• Graded • School for Everyone

[Elyna]

4th Ashan 717

The skyrider wasn’t entirely sure of the rules regarding animals and children in the University grounds, but so far no one had stopped her. She wondered if it was the way she had dressed. Trading in her usual rough breaches and layers of shirts and tunics for a more dignified dress. It had been her Mother’s idea, to spend the morning working with less fortunate members of the citizenship. Elyna would have preferred to wear her usual clothes, but Caelan had insisted. After all, who would believe that Lady Burhan was a competent seamstress if she was so badly outfitted? It had turned out, that she enjoyed the morning, mending and repairing clothes and sketching out patterns for fast growing children, whose mothers couldn’t afford to keep them out of rags. The skyrider had an entire basket of stitching to do.
Elsie had enjoyed the morning as well, sat with other children of a similar ability to and Vara, always close to the child’s grasping hand. The puppy had a sweet temperament and Elyna would have sworn, was a far more protective third parent to the baby. As ever, the Skyrider had bene eager to escape her Mother’s influence and she had bundled Elsie up in a woollen blanket and put Vara on a leather leash. It was too early to return to the house on the hill, and she’d wondered, if just maybe she would find Malcolm at the University.
She was aware that teaching was due to resume. The dress was a deep, forest green that sat nicely against her shape. It also had enough give in the wool to remain comfortable. Elsie was heavy on her hip as she stood, scanning the parchment notices for familiar words. Malcolm, or Krome. The woman behind the desk had smiled at her but had then been, fussing over Elsie instead of answering Elyna’s questions.
“Which room?” Was he even teaching today?
“Oh just down the third corridor, turn right, left and look out for the sign-”
Elyna was lost already, unable to keep a clear picture in her mind. The University was a beautiful place and she’d been known to visit the library on a rare occasion, but the grandeur was a little frightening. The bustle of busy students passing in the corridor, made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Cheeks turning pink as she desperately tried to make sense of the listings of classes and professor’s timetables. It was a foreign world. Academia was a dangerous and unknown place. She had made a mistake to come here. Who knew if Malcolm would want to see her anyway. What was she thinking, bringing a baby and a puppy?
The skyrider smiled at the receptionist, “thank you.” Backing away she turned to scan the corridors, losing any intention to follow through with her plan. Vara let out a soft bark and darted, trying to wrap the leash around the young woman’s leg.
“Vara,” Elyna hissed, “Vara, stop!” She bent, trying to untangle the leather, Elise balanced precarious and choosing that moment to delve her chubby fingers into her Mother’s hair and start pulling it from it’s pins.

[Doran]

The Mortalborn’s time in Andaris was rapidly coming to an end. He had already arranged for a boat that would take him all the way to Etzos where he would continue what he had begun in Oscillus two seasons prior. Neither his colleagues nor his students were aware of that of course. As far as they were concerned he would be taking some time off to join an expedition to Western Idalos which was not an entirely unusual thing for a scientist to do. Sometimes he wondered what they would do if they knew the truth. Would they admire his supposed bravery or send for the guards to arrest him and take him to the city’s deepest dungeon where he would await his execution?

It didn’t matter. Such thoughts were an utter waste of time, he decided as he moved through the university’s corridors at a swift pace. He needed to take a look at a few books at the library and write a summary of what he had covered in his lessons so far for his successor – and meet with the man later that trial. It had, briefly, occurred to him that he could just have let it be – it was unlikely that he would return to Rynmere University during these mortals’ lifetime, and their anger was of little concern to him anyway – but he could not bring himself to leaving a job unfinished. He always saw things through to the end, no matter what they were.

He had almost reached his destination when his gaze fell on a woman with a small child and a dog standing near the reception, looking somewhat helpless, and he stopped dead in his tracks. He had only met her once, months before, but he had never forgotten her face. He had asked her for shelter during a thunderstorm – he had been in the wilderness, collecting reagents. They had almost lost their lives when a horde of shadow beasts had attacked them. He had been a very different man back then. He had not known who had been behind the beasts yet, and his hatred for the Immortals had not been as strong, although the relationship with his father had already been somewhat strained.

He looked at her thoughtfully for a few moments and watched her try to deal with both dog and child at the same time before he decided to intervene. He had already been curious about her when they had first met. She had told him that she was a skyrider then, a captain of the Xiur Skyriders no less, and she had lived alone, somewhere outside the city, without a husband. Their first meeting had not been unpleasant, apart from the attack, despite the fact that they probably fought on opposite sides of the war now. Was she as devoted to the Immortal of Hope and his allies as he was to Syroa?

“Lady Burhan”, he greeted her, politely as always, before he quickly moved to help her untangle the leash lest she fell and hurt both herself and the child. “Is there anything I can do for you? I couldn’t help but notice that you seemed a little … overwhelmed. I’m not sure if you remember, but we’ve met before, at your cottage. I’m a professor here …” With that he fell silent and awaited her response. He was dressed impeccably, and he held himself straight now. He was not nervous, and there was no hint of paranoia although it was possible that somebody was already on his tail. He looked just like what he claimed to be, a scholar, although he was more knowledgeable than most.

[Elyna]

At the sound of her name, Elyna glanced skyward, as if that was where the immortals were hiding as she sent a silent prayer for strength. Lady Burhan, was this someone sent by her Mother to assist her? Another noble with cool remarks about her inability to control her child and her dog? The skyrider wanted the granite tiles to open beneath her feet and drop her through the surface of Idalos. She wanted to vanish from sight as her cheeks burnt and she bent. Afraid to look up as the stranger knelt to help untangle the leash from her legs. “Thank you,” she murmured her reply and straightened, with the leash held by the man, she was able to carefully free the strands of dark hair from Elsie’s grip. With the stinging pain eased, she accepted the leash back and lifted the child up a little higher on her hip, took a breath and finally looked at the man who had come to her rescue.
“Oh!” She smiled, surprised, and attempted to tuck her wayward hair behind her ear. “No, I – I remember, of course,” it had been a strange night and one she couldn’t explain. The creatures rising up from the shadows. Had it been before or after the strange summons to the ship? The Skyrider had ventured out of her house, but heavily pregnant had decided against leaving Rynmere behind. Life had certainly changed in the last arc. As a girl she’d longed for adventure and the chance to sail away from the Island. She’d dreamt about the sacred seven and the lesser known immortals and the dashing deeds she would undertake overseas, exploring the world…Elsie lay her head against her mothers’ shoulders and pushed her thumb in her mouth, watching the professor with wide-green eyes. “I don’t think that I could forget that night really,” her brows drew together, “it was…well. I’ve never known anything like it,” she glanced at the passing rush of students and academics and held her daughter a little closer and waited for the crowd to move on.
“It was…Doran Feets?” Was that his name? It rang a bell. “Thank you for your help, it was probably a foolish thing to bring Vara,” she lifted the leash and the puppy sat, tail sweeping the floor, “and Elsie to the University, I was just hoping to uh – I was trying to look for…Elsie’s Father. Do you know where they teach History? Do you have offices as professors?”

[Doran]

Unlike Elyna the son of Ziell paid little attention to the students and teachers that moved past them, although he had almost come to care about some of them since he had moved to Andaris a couple of arcs before. He was entirely focused on the woman in front of him – and the child. His daughter had not been much older than Elsie when she had died. It had happened so long ago that he struggled to remember her face these trials. Sometimes he wondered what kind of woman she would have become had she been allowed to live.

Feets? He raised an eyebrow as he heard that and looked at her appraisingly for a moment, and then he correct her in a somewhat curt manner as he didn’t appreciate being given such a name particularly, “Thetys, Doran Thetys. And you should probably have left the dog at home at least, although I’m not aware of any rules that forbid dogs here in case you are worried about that.” He paused briefly, and then he gestured for her to walk with him.

So she was married or at least in a relationship. When he had first met her, he had taken her for a widow or a woman that had left her husband. But who could Elsie’s father be?

“I can take you to where the professors’ offices are located”, he offered and gestured for her to hand the leash to him if she wanted to so that she would be able to carry the baby more comfortably. “I have to walk in that direction anyway. I’m not aware of any history professors with the last name ‘Burhan’ though. What is the name of Elsie’s father?” he asked and furrowed his brow very lightly as he thought about his colleagues in the history department.

Professor Malcolm Krome was the most likely candidate for Elsie’s father in his opinion as he was the only one who was even remotely close to Lady Burhan in age, despite the fact that it would be a somewhat scandalous relationship. Unless Elyna had a strange weakness for eighty-arc-old men with arthritis, bad eyesight and hardly any teeth that were probably borderline demented?

[Elyna]

“Thetys,” Elyna repeated his corrected name beneath her breath, “Thet-ys,” the heat that had spread across her cheeks and her neck only seemed to darken, mottled with her embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I'm not so good - uh, proficient, with...uhm...words."
She should have remembered her Mother’s trick, to stay silent and look a fool, rather than speak out and confirm it. Moving her weight from one foot to another, she turned her attention to Elsie and scowled, finding that the child was sucking her thumb. Unwilling to start a war with the baby, when she was already causing a scene, Elyna followed after the man. Shoulders bowed a little with shame as she accepted his kind offer and passed Vara’s leash into his hands.
It had been a gentle reprimand but it left her legs feeling weak. This had been such a bad idea. Who was she trying to fool or convince? She and Malcolm were barely talking and now, as they advanced down the hallway towards the offices, she could envision his reaction to her unexpected arrival, with dog and baby in tow. It wasn't good.
Her footsteps slowed, heavy on the tiled floor until she stopped. What is the name of Elsie’s father? It was a perfectly reasonable question and the answer in some ways, was very simple; Malcolm Krome. Despite his accusations. Yet, it wasn’t as if the pair of them had a tendency to play family in public. It was rare for Elsie to have an outing beyond the house on the hill, or her grandparent’s manor. Whilst Elyna didn’t think that the Warden would be ashamed to be named Elsie’s sire, how would he feel about the direct association with herself, in his workplace? As a Skyrider and a Knight, their relationship was not discussed and during the campaigns they’d worked together, had been set aside.
There was a lump in her throat that was hard to swallow. “This was a bad idea,” she repeated her thoughts and looked towards the professor. “Do you…do you ever get the feeling that we’re puppets of something bigger? That our lives are no longer our own?”

[Doran]

As Elyna told him that she was not so proficient with words, the Mortalborn inclined his head and nodded curtly, thus acknowledging what she had said. That, he thought, had been more than obvious. “It doesn’t matter”, he remarked though. That was all that he said as he considered it to be improper as well as a relative waste of time to criticize the way of speaking of a woman that he had only met once, albeit under highly unusual circumstances.

They were halfway to the area where the professors’ offices were located when he noticed that she wasn’t following him anymore. He turned around, furrowing his brow as he did so and looked at her questioningly for a moment. Had she changed her mind? Why visit the university with a baby and a dog in tow, only to suddenly decide that she didn’t want to see her husband or whatever that history professor was to her after all?

He decided not to ask. Whatever problems the man and she had, they were none of his business, although he could have pried the memories from her with a mere touch if he had wanted to. Perhaps, he thought, she didn’t want him to find out who Elsie’s father was. Perhaps he had been correct in his assumption that the relationship was somewhat scandalous and unusual in nature, and she was afraid that he would talk to others about it. She could not know that he had no intention do so. He had never been one to gossip, considering it bad manners.

The way that she stood there and looked at him made him think that something was on her mind, but she was unsure whether she should talk to him about it. He decided not to press, but waited patiently for her to come to a decision.

When she finally started to speak, he couldn’t help but be surprised, although the expression on his face betrayed little of it. He didn’t reply right away, but looked at her thoughtfully for a few trills instead.

“It’s not just a feeling“, he finally said in a strangely calm tone – as if he were speaking of something that he had gotten used to a long time ago - and then continued, because he had never been one to shy away from stating his opinion, even though he was aware that some of what he said came very close to heresy. “We are puppets, of those that are supposed to be our protectors and keep us safe, born so that we can be used at the right time and manipulated from the moment that we take our first breath until we die. Our lives have never been our own to begin with, Lady Burhan.”

He paused there and looked directly at her. “Why did you ask?” he wanted to know, even though the likelihood that she would answer truthfully or answer at all was small. She barely knew him. It seemed strange to him that a woman like her would ask the same question that he often asked himself though, and it made him wonder if she had been wronged as well.

[Elyna]

He seemed to hesitate in the corridor and the rest of the bustling students seemed to fade from her focus. Elyna didn’t know what had prompted her sudden question, yet she realised that she wasn’t surprised by his answer, nor his tone. The simple acceptance. Puppets. Dancing to the beat of the puppeteer, the master of strings. He believed in the Immortals beyond the sacred seven and she felt as though a weight was lifted from her shoulders. They were to be used at the right time. What was her time? Was it simply to be a mother to Elsie, a granddaughter of the Immortals? Was her purpose to have fallen hopelessly in love with Malcolm? Despite her own dreams and desires, her childhood wishes and a lifetime of determination, it was all so close to being undone for the simplest of reasons; love. Was it possible that her life’s destination was simply to exist in a fraught relationship with the Mortalborn son of Vri? To what purpose?
Why had she asked? Elyna blinked and realised that the question needed an answer. It deserved one.
“Because I am sick of being a victim of my own life,” she responded and lifted her head a little. Her shoulders shifted, moving back and her grip on Elsie strengthened. “I’m tired of the strings that bind us. Of the injustices I can do little about.” She closed her teeth over her bottom lip and studied his expression, eager to ask him more of his own experiences. “If you were to free yourself from strings, how would you do it, Professor?”

[Doran]

“Then don’t be a victim“, he retorted. The tone of his voice was a bit harsher than he had intended. He had once been just like her. He had done what the so called good Immortals had wanted, what was supposedly good and just, even though he had begun to doubt their decisions and their laws a long time ago and none of it had ever made him happy. He had played along because he hadn’t thought that there was any other option for him due to his being Ziell’s son. He had thought that it was his destiny, what he had been born for, but eventually he had realized the futility of it all and decided to just stop.

“You are a warrior. Fight back”, he told her. “If you think that there are injustices in this world or if you think that you are being treated unfairly, do something about it. It isn’t true that we are completely powerless and have to accept whatever is happening to us. There’s always a way.” That was what he had decided to do. Fight back. Recognizing that there was something wrong with your own life or with the world and that you had been lied to wasn’t enough in his opinion. If you acknowledged that there was a problem, but didn’t actively try to solve it, then you were just as bad as those that were responsible for it, maybe even more so and deserved all the pain and all the suffering.

“I would try to sever those strings, no matter what the cost”, he spoke and then hesitated for a moment – not because he was worried about how his words might be perceived, but because he wanted to make sure that she paid attention to what he was saying.

“I would turn from the one who is manipulating me and treating me badly. I said that I think we are being used before and that our lives have never really been our own, but it doesn’t have to be this way forever. Our minds are free, Lady Burhan. Our thoughts are free, and they have always been free no matter what the rest of our existence is like, and with that comes the possibility for us to rise above it all and forge our own destiny.”

[Elyna]

Her eyes narrowed as she watched him, his retort was harsh and she wondered if she’d perhaps made a mistake. Had she imagined there might be some semblance of friendship between them? When he elaborated, some of the tension eased from her shoulders and her features softened. Less defensive, she offered him a smile and gave a nod of agreement. Fight against injustice, it was what she tried to do. The young woman had never cared much for the expectations that others laid at her feet. She would face a crowd to defend one innocent person if she had to.
Turn from the one who was manipulating and treating her badly? Elyna wondered if that puppet master was no one other than herself. “You speak of turning from the Immortals?” she asked the question and regretted her own direct approach. Lifting Elsie a little higher on her hip, one arm wrapped around her daughters back in support. “Don’t you believe that some at least, would seek to help you cast of your chains?” She studied his features, dark and brooding. He had always been a handsome man, yet there was something harsher in his face. A twist of darkness that hadn’t been there before.
Elyna tilted her head to the side as the whisper of footsteps approached again. Their corridor had been deserted for a few moments but the whispering foretold a flood of academics. “You have changed since our last meeting, Professor. I find myself regretting, that I did not remake your acquaintance till now.”

[Doran]

As Elyna asked him if he spoke of turning from the Immortals, the Mortalborn didn’t say anything – at first. He simply looked into her eyes for a moment and inclined his head a fraction – which could be interpreted as confirmation – before he replied, in the same calm and matter-of-fact tone that he had used before, “I speak of turning from anybody that tries to keep you in chains, be they Immortal, mortal or something in between. Nobody has the right to hold you prisoner and take advantage of you.”

He had never been afraid of saying what was on his mind, but there was a difference between that and being foolish and rude and ranting and raving about your hatred of the Immortals like a madman in a public place. His hatred was, most of the time, more subtle, like a fire that burned somewhere below the surface. Besides, she did have a point.

“I didn’t say that every single one of them is bad”, he replied. “There are good and bad people everywhere, and some can be allies, at least for a while. You should not trust blindly though.” He meant Syroa when he spoke of allies. He had no illusions as to her nature – she was not some sort of poor, misunderstood woman that really only wanted to help – but she had been the only one of her kind who had ever given him something worthwhile and marked him, and he would serve her because of that, for as long as she had need of him.

Even now he thought of her and sent a prayer to her, even though he had not been a religious man before. He had always found such a thing unnecessary due to his own Immortal blood. She had given him the means to become more than he had been though, to finally rise from the shadows.

“So have you”, he spoke as she remarked that he had changed since their last meeting. He didn’t only mean the fact that she was a mother now. She seemed different from the woman he had met when the shadow beasts had attacked. He could hear the voices as well – and the sound of footsteps, coming closer. Apparently, he realized, a class had just ended.

He stepped to the side so that he would not be in the students’ way and gestured for Elyna to do the same. “If you want to, we can continue our conversation in my office – or …” He cast a glance at Elsie and then at the dog whose leash he was still holding. “… meet again at a later date. I find myself regretting that I didn’t visit you again after that night.”

He really was regretting it. As strange as it was, Lady Elyna Burhan seemed to share some of his views. For a moment he allowed himself to think that there could be some sort of friendship between the two of them, in spite of what he had done and in spite of the fact that he would soon be going to Etzos, at least for a while.