Won't You Play Your Tune Again?

(10:1:4)

There was no mistaking if the other had seen him. Giving up on subtlety, Seih stepped out. |Ho there.|

|What do you want?| His expression hadn’t changed, closed off enough to be a blank wall.

|...You seem well-informed,| he said after a moment, going for a neutrally blunt answer that wasn’t “I’m curious”. |Are you with Aphox?|

|No.| And before he could metaphorically blink twice, the other had slipped off the barrels and stepped towards a gap bending open in the wall, leaving Seih standing there flatfooted.

|Wait—| Instinctively, he reached after him, aeons too late. There and gone in an instant, the wall closing back up behind him.

...Well, that was abrupt.

His hand drifted back to his side. It was possible something had come up. Possible. Admittedly not likely.

As he stood there, staring at the now perfectly-whole wall, he couldn’t stop that nagging feeling from before creeping back. That this mysterious soul wasn’t exactly who he seemed to be. That they felt, on some indefinable level he couldn’t put a finger on, not... human.

And it wasn’t the eyes, wasn’t the unsettlingly skilled gambler’s face, or the bluntness. All of those could be explained. It was something... deeper.

Tok-tok.

A knock jolted him out of his thoughts, catching at his physical senses, and Soulspace faded around him as he dragged himself out cold. Shaking his head to fight off the disorientation, he glanced up at the archway.

Brei’s grey eyes caught his with a raised eyebrow, her fist hovering above the marble. “Don’t you want to go shopping?”

&&&

“...is that Hafest’s Divination?”

Brei glanced around the brightly-coloured cloth flapping in her face across the bustling square, eyes skipping across the children and teens dancing to the piper’s music at the fountain. The only one she could see—

Oh, light purple hair, short and wiry, and just disappearing into the bakery store. How Seih had spotted him when he normally had the spatial awareness of an old wagon ox, she’d never know. He’d already been bumped into twice, yet he spotted a slip of a boy across the busy crowd. Amazing.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember what it looks like,” she said with a shrug, and turned back to fingering the cloth, making thoughtful noises for the benefit of the hovering, hopeful vendor. “Unfortunately, it’s just not what I’m looking for. If you had a slightly richer shade...?”

“Of course, of course! Perhaps this hue will suit your eye?” The beaming man pulled out more.

She eyed it sceptically. “Hm, do you think it’s too orange, Seih?”

There was no reply.

She glanced around to see him still gazing off across the square. “Seih?”

He finally blinked at her, returning from wherever he’d wandered in his own head. Just when she was about to ask again, he glanced at the cloth, gaze flicking over it. “It’s too orange,” he confirmed, catching at her hand and gently tugging. “Why don’t we take a break?”

She frowned at him, eyes narrowing, but let herself be pulled away with a polite apology and a compliment on the weave of the vendor’s fabrics, if not the colour. As they slipped through the milling people laughing and chatting and inspecting stalls, she dug her fingers in a little harder than necessary. “Was it really too orange, or did you just want to pull me away quicker?”

“Political intrigue.”

She glanced sideways at him. “Are we spying?”

The glance he flicked back was a little too neutral to be a “no”.

A hint of a smirk pulled up the corner of her mouth, and she swung her hand airily in his. “Well okay then, I suppose I can always do with some distance to make a decision. Do you think he’s planning on sabotaging the bakery? You did say something about them having trouble....”

He snorted, a slight smile tugging at his lips. “I don’t think Hafest cares about putting a bakery out of business. I’m just wondering why he’s out here alone.”

“Errands?” She shrugged, slipping in closer to avoid bumping into a group of even less spatially-aware people. “That would be annoyingly boring, though.”

They went around the fountain, avoiding the group of huffing, grinning dancers twirling in the only open space in the square. Not only children like she’d caught in her earlier glance, either. There was a trio of shirtless men around her age, one of them waving and yelling an indecipherable greeting at Seih as the other two grinned at them and shoved each other. A few mothers, too, even a spry older lady twirling with a little girl.

“Friends of yours?” She smiled at the three, flicking her fingers in a little wave and catching a dramatic pair of bows in return.

“I used to go to tutorship with Esse. Kerl and Lanke were the troublemakers,” he told her after calling back a greeting. “Haven’t seen them for a while.”

“Hm.” Something else caught her ear as they sidled between stalls for the entrance to their goal, a group off to the side holding up signs and talking to anyone who wandered over, one calling out to the world in general something she only half-caught about Darkness and Loh. Her eyes flicked to the wording on the signs strung up around their little ramshackle pavilion, slogans crying doom and the end of the world, and even that they should leave Firemount entirely. Hm. “I’ve never seen them before.”

“Doomsayers,” someone passing by sniffed, obviously spotting her looking in the direction of the little group. “A bunch of rural types up for Jirrday wanting us all to take up arms and march off to Loh. As if we should need to trample our feet in their garden.”

“You’d think none of us were related to rural types,” she said drily as the random bystander sneered at the little group and went on with his life.

Seih squeezed her hand, directing them out of sight and up to the door. “A lot of people are convinced it’s nothing but the Drillers digging holes where they’re not wanted.”

“...But you don’t think that.”

His expression had closed off, but there was something troubled in his eyes. “Even if it is... doing nothing doesn’t stand right with me. Hopefully once we start focusing on fortifying the Pillars people will be more open to doing more.”

With that, he guided them into the bakery and out of the bustle, the little trailing vines dangling from the ceiling and laden with flowers nearly brushing Brei’s head as she ducked. The homely smell and feeling of the place was always the first thing to greet you. Well, besides the plants that wanted to plaster themselves to your face, she thought to herself with a roll of her eyes, putting the conversation and thoughts of disgruntled farmers out of mind.

No sign of the mysterious Divination greeted them on first glance, though. Maybe they’d taken long enough that he’d come in and out again already.

Oh well. She was feeling a little peckish. One of their sticky rolls would be nice to have....

Someone bumped into her as they moved to the counter, and she turned with a frown, wondering where in the dark world they’d come from—

Only to spot a light lavender head of straight-cut hair hurrying past her, the trailing end of a scowl turning away, some sort of bag in his hands.

Where in the core of Darkness had he come from? She stared, watching in disbelief as he disappeared through the doorway. She could have sworn—

“Brei?”

When she turned around to look at him, Seih was completely and utterly oblivious. “You didn’t see him?”

He gave her a strange look, eyes flicking past her. “He’s here?”

“He was.” She threw her hands up, taking a long step to join him at the counter. “He bumped into me out of felled nowhere and disappeared out the door.”

“Oh, Winds?” The baker lady settled her hefty arms on the counter, a smile playing on her lips. “Always better to be careful with the quiet ones.”

Brei grumbled quietly to herself as Seih turned to ask Celaph, “Does he come here often?”

“Oh, he just drops by sometimes to collect baking or staples. I think Domini Hafest gets him to do errands.”

“Mrmf.” Brei folded her arms. “For a Divination he’s not very good at staying out of people’s way.”

|Well, that was a waste of time. Unless we want to chase after him,| Seih murmured over their soulbind connection, moving Celaph’s attention to ordering some of the delicious baked goods on display.

|Mm. He’ll be long gone by now.| She glanced over her shoulder, half-imagining she could hear yelling from that group outside. Divinations and doomsayers.

Things just couldn’t be normal anymore, could they?