, in ways he had never stopped to consider. It was exciting, to be so near to someone, to know they were experiencing the same things (or a different perspective on the same things) each as they happened, to know that everywhere he felt her, she felt him, and it was all somehow vastly distinct from sitting next to one another in class or brushing hands if they worked together on a project or even hugging. He realized — as his hands touched to her hips and then climbed, with eager and curious hesitance to the minute dip of her waist and then around, to the small of her back — that he and everyone else in the world actually brought themselves into very little real contact. He wondered why that was, and what he might do to change it in the future, because this—he liked this quite a lot, and it seemed like a promising way to please people.

“Zekiel-”

He pulled back enough to meet her gaze. “Mm?”

She shifted against him. “What are you doing…?”

He blinked. “Kissing you?”

“With your hands.”

He glanced to them, then to her. “Holding you?”

She looked skeptical at best, though fortunately not outright displeased.

“Kissing you makes me want to touch you,” he said.

That drew immediate response. First in the form of some unidentifiable squeaked garble of a sound, and then followed directly after by squirming and edging out. As quickly as the moment had begun — and he couldn’t have said when exactly that was or even what ‘the moment’ itself was — he knew with a certain surety that it was, now, over as she put space between them and pushed the things he would need for his snake into his arms.

A pinch of abashed heat sprinkled his ear tips: he had all but forgotten about Babasa. It was a relief that Edeline at least had not.

“Thank you—” he began again, but Edeline’s retreating footsteps towards the door spurned him to act instead of going on, trailing after her and attempting to balance everything given him without dropping or damaging anything.

It occurred to him then at several points during their return walk to his room, that perhaps he ought to say more, to re-emphasize his appreciation for the experience or simply speak of whatever pleased Edeline to talk about. But it was the deepest part of the night, Edeline did not seem intent on speaking herself, and any extra noise was a potential for waking someone. So, Zekiel held his peace and his tongue, managing to keep his thoughts to himself until they arrived at his door. There, after receiving assurance she wouldn’t leave immediately, he deposited his supplies in his quarters, and re-emerged.

Edeline was waiting.

He realized he still did not know what to say.

“You may walk me to my room,” she said. He was quick to agree, and on the way, as she began to speak to him again, this time in quieter tones about keldari—their eating habits, their natural habitat and sleeping patterns, her limited experience with them, what she had read, and so forth—it all felt very normal and pleasant. He relaxed and listened. When they arrived at her door, she paused, and eyed the flooring. “In any case, I hope that she is well for the night and if you struggle with her we may speak again in the morning or you might bring her to an animal doctor, as there are some in the city…goodnight, Zekiel.”

“Edeline.”

She looked up to him.

“Thank you,” he said, “for helping me, and Babasa. And for kissing me.” He eyed her, and debated only a moment before adding, “Might I once more? I won’t touch otherwise if it doesn’t please you. I promise.”

She blinked, and then flushed, huffing softly beneath her breath with a small, curt nod. “Just once more,” she cautioned. “For tonight. And no hands…”

By the time she said the last of it, though, his hands were already behind him, one held at the wrist by the other, and he leaned with them at his back, touching their lips together in a chaste, but lingering catch. He smiled into it, and was still smiling, eyes aglow with warmth, when he retreated.

“Sleep wondrously, Edeline,” he said. “And many blessings upon you.”

“Many blessings…” Edeline repeated with a nod, quieter even than she had been before. “And goodnight.”

By the time Zekiel made it back to his room, it was fortunate he had something to do (arrange the bedding and food of his new, potentially temporary roommate), because he could not remember ever feeling so awake—and at such an inopportune time, as well. Not that he much cared about that in the moment. Everything felt exciting and curious and new and he wanted—

He flushed, frowning as he realized how much he did in fact want. Not just for Edeline or others, but for himself. He wanted to kiss her again, not just because it might please her, but because it pleased him, and he wanted to touch and learn, not simply so that he knew better but because he expected to enjoy it. It was a strange, selfish set of wants, overlapping, intertwining, and making all matters worse by being, at their core, vague. He felt, even after speaking to Babasa about it all and settling himself into bed, as though he wanted something very concrete and specific, but the nature of what that was was as of yet undefined.

Perhaps Edeline would know. She seemed to know a great deal, and for this night at least, he had to content himself with the fact that he could ask in the morning if he dared. Selfishness was nothing to be proud of and certainly not befitting of a vessel for the gods’ will, but honesty was, and he hoped that through honesty and clarification, he could both calm himself and rectify any misguided mental path he might have made it onto.

For the moment, however, he was saddled with the task of relieving his body’s over excitement himself in order to allow for sleep. Fortunately, sleep afterward at least was a near-instant process.

Result:
Cast: Zekiel, Edeline, Babasa ||Word Count: 2,281

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Sweet Shivering Strolls ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Malta takes Zekiel up on his invitation to visit Pajore's church. He is thrilled to have and escort her.

Word Count: 3,172 || Posts: 10

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ The Swordsman's Sister ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel meets again with Jalase and they seek out his sister, a priestess of the Sanctum.

Word Count: 3,147 || Posts: 10

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ From The Same Tree We Fell ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel introduces a new 'friend' - Finn - to an old friend, Tacrith.

Word Count: 2,414 || Posts: 10

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ From The Mouths of Babes ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel makes a house call to give the gods' blessings to a sick child. While there, he meets Amrita, the young daughter of a local healer.

Word Count: - || Posts: 1

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Dinner Night ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Tacrith invites Ze to dinner. It's been some time since they've had time or opportunity to talk between the two of them.

Word Count: 4,882 || Posts: 21

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ An Unfortunate Accompaniment ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel counsels a boy plagued by depression - a young prentice of the Sanctum with some connection to him,
Xelannis, accompanies.

Word Count: - || Posts:

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ The Gods’ Strength ▼

In the days, weeks, and months after Zekiel located Jevan, he took the time out when he could between his duties to pay the sequestered seaside shack periodic visitation. Over time, Jevan seemed to come to his own personal conclusion that he, Zekiel, was mute. Some silent servant sent by Marleya to periodically tend to him and/or ascertain that he was at least still breathing, for Zekiel never did speak in his presence then. The man insisted in scattered mutterings on calling him a ‘city boy’ though he had no specific reason for such other than his own guesses, likely formed from the softness of his hands and unweathered nature of his skin and body generally. But Jevan did concede that he took well to netting, knots, and the various other tasks that he would bark at him on the occasions he appeared.

Enough so that he continued to tolerate Zekiel’s presence, and gradually, the more that it became a fixture in their lives, Jevan began to make his own conversation when they worked. One-sided, but not unwelcome, he would speak of the details of whatever task was before them, or of his latest escapades into the sea, or even — as time drew on — of other things in his life, most before his most recent move.

“I had a son once.”

Zekiel looked up from his task—scaling freshly cleaned fish for preparation to cut and layer into the salt box set out—his hands hands damp with it and covered in the glistening flecks of removed fibers. Jevan was not looking at him, but frowning downward with focus. He had been speaking before then, but what of seemed less important after this utterance.

“Wasn’t much mine, I s’pose. Not so much as he was Marleya’s. But he’d have been about your age by this year.” Jevan’s eyes were murky and unreadable behind their dim glow. Distant, and clearly focussed elsewhere, seeing something other than what was before them.

Zekiel’s hands returned to his task, but he listened.

“Looked everything like his mother, he did. Like the gods took her spirit and put it in him when he came into the world, taking her back to them as they did.” The sharp thunk of blade on wood sounded as Jevan’s knife lopped the head off of one of his catch, and his thick fingers moved with surprising agility after, carving the fish for cleaning, removing guts and bone in practiced motions. “And then they took him too.” The blade scraped the cutting board. “The church, that is. Never had nothin’ they wanted before then, but they did.”

Zekiel dipped his hands in the small bucket of clean seawater brought out for rinsing, and then took up the slab of meat, washing that also before setting it with the others he had scaled, ready to be packed and salted.

“Your daddy a fisher too?”

Zekiel glanced up.

“Or’d Marleya teach you to cut ‘em.”

Zekiel nodded.

Jevan grunted. After, there was a span of silence between them that lasted for some time, split only by the sounds of their work — scraping scales, slicing meat, cutting bone, and the wet slap of moving them about. “She never did tell me your name.”

Zekiel had sometimes had his suspicions prior, wondering if the man knew or at least suspected, despite never calling him on it, and when he looked up then and Jevan met his gaze, he felt certain for an instant, held in the moment. Then Jevan snorted, breaking his stare and shaking his head.

“I s’pose…I’ll have to come pay my regards sometime.”

Zekiel said nothing then, of course, and the remainder of the evening went without incident, with Zekiel departing when time called so that he could make his return trip Pajore at a reasonable hour. Tasks as part of his more traditional duties kept him busy then for a period of just over three weeks, and he did not find time or opportunity to pay visits outside the city. He considered it, on brief occasions, but never settled on a fitting chance to return.

Jevan would have his fish hung by now to dry for the winter, unless he had chosen to salt them twice. Marleya’s middle grandson would be visiting, if he held true to his promise, and would be able to help her about the house at least to secure it for the colder months. Zekiel was just leaving the office he most often used for consultation sessions with a small stack of books in hand. A young prentice had been assigned to ‘assist’ him with his papers and scheduling, which seemed in practice like a none-too-subtle hint that his organizational skills were perhaps non-existent, as her only task so far seemed to have consisted of seeing to it that everything he needed to work with was consistently neatly placed in the same positions after he disappeared from such spaces. There was also a magical list that she left at the corner of his desk—not literally imbued with spellwork, but maintained by her such that it seemed to him to be magical, ever kept in structurally perfect handwriting and delineating every appointment and request he had to be engaged with anyone at any time, and updated constantly.

His mind as he left, as it often was, was adrift.

“Cleric…”

He paused, hand still on the doorknob to the consultation room when he looked to the speaker. Immediately after, he smiled broadly. “Saiah. You’re well? It’s wondrous to-”

“There is a man come to see you,” she said. “But he did not announce himself prior to his coming. I will tell him to return tomorrow-”

“Oh, I would love to meet with him! I am heading to the main chapel, and he may see me there if it please him certainly.”

Saiah looked stiffly unconvinced. “Cleric, you have evening prayer, and he did not announce himself. If you allow persons to approach at any hour they please, they will come into the habit of thinking you are always available, and…”

“Then I will have company at all the hours company is pleased to have me,” Zekiel said, chipper with interest and unphased by any potential concern of hers.

He understood that Saiah prefered to know before things occurred more or less exactly how a day ought to go, and that the gods compelled her to make lists of her predictions in time order—for herself, and for others. ‘Schedules,’ she called them, but to Zekiel every schedule was just a prediction based on past experience as to what one expected the gods had in store for a day. While it did not bother him to have her aid in reminders as to who expected to see him where and when (and in fact he was ever-impressed by and grateful for the help), he still tended to consider such things far more fluid than she did.

The gods often gave surprises, after all, and there was no need to let expectation interfere with opportunity.

So it was that Zekiel did as he said, letting Saiah know where he intended to be before putting up his things and making his way towards the front chapel and prayer halls in the area open to the public for worship. He had arrived and just begun to light incense when footsteps sounded behind him, and paused.

“You do look just like her.”

Zekiel’s fingers stilled where they were, holding for just a moment at a hover with the lighting stick before he finished its path, bringing the burning tip down to the incense and waiting for it to catch before blowing the flame out. He had feared, just for a moment in the first instant that Jevan’s voice made itself known, that his tongue would freeze here, too. Not a word. Not a sound. Don’t breathe, or I’ll feed you to the sea. But, after the first upward seize and stutter of his pulse, he found blessedly that his tensions ebbed, for he was home, in his space, and this man was at least now familiar to him as more than an angry ghost.

When he turned, his expression was neutral, but almost smiling. “Jevan,” he greeted. “Welcome to the house of the gods.”

The man’s eyes raked him, starting with his face and skimming down to take in his full presentation and attire.

Zekiel held out a hand. “I am Zekiel, cleric of the Sanctum of Pajore and servant of our makers. It is wondrous to see you here.”

Jevan studied his hand, and then looked up to his face again. “Do they treat you well. These ‘gods’ of yours.”

“Yes.” Zekiel did smile then. “Far better than you ever did. And better, I think often, than I deserve…but I also think perhaps that I do not know what I deserve, and so I trust myself to their will.” Once it was clear Jevan would not be taking it, Zekiel let his hand come to rest at his side. “Would it please you to pray with me?”

Jevan’s eyes moved to the small altar at which Zekiel had lit his incense and before which there was a small, low cushioned bench, designed for knelt prayer. He shook his head. “No.”

“What would please you? Or did the gods not make you capable of happiness or satisfaction.”

Jevan’s eyebrows slowly rose, and Zekiel felt a resurgent stirring of his pulse against his better hopes. When the man stepped forward, progressing toward him in a gradual advance, he felt rooted where he was, hands folded loosely behind him. “The gods…” Jevan began when he was near close enough to feel the radiation of his body heat, “…have not given me much to be happy for, boy.”

Zekiel’s exhale had the rhythm of his pulse. “The gods give you morning, every day. They give you breath this very moment-”

“And am I to be grateful for that, then?” Jevan growled, and it was low and near enough to his ear that for one moment, Zekiel felt certain the gods deprived him of a heartbeat.

Seconds passed.

He exhaled.

And, lowering his eyes to the floor, he surprised himself with the sound of his own voice, if far quieter than before. “No…I don’t suppose I know what you are to be, and you will be whatever please you.”

“You’re wrong.”

Though the direction of his gaze didn’t move, still locked on the polished hardwood directly before his boots, he blinked. “I sometimes am, I’m sure.”

“Do you think I like being like this, mm?” Jevan asked. “Bitter…angry, old, and more every day our ‘gods’ do me the great favor of giving me breath. Alone out on some shite islet on a poison island, bitching away to the hellmistress sea…”

Zekiel drew a breath.

“Do you think that’s what it ‘pleases’ me to be,” Jevan said. And waited. Zekiel was not sure what he would have answered, if he had found the words to use among all the many loose in his head, but his tongue was still. “Are you afraid of me?”

Zekiel’s tongue touched to the roof of his mouth. His teeth, though he told them to, would not open.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

Zekiel’s breath left his lungs. “I know.” He swallowed, and felt a flush in spite of himself. “But I…” His pulse stuttered, and he realized he wasn’t sure what the ‘but’ was, or if he did it was too much to say in a single evening. Three coarse fingers skirting his neck before taking a loose handful of his hair was enough to jerk him back into the moment with a physical hop of surprise, and his eyes snapped over and back to where the other was now standing.

“‘But?’” Jevan repeated.

“Ah…” Zekiel flushed. “I’m…not certain.”

“I never hurt you, did I?”

To his own surprise, Zekiel’s chest seized. “You…left, always.” He had thought that was all, but then his tongue moved again. “And you did not want to hear my words and you told me you would throw me into the sea and I wanted to please you so I would not speak them but I needed to speak them because the gods bid it and so I did when you weren’t about with your ears to hear them but words are better to be heard and I had so many but I couldn’t because you didn’t want them and it hurts to be alone and keep them to myself but then Marleya would take them and Sister Mortrem and many persons after but it’s well and wondrous because I was taken home and I can do as I’m bid here, I don’t mean to be afraid I know I have nothing to fear, and the gods’ will be done.”

Jevan eyed him for a long moment. After, his grip in his hair loosened further and dropped away, but his gaze remained intent. Zekiel couldn’t have said how long passed before he spoke again. “Maybe I could have done a better job.”

Zekiel didn’t mean to laugh. The sound lodged itself in the back of his throat on the way up like a hiccup, but then bubbled the rest of the way out to his own startlement as much as any. The pull at the corner of his lip was small, but present. “It’s possible…but it is all well now, I think.”

Jevan snorted beneath his breath. “Just because something ends up well, doesn’t mean the whole path to was what it should be…” His head tipped a scant inch to the left. “You are happy here, mm?”

“Yes.” That answer came immediately at least.

“And what did you come after me for…” There was a pause. “After all this time, if all I ever did was bring you my misery.”

Zekiel blinked. “I…” Why had he gone? “The gods took me from you, and I thought then that it would make you happy to have me gone, because you were not happy when I was about. But as I grew I saw that many people are unhappy for many, many reasons, and though the gods give much they also take in great portion and test us, some more than others, and some fiercely, in ways that make it difficult to understand why. But I do not think it is my purpose to understand. I feel I have been put here as a vessel through which to bring about better things, where there is struggle if I may. And though I put you from my mind when I was small, I found you on it again as I grew, and as I bid others to let go of their fears I thought it wrong of me to hold on to mine and continue to hide in this…” His eyes flit to the religious instruments about the room, the walls of his church, and he exhaled, “…castle, pretending to myself to have done you a service by staying away when you may still be pressed with trials.”

A look that might otherwise have been a smile managed to look far more like a leer on Jevan’s lips. “Ahh, how sweet, nnm? You came to rescue me did you?” His arm looped up, and his elbow pressed enough weight on Zekiel’s shoulder to make him stagger a moment. “My son?”

Zekiel tensed without meaning to, his shoulder pulling away quite of its own regard and his cheeks flushing with embarrassment at himself for his own behavior. “No—I am not your son-”

Jevan’s laugh was not precisely pleasant, but neither was it unpleasant so much as startling and quieting. “What then?” he asked as abruptly. “If not to save me, or for a happy family reunion, what were you after?”

“You…” Zekiel hesitated, “…raised me, for some years of my life. Perhaps it is possible you might have done…better, but you did keep me alive and taking breath, and I did get to see many sunrises because of you then, and later, after I was taken and left your hut and village I did have many more especially good days, and I have met so many wondrous people. I found my home here after you, and I would not have been present to see it if not for your presence in my beginnings. So I wanted to thank you, for all of those and many other things, and I wanted…to come to know you enough to not be afraid so that I could share some of my words with you and for you to come to know me enough to be curious enough that it would please you to come and hear them, and know what the gods have done for me and might do for you.”

Jevan eyed him. “You do have a lot of words, don’t you.”

“I do.”

After a long, drawn moment, Jevan grunted. “I don’t need a son. And I don’t want one. And I don’t have one. Some might think I need a priest. And they’d be wrong. I don’t want one. And I don’t have one.” Jevan took a step back, his head tipping just enough more to the side to send audible cricks as his neck popped, and he folded his arms. “But…there has been this boy, who’s been coming to visit me. And he hasn’t said anything yet, but he doesn’t dress in all this…” One of his hands unfolded to gesture disfavorably at Zekiel’s attire—befitting, as he was within the Sanctum, his class. “Rubbish of the government.”

Zekiel blinked.

“Upright, quiet city boy, but he knows how to handle fish, and nets, and knots, and his way about a skiff. Not the best sea legs, but he could learn. I can deal with that boy. Grown, as he is and not shitting himself. I don’t do babies, or gods. But if he wanted to come back sometime to gut fish…and share a few words about boats, and the sea, and the weather once or twice more before I die, that might…” Jevan looked almost dubious, but the words came just the same, “…please me more than not.”

It took a moment for the full weight of the words to sink in. At the instant they did, however, Zekiel’s expression lit, and he was beaming as he swept forward quite without thinking about it, arms encircling the man before him in a hug which was—immediately—met with verbal and physical objection. “Ayye—aah, what are y-? Nnnnnghh-” Jevan’s hands pushed, ushering him back and shooting him a sharp look despite the lingering warm (if slightly more sheepish) look on Zekiel’s face by the time there was two feet of space between them again.

“I apologize.”

“Why did you think-”

“You said it might please you more than not if I came back to visit and we might talk about the sea and sky and ships and I think that’s wondrous.” Zekiel tucked his hands behind himself. “I promise to wear something other than this and to only share so many words as you like and stop if wish, as I do also like to listen when you are not angry and I love the sea very greatly. I’ve been coming to see Marleya-”

“Alright.” Jevan held a hand up. “That’s…enough. You can come. Later. Just don’t…touch me.”

Zekiel couldn’t have guessed why, but that man almost looked—flustered? Angry, perhaps was more likely, but after as much experience with the man’s anger as he’d had, he felt certain that this wasn’t it. “You touched me,” he said, not so much an accusation as an inquiry into why it would be appropriate in one instance, but entirely not in the other.

Jevan did not look entirely pleased by the comparison. Instead of answering though, he scoffed after a moment, shaking his head in a way that reminded Zekiel of a canine—in conjunction with the scruff of his beard and rough grumbling noises that came with it. When he did speak, it was of something else.

“I don’t, you know,” Jevan muttered. “Think you’re my son, that is. I was just…with her at the time. I told her and her parents that I didn’t think-”

“I understand,” Zekiel said. After a moment, he glanced down, though his voice remained more gentle than hesitant. “But if you thought she had laid with another man or other men and you kept me, even when the gods took her from us both and made it difficult for you to feed even yourself…I am grateful for that. You might have tossed me to the sea.”

Jevan’s brow, bushy that it already was, looked like a single line when it furrowed. “You know I say things like that when I’m angry…because I’m angry. Not because I intend to do them.”

“I was very small,” Zekiel said. “I think that I thought you would do anything that pleased you.”

“Zekiel.” The way Jevan said it sounded almost more to himself than anyone else, and in that moment Zekiel felt suddenly sure that he had not once heard the man say his name since his childhood.

“Yes.”

Jevan studied him. “I gave you that name, you know. Her parents-” The bristle of his anger was so palpable Zekiel swore he could see it, but it petered back again a moment later like a tired wave receding down the shore. “They insisted I marry her when she became heavy, but when she died…” He shook his head. “They wouldn’t take you. No one would take you. Everyone was afraid.”

Zekiel watched, listening. When he had been small, Jevan would sometimes delve into extended tirades about their circumstances, but they had never felt like explanations so much as accusations. None of this would have happened if… But this was different.

“So I kept you. And I named you three weeks after she died. Because I thought you would too, but you didn’t. It means-”

“The gods’ strength.”

Jevan eyed him. “Sometimes, after you began to learn to speak, I would come home and hear you before you heard me. You would be going on and on and on…nonsense, it was, or it seemed to me. Some days it would be just one word that you’d repeat over and over, other days it was whole stories of nonsense you spoke to the walls. Sometimes they did not even seem to be sentences. But you…” He frowned again there, giving a single shake of his head. “You always sounded…happy. And I did not understand how you could possibly be. I thought you were a mad child, and that was my burden to bear…and when I would step upon the door front, you would silence. Like a little spirit.”

“It is one of your greatest gifts to me.”

Jevan blinked.

“My name,” Zekiel clarified. “And I was happy to speak, as I often am.”

Jevan did not stay a significant period after that, for Pajore was some ways out of the way for him and he could not afford, nor had he come with the intent, to linger. But they had and did share words, and by the time the man left the church, Zekiel felt a lightness and unraveling in his chest, as though invisible knots of twine in his heart and mind were being at long last tended to and perhaps Jevan did not find his company wondrous, but he had received the first invitation into the man’s presence that he ever had. And to be more pleasing than not was a promising start.

This, he thought when he knelt for evening prayer, had been an especially good day.

Word Count: 3,964

Quote:

Zekiel bears very little ill-will toward anyone, but Jevan has been a lingering source of unfinished business. Though he has never felt familial toward the man and does not think of him as a father, he still began to feel in his years of developing adolescence that perhaps he'd been too quick as a child to put the man from his mind entirely. After returning to his village of birth for brief visits when he could find the time, he began to seek Jevan out for the first time and begin forging a tentative connection there despite his persistent, ingrained fears born from their relationship in his earliest years.

This solo is the first time Zekiel has spoken to Jevan since being taken to the Sanctum, and represents the tipping point in that build-up of familiarity and the facing/healing over of old wounds, fears, and misunderstandings. It attests to the fact that Jevan is not family and that the church is Zekiel's home, but that more than just a shelter, it has given Zekiel confidence over the years in ways he once did not begin to possess. Jevan is not the friendliest or most pleasant of individuals, but neither has he had the easiest life and Zekiel felt a want for closure and better understanding such that the man would feel less like an uncomfortable and avoided unknown in his history. Here, as a grown young man, he attains some closure on his early history.

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ To A Temple By The Sea ▼

“Ilidan.”

Edeline stirred in Zekiel’s arms, tipping her head back against his chest to peer up at him with some combination of curiosity and a furrowed brow. “Ilidan,” she repeated. “You won’t stay here…” Though the latter comment may have started with questioning intent, it wasn’t so by the end, as though it took only the course of a few moments and a glance upon his face for the finality of realization to settle.

“It is my path to serve near to the rolling shore, I think,” Zekiel said. If her concern phased him, it wasn’t evident in his tone, light and easy as it generally was. “The gods speak much to me there, when the salt is in the breeze and light dances over the water…they brought me to the world not far from it, and I should like to pay my regards through service. And, Sister Mortrem says that the mothers of the temple there, Mother Enith and Monira Grell, are on enough in age they would welcome an understudy of rank to take their duties as taught and stand in their stead when they return to the gods. I believe that fate has arranged it so.”

Edeline’s gaze did not return to his, but lingered instead on places indistinct—some unmarked location on the bedsheet or the far wall, her silver eyes distant and focused not on what was before her but elsewhere entirely. It was some time before she spoke. When she did, the words came soft. “You’ll be gone.”

“I will be in Ilidan,” he said, touching a kiss to her hair because it was before him, and her presence was warm in his loose embrace. “Not gone.”

They sat atop his bed, both fully clothed but for their shoes and each with texts that they had brought to ‘read together’ as had become their habit after some weeks of spoken and unspoken negotiation following their first kisses. His text was not in hand, and instead sat bathing in mid-afternoon sunlight atop the sheets near their feet. Often, particularly for Zekiel who found reading for extended periods to be difficult enough even without open distraction, reading together with Edeline entailed more soft talk and light kisses and embraces than it did actual assessment of text. But he rather preferred it that way.

Her text remained in hand, but only loosely propped in her fingers, not even open enough any longer to truly study. He understood its presence to be more symbolic of restraint and attention to duty than anything else and took no offense to it. For his own part, however, he found it difficult to believe the gods would put such a wondrous and warm girl in his lap if he was meant to do anything but appreciate her presence in those moments, and to squander his attention on text that would still be there afterward, while the limited opportunity of her sat there in his arms, seemed to be wholly counterintuitive—perhaps even disrespectful, to waste such a precious blessing.

Nosing inward, he brushed his lips to her ear. “You might come to see me. It would be wondrous to have your company-”

“Why Ilidan?” Edeline twisted again in his hold, enough to half turn and face him with a stern, seeking expression. “You’ve done all your studies here, why couldn’t you serve the gods here? From the Sanctum? This is home.”

Zekiel blinked, and though the outer signs of concern may have been present before it was only now that he took more time to contemplate them in her. “Have I upset you?”

Edeline frowned. She opened her mouth, hesitated, and then shut it, shaking her head. “No…”

It had taken him many years to recognize the peculiar anomaly of falsehoods—that someone could be inquired upon and give in answer anything they pleased whether that be the truth, something just shy of it, or something wholly opposite of it. Some were so practiced in the art that Zekiel saw no point in attempting to discern if and when the answers they shared were true. He was happy enough to accept whatever they gave as just that: the answer that it pleased them to give, there being no reason to challenge it.

In some especially strange and confusing circumstances, though, it seemed that certain individuals would give answers shy of the truth while privately wanting the other party to understand more than what was said. It was a particularly difficult task for Zekiel to maneuver those moments, and he had come to find it easiest to surrender overthinking and let himself be guided instead wholly by the gods’ given intuition.

“Please share the truth with me here,” Zekiel asked at length. “There is no one to bear witness to it but ourselves and the gods, and I should like to if it please you. It is difficult for me to understand your heart if you present it differently to me than you feel it, and you needn’t fear I will be anything but grateful to know your mind no matter what weighs on it.” He threaded two fingers lightly, almost absently, through her hair, tucking some behind her ear. “Have I upset you?”

Edeline’s cheeks warmed, and she shifted against him, breathing out as she did and returning her gaze to the corner of the mattress, downward and evasive. “I thought that you would stay. That you would be about longer. That we might…”

When her words drifted to nothing, Zekiel tipped his head. “That we might?” There was a tenseness in her shoulders that didn’t seem to ease when he ran his hand up her arm, though the heat in her cheeks intensified, and he found it as obscurely fascinating of a sight as he had the first time he glimpsed it.

“Why Ilidan?” she repeated instead of answering. “Why do you feel you need to go, or what will it give you you cannot get here?”

Zekiel blinked, but considered a moment before answering. “I think it is where I should be. There are many here already and Pajore is well tended to. As much as it has raised me, I have long thought that the gods put a pull in me towards the sea and that when I was of age and training to do so I ought serve the outer provinces. Ilidan is small and quiet with a temple that will be mine to tend in time…I think that is my place, more than the capitol, though I will return often to see it.”

“You did not tell me…”

“I have just told you.”

“You did not ask me before making your choice.”

“I asked the gods.”

This, unfortunately, did not seem to be the ‘right’ answer, as almost immediately Edeline moved to pull away. More fortunately it must have been more form and show than genuine intent, because only the lightest looping of his arms about her brought her still again. He kissed her shoulder and murmured his words there.

“I did not mean to upset you-”

“Of course you didn’t,” Edeline snapped.

The force of it was enough to draw his eyes up, but by the time he caught her expression, the flicker of anger was already melting back into something closer to hurt. Equally unpleasant. He opened his mouth.

“Am I important at all to you?”

It seemed a bizarre question to him, as he found it difficult to fathom her thinking the answer to be anything other than what it was. Still, because she had asked, he said, “You are.”

“Have you thought-” Her throat tightened, and after a moment she swallowed. When she spoke again, it was quieter, but calmer. “Have you thought at all about what you want? As we become older, when you have your temple…”

Because it wasn’t clear to him what she was seeking for in answer besides the most obvious of things, he waited for clarity. Often, he found, if he waited, a person would provide more insight into their question.

Finally, it came.

“Will you take a wife in Ilidan?”

He relaxed. This, at least, was an easy question. “I should love to, if the gods put that blessing before me.”

Zekiel did not often expect or anticipate—things happened as they would and there was little need to attempt to predict them beforehand as you might just as likely be wrong as not and then what could you say for your time spent guessing? In this instance therefore, the silence that followed did not strike him as abnormal, unexpected, or cause for concern. It was easy to him and uninterrupted, until he became aware of a very slight shaking from the body in his embrace. Immediately he reached, fingers catching just beneath Edeline’s chin and tipping to look—he caught but a glint of tears on lashes in the half moment before she twisted her head back away.

“Edeline-”

“Why are you here with me?” she blurted.

He took a moment, the answer there instantly in his mind, but stalled by a cautiousness instilled only by repeated lessons in the area of human interaction. Pause, though, did not give him any alternative answers, so eventually he shared it as it was. “I feel blessed and happy in your company,” he said, “and I thought that it pleased you to share mine. But if my presence upsets you, I will depart the moment you say that I-”

Her fingers gripped at the front of his shirt, and her body twisted and rose so suddenly that he hadn’t a moment to consider it before her lips were on his, silencing whatever else might have come from him. After as long as they had now been sharing such interactions in scattered portion, he had once thought — much as he had the first time, even — that the contact would feel or come to feel much like any other: routine, pleasant, and appreciated, but simple and familiar.

It managed always to be something else. A prickling under his skin even in places that were not touched with heat that did not burn which came from sources unidentifiable. Vague, circling and ephemeral itches of want for something unnamable, and an overarching, swelling sense of both peace and mounting emotion in portions and manners he could not have described afterward. Though he never said so aloud, he had begun to suspect in his own mind that this, too, was god-intended; the gateway to some sacred dance the details of which he had not yet unearthed and the threshold to which he had not yet learned to cross.

Edeline’s body was small, familiar warmth in his lap as she twisted to face him fully and looped one arm over his shoulder, but the dampness to her cheeks and the quiver to her breath pulled him from whatever magic was in the rest. He had to pull back, and did so as his thumb traced her cheek, his gaze seeking.

“You are hurting-” he said.

“I love you…”

He blinked. “And I-”

“What do you want in a wife, Zekiel?”

It seemed to him a strange change again in topic—to have so many unrelated subjects dancing at the tip of their minds and tongues. His mind was still preoccupied with her tears, hung on attempting to discern why they were there, if they were his own doing or from outside sources and what he might do to calm them. The question felt like an interruption of inquiries into more important things such as seeing Edeline happy. But she had asked, and so he answered with some distraction.

“A woman who is as pleased by my company as I am hers. You are crying-”

“Is that all?”

He studied her. “Does it please you to speak of a wife I may have? Because it does not seem to…”

“What do you want most?” Edeline’s wrists settled loosely just past his shoulders, her fingers toying in his hair and her body stilling enough against him with calm that a spark of the prior curiosity in it all stirred. “If the gods were to give you a gift greater than any you dare ask for, what would it be?”

“A child.” Zekiel touched his nose to hers and then kissed it, his fingers light at her hips but peculiarly attentive to each minute shift of her. It was an easy enough answer to give, fortunately, requiring next to no thought other than to open his mouth. It wasn’t a blessing he thought he ‘deserved’ or expected to receive soon or ever—who was even he to know the gods’ plan, being but a servant of their will?

But he knew himself well enough that the want — rational or not, deserved or not, ever to be granted or not — was well settled truth in his own mind.

By the time his eyes found her face again, it was more flush than he remembered it. Before he could open his mouth, though, she was speaking, an unplaceable determination in her stare.

“Do you know how children are made?”

Zekiel nodded, though a sizeable portion of his attention was on the way her hips slid very slightly in as his fingers made gentle strokes low along the small of her back. “The gods make them. But only through a woman, when it comes time to bring life into the world.”

“Zekiel…” Edeline touched a thumb to his cheek, and though it was clear she had more to say for an instant he thought the words may have stuck themselves permanently inside her. Then she found her courage. “What I mean to say is do you understand how they are made? You know that the gods make them of the man and the woman in every creature? That it takes two for the gods to craft children, just as there is the god and the goddess, just as there are male and female of each species, just as every life is made of both but born to the woman?”

Zekiel eyed her, nodding again but more slowly, since he felt that though he thought he understood — he knew of the duality of the sexes, and the need for a father and mother — there seemed, in Edeline’s opinion at least, to be more to the gods’ process than a decision that it was a moment for life’s fruition. At length, though he had nodded at first, he shook his head.

Edeline took her time before speaking. “Now is…not the time for children, and I know that you will be going away, but you might return and-”

“I will return-”

“-I would like to tell…to show you some of the ways we ask the gods for children. We won’t—we mustn’t and we will not make them as we are not wed, but I…would like to show you how.”

After, Zekiel would come to look back with great and amusing clarity at how truly vacant of understanding as to the process that he had been beforehand. In this particular moment, however, he felt only a warm rush of wild curiosity and eagerness, feeling (if unaware of just how accurate the feeling was) that he was at the precipice of discovery and that Edeline was offering something precious the likes of which would never be offered again if he did not accept now.

So, he nodded, bewildered but alive with his interest, and as it happened, things could not in his opinion have felt more natural. By the end, there was nothing but absolute conviction in his mind that this was a process drawn together by the gods as a means to honor them and entreat for children, intimate and sacred. As Edeline lay after under the light hold of his arm over her with her hair beneath his nose, he thought again of the trip he would soon make, of the shift in responsibility that would come with it—and in earnest of the concept of taking a wife and making a family there.

In the inescapable brevity of that instant, as the evening sun lit the dark strands of Edeline’s hair and he breathed her as he rested, he felt certain of two things. First, that he knew nothing of the precise details of the gods’ plans for him as he moved forward. But second, that surely, surely he was progressing in the right direction, and he could not have been more grateful.

He murmured a prayer where he lay, so near that his lips brushed the crown of her forehead with the shape of each syllable and the breath of it scattered through her hair there: gratitude and adoration.

It was, he thought, an especially wondrous and precious moment.

Result: Zekiel shares with Edeline where he wants to settle as a priest, works through his thoughts on why and the increase of responsibility that will come with a temple of his own
in time, as well as some eventual goals there. Edeline, though, is somewhat distressed with his choice to move away from the Sanctum, and shares a lesson that will never leave him.
Cast: Zekiel, Edeline ||Word Count: 2,819

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Yea, Though I Walk ▼

“You’ve decided.”

“Yes, Mother.” Zekiel stood at the northeast end of the Sanctum gardens where the crossroads of two winding cobbled paths came to circle. At the center of it, a stone fountain rested, blanketed at the sides by carpets of green moss and a flowering vine that Zekiel had been told the name of a half dozen times by Fallon he was sure, though he could not remember it now. He knew that the bud, picked new after blooming, could be cooked into a tea which eased nausea.

Mother Mortrem, who had taken the title at long last despite lingering a rank beneath well longer than her experience and even age might have dictated. Zekiel knew not the precise reason, though he knew she felt especially in place actively guiding the new Chosen and perhaps had been reluctant to take on a station which would involve more passive overseeing.

For the moment, however, it was no impediment at all, and he had elected to speak with her — as she had mentored him up from the ranks of prentice and before — about his decision to serve Ilidan.

“Because it is near to where you were brought into this world?”

Zekiel considered a moment, but eventually shook his head. “Ilidan is small, but with great roots and an openness to the seas beyond,” he said. “The gods have put fragments of the worlds beyond in my path before, the children of other gods…” He looked to her. “I should like to be where I can calm the storms brought by strange company…” He smiled. “And a place where I need not travel far to fish with my people. Somewhere with room to grow, that I might come to know every family that calls it home.”

Mother Mortrem took a moment where he did not immediately know what she might say. Then: “You are aware, Zekiel, that mainlanders will no more be allowed within your temple walls than they would be within the walls of the Sanctum itself…it is holy ground, and private only to our people.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Have you…made other acquaintances from the mainland as you did that boy?”

In the aftermath of it all, even years after his disappearance, Zekiel still received probing comments from time to time. Verbal fishing expeditions, some more subtle than others. He watched the way the sunlight caught at the rim of a flower petal, painting the outermost edges gold while the middle was warm with it.

“No,” Zekiel said. “Not as I did him.”

There were other mainlanders, of course. Though their presence was minimal, it grew every year with increased trade despite the continued heavy leeriness of the natives. He, having been in more extensive contact than most and with no fear of them, had engaged on occasion. But never again like before.

She at least seemed satisfied. After a protracted moment, she nodded. “Very well. I will submit your final request for assignment. You will be instructed as to how to go about moving what you will need, though most will be where you head…” There came a pause, and though it could easily have been all there was to say, Zekiel felt the sense that it was not. “Before you leave, however, as you have not yet…there are matters you must meet with Father Borath and a selection of the council to speak on. Strange times are upon us, and of the rank you are now, your experience, though still limited in your youth, will be needed.”

Zekiel studied her — so familiar, though an older and more wisened woman now than the one who had lead him up his first steps at the Sanctum’s gate — and he smiled. “Of course, Mother. It is a wondrous blessing always to have opportunity to be of aid.”

Result: Zekiel submits his request for assignment to Ilidan.

Cast: Zekiel, Mother Mortrem || Word Count: 698

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Grave Expectations ▼

Meta: Link
Result: Zekiel attends a public gathering to address the issue of Yael's disappearing persons. In the midst of the presentation, a young Chosen is abducted in a surprise appearance by the dretch and gone again before anything can be done.

Word Count: 3,108 || Posts: 8

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ House of Faith ▼

In the aftermath of the events which transpired in Pajore, it was difficult to put a name to the state of things—but fortunately, Zekiel had never much been one for lists or labels. As tragic and puzzling as the event was to the public, and as little as he personally understood the meaning for it all, he found that he felt as filled with purpose or more so than he ever had if that were possible. There were times, during his studies in Pajore on slow evenings where the sun shined warm and winds tickled around the outer sides of the Sanctum as he was meant to be reading and devoting great study to reams of text before him, that he had fallen endlessly adrift into musing and distraction. Though he would be chastised then and though he understood it was his place to learn as much as he could, it had never distressed him for it had simply never seemed vital that he do anything but what he could as the gods put it before him, and if that meant to appreciate the look of summer instead of the look of old text then far be it from him to think that an egregious waste of time.

There simply was not time for such things now, and he did not find he missed it or even thought on it, for his life was always full.

During the period where he remained very briefly in Pajore after the priest’s disappearance, there were those in need and in panic at every turn, questions to be tended to, and endless, endless opportunity to step up and make oneself part of the healing and recuperation process. It seemed at every breath that no matter how busy all were, the list of need ever outpaced the rate at which things could be accomplished. The only answer, of course, was to continue to try, and tend in turn to each problem as it came.

It was not long, however, before he was given cue to make his trip as planned. While there would never be a lack of need for aid in Pajore any time soon, Ilidan was as much or more in need of the same tending and information, and he could not dally in his assignment. So he didn’t, and as quickly as he could make his closing arrangements at the Sanctum and gather what few personal items he intended to keep with him, he made the trip to Ilidan.

It was a beautiful little temple, run before him by two aging priestesses who more than needed the help, but whose company he found consistently pleasant even in the aftermath of the Sanctum’s loss. Though he was new and it would be his duty to learn under them, the situation was such that he hardly had time or opportunity to be lead gently into the role.

The town needed a priest now, not days from now, and fortunately, the transition was as smooth as any could hope for. Much of his experience within the Sanctum, working under Sister Mortrem and Father Borath, attending sermons and meeting with the people of the town, had laid the foundations of what he needed to perform here, and it was — to him, at least — almost an excitement more than a point of concern to be called to immediate action.

As many of the town observed, he was indeed young to be taking on such a position of responsibility, and inexperienced in the grand scheme, but he spent no time concerning himself with such factors from the perspective of detriments. His youth made him full of life, and his lack of experience meant he had full room to learn exactly who he needed to be for this village. Though it was different than Sanctum life where every day was regimented, particularly in his younger years, and the elders about him guided every step, it felt like the crossing of a threshold.

It was his life still, but a new one as well.

And he was ready.

It was going to be, he thought, an especially wondrous journey forward, for the gods did not seem to intend that he ever be idle—and he would not have preferred it any other way.

Result: Zekiel moves into his temple in Ilidan and reflects on his journey, the transition, and his expectations for life going forward.

Cast: Zekiel || Word Count: 719