Completed Been to the End of that Road

[Zael Castomir]

Much like Kristen, Zael noticed the oddity of Zinnia's eyes more so than the loss of her stutter. Consciously, the former; subconsciously, the latter. Yet the fact of Zinnia's eyes alone was to Zael not much of a remarkable thing—like what happened with countless others, he just chalked it up to some effect of her magic.

Her eyes and her stutter both paled in importance before the regrettable impasse reached, however. He had been hoping Kristen, at least, would with some deference to their past amiable acquaintance afford him some slack. See where he was coming from, if nothing else. Didn't seem like that was going to happen.

Zael finished his tea. Smiled faintly. And said, "I don't think we're gonna see eye-to-eye on this."

At least Kristen and Zinnia didn't try to kill him immediately, like Fennec (he didn't know her that well, but her face-painting was always strange to him). At least they didn't punch him immediately in the gut, like Sable (damn, man, why'd it have to go the way it did?).

A little moment of peace and tea—bursts of anger aside, his preference for ale aside—was good enough for Zael. A break from the norm of fire and blood.

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Zinnia hadn't even noticed how shallow her breathing had become, how much harder her heart had been beating, until the words of her friend and foe touched her ears. She flinched as Kristen made contact, and Zael's words in particular (whether he'd said so intentionally or not) resonated in Zinnia's skull.

The gold-eyed girl gasped as though she'd been underwater and brought her hands up to her brow as she rested her elbows upon the table in front of her.

"S-sorry! I'm...I'm sorry...I d-didn't mean...I didn't--hic!"

She pleaded as she dug her thumbs into her temples, tears welling in her eyes as a panic attack began to set in.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"It's okay, it's okay, you are fine, Zinnia, you are well," Kristen said, small and quiet words meant to soothe as much as was possible. In her long arms she held Zinnia as closely as she could, and were it not for their being seated side-by-side a full embrace would have been in order.

Temporarily, all that had to do with Zael, with Gilram, with the Rogues and the woes of the Republic, was forgotten. Because all of those were each in their own way a far distant thing compared to this.

The imminent, worrisome, and truly dire plight of a dear friend.


Zinnia

 

[Zael Castomir]

Zael gave it a moment.

He knew this conversation was likely to get rough, but it wasn't his intention to cause the sort of distress Zinnia felt now. Poor girl. But, Kress, wasn't everybody a bit like this? Dealing with the whiplash of coming straight out of the hell of the old way and into the fresh light of the Republic's changes in the Academy? Now, he could badmouth the Republic in all the ways that he had, sure, but he wouldn't fault them for those changes they had made there. At least the children going into the system wouldn't have to deal with that, with the special kind of torment that he and Zinnia had survived.

So he stayed quiet, yeah. Better to let Kristen take the reins here.

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

This was entirely alien to Zinnia. In the past whenever she'd had a meltdown she'd been mocked for it. "Behavior unfitting of a Dreadlord," that's what they would have said. The kind of weakness that Caeso would have hated...yet now she received comfort.

Kristen had not been a stranger to treating Zinnia like a normal person and looking out for her, but sometimes she still didn't know how to absorb that fact. Presently she was melting and trying very hard to get herself together.

"S-sorry, I--hic--you're right, I'm f-fine. Sorry."

She stifled her nervous tics and rubbed her eyes with a sleeve, then looked to Zael.
"Sorry," then glanced to Kristen, beacon of kindness that she was. "B-both of you."

 

[Zael Castomir]

Zinnia came around, and that was good.

But Zael figured that their chat was over at this point. Did things go the way he would've liked them to go? Couldn't say they did. Even if Kristen and Zinnia weren't budged at all from their original positions, let alone coming anywhere close to something resembling understanding, it wouldn't change Zael's path. In Vel Anir the only meaningful currency was blood, the Revolution itself proved that, and Zael figured he might as well see something truly worthwhile bought with it. If he, Kristen, and Zinnia could have another conversation again sometime in the future, all of them as free Anirian citizens, maybe in the military or maybe not, then, hell, he could call the "fight of his life" done and done, huh?

"Nothin to be sorry for, Zin. You said your piece and I said mine."

He started to stand from his seat.

"Enjoy your stay in El—"

Zinnia

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Who else could claim to hold the manner of torment which Zinnia held? Not a one. Perhaps in the whole history of the Academy, not a single one. And so what a great and terrible chastisement Kristen would have delivered upon a hypothetical third Initiate sitting there with them, seeing Zinnia so, mocking her for it. Had Zael himself done it, Kristen would have scorched him all the same, Fire Immunity or no; thankfully, he did not.

Kristen smiled with an encouraging air when Zinnia recovered her bearing, giving with her left hand upon Zinnia's far shoulder a vigorous shake of camaraderie and closeness. Now, in the wake of this small but significant incident, there was an impetus in the air for Kristen to voice her concern aloud, to speak candidly and openly on this most sensitive of subjects, and she meant to do so soon.

Zael seemed prepared to leave. Enjoy your stay in El—

"Zael, wait," Kristen said, catching him a bit by surprise and making him pause in mid-rise from his seat. "Tell me, and tell me honestly in light of all that has been said: what is the brightest future you can imagine for Vel Anir?"

Zinnia

 

[Zael Castomir]

Almost like she plucked the thought out his head. At least in part. But Zael didn't relay what had gone through his mind earlier. Instead, a better idea came to him, wrapped up nice and neat.

He smiled lightly and said, "One where your son and mine can be the best of friends."

Kristen, perhaps thrown off by the answer at large, seemed to focus more on the detail: "Your...son? How do you know that you will sire a son?"

His smile only broadened. "Some things you just know."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Zinnia could do little now besides stare between her two seniors, lost. What could have set the rogue Dreadlord's mind down such a path? Had the Bloody Graduation really had that much of an impact on him as to set him against his kin and country without a hint of doubt? Zinnia looked down, as if searching her mostly-empty cup of tea for answers.

One thought arrived in her head, one that was most concerning: she hoped she never had to face something that would shake her faith in Vel Anir the way Zael had.

"P-please, just...don't do anything stupid, okay? I d-don't want to have to fight you at s-some point, Zael," Zinnia said at last. He'd made to leave the place, and he'd been right; both of them had come to a stalemate, and there was probably nothing left to be said. The least she could do was wish him well in her own reluctant way.

 

[Zael Castomir]

"You're not my enemy, Zinnia. And neither are you, Kristen."

He had that impulse, as was his nature, to leave on a more lighthearted or positive nature. To make a jest like, "Besides, you couldn't catch me anyway" or to offer a bold and sunny saying like, "We'll all get through this—watch" but he did not. What he said felt like the best thing he could have said, because it was true, and it was true on such an elemental level that nothing could change it. Not even if they did wind up in a fight against each other.

So with that, Zael departed from the Laughing Cup, merging with the flow of Elbionese people walking the street until all sight of him became lost amidst the busyness of the crowd.

Zinnia

 

[Kristen Pirian]

With Zael now gone, Kristen made no motion herself to leave. She didn't touch her tea in any effort to finish it, the cup only minorly partaken from since it was first placed upon the table.

Presently, she had her hands bunched together, pressed to the table's edge, and she was looking over at her companion. "Zinnia, might we use this moment...to speak on a matter of great import?"

Likely, Zinnia already knew what Kristen had in mind.



Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Just like that, the Slayer of Ganfarred was gone. Lost to the city of Elbion once more. Zinnia privately hoped not to see him again, or at least to see him under better circumstances.

It was then that Kristen spoke up, seemingly somewhat concerned. Why wouldn't she be? How many times had she seen Zinnia get...like she was, and not so much as mentioned it?

"...Yeah..." Zinnia breathed.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Where to begin? Always with a large confluence of emotion seemed to come a lack of words, at least initially, to express them. And, as always once again, thinking about it was less helpful than just wading in to the topic, letting her heart do the guiding and to pluck from the ether those words proving so otherwise elusive.

"It is...to my immense shame that I must speak aloud the folly of our countrymen, but such a black truth rests at the root of the matter. And what a profound tragedy, their blindness, their obstinance! For what further proof is required of your devotion to the Anirian cause than the very passion with which you spoke in its defense here this day? What further proof that you in your loyalty to Vel Anir are numbered among the greatest Anirians who have ever lived? What rival in this love can be readily found, even among those who claim as their birthright the most prestigious blood? And yet, even adorned with such accolades as these..."

Kristen swallowed.

"...we both know why you wear the hood."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Zinnia had spent the entirety of Kristen's preamble slowly pulling further and further down on her hood, while her knees rose into the booth to press against her chest. When at last her friend had delivered the finishing line, Zinnia sighed deeply, feeling as though an arrow had just been plunged into her gut.

"You uh...s-sure know how to talk a girl up before dropping the hot t-tar, huh? Wish I could speak as n-nicely as you do, Kris...you're gonna make a g-great leader someday..." Zinnia replied after a long, pregnant silence. She was still stalling, and she knew it. Kristen probably knew it too.

Gold eyes peaked from behind the soft leather hood, scared.
"Wh-what do you want me to tell you?"

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"No, no, Zinnia, please," Kristen said, reaching over immediately and again embracing her.

Of course this matter was one of profound sensitivity for Zinnia. Gods, what terror must have visited her when first those signs, those physical manifestations, appeared? Was it any wonder that she retreated into that balled-up defensive posture, her knees and legs standing sentinel, her hood, that thin cloth veil between normalcy and disaster, acting as a turtle's shell?

"It is not for me to demand anything of you, not for me to solicit from you relief for my own anxieties and fears. Far from it, Zinnia, far from it! Though my heart is laden with them, those anxieties and those fears, and I will speak forthrightly about them, this is about you, Zinnia. Anything which might bring some measure of relief for you, Zinnia. For what scarce chances have you enjoyed, for all the time you have guarded your secret tightly against your breast, to speak candidly of it? And if you wish not to speak, then all is well! If you find that it is preferrable merely to hear the soft words of a friend, then I shall be content to let it be so. Seeing you in so much pain and distress earlier has bid me to offer what solace I can. And if I were allowed but one thing to say, one chance to proclaim in short summary the contents of my heart, then it would be this: You are not alone, Zinnia."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

"No one's ever--I m-mean, I've never had anyone to--Kress, I wish we weren't in p-public," Zinnia replied, tears beginning to well at the edges of her eyes once more. "Darn it, Kris, why are you so darn n-nice to me?"

The noble and the nobody. Zinnia couldn't be more thankful for finally having a friend as close as Kristen, but now guilt clawed at her heart.

"Of c-course I'm 'distressed!' I don't know what's even happening to me! I d-don't know what these changes are, or when or if they'll ever s-stop. My eyes used to be brown, Kristen. The m-medical staff said eye color changes were c-common side effects of being 'magically inclined,' but so far as I know nobody else has grown--" she choked on the word a moment, scared to say it even so far from home. She whispered it instead. "Horns!"

Her hands clutched Kristen's forearm, so tenderly wrapped around Zinnia's balled up knees. Kristen was so much better than her. Better than any of the other so-called "nobles" at the Academy, or anywhere else.
"And n-now I've dragged you into my mess, caused all this s-stress to you, and you don't deserve any of this! You're someone! You're s-special, Vel Anir's pride...and I'm just some lowblood, orphan, f-freak. You deserve better than me, I should be alone, I--"

It hurt too much to say anything else. Zinnia grit her teeth and buried her face in her legs. It was all she could do to stop herself from making a scene.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

The proposal of remedies could wait. Must wait, for now was not the time for them. A great insight had Kristen been once told by father Neil. She had stumbled upon him consoling her mother, Josephine, in the privacy of their chambers. Mother was distraught about something, Kristen couldn't quite remember what, but she did remember having an impression: that her father could have easily offered a solution. Neil, who was often straightforward with men in his charge, giving them clear guidance and direction, did not on this occasion do so for Josephine. When Mother left, and Kristen asked Father of it, he said: "Because I knew your mother came not to me for a remedy—not yet. She wished first to release the burdens of her heart."

Such a catharsis was necessary then, and Kristen thought it necessary now. And so she received the wave of Zinnia's troubled emotions with grace and compassion. Held her as words failed her.

And, in time, a soothing reminder, quietly said:

"I will never regard you as a freak, Zinnia. We are sisters beyond the narrow confines of blood and kin. You and I are Anirians alike."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Unwilling to make a scene in a place both public and unfamiliar, but unable to hold back the tide of emotion that had pooled behind the dam that Kristen had so thoroughly smashed, Zinnia could do little. She simply leaned in to Kristen and shook, and shook, and shook, silently sobbing away years of isolation and uncertainty, of discomfort in her own skin, of self-hatred.

Through all of Zinnia's barriers and hiding within her dorm and behind her hood, through all the expected hatred Zinnia had prepared to receive from her Anirian kin for what she was, Kristen broke it all down in an instant.

How wrong Zinnia had been. Perhaps not about herself, but about what a noble truly was. For so long she had looked to Caeso, to his strength and his righteousness, for what that was and what exemplified humanity. Zinnia had been so, so wrong. For it wasn't Caeso that embodied nobility, but Kristen. Kristen the gentle. Kristen the caring. Kristen the strong.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Only some looks, here and there, from other patrons of the Laughing Cup. Mild bouts of curiosity for the girl who appeared so troubled and the girl who held her. For all they knew it was some matter of family (in a sense, it was, wasn't it?), or perhaps some anxiety over requirements from the College. Those who had been present long enough to remember the man with the blond hair and the eyepatch sitting with them thought maybe it had to do with the affairs of young and broken hearts. But no thrilling scene was it to an outsider looking in, not like the earlier outbursts had been, and so patrons attended to their own business, their own lives, their own friends.

And so became something of an island that table where Kristen and Zinnia sat. They sat at the shore together, in a quiet that for a long time did what words could not. Soon would come the gentle tide again, lapping at their sand-touched feet, introducing the possibility of the spoken word.

"I worry for you, Zinnia. And I want to help you."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Calm came after a long wait. Zinnia's shaking faded to soft hiccups, which eventually themselves faded to normal, quiet breathing.

"I...thank you. I just..." Zinnia replied softly. She sat upright and wiped her face with a napkin left on the table. "I d-don't know how you could. Unless you can get rid of these parts of me that are wrong, I j-just...I don't know what to do, Kristen."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

The pain and anguish subsided, at least for now. Kristen could hardly fathom how long that must have been building and building within Zinnia. She herself, in the wake of her kidnapping and being rescued from the Blades, happened to be veritably surrounded by loving family, most especially her cousin Val, who in time came to gently free her of the utter despondence her trauma had cast upon her. Zinnia? Gods, depending on when first this began, Zinnia would have been surrounded by old way Proctors and Initiates.

That she was here, now, attested greatly to her perseverance in the face of overwhelming adversity, both from within and without. A truly admirable facet of her character.

"I think, first, it would be good if we made quiet efforts to discover the source of your changes. There must be something that explains it, someone else—or mayhap a great many someones—who has experienced something of the like."

Vasha Drurcius had as her magic something similar, though...Vasha's circumstance wasn't quite the same as Zinnia's, was it? So hardly a viable avenue of inquiry. Fortunately, however, they were in Elbion, even if their time here was slim; was it not possible that out of the myriad tomes scattered throughout the city one of them might provide an answer?

"To understand what is happening with you is certain to allay, at least, that terror of the unknown."

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Zinnia shimmied about in her seat a bit. Kristen was so much smarter than her, or perhaps at least she had more common sense. Perhaps that was the difference between Kristen's more refined upbringing and Zinnia's wild intuition. That or maybe Zinnia just cared so little for herself that she'd never thought to do any of what her friend was now suggesting.

"Y-yeah...yeah. You're right. I guess we're in the right p-place to go asking, huh?" she said with a sniff and a smile. "Though I wouldn't know where to b-begin..."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Neither would I, truthfully," Kristen said. She laughed with a stiff and guilty air, "Ahhh...sometimes a plethora of choice can be as unhelpful as it is paralyzing, and Elbion is nothing if not replete with libraries and scholars. Would that it was as cosmopolitan as Alliria, and the chance correspondingly higher that a man or woman, endowed with all the same features as you, might just happen across our path on the street! But we must not fret, even if the knowledge proves elusive—an answer must exist out there, waiting to be discovered."

Discovered. An innocuous word, in and of itself. But in the dire context of Zinnia and Vel Anir at large, a word of terrible import and frightful significance. It bridged Kristen into the second, and far more heavy, way of helping Zinnia.

"Second, apart from studious inquiry, I think certain...preparations...should be arranged, if..."

Kristen hardly needed to say it aloud, what with her solemn expression telling it all.

Zinnia

 

[Zinnia]

Zinnia had no idea what "cosmopolitan" meant, but the implication that there might be others out there just like Zinnia wasn't entirely comforting. Vasha was the way that she was because she'd been made to be that way. It was why she enjoyed some degree of acceptance. Zinnia didn't have that luxury. She was just...becoming.

"Yeah...yeah! I'm s-sure we could find a researcher or something who could f-figure this out. Elbion types l-like to look at freaky stuff like th-this, right?" Zinnia asked, pulling her hood back a bit and tapping one of the bony bumps that protruded from her betwixt her hair.

Of course, once again the conversation flipped from hopeful to dour.
"Ah...r-right. Can't, uh..." she swallowed hard. No more tears, not right now. "Can't keep it a secret forever, r-right? It'll probably keep g-getting worse, so..."

Zinnia laughed nervously, trying and failing to keep a flimsy air of geniality before sinking down and clutching the sides of her head, elbows on the table.
"Kristen, I have no idea what I'll do if the wr-wrong people find out."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Freaky stuff like this. Keeps getting worse. Inwardly, these bits of commentary from Zinnia caused for Kristen no insignificant amount of painful disquiet. That she would think of herself so! Yet...it was no secret why Zinnia held herself in such regard, and Kristen felt a shadow of that selfsame turmoil. Both of them were raised with Anirian sensibilities, weren't they? Mayhap the totality of these sensibilities combined could not equal those possessed by some of their peers, elders, or Proctors and Dreadlords above them, yet still the environment in which they were raised could not be discounted. Despite Kristen's heart aching in sympathy for the plight which beset her friend, still it could not be denied that some part of her agreed with Zinnia in these sentiments. And that was an ugly truth. The seeds from which said truth sprouted were, as well, not so easy to uproot.

Yet in Zinnia—in Eren'thiel Xyrdithas, as well—could be found the means by which those seeds might have their influence extricated for good.

...I have no idea what I'll do if the wr-wrong people find out.

Kristen laid a hand in the crook of Zinnia's nearest elbow. "If such a thing does happen, if disaster strikes and you are threatened, I implore you to seek refuge in a House Pirian estate, or in House Pirian-controlled lands. Already have I mentioned you in my correspondences with my father Neil and my mother Josephine. They know not of your...features, but they know that you are a dear friend of mine."

Zinnia