((*wonders what the significance of observant is* I don't know who else is meeting up with us there...so remind me if I forgot to name anyone))

"You've brought more with you than we have here," admitted Kiarryn. "I believe there's Alistina, Kjiro, Rinaya and Jack. And me, of course." She grinned briefly. "You seem to have had extraordinary good fortune to find so many willing."

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Alistina, wearing her black skirt along with a white blouse under a brown vest, was also barefoot, and entered the room. She fiddled with her long single orange-gold braid, and some times tugging on it. She wandered what all the comotion was about. clear blue eyes studied they many faces in the room...

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08

Great. Now I've got to think back and try to remember the significance of it. Um.... I think it had something to do with her not really paying any real attention to what people were doing and all that. I don't remember for sure. *thinks* You didn't post much about anything in the room, or her really noticing anybody, so maybe I just went somewhere with that. I totally forget. Sorry.

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"There are only five of you here?" Tal asked in surprise. He had assumed that there would have been more. Oh well--it didn't really matter, so long as nobody was here that he had been on bad terms with.

He glanced up as another girl entered the room, fiddling with her orange-gold hair. Tal sighed--he would never understand why people with long hair found it so fascinating to play with.

"Which one is that?" he asked Kiarryn. From the names, he guessed that Alistina and Rinaya were the only girls--hence, this girl would be one of them, unless she was not a Gifted or an Exalted. But again, she was not in the garb of a servant girl, and he couldn't think of why anyone would be visiting the Gifted during so short a stay.

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"That would be Alistina," Kiarryn replied, after a brief glance in her direction. The difference between them was almost startling - like night and day. Kiarryn herself was nothing special to look at; boyish, tall and sunburnt, she possessed none of the sinuous grace that Alistina embodied. Perhaps she felt self-conscious, but perhaps not, for in another moment she'd replied - "Yes, just the five. As I said, you've brought more with you than we have."

((Lol no problem, I do it all the time ))

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((Ai! Ok,I need to catch up...))

Landen looked around the room causiously, wondering what they were to do next. Watching all of the several conversations go by without paying much attention, he made his way over to Raina, whom had not made any sign of emotion, much less enthusiasm at all.

"You look... Uninterested." He commented, not knowing what else to call her. "I suppose we are going to be staying here for a while. But I wonder if they have any plans for us..." He asked this, not only to her, but to himself also.

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You may (or may not) know me elsewhere as Elfpen

Raina, startled out of her thoughts, jumped a bit, then smiled wryly. "Uninterested is partially true." she said calmly, glancing about at the others with a neutral expression. "I feel as if I shouldn't be here.." she then added quietly, more to herself.

At the mention of having to stay here, she gave a soft snort of derision, but said nothing..then at the mention of possible plans, she shook her head. "Plans..that's one thing I don't even want to consider right now."

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Not exactly the type to sit and palaver, Yrudit slipped from the room and proceeded down the marble corridors. Shafts of sunlight fell through the arched windows, striping him in gold as he trotted along his way. Conscious of the fact that he was not generally liked here, he made a point to keep his gaze riveted straight ahead.

He turned a few corners until he reached the east wing that housed the private living quarters. He halted outside a gilded door inscribed with a strange sigil. He raised a hand to knock before, catching sight of the glowing sigil, thought better of it. Instead he raised his voice and called, "Khaar?"

"I'm busy!" came the none too amiable retort. The voice did not carry the mellifluous timbre of the elves, but a hard grate.

Yrudit hid his smile. "It is I, your reptalian friend."

The door promptly opened, revealing a red-bearded dwarf garbed in the robes of a lorekeeper - an unusual sight, for dwarves were mostly known to keep within their mountain fortresses. Khaar's weathered face scrunched into a squint, then a warm smile. "Yrudit, my friend! Come inside. I have news for you."

"Not good news, I take it," the lizardman rasped, stepping into the antechamber.

Khaar's grim expression was all the verification Yrudit needed.

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Landen gave a snort, coupled with a small scowl, having not heard her first remark,

"Well, I never said that they are considered good things in my book..." He looked around the room again, fiding the intricate crown molding particulary interesting. "But staying here... That might be so bad..."

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You may (or may not) know me elsewhere as Elfpen

"Depends on your view of things." Raina murmured, with a slight shake of her head. She then fell silent immediately afterwards, thinking that to be the best course of action for her just then. When silent, she didn't have to worry about watching her tongue, or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, as she was propensed to do.

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"I bring you news from the north... and from across the sea," Khaar began, settling on an overstuffed armchair and offering his guest some tea.

Looking back with a start from examining the lorekeeper's vast collection of ancient tomes, Yrudit politely declined and gestured for him to continue.

"First of all, Farahdi. The Wasteland there, do you know of it?" He consecutively answered his own question. "Of course you know of it - you were raised there. You have heard of the... occurences?"

"I know the rumors."

"Some otherworldly force has seized hold of Farahdi. But!" He held up a weathered hand. "It is spreading still! I have come from the north, my friend. The townsfolk there speak of strange whispers in the night. Could it be the influence of..." And here the dwarven lorekeeper paused for melodramatic effect. "... Duzakha?"

"Why have you not reported this to Princess Silvryn?" demanded Yrudit.

Khaar started and leaped to his sturdy feet. "Bah! She has returned? Too long have I sequestered myself in my studies. Take me to her, then."

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"My thanks to you, Kiarryn," Tal said. "I do not know the names of any that you mentioned. I have been away from the Order for a long time."

It hadn't really been a long time--he was still young according to Elvish standards, but from a human's point of view it might seem like a long time.

"If it does not trouble you, would you tell me something about yourself? I fear that I have been considered rude by those not used to the ways of my people, but I like to know the history of those I converse with," he said. Many people did consider the desert elves rude, but it was simply that their culture was much different from that of the woodland elves. He and Silvryn had had more than the average share of differences when they first met years before. She was the only woodland elf he really knew, Tal realized--he had never really gone out of his way to make friends as he wandered, and most wood elves shunned their desert counterparts.

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This was where Kiarryn hesitated. She had no qualms about freely asking him to call her by her name - in her mind, that was only courtesy even to a stranger. But her past was a secret she kept very well, and rightly so. She had no wish to relive, to anyone, her still-vivid childhood years that had been spent as a slave that no one wanted, a piece of property to be discarded when time saw fit. Neither the years following, spent as a homeless orphan wandering with only her Gifts to save her should she stumble. And this elf, pleasant though he might be, was no close friend.

Kiarryn looked up to meet his eyes. Surely she could tell him something?

"I...I too, lived much of my life in the desert," she ventured, knowing that as he was a desert elf he might perhaps be interested.

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Yrudit and Khaar found themselves waiting out in the antechamber for a considerable time before the prestigious Princess Silvryn granted them her audience. They entered the audience hall with respectful bows and murmurs of "my lady" as protocol demanded.

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((*Conks self* I cannot BELIEVE I missed that post for so long...))

Silvryn turned from standing at a long desk filled with various scraps of parchment and pots of ink, and surveyed the two with surprise. "Khaar, you emerge," she observed with a touch of wry amusement in her voice. "The tidings must be of great import indeed - ah, and the Ambassador." Her violet eyes flickered to Yrudit briefly.

"Aedha?" Silvryn queried briefly with a glance over her shoulder, and from her place at the desk, fingers stained with ink, the human girl looked up. "Ah, good. Take careful note."

Gracefully striding to her seat, which was a chair intricately formed of iron shaped to resemble vines (likely of dwarf-make), Silvryn gestured for the pair to sit down and almost instantly quiet Aedha was there with a tray of sweetmeats, which she set down on an elegent table to match the chair. "So tell me, Khaar, what brings you out of reclusion?"

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So the girl was not very willing to share her past, as Tal had feared. Of course, if she grew up in the desert, there were only so many possibilities. And it did not seem likely that she was lying--she had sun-dark skin and short hair as well. Both were marks of those raised in the desert. Long hair simply made one notice the heat more, and in the scorching sunlight a person's skin went either red or brown very quickly.

"Were you raised in the Desert of Abyth or one of the small deserts that occasionally are found?" Tal asked. It didn't really make much of a difference, unless she grew up in a dry-earth desert instead of one of sand, like the Abyth. The dry-earth ones were more dangerous, because the heat wasn't as bad--many more animals lived in them, or so Tal had heard. He had never seen one for himself.

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Embarassed in the face of such regality, Khaar blushed into his beard - an uncommon sight for a dwarf. It took a discreet bash over the head from Yrudit to bring the lorekeeper back to his senses.

"What? Ah..." Khaar cleared his throat with a second bow of apology. "Your Highness, you do recall the... shadow that has plagued Duzakha?" He hurried through the question - the Princess would have to be dimwitted indeed to not know of what he was speaking. "I bring tidings from the northlands, Your Highness. The rumors speak of disappearances and whispers in the night. I have not seen this with my own eyes, but the rumors say..."

And here he trailed off, eyeing the Princess askance to judge her reaction thus far.

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