With a Venora, Two

[Hart]

Continued from here, but without Soren as Soren has not been posting. Here is a brief summary of the previous thread. Tristan and Soren meet to discuss possible business. However, Soren tells Tristan that he hurt his brother, Hart, and wronged him badly- which interrupts the meeting. Tristan demands to see Hart and Soren takes him to Greta's bakery, where Hart -now Eihr- lives and works.

Eihr and Tristan meet. Eihr explains that he is not Hart, and that Hart is dead. They discuss various topics, including revenge upon Soren for Hart's death. After a long discussion, they return to the rest of the bakery to talk with the others- Tristan's bodyguard Lianne and his young daughter, Ayla. As Soren has not been posting, it will be assumed that he has left the bakery.

7th of Zi'da, 719

There was no seating in the bakery, but Greta brought out seating for them. The chairs she brought out from a table near the ovens; she set them down near the front wall of the shop, to be arranged as needed.

"I've got to prepare a baking schedule for the upcoming trials, and a delivery schedule for written orders and the like," Greta explained as she brought out the chairs. "Plus there's the ledgers to do," she said. "So I'll be up the stairs in my apartment, doing the papers. Keep the bakery closed, will you, til I come back?"

She made sure the ovens weren't lit and nothing had been left to burn. Then she set the sign on the door to closed and took the ledgers up to her apartment.

She was lending them the shop so that they might finish their discussion.

Eihr took the others' orders as Greta went upstairs. He plated the pies and pastries and put them on the countertop, to let the others sort them out. The cost of the orders he paid for himself, putting his last few coins in the bakery's coffers.

Then he stood where he was, behind the counter, even though Greta had brought out chairs.

"Hello Lianne," Eihr said. He had waited until they were all settled. "Hello Ayla." Tristan had introduced him, but Eihr introduced himself. It was not that he thought Tristan's introduction had been poor; it was that he thought introducing himself was- polite. "My name is Eihr," he said.

"Hello, Mister Eihr," Ayla said, though he was not able to see the small hand she held out to him.

Ayla was a mortalborn, though Eihr said nothing about it. Though he had not seen her hold out her hand, his gaze fell upon her briefly. He looked at her as if he could see her, though he was not able to see. Then his gaze dropped away.

He wished to question Tristan about her- how was it that Hart had not known that she was a mortalborn? But they had other topics to discuss.

About those topics, Eihr thought it was best to speak directly.

"Lianne," Eihr said. "You met Hart." It was not a question; he understood that Hart had met her. "Ayla," he said. "You met Hart as well, though that was when you were very small." He paused. "I think it best to inform you that Hart is dead."

He stopped there. When delivering such a message, he thought it polite to allow the recipients time to process the information. He hesitated for as long as he thought was necessary. Then he continued.

"Tristan and I have discussed Hart's death. But we have not discussed-" He hesitated again.

"Family," he finally said.

"Hart had family. He had you, Tristan. He had Ayla. He had a mother -two mothers- and a father he never met. And he had-"

"-a daughter," he said, after a pause.

"Her name is Ruari," Eihr said. He answered the questions about her he thought they might ask. "She is Tristan's niece, and Ayla's cousin. She is very small- she will be an arc old in Ashan. The last time Hart saw her, she was in Scalvoris with her mother, Kirei."

"Hart thought of Kirei as his family, though he had not seen her or Ruari for some time. He had a familiar, Karshe, as well. And he had Wren, a boy of six arcs, whom he was looking after and who was like a son to him."

Eihr let them process the information.

"I am not certain what to do," he said when he thought they'd had sufficient time to think. "I have not contacted Hart's family about his death."

He had not thought about Hart, or his wishes; he had not thought about Hart's family.

But they -some of them- were here.

"I am not certain what to do about us, either," he admitted. His voice was quiet. "You were Hart's family. You are not- my family." He tried to stop himself asking, but somehow he was unable to stop, "Are you?"

Eihr did not have a family. Tristan and Ayla were important to him, he had understood that as soon as he and Tristan had met. But that did not mean that they thought of him as family, nor that he was important to them. Hart, who was their family, had been important- but Hart had died. And Eihr was not Hart.

"I am not certain what you wish to do about me."

OOC: As a note, Eihr is able to sense the presence of other mortalborn, which is how he is able to tell that Ayla is a mortalborn. It is also how he is able to look at her more directly, as if he was able to see her; he is able to sense, through the ability, where she is.

[Tristan Venora]

Once he had thanked Greta, and the baker had gone upstairs, Tristan took a seat and patted the chair next to him so that Ayla would take a seat as well. The little girl did so immediately, smiling shyly at Eihr and looking at him curiously. She was too young to remember much of Hart, but she definitely noticed that something was going on and that the adults were behaving a little strangely – and that this man looked a lot like her father.

Lianne kept on looking from Eihr to Tristan and back, utterly and confused and just a bit uneasy. Why did this man insist that his name was Eihr when he looked like Hart, apart from the fact that he glowed – and when Soren had talked about Hart when they had met him? Was he another doppelganger, another Venoran bastard that nobody had known about until now? Sometimes she wondered about this strange noble house that she had ended up working for!

“He’s dead?” the redhead asked, confusion marring her pretty face. Her gaze flickered back to Tristan, as if she were looking for an answer, some sort of explanation that made sense.

“But why? How?” she asked.

“Soren Kvistson”, Tristan replied curtly, his gaze darkening noticeably as he wondered if he should have killed the man after all. He knew exactly how to kill a man with alchemy. But no, he didn’t want to go there. He didn’t want to become a murderer. He doubted that it would really make him feel better, besides, killing someone changed you …

“Soren Kvistson killed Hart”, he elaborated, lowering his voice so that Ayla wouldn’t hear him – there were some things that he wanted to keep from his little girl. “Eihr looks like him, but he’s not him. I’ll tell you more when we get home”, he promised.

When Eihr told him that Hart had had a daughter, Tristan’s eyes widened. Why had his brother not told him? What else had he not known about him? He regretted that he hadn’t tried harder to stay in contact, that he had let the mage killings and the plague get between them.

He was about to tell Eihr that Ruari was his daughter as well, in a way at least, but then he realized that Eihr might not want to hear that, besides, even though he had Hart’s body, he was his own person … Eihr had never been with Kirei … he had never loved her …

“I’ve never met Kirei”, he remarked with a hint of regret as he wondered if he should bite into one of Greta’s delicious pastries or not. He wasn’t sure if he felt like eating at the moment. “But if you want to, I’ll contact her for you”, he offered, because it was the least he could do.

Besides, he wanted to get to know his niece.

“We are your family”, he disagreed because Eihr seemed so lonely to him, and because it was true. Eihr wasn’t Hart, but he was still Noah Venora’s son. That hadn’t changed. “Or at least we can be your family. You are the only brother I have left. Teddy killed himself, and Soren killed Hart. Most of my family are gone, Eihr”, he admitted softly.

“You could come with us. You could stay with us and figure out what you want to do with your life. I might be able to help you”, he remarked, remembering that Eihr had been crying when they had been alone upstairs. He didn’t want to leave him alone.

[Hart]

Eihr was not practiced at conversations like this. The subject matter was- heavy. Prior to meeting with Tristan, Eihr had mostly had conversations with Greta.

His conversations with Greta were light; and because it was just him and Greta, the conversations did not feel so- difficult.

But as Lianne asked questions and Tristan answered, Eihr had some difficulty trying to decipher when he should and should not reply. He was not able to see the others' expressions nor their lines of sight, so he was not able to tell whether they were talking to him, to the room, or only to each other. He understood what they were saying, of course. It was just- difficult to know when or whether to answer.

For the most part, Eihr remained silent.

Only when Tristan started to talk about Kirei was Eihr able to decipher without doubt that the conversation had returned back to him.

Tristan offered to contact Kirei, and Eihr would have preferred Tristan do it. But it did not feel- right. It took him a moment to put the feeling into words. Even as he answered, he was thinking about how to explain. Finally he said, "Hart died because he thought Soren was offering him a drink."

He remembered it distinctly; he remembered how Hart had felt when Soren had asked him to pay. He remembered the resignation and the exhaustion Hart had experienced, knowing that he had made a mistake, that he was not able to pay, and that -because of it- he was in trouble. Again.

"Soren offered him a drink, and Hart said yes because he thought the drink was free of charge. But it wasn't."

"Because of that I have certain- reservations. Your offer to write the letter free of charge does not feel right. It feels-"

"-scary," he finally said. "What if I thought you were offering to write the letter as a favor, but you were not? What if-"

What if you wrote it for me and then asked me to pay?

Many of Hart's memories were not very distinct to Eihr; they were far away to him. But he remembered the intricacies that had led to Hart's death; he remembered them very well.

Always pay in Raelia.

"If you insist on writing the letter, I will have to pay you for it. But I do not have the money." He did not wish to utter those words aloud; it felt like admitting to a crime. The words dragged out of him. He let out a breath. "I will write the letter myself."

Tristan seemed adamant that they were family -"Or at least we can be"- and Eihr was conflicted. Tristan called him his brother, and something in his heart gripped to the word.

He did not want to be by himself.

“You could come with us," Tristan said. "You could stay with us and figure out what you want to do with your life. I might be able to help you.”

But Eihr shook his head. He felt as if he had to say, "No."

"For the same reasons as with the letter, I can't. There would have to be some sort of transaction between us. I would have to pay rent. Not because of you, but because of me." He took a breath. "And I am not able to pay." He sounded frustrated.

How was it that he let himself be manipulated so fully, by circumstance and by his very own thoughts? He was the product of Hart's death; but he, too, was the source of the arbitrary rules about relationships and transactions that conflicted him now. It was- stupid.

"However," Eihr said cautiously, and brought his gaze up. He tried to look at Tristan. "If you are willing, I would like to try to be your brother. Though I may not be- so good at it."

[Tristan Venora]

Tristan didn’t have a lot of practice when it came to such conversations either. He had met Immortals and monsters and Immortals that were monsters and kept the company of kings and queens. The current situation was unlike anything that he had ever dealt with before though, so he was just a little confused, and his confusion only increased when Eihr admitted that his offering to write the letter for free felt scary. Besides that, the fact that his brother had such reservations pained him.

It made him reconsider his decision to collaborate with Soren. The man had insisted that he hadn't known what would happen, that he'd only meant to teach Hart a lesson, that he hadn't known what his associate would do, but he wasn't entirely sure if he could trust him.

He was a stranger in Melrath though, having only arrived a few trials earlier. He simply didn’t have the resources that he needed to help Eihr and improve his condition, and he didn’t know anybody in the city. He wasn’t even sure how willing the people of Melrath would be to do business with him.

He needed to think about it.

For now, he simply looked at the man that he considered to be his brother even though he was not Hart and remarked, shaking his head slightly, “I don’t need any nels, Eihr. I have more nels than I’ll be able to spend in a lifetime. If you are worried about something bad happening … would it help if I drank a truth serum so that you know that I mean what I say and that I will never go back on my promise?” he asked and raised an eyebrow which was of course something that Eihr wouldn’t be able to see.

“There’s also a way for you to pay that doesn’t involve giving me nels though”, he continued. “I’d appreciate your company and getting to know you more than any coins in the world”, he admitted. He had said the truth. He’d already lost too many people, and he wanted to get to know this new brother better, no matter how he had come into existence. He definitely didn’t want his money though. Hart had been quite poor, and thus so was Eihr.

For a moment, he was tempted to give Eihr money rather than the other way round, but then he realized that Eihr would probably not appreciate that and that it would only complicate matters further – even though the other man deserved all the nels in the world in his opinion. Nels wouldn’t be able to fix his sight or the trauma that he had suffered, but they would make his life considerably easier and more pleasant which was a good thing in his opinion.

“Brothers shouldn’t demand money from each other”, he said softly as Eihr declined his offer to stay with him for the same reason. He decided that it would be best not the press the matter further though as he wasn’t sure what kind of effect it would have on the other man’s emotion state. He did believe that though. He thought that someone that made a relative pay rent even though he didn’t depend on the money was a bad person and greedy on top of it, and he had absolutely no interest in being a bad person.

“I would like that”, he said and smiled, meeting Eihr’s gaze even though the other man wouldn’t be able to see it, of course, when he told him that he would like to try to be his brother. “That means a lot to me. And don’t worry about not being good at it. This isn’t some sort of competition, you can’t succeed or fail at being a brother. The only thing that matters is that you are my brother”, he told him, hoping that he would understand what he meant. He wasn’t sure how well he had worded things.

[Hart]

"Truth serum," Eihr mused. He had not even known that such a serum existed.

"I am not certain a truth serum would do much to make me feel better," he said.

There were too many unknowns involved; Eihr didn't have any information about the truth serum, or how it might work. The serum was ingested, according to Tristan; was it not likely, then, that at some point its influence would go away? If Tristan said something while under the influence of the truth serum, but the serum's influence went away, was it possible for Tristan to then go against what he had said? It all seemed so complicated and full of questions.

Beside that, Hart had never needed a serum to interact with others.

I wish I was not like this, Eihr thought, frustrated. He understood that he was complicating things that need not be complicated. He understood that he was difficult.

And ordinarily his difficulties did not matter to him. But Tristan mattered. And that further complicated things.

Eihr did not like things to be complicated.

Perhaps his relationship with Tristan would be simpler if he tried not to be himself?

Eihr had- some experience with not being himself. He behaved differently during work, because being polite was an implicit expectation of working in the bakery. He thought he might be able to do it; to be someone else, perhaps. Someone- simpler.

But Tristan had said he wanted to know Eihr. I’d appreciate your company and getting to know you more than any coins in the world.

"Are you certain?" Eihr asked, frowning.

Based on what Eihr understood of himself and the city of Raelia, Tristan's sentiment was baffling. But Tristan was not from Raelia. And -Eihr thought- his logic was sound. Tristan was rich. He did not want for money. He wanted other things. He wanted a brother. He wanted to know Eihr.

But what was there for him to know?

Eihr was not like other people. He had understood that from the first. He had observed how complete other people were, and had observed that he himself was not. There was something missing, in him. For the most part, he was empty.

Ordinarily that did not matter to him, either. But-

"I don't know who I am," he finally said. "How do I know?" he asked.

How do I understand any person?

"Is there something you want to ask me, Tristan?" he asked. "Perhaps if you ask me a question about myself, I might know the answer?" Was that how it worked?

He seemed at a loss.

[Tristan Venora]

“A truth serum would give you the certainty that I’m being honest”, Tristan replied. “Its effect cannot be circumvented. Everybody who drinks it must tell the truth”, he continued. He wanted Eihr to trust him, he wanted to let him know that he would never do what Soren and his associate had done, beyond all doubts, and if mere words weren’t enough – although he would never lie about something like that – he would resort to such measures. He decided to not press the matter further though, but left it at that.

The ultimate decision would be up to Eihr.

His thoughts went back to what Soren had done again, to what he had claimed and what Eihr had told him. Soren and his associate were to blame for Hart’s death, even if the tavern owner had insisted that he had not known. Hart had been his brother, but Eihr was his brother as well, and he wanted to help him. He wanted to save him because he had already lost too many members of his family and couldn’t bear to lose another one or see him suffer, and if had to associate with the people that had hurt one brother in order to help another brother …

“I am certain”, he confirmed, smiling lightly. “I meant what I said before. We are family, Eihr. You are my brother”, he insisted. They were probably among the strangest pairs of brothers in Idalos, but he didn’t mind. At all. Hart had died which pained him, almost beyond measure, but he had gained Eihr. Eihr was alive, and he wanted to get to know him – and be honest with him and be there for him, no matter what.

“By living”, he replied as Eihr wondered about finding out who he was. “By interacting with the people around you and making new experiences. Most of us start out as a blank slate, more or less – although I’ll gladly tell you anything about the Venoras and me that you want to know if you think that could help you find out who you are”, he offered.

When Eihr wanted to know if there was anything that he wanted to ask him, Tristan didn’t reply immediately, but just looked at his brother that seemed so lost for a moment.

“Perhaps … perhaps you would like to tell me what you enjoy, if there’s anything you’d like to do in the future, and if you mind …?” he finally wanted to know, breaking off abruptly. He had a lot of questions. He wanted to know whether Eihr minded having Hart’s memories or his body, whether he minded being blind, whether he wanted him to help him get rid of Hart’s blessings that were not his blessings, how he really felt, about everything – but he wasn’t sure if Eihr would be okay with him asking them or if it would just make things more complicated, problematic and painful.

“I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to ask”, he admitted a moment later, looking just as lost as his brother. “I’ve never done this before. I’d really like to help and get to know you better though”, he continued, the tone of his voice slightly softer than before. As he said that, his gaze momentarily flittered to Ayla and Lianne both of whom had simply listened so far, although the little girl’s eyes were slightly wider than they had been before.

He smiled at his daughter reassuringly.

[Hart]

A truth serum's effect could not be circumvented, Tristan said, and Eihr looked sightlessly down while he thought. He wanted to say yes to the serum; perhaps if he said yes, and Tristan took the serum, things would be less complicated.

But he wanted to say no as well; because he himself would never willingly take a truth serum. Substances that made a person do or think things that they otherwise would not have done or thought- they were troublesome to him.

That was how Hart had died.

He looked pensive for long moments, troubled.

Stop complicating things.

"If I ever have need to move out of the bakery," he said slowly to his hands, "Might I-" He stopped, struggling with the words, warring internally with himself. You must always pay in Raelia. The thought was intrusive. He let out a slow breath.

"Might I stay with you, then? If I ever have need to move out," he repeated, to be certain Tristan had heard the terms. Then he sighed.

Was that progress? He still felt troubled.

"Please don't take the truth serum," he added.

That felt- better.

Tristan said to interact with people, to experience things, and Eihr nodded thoughtfully. Yes. He agreed with that. As for the Venoras- "Whatever you would like to tell me about the Venoras, I would like to hear."

This was information Hart did not know. Hart had studied books on politics in the Eastern Settlement and, to an extent, in Rynmere; had studied charts of lineage and attempted to memorize names and titles, noble etiquette and decorum. But this information was different.

It was personal.

"Though I do admit that I feel- as if I am a native of Melrath," Eihr said. "Of Raelia." He moved his shoulder in a half-shrug. "I have only ever been here."

Tristan was silent for a moment, and Eihr looked up as if to look at his face, though he was unable. Finally Tristan spoke.

If I mind what? Eihr contemplated. But he did not ask.

"I enjoy," he said introspectively, mulling over the words.

Then he said, "Drinking ginger tea. Baking with Greta. Jumping in icy water. Making myself strong. Being able to write. Remembering the stars." He was not able to see the stars otherwise.

"And flying," he said, and smiled briefly.

"What I would like to do in the future," he repeated.

"I would like to fly again," he said. This was something he seemed enthusiastic about, flying; there was an animation to him that was not normally there. "There are flying horses here called sleipnir; perhaps I would like to have one of them." He would.

Then his gaze turned inward again.

"I would like to be strong, and able. I would like to be my own person, entirely. I would like to be a good brother and uncle. And I would like to have money-" and citizenship and a mage mark, if possible, "-so that I am no longer in danger here, in Raelia."

[Tristan Venora]

“If you ever need to move out of Greta’s Bakery”, Tristan replied without hesitation. “You can stay with me. In fact, Ayla and I would love for you to move in with us”, he assured Eihr. Unlike the Mortalborn, he wasn’t warring internally with himself at all. He hadn’t even really thought about his answer because it had been clear to him, anyway.

“I won’t take the truth serum then”, he decided a moment later, although he wasn’t sure why Eihr was so much against it. It wouldn’t hurt him. It would just make him tell the truth, and the truth was not a bad thing, was it? He decided not to ask his new brother why he had a problem with truth serums though. He didn’t want to ask too many possibly uncomfortable questions.

Instead, he turned to a less complicated and much more enjoyable matter – his family. “Venora is one of the most beautiful places in Idalos I’ve ever seen”, he remarked and gestured for both Lianne and Ayla to move a little closer to him as well as they might be interested in hearing more as well. Once they had done so, he began to talk, about the gardens of Sabaissant, their relatives, and about Granny Ebony, of course, the head of his family who seemed to be pretty much immortal. Not even the plague had been able to harm her!

There were a few things he left out though, such as their youngest brother Teddy’s suicide or his … at least he was pretty sure that he had a cousin, and that cousin had married the man who had tried to throw a door at the king. Some of the memories were strangely hazy, as if he were suffering from a really bad hangover that had affected his mental faculties negatively – only that he hadn’t even had a single drop of alcohol recently!

“You can have more than one home”, Tristan remarked as Eihr told him that he felt as if he were a native of Melrath. “Raelia is your home, but Venora can become your home as well, if you want to, if we ever go back there. Your – our father still lives there”, he told him, smiling softly as he thought about him. Some members of House Venora were a little messed up, but Noah Venora was a good person, and he doubted that he’d have a problem with Eihr should the two ever meet.

When Eihr began to talk about what he liked and what he wanted to do in the future, Tristan listened to him. He didn’t interrupt him once. “I like ginger tea as well”, he remarked which was true. He enjoyed the hint of spiciness, besides. “As for flying”, he continued, noticing how much more enthusiastic the Mortalborn suddenly was which was something that brought a smile to his face. “I’m certain that I could arrange something.”

He was tempted to just offer to buy him a sleipnir, but Eihr had a problem when it came to accepting gifts, so he wasn’t sure what he should say and kept things vague as a consequence, even if doing such made him feel bad. He had a lot of money. He wanted to share it, especially with someone that obviously needed it!

“Perhaps we could go flying together”, he suggested. Such an offer wouldn’t be a problem would it? If you just rode a sleipnir rather than buying the animal, money wasn’t an absolute requirement. He would probably be able to just persuade someone to lend them their sleipnir. He could be quite persuasive. He’d even persuaded an Immortal to share his bed once!

And if a sleipnir somehow ended up in their possession while they went riding (legally, of course, he was not a criminal after all), well, such things happened sometimes, didn’t they?

“If you want to be strong, we can train together”, he remarked. “I need to get stronger as well so that I can protect Ayla”, he explained. He managed to sound comparatively calm when he said that. A lot of bad things had happened in the previous two or three arcs though, the plague, the civil war, Aelig – for a while he’d also thought that Faith had died.

When Eihr mentioned that he wanted to have money, he couldn’t help but make the offer, even though doing such might be bad idea, considering Eihr’s previous statements. It would be such an easy solution to Eihr’s problems though. “I could give you money. My nels are just gathering dust anyway, so you’d be doing me a favour by taking them and actually spending them. If you are not comfortable with that, let me know though, please, and I won’t mention it again”, he added in a very honest tone of voice.

[Hart]

Tristan was offering him so very much, and Eihr's expression became closed.

He had acknowledged internally that the rules he had about relationships and transactions were arbitrary. Eihr understood that. He did. And yet the thought repeated: you must always pay in Raelia.

And Eihr had not paid.

Tristan had said, "Brothers shouldn’t demand money from each other." But if not money or trade, what was their relationship to be based upon? Tristan had said, "The only thing that matters is that you are my brother,” and, “I’d appreciate your company and getting to know you more than any coins in the world.” That had made sense, hadn't it; that had been logical, because Tristan wanted a brother and did not need money.

But Eihr had not thought Tristan would offer him money.

Tristan told him about Venora, a beautiful place Hart had never seen, with a family Hart had never met. Hart's father. Tristan's father. And Tristan said that this man was Eihr's father as well.

"Ah," Eihr said in a low tone, as if to object.

He was starting to feel overwhelmed. Tristan offered a family -a brother, a niece, a father- a house, money. Venora- a home.

"You can have more than one home,” Tristan said, but Eihr said stubbornly, "I cannot have a home."

"Melrath is not- it is not home to me," he said lowly, despite that he had said that he felt as if he was native to Melrath. But a person could be native to an area and not have that area be their home, could they not?

"And Venora cannot be home to me. I think I would like to visit there, Tristan. But I cannot have a home."

He tried to order his thoughts.

"Do you remember, in the final trials of Ashan 719, the world falling asleep?" It seemed unrelated but it was not.

"There were people, during that time, in the land of dreams. And Hart was there. They were trying to stop the world from sleeping. But to stop it, they had to make sacrifices. There were two sacrifices that Hart had to make." Or, if he counted the man at the door, there were three.

Eihr thought of what the sacrifices had been. There had been the doorman, and the coin. Then-

There was no memory of the first sacrifice. Why was there no memory? Eihr let out a shaky breath, eyes flickering with light.

He thought of the second sacrifice, half afraid that that memory would be gone as well. But it was not.

"Hart sacrificed his ship," he finally said. "The Jovy A'kor. And so the ship burned up, the day prior to Hart's death." It was the first time he had really thought about the sacrifices- about their cause and effect.

"With the ship, Hart sacrificed the ability to ever have a home." That was the cause. "And that sacrifice has not gone away, for me." The effect.

Suddenly his thoughts were going very fast.

How was it that he was tied so irrevocably to what Hart had done? How was it that Hart's contracts with the immortals were writ upon him; how was it that Hart's suffering persisted even though Hart was gone?

"Raelia cannot be my home. And Venora -or rather, Sabaissant- cannot be my home," Eihr said. "It is not possible."

"Please don't offer me money Tristan." How much money did Tristan mean to impart to him? That was another of the rules- he must not be indebted, not to any person. There was so much he felt he needed to pay; he did not want Tristan to be a name on that list.

"I do not understand, really, what it means to be a brother. But did you not say that brothers do not demand money from one another? I will not demand it of you."

[Tristan Venora]

Some of the things that Eihr said didn’t make a lot of sense to Tristan, such as his statement that Melrath supposedly wasn’t his home. Hadn’t he said that he felt as if he were a native of Melrath just a moment earlier? And why couldn’t Venora be his home? Venora had been Hart’s home, at least for a while. Oakleigh had been Hart’s home, so it could be Eihr’s home in his opinion as well. He was about to open his mouth in order to tell the Mortalborn that when Eihr asked him if he remembered the world falling asleep.

He closed his mouth again and furrowed his brow for a few moments instead before he nodded, confusion marring his face for a moment as if he wasn’t sure what it had to do with the conversation at hand. “I do”, he replied since Eihr probably expected him to say something. Lianne looked just as confused, he observed, as he momentarily glanced at his red-haired bodyguard. Lianne didn’t say anything though. She was, mostly, there to protect him.

Someone else might have had doubts about Eihr’s – or Hart’s – story as it was rather fantastic; Tristan had experienced his fair share of unusual and supernatural things as well though, and he had stood face to face with the Immortals more than once, and for that reason he just inclined his head and listened, his gaze never leaving his brother’s face.

“It might be”, he slowly said once Eihr had finished speaking. “Hart made those sacrifices. You didn’t make them. You might still find a home sometime, if not now, then in the future. Perhaps whoever you made those sacrifices to, could be convinced to give you your home and your ship back. You are not him. You are not Hart. You shouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of his actions. If you want to, I can help. I can be quite persuasive”, he offered, a smile flickering across his face for the briefest of moments as he remembered how he had persuaded being far more powerful than the two of them in the past before he grew more serious again.

There was a lot that he hadn’t known about Hart – and a lot that he didn’t understand about Eiht yet. He wanted to get to know him and understand him though – and to be there for his new brother.

“I won’t then”, he replied as Eihr asked him not to offer him money. “Although I would never have demanded it back. It’s true that brothers do not demand money from each other, but giving it freely is not the same as demanding it. Still, if the matter of money makes you uncomfortable, I will never mention it again”, he promised in a very serious tone of voice before he fell silent again and waited for Eihr to speak once more, still confused, which was the reason for some of the things that he had said and done so far.