Fear and Love in Alexandria

Log Info

• Title: Fear and Love in Alexandria

• Emitter: Ravenstongue

• Characters: Ravenstongue, Dolan

• Place: A12 - Memorial Gardens District

• Summary: Ravenstongue and Pothy are in the gardens enjoying a nice spring day when they run into Dolan. While they have met before, they take the opportunity to actually get to know each other. After speaking at length on magic and philosophy, Pothy's lust for snacks grows to be too much and the sorceress departs to sate Pothy's hunger before it's too late.

-=--=--=--=--=--=--=-<* A12: Memorial Gardens District *>-=--=--=--=--=--=--=-

Among the gardens, scents mingle: green, loam and subtle sweetness, wafting from the meticulously groomed grounds. The lawns are richly green, dense and close-cropped, bordered with polished pale marble stones the size of a human man's fist. The pathways are smoothly cobbled in muted tones that subtly echo and contrast with the surrounding greenery, shaded by the lush canopies of tall, straight trees whose branches arch over the walkways to form open, airy tunnels. Elegantly ornate, tall mana-lamps of wrought black iron keep the paths softly lit in the evenings; they are often situated near benches of matching material and style. It is peaceful, here. Somber. It is also curiously warm and green no matter the time of year; leaves do change color in fall but remain on the trees until spring comes again.

At the heart of the park where the paths converge are large marble pedestals supporting bronze or marble statuary, chiseled letters upon the heavy bases naming the subject of each piece. The previous sculpture celebrating the union of Alexandros with Myrddion has been removed from the center of the garden and replaced with a gorgeous statue of the Crown Princess Lianna Rena and a marble walkway that leads to the Monument of Heroes - a newly-raised edifice celebrating those who fought and died on behalf of others. Tribute is still given to the friendship between Myrddion and Alexandros in the form of the paired standards mounted above the entrance to the Monument of Heroes: one from each nation. The flagstaffs are crossed and held by a Myrrish Knight and an Old-Alexandros Miner.

-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=- Dramatis Personae =--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-    
Dolan                5'10"    174 Lb     Human             Male      Brown-haired human with scars down his face.           
Ravenstongue         5'0"     99 Lb      Half-Elf          Female    Short half-elf girl with violet eyes and black hair.
-=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=-

It's a nice Tariday, a true spring day, and the Memorial Gardens District is one of the best places to be on a day like today, where the sun's rays are gentle and warm, the breeze flits in and out with the lightest of touches, and the air itself just tastes clean and renewed.

Speaking of tastes...

A white raven with startling blue eyes has found himself a prize. Someone discarded their sandwich by tossing it onto the ground in the path, and the pale corvid has taken it upon himself to reduce and reuse by ingesting the carb-loaded substance himself.

On a bench near the feasting corvid is a half-elf woman, a young lady with violet eyes and black hair that tumbles down to her waist in gentle waves. Today, she wears her usual glasses and a knee-length lavender dress with an off-the-shoulder neckline. The feather mark that adorns her chest, right where her heart presumably beats underneath, is on full display.

"Pothy, are you enjoying yourself?" the half-elf asks, peering at him from over the cover of a book she's reading. The bird answers in the affirmative--or so it seems--with a croak and a continued vigor for eating sandwiches.

The pair are far from alone, and Pothy gets some interested - and interesting - looks. Thankfully, Alexandria is a city positively crawling with the unusual, and by usual arcane or adventurer standards, the leucistic raven and his half-sil friend fall firmly into the par for the course category.

Dolan, however, pauses on his walk through the gardens, a timeout taken from his usual errands to simply enjoy the weather. The bird catches his eye first, and he's not likely to forget that, even as brief as the time he'd seen the bird in the hospital room the other day. He did run out pretty quickly, and had not been able to return, he may as well at least say hello. Now, what was her name...

"Cor'lana, was it?" he greets the raven half-sil, offering a hand. "Sorry for running out on you so fast the other day. The gnome wasn't going to find," he coughs, "anything running off through a crowd like a toddler."

The violet-eyed girl smiles warmly at Dolan as he says her name. "You got it!" she says, taking his hand for a shake. "I don't think I ever got yours, though--or if it did, I think it got lost in the chaos of you chasing after the gnome."

Pothy looks up and sees his mistress is having a conversation! This means polite company--shiny. Oooh, there's a shiny on the man's face!

No! Focus! Leave no sandwich uneaten! Pothy returns to the sandwich, dusting off the remains.

"I hope she found what she was looking for," Cor'lana replies. Her hand goes casually to rest on top of the mark on her chest, dainty fingers close to the scales of Vardama in the black feather. "I trust you're also enjoying this day? Telamon's overjoyed, I imagine--he's not a fan of winter weather."

"I'm ready for spring too, just like everyone else," Dolan agrees with a cheeky grin, not appearing to have noticed the bird's interest in his face. "I'm Dolan. Yeah, that was getting a little crowded in there, it was hard to keep track."

And then we're talking about the gnome finding what she was looking for. "Not - exactly." The smile vanishes. Something didn't go well. "I need to find her - and damn it all, now I want one of those sweet rolls."

Sweet rolls? Sweet rolls? Pothy has just shoved the last of the sandwich down his gullet and already other treats are being discussed! "Snacks!" he cries out, mimicking Ravenstongue's voice--

And then he flies onto Dolan's shoulder. "Snacks?" Ooh, shiny thing!

But before Pothy can even begin his corvid antics, a sharp whistle comes from Cor'lana's lips. The half-elf is frowning gravely as she looks at the pale-feathered friend. "Pothy, don't you dare. I'm sure Dolan needs that shiny thing to see."

Pothy tries to look innocent--which is to say he whistles back at her and then preens his feathers. Cor'lana sighs and looks back at Dolan, violet eyes suddenly a little weary. "Sorry about that. Pothy's a very curious bird--sometimes he gets intrigued by shiny things in addition to food. It's part of what I can only assume to be corvid nature--and his position as my little 'repository of knowledge'. Not that he's very good at the latter."

Dolan's first reflex is to shy as the bird settles itself on his shoulder, but the bird is quicker than he is, and talons sink themselves into the padding beneath his breastplate. "I - uh - yeah." He seems more than a little relieved when Ravenstongue chides the bird. "Yeah, I need that. Is he asking me for snacks? Because I don't have any. I kind of wish I did." He turns his full head to regard the bird carefully, fully exposing the shiny thing, but watching it quite obviously with both eyes. "I don't have any snacks for you. Besides, you just ate."

"Oh, it doesn't matter if he just ate or not," the half-elf says with a snicker. "He's a bottomless pit. He'll keep eating if he wants to. And he's my familiar, so he doesn't need to eat. I asked a friend with arcane sight to look at him eating once, and the food just dissolves into a tiny amount of mana--you couldn't cast anything with it."

"Snacks," Pothy says again. It's a mere statement as he preens his feathers some more. He has to look good for his adoring audience. His adoring audience that might give him snacks.

Cor'lana looks right at Pothy and just shakes her head. "You heard him. He doesn't have any. Get back here."

Pothy throws his head back and lets out a sigh like a moody teenager before he flaps back onto Ravenstongue's shoulder. "Snacks," he says grumpily. He receives a scritch on the head for his troubles. Poor Pothy, destined to be snackless.

"Does he says anything besides "snacks"?" Dolan straightens when the bird flaps off, clearly more than a little relieved and still eyeing the raven warily, as if it might go after his artificial eye at any moment now. Not one to hide his thoughts, clearly. "Mana, huh? You're an arcane student?" There's much more genuine interest in that question.

"Snacks," Pothy replies in response to Dolan's question--and then he pauses and says, "What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" in the voice of an old, eccentric man.

Cor'lana looks at Pothy for a long moment before she says, "You learn the weirdest things if I hang out at the Society for Progressive Arcanists for too long." She shakes her head.

She looks back to Dolan, violet eyes twinkling with mirth. "You could say that," she says. "I'm a sorceress. Teaching can only go so far when the magic is in your bloodline. No one can teach you how to harness what is unique to you and you alone--only show you the path that others like you have walked. I get private lessons from Madame Sandy, but that's really about it."

Dolan simply shakes his head in amazement, still eyeing Pothy. "I'll take your word on it. Magic has never been my thing. I'm a pretty simple guy." His good humor is returning, and his features tug up into a genuine, self-aware smile. "But not as simple as you," he tells the bird. "Food, shiny things, and quoting batty old men. Am I right?" No hard feelings, just a touch of wariness still. "I do well enough in the service of the Sun Lord. How'd you figure out you had magic in your blood?"

Pothy looks like he has something to say in response to Dolan calling him simple--but then his mistress draws up a hand she snuck into her satchel, pulling up a handful of nuts in her palm. Whatever the white raven had planned to say dies in the face of his one true love: snacks.

"I only recently got back my memories of my full life," the half-elf says--which is one hell of a way to open up a sentence, but she says it pretty casually. "So I didn't remember how I got Pothy until recently. But I did remember my mother told me that I had inherited magic from her. Then, well, my friend with the arcane sight? He looked at me and told me my veins were alight, like my blood was actually magic. Furthermore, well... it turns out magic runs on both sides of the family. I'm lucky in that regard, you could say."

Cor'lana's hand returns to her chest, resting on her mark--the golden band on her ring finger sparkling a little as the diamond and two amethysts catch a ray of light. She smiles fondly. "Really, though--I am lucky in many ways."

GAME: Dolan rolls spellcraft: (5)+5: 10

That draws Dolan up short, but not in a wary sort of way. "Huh," he says. "Sounds like your life's pretty complicated, but in a good way. I can't imagine just having magic like that. I mean, I call on the Knight a little, but that's not me, that's all Him." A little bit of verbal floundering can happen to anyone, right?

As Pothy dives into the nuts, Dolan is still watching him, but less intently, most of his focus now on the woman. "It must be pretty tough to figure out what to do with it sometimes, if you don't have all the books and formulas the wizards use."

"Ahh, a holy man." It's not said in a derisive way, but Cor'lana's tone suggests she doesn't do much with the gods herself. "When I came to Alexandria almost a year ago, I relied on my faith in the Raven, myself, but I never drew power from that. Nowadays, I think about Him less than I probably should."

"Navos," Pothy says reverently. Did his blue eyes just glow slightly?--No, probably a trick of the light.

"Yes, Pothy," Cor'lana says with a smile as she pats the white raven on the head. He purrs, which is an odd sound to come from a raven, accompanied by happy tail wags up and down like a puppy tail. "I know you love Him. I am grateful, too--but I am not so nearly the same person as when I came here. I know many more things now, and... I am more given to my paternal forebear in terms of whimsy than a proper Navosian should be."

The violet eyes return to Dolan. "And it's that whim that's carrying me more and more these days. I have no books, no formulas--just my power, inherited over eons. I am free and I enjoy that aspect the more I've grown into it."

Navos. Dolan's amusement fades, and there's a touch of sadness in his acknowledgement, though why - who knows? "Huh. Although -" Dolan tilts his head, and leans against a nearby tree, opting for comfort that does not force him to move the massive blade strapped over his back. "One of my teachers used to say that a lot of people think they're free because they can do whatever they want, but they're really not because they end up as a slave to their own wants. How'd he put it-" A beat or two of silence, and the swordsman taps his foot, obviously trying to recall. "The only way you can truly be free is to rule yourself. Do you find that to be true?" He looks up, his gaze keen on Cor'lana.

Cor'lana looks thoughtful for a moment, tilting her head in one way. "Well, I guess that's a philosophical question, isn't it?" she asks. "What's the definition of free, exactly? If we define it as free from influences or ties to others, you've suddenly got a very lonely person. If we define it as a person who is able to pursue those ties or desires as he wishes, rather than imprisoned by them, it becomes a matter of perspective, doesn't it?"

She leans back a little into the bench. "I consider freedom, to me, to be able to pursue what I want. To do the things that I wish to do. To keep the friendships I have and to come to their aid without worry of backlash from others. I used to be someone who was constrained by fear, but now?"

She smiles. "I am happy because I am no longer afraid. Fear, to me, is the antithesis of freedom. I have chosen to embrace love instead in multiple forms."

Her ring catches the light again as she puts it back into her lap, letting it fall away from the mark on her chest.

The flash of the ring, and the feather, is not lost on Dolan, although he doesn't ask. Instead, he continues to watch her intently. Only at the last part does he nod, slowly. "It's about being able to pursue your wants without being ruled by them. That's a trap of a different kind, because then you lose sight of others. I can see that." He remains leaning against the tree, considering, but finally says, "That mark means something to you." It's not a question.

The fondness in her smile returns, a warmth that creeps back into her expression as the mark is addressed. "Yes," Cor'lana says, an undercurrent of joy in her voice. "It is the mark of my ancestor on my father's side of the family. I do not care much for my father--but Grandfather is a kind man. He is the only family I have now and I love him dearly."

She points to her mark again with a finger in a gesture that seems perhaps more at home on a statue than on a person. "This mark is traditional in my family--all firstborn children have this to indicate our descent from him. It is a matter of pride."

Cor'lana looks back up at Dolan from her mark and says, "I haven't known him for very long, but he's shown me more than enough of the familial love that I've missed since my mother passed away two years ago. And he's also responsible for getting me together with Telamon--so I really owe him a lot." She snickers.

"I am sorry to hear about your mother, but I am glad you have found that love. It means a lot, it sounds like." Dolan suddenly goes quiet, looking down at his own feet. Seemingly out of nowhere, self-reproach writes itself across the half of his features that still move freely, an expression muted in the other half for minimal movement visible in the face. "It sounds like you lead a blessed and lucky life."

"I do," Cor'lana responds. "Despite all I have been through, I have been blessed in many ways, and continue to be. I just wish that all saw it that way."

She sighs and shakes her head. "I have... entered a disagreement with a friend lately over the subject of Grandfather. Feelings were hurt. It's something I have very little experience with to begin with, having friends, let alone having disagreements with them, so it's... very new to me."

Pothy finally looks somewhat tired of discussing this. "Snacks!" he demands, and Cor'lana looks at him. "Is this your way of saying you want more than nuts?"

"Cake," Pothy demands in his mistress's voice. He looks deadly serious about that notion, too.

Cor'lana shakes her head with a chuckle. "Cake it is, then. It looks like I can't keep you any longer, Mister Dolan--otherwise this birdbrain will torment me until I do."

Dolan merely snorts, his lips tugging upwards, at the byplay between the raven and his girl, but he straightens. "I should be on my way anyway. It was a pleasure to meet you, Cor'lana, and brightest of days to you." He seems to take the desire to depart in stride, preparing to go on his way.

"And to you and yours, Mister Dolan. Have a lovely day--not so hard to do on a day like today," Cor'lana says with a smile.

"Bye bye!" Pothy calls out after him. Then he looks at his violet-eyed mistress with a cross look on her face.

She looks back at him with a pout. "What? Am I not getting up fast enough for you? Am I not fetching your cake quick enough?"

Pothy whistles at her rather urgently. The bird earns an eyeroll from Cor'lana, who stands up from the bench. "Alright, alright. But you're going to share this cake with Tel when we get home."

Another complaint whistle follows her off as she walks to a nearby bakery to sate the Pothy-bird.