zephyrus.

what do you mean we have homework due tomorrow

mission board: anniversary || any +1

Sothe is not an academic.

He never has been, and, more importantly, is under no illusions otherwise. He's here because he has to be, plain-and-simple; studying makes his head hurt, and reading still makes his vision swim. He scrapes by in classes because he must.

Even this one.

Ugh. It's embarrassing, first of all. Second of all, he feels like an idiot, being patronized the whole time some professor or other drones on about things everyone should know. Third of all, he feels stupid for the things he doesn't know.

Fourth of all — why the hell are they quizzing them on it?

Asking for help is out of the question, for a host of reasons he could run down for the eleventh time but doesn't. There's another option, then, one that he seizes far more readily. The option of lurking.

(Libraries are good for lurking, he's learned. Lots of low light and corners no one cares to visit.)

It's not hard for him to find people studying the material they've been prescribed; he follows the noise of laughter like a crow's caw and the echo of a voice in empty space to find a student with his own textbook.

And Sothe, for all he hates idleness

hovers, and waits.

@corvusi

#tag later

if two students killed each other with sticks in the forest would that be fucked up or what

mission board: anniversary || sword +1

#🗡 - ic.#🗡 - edain. | 01.

Sothe thinks it's stupid, truth be told.

There's a level of frivolity in it that disgusts him, if he lets his thoughts settle on it. Playing pretend with sticks is a privilege afforded to those who didn't have to fight with broken-off pieces of gutters and knives more suited to cooking just for the chance to see another sunrise. There's merit in the practice of improvised weapons, but he can't say he's inclined to entertain this one.

So — he doesn't.

He goes into the forest, and he finds a stick. Sturdy, a bit broad, and then he finds the shadow of a tent to recline in. Behind canvas, he takes out a knife — a shorter one, not one for combat, but filed for carving — and begins to pare down the edges of the stick.

It's not cheating. If they want to play games with survivalist instinct, then they can damn well play.

It's only when another shadow passes by him that he looks up from his task — a professor he's not sure he's seen, or maybe he's being assumptive that she's a professor at all — and flicks his knife back into one of the many sheathes around his waist.

...a year ago, he would've fled. Six months ago, he would've ignored her. Today, he asks —

"Expecting injuries?"

@ulirblood

a reasonable sort of misanthropy

faith +1 || mission board: anniversary

#🗡 - ic.#🗡 - raven. | 02.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It's a sentiment Sothe finds himself returning to, lately. The more he's changed — lightning scars down his arm and an opening in his heart, something beloved made manifest with craftsman's hands and a knife that can do more than bleed — the more he's stayed the same. Stayed the same, here, means something like —

a resentment for manipulators. For those who use the downtrodden and the hurting and the hollow. He'd never call himself an altruist by any stretch of the word, but he's always been a blade for those whose hands couldn't hold it. Call it a debt, or lingering nostalgia.

Another thing that's changed — he doesn't work alone. He never has, not truly, but for a task like this, he sees the trajectory clearly. In-and-out, a knife across the throat, angled away to minimize the blood that sprays onto him himself. That's a task that requires only him and his faith in himself.

But he doesn't solve things all on his own like this anymore, and he doesn't always slide a knife between ribs like it has always belonged for, so here he is.

He adjusts his scarf around his neck as he walks, a half-step behind Raven, casting his eyes back and forth as if anticipating something to go wrong before they've even truly begun.

"Think they want the nonviolent approach?"

@peerlessscowl

the floor is falling

⤷ mission task: distress ( flying +1 )

“Sothe!” Pelleas cries, utterly bewildered. The Zephyr moves faster than Pelleas can even realize what happened or why, but the younger of them now is the one controlling where they go with Pelleas's wyvern and trying to wrestle it out of his hands feels like a disaster waiting to happen.

So Pelleas, though uncertain and frankly a bit terrified out of his mind, squeezes his legs tighter to the sides of his wyvern as the two speed away. He uses his free hands to conjure more blasts of dark magic to cut down the enemies that might dare to follow them. The men scream in agony, and the forest becomes tainted in the tell-tale miasma of Pelleas's fell arts.

But they work, and from it, they're able to get to safety from it, and the men downed along the way. When they're out of the clear, Pelleas regains control of the wyvern, hands on the reins over Sothe's own, and Pelleas successfully lands them.

That's not the end of it though. “Sothe, are you hurt? You saw something I didn't, didn't you?” he immediately accosts him once they're on the ground.

“I don't know what happened to make you act like that, but I know if nothing else you never do something without a reason.” Pelleas doesn't need to understand every machination of the whisper's mind to have faith in his rational mind. Perhaps at times Sothe was biased, yes. But in this case, Pelleas is certain he wouldn't have been biased in favor of Pelleas nor would he have wanted him outright dead for as long as they both know it would make Micaiah sad.

So in this instance, there is no reason to doubt Sothe of anything lesser than right judgment. It was, for all these reasons, why Pelleas had asked for his help in this mission after all.

“If something happened, please let me heal you. It is the least I can do.”

#🗡 - ic.#🗡 - pelleas. | 04.

"I'm fine."

Instant, bitten-off, in that way he has always been dismissive of Pelleas. In giving an answer at all, he acknowledges the other more than he once did; in not fleeing, he gives Pelleas more of an answer than he once did when his ending to conversations was disappearing into shadow.

(...it's not like he can just walk away right now, though, is it?)

Adrenaline prevents him from feeling the sting, anyway — he's certain something struck him, but it takes looking over his own body for crimson to find it. His shoulder grazed and bleeding, uniform torn open to show the pattern of lightning over his skin.

More than grazed. He rolls his shoulder, gauging motion, and hisses when his arm raises above his chest. A sigh, dissipating into a sort of groan.

His hands are trembling. A note he doesn't notice. The ground beneath him still feels tenuous, far too able to disappear beneath his feet and send him falling with no one to catch him this time.

"I was trying to keep us both from dying."

He doesn't need to justify himself to Pelleas, and the sentiment comes belatedly, but it still comes. Us, said unthinkingly.

when you finally find it, you'll see how it's faded

Waiting.

Always waiting, always trusting, but always waiting. Idleness does not suit him; he has never been able to rest, not since he was eight years old and picking locks with trembling hands or fifteen years old and watching blood spill with far too much ease. A dagger on the mantle is something unnecessary. Gaudy, a gauche display. He hates what waiting could make him.

Someone who does not dirty their hands.

Sothe hates the idea.

So, yes, waiting is hard. It is grasping the knife around the blade, and it is a fall from dizzying heights, and is the memory of being left behind.

And this? This is the only childish fear he allows himself to carry, because he never had the luxury of fearing the dark or the snow. He allows himself to carry it because he has no other option. If he does not fear being left behind, he will not fight to be remembered.

This wait, is at least, one with the end in sight. A shadow outside of the interview room, finally slotted into place where it belongs, because a weapon needs a wielder and a shadow needs something to cast it. He waits, diligent and stiff, pressed into the long shadows of cobblestone walls, and when the door opens he strides into light.

She invites him into it. She always has. She always will. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

He tilts his head, looking her over, as if there will be some invisible injury she bears, another space between who they were and who they are.

"How was it?"

@dawningardea

#🗡 - ic.#tag later

housekeeping & etc!

[hello there toa, it's me, harrow from your phone. over the past few months, i've really fallen behind on things. as such, i'm resetting most of sothe's drafts -- if there's anything we had going you'd like to either plot the ending of, or keep going on, please let me know! additionally, you're more than welcome to reply to anything that's your turn if you want to continue it. thank you all always for your patience, and much love.]

#tbd

the floor is falling

⤷ mission task: distress ( flying +1 )

Sothe, too, understands intimately the feeling of of bad news as relief. It’s the break of the ice, a shattering of an illusion — he knows where he stands when the danger finally rears its head.

Or, well, where he sits, in this case.

He’d really, really like to have a better idea. Something like — ‘Pelleas, are you a fucking idiot?’ — a smug vindication. But he’s got no experience as a flier, and he’s never been a tactician. The only survival plans he’s ever known how to draw up are his own and Micaiah’s, and any bigger plotting has always been beyond him. Getting shot once sounds like a bad idea, but he knows the sort of ploy Pelleas aims for.

“Less talking, more doing!”

As if the archers could hear Sothe’s voice, some sort of miraculous thing over the din of his heartbeat and wingbeats both, arrows fly. He places one hand on the knife at his hip, preparing to draw, and the other hand shifts from its deathgrip upon Pelleas’ uniform to a more solid grip.

He doesn’t want this. He fights himself to do this, to wrap his arm around Pelleas, securing himself, but as the wyvern dives and his head spins, he knows he’d have fallen off if he stuck to his pride.

Oh. Dropping, too fast. Dizzing. He’s falling, he’s falling —

he grits his teeth and forces himself to look forward.

The moment Pelleas feels Sothe's grip on his uniform readjust, it is like a reminder of the fact the man is here. Of course he is, and there are more obvious ways to more accurately and individually distinguish it is him— to look at him and see his face or to prompt him to speak and hear that it is him.

And yet, it is in touch that he feels the most rest assured.

The trio dives in response to the first shot to go for them, and Pelleas hones his mind, clearing it of anything but their mission.

“ What the...! Did you fools miss?! It's just a wyvern! Shoot it down! ”

The group of archers try to regroup, following their leader's barks, but some others choose to flee to create better distance. The ones that do not get trampled by draconic claws for their troubles, and Pelleas releases a volley of dark magic spikes to pinion those that might try to flee and those that try to shoot alike.

“ Gahh! ”

“ Did we...? ” Stopping his wyvern to get a quick glance around the clearing and gather his bearings, see how much the initial attack struck, Pelleas misses the sight of one archer poised to fire from within the canopy of leaves above, eyes too trained on the ground as his chest heaves for the exertion of spell casting.

And then, a glimmer of metal in the air.

What was it he'd thought, again, mere moments ago?

Oh, right — Pelleas, are you a fucking idiot?

They both know battlefields and split-second decisions and the crest and crash of war and what the glint of golden sunlight off silvery steel means and so when the light strikes his eyes he doesn't

get

an option, a question, a choice, even a chance to think. One second is the bridge between life and death, and even if he doesn't care about Pelleas —

(he does, he does)

— he cares about his own life.

It's hard to draw his blade in dizzing downward drop, and harder still to reach past Pelleas to yank at the reins he knows nothing about handling. A thief who knows naught of the skies far above him, a weapon that can hardly stop an arrow, but a dagger is not only forged for killing.

In self defense, in defense of others, it can also swing.

"Pelleas!" Sothe snaps, winding himself into harm's way.

Better him than the wyvern or the rider. Higher chance of safety. He doesn't know how to land it, how to fly them further into danger or far above its maw.

This is all he can do.

#tag later

matched set

If she can trust nothing else in the world she knows she can trust Sothe and his strong, swift hands.

They say the Maiden of Dawn is a miracle worker, but Micaiah thinks the opposite - it is this one who once reached out to her with small, callused hands only to near jump away again, this one who she convinced to stay with her only to betray his trust, this one who forgave and returned to her in any case.

He is the miracle. When does a boy become a man? The eternal maiden is not one to know, but she does know Sothe. He could grow wings and she would know him still. It would be no less marvelous than how he has already transformed.

“Let me give you mine too,” she says, even as he extends his wrist before her request is finished. She hardly has time to put it on his wrist before they are being jostled forward - moment brought to a pause, but not forgotten, as Micaiah turns on her charm and fawns on their noble host in hopes it will make up for their provincial gifts.

(She cares very little, of course; but she will be doing much of this on the future and the noble scion plays his role well. Soon enough they are waved along.)

“Did I fit it on correctly?” Micaiah's asks, turning to look at Sothe 's wrist again. The charm seems to have clicked into place on the bracelet as intended and she nods at that, pleased, leading Sothe along as she searches for the photo-artifex.

Rather than the large one she is used to she sees several miniature versions laid on a table and, delighted by the ingenuity, rushes over with Sothe in tow. A fellow Black Eagles of theirs takes one in both hands and aims the lens at his face, smiling before the flash of light encases his expression.

Soon after, from the back of the photo-artifex a paper copy of the image unfurls. “For my parents back home,” he explains a bit bashfully and Miciaiah says that's wonderful.

“ It is, isn't it?” She says, turning back to Sothe. “Ah but I wanted to capture our matching charms too. How do we get that all in one small, ah… photo?”

The solution that he first thinks of is this — ask someone else to take their picture. It would, then, be easy enough to bare clasped hands before the lens flare, as much as he hates the idea of being trapped in front of the light like a torch passing over his chosen hiding spot.

Selfishly, he does not want this. He knows, still, that he belongs to Micaiah in a way she does not belong to him. But for someone who has always had so little, pressing his hilt into her hands and her hands alone is an endless offering he is unwilling to compromise. Not to anyone else, be it fellow student or professional.

Only, always, her.

"We share it."

The burden, the photo-artifex. He picks one up in two hands, and then gestures to Micaiah.

"One of us steadies it, the other presses the button. We can hold our bracelets up. We'll each have a free hand."

Together, together, together.

#tag later #trim later

sereneslearne

is it living to ignore yourself? || sothe & leanne

pearlescent // blackmail

sereneslearne

Uncertainty clouded her mind. So thick and impassable were they, not even the words of those sitting directly before her could penetrate the fog. Who would be so cruel as to insist she meet the fate she had been narrowly spared twice over. What goal did they hope to achieve in attempting to scare her into returning to the kingdom?

She soothes the student before her with a gentle song. Half-hearted as her pursuer may have wanted her to be, she still had to at least manage this. These things may end up being an obstacle in the future too. Running away from them now meant only that they would be less prepared in the future.

That session done, she makes her way around. It’s unnerving the way her body feels as if it’s been cut off from the rest of the world. Try as she might to allow herself a face plain and unassuming, her lips turned ever slightly downward and her eyes drew to the parchment in her hands.

Attention was inevitable when few were those of any of the bird tribes; nonetheless she attempted to keep herself to the walls and out of sight. Perhaps she should consider it. If it meant that things may even become a problem back home if she tried to insist so hard, she would never forgive herself… but could she truly disregard her own wishes? Would that not be just as much a damnation as leaving herself to fall like her brethren had?

So occupied is her mind on her plight that she doesn’t notice the body she’s bumped into until it’s already happened. Instinct draws her hands to her chest, yet parchment once held so tightly in them walls at the feet of the one she’d run into.

“E-excuse me!” It’s the easiest thing she knows to say. Her head is far too muddled to find any other words.

@nevassan

#tag later #if i ever go through my tag later tag itll be awesome (I WILL)#sorry this is kind of bad I'm forcing myself to quick brown fox my posts rn

In many ways, Sothe does not know how to handle the herons.

It feels as if he should — as if familiarity should beget ease of association — but there is an ever-present discomfort at the idea of being seen. Laid open, laid bare, and Micaiah is allowed because he has never know anything else but he is not so lenient as to feel as permissive to others.

This is to say — Leanne does not make him uncomfortable, but she does not put him at ease, either. He skirts her gaze with the practiced ease of a stray cat, crouching instead to pick up the note she'd dropped.

The letters loop together. It's really not his business, anyway — he hooks his thumb in the loop of his belt and offers it to her with a small jerk of his head.

"This yours?"

Which, really, feels like a stupid question the moment it leaves his lips, given that he watched her drop it.

That's Oomf 😭😭😭

encantresse

there's a gentleness to sothe that has always stood out to her. the kind that is so often sheathed, yet quick to be drawn. a softness that, she suspects, has taught him to endure the brutality of the world.

"mages," she explains mildly, as not to stir up further concern. "we faced off with a group of them toward the end."

there's nothing else to say otherwise. dorothea allows the explanation to settle as she watches burns blossom into renewed skin, and feels the stinging heat turn to a bearable warmth that spreads to her chest and propels her heart to beat.

( how easily it could've been her and the others left behind in their place — were their enemies still drawing their last, ragged breaths? or had they finally exhaled and departed with the wind? )

( she was sorry. she always would be. )

"really, i'll be fine. thank you, sothe."

rather than pull her hands away, they remain in his, should he still seek the familiar touch of another.

"did you run into much trouble yourself?"

#🗡 - ic.#[ i missed them so bad i could di e. he loves her so much. ]

he lets her hands endure in his.

( lets is a strange word, isn't it? it is hardly a permission he grants — it is something he seeks. a brilliant spotlight gives a skittering shadow space to exist. the measured touch of another gives him purpose. see, here — the dagger that exists not only for killing, cauterization in peacetime. )

he accepts, this time, her insistence upon her well-being. he will not fight with her — he is too tired to fight with her — and he trusts her. budding plants around them, faith in her grows alongside them.

did he run into much trouble? upon his hand, lightning scars yet spread, patterned in the shape of a near-deadly blow.

"yeah."

there's no point in lying, even if he doesn't care to elaborate — they'd all staggered into plenty of trouble, lucky enough to be standing here and now. his own breath comes ragged, although he's far less recently injured than she.

he doesn't squeeze her hands — doesn't want to hurt, doesn't know how to hold — but he keeps them steady.

"mostly before. i'm fine."

lie of convenience

⤷ alternate universe: persona au.

“ I suppose so. ” Pelleas does not fear death. He hadn't the first time, and after experiencing it once, he still feels that way now, feeling it as keenly as one might feel a lover. There is a degree of freedom to be associated with it, no longer burdened by an overbearing mother's love, no longer burdened by a corrupt father's legacy, no longer burdened by an unfathomable truth.

But the answer doesn't feel as simple as he might wish it was.

“ Of course, I want what's best for everyone. I hardly imagine there's many who wouldn't say something like that. But... humans aren't so virtuous. Your time in the Metaverse has taught you that over and over, I'm sure. ”

From palace to palace, they've discovered the shadows of people's hearts. It would be foolhardy to pretend otherwise.

“ Micaiah deserves the truth, especially if I am correct to assume she is the reason I'm still standing here right now. But if she hesitates even a little, I don't know... I don't know if I will be so strong. The time I've spent with you all, fighting alongside you, has been my happiest days. It makes me wish I had done so sooner...

“ If I die, and she is upset for it, I will feel guilty enough to wish to stay, the world be damned. Horrible, isn't it? ” he posits. “ At the same time, can we truly act as if this is damning the world? The people, not just Micaiah, deserve the truth. But the truth is harsh. This world borne out of everyone's wishes for something better... Who am I to say it is the wrong thing, even if that is what I sincerely believe? ”

A heavy, tense beat passes before Pelleas adds somberly:

“ ...It would not be the first time I have been wrong in my decisions of what I believe to be the right thing to do. ”

#🗡 - ic.#tag later #[ WELCOKME BACK TO THE FALSE REALITYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY ]

What's best for everyone — but that kind of wish is the exact problem, isn't it? There's no equal best-for-everyone, no play where everyone can act the perfect roles; that they're here and talking is proof enough of that. If he had a say — well, he'd been happier if they'd never met Pelleas, wouldn't he?

But then there's that pesky line, too; between best and happiest. Which one makes the right ending?

(And, yes, yet, despite it all, he does//did miss Pelleas. Grief is a strange thing, a thief in the night. It exists only by when you wake up and find something missing; it is torn open and sewn-shut again when the hole is filled all wrong.)

"She will be," Sothe tries to find the confidence that had slipped him before, the vulnerable cracking of I don't know still raw in his throat. "She's stronger than you."

He exhales out his nose — the breath turns into a sigh, an actor's disappointment for the stage he's been thrust onto.

"The truth's harsh," he agrees, and it's rare that he takes Pelleas' words for himself, echoing them with earnest affirmation, but here and now, it feels prudent. Correcting another thing that went off-track, another little trick of the light to draw them closer — in an ideal world, wouldn't they have been close?

"There's no point in living a life of lies. A life someone else has chosen for you. And what's the best choice, anyway? Is it what I'm good at, or what I like? What's best for me isn't best for you, anyway. Better, sure, whatever — but I'd rather get a say."

No more false choices, puppet-string choices, scripted choices, game-dialogue choices.

To someone burdened by an overbearing mother's love, someone burdened by a corrupt father's legacy, someone burdened by an unfathomable truth — he trusts Pelleas to understand.

He trusts Pelleas.

matched set

They are fifth in line now (sixth? Micaiah had assumed they would be presenting their gifts together. As usual it is hard to distinguish between the two of them), but Micaiah pays that little attention as Sothe asks her to come closer.

"Oh, yes," she grins, "the charms." She has yet to give hers out to anyone, and she doubts Sothe has either (but with his ability to pass through the crowd like a shade not even she could know).

She holds up her wrist obediently - happy there is one, simple request of his she can fulfill (things will not be so simple when they return to Daein but surely he knows he is first in her heart always). When she sees his own charm bracelet her grin grows brighter.

"A Sothe turtle! I would like one very much. Shall we trade?"

#toaball2025 #🗡 - ic.#tag later

The place they stand in is one shared — in the limelight, Sothe would prefer not to exist as anything more than a hidden weapon and a carefully-cast shadow. On their own, in candlelit rooms or tearstained nights, he seizes that personhood again, the one that lets him argue with her, the one that lets him demand selfishness and forgo selflessness.

But here, in this line, in this stupid noble game with foolish little gift bags?

Let them think him decorative. Let them think of him as nothing at all, a poor boy, a dulled blade.

His lips quirk, slightly, when Micaiah holds up her wrist. It is with gentle reverence that he takes a charm from her bracelet; it is with sharp swiftness that he affixes one of his own to hers.

The turtles are the same, uniformly manufactured, two-ten of a kind.

"A Micaiah turtle."

...he offers her his wrist in turn.

"sothe," greets seteth, cordially, without much fanfare. if he's seen the younger man running about for charms, he makes no mention of it. "good evening. it's been some time since the baking competition, hasn't it? i hope you've been well."

no—rather, seteth simply unhooks a small turtle from his person and offers it to sothe. no chocolate-sticky fingers or culinary scores necessary.

"ah... we seem to match, don't we?" he asks, nodding to the other's bracelet. "an amusing coincidence. would you like to exchange?"

This is far easier for him than any backing competition or general fear-of-authority — he's approached simply, with no fanfare or expectation held above him. Seteth unhooks a turtle with no score attached, no invisible rules Sothe needs to be play by to win it.

"Here."

The zephyr unhooks one of his own turtles — when he passes it to Seteth, he hardly touches the other's hand. Ghostlike, a passing breeze.

He breathes in, looking slightly away. Almost-shy, almost-coy, he huffs out —

"thanks."

#🗡 - ic.#toaball2025

unslake

This whole collect five to win! game is stupid.

...despite harboring that opinion, Sothe's already most of the way there — and as the night turns to its end, he'd rather not leave the task unfinished. Whatever. Call him an idiot for playing along, but searching for a starfish pinned to someone else's hip gives him a distraction from spiraling thoughts that he can't quite make sense of.

A thief's keen eyes pick one out, spotted amidst bracelets and beltrings. Now there is the other part, the worst part of this ridiculous game — the asking. The asking, and he's still half-drenched, and he's not sure if his hands have stopped shaking.

So he goes about it in the manner of a thief.

With a turtle unhooked from his own bracelet — the very nature of all this is transactional, in the end — he reaches to snag a charm frim the stranger. He makes it halfway through his task, snapping a turtle to the other's adornment, when he's caught.

Shit.

His hands are, in fact, still trembling ever-so-slightly. If this was still a game of survival for him, it'd be over. He drops his hands from the other's trinkets, raising them both — they quiver, and a visible lightning scar snakes over one.

"I gave you a turtle," and here, he gestures to the other's collection of charms. "I... need a starfish."

Contempt for the game is hardly hidden from his voice.

ethereal ball.

Thieves, in Grannvale, are a thing of the past. Or, at least, this is what the opportunistic advisors of his court liked to say—undoubtedly an exaggeration of the truth, but Arvis likes to believe that the sentiment behind it still reflects reality. Under his leadership, the Empire has quickly become a prosperous nation, after all. Even so, the past has only been the past for so long, and theft—born out of greed or out of desperation—is not something foreign to him.

But a thief that gives you something instead of taking from you—is rather unexpected. Arvis glances between his own bracelet and the startled younger man, acknowledging that, well, yes, it is as the "thief" says—he gave Arvis a turtle. He takes his bracelet into his palm, rubbing his thumb over the new charm to examine it. But his attention remains focused on the other man, scrutinizing him, the tremble of his hands, the scar on one of them, the contempt laced in his voice. Vaguely, Arvis recognizes him—a student, perhaps?

Arvis scoffs. So, the student would rather steal than have a conversation. Than indulge in the game arranged by the Viscount. The glower on his face subsides, but his expression remains stern—even unkind. There is a long pause of silence before he deigns to speak, an itch to make the other dwell in the awkwardness just a little longer. Then, he unhooks one of the spare starfish charms from his bracelet, but he does not extend his hand. Not yet, at least.

"The point of the game, I believe, is to exchange dialogue and charms together. Not merely the charms alone." He glances toward the student's own bracelet and its collection of trinkets. The starfish is missing among them. Presumably, the others were obtained primarily through theft, too? Finally offering the starfish, Arvis asks, "Do you have a name?"

#toaball2025 #🗡 - ic.#[ just wanted to tack on the narrative exchange! ty for letting me write him being a shithead over it LOL ]

Ugh. Trapped in conversation, with an authority figure with noble-bearing. He thinks he's so much better than Sothe, doesn't he? Withholding his charm, dangling it above his head, as if he's some poorly behaved animal not deserving of a treat.

He thinks to walk away. He's already come this far.

"Sothe," he grumbles, shifting to put one hand on his hip, thumb grazing over the hilt of his dagger. "I guess I'm going to be getting your name now, too, right?"

He rolls his eyes.

matched set

"I forgot!" Micaiah protests, enjoying this moment when it is just them; when they can banter, and the banter is not with the world or their country's survival lingering in the background.

"If Pelleas had not been going through all those teas, it would have slipped my mind entirely," she says this, low, with a conspiratorial smile; noble behind them completely forgotten.

"Photo-artifex it is then," she says slipping her arm into the crook of her zephyr's. "I do hope I remember how to operate it... but if not that will be an adventure!"