A Star at Night

[Faith Augustin]

During the party

She didn't entirely mean for him to get so upset and she looked at Master somewhat apologetically as they got up and followed him out. It wasn't like she'd said anything that wasn't the truth, she knew that, but equally she shouldn't be quite so defensive of Tristan who was more than capable of standing up for himself. She should just learn to be quiet, she knew, but it was him and he was such a good man and Ruq was taking advantage.

Still, she stood quietly with him, just a little behind him and when they bumped into Lady Elyna, Faith dropped a low curtsy and smiled to the noble woman. She had a deep fondness for Lady Elyna and it showed in her expression. But more than that, Faith was a fundamentally very kind young woman and, at the sight of Ruq potentially hurt she forgot anything about being upset with him or such and she just wanted to tend to his wounds.

"I have some medical skill, if you will allow me. I can bandage it, if you do not like the sight of blood, I will make sure it is completely covered", she assured him and waited to see what he had to say. This was all very strange and the young slave found it very confused and cofusing. But she did her best to simply stay out of the way because, once she had made that offer, she thought it was best if she did.

She had probably caused more than enough trouble, she considered, with her tendency towards speaking her mind and so she just waited to see what it was that Master wished her to do.

[Elyna]

It took her a few moments to understand what he was saying. Not expecting to hear Rakahi in the setting, the words saw her pause. However she reached out and held a firm hand to his shoulder. It was a long time since she’d spoken the Biqaj language and it felt foreign on her tongue. Her Mother would be furious and the woman glanced over her shoulder to make sure that Caelan wasn’t about to waltz past.

“Faldruns’s balls' you got wine on the floor,” she told him sincerely, “I don’t care about the wine, or the glass, but your hand,” she insisted. Her fingers closed tight against his upper arm in her reluctance to let the poor man flee a minor stain. He was bleeding, he needed help. A cut to the hand, with glass shards could be dangerous. What if he lost the nerves? What if he lost the hand? “I am Elyna Burhan,” she informed him as he insisted that he leave, “this is my house,” she was sure her parent’s wouldn’t mind her claim of temporary ownership. They always wanted her to spend more time at home anyway, “and I’m not going to let you loose a hand over a broken glass!” She insisted and lent forward to inspect the wound.

Tristan bumped into her and she straightened with a worried smile, “Tristan! I’m so glad you’re hear!” The delight in her voice was genuine if not tinged with concern for the stranger, “you’re welcome,” she explained, distracted and unwilling to remove her gaze from the man intent on running, “he’s cut himself. Do you know each ot- Faith!” The smile returned again and she finally let the man’s arm go.

“You all know each other?” She looked between them, “look, Sir…as Tristan and I have explained please don’t worry about the glass. Will you let us help you?” She searched his expression.

[Quio]

Mixed emotions. The woman spoke in Rakahi and immediately, though he shouldn't, he felt a modicum better at the sound of the accented Biqaj language and at the kind words she offered. But then she had her hand on his arm, and he couldn't leave --but he had to-- because she introduced herself as Elyna Burhan. Burhan, he thought, knowing the noble name, and then she said, “This is my house.” He gripped his hand tighter into a fist and then immediately released the extra pressure at the feel of cutting glass.

Just in time for the others to arrive.

Tristan had said something before he'd left the room and Quio mumbled at him now, not really knowing what he was saying but even with the lady of the house here he couldn't stand it any longer, "I'm not a Krome, a-and I'm not-- I'm not Biqaj. Faith was right. I lie. More than you know." He sounded like a madman; even as he spoke his eyes, usually a warm brown, flashed a bright Biqaj silver in fear. And with the eyes went the silver blood dripping slowly from his clenched fist-- also a Biqaj trait.

They were asking to see his hand, and Faith was right again-- he did get squeamish at the sight of blood. Not from false blood, but from the shining pink and yellow and silverish light energy that amounted to it for Yludih. So it was he looked away when, shaking, he offered out his hand. A few trills passed and he couldn't unfurl his fist. Was he truly going to do this here? In front of a stranger, and a powerful stranger at that? Military all over the house--

Before he could convince himself to pull free of Elyna's grip, he instead slowly, slowly opened his fist. The palm of his hand was a mess of shallow and deep cuts and crushed shards of glass.

And there, shining through from the deepest of the gouges, the barest hint of a bright light. Life light. Yludih blood.

"I-I'm not--" he started to say, and then didn't know what he was trying to explain. I'm not dangerous? He had already hurt them. Stolen from Tristan and risked his life. He let out a shaky breath.

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"

[Tristan Venora]

“He’s my brother’s boyfriend”, Tristan answered as Elyna asked him if they knew each other. He had been too surprised at Quio’s abrupt escape and injury to realize that Elyna didn’t know about the other brother yet, that she probably thought that Teddy who was quite infatuated with Lazuli Warrick was gay now.

Having said that, he turned back to the man that probably had more secret identities than he had and informed him, “Faith’s right, she’s really quite a good doctor, and her bedside manner is far superior to Alistair’s.” The thought of it brought a smile to his face – Faith was really quite good in bed as well as next to it - but the smile disappeared momentarily as Quio insisted that he was not a Krome.

He quirked an eyebrow and looked at him in confusion for a moment, but then a huge grin spread all across his face. “So you just pretended to be Iaan Krome so that you could attend the ball. That’s awesome! I sometimes pretend to be other people as well. Once I even claimed to be the king, but I’m not sure if anybody believed me.” It was just then that it occurred to him that Quio had said that he also wasn’t a Biqaj. He broke off and furrowed his brow.

“What do you mean, you aren’t a Biqaj?” he asked. The tone of his voice wasn’t accusatory at all. Instead the noble was fascinated, as he always tended to be when a riddle presented itself. “You look exactly like one. Are you a half-blood? Are you secretly an Immortal or the son of one?”

Even as he posed that question, he realized how ludicrous it was. But still, what else could Quio have meant? Was he some sort of mage that stole other people’s faces? Now that would be even more unlikely than him being a Mortalborn. He had, as far as he knew, never done magic before.

As Quio opened his fist, Tristan just stared at him – and at the light coming from inside of him. “Not what?” he asked. He had never heard about people that were made of light before, so looking at Quio’s hand didn’t answer anything, it just deepened the mystery.

“Whatever you are, I don’t have a problem with it”, he decided because anything else would just be hypocrisy, considering what he had done and pulled his gaze away from the wound. “I still like you. As I said before, I sometimes lie as well. You can trust us.”

[Faith Augustin]

Faith smiled as Lady Elyna took charge, in her own gentle and supportive way, and Ruq or Lord Krome or whoever her was looked more and more upset. Faith wished that she was wrong and she felt a pang of guilt for thinking badly of him in the first place. He looked trapped and haunted and like it was important, but she felt a desperate pity for him as he stood there.

He spoke, and what he said made no sense. Master spoke and what he said made perfect sense and none at all. I lie all the time you can trust me. Faith smiled at him with fondness in her gaze, but turned her attention back to the injured man. He lied, alright that was fine, but there, he was cut. He opened his hand and there was... what in Famula's name was that? Faith blinked and then moved into action because, the simple fact of it was, it didn't matter.

"None of that's important now. Come on, come in here, lets get you bandaged up. Lady Elyna, could I trouble you for some cloth? There, that would be ideal?" The small tablecloth which covered one of the decorative tables in the room, or a piece of Faith's dress, whatever was needed, she would take the hand, elevate and put pressure to stop the bleeding. "Ideally a bowl of warm water and some bandages, if it's possible?" But with whatever, she would attempt to lead Ruq to the sofa and start to tend to his wound. "Soon enough, you'll be right as rain, it's alrght, Sir" Her voice was quiet and calm. She didn't call him by his name because she didn't really know what his name was in the moment. She, too, had no idea what the light meant, but it didn't matter. He was upset, he was injured and he was Master's friend, so that meant that she did her best. At least, she considered, this meant that Lady Elyna didn't get blood on her dress.

"Don't look at what I'm doing, look to those two beautiful people", she said with a smile "You are happier not looking". Because she was going to have to clean the glass out of this, and that would look, and get, a little messy.

[Elyna]

Elyna found herself wondering just whose paramour the man before he was. She looked between him and Tristan and then over to Faith, ushering the party towards the room they’d just vacated she ensured the door was closed behind them, for privacy. The man had closed his fist on the glass and she’d flinched, not wanting to imagine the sensation of pain. It was with a grimace that she listened to his explanation. He wasn’t a Biqaj? Or a Krome? For the latter, she was relieve. The young woman wasn’t particularly fond of other Nobles, particularly Krome’s as a rule.

“You pretended to be a King?” Impressed by Tristan’s imagination she shook her head, “you’ve got more bravery then I ever imagined Venora,” she teased trying to keep the situation light hearted. Truly though, it was a brave man who tried to impersonate the king. She studied the playwright carefully for a moment before shaking her head. As youthful as his Venoran skin made Tristan appear, he was a man and not a teenager. Surely anyone who’d met the king would have realised immediately? Surely…

Her blood felt as though it drained through her boots at the mention of Immortal children. She swallowed and turned, collecting an ice bucket and searching for a clean napkin. In the end she grace up and pulled the cloth free. There was something almost gleeful in the delight she took, ripping it into smaller and more manageable strips, like bandages. She laid them in Faith’s reach and retreated, taking a seat in a large chair. Sinking into cushions that bent around her and enveloped her pregnant frame. She had seen the light, so had Tristan and Faith and the woman found herself chewing her lip.

Yulidh were not welcomed on Rynmere. Shapeshifters they were generally found untrustworthy. Most Ryns’s preferring a simple life and to know that the face they saw, was the true face. The young woman found herself frowning. He certainly wasn’t a Biqaj and he was certainly afraid. He wasn’t lying about that. He was hurt too and he said he wasn’t dangerous. She ran her fingertips over her forehead and the mark left by the Immortal, Pre.

Faith tended his wound and the woman lent forward after gathering her thoughts, “I know what you are,” she told him and held his gaze, “but you won’t find anything but kindness in this room,” she assured him. “I can’t promise you what the world holds beyond the door, but let us tend you hand and then you can explain to my friends, who are you.” She spoke in common before addressing her final question to the man in Rahaki, “what is your name?”

[Quio]

Their reactions were not at all what he was expecting. But then again, Jessa, the girl he had first shown what he was, had seemed more dazzled than afraid at first... and he knew how that had turned out.

They wanted to lead him to another side room and he walked with them, even as he saw his chances of easy escape dwindling. They seemed more concerned about his hand than the life light bleeding out of it. He was trying to understand. Maybe they hadn't heard of his kind? Tristan asked what he was, and that had to be it. Somehow, they didn't know.

For a moment he was light-headed with relief, and he wobbled to the edge of the sofa where Faith had directed him. Elyna sat on the other side, and he felt his heartstone shoot up into his throat at her words. I know what you are. Nothing but kindness, she said. Explain who you are. Your name--

"Quio," he muttered, answering her question, and his throat felt very dry. "But Faith and Tristan know me as Ruq."

Once talking he knew it would be difficult to begin again should he stop, so he added, more to the woman tending his hand than to anyone else, "Thank you, but the glass--" He glanced at the wound and felt pale, but swallowed and tried to make his voice continue to come out. "You may have to pull hard to remove it." Harder than with a usual wound; the energy that kept his body together, and the fact that he was made of crystal, sometimes meant that things that pierced his flesh got stuck. And could do more damage when being removed.

"I-It doesn't need stitches, I don't think, it just needs to be wrapped up tight. Very tight." Painfully tight, to keep the light energy from bleeding out into the room, and keep the crystal there, cracked, from breaking up further. That was what the false blood was; tiny bits of crystal broken up and falling away, fine enough to imitate a liquid.

However, that was about the extent of knowledge he had about treating his own kind. That, and he was pretty certain he couldn't get an infection.

"I'm sorry," he said then. "I'm Yludih." It was extremely difficult to say out loud. He put his unhurt hand to his face to mop at his brow. Unable to look at them, though Faith had told him to. "Hart knows, don't blame him. As Elyna mentioned, it's--" dangerous to be Yludih in this city. Dangerous to be Yludih in most any city. He shook his head. "--it's not good, what we do. What we are. Everything we are is an illusion." Everything we are is a lie. "People don't-- like us." That was putting it mildly. His kind had been hunted in the past. He himself had been hunted, as a child. Before he had met Hart.

"Please don't be angry at Hart for lying to you. We don't tell anyone. Not-- not willingly. It's not his fault."

"Speaking in Rakahi"
"Speaking in Common"
"Speaking in Ulehi"

[Tristan Venora]

Faith had a point, Tristan realized. The questions could wait. Ruq’s wound needed to be treated first. Since there wasn’t much he could do to help – if he treated the man’s hand, he would probably lose it and die from an infection afterwards – he made a step back, thus giving his slave better access to the patient. He smiled at her proudly as she tended to Ruq’s wound. Faith was truly a very multifunctional woman. She was not only a chef and a seamstress, but apparently also a bit of a doctor. He wondered where she had picked that skill up. Had Alistair secretly been giving her private lessons or had she already come with knowledge of medicine?

As Faith told Ruq to look to ‘those two beautiful people’ the noble proudly puffed up his chest because he liked being called beautiful. Actually Tristan considered himself to be the most beautiful of all the Venora children. Elyna wanted to know about the one time he had pretended to be the King though, so he stopped being narcissistic for a moment and answered, “Indeed. I did. It was in a tavern, and I might have been slightly drunk at the time. I even paid for drinks for all the patrons because that’s what the king would do if he decided to leave his castle for a change and have some fun. He probably has so much money that he doesn’t know what to do with it anymore.”

He wondered if Ilaren had appreciated what he had done, not the pretending to be the king part (deception and such seemed more like Syroa’s domain than Ilaren‘s), but the free alcohol and sent a quick prayer to her because she was his favourite female Immortal before he turned to face Elyna once more. As she claimed to know what Ruq was, he perked up his ears. How did she know that? Had she met people like him before?

“Quio”, he repeated. “Is that what you want to be called from now on?” he wanted to know before he broke off abruptly and furrowed his brow as he considered what he had just heard again. So he claimed to be an Yludih. He still didn’t have any idea what exactly Yludih were and what their history was, but from Quio’s words figured that they were some sort of shapeshifters. He’d always wished that he could just turn into other people!

“And that’s what you were so afraid to tell us?” he eventually blurted out and looked at Quio in confusion. “But … but why? Why do people not like you? Pesonally I think it’s really awesome that you can just become somebody else.” His eyes lit up as something occurred to him, and he looked at Ruq – no, Quio! – in envy. “Do you … do you think I could learn to do what you do and become an Yludih? I’d really like that! Always having the same face is boring, although it’s of course a very nice face.”

“I’m not angry with you”, he proceeded to assure him. “I’m just slightly confused, but I’m confused a lot of the time, so you don’t need to worry too much about me.”

[Faith Augustin]

Well, this was unusual, unexpected and strange, Faith thought. She recognised that, in this moment it was not her place to be adding anything to the conversation, rather it was time for her to do her job. "I understand. Thank you." Her quiet voice spoke to Quio, or Ruq or whatever his name was. She lowered her head to the job in hand and she considered that it was, indeed, a good job that he had warned her about the need to give it more force than she normally would. Because that was a very strange anatomy.

Faith concentrated on the wound and on what she was seeing. It was like he had no blood at all, she considered, and that unnerved the devout slave more than a little. Blood was sacred to Famula, after all, and the thought that she might be treating someone without any was more than a little uncomfortable to her. But it was what it was and she would not be the one to judge. Undoubtedly, he still had a soul and, undoubtedly, Famula still saw him at his death. So, having weighed up whether she was about to, for the first time in her life, disobey an instruction and having recognised that she wasn't, she worked.

So, she just needed to be sure that she didn't hurt him more by taking this glass out than had been done by it going in so she examined the wound carefully and determined the angle which would be best for her to pull the thing out without further damaging his... structure? Having done that, and she had to smile a little as she thought that this was the strangest application of mathematics that she had ever seen, she did just that. Each piece, she worked with care and her usual meticulous attention to detail, determining the angle that it should go and then pulling it. She zoned out the conversation in the room, focusing on the task, only the task. It was something which she had needed to do a lot during her training and so it came in handy now.

Once she was finally satisfied that she had done what she needed to and that all glass was out, Faith started to bandage and was doing so in her usual way, tight enough that it held in everything but not so tight that it... she realised that this was a mistake. Not so tight that it cut off blood flow? He didn't have any. This wasn't stemming blood flow, it was gluing too sides together and to do that she had to put maximum pressure on both, to hold them in place until they stuck. So, she bandaged tight, as tightly as she could and she used every ounce of strength that she had to pull the bandages tight. Then, the considered that she could use a technique which was normally used on torniquets and she looped bandages, as given to her by Lady Elyna, around and then lifted her hand to her head and pulled out her hairpin. Slipping it in the bandages, she used it as a lever, rotating it in full circles in corkscrew like motion, in order to tighten the bandages beyond the limitations on her strength.

Then, when she had tied it off, she sat back on her heels and examined him critically, before starting to move and quietly, carefully, tidy up. His fate and how this would turn out was not her place, or her business. In circumstances like this, Quio's fate was very much not in her hands, but in Lady Elyna's and Master's.

[Elyna]

As the interaction between the man she learnt was Quio and the other continued, Elyna found herself growing tired. Interpreting between Rahaki and Common was something she hadn’t done in a long while and she was certainly out of practise. Some of the words caused her to pause, fumbling for the correct pronunciation and adjusting to ear to her Mother’s tongue. Caelan would have been appalled at her lack of mastery. “A pleasure to meet you Quio,” she’d addressed him in common.

The skyrider looked between the nobleman and his slave before lifting her shoulders in a shrug, “I don’t believe anyone here is angry with you,” she admitted. “More concerned for your hand, although Faith looks as though she’s done an amazing job,” she offered her friend a smile. Fascinating, the wound would bind under pressure? Tristan’s explanation caused her to grin at the man. She was sorry, once again, to have missed the opportunity to see the sights of Andaris under his tutorage. Certain she would have learnt a lot.

“I would be lying, if I said that I didn’t wear a mask of my own,” Elyna admitted, voice soft. Uncertain if she truly wanted to share the thoughts. She adjusted how she was sat on the chair, the baby causing her to be uncomfortable. “Everything is an illusion really, the person we project on the stage of the city,” the words were more eloquent then her usual, shyer utterances but she believed them to be true. “I think though, because you can change your appearance…is that correct?” she tilted her head, wondering if the vague knowledge she had was correct, “people wonder if you’ll do something awful then simply vanish…I don’t believe you’re a bad person for trying to survive though. Tristan, I don’t think it’s something that can be learnt,” she held back a smile, “but I’ve heard of Yuldih or suspected Yuldih being hunted and…” the smile vanished. It was hard to repeat the torture and slow death she’d heard of.

Faith finished her task and the noblewoman found herself wondering what they were going to do next. She let out a slow sigh, “Quio, your hand will be okay? I can speak for myself, that I won’t reveal your secret…so…” the smile returned, somewhat mischievous, “I hear that there is a party. The three of you can celebrate and drink and toast to the removal of masks?”