• Memory • Try Again

[Saza Moshe]

70 Ashan, 718 ‣ Nashaki

Saza didn’t find a place to sleep. Or, he didn’t look for one. Either way he didn’t sleep, and once he left the inn near the Tower of Stone, he set off to head back to the one he’d first found Hyde in. It wasn’t a long walk, and it was shorter still without an intoxicated human leading the way and stumbling all over the street. Taiseer was still there, but considerably drunker, and a few of their other friends had joined him at some point during the night. So Saza stayed with them for a break, while their conversations winded down and their attentions shortened until none of them could hardly think to speak, and then he’d walked them back to Dion’s mother’s house.

Afterwards he’d returned, again, to the inn. The place had mostly cleared out save for the few sleeping and stubborn stragglers, and the owner had hardly minded his offer to help clean up. The few coins earned were enough to at least make him feel a little better about spending what he had on Hyde. While he tidied up the tables and chairs, he’d asked the innkeeper about a few things. Any odd jobs he’d heard of, how the business was doing, the table that’d been broken earlier on in the night – did he still have it, and could he take a look? And the man had been a little confused by his request, but he’d indulged him, and brought the broken pieces back out onto the floor.

Only, it was a lot harder to put a table back together than he’d thought. Saza did what he could to piece it back together, and when the owner took notice of what he was trying to do, he’d shown him a few things – given him a few nails and a hammer, and showed him where they went – but it was clearly still wrong. The legs were sturdy… mostly… if you didn’t slam your arms down too hard. They might’ve been a little mismatched too, as he realized only after the fact that he’d mixed up the right and the left, but did it really matter that much? Didn’t look as pretty as it could’ve… but it was still a table.

After a few more breaks the biqaj gave up on trying to make it better. He pushed the patchwork table into the corner. The owner had retired to his room, leaving a new shift of servers in his place, and Saza got a small kitchen knife from one of the younger girls. She giggled into her hand and watched as he returned to the table and carved two letters into the wood – SM – just below the ones he’d spotted while he worked. The knife was returned to her, along with a pleasant smile and a wink.

Saza finally left the establishment after that and stepped into the bright mid-morning sun. He didn’t figure he’d get much sleep now, not in the growing heat of the city streets, and there wouldn’t be many places (alleys or otherwise) isolated enough to lie down in regardless. It didn’t bother him much; he was tired, but he’d felt worse. He pushed his curly hair back behind his pointed ears, waved to the older woman selling scarves across the street, and then started walking.

He’d meant for his feet to take him on a path to Dion’s mother’s house. Really, the youth had intended on meeting up with his friends and seeing what they’d planned for the trial… and still he wound up walking towards the Tower of Stone. He’d just check in on Hyde first, just to make sure the odd human hadn’t died in his sleep. People did that, didn’t they?

The tavern was still quiet, though a few faces had made themselves seen. Saza didn’t bother with any of them, and though he smiled to the bored servers on his way to the stairs, he didn’t bother with them either. Up the stairwell, through the hall, Saza came to a stop in front of the closed door he’d left Hyde behind. He raised a hand and knocked a few times.

“Hyde? You in there?” He supposed the older man could've gotten up and left at some point... but it didn't hurt to try. Saza crossed his arms, with sleeves that were just a little too long and almost covered his hands. He'd borrowed the shirt from Dion's old dresser at his mother's house; it was silky and lightweight, dark green in color, but most importantly, it was clean. He leaned forward until his pointed ear was pressed against the door, listening for movement in the room. "It's Kalba," he added, as a somewhat preemptive measure in case the man had forgotten his name again.

[Ichabod Hyde]

7 0 - A S H A N - 718. . . N A S H A K I

Hyde would have sworn he’d fallen asleep on the floor. It was the one thing that lingered in his memory when he first woke in a bed. Within trills though, it got replaced by the horrendous sickness that was a drunk’s hangover. For as much as Hyde drank, his hangovers were not like the usual upset of a youthful night out at the taverns. Rather, the older man’s hangovers were the first stages of withdrawal. If he allowed them to persist – or simply tried to have some juice, or eggs, or any manner of cures that drinkers made use of – the sickness would not go away but worsen and worsen. Already he felt the sweat bead along his feverish skin. It didn’t help that he was also sunburnt from the other trial when he’d gone out in the sun to try and find work, but only ended up passing out while resting against a crate along a market’s side.

On the nightstand sat a bottle. He shoved off the blanket and didn’t think much about it until he was three gulps in that this wasn’t the same bottle of gin, he remembered… where had the bottle come from? For that matter, where the fuck was he? This wasn’t the room he remembered either. He glanced at the unfamiliar bed but couldn’t see any signs that another person had shared it with him. So, why-

-oh, he got kicked out. Hyde remembered that and took a fourth swig that halved the contents of the bottle. The gin was weaker and bitter compared to his previous bottle, but it would do and that was all that mattered.

His stuff was there. He ambled over to the rucksack, crouched beside it, and got a whiff of the dried vomit. Great. At least he still had his few possessions… even if they were soiled. He paused and looked at his bandaged hand. Bandaged? He examined the rust-stained splotchy wrappings. No way he dressed it himself. It was far too prim and neat, having stayed on through the intoxicated night. Then who…

Knocks at the door broke his attempt to recall. He held a hand over his head, a pounding ache in his skull as if woken up by whoever was at the door.

“Hyde?” someone who know his name. “You in there?”

He didn’t respond beyond a grimace (that obviously couldn’t be seen). Hyde managed to get to his feet and swigged another swallow of the straight gin. It started to buzz in the back of his head, but it would take a few bits before it eased the pain of being alive and awake. He choked slightly on the hurried drink, though, and descended into a coughing fit while the liquor burned down the wrong pipe of his throat.

“It’s Kalba,” added the voice behind the door.

Kalba. That was who. The… the soldier kid, who had shown up and… bandaged his hand. And… got him water – he remembered that now – and… who’d shared that room with him the last time he’d drank gin straight from a bottle. Hyde’s mind pieced together what he could from the disjointed memories and filled in the swaths of blank darkness that he could not recall.

He coughed behind the crook of his elbow, while he went to the door and opened it up. Hyde swung it wide and left it open while he turned away to go cough by the basin. It took a bit until he finally recovered with a few gasps of desperately needed air. He rubbed one side of his face that still had thin white lines imprinted from how the sheets had folded underneath him while he slept. The lines trailed down like the design of marbled stone, over his muscular shoulder and arms to his waist and hips where the dark pants hung low against the bony shape of his pelvis.

Hyde drank some more from the bottle, then he set it down beside the basin. He offered a silent wave of greeting to the kid, then gathered handfuls of the murky water to rinse his face of the smudged paint. No longer black, but light grays and around his hooded eyes the shade seemed to be almost tattooed into the skin for how stubborn it remained. He noticed his hands trembled, but he ignored the subtle shakes while he slicked back his hair with the water. The Etzori stretched his back with arms raised above. A noise escaped him then, appreciative of a much-needed crack in his aching spine. He lowered his arms, twisted at the waist to either side, while he tried to get his body going and let the gin pump through his veins faster so he wouldn’t have to feel so sick.

[Saza Moshe]

70 Ashan, 718 ‣ Nashaki

Coughing. That’s all he heard on the other side of the closed door. That was… a good thing, right? It meant that Hyde was still in there, because he recognized that cough. It was a little different this time, as if the man had actually started to choke on something rather than simply give in to the rumblings of his chest, but he couldn’t exactly see into the room to tell.

The corners of his mouth curved downward in a frown. Saza leaned a little closer to the door, listening for any signs of true struggle (not like he could help much if there was, but it’d be nice to know). Soon enough though the door was swung open, and the youth stumbled forward, thrown off balance by the loss. “Woah,” Saza caught himself a few steps in, and breathed out a sigh of relief as he straightened back up. That could’ve been more embarrassing than it was.

One glance around the room, a considerate survey, and he noted that things were left relatively unchanged since the last time he’d been in there. Hyde must have slept for a while then. The biqaj lifted his brows as a thought occurred to him, and he offered, “oh, sorry if I woke you up. I can… leave you alone if you want. In a trill.”

Saza crossed his arms again, calloused fingertips scratching at the smooth fabric at his elbows. Hyde had crossed the room and occupied himself at the wash basin, and the blond allowed his eyes to drift about the room before finally resettling on the human. Washing himself up again… drinking again, too. Maybe he shouldn’t have gotten him that bottle. But – no. It wasn’t his place to care.

Lines had left themselves behind in Hyde’s sunburnt skin, curved and marbled with the pattern of sheets. They trailed downward over the expanse of bared skin, over shoulder and arm and waist, to the hip bones left revealed at the low waistline of his pants. Saza clicked his tongue out of habit and looked back to Hyde’s face while the man stretched, eyes the color of a cactus flower in bloom. Hyde seemed to be doing… alright. He wasn’t dead, and that was what he’d come to make sure of, which meant he could leave the man in peace.

Instead of doing that though, Saza stepped over to the bed and sat down at the very edge.

“How’s your hand? Still working, I guess?” though it probably wasn’t great for it to be soaked in that dirty water. He couldn’t imagine the bandages helping all that much if they were only keeping the filth in. “We should probably get you some new bandages, if you don’t want it getting infected.”

[Ichabod Hyde]

7 0 - A S H A N - 718. . . N A S H A K I

Hyde returned to wash off the sweat from his body while the youth went over and sat on the bed. He didn’t care about the intrusion. It wasn’t his room, he figured. Just where he had slept for the night. If his memories served him well enough, then Kalba had paid for it so then it was Kalba’s room. He assumed that the soldier had other things to do, which was why he’d left, rather than even think of anything to do with etiquette as being the reason. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t ask.

“Mmhm.” He replied to the question about the hand, and raised to show the filthy bandages that remained around his hand. Hyde flexed his fingers into a fist, then out, to show that it was still… working – though he wouldn’t have used that term. The cuts underneath stung, but they were bearable and he suspected scabbed over.

We – said Kalba. We should…

What an odd thing to say. As if they were making plans together. Was it a casual phrase? Hyde thought of the other night, a few trials ago, and the other gin bottle. He scratched at the back of his neck, then shook his head. Instead of answering, he left the basin and retrieved his rucksack. He dragged it over, then started to take the items out to begin cleaning whatever had gotten the dried vomit left on it. Unraveling his coat, he took out the items left in the pockets – which wasn’t much: a few throwing knives, lots of lint and sand and pebbles, a handful of folded parchment notes, and a couple copper nels. He set the knives, notes, and nels aside together.

Hyde needed new clothes. He checked the coat for any bile and found a dried splotch on the sleeve. While he scrubbed away at it with the basin water, he glanced at Kalba. Maybe he should say something… but what?

The silver-haired man looked away, back to the coat, and he frowned. Then no matter what else was being said, he interrupted with a gruff question, “How old are y’, Kalba?”

He set the coat aside on a chair, to dry, and then proceeded to wash his shirt in the basin. In a simple tone, while he felt the gin lessen the sickness, he added in a mutter, “Hardly look a soldier.”

[Saza Moshe]

70 Ashan, 718 ‣ Nashaki

Saza crossed one leg over the other as he sat, and watched through calmed, dark blue irises as Hyde continued to clean. His skin, his hair, the items pulled from his soiled rucksack – the biqaj figured he probably should’ve dealt with those the night before, but Hyde hadn’t exactly been in the state to do so, and he didn’t think the other man would’ve appreciated him doing it for him. It wasn’t that Saza felt overly compelled to help everyone all the time… he just liked to feel useful, and it seemed like Hyde kind of needed the help.

“That shop should have more bandages,” he mentioned, glancing away from the human to look around the relatively empty room again. “It’d be good to change those out. Or if it looks fine enough underneath, you could probably just let the cuts air–”

“How old are y’, Kalba?”

The question pulled his gaze back to Hyde, colored orange and dappled with reds and lighter blues. How… old was he? Why did he care? Saza didn’t answer immediately, but worked over the question in his mind as he observed. The older set his coat over a chair and then started on his shirt, scrubbing the dried remnants of bile and liquor from the clothes. He couldn’t help but feel like it was hardly of any use, when Hyde seemed likely to fall right back into that drunken stupor and dirty it all over again, but he could appreciate the efforts to be clean.

“Hardly look a soldier.”

It was quieter, that. Saza furrowed his brow slightly and dropped his focus to the shirt in Hyde’s hands. It wasn’t something he could really argue – he knew he didn’t look like a soldier. He knew he didn’t act like one either, and he wasn’t sure whether to take the man’s muttered words for an insult or not. Saza cleared his throat and said, “well… I never said I was a good one.”

Saza gave a half-smile, though the warmer tones of his gaze vanished to leave behind a crystalline blue. Any excuse he gave would not only be an excuse for himself, but for the Tower of Arms overall – and he did not wish to inform Hyde of how poorly trained he and his fellow infantrymen were. It was just embarrassing.

“I’ve only been in since the beginning of Cylus, though. And we don’t really get into many conflicts. Unless you count wild animals trying to break into the forts,” he shrugged a shoulder, but in the end, Hyde could think what he wanted of it. Saza certainly wouldn’t try to make the Tower of Arms sound more appealing to anyone; it was surprising enough to be a part of it himself.

The curly-haired biqaj uncrossed his legs and sat back a little farther on the bed to get comfortable. He leaned back on his hands and finally answered, “I’m seventeen. How old are you, Hyde?”

Couldn’t be that old, could he? Saza knew that his friends might’ve thought otherwise… and maybe he was biased somehow, but he didn’t think the human looked that bad off. Just a little rough around the edges.

[Ichabod Hyde]

7 0 - A S H A N - 718. . . N A S H A K I

Kalba joked, and tried to brush off the comment (or was it the question), but Hyde didn’t laugh. He didn’t smile. He didn’t even look over. He kept scrubbing at the shirt in the basin. It didn’t seem to be getting any cleaner though. His fingers dug a little harder into the coarse fabric, as the threads frayed underneath the pressure, widening the patchy holes through the side of the shirt.

As the youth shrugged, Hyde muttered in a small, disinterested, but audible response, “Depends on animal.”

“I’m seventeen.”

Hyde glanced over his shoulder. He surveyed the curly hair, the tan skin, the silken shirt, and he looked back to the basin. Seventeen. He would have guessed at least twenty-one if put to the task. But then he found it was getting harder to differentiate between the younger arcs anymore. They all looked the same to him – fresh-faced and eager with plentiful hair on their head and few scars on their bodies and minds alike.

“How old are you, Hyde?”

“Arc Six-six-five,” answered Hyde. Let the kid do some math. He picked up the shirt, soaked with the basin water, but it didn’t look any cleaner. Hyde tossed it on the table. He lowered to his knees, dug around the rucksack to the very bottom, then retrieved a thin purse. He took out a few silver nel. His entire life savings. Nel that wasn’t supposed to be spent on liquor and that he’d put aside so he might forget about it in his peak inebriation moods when he’d go looking for money to buy more booze with.

He glanced at the shirt, then shook his head and grumbled, “Need clothes.”

Hyde lifted to stand, pocketed the silver and copper nel that he’d gathered and then grabbed the bottle of gin. He chugged whatever remained. Once finished, he set the empty bottle beside the basin. The older man pulled on his boots, then walked to the door. He held it open, looked at the biqaj, and asked, “Comin’?”

The young soldier must be bored, hanging out and helping like he was. Besides, the concern for the bandages suggested something. Hyde didn't think too far about it, but he didn't scorn Kalba either. If Kalba wanted to follow him around, then Hyde supposed it wouldn't be too bothersome.

[Kasoria]

Review Rewards

Name: HYDE

Points awarded: 15

Knowledge:
Endurance x 2
Intimidation x 2
Detection x 2
Linguistics: Common x 2

Skill Review: All Skills used appropriate to level

Name: SAZA

Points awarded: 15

Knowledge:
Woodworking x2
Endurance x2
Etiquette x2
Discipline x2

Skill Review: All Skills used appropriate to level

Notes:
Hmm. Glad I read the previous one. Ties these together much better. Some little turns of phrase and scenes here - Saza carving his name, Hyde coughing into his elbow - really grabbed me for some reason. Nice work!

If you have any questions, comments or concerns in regards to this review, feel free to PM.