Fate - First Reply Sucker Punch [Elbion College]

---

"Tarantino"-style thread for Elbion College students. Here's the intent:

1) Our first posts contribute to the establishment of a climatic scene.
2) We then go back and RP how we get to this scene, knowing that it will happen.
3) We resolve the climatic scene we all set up initially, and anything else that may follow afterward.

Suleiman finished his lap about the College grounds and came to a stop near the Water Garden, bent over and panting in the shade of one of the many trees. The sound of calm splashing water from the fountain in the Garden's central pond came as a note of relief, if not victory, to Suleiman's ears. He wiped sweat from his brow.

Now back home in Maraan, his father Eskandar had sought out the expertise of a swordsinger to instruct Suleiman in the art of the shamshir. Uncle Fahid—father's first choice—traveled too often abroad for consistent teaching, but the man Eskandar found in his stead, Jazir Sudar, was just as skilled and, if the stories were true, just as deadly. Sternness infused the man to his very heart, and yet he also had a rough sense of humor.

In the days leading up to that carriage ride to Elbion, Jazir took Suleiman aside after the last swordsmanship session and he said to him, "Do not falter in your bodily training. The shamshir is perfect, but that perfection is ever blunted by the hand which wields it. Make your hand, and the body attached to it, worthy of the shamshir. Do not let your magical study impede this. Or I will find you. And I will kill you."

Suleiman went pale.

But Jazir grinned after a moment, clapped a heavy hand (and by Annuk it was a heavy hand!) on his shoulder, and said, "I am kidding about that last part. But not the parts before. Do not falter."

So Jazir had said he was kidding. He did saaaaay that. But, just to be on the safe side, Suleiman made sure to at least put in some effort in bodily training. Yes, yes, and also for the fact that father wanted to see him well-trained in the shamshir, it was the refined and elegant art of every man of Mirza rank, but...in large part because Jazir was just so effective at what he did.

Now that his run had come to its end and his breath soundly returned to his chest, Suleiman gave a glance around the Water Garden and so happened to see another student, a newer student, like him, since...yeah, he recalled catching a glimpse or two of her in the Convocation Hall. Though Suleiman had not gotten a good look at her face (and its most distinctive characteristic), he remembered her mostly from her hair.

And her staff.

Which prompted him, perhaps towards perilous awkwardness, to approach her with genuine curiosity and simple sincerity and to ask, "Hey," as he gestured to the staff, "does that help?"

He said, meaning with her magic. In no way thinking of her leg.

Svenia Albrecht

A little gust of confusion crossed over Suleiman's expression. He didn't quite get it at first. Still he held the notion that the staff must have been for her magic, and thereby came the puzzlement. Help her walk a little steadier? What kind of spell was that?

"It is pretty," he said, figuring to at least arrive at some common ground while he labored in his ignorance.

Why?

Uh oh. There was something about the way she said that.

Suleiman held up his hands. "Oh I meant nothing by it. I'm not trying to scry into your secrets or anything of the sort. I just feel as though learning magic is, sometimes, much like trying to catch a duststorm in your hands. Anything that could help, right?"

Svenia Albrecht

"Yeah, that's what I would suppose too," said Suleiman. "I remember back home seeing a man of magical talent passing through the city. I don't know if he was a wizard or adventurer or what-have-you, I had just heard some rumors; point being, I caught a glimpse of him, and he had a staff too, and he—wait you don't use that for magic?"

It struck Suleiman like a runaway boulder. All that she had said, the way she just now leaned on her staff.

"Oh."

And his face flushed with embarrassment.



Svenia Albrecht

Her bluntness, to Suleiman's surprise, lessened the sting of embarrassment. To put the unspoken in words lifted its burden before it could linger, and he discovered this then and there. Father did speak often on the virtue of straightforwardness.

Can we find some place to sit...?

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure thing," Suleiman said, just a bit of haste coming through, as it felt to him that moving away from the very site where he had made a bit of a fool of himself might be to aid that selfsame foolishness in vanishing into the past.

As soon as they started to walk, it then further dawned on him about the other thing he had seen but only now noticed. The burns. On her face. The shift in angle and the shift of her hood and hair gave him a glimpse, and his eye, tardy in its report, relayed to him the sight of her hand moments prior, when she had trailed it down the contour of her staff. Oh Annuk, Narmaka, Maskat, should he say something about that? Those words of wisdom about the unspoken and their burden just went through his head. Yet still reticence seized him.

Instead he said, for it did honestly strike him to do so, while also serving the aforementioned reticence, "Worse? Since here? Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've been fairly treated so far."

Svenia Albrecht

Surely you understand?

Suleiman couldn't hide his grimace. He...didn't understand. In the years of his childhood, he himself was not cruel or did cruel things—or at least he hoped he wasn't in gross error, and that Annuk would judge it so. Neither did he see what she was talking about in his younger brothers. Though Suleiman did know well that his station as Mirza made for a dividing line, as Svenia said, between himself and his experience and that of the common Maraani. He had not lived a life with much difficulty; and this, too, came with its own arrangement of blessings and curses.

But Suleiman in earnest made the effort to understand, and his grimace passed and his expression became suffused with consideration.

"What...I don't know, what can you do about that? I've seen some people make a donkey's ass of themselves, hurling insults, spitting, jeering, and things like that."

Not quite what she was talking about, he gathered, but the occasional altercations in the marketplaces of Maraan were the best equivalent Suleiman had. Rarely did he see the beginnings of them, or the ends; mostly he would pass by, for none of them concerned him or his family.

"What are you supposed to do about it, I guess I'm wondering—if someone's heart houses a mean spirit. What do you do?"

Svenia Albrecht

He sat as Svenia sat and seriously pondered her question, his back hunched and his elbows on his knees, his hands entwined and his brow in a deep furrow. Certainly he had caught some mean remarks before, barbs proceeding from some mishap or accident or other, but again it seemed not the thing Svenia was speaking about.

But to her point of thought, what if someone did aggress upon him? Simply took a disliking to him, no prior mishap required, and called him a coward, or slovenly, or a donkey's ass? What would he do? Well...if he did as Svenia herself did, it would be to essentially do nothing. And though Suleiman did not quite know what he would do, or ought to do, to do nothing seemed to him not to be the right thing.

"Well..." he said at length, finally arriving at something of an answer, an example, that seemed to him fitting. "There is my Uncle Fahid."

He sat up straight. "Uncle Fahid is a warrior, traveler, he does a lot of things. And he had come home to Maraan when I came of age to drink, and took me to a tavern. I almost choked on my first taste of spirits—but that's not important.

"Altogether it was a fun time. We drank, played some games with a few of his brothers-in-arms, and he told me some of his stories. But there was this one man who came in during the night. Once he got a few drinks in him, that's when he started to let some mean and ill-advised words go to the other patrons. He went about, insulting men who were there by themselves, daring them to 'stand up'. Nobody did anything, and his gibes were mostly washed under the din. But he got bolder. And, you know, he actually did start calling men cowards for not standing up. He laughed and thumbed his eye at them and went from one man, one group, to the next.

"He came to my Uncle Fahid then, and he said, 'What about you? Are you going to keep your ass tucked tight in that chair?' I remember Uncle Fahid just sharing a look—this...this look—with his two brothers. And then he stood up, faced the man, and he nodded his head toward the door. He didn't say a word. Just nodded his head toward the front door there. And...well, the man just hesitated, looked around at everybody looking at him, and then he sat down, and he said no more for the rest of the night, and left everyone alone."

Suleiman clucked his tongue.

"I should have asked my uncle how he did that."

Svenia Albrecht

In Svenia's insight Suleiman found much to appreciate. Though his family, particularly his father and his mother, meant well, they had made for him a bed of silk so comfortable that he now found difficulty in rising from it, and had further fashioned an iron gate which kept many of the world's ills out of his upbringing while also lessening life to those very confines.

And so Suleiman listened to her points of view and was struck by the novelty of them. Particularly when she arrived at her remarks about ladies. Suleiman had no sisters, and the most prominent influences on his life thus far had all been men. He, knowing it in the instant she spoke of it, perceived himself as quite removed from that world. It was to him like a revelation showing that there existed a second sun directly behind and moving in perfect march with the sun he had always thought was alone.

He almost didn't notice the quiet between them, thinking deeply as he was. He snapped out of it with a conspicuous shake of his head, a big grin, a breathy laugh that served as the voice of his humility, and had but this to say:

"You know a lot, and I feel, uh...small, I guess, in comparison."

Svenia Albrecht

Thanks to Papa. But also, thanks to the tutors that taught me...

Suleiman smiled and couldn't quite hide his guilty conscience behind it. He had a similar story, of his father providing for him an education with tutors and the like (or at least making the attempt at it). Suleiman wasn't entirely delinquent in this, just...far too often delinquent. On occasion he'd even take his brothers—thus making them miss their studies too—and go to the gamehouses about Maraan or even to the backways with some of his commonborn friends where they would gamble. These among other adventures that, while fun at the time, contributed to his education now being of shoddy construction.

Following this, she had some kind words for him, but still it left wide open the implication. And Suleiman thought he had best make mention of that now, as opposed to, what, pretending he just couldn't see them or something silly of that sort. And he thought, Ah, Narmaka, bless me, I'm going to say it.

"It's that much of a problem for you, even here? Is it...because of the burns?"

Svenia Albrecht