INTERLUDE
Avis awoke.Â
It had been another brief, yet convoluted dream, of magitek frying pans and raining limbs and rotund feathered beings. All this was no doubt the product of a few morbid hours spent in the basement speed-reading wide-eyed through what little there was of Garlean history before, emotionally-drained from the horror of Garlemald and her employer's confession, the hyur fled back upstairs into the children's section. There she'd spent another long period of time walking in the worlds and woods of her old favorites, books of pictures and rhyme. Until she fell asleep with the book in her lap, the page turned to an amusing illustration of Mother Dodo attempting to repel assailants with a colorful list of don'ts. Get it?Â
She hadn't realized how fatigued she was, though sleep had been a dismal possibility since her meeting with Jigumundo.Â
Still disoriented, Avis cast her gaze upwards slowly to connect with that of the bookstore's attendant. His glaring concern was quite obviously directed at the faint elegant watermark her drool had made on a recently-creased page, and not at all at the dangerous way in which her head had lolled in slumber, as if it'd hung from a near-snapping thread.
With an elegant touch to the left side of her mouth, where it was still moist, Avis smiled and asked sweetly for the time of day.Â
The attendant gave it.Â
At that Avis bolted from her seat - then collapsed back into it as pain shot through her neck from having dozed off in a position bearing an unfortunate likeness to a badly executed beheading. It took Avis another few neck-rubbing moments of wincing and incoherent apologizing before she finally mustered up the composure to walk, as sedately as possible, out of the establishment - with an unpaid book in hand. She paid for her completely unintended crime with the attendant's irate lecture and another excruciating twist in the wrong direction to her sorry neck. At midday, Avis finally hobbled from the Eagle & Quill, which was paradise regained, cursing and...Â
glad...Â
...in a way she hadn't felt for years.
She knew, though, that she had left without having dropped by Xavarian's study for a farewell. She wondered what he would think of that.Â
***
Sir Fabuli, steady to a fault, was still exactly where she'd left him, down at the docks, despite all the hours that had passed. Angry warks punctuated the air for a good few minutes before Avis finally got the chocobo to calm down. His displeasure was not unfounded, of course; she had, after all, disappeared somewhere further into the Mist with Xavarian, that most decidedly unnatural and apparently malevolent of duskwights, for half a day. His disapproval was complete.
Still, Avis's feelings were hardly touched by the legitimate concerns of her steadfast steed. As the pair clunked through the Mist, Avis had the strange feeling that she had walked through a tunnel and exited from it into an alternate reality, that the world had shifted, become altogether larger and sadder, somehow. She turned Sir Fabuli off course, briefly, to look once again over the sea. The sun had set the lights to dancing upon the waters. She found herself pulling out her notebook and anchoring that view with her scribbling, as though she needed some sort of marker to signify this:Â
...that she had left one chapter of her wanderings resolutely behind.
***
At the Mizzenmast Inn, the innkeeper seemed to have been waiting for Avis all night. He dangled an elaborate scrollcase from one hand as she approached, silent, his face drawn into a perfect blank, like a lone porter carrying a lamp through light winds and snow. Avis knew it for what it was straightaway, and covered the last few steps with her hands reaching out like a child certain of her gift.
[sub]Avis Inkwood | Qara Qalli
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