mcahogarth

Serial, Kherishdar's Exception, Episode 8: What I Notice

Added 2018-08-29 14:00:03 +0000 UTC

   “I guess we’re playing District tonight?” Ajan said, interrupting their tacit argument. “What season are we starting in?”
      “Winter,” I said. “We started in summer before.”
      Ajan unfolded himself with a luxurious stretch and dropped into one of the chairs around the table. “Why winter and not autumn?”
      “Because it’s easier. There are fewer condition cards, and I hate playing the harvest.”
      “No taste for natural disasters?” Ajan grinned. “But they add an element of risk!”
      I wrinkled my nose. “I prefer my risks less random.”
      He snorted and looked over his shoulder. “So, are you two joining us or are you going to keep eyeing one another until Farren’s soup gets cold?”
      “Farren will not let his soup get cold.” Kor said as he resumed setting out the pieces. “As he dislikes cold soup.”
      Farren sighed, and sipped from the bowl.
      I wasn’t sure what I was more grateful for: that Kor had prevented his ajzelin from haranguing me about leaving… or that the exchange had demonstrated that Farren cared about my welfare. I twitched my ears once to flick the blush from them, then found a chair and allowed myself to be pulled into the game.
      It was an eccentricity of Kor’s, that he enjoyed games. That he knew so many of them and from castes he had never been part of. It wasn’t forbidden for us to learn the games of other castes, just… rare. We all had our preferred pastimes, our own concerns and interests. Even when we did cross boundaries, what did we really learn? To be a visitor, a voyeur… it gives you the feeling that you understand something when you really don’t. One never learns the nuances.
      But Shame crossed boundaries with the ease of a shadow sliding over a wall, and he was a consummate teacher. We’d learned quite a few new games during the dareleni, but we interspersed them with games we all knew because they were common to all the castes. To keep from outraging Farren’s sensibilities, I thought.
      District was one of these cross-caste games: we use it to get a sense for the work our Regals and Nobles do. During it you build and manage a Regal’s district, as if you were creating a fresh city in new territory. Ad hoc versions are played with drawings on scraps of paper, representing the services; permanent versions are usually hand-carved, with pieces added over the years until each family’s set was unique. Less talented artists will make flat pieces, resulting in a grid-like game.
      Our carver was quiet Jash, who had clever hands, so the Qevellen set was three-dimensional. After we’d been playing for a few hours our city looked like a diorama of golden wood and elegant trees. He’d added a few flowerbeds to the set since I looked at it last. I found their texture distracting, pleasing, and rubbed one of them while we played.
      So we whiled away the dareleni, and Farren ate with that elegance I found so arresting in someone outside the fathriked, one that had everything to do with his long fingers and slim wrists, and his unconscious gestures, holding his sleeves out of the way. I loved watching him for entirely different reasons than I did Kor and Ajan, who were arresting because they were sensual, but so restrained. I had thought initially that was all Kor… but there was an inner core of privacy in Ajan that resisted performance of intimacies that involved other people.
      I could appreciate that.
      I still liked watching them.
      After the game, Kor herded Farren out, talking about joining him later, mentioning some particulars of the House they had apparently been discussing before my arrival. Ajan and I put away the District pieces as they vanished into the hall.
      “Don’t make it too hard for him,” Ajan said. “He’s a worrier.”
      You’ll like that one, aunera. It’s literally ‘he has a bip krevili,’ which is a cup that overflows with waste water.
      “I’ll try,” I said.
      He flashed me a grin. “Try harder.” At my expression, he said, “Not trying to offend, Haraa. But you’re a little aggressive about being able to handle yourself on your own. It flusters people who want to take care of you.”
      “I don’t want to be taken care of,” I growled.
      “He’ll learn that in time,” Kor said from the door. He stooped to pick up his bowl of tea and drank. Offered it to Ajan, who finished the last of it off.
      “No argument from you?” I asked, arch. “That I need supervision? That I’m new to this? That I don’t know what I’m doing?”
      “In the end, we all learn by doing, Haraa.” He smiled at me, brow quirking. “And I don’t underestimate your mettle.”
      I sniffed. “As if you know the extent of it already.”
      “Not at all,” he said, the amusement more pronounced now. “But I am confident you will demonstrate that extent to me without further provocation.”
      “Further provocation?”
      “Now you’ve done it,” Ajan said, shaking his head. “Lover mine, I’m going to bed. Come see me before Farren.”
      Which left me alone with Kor, who was already following him, so how much trouble could I be in for?
      I was expecting teasing, so the sudden sobriety with which he met my eyes disarmed me. “Qenain’s fall was sufficient, Haraa. I need not push a soul already in transition.”
      Startled and disturbed, I said, “And if I stop halfway? If I never make it all the way through?”
      He paused, hand resting on the doorframe. “You will.” A smile then, crooked but gentle. “Good night, qirini. If I don’t see you before you go, fair travels.”
      That left me alone in the room to wonder if Kor knew why it irritated me so badly that Farren wanted to fuss over me, and that some part of me dreaded the day he wouldn’t anymore. I drifted to the window to look out at the world, try to see it the way an artist might. The sky was… some purple color dense enough to seem like fabric. There were lamps shedding warm light on the street. I could just see the spires of some temple, also lit, but I didn’t know which one. The veneration of anything had never mattered to me, except Shemena, the Maiden, and I never felt I needed anyone to teach me her precepts.
      I was not an artist. Looking outside, what I noticed was Kherishdar… because tomorrow, I’d be leaving it.
      Maybe that said enough about me, at that.