DINNER OUT-
:: A Fragment of a tale of the GREEN RUINS & SHALLOW BLUES Series ::
(C) 2025 Kyrinn S. Eis All Rights Reserved Worldwide
I HAD FOUND HER, and together we had travelled from Haithendryl to the mainland.
Curious courses, carved, not into the ground, but long time-worn paths of carts -- the time itself, but in a space of the length -- the roads were spiked with T-s of ice-cold nothingness. This affected not only the grasses, Zarth among them, but formed cloudy trails which altered local weather and brought-on precipitation -- the runoff flowered the furrows edges.
Days and miles -- or, leagues here, they call them -- to the Complex
-=-=-=-
I had found my way to the restaurant, Zhanit having stayed behind with Leandre, -- I'd thought it strange that Sworn hadn't been with a woman before, -- it takes all types to fill the Banner Ranks of Lybrti...
The place was a squarish slightly-tapering tower, barely narrower at its top than at the base, but enough to be noticeable at a distance; whitewashed pourstone, the local variety sandy unlike back on Terra. Dirty streaks on the sides perpendicular to the onshores which brought the scouring rain, or, so I supposed, -- what allowed the stains to run and not be blasted free as on the wet face.
The scents -- aromas for food, scents otherwise -- aromas were... usual and welcoming, but also, salty -- saline -- ...'brine-y' -- bad memories of the demoniac on the barge out in Northfork's sound -- that somehow attached to the Golden Crown being... The aromas, delicious in my hungry mind's ...sense.
Inside then, the lighting subdued -- only once the queer crimson sun had set did colours begin to again make sense -- Terran-sense is all -- all my experience save that brief stint on the space station -- Aninedent Wrohndruun, this world, not like Terra by dawn, and a black moon which dominated the sky in blood-red day and as a window of starless darkness at night -- and it, she, they called her, Matride, at night -- she whispered. Her man, by way of folk tale, Edwn - 'Eh-Doon' - was blue in his foreign orbit of the next-door world, unnamed in my details unsorted of this new home of ours -- Sworn and Mine, and that by Lybrti's Will -- the companion world its moon, Edwn, blue in its steady course was then pinker and brighter for its -- his agitation as brought closer to AW -- 'The World' -- quaint, but apt -- all upon her born, 'Comers Into The World' -- something mystical about that -- must make a note and investigate further -- Edwn would transform as he -- He neared Her -- Matride, would erupt, split-open and volcanoes -- those cindercones of Terra, common throughout the cosmos, I suppose, would turn lake and then sea of molten ... innerds, the matter of the moon, he blue until his gasses igneous and incandescent enflamed for Her -- His heat for Her.
"Are you dining alone?"
Struck by his handsomeness, i -- i -- I was speechless,
-- " ... "
I managed to nod,
-- "My fellow captain is with your sister now -- by choice; she, your sister -- I was told to find your dining establishment and--"
His smile, golden, not his teeth, they white, his ... aura -- his Force strong, ...powerfully soft... --
"Yes, well if she has a new friend ... your fellow captain a ... woman?"
I nodded, not that I thought of Sworn as a woman, a sword -- a mood of ... steel.
-- "Yes."
His hair had darker roots, brown, but light, but the hairs blonder, his facial hairs, too. Brown -- no, blue -- Blue eyes; soft, pretty, his lashes long...
"This way, sir."
-- "Captain Tixa Ioq, Lybrti's Banner Ranks, Auldgory -- Terra; new here; we both." I prattled; managed to stop.
He smiled,
"Koerp; Koerp Kallynd"
... it -- it danced in my ears; his smile turned both softer and more masculine at once; -recognition
"I will be dining alone, but I will return with something for her, my--"
-- "You may find that Leandre can well take-care of her friends, your ... fellow Captain; don't fret.
-- "Tonight, I have roasted highlands voar, recently captured, and finished on Oak Nuts--"
"Acorns?"
He, Korp -no- Koerp, looked on, smilingly-surprised, confusedly-interested -- I saw it; his eyes; the shape of his face around them...
-- "Acorns are your ... people's name -- the Terran name?"
"Auldgoryan, at least -- we have many lands, many languages -- even upon Auldgory herself: rich, fertile, 'her'; your world, your mainland -- even the Isle--
His face then turned; soured; his eyes betrayed hurt; imagined pain around the corner of conversation...
"You follow the Qar Dashin?"
-- "No. I have met many who do, on the isand; met the Mother Commander, Campbell, Maylen --Reg--"
Koerp sad -- nodded, presumed;
I wanted so badly to take up his hand and explain --
"I am bound to my Goddess, Lybrti -- by the three: The Red of Sacrifice, the White of the Nobility of Her Cause; the Steadfastness of our Honour -- the Qar Dashin, while a good and noble custom of your people, sharing some, surely, of the same as my Creed -- Unification under the First Mother -- I am no adherent -- I assure you. ..." I hesitated before I blathered further; of my evangelism for Lybrti to a people so far from Terra, -- Auldgory, that it made neither sense nor had proven worth the bother ...
"May I bring you the recommended course?"
Something -- I attribute it to Lybrti Herself, if I dare-to; overcame me,
--"Only if you dine with me; show me your ways here; having only newly arrived on your shore."
That smile again.
Returned.
~
In the morning, in bed, he turned and with slightly more stubble than the day prior,
"Syrup toast with fruit, or a hardier course: sizzle and ouer?"
How could he always be so kind and gentle and so soft and rugged at once?
--"Ouer are lain to hatch?"
He smiled an unvoiced laugh, looked away, back, nodded and removed himself to the kitchen.
~
"I'll pack light, but we must move before downpours; expected today; the season. We've much to see -- I want to show you the Memorial Way, and you -- simply must taste the Winter Fruit; our great delicacy here in Onysrea."
Whatever he said; at best I simply nodded, and worst, bumbled, fumbled my words; I learnt quickly to shush my mind and still my tongue ... and but listen.
*
At once the rain formed more fully drops from the dancing mists it had, for hours prior, been.
The lawn of hybrid grass, Zarth in its metallic this-and-that blue-green, with the hardy, dense, and nappy ground coverage easily mistook for moss. This green commons, something like the approach which rolled out before the Starry Empire's Prince Presidential abode of Sterling White -- that which hemmed the rectangular loch whose waters still retained the ghostly image of the vanished obelisk upon which once Terra spun. I was nearly overcome by its resemblance, and yet, I must confess, this place -- this one step was over-again but one of many for a mile or more horizontal slats down a vale.
~!$"Koerp!"$!~ someone shouted a good distance off.
He turned, his face one of concern, but this ceded to a pleasant cool friendliness -- warmer than professionalism but more remote than camaraderie.
-- "Friend of yours?"
Koerp nodded, hmmd,
"Dahs -- Dahsenderant Ohnsherant Omerant of Aliemediaran. Also a Captain, in the Wlvandran Continental Army."
I had heard very little of a Continental-anything, but an Army -- that sounded promising...
-- "Ali-media--"
"Out West; they have a ranch not far out of town, in the most similar terrain to that of their House -- here, it is a Ascienta, or some such; lovely, but perhaps not so much so for their bondfolk."
-- "--"
"No, but multigenerational sense of obligation and reputation b- bound-up in the same fortunes as the Aliemediarani-Omerant."
The short-haired man, taller, or, lither, than my- than Koerp; with determined stride, made his way directly towards us.
Their reintroduction took precedence over my instruction, but in that time, I had noted that Dahs Am- Dahs seemed ...jealously concerned to learn of me and what ...I was doing with Koerp.
We exchanged barbs, and he won; my mind surer rather than swifter; for me, a common occurrence.
Dahs was unpleasant and jealous for Koerp's singular attention and not at all envious of me.
It was a demand upon the hospitality of the House Omerant for us to meet those military men grafted-into the House by Honour-Bond: their names were in part lost to me, and although I had occasion in later days of training in the Rapier and Backsword, both unusual for me in my Sabre-trained-ways, I shall not recount them for what later occurred; suffice it that the best of them are honourable men, and the worst not much better than hangers-on and louts -- or worse still.
The Ascienta, similar in name to those homes of the common-folk on the Isle with whom I had much contact in the weeks, months before Sworn found me; -- Goddess! Before even I had met Cherry, and that entire shadowed arc of my secret past life revealed -- to think that despite all the Amphibians threw at me, I should nearly had died on Haithendryl from a gunshot wound to the arm! Goddess-preserves Her-own, She-does...
The terrain, napped heath and vicious mounds at whose base, the hollows filled with basal water -- poison, but immediately sensible as such for its stench -- what it took the good folk of the Omerant to purify it would be entirely too far removed from the thrust of this account.
While there -- ah, yes, Leadre and Swor-- Zhanit had been sent for and in the care of similar sisters of Dahs -- their goddess-ways -- they separately tended -- there, I drilled daily, multiple hours each day, in, first in the rapier, but its use and length too fine for my cut-and-thrust 'felling-work' and so then moved remedially, onto the backsword -- carried by those of the House when in town on mere errandry
Every day and night, Dahs maintained vigil over me and kept me from Koerp until finally, we had time alone for hours until again I was roused and put to task to learn a weapon for which I could not see a use when my own sabre lay sheathed untended beside the door to our room.
Dahs seemed to want to run me into the ground, but could not be seen to do so outright, instead, I was made to exhaust myself and watch Koerp from across the room as he and the master of the house fought and trained -- in that measure.
Finally, to my great surprise,
"Let us, tonight, slip out and return to Onysrea and take time for ourselves -- it won't last long, before he comes back for us, but that time will be ours. Yes?"
-- "Yes, of course, as you say."
We did so, and as we rode our pterravian steeds through the dark night, skirted the Oesturasn Oceans' Bleachwood coast, hundreds of feet below us, and passed on the right hand side of the ancient graveyard and Onysrean crypts. The mist was a wall of water through which we dashed, our birds in their waddled run bobbed athwart more than to and fro, and it was easy to almost drift off into night's sleep, but for the cold bracing rain which forced us into an Abigaelian Shelter of sufficient size to permit us our privacy and let the steeds their heads cover as they stood unintentional bulwark against the wind.
~
Avistra's crimson light -- at dawn, peculiar, perhaps for the dew, shines early scarlet for but a few moments; -- dusk or as they say here, sunfall, is a more periwinkle and lilac affair save the clouds which orange and peach for some beauteous reason I do not know.
"Always awake before me."
I smiled as I observed her light upon his skin, and its effect upon his blonde beard and stache; his brown eyes caramelized and redder yet for Avistra's shine.
-- "An early riser..."
"Yes... I have noticed..."
It was a glorious morning.
*
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