Fable - Ask A New Start

Aiko lifted her bow as Svenia finished her request. It seemed a small ask, all told. There seemed to be an implicit expectation of aid from student to student. While the circumstances were unfortunate, Aiko could not help but be envious of her sense of purpose. Aiko had a general goal of bringing honor to her family, but outside of demonstrating competence she didn’t know how she would do that.

“I will help you with this.” Aiko said. She had some questions on exactly how the girl aimed go stop further loss at the tide of flames, but they could be answered later. The girl’s face turned to a smile as an idea hit her mind. She pulled up a small purse, decorated with painted floral patterns. She opened it with a click, and looked inside a moment before pulling out a small card of paper that held the College of Elbion’s crest. It was organized in a grid, and printed in such a way that implied magic scale over being handwritten.

“This is my schedule for the semester.” Aiko said, presenting it to Svenia Albrecht . Svenia might notice a ‘remedial’ type of class in mathematics, but it was filled with an otherwise standard list of prerequisites that every first year was expected to handle.

“Maybe there is a class we can study together in.”

"Thank you," she said with a genuine smile. She reached into the folds of her skirt where she kept a slim back with her personal affects and withdrew a similar card. It was dog-eared and crinkled but still quite readable. She did not carry a purse for the simple fact that she already burdened herself with the staff.

She offered it to Aiko, taking the other girl's schedule. She raised a brow at the remedial class. She did not, however, mock or belittle the elfin girl for it. "I can help with the mathematics," she said. "I've worked ledgers and interest and many other things to do with numbers. Pa ...was adamant that I learn." There was a little hurt in her heart over mentioning her da, even three years later. She pushed it down ruthlessly. "He insisted that we all be capable of helping or taking lead on things."

Prescient and fortuitous that he had. Turned out that it was needed many, many years sooner than it should have been

"There are many things they want us to do that do not interest me," she noted. She was here to learn healing magic and maybe, just maybe, learn to suppress and lock away the unwelcome flames within. "But I will do what I must to learn what I wish. Looks like we have potions together," she remarked.

Aiko’s cheeks flushed a bit at the mention of her mathematics class. It disappeared shortly, but certainly not short enough to go unnoticed by Svenia.

“Such things were not a priority for my own education.” Aiko said softly. There was a bit more to it than that, but Aiko did not wish to delve into it just yet. Especially given the owl was likely still listening to all said.

“I’m afraid that’s likely my fault, or those who’ve borne a likeness in the past.” Aiko replied at the mention of their breadth of coursework. “I’ve little idea what to specialize in. It seems I’ve at least a year to find out, but is no small decision.” She continued. Aiko gave the girl a smile.

“I shall look forward to some great times in Potions then.” She said to Svenia Albrecht completely unaware of what was to come.

Vaezhasar Drakspae said:

“Tell me—are you enjoying the social theatrics, or merely auditing them for later dissection?”

Click to expand...

Kikwi did not need enhanced sight nor hearing to notice the large and heavily armored Maester. His footfalls could be felt before he even entered the hall. Students parted before him, more out of self-preservation than deference, lest they be crushed.

“Good evening!” He chirped back. Drakspae’s voice was always interesting through his helmet. At first it was hard to understand, but Kikwi had learned to decipher it. “Master” and “maester” sounded so similar, funny how one was an academic accolade and the other simply a politeness. Kikwi was no maester… but he kind of liked the Master part.

“I don’t really understand most of what they’re talking about, to be honest.” His facial feathers furrowed in contemplation. “Many of these students are noble… from here or elsewhere. Nobles like to speak without really saying anything at all.”

Kikwi had been doing his best to decipher this code of social etiquette. One young lady in particular was saying exactly what she meant, being kind of rude about it. Still others were discussing matters Kikwi assumed to be private, so he tried not to think about it too much.

“Do you have any exciting lessons planned this year? Well of course you do!” He snapped through a crunchy cricket.

Kikwi
Vaezhasar let the query dangle like an unbaited hook. A heartbeat…two—then a guttural chuckle rattled through the conjoined plates of his helm, warped into something that sounded equal parts mirth and rolling avalanche.

“You may find it droll, but I have yet to suffer the indignity of a lecture hall since the parchment was thrust upon me. I relegated myself instead to fieldwork—the sort of expeditions that involve more crawling through damp ruins and bargaining with things best left unbargained-with than scholarly review boards are comfortable endorsing. Someone, after all, must catalog the things that prefer to remain uncatalogued.”

A pause; the orb in the dab-smack of his chest thrummed, casting quicksilver light across the gold flanges of his breastplate. “Still, the Board insists that I darken a rostrum now and again. Very well. This term I shall offer a modest series on familiars and extra-dimensional entities—those obliging creatures polite society insists on calling ‘forbidden.’” The helm inclined, horns tracing a slow arc of assent. “Attendance, I caution, is at one’s own mental peril. But the curiosities of youth are best indulged under supervision, eh?”

He tapped the staff once against the parquet, as though sealing a contract with the stone itself, and the lingering tongues of witch-light curled back into silence.

"Oh I'm not very talented, but I am good at squandering," Suleiman said, no stranger to self-deprecating humor. He was always the talkative sort, and being in the midst of so many well-established peers, he felt a strong but vague tug to make a "good impression". He ought to at least seem personable, so he reckoned; it was one talent that he had.

"And. Right. Everyone does need their own motivations. And I say, the unstudious pursuits are the wood that helps keep the fire in the hearth going."

And he cut a slice of the ham on his plate and took a bite.



Yuebing Coquelicot Calixtus

Yue regarded Suleiman Askari more closely but her frown remained. He seemed to have deflated a little.
She supposed that this is were she ought to say something softer to ease the conversation in a more jovial direction.
Alas....nothing came to mind. "Hm.." She replied quietly and nibbled a bit more of the fruit tart. She wasn't all too familiar with it's people or it's customs. Her life had been fairly insular before coming to Elbion.
It would be squandering opportunities not to engage. These people were her peers after all. Best not to make a hypocrite of herself. Her tone neutral as she asked "Do all people of Maraan use such colorful phrasing?"
One did need enjoyment in their life of course. Yue just wasn't so sure she could allow herself to become distracted by non-academic pursuits. She understood well the value of networking of course. Then again she hesitated to cozy up to even the friendlier students seated here. Only one among them had a clear and obvious benefit for to get in the good graces of. But she didn't intend to pursue that 'motivation' without more information. She glanced at Calixtus he seemed an ordinary boy to her. Perhaps a bit prideful.

She could half hear that the elf and another girl were talking about classes. It seemed a more productive conversation. But given how the one with the brown hair had glared....yue gathered she would be better off to keep her attention to the boy from Maraan.

"I have my moments," Suleiman said, making sure to mind his table manners and to speak only when he didn't have a mouthful of food to get in the way (or come sailing out). His parents had been lax on him, but this was one of the things they made sure to scold him on. And here in Elbion those scoldings were paying off.

"But the Mirzas of Maraan do use a lot of color with their phrasing, so to speak. My father and mother do. My uncle does. My grandparents. Pretty much everyone I can think of. Me? I don't know. Like I said, I just have my moments. My mother calls the way I tend to talk 'earthy'." Suleiman shrugged without shame or concern. Moreover by his demeanor, wide smile and all, he embraced it. "I don't think there's anything wrong with a lot of plain-speaking, and a dash of seasoning here and there."

Suleiman seemed to catch himself here, as though he had forgotten something.

"I'm sorry, did you mention your name? Sometimes I do get to yapping and I might have missed it."

Yuebing Coquelicot

They gathered in the basement for this most momentous ceremony, the long wished-for turning of fortune for the Mindalië Clan.

Elves of the Mindalië stood near shoulder-to-shoulder amongst each other. They wore the best finery their crafts could produce, splendid robes and sashes all. Masks of a half-style, each covering the right side of their faces and each adorned as though with the stars of the night sky, they wore as well. Silvery light of special candles lit the breadth of the basement like that of a moonlit night, and indeed, painted upon the ceiling were frescoes of Lessat and Pneria and other familiar celestial features of deepest night. All these trappings spoke in remembrance of the Nithelem Shores.

And now Feä walked slowly down the central aisle, led by her mother Talenwen amid her kin. Low but powerful the chanting in Elvish of the Nithelem dialect: "Mindalië...Mindalië..." that is, "we remember...we remember..." Feä's heart beat within her chest, and as she approached the dais whereupon the chalice sat and her father stood, she grew ever more fearful.

But there was no turning away now.

Her mother Talenwen delivered her before the large chalice and before her father Arunwë, and she departed and joined the crowd of their kin. Silence befell the room, and only was it broken by the unsheathing of a sword, and Arunwë slowly offered the blade to Feä.

"Raise it aloft," he commanded. Feä took the blade, and she did so, and the sword's tip pointed upward to the seeming night, upward to the image of Lessat and Pneria upon the ceiling.

"And now, Linnuwen, I shall lead you in the Oath."

He bid her to repeat after him, and thus did she begin to speak the words.

"...I, Linnuwen of the family of Vaedhia, born of the Nithelem, swear upon..."

Mercy of the Moons, what am I doing?

"...so long as I live..."

Elsewhere can I go!

"...to break the Exile of the Nithelem..."

To lands afar! Places other than Elbion!

"...to slaughter all who oppose us..."

Needless is this! Needless! Elbion is not the only place to learn!

"...our righteous claim to the Shores that are our home..."

I shall be ensnared!

"...and to hold the Nithelem Shores forever..."

Fly! Turn and fly!

"...against any and all, be they Elf or of Lesser race..."

FLY!

"...To this bitter end do I now join my kin, and commit myself ever to our cause."

But Feä did not flee. Though her legs burned as though awash in flame and her body entire felt like a great stone weathering a mighty gale, she stood still upon the dais. Her father Arunwë thrust the ceremonial knife he now held into the air, and he cried, "Mindalië!", and all Feä's kin and family cried in like manner, and so, too, did Feä herself. The Oath was almost complete.

"Hold out your hand," said Arunwë, "and let your blood be joined with all of the Nithelem who yet live, and who are likewise Oathsworn."

Arunwë lifted the lid which rested atop the large chalice, and inside it gleamed naught but blood in the silvery light; blood given, as her father said, from all the Mindalië who had taken the Oath before her. Feä offered her free hand, as bidden, and Arunwë cut it; a mild gasp of pain escaped her lips, despite her will to keep it sealed away; and Arunwë gently guided her hand to turn, palm facing the chalice, and blood dripped vigorously to join that pool of kindred crimson.

"It is done," Arunwë announced proudly to all, and all made the gesture of well-wishing common to many kindreds of Elvenkind, and then many (but not all) knelt and a murmur arose, that of "Lannuädaith!...Lannuädaith!..."

And now Arunwë took back the sword from Feä and sheathed it, setting both it and the knife aside. He cupped his daughter's cheeks in his hands, and smiled, and he kissed her deeply upon her lips. All strength was needed by Feä to contain her shudders of revulsion, for she long knew that this was a most wicked thing, these close relations between father and daughter, and other near kin besides, that the Mindalië practiced.

Arunwë drew back, but still he cupped her cheeks, and he said to her, "This I swear to you, my daughter Linnuwen. That when you see it, the land that is our ancestral home, you shall know at last the full worth of our long tribulations, and why we have done all that we have done. I swear it. Truly...I swear it."

Feä gazed upon her father in silence, but his smile only grew, and he took her into his embrace.



The very first act Feä took upon officially entering the College of Elbion was to go to her appointed room (named a "dorm" by fellow students and Maesters alike) and to change out her elven garments and into much simpler clothes. Less ornate clothes. Clothes that a human commoner might well wear. She cared not how this might make her appear to her fellows; she desired only to be free of clothing made by Mindalië crafts.

With the blue scarf gifted to her from her Mentor, Feä stepped out of her room, and then and there was struck like one made sick from a dizzying height. Freedom! called one half of her heart, and The Oath! called the other half. The delight of once again being free of her family and Clan twined with the latent dread of the Oath she had sworn, and in the twining came a great divisive pain.

But she had to press on. To learn and to master her gift of magic, as her Mentor had advised. Then and only then would her heart cry Freedom! in unison, for she would then have the power to reject the will of her family; not merely through running and hiding, as had been her impulse during the ceremony of the Oath, but by the only sound mean available to her: confrontation.

One day at a time, however. And today, there was the welcoming ceremony in the Convocation Hall.

There Feä had like all the other new students gone, and she had sat, and listened to Maester Caliora's commencement speech. A great feast was laid out for all upon the tables. Many of the students had taken to conversing, and some rather strange figures had come into the Hall (Stars Alight, the tall Maester in the armor was terrifying!).

Feä herself was sat across from a sight never before seen by her eyes, that of a "dark elf". Only had she heard tell of their kind, but not before this day had she occasioned to see one. And though the Hall had in its number a fair few of the rarer kinds upon Arethil, here in the dark elf was Feä's fascination captured.

She spoke without thought or concern, saying to him in the earnest fashion of a sincere compliment, "Your skin is beautiful. It reminds me of the deep blue of encroaching dusk and approaching dawn."

Akpadiaha Uwem

Part 1: Parting the Third​

“Papa! Papa, look!”

The raffia charm he spun in his fingers was barely dry—twin-winged with moonflower patterns—and braided too tightly. He’d been weaving since sunrise. Now the knots sang with nervous energy.

“I made a new one for my staff. It’s got stars and a hush sound. You know, the one that—”

“Boy,” Ini Uwem grunted, one brow raised as he shaped a clay bowl on the turnstone, “you’re knocking the balance off my rhythm again.”

Akpa grinned, wide and shining. His amber eyes danced under the morning light slanting through the open windows of the workshop.

“Your rhythm’s a little stiff anyway, Papa.”

“And your mouth’s a little fast. Are you packing or dancing?”

Akpa was dancing. Literally. He spun in place with his traveling satchel bouncing at his hip, his staff in one hand and his other reaching for one last pot to kiss goodbye.

“I think I’ll be taller by the time I come back. Maybe smarter. Maybe I’ll talk slower,” he added, failing to suppress laughter. “But not quieter. Sorry, Papa.”

“Don’t get touchy,” Ini said, voice a little stern, shoulders a little tense.

So, naturally, Akpa wrapped his arms around him like a storm tide, clutching the man with all the pressure of childhood and departure.

“Mmm!” he squealed. “Too late.”

Then, without letting Ini scold him again, he dashed through the workshop’s rear gate and onto the road to Elbion, staff clicking, raffia charm fluttering like wings in the wind.

---

Part 2: Convocation Hall​

The hall was all polished stone, hanging banners, and polite coughs. Voices rose and fell like wind over rooftops.

Akpadiaha sat alone, dressed in a simple indigo tunic with ash-grey stitching along the cuffs and hem, paired with earth-toned linen trousers tied just above the ankles with thin raffia cords. A navy-blue sash was knotted at his waist; its end embroidered with a small crescent moon. On his wrist, a raffia bracelet—faded, handmade—shifted as he moved. Nothing flashy, but every piece was chosen with his father’s care.

He tried to talk to other students.

He had tried. Oh, he had tried.

“Hi! I like your boots. Are they waxed with pepper oil? That keeps the mildew out, but some people—oh, you’re reading.”

“Sorry, hello! I saw your sigil. That house has a big merchant tie to Alliria, right? I—no? No talking? Okay.”

Each time, he smiled too quickly. Laughed too long. Fingers tapped his staff too loudly. His tongue outran the air in his lungs.

So he sat still now, arms locked in his lap. Breathing through his nose. Whispering in the way only he could.

Lady Vaene, I can’t sit still. I want to fly and scream, and I think I’m going to explode, and I can’t tell what’s me and what’s the stairs, and maybe I’ve already messed it up—

The inside of his ribs fluttered.

Shhh, child, a voice answered—not in sound, but in stillness. You have not broken anything. You are only becoming.

It wasn’t a voice like his father’s. Nor his sister’s. It was older. Deeper. It filled the room without weight.

You are wind in a house of stone, Akpadiaha. Let the stone tremble a little. That’s how they learn to listen.

His pulse slowed. He twisted his raffia ring between his fingers. He smiled.

I like that. Can I write that on the wall later?

No answer this time.

But it was enough.

---

Part 3: Response to Feä Mindalië​

He had not noticed her fully before—only the shimmer of her presence, like moonlight pressing softly on the skin. Then she turned to him, voice like old rivers and thread:

Feä Mindalië said:

She spoke without thought or concern, saying to him in the earnest fashion of a sincere compliment, "Your skin is beautiful. It reminds me of the deep blue of encroaching dusk and approaching dawn."

Click to expand...

Akpadiaha blinked. His grin bloomed wide and wild.

“Ohhh, thank you!” He swiveled on his bench to face her fully, nearly knocking into the bench leg behind him.

“That’s the nicest way anyone has ever compared me to the sky.”

He leaned forward, hands clasped.

“I’m Akpadiaha Uwem, but if that’s a mouthful you can call me Akpa. I’m from Alliria. I used to make pots, but now I mostly make sanctuaries. Sort of.”

He looked into her eyes.

“Wow! You have very poetic eyes, by the way. What’s your name?”

A beat passed. He whispered again, conspiratorially:

“Also, do you know what spectral bats eat? If not, we can guess together.”

He looked at her like she might be a dream he hadn’t finished having.

Feä Mindalië

"Akpa," Feä echoed, when he gave to her the shortened form of his name. Hers, too, was a name of longer form, yet she shortened it not in pursuit of ease.

...What's your name?

"Feä," she said in reply. For this element, Feä, had been appended to her name of birth, Linnuwen, in the attempt to shame her into obedience. She wore it instead as though awarded for her defiance.

But now came a belated registering of Akpa's own compliment, this being of her eyes. She blinked twice, surprised, for naught of the like had she heard before, and her hand as though led by its own curious will came up and touched her cheek just beneath her eye, and but a moment later the edges of her mouth curved in small yet certain fashion into a pleasant, subtle smile.

A true font of the unexpected, even so from this short and initial exchange with him, Akpa then mentioned...

"Spectral...bats?" said Feä, now leaning forward herself and speaking in the same hushed tone as Akpa himself. "I do not know your meaning. What is the reason for your asking?"

Her first thought—which she suspected to be in error—was that he had one as a pet, had come into possession of it recently mayhap, and knew not how to feed it.

Akpadiaha Uwem

Part 1: A Specter of Bats

Feä Mindalië said:

"Spectral...bats?" said Feä, now leaning forward herself and speaking in the same hushed tone as Akpa himself. "I do not know your meaning. What is the reason for your asking?"

Click to expand...

Akpa blinked once or twice as Feä leaned in, her voice mirroring his own hush. He hadn’t expected that. He’d expected her to nod politely or change the subject or smile in that tight way some people did when he got... too much.

But she didn’t do any of that.

She leaned closer. Asked what he meant. Not to correct. Not to mock.

To know.

So he slowed.

The rhythm in his chest beat like soft drumfire now. He rolled the raffia ring around his fingers before answering.

“They’re not like... normal bats,” he said, lowering his voice just a little more, “I don’t feed them—or maybe they feed me, in a way? I don’t know. I shouldn’t say too much.”

His eyes darted to the ceiling for a moment, remembering the warning:

Not everyone hears the sacred in the same way. Be careful where you scatter your seeds, child. Not all soil is kind.

He exhaled. “They’re more like... a sign. A sound. A place that finds me when I need to be found.”

Then, with a flicker of a smile: “And sometimes they’re just there. Quiet. Watching. I don’t mind.”

Part 2: Every Name has a Meaning

Feä Mindalië said:

"Feä," she said in reply. For this element, Feä, had been appended to her name of birth, Linnuwen, in the attempt to shame her into obedience. She wore it instead as though awarded for her defiance.

Click to expand...

His hands went still. The raffia stopped.

A beat.

Then: “Your name is Feä?”

Now came the bloom. His whole expression lifted like dawn.

“That’s a beautiful name! Names have meanings, you know. Not just what they call you but what they leave behind. What does yours mean?” He leaned in too, unthinking, but caught himself.

“Mine, ‘Akpadiaha’, it’s from my father’s side. Kind of hard to translate, but it’s something like: ‘the child who treads lightly, but leaves weight.’”

A pause, a chuckle. “Which is funny, because I don’t tread lightly at all. I stomp and chatter and flap. But I think it means something, even when I’m not trying to.”

He tilted his head.

“Oh! And I used to make clay things. Pots, bowls, ceremonial stuff. And I weave raffia charms now—see?” He held up his bracelet briefly before tucking it back under his sleeve. “And I once got chased by a bull because I forgot to bless a mat properly. It’s a whole thing. And—”

He cut himself off with a wide, sheepish grin. “I’m talking too much again.”

He touched two fingers to his temple. “Sorry. I’m supposed to be learning how to... slow down.”

His amber eyes flicked back to her, softer now, curious again.

“But I’d still really like to know—what does Feä mean?”
Feä Mindalië

Feä tried to follow Akpa's description, yet with things as yet unheard of one's imagination had to fill many gaps. From what he said they seemed not animals of a mundane kind, but...ethereal? Ghostly? Her bemused look gave way to a heartening realization: ah, but mayhap Maester Kikwi's class, Husbandry of Arcane Beasts, might illuminate the nature of these spectral bats! Was Akpa in that class? Of great use would it be.

From bats to names, then. Akpa spoke much, and truly it was though they the two of them were as balances on a scale—he with his many words, and she having to overcome a natural shyness to speak but a few. On the meaning of his name did Feä gaze at Akpa with a pink wonder, and she felt for that moment that together they each meant to contemplate the riddle.

Swift like a wind on the open plain did he continue, speaking of his tendency to stomp and chatter, of his former craft of clayshaping, of the raffia charms he wore (and showed her, and Feä tilted her head and her eyes flicked with tiny motions to each small detail).

But he came back round to her name. An innocent curiosity, though Feä could not help but to blush. Indeed in the face of her family she wore her earned name like an award, but strangely outside the insular realm of the Mindalië to speak of it felt a little...embarrassing. But speak of it she did; and though one could translate Feä to the Common tongue in several ways, in a single word it best came out as:

"Rebelliousness."

She averted her eyes bashfully, looking down at her lap and shifting silently, but then looked back up to him with a quiet smile and blushing unabated.

"Much did I do to gainsay my father and my mother. I was an insolent child. My name of birth is Linnuwen, not Feälinnuwen as it is now, and yet...I admit my fondness of Feä."

Akpadiaha Uwem