Completed Drowned Dreams at Dusk

[White Swallow]

A lonesome inn some fair distance west of Elbion. Season of Seagrass.
Most of the tenants were asleep and the barkeep no longer served.
The hour is well past midnight.
It was still.


Do you miss his warm hands on your shoulders, do you miss his soft hot breath against your skin.
You wish it was so easy, to forget about the living. Yet you have fallen in love with life.

In a daze, the White Swallow rose. Breath shallow and skin clammy.
He ran his hand over his rough beard, exhaling slowly.
Haunting, he could not think of sleeping any further.

Gazing left and right across the many other sleeping tenants, some snoring, others barely awake, he made his quiet departure to the balcony.
certainly, he was not the only one awake.

The fresh cold air gushed into the stuffy room. as he made his agress.
With the crickers down below and the stars up above, he stopped before the railing to look around.

 

[Yoko]

The further she rode from the dunes of the Amol-Kalit, the cooler it seemed to become. Sand gave way to baked earth which yielded in turn to grasses and scrub. She had never been so far north before, but new horizons did not wait for the sedentary and so she braved the foreign despite odd looks from the scant few humans and other races she'd met in passing on her travels.

Ahead rose a structure that, from what she'd been told, was someplace she could rest for the night. Uneasy about spending the night in the wilderness so far from home, yet so close to habitation, she'd opted instead for this place. Somewhere she could rest, possibly with her own room and bed. She had managed to barter and trade for some basic funds along her journey which meant that so long as the innkeeper's rates were reasonable, she could easily spend a night in relative comfort.

As the cool winds picked up and the crickets sang in the tall grass, Zaahira nudged her equally tired horse forward towards potential rest.

White Swallow

 

[White Swallow]

He leaned across the railing as a lone rider approached the inn. It was quite late and they were alone, perhaps they were very exhausted? Personally, he himself equally would dare not sleep alone in a place as treacherous as Amol-Kalit.
Less so when robbers were common, raiding caravan routes to from Maraan to Elbion.

Inside the inn, the silence of darkness truly set in.
no more crickets nor evening birds would sing their songs.
Only the creaking of wood and the gentle breaths of sleeping patrons.

The innkeeper if asked, would give his modest price for the rooms, before pointing up and mentioning, there really is no way to get lost, everyone shared the same living space.

No trouble, of course.
Such were the rules.

 

[Yoko]

The innkeeper, while confused on exactly what she was, offered a decent price on a room which the Alqatati contentedly paid. She made sure her horse was appropriately secured and went back inside and upstairs. Placing her meager possessions underneath a worn bunk, she stepped out onto the balcony to clear her mind for a moment before sleep.

Outside she found another gazing out into the night. She shrugged and took a position a short distance away. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the quiet and the cool breeze for a moment. Many weeks of travel through the desert made her body ache, though the worst was the thirst at the end of the day. She did her best to rest during the day and travel at night, though as the days grew less arid and the nights grew somewhat warmer, she switched to traveling under the sunlight.

Zaahira sighed once, as if trying to breathe out the fatigue, and sipped from her water skin. Tomorrow was another day of travel.

White Swallow

 

[White Swallow]

(sorry for the writing swamp ;_; Zaahira )

While the inn was dead silent, the moment one stepped onto the balcony, the living came forth once more.
Of the bushes, the oleanders and thorns thickets, the insects came forth in a cocophony of various sounds.
His gaze he shifted to the new arrival that relished the cool night air with him.

The White Swallow, in his robes and veils, quietly whispered, yet his words cut sharply through the noise.
»Do you sense the stir in the atmosphere?«