Just Two Minutes [ooc welcome]

[Naunet]

((Most of the RP relevant to this thread can be read here. There's a bunch of plot that happens on Antimony's side of things that I haven't yet posted, but it's not immediately necessary to know. Enjoy!))

 

***

 

It had been a few days since Antimony had given shelter to a rather besieged member of the Brass Blades, and since that evening her thoughts had not settled even once. Certain revelations kept her distracted enough that it had begun to affect her work, as well as her sleep, and so it was with determination that she set out from her inn room early this morning with the intention of simply clearing her head. She worried briefly what these only tangentially related complications could mean for her investigation, as well as her impression on Miss Carceri, but as she left the Quicksand and began slow, quiet steps further into the city, she steadfastly pushed those thoughts from her mind.

 

Ul'dah's constant, stifling walls made it difficult for her to keep track of the time, but by her estimate it was still morning, albeit rather late, by the time her walk took her to what had quickly become her favorite resting spot in the city. Set back from most of the various guilds and businesses, the small courtyard with its single, round fountain was almost peaceful - as peaceful as smelly, chaotic Ul'dah could ever get. The white noise from the fountain helped drown out her worries, however.

 

And so Antimony settled wearily onto a bench very near the fountain, letting her spine relax against the stone. She could feel a faint spray of mist from the fountain on her ears; the sensation was refreshing. As she sat, she made every effort to relax and not think about corrupt officials or dolls or would-be assassins or being fired or any other such things.

 

Lingering in the middle of one of Ul'dah's hideous streets -- manmade canyons where filth and starvation settled instead of sand -- K'ile Tia stared at the paved stone a few feet in front of him. At first glanced, he looked composed, with his solemn eyes half-lidded and his hands coupled before him. But his tail shivered. His ears bent backward on his head as though blown by some chilly wind. His left hand shook, and his right hand failed to hold it still.

 

Through eddies of starvation and sickness mixed with wealth and cheer, K'ile could discern the strangely stoic scent of family. Once the smell of those Miqo'te with whom he shared common blood, history, spirit, had been a warm and welcoming perfume that wrapped places and people of incomparable worth. Now it was a cool scent, old and half-forgotten. It was like venom, aged to potency, boiled and spiced.

 

Was he a coward? Of course he was. If K'yohko had spoken a single truth in his entire life, it was that. K'ile Tia lingered within sight of the fountain, saw the shadow and distant silhouette of the person he was looking for. Her image was distorted through falling water thrown by the fountain. He found himself reluctant to clear it. Normally memories of people were idealized, and he might have been afraid to damage that memory. But, no, not of her. The memories were terrible, at least those of the last moment. He wanted to destroy those memories. What then, did he fear?

 

Maybe it was just stupidity.

 

He shook himself and flung his arms out to either side, put on his ears and huffed. If only K'yohko and K'thalen could see him now, they'd be laughing. If he were watching himself from a distance he'd laugh, too. K'ile Tia was an idiot.

 

Well, he might as well indulge that. Stupid and idiocy could get him pretty far if he was just lucky and bold, right?

 

Around the corner he went numbly, hoping he didn't look petrified, sure he looked like a fool with some crooked expression. His tail felt like it was getting in the way of his legs and his ears couldn't decide where they wanted to settle.

 

K'ile Tia did his best to meander around the fountain. Meandering, he told himself, was the best method of approach. Each step closer filled his senses with that old scent of his sibling, and drew his shoulders eyes down. Though he meandered, his approach felt sudden, so that when he arrived he was surprised to have done so and absolutely unprepared.

 

He didn't see a single thing out of sorts about her. Dressed like an outsider, maybe aged a bit, but to him she seemed hastily transplanted, only slightly adapted.

 

K'ile didn't want to sneak up on her, but was inexplicably afraid of uttering a sound. He tried to speak, but choked on it. As he stopped his approach, he forced himself to proclaim his presence, and so he greeted his quarry with a squeaked mumble and a cough. The cough was louder, and the curse the followed it was silent as he averted his eyes in frustration at himself.

 

Perhaps Antimony had not done as good a job as she had hoped so far in relaxing herself, for when she caught something distantly familiar on the air, followed by what sounded like someone choking, her mind immediately leapt to all of the worst conclusions - many inspired by that horrible doll that remained back in her room.

 

Bolting upright, she had barely two seconds to think that those conclusions were rather silly as she twisted her head and ears about every which way, before her startled look settled on...

 

All thought ceased.

 

Green eyes shook behind round wire frames as she sat utterly frozen. Deep in her gut, she could feel something old and aching stir. The awareness of its wakening made her want to bolt, but her joints and muscles remained locked, as though she'd become carved of stone. She said nothing.

 

Sweeping over in front of the woman in order to try and recover from his mistake, K'ile found that he still couldn't speak. Hollow greetings mingled with instinctive excuses in his mind, tripping up between questions that needed to be asked and a hundred different things he'd been hoping he'd said five years ago. It all wanted to come out at once, bus his jaw and his chest locked up. For a long moment, he just stood there, looking at the woman, smiling, appearing ever on the verge of speaking.

 

He exhaled a long "Uuuuuhhhhm," without moving, and then said, "Hey there! Wow. Hi! You've got glasses on."

 

What was he trying to say?

 

"They sure are..."

 

Figure it out!

 

"Made of glass."

 

He didn't even remember having that thought, but he must have, because he'd managed to say it. K'ile Tia took this as confirmation that he was actually just as dumb as everyone thought he was. But Twelve take him, he needed to do better! He hadn't come all this way just to make an idiot out of himself! He hadn't let go of her five years ago just so he could find her again and not know what to do with himself.

 

"K'piru," he said, "Can I get two minutes?"

 

When he spoke that name, it was as though someone had set a spark to her thoughts, for they all rushed in from corners long forgotten in a single, engulfing flame. She felt her mouth hanging open slightly, her blood echoing deafeningly in her ears and drowning out whatever words the man across from her had continued to say.

 

Antimony - not K'piru - swayed on the bench, gripping its front edge. What manner of spirit had crafted this illusion, this facsimile of painful familiarity?

 

She tried to stand, tried to run, found herself frozen still.

 

Had young K'ailia sent him? Should she have been firmer with the girl, demanded she leave her alone, disavow her ties publically, unequivocally... With a dim panic, she felt the edges of a carefully crafted recovery fraying.

 

"I thought..." Antimony swallowed and found she could not run from K'ile Tia as she had from K'ailia. There was no wall of pretend identity to hide behind from him. He would smell that lie a malm away, already had.

 

He found himself reaching forward, just as a gesture, holding out one palm with open fingers. He hoped she didn't notice how his fingers shook, or how he was struggling to breathe. "Just two minutes," he repeated, and then said, "We don't have to talk about anything you don't want to. I just wanted..." It wasn't 'just' anything. There was too much that he wanted for him to even think about.

 

Antimony's hands tightened, shook around the edge of the bench as she imagined in a white flash reaching out to take his own. An imagined action, nothing more, for she was held down and still by one thousand weights, each weight a thought, a memory, a fear.

 

He wanted... what? He wanted what? She wanted suddenly to scream at him, thought she had for a moment, shrieking at him to go, to leave her be in her crafted solitude, but that was just a memory. Antimony blinked, tried to focus on the soft tumbling of water behind her.

 

"You're not..." Real? But he was; she could breathe in his scent as clearly as the night he had tried to hold her, tried to stop her. Part of her wanted Ulanan to round the corner into the courtyard then, for the lalafell to puff up and chase K'ile away just as she had done with K'ailia. But only part of her. "There isn't anything to..." She drew a breath, but it came thin and struggling before she could finish, "... say."

 

There was a great deal to say. "What if I'm okay with that?" It was easier not to  say it. It would be easier to just not speak at all, and linger until she couldn't stand him anymore, but then what would be the point in coming all the way back to Ul'dah. "Maybe just a little chat. Small. You don't even have to look at me."

 

A chat. The simplicity of that request was almost absurd when held up against the unraveling panic she felt. She felt herself leaning forward, trying to urge her legs into action, but that familiar face, taught with its own array of emotion, kept her locked in place.

 

"A chat," her voice echoed her thoughts, faint and shaky. She cursed herself for ever coming to Ul'dah, work assignment or no. She had been alright in Limsa. She had been... functioning. Despite his words, she found she couldn't look away, her eyes seeming trapped in the same stony grip as the rest of her body. Her chest ached. "I don't... know what you want to..."

 

Now's about the time K'ile would normally get awkward, avert his gaze, pull on one ear. He knew when he wasn't wanted around, and it would only be sane to let her be, go find K'luha, go back to the tribe. On that other hand, that would be insane, because he couldn't just keep on like he had been.

 

Unable to look away from her, he let himself drop into a crouch in front of the woman. The gesture was familiar, almost supplication. Looking up at her, he said, "It's been five years. Don't tell me to go away again. Just give me five minutes. Five years for five minutes. I just want to know that you're doing alright. What you've been up to."

 

She hadn't realized it could still hurt this much, Antimony - no, K'piru thought. Even after seeing that Tonberry article, seeing the pictures of her daughters and Thalen, she had cried, been angry at D'hein for even thinking to bring it up. But with K'ile kneeling before her now, it felt almost as though the wounds were fresh. As though he'd come to her in Ul'dah to deliver the news once more.

 

But he wouldn't be so cruel.

 

Shaking, K'piru bowed forward, until her head nearly touched K'ile's. It shouldn't affect her this much, not after five years; she'd thought if she hid from it long enough... "I've... got a job," she muttered weakly, and it felt silly to say things like that, such casual things, as though that night out in the desert had been nothing.

 

The very fact that she hadn't walked away from him directly made him numb. But now, K'ile inhaled her words, her scent, the way she leaned close to him, as though he'd been suffocating. He's lungs opened up and let him breathe again, and he took in so much air that his ribs hurt. The numbness in his limbs and tail turned to a strange tingling.

 

He smiled, broadly. The smile took over his face and his ears bounced. "A job for gil, I'm guessing? Alchemist, I bet!"

 

She felt like a child - not for the urge to cry or run away, which were admittedly childish, but because she so desperately clung to the idea of a simple, casual conversation instead of acknowledging K'ile's presence in Ul'dah, its implications, and the way she suddenly wasn't sure if she /should/ run. With nearly five decades behind her, K'piru found she could only act as a child in this moment.

 

She shut her eyes against a stinging heat and struggled to breathe around the oppressive scent of family. "No," she grimaced, kneaded her fingers against the stone of the bench, which caused them to ache. "An acc... with money. Other people's."

 

"I don't know enough about gil to understand what that's like. Juggling coins? No idea," he chuckled. The words were coming easier now, which was good. If he only had five minutes out of these five years, he decided it wasn't bad to spend them learning how to talk to her again.

 

Still, he watched her hands. He could tell what she was feeling. He had no idea what she was thinking, but feelings were more important than that. "You live in Ul'dah?" he said.

 

She could lie. She could say yes, she does, and then when she left after her job was complete here, they would never find her. They would never know where to look. The thought left her strangely cold. She shook her head before she realized, but the roiling storm of long ignored grief overwhelmed any regret she might have had over that.

 

Still, she couldn't bring herself to speak again, to answer the question correctly. Instead, whatever words she'd been unconsciously preparing collapsed into a small, choked sound, and she pushed her head against his. On the bench, her tail twisted in agonized coils.

 

K'ile closed his eyes when their foreheads touched. His smiled didn't waver, but he couldn't make sense of her. There was nothing new about that. He had never learned to understand the shaman, so why should the gil-juggler be any different? She was doing everything short of reaching out to him, but she wouldn't speak.

 

He decided that if he had to choose between a verbal answer and this simple, slight contact, he preferred the contact. K'ile preferred the closeness to the small-talk. He pushed his forehead back against hers a bit, to return the gesture, and said, "Are you doing well?"

 

She would not think of what she didn't have. Of whom she didn't have. K'piru repeated this to herself, trying to drown out the thoughts stirred from their shadows by K'ile's presence. If he had been any other...

 

She didn't know how to answer that question, not in this state. Instead she shuddered out one of her own, one whose potential answer she dreaded, "Why are you... in Ul'dah?"

 

His smile wavered at the question. The obvious, riskiest answer, as that he had come looking for her. If he said that, and she did anything other than run away, or shut him out, then he would be...

 

K'ile couldn't even think it. It wouldn't happen. She had run so far, and he had chased her down. She didn't need to know that. It was pathetic. It was at least a little insane. No.

 

"I came with K'ailia," he said, and forced a chuckle. "She's a pain, but she let me know you were around."

 

She let out a slow sigh. It made sense, and the relief she felt over knowing he hadn't been forced out, or left the tribe was almost enough to chase away the ache in her chest, if only for a second or two. There was frustration, briefly, that K'ailia had betrayed whatever implicit trust of silence Antimony had expected of her, but she couldn't blame the girl.

 

She acted then on a sudden, wild impulse, one that surged forward with such force and speed that she didn't even realize it until she found herself wondering how her arms had moved to wrap around K'ile, clutching at him, why her face had buried itself against the side of his head. The ache in her chest had strangely fled, replaced with a hollow sensation, empty. Lonely. "I'm sorry," she muttered. "I'm sorry. I can't... I'm sorry."

 

For a brief moment, K'ile was paralyzed. His senses weren't prepared for the rush of sensation as K'piru's weight and scent and warmth fell across him. He was blind and numb, deaf and dizzy. But when his senses did return, he found that he had already moved. His body had acted on instincts that had been closed up inside of him for years, and his arms had closed fiercely around her. He held her as though something were trying to pull her away, lay his face into her neck.

 

For five years, he'd done his best to not even think about K'piru. Not once had K'ile thought of this, imagined the possibility of a moment where she might accept him. He wasn't ready for it. It was overwhelming. He couldn't speak, and his mind was empty.

 

K'piru could only repeat that apology under her breath, a desperate chant, or a prayer. She didn't know if she was apologizing for leaving, or staying away, or not wanting to return even now - perhaps it was all three.

 

Or none at all.

 

The frames of her glasses pushed uncomfortably into her skin, but she ignored the sensation and mumbled on.

 

Leaving one hand on K'piru's back and laying his other on the back of her head to try and comfort her, K'ile finally spoke, in a shaking voice, "It's okay. You don't ahve to be sorry for anything."

 

She continued her litany of "I'm sorry"s for a time after K'ile spoke, curling her fingers into his back. She felt as though she should be crying, and her body trembled as though it was, but her eyes remained dry no matter how much they stung.

 

The absence of his presence stung more now that he had found her, and she wondered with an ill feeling if she could actually manage to walk away again. Maybe she could just stay on this bench, forever. "I can't go back," she croaked into his neck. "I'm sorry. I... you shouldn't have..."

 

"I'm not going to ask you to go back," Kile said, petting the back of her head. "You can be whatever you want, wherever you want. It's okay."

 

Okay. She breathed, relaxed just slightly but didn't let go. Her thoughts skittered back to that night in the dunes, the existential terror and grief and overwhelming desperation that had driven her away from everything. K'ile had let her go. He would do it again.

 

His scent still reminded her of Thalen, but rather than the lancing pain in her chest as though he'd impaled her, there was only that shadowed hollowness. Her breath hitched. She didn't cry. "Limsa," she mumbled almost inaudible, ears laid flat against her skull.

 

Eyes closed, face still lain into K'piru's neck, K'ile breathed deeply. His senses were beginning to come back. He was beginning to feel her against him, and it gave him a strange comfort. The sensations were not familiar; he couldn't remember ever having been this close to K'piru before Catenau. But the feelings it evoked were nostalgic. It made him feel like...

 

"Limsa?" He said after a moment. "Sounds familiar."

 

"A city on the water. Carved into white cliffs." She nearly smiled at her description, but such an expression was still beyond her, not when she felt as though she only barely held the edges of her control together. And her grip was in constant danger of slipping.

 

"Oh!" K'iles head popped up, and his ears lifted. "I remember Luha mentioning that place! You have to take a boat to get there, right?"

 

She faltered briefly at the mention of K'luha, her hands loosening against his back. Her sister's daughter; K'ailia's mother. The fiery woman was recalled to her with painful ease. She didn't want to think of them.

 

K'piru returned her grip, perhaps firmer than before, and her arms trembled slightly. "Yes. From... Vesper Bay." She didn't know why she told him these things. He would only bring the ghosts with him.

 

"I'd like to go sometime," K'ile said effortlessly, grinning at the though, grinning at sharing any moment at all with K'piru. "I've never been on a boat."

 

To that, she couldn't respond save to press her nose against his neck. The thought of him traveling to Limsa, to see her, wrenched at her gut with an ill fear. And yet she also thought that in the days before she'd left for Ul'dah, following that troubling evening with D'hein and his nosey article, her home had never felt so lonely. The warring perceptions left her head pounding and her stomach churning.

 

K'ile listened to her silence. He squeezed her, dropped his chin back to her shoulder, breathed in the air that wrapped her. Slowly, he was beginning to think again. He thought about going to Limsa with K'piru. But hadn't K'luha said she would take him? Five years ago, K'luha had just been a mote of darkness inside a shadow. Dalamud had cast everything in darkness. He couldn't see anyone. There hadn't been anyone.

 

Five years. Where were all the things he wanted to say to K'piru? All the things he had wanted from her. Had he wanted anything at all? Or was she just, family?

 

"K'piru," he said, finally. "I've missed you. Really." He squeezed her. "Really."

 

"I--" She blinked hard over his shoulder, struggled for a time with a conflict of ghost and flame and escape. In truth, she had not thought of K'ile, nor of K'ailia or K'luha, or anyone else in the tribe for most of the past five years. She had locked those thoughts away, built her walls, dug a moat, guarded herself as much as one person could manage against it all. Had she missed anyone? She didn't know. She hadn't allowed herself to think of them long enough to know, not until Ul'dah.

 

Instead, she just sighed. "It's okay. I'm... I'm alive."

 

"That's all I need you to be," K'ile said, "Alive and okay. I don't need anything else." He laughed, "The hug helps, though. It helps a lot."

 

K'piru didn't laugh, nor smile. The panic from before was gone, but she felt now as though she'd swallowed lead and it had settled with an impossible weight in her belly. She leaned back slightly, though she kept her arms on K'ile, and looked past his shoulder. If there was more to be said, she couldn't find it - or, she couldn't bring herself to speak it.

 

Lifting his head, K'ile wore a solemn expression as he looked over K'piru's expression. He couldn't read it. He would never be able to read her. He felt he should have so much to say to her, and he did, but the words wouldn't come to his lips. He stared at her eyes, tried to look inside of them, tried to find what thoughts and feelings she was hiding inside of them.

 

To K'piru, there came a new, slow kind of grief the dragged her thoughts as though she were moving through molasses. The pain of it was a dull ache that sunk deep into her body and came wrapped in both the ancient scent of blood K'ile had brought with him and his presence on its own. It was not something she could escape, and she knew she didn't have the will to do so even if she could. He seemed so relieved, so pleased to find her. She wondered when he would leave her be, and the thought dragged her down further. She wanted to be left alone.

 

Of course. That's why she had surrounded herself with so many people. A widowed lalafell with strange research habits and an even stranger devotion to her security, an elderly assassin whose disturbing actions still had not dissuaded her from continuing contact, a lonely miqo'te yearning for guidance and validation, and even a corrupt Brass Blade who had done her little kindness yet still seemed to pull it from her.

 

She shifted her eyes to K'ile's face and for once, there was no desperate ghost waiting in those familiar features. She looked down, and her tail stilled, her arms dropping from his back to rest limp in her own lap.

 

Indulging in the silence for a time, K'ile noticed the hands fall away. It seemed the right time for that. It must've gotten awkward a few minutes ago, but by the Twelve, if he was going to be weak and sentimental in front of anyone, it was going to be K'piru. He could bring himself to take his hands off of her, though he did lean back and move his hands to her shoulders.

 

He still couldn't think of what he wanted to say to her. No, that wasn't the problem at all. "There's too much I want to talk about," he said, doing his best not to think about the words, just to let them be. "I don't know where to start."

 

K'piru spent a few moments wading through her own circuitous thoughts to try and figure out what K'ile could want to speak about, but she came up pathetically short. If he asked her more questions about her life, she knew she would likely answer, but she had no complementary desire to know of the tribe. What knowledge K'ailia had thrust upon her had been more than enough. She was better off remaining ignorant of it all, separate from it all.

 

But if it was just between them, perhaps she could keep herself from crumbling again. Still, she couldn't manage encouraging words; she only lifted her eyes again and watched him quietly.

 

"Are you going to disappear again?" K'ile said, again without thought. Maybe that one he should've thought out a bit more, but, there it was. "You can if you want to. I just need to know if I'm going to have to wait another five years before I get a chance like this again. If I'll ever."

 

She would be lying if she said she had not considered it in these endless minutes (hours?) since he'd approached her. More than once. And yet... "I told you where I live." Her tone hung low and quiet. "... I do not intend to leave it."

 

"Then I want to get to know you again," he said, looking down at K'piru's hands. Her age was more evident there, in her thin fingers, and yet she seemed so young to him. As though she hadn't aged since he'd first gotten to know her, back when he was still a kid. "I want to know what you've been doing, and what you've learned. The world is..." he hesitated, sought words, "The world feels a lot bigger now that I've found you out here in it."

 

Though she may have seemed young to K'ile, his words left K'piru feeling impossibly old and fragile, that heavy weight that had settled over her dragging on her bones until she thought they might break. Despite this, she felt a taughtness at the corners of her lips and she found herself saying, "I went on an adventure once. I... do not recommend it."

 

Ducking his had a bit, K'ile said, "That would've been good to know a week or so ago before Luha and I went adventuring. Now she's got a broken hip. So, good advice."

 

A shadow flickered across K'piru's face and she looked down and away. A question nagged at her, but she could not give it voice; it risked too much of what little control she had. Instead, she took an unsteady breath and said simply, "I'm sorry."

 

Looking briefly to one side, K'ile then sought out K'piru's eyes again. "What for?"

 

K'piru winced and, after a moment, shook her head. There was an awkward pause then, where she oscillated between wanting to think of something else to say and wanting to just return to what had resembled a comfortable silence. Eventually she managed one question, not that which had carried such threat just prior, but a significant one nonetheless: "How long will you be in Ul'dah?"

 

"Uhm." He finally dropped his hands from K'piru's shoulders, though one hand reached for her hands without thought. He almost didn't even notice it, but did end up looking at his hand in veiled surprise. "I don't know. I didn't even think about it. I guess it depends on K'luha and K'ailia. A day or a few. Not long. But, I'll be traveling more soon."

 

At that, K'piru frowned, the slight wrinkles in her face deepening. "Did you..." Perhaps she had misunderstood earlier, she thought and fought back a sudden nausea. She felt like a hypocrite for reacting in such a way. "You left...?"

 

"We're here on business from the tribe," K'ile reported, neutral. He watched his hand touching K'piru's as if he expected it to do something. "Famine never really let up, so they're scouting out options and trading more now."

 

Her fingers flexed under his hand in a small, external display of conflict. "I see." She could not allow herself to think of the implications of his statement, to think of what struggles the tribe might have faced, might now be facing. It would only cause more pain.

 

She tried to focus on K'ile alone, separate from the others, but no matter what question her thoughts turned to, they all lead damningly to the tribe. All she could think to say, in a half-desperate attempt to turn the conversation away, was a quiet, "Limsa smells cleaner than Ul'dah, in most places."

 

K'ile muttered. "Oh. That's good." He finally moved his and to grip hers and said, "You should tell me about that adventure you went on! You've probably been places in this world I've never even heard of."

 

"That adventure," K'piru echoed and looked to their hands. An uncomfortable memory, but not nearly so much as others. She drew a slow breath that shook only on the tail end, deep in her ribcage. "It wasn't so much a... I didn't intend for it." The weak smile that suddenly pulled at her mouth caught K'piru by surprise, not least because she did not feel happy. "An old man saved me from assassins."

 

Giving K'piru a confused look, K'ile utteed a simple, "What."

 

It wasn't precisely how things had happened, she knew, but she wasn't sure it would be wise to share the full reality with K'ile. She steeled herself, reminded herself that this was better than discussing the tribe, than discussing family. Perhaps not quite as good as silence, but K'ile didn't deserve that. "I was on a business trip," she began, feeling the calluses of his palms against her skin. An unbidden thought: she wondered if he still danced. "The... ah, assassins were sent by a client. I didn't know... my employer was not what he seemed." She winced, still distantly hurt that Ernefalk and Perelon had betrayed her trust in such a way. Sighing, "It was all rather complicated."

 

"Sounds like it would make a good story, though," K'ile said. He leaned towards her and gave her a boyish smile, "Did you fight assassins?"

 

She looked up at that, watching his eyes for a moment, and then a bit sheepishly, "I mostly ran and hid."

 

"That might count! I want to know everything! How many assassins were there? How often do people try to assassinate you?" He whispered, "Do you have assassins that try to assassinate the other people's assassins?"

 

It was almost funny how close K'ile's speculation came to the truth. Or disturbing, if one thought too much on it, especially considering recent...

 

K'piru coughed, ears swiveling forward and backward. "There was... well, yes. The old man was, ah... the first one. I don't know why he didn't kill me," she muttered the last two words so low that she wasn't sure if K'ile would catch them. It had been months since she had last dwelled on that series of terrifying events. "But later he... my friend and I were going to die, but he prevented that." She blinked and smiled sadly. "I make it sound so melodramatic."

 

He smiled broader when he saw her smiling. "Maybe it was. Maybe you should find a bard and tell him about it! But, details." He squeezed her hand, "We need mroe details! Names and places and stuff. Here," he stood, still holding onto her hand. "I'm figuring out that Ul'dahns like to eat and drink things when they tell stories."

 

Swallowing, she leaned forward somewhat as he stood with her hand. "What do you mean?" She hadn't intended to tell some grand story, but he'd clearly taken it as such. The endearing nature of that was painful to acknowledge. She could feel the muscles in her legs tensing, caught between that constant war of action and inaction that had gripped her since the moment he'd fumbled out a greeting. She looked down to her lap, feeling inexplicably guilty.

 

"I mean... I don't know. Don't Ul'dahns have designated places for conversations and stories?" K'ile looked around, and smelt the air. "I thought that was a thing here. Food and drink and stories. Am I wrong?"

 

"It..." She felt as though she were flailing about, though she remained frozen on the bench. "I don't... know. I'm not Ul'dahn. Are you hungry...?"

 

"Uhm." He thought about that. He'd run all the way back to Ul'dah from the Shroud, and he couldn't remember pausing for any actual meals, but he hadn't been so maddened that he had foregone food entirely. "I don't know. I wasn’t really thinking about it."

 

"Oh." A pause, during which she tried in vain to shed the weights pulling at her bones, sinking into her gut. Moments ago, she had been close to shaking them, until K'ile had stood. Her fingers clenched around his on their own. "I can..." She hesitated again, found herself suddenly choking on her words. "If you wanted food, the Quicksand can send it to, ah, my room." He had alluded to famine earlier; though she wouldn't allow herself to think of that in the context of the tribe, it still worried her. But neither did she feel capable of handling the busy pressure of the Quicksand's tavern.

 

"I'm okay with that," he said gratefully. And then, "Between you and me, these places where the Ul'dahns eat and drink are kind of... They're like caves. Crowded caves." He pulled gently at her hand, to try and help her stand.

 

K'piru nodded and added quietly, "Too many walls." The pressure of his tugging traveled up her arm to her shoulder, sinking into her chest like a vice. Slowly she stood, her legs protesting and shaky enough that she wondered if she would even make it to the Quicksand. Perhaps it would be for the best if she simply gave him some gil, sent him on his...

 

Her ears lowered against her head as those thoughts awoke whatever hollow thing had engulfed her. Unconsciously, she tightened her grip on his hand and then breathed out, "It's not far."

 

"I remember where it is. I was there once." he had been about to release her hand, but when she tightened her grip, he let his fingers stay where they were. It was an odd feeling, to just be standing there holding her hand. In that moment the gesture seemed strange to him, foreign. He didn't understand it, but he welcomed it anyway.

 

He turned and pulled her along with him. "Let me know if I end up going the wrong way, though."

 

She felt like a child being dragged off to see the elders, K'piru realized, and then forcefully shook her head to send the thought fleeing.

 

He did seem to know where he was going, for the most part, which surprised and unnerved her. How long had he - they - been in Ul'dah, and she hadn't known? K'ailia she had been painfully aware of, but the others... she wondered with a bit of a tremor between her shoulders what she might do if they ran into the mother and daughter pair, but found herself utterly incapable of even considering the possibility.

 

She let K'ile take perhaps a longer route than she would have usually done, perhaps out of some undercurrent of dread towards whatever waited for them at the Quicksand, in her room, but they arrived eventually. The main tavern area was over-loud at noontime, packed with regulars and armor-wrapped adventurers. The former drank and chatted loudly with one another; the latter gathered in small groups near a desk arrayed with strange cards. K'piru had never thought to wonder what those cards were for; it seemed far too dangerous stuff.

 

When they reached the back halls, she felt herself droop with some relief as the swinging door shut and muffled much of the noise from the tavern. Her own room was down one hall to the right, but she hesitated before leading him there, catching a strange mess of broken wood scattered across the floor in the opposite hall.

 

She blinked at it, unsettled, for several seconds and couldn't help but think of the doll still lingering in her own room, of Miss Loughree and Megiddo, before shivering and gesturing to the right. "It's... ah, this way," she muttered, still half-eyeing the mess that suggested some rather significant destruction.

 

K'ile, too, was distracted by the pile of battered wood, but for a different reason. Even from this distance, with the haze of food and alcohol and filthy Ul'dahns thick in the air, K'ile could smell K'luha's scent about that wood. Pulling his hand from K'piru's he said, "I need to look into this."

 

It was an unpleasant thing for him to say. He'd abandoned K'luha in Thanalan to get away from her. She should've stayed witht he tribe. He should've had this time just for K'piru. And yet here, in the inn, she was inserted into the situation. He could tell by the coolness of the scent that she wasn't present, but he could also tell that she had not left happily. He had spent enough time around Luha to smell the difference.

 

Five years ago he would have ignored it and clung to K'piru's had, dragged her off to her room, stolen time with her. But five years ago he hadn't trusted her, and he hadn't cared about anyone else. If had been anyone other than Kluha, he may still ahve ignored it.

 

Even so, as he left K'piru and trotted over to the pile of wrecked wood, every step he took away from K'piru felt like he was putting malms of dark desert between them. He bit down on his nausea and focused his gaze.

 

"Seven hells," he muttered, looking into the room. It seemed to have been ransacked, but the only people he smelt were K'luha and K'ailia, and a whole lot of anger. He smacked the doorframe and hissed, "Damn you, K'ailia! What did you do?"

 

As K'ile walked over to what she could now tell was a ruined door, K'piru brought her arms to herself. The divergence of his attention should have filled her with relief, and a small whisper from a place of dark sand and flame told her to retreat to her room and lock him out, to let things go before she started considering other, unwise things.

 

She'd taken a soft step backwards before she realized what she was doing and then froze. Blinking behind lenses smudged from her earlier fit, K'piru found that icey vice locking down on her joints once more. Behind her, there was solitary escape, but there in the hall, was K'ile. Family.

 

Wait, K'ailia?

 

Green eyes widening, K'piru took another step backwards, watching K'ile as though he were on the opposite side of a crevice. K'ailia had... "What is wrong?"

 

 "They're fighting again," K'ile uttered, voice strained with frustration. He turned away from the room, walking back down the hallway towards K'piru. In his gut, bitterness boiled. He'd finally found K'piru and this was happening, now. Why couldn't K'ailia had just left K'luha alone? Why couldn't K'luha have just accepted things? Their relationship was violently ill.

 

"K'luha's hip is broken. She shouldn't even be standing, let alone getting in fights with her daughter and running off." With exceptional distaste, he said, "I need to find her before she hurts herself even more."

 

He stopped walking near K'piru, and sighed heavily. He was looking at the wall, but his displeasure was evident on his face.

 

There it was: that desperate need to turn and run. Her room, her sanctuary, was mere seconds away, and with him so distracted, she didn't think K'ile would follow. For several seconds, she didn't speak and hardly breathed.

 

She didn't want to deal with the tribe and its problems, not when she could barely deal with just K'ile, but... K'luha was hurt. Badly. Her hands shook and she pushed them against her arms in a futile effort to still them. "I..." A broken hip. She could handle a broken hip. She wouldn't even have to... "... I will help."

 

Turning his head towards K'piru hesitantly, K'ile looked the ex-shaman over. Her body-language was unmistakable, even to him. He could feel her trying to pull away from him, just like she had in the desert five years ago. He hadn't forced her to stay then, and he wouldn't now, as much as it made his already-nauseous gut churn to think about it.

 

He reached out and put a hand on her arm. "Are you sure?"

 

Her features tense, she forced out a short, "Yes." If she thought too much on it, she was sure to change her mind, to run and hide and try once more to forget everything about them. But with K'luha /hurt/... it changed everything.

 

"Thank you," K'ile said, and wrapped K'piru up in a suddenly tight hug. He kissed the side of her head without thought, well below the ears atop her head, and avoided acknowledging the gesture. He spun out of the hug quickly, claiming her hand with his own once again to lead her back into the tavern portion of the Quicksand.

 

Over the rush of voices and scents that assaulted him the moment he opened the door, he said, "Luha's been refusing magical healing, and she won't rest either. Her hip's just been getting worse for the past couple of weeks."

 

Feeling dizzy with thought and emotion, K'piru did her best to keep up, and to focus on the problem she had allowed to drive this decision. As they moved into the open tavern, she kept her gaze inward, hardly paying attention to where K'ile was leading her. A broken hip, at least weeks old. That alone did not bode well for K'luha, and she tightened her jaw."If... the break has not been allowed to set... a poison could enter her blood."

 

"You're saying she's going to get herself killed," K'ile responded. "I'll take the blame from Azeyma if that happens. I should've been firmer with those two!"

 

He brought her out of the tavern quickly. Picking out K'luha's scent was easy for him even in this crowded part of the city. He'd been spending so much time with Luha, fretting so much over her body and emotions and what the woman wanted from him, that he'd become even more familiar with her scent than K'piru's. Though he guessed it fit. He had gotten to know K'luha so well, and K'piru he barely even knew anymore.

 

He noticed the paths of K'ailia and K'luha had diverged quickly outside of the Quicksand, K'ailia heading off towards the markets and K'luha going towards... the gate? "Twelve damn that woman if she left the city like this."

 

She followed his gaze, expression tightly closed off and distant, and said only, "She will not have gone far."

 

"The way you say that worries me," K'ile said, and his hand tightened around K'piru's in an external display of the concern that he'd voiced. He tried not to walk uncomfortably fast for K'piru, since they were connected at their digits, but he couldn't stop the air of hurry about him. The closer they got to the gates, the more sure he was that the fool woman had fled the city.

 

When they stepped out of the gate, the smells of Ul'dah began to recede, and K'luha's scent stuck out like lightning hanging in the sky. It gave him one more reason to feel sick, and his limbs were beginning to feel numb. K'luha was supposed to be smart enough to take care of herself. That was the entire reason K'ile had been able to commit himself to finding K'piru. Had he misjudged that? Had he misread the woman?

 

Perhaps he had. The fear in his chest was thick, bubbling with familiar desperation.

 

At any other time, the sprawling, open desert before them might have put K'piru at ease, a welcome relief to cramped walls and crowds. So close to Ul'dah, however, even outside its main walls, there still lingered the stifling smells of poverty and sickness and too many people clustered into one location. And of course there was the awareness of who K'ile was leading her towards.

 

K'piru did not speak further as they moved, and her fingers shook around K'ile's grip.

[LandStander]

((Gets buried under the wall of text, never to be heard from again. That title is completely misleading!))

[Naunet]

((The title is totally a reference to K'ile's stamina. It's a game of find the erp! Totally.

 

I mean.

 

I make no apologies!))

[Twinflame]

((You mean you couldn't read all that in two minutes? It only took us two minutes to write!

 

... Or not. Also wtf Nau stahp ))

[Illira]

((This makes me want RP: . It also reminds me that Anti is supposed to be sending reports to Illira. Has she ICly been doing that? If not it could totally be an excuse for her to go to Ul'dah to figure out whats been going down in radio silence!))

[Naunet]

Anti is supposed to be sending reports to Illira. Has she ICly been doing that?

 

((Ehehehe... *shifty eyes*

 

She's got some 'splainin' to do. She is indeed late with her agreed-upon report schedule.))

[Twinflame]

K'luha Haaz: The sun was still hot, but it was better beneath the overhang of a thick rock. Hidden away in the shade, she was almost unnoticable. had she not spent her life in the Sagolii, the long time with her bare back to the sun might have burnt her. Her hip was an entirely different matter however, and the more the numbness of her body faded the more painful it grew until it felt like it was going to engulf her completely. 

 

After the first two laying where she had fallen, her mind had suddenly raced back to Tahj. Who would care for her if K'luha died? Somehow it spurred her to crawl across the desert's floor, each little movement causing more pain than the last, until she had finally made it under the rock for shelter. It had probably been five or six hours since he fight with K'ailia and Ul'dah still loomed ominously in the distance. While she could see the city's massive shape, she couldn't make out any details so she knew she had run a decent ways away. 

 

Perhaps too far. She was in too much pain to concentrate properly on using Aether or an Aetheryte, and too far off the road to solicite help from anyway. Grasping roughly for handfuls of sand, K'luha didn't notice her own body shivering while she tried to think of a plan.

 

*

 

Twinflame: Dragging K'piru across the sand had been a strangely nostalgic experience for K'ile, even though he couldn't remember ever having done so before. It had always been K'thalen who would pull K'piru after him, K'ile only rarely trotting alongside. The movement had at first made the silence natural, but as time stretched on and they still hadn't caught up to Luha, his mind wandered and the pressure of K'piru's hand in his own grew warm.

 

It wasn't that he didn't have anything to say to K'piru, or that it would be difficult to begin, since he had her out here all alone anyway. But he was just so afraid to say the wrong thing and send her fleeing back into anonymity again.

 

He was also burdened by his concern for K'luha, but that had become a static simmering in the back of his head, easily compartmentalized. Occasionally a pang of fear would break through, when he thought they were close, and K'ile would worry that the woman had fallen into a ditch or run into a predator. He would remember the way she'd screamed when the wolves had gotten her back in Thanalan.

 

But as her scent aged, the fear would recede. For a woman with a broken hip, she'd made a hell of a run. K'ile was beginning to wonder if she figured out how to fly when finally the scent of the woman grew strong and did not fade.

 

"She's close," he said to K'piru, his hand tightening around hers. He'd grown sweaty in the sun, his palm turning clammy, but he hadn't let go of the woman's hand. Doing so strangely unthinkable. K'ile slowed their pace to a quick walk, searching the earth for clues of movement, and called out, "Luha!"

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): The pace K'ile had set was difficult for K'piru. Though she had traveled with some regularity for past work, it was generally on the back of a chocobo or a cart, only occasionally on foot, and even throughout her life with the tribe, she had never reached the physical endurance of the hunters. Still, she clung to the tia's hand and managed to keep alongside him.

 

The physical exertion kept her thoughts from dwelling on the painful reminders that seemed ever constant with the scent and presence of family, shadows that might have sent her fleeing once more in the opposite direction if she allowed them too much space.

 

That K'piru didn't respond when K'ile began calling for K'luha was both an artifact of her internal distraction, as well as her lack of available breath.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: There was a distant call. K'luha's ears flickered upwards to listen more closely. Something was calling her name. Something... or someone. Was it K'ailia? Come to say more cruel words and hurt her mother further? It seemed to be her favored activity these days. K'luha remained silent and close to the ground, her form shadowed and hidden fairly well beneath that rock. A rock that K'ile and K'piru weren't far off from. 

 

It took K'luha some time before she actually recognized the voice, but even then she didn't believe it. K'ailia had said K'ile was in Ul'dah, but then why would be he out here looking for her? He had left her on her face on the floor before, K'luha thought spitefully. Her temper boiled the more she heard his voice and she wanted to hurl the rock she was hiding under at him. No, she did not want K'ile to find her. If he was going to abandon and lie to her, she wasn't going to be fooled a second time.

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile tracked K'luha's scent to strange marks in the dirt, Unlike the Sagolii sands, Thalan dirt was thick and heavy, with dark soil just beneath a thin layer of red dirt. He could see where K'luha had lingered, knocking a great deal of dirt aside. There were lines from fingers out to one side, the snake-like lines of a tail moving against the ground. Had she fallen?

 

It looked like she'd dragged herself over...

 

There. K'ile's ears stood up and don't that way as his gaze searched the shadowed rocks, and then his ears went flat against his hed hair. He muttered in frustration, "Luha, you..." nad pulled on the leather harness about his chest before he stood and pulled K'piru towards the rocks. "K'luha!" She had herself hidden well, as though she were playing a game.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): K'piru's fingers flexed around K'ile's hand, the warmth that had built there suddenly going cold as ice as he moved them both towards the rocks. Her gaze locked forward on the shadows there, but she could only look through them blankly, suddenly terrified of even laying eyes on K'luha's form. She wanted to tear her hand from K'ile's and bolt, but her legs continued to follow him of their own volition.

 

Her breath came in short bursts through her nose as they neared and then stilled entirely when her eyes caught sight of the limp curve of a blonde tail and one foot poking out from behind a rough wall of stone. Her legs, too, stopped.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha still said nothing. She could smell them now they were so close... but they? There was definetely someone with K'ile. And it wasn't K'ailia. Someone else... someone that smelled of the city. Of Ul'dah. 

 

She did not want to meet K'ile or whomever he had brought with him. Whomever was so important that he would lie and abandon her on her face in the desert was not someone K'luha wanted to ever see. Maybe she deserted that. Maybe she deserted to be dropped in the desert and abandoned, but Tahj? He had abandoned Tahj too. He wasn't there for her arrival. He wasn't there for Tahj. And Tahj had never done him any wrong. She did not deserve it.

 

*

 

Twinflame: The Tia pulled the ex-shaman around the stone, clambering carefully and making sure not to outpace K'piru. When he could finally see K'luha's form laying on the stone, could see the woman's face, he said, "Don't hide from me, Luha."

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): At some point after spotting the first glimpse of K'luha, K'piru had stopped consciously gripping K'ile's hand, her fingers going limp in his own, and her legs wobbled like jelly as he pulled her across the rocks. When he spoke, calling down to the injured woman, his voice sounded as though very far away, muffled by a heavy, echoing pulsing in her ears. She fell back, would let her hand fall from K'ile's if his grip allowed it, and found herself entirely incapable of looking towards the other woman, though she could practically smell her pain.

 

In her head, someone screamed.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha felt her stomach tense as she was spotted. It wasn't like she could run anyway. Although she wanted to. Less like run and more like beat the shit out of K'ile. Don't hide he said... and why wouldn't she? 

 

She couldn't look towards K'ile and whoever it was. 

 

"You lied to me." She hissed with a malice and anger in her voice that was rarely used.

 

*

 

Twinflame: When K'piru pulled against him, K'ile's hand instinctively tightened. He barely noticed her restraint, though, reachting as though she'd simply lost her balance and he was helping her maintain it. His attention was turned all towards Luha, and he continued towards her, closing the distance until her could crouch in front of her, "What about? I'm sorry. What are you doing out here?"

 

*

 

 

Antimony (K'piru): Only K'ile's strength kept K'piru moving forward - literally, as he all but dragged her across the rocks, her legs stumbling to keep her upright as her body refused to actively partake in moving her towards K'luha. Her scent was different from K'ile's but still innately familiar and, above all, a recaller of fire and ash and death. K'piru made a choking sound in the back of her throat and tried desperately to wrest her thoughts back from that brink of panic.

 

K'luha was hurt. Her own fears did not matter until K'luha was safe.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: About what? He was so goddamn oblivious. His stupidity burned angrily in Luha's throat until she finally turned her head to look at him. He was fine. Not a damn scratch on him. Perfectly, and utterly, in perfect health. 

 

"You LIED to me." K'luha's voice raised in fury, her tone really empahsising the severity of the transgression. "You said you would come back in the morning. Then you said you would meet us at Drybone. You LIED to me. You LIED to Tahj! Maybe I desered the sleepless nights, the sickening worry. You didn't even take your fucking lance. Tahj didn't deserve that. She deserved to have you home and showing her around. She deserved to have you there with her while I had to come back to this shithole to deal with my cruel daughter. But you fucking LIED to me! To her! What was so important you had to lie? What was so terrible you couldn't have just told me? Did you think I was going to say no? Did you think I was going to make fun of you!? Why didn't you trust me!? Why did you LIE TO ME!?" K'luha fumed furiously, torn between shaking anger and pain.

 

*

 

Twinflame: So from the get go K'ile was absolutely convinced that there was no way in hell to answer that question honestly and live. At least not without letting K'piru in on thoughts and feelings that would send her into a whole so deep she'd probably have a phobia of red hair and blue eyes for the rest of her life.

 

It wasn't that he de didn't think K'luha deserved the truth. It was just... K'piru...

 

"Because I'm a liar," he said. "So just hate me. I won't argue. You can stab me in the neck when we're done. But first you need to let K'piru help you." K'ile looked up at the woman behind him.

 

His senses were so full of the scent of K'luha's anger that he hadn't noticed K'piru's fear until he looked back at her. Usually K'piru was at the top of his priority list, the head of his attention. K'luha was encroaching on that territory. Maybe K'ile shouldn't have brought K'piru. Maybe the shaman was already renewing her decision that she didn't want anything to do with him, with them.

 

But then, "K'piru. Don't let her scare you. She's hurting more than she shows."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha was ready to strangle him. Because he was a liar? That wasn't a goddamn answer. That was him trying to get out of the damn question. She had no words for a moment, only a loud and furious hiss towards K'ile... until he distracted her with the mention of K'piru. 

 

She blinked for a moment. K'piru? She was... alive? And well? And here!? 

 

K'luha brightened for a moment. They were just... reuniting with all sorts of lost family and it was... Luha was happy about it. She wanted them to come home sometimes. To feel welcome at home. She wanted to be able to see him when she went out of the tribe. Maybe if it was like that she and K'ailia could get along... but K'ailia was cruel to her. Judgemental. Her son wouldn't have been like that. If only... But she was getting distracted from the real issue here.

 

"K'piru!?" K'luha questioned, pulling herself forward and poking her head out from her hiding place to look for the shaman. She didn't sound angry, but rather somehow excited at the prospect of seeing her aunt.

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile looked back to K'luha solemnly, pulling K'piru forward and taking the shaman's hand in two of his own.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): She couldn't handle this. She didn't know why she had thought she could. K'luha's face peeked out from around the rock, and the sight of it nearly ruined K'piru. The other woman's mouth moved, but she could not hear her voice, could hear only the screams of the dying, the burning.

 

A weight on her hand dragged her forward, closer, and her gaze dropped from K'luha's face to some vague point in the sand next to her. With an internally violent effort, she brought down iron walls between her thoughts and the memories and grief stirred by the presence of family, and stepped forward. She did not listen to the screams of her daughters, nor did she watch the flesh of her nunh where K'luha's would have been. Expression blank, she held out a hand towards K'luha's hip, as though gesturing towards it, and spoke flatly, "I need to see it. You're ill."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'piru looked... well it was her surely. She looked a little older and decidedly sick. K'luha slinked back a bit, wondering why it was that K'piru looked so sick. Was it her? Was this what K'ile abandoned her and Tahj for? It wouldn't be the first time, she thought bitterly. She loved her aunt dearly, but both her aunt and K'ile had shut her out painfully and frigidly after the Calamity. 

 

"K'piru..." K'luha called softly, worriedly. "It's... good to see you after all these years..." Maybe that would put her more at ease? K'luha wasn't sure what would help, but K'piru could not hide the fact from K'luha that she seemed to be shattering into a million pieces.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): "The wound will leak into your blood if you do not allow me to do something," K'piru elaborated, voice quiet and detached.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: Why was she...? K'luha slunk back beneath the rock. It was so nice to see her but... there was such a frigid feeling there. Like K'piru couldn't stand to look at her. Why had K'ile forced her out here in the first place? Had he just run into her? Or had he gone looking for her? K'luha couldn't help but feel that frigid air return, just as she had felt it when K'ile returned after the Calamity. 

 

"It fine... I can see you're not well K'piru. I'm sorry K'ile dragged you out here when you didn't want to see me." K'luha closed her eyes and turned her head away. This wasn't at all how she imagined... not that she had ever really imagined it. "Go ahead and go back to spend your time together." This is what K'luha assumed they were doing before whatever brought them out here. "K'ile left me with a broken hip on my one once. I assume he has no problem doing it again." This was said a bit spitefully towards K'ile but she managed to stay with a rather passive tone of voice.

 

*

 

Twinflame: "You were supposed to go back to the tribe and get it taken care of!" K'ile snapped, letting go of K'piru and reaching out to take K'luha by the arm, refusing to let the woman retreat. "You know, I'm sorry if it's inconvenient for you and you don't want to bother anyone, but you don't get to hide in a fucking hole and die! I'm tired of people doing this shit. Especially you." K'ile was not kind about grabbing pulling K'luha out of the hole. She already hated him and she was already in pain. She didn't get to hate him to death just because she was sad.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: "And you were supposed to meet me in the morning!" K'luha snapped back, her fury regained almost instantly. She wanted not to give him the satisfaction of know how much pain she was in, but the rough way he yanked her from beneath the rock sent her entire body racking with intense pain. K'luha screamed and tried to pull her arm back, her whole body shaking violently from the intense pain. Luha was a strong woman. One that did not cry often to pain, but this was not something she could hold back. Blubbering for a few moments with tears and shaking, she was unable to throw any sort of anger back at K'ile while she drowned in pain.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): For a long moment after K'ile dropped her hand that felt more akin to a breathless eternity to K'piru, she wavered amidst the stones. The pungent, salty scent of Luha's pain served as a focal point in the chaos of her own panic, and she moved forward, dropping to the ground alongside the other woman. Her hands reached out, one resting firmly on K'luha's side, the other feeling gently at her hip.

 

There was no time or sense for ceremony here. Shaking fingers made to pull the other woman's waistband aside so that she could see the injured area below, all the while her features remained taught and blank. She did not reply to K'luha's words.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha had almost recovered enough to think again by the time she realized K'piru was kneeling next to her. This felt a little familiar, as it was K'piru who helped deliver both her children. Although, this pain was probably far more intense. When K'piru touched it even gently, K'luha screeched again and tried to squirm away from the woman. 

 

Her brain couldn't even make sense of anything but the excruiating pain that seemed to rack her every muscle and force them to contract pinfully. It was probably lucky for K'luha that she had pretty much run out of her room in a pair of pantlettes and a camise. Mostly now that K'piru was moving it, there wasn't a lot of fabric to move or irritate the sight further. Although it was surely a completely mess to look at. What had started to heal had been completely broken through now, and what had been a fracture was now a clean break with bone pressing at the skin and tearing it parcially open. 

 

Luha cried loudly, still trying to crawl away from K'piru's touch. She wasn't sure what she was screaming, but she thought it might be something like 'No, please dont touch it. Leave me alone.'

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile pulled K'luha to him, in what was a familiar gesture. But this was very different. On his knees, he pulled K'luha's shoulders onto lap. This time he took her arms and held them, tried to cross them over her chest so she couldn't get away or struggle. "I'm sorry, K'luha, but K'piru said you might die. You can't do that. What would Tahj and I do?"

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): The body beneath her hands twisted and writhed, a sand-colored worm of desperation. K'piru blinked at the exposed skin, its surface distended at an unnatural point, the flesh painted dark, sickly colors and surrounded by an angry red heat. The body made noises, in protest, but K'piru's hands remained certain on its form.

 

Broken, K'piru could tell, but as she extended her senses - first tenatively, weakly, as though afraid of some unknown backlash - towards the thin lines of the body's aether, K'piru found there was more to the story. About the bone the energy had pooled in an ugly mess, a solid, unyielding knot as though it had tried to protect itself. Scar tissue, barely formed. The wound was old, had begun to heal, but something had made it much worse since.

 

Outside this clinical awareness, K'piru felt faint, the screams pressed in and swayed briefly over K'luha's form before regaining herself. "I cannot treat it here," she murmured, hands hovering over the shuddering, agonized body. "In my room there is... I may be able to draw out some of the poison."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha struggled again K'ile, finding some comfort in his touch and at the same time not wanting to. She wanted to push him off and kick his stupid head in. How dare he try to toch her after he had lied to her. How dare he try and act like she mattered when he lied and walked away from her for over two weeks. As if he really gave a fuck if she died. She could have died where he left her from that fall. But K'ile didn't care, of this K'luha was obessively convinced. No one would have cared if she died. In fact, they all would have been happier. 

 

"Liar." K'luha hissed hysterically at K'ile. "You LIED to me and dissappeared for over two weeks. You don't care. Everyone would be better off if I had just been exiled and Maka had stayed. Maka didn't raise a spoilt brat who doesn't care about her people. She didn't raise that girl to become a cruel outsider. Tahj is a good girl. And K'ailia would have been if Maka raised her. K'ailia is so cruel to me... and she doesn't even care how she hurts. She chose to walk away. I could have handled if she died, but she walked away on her own choice. It's so much worse than any death. You don't choose death. But to just walk away after all the suffering and sacrafices we made... I made... and just... not care about it... about me? I can't...." K'luha was still shaking, although for the time being she had stopped squirming. It all hurt to much. 

 

"Just leave me in the damn desert again. Just drop me on the floor again and walk away for another two fucking weeks K'ile. I w-want to be with my son. I never got to hold him long enough... I want to hold him again... my son..." Burning hot tears of shame leaked now, and though they weren't actually any different from normal tears, they felt like they burned her eyes when she cried them.

 

*

 

Twinflame: Keepling Luha pinned in place, K'ile gave K'piru an empathetic look. "I think Luha's beyond reason at this point, and I don't think she's going to be doing any walking, either." He looked down at Luha and said, "I can carry you, but you need to let me. Don't struggle or you'll hurt yourself."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: Luha remained pitifully crying for a few long moments before she gathered enough of herself to look up at the messy head or oranges and reds that was K'ile. The idea of hurting herself seemed somehow funny in her hysteria and delirium. For a moment she thought she had freed herself and slit open her wrists, and was rather surprised when she looked at her wrists and found them fine. 

 

"You lied to me." Luha repeated, still fiercely directed at K'ile. "Just shut me out and leave me behind like you always do. No one cares anymore. I don't even care anymore. I want to be with my son." K'luha seemed to go limp with her last breathy declaration but her eyes were still open, staring at the sand like she was looking at her son.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): K'luha's words reached K'piru's ears distantly, and though she tried desperately to keep her focus and energy on examining the woman's wound and /not/ on the person inside the body beneath her hands, the voice still slipped past her walls to ghost through her thoughts.

 

She recoiled from the woman in the sand then, her own tail curling against her leg through her clothes. K'luha's words sounded with a chilling familiarity that shook an icey dread down to the base of her spine. Closing her eyes, she saw dunes shadowed by an unnatural night, felt rough fingers wrapped about her arm, her body, restraining her, holding her back. She recalled how she had wanted to throw herself to the sands, let the pitiless gaze of Azeyma decide her fate, if the goddess even cared to look.

 

"Take her," K'piru muttered weakly, staggering to her feet with one hand curling against her head. "Take her to my room."

 

*

 

Twinflame: The Tia nodded somberly, the red hair atop his head shivering like fire in the wind. "I'll try not to hurt you, Luha," he said, and lifted her shoulders up by his own, lay her head against his head. He put one arm under her legs, another behind her back and under her shoulder, wrapping her and holding her to him and hoping he could keep the weight on the 'good' side of her hips.

 

He lifted her up and said to K'piru, "Let's go."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: "You already hurt me more than you can ever know." K'luha replied icly, grasping at the sands like it might hold her in place when K'ile tried to pick her up. Not that it did. She just ended up with hands full of nothing as he picked her up. K'luha screeched at the movement, her body shaking again in pain. Any movement at all felt like her spine was being ripped out. 

 

Luha was torn between throwing herself to hug K'ile and ripping his eyes out, and flailed painfully between hugging him to snarling and scratching at his face. All the while screeching unintellible things that occasionally came to phrases like, 'You lied' and 'You're just like K'yohko' and 'Give me my son back'.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): Turning away from both K'luha and K'ile came blessedly easy for Antimony, her eyes moving up to take in the silhouette of Ul'dah rather than the twisted, broken form in K'ile's arms. She said nothing further, only began to walk slowly back towards the city.

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile didn't resist K'luha's thrashing any more than he had to in order to hold her still, and didn't protest more than to say, "Stop it, Luha. Everything's all right," in a rather tired voice. He turned his face away from K'luha when she reached for his face, often ducking his head behind hers. He just held her and followed behind K'piru.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha couldn't understand it. Especially with how little K'ile seemed to care about her pain. She wasn't talking about the physical pain either. That was something she could deal with. But why was it everyone simply didn't care about her mental anguish? Or perhaps, she just cared too much.

 

Eventually K'luha quieted down to simply covering her face with her hands and choking on her own sobs whenever K'ile moved too much and her hip felt like it was breaking in two and then being jamed in opposite directions.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): As they passed from open desert to refugee outskirts to the busy, dirty streets of Ul'dah itself, K'luha's scent - the pain and sweat and home of it - stayed present in Antimony's senses even as rot and disease stink pressed in with the other myriad smells of civilization. She did not pause to see if K'ile followed; she didn't need to with their scents so close by, though she wasn't certain she would have waited if they hadn't.

 

She hastened her steps, though not by much, and immediately felt guilty about the unconscious desire to lose them in the chaos of the streets.

 

The Quicksand, with its broad archways and curving walls, rose into view far quicker than it had seemed to take to get to K'luha, and Antimony hardly noticed as she passed through a side door into the main tavern. A few patrons turned with curious looks, but she did not notice those either. Again she tried to keep her mind focused on the pressing, physical issue: K'luha's hip and the infection brooding within it.

 

Not long later, she slipped into the back halls, past the turn with its ruined door, and arrived at her own room. The simple furnishings and empty walls, which had grown familiar over the weeks she'd spent in Ul'dah, seemed suddenly almost threatening as she stepped inside, leaving the door open behind her. There were not many signs of occupancy here, save for on the circular table at the foot of the bed, where papers piled in a wild mess, untended for days. Her tail shivered along with her hands as she stepped to the bed and stooped to collect a small box.

 

She had spoke not a word during this brief journey, and continued to move in silence even after entering her room. Speaking even once more threatened to shatter the fragile composure she'd gathered.

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile walked in silence and permitted himself no deep or comlicated thoughts about the woman in his arms or the many things that she seemed to hold against him. The rightness and the wrongness of her various accusations were as evident as her weight upon his arms and the rigidness her pain evoked in her body.

 

He concentrated on the sense and warmth of K'luha, the way the muscle's of her back and arm felt on his skin. The way her tail haung against his hip. This while he watched K'piru walk stiffly ahead of them, her gray-brown tail swinging back and forth with an occasional shiver to to it. He watched the lilt of her ears. He watched the small number of unkempt hairs that lay over the back of her neck, stuck there by sweat.

 

It was a long time after K'piru had initially invited him back to her room. Now he finally arrived, but K'luha had robbed all of the comfort from what would have been a preciously rare moment. K'piru, who had once left him so far in the dark, had invited him in. But he hadn't been able to come without K'luha. Despite his attempts to leave K'luha, he couldn't.

 

Placing K'luha on K'piru's bed was natural and yet strangely repulsive. The latter was not a feeling he wanted to own, and so he spat it out with the words, "Here we go, Luha. We're going to take care of you."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: There were many raging voices in K'luha's head. In one way, she felt the same coldness K'ile and K'piru had displayed towards her before. She had never forgotten that they completely disregarded her in the wake of the Calamity, but for some reason she had thought K'ile had moved past it. In a way, she had to admit he had because she was here in the first place. Maybe he would have ignored her before. But then again, he had lied to her and abandoned her which had helped cause this problem in the first place.

 

And K'luha was glad to see K'piru, truly she was but... her once favored aunt was so cold and disgusted by K'luha that it was hard not to feel hated. She didn't know what she had done to earn such hatred or disgust, and the only thin she could think was that K'piru was mad that K'ile had dragged her to help in the first place. 

 

She felt disgusting. Her stomach coiled and flipped in her chest until she could not speak. K'luha had to close her mouth tightly, else she was afraid to vomit her own stomach out.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): There was not much she could do here, Antimony thought dimly, ignoring the shuddering panic of K'piru roiling at the back of her mind. The box sat open in her lap to reveal a small collection of herbs and ointments, and a thin, carved, humanoid figure. The latter she took in one hand distractedly.

 

She was ill-prepared to deal with an injury as drastic as this one. Even pulling on what minor magics she knew, her best hope was to focus on drawing out the infection. Her ears flicked back, listening to the pained shifting of K'luha on the bed, and closed her eyes tightly for several seconds.

 

It is not K'luha, she told herself, ignoring the scent of the woman that mingled with K'ile's and persisted in sending her memories spiralling. It is an injured woman, whom you can help.

 

Feeling faint, Antimony stood and moved to the other woman's side. She kept her eyes on the weakly writhing body as one hand plucked a few strands of hair from its head, which she tied firmly about the figure in her hand before pressing the figure into the other woman's own hand, forcibly wrapping fingers about it. "Hold," she intoned lowly, and her voice shook but she didn't allow herself to spare that a thought.

 

Instead she took her attention to the hip and began to move the body on the bed in such a way that the spine and pelvis would straighten. She had not done anything of this sort in years, but the unyielding yet gentle touch came back with little effort. /Just a stranger who needs help./ One of the ointments she took from the box and, after pulling down the thin cloth of the woman's clothes, she began to slowly rub it into the skin. The air quickly filled with a sharp, pungent aroma, almost bitter. She needed ice, she thought, but there was no way she would get such a thing here. Instead, put her hands to cracked bone and battered flesh and called on things she had violently disavowed five years past.

 

*

 

Twinflame: Having taken up a stance a meter or two from the bed, K'ile's primary senses were still blunted by the strength of the odor exuded by K'piru's medicine. It was like someone shining a light in his eyes, and he put his hand over his nose in a futile gesture. He didn't need his sense of smell to know how K'luha felt, but for K'piru, things were a bit less certain. The once-shaman was enigma, and she could be feeling or thinking anything. It was strange to see her at work as a healer again.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): The words that pushed through Antimony's throat came slow at first, reluctant and half-remembered. She faltered, as did her hands on the vibrantly bruised hip, at the thought that she had become a hypocrite, that even as she spoke Azeyma's name and murmured words of succor over and over again, she did not expect the so-called Warden to grant it.

 

The utilitarian in her silenced those thoughts as viciously as she had thrust aside her faith in the face of fire and death. Now was not the time for doubt.

 

Bending low over the form, strands of hair hanging into her vision, Antimony's awareness shrunk to only her hands, the flesh beneath them, and the bright, tortured lines of aether contorting their broken paths through the body she sought to heal. After the first ten minutes, she did not even think of the words she spoke; they tumbled from her lips with a trance-like steadiness. One hand moved without looking to grip K'luha's, which held the carved figure. She spoke its name in her thoughts and words, and with that name it gained a lure.

 

The angry, broken aether in K'luha's body stirred and, like a river, began to bend and pull away down a path of least resistance. Very deliberately, Antimony guided it, called on it, cajoled and dragged it out of where it should not be.

 

When the rhythmic, whispered chanting finally faded, so too had the ointment's bitter odor, along with the heat that had built dangerously between bone and blood and flesh. Antimony's body sagged, a low, shuddering exhale sapping strength from her posture as her hands fell away. Her vision blurred and she felt herself slip down until she was leaning against the edge of the bed, on her knees. She could not recall these rituals draining her in such a way, but then, she had never performed them with so little reagent, nor with so little faith. Breathing unsteadily, Antimony rested.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha had no real say over what was happening anymore. She couldn't fight back. She couldn't protest. She could do nothing but be a burden and stand between K'ile and K'piru's reunion. Her mind wandered back to older times, when this sort of thing had happened before. All of the times K'piru had held her hand and helped her heal, and there had been many. And she could remember Piru's face when she woke up from her coma. And again her face when she bore her first child, then lost it, then a second. All she had ever tried to be there for K'piru and failed. All the times she had tired to be there for K'ile too, and failed. And K'ailia too. 

 

More than anything, K'luha wished she could just stop thinking. She was tired of feeling like a burden to everyone and everything. And yet being a burden was all she had ever known how to be in a relationship. Was Piru so disgusted with her now that her aunt could hardly stand to look at her? Maybe K'luha had thought poorly of Piru when she first left, but it was out of sadness more than any real anger. She was terribly sad that she lost her aunt. Everytime she had ever been angry it was because she was hiding a sadness. 

 

There was a discomfort and a comfort the ritual held. It was something that had been done similarly before, which was far more comfortable than any sort of Gridanian healing. Yet all those thoughts of being a burden and Piru's apparent distate for Luha made her unplausibly sad. Why wouldn't K'ile trust her? Why wouldn't Piru? And for that matter, why did K'ailia not understand her mother's sadness? 

 

K'luha made no noise, but staired emptily at the ceiling and let tears fall down her face; a newfound sadness plaguing her. A sadness that came with the loss of what she had thought to be her close knit family.

 

*

 

Twinflame: There wasn't a great deal of comfort in these caves that the Ul'dahn's called rooms. K'ile crouched against the wall opposite the bed where K'luha and K'piru were, watching the healing. He mostly watched K'piru's hands, her lips move with words K'ile found distant and strange. He noticed the movement of the shaman's gray ears and tail, the lean of her head, the set of her shoulders and hips.

 

He did not fail to notice K'luh's tears, but he did not watch them either. He did fail to notice anything about himself, for there was nothing about himself. K'ile Tia was empty of any feelings, and had no thoughts as to his own actions. What he would do with himself depended on those women, as it always had. Those women who he...

 

Well, that was a thought. And the way he took a breath deep enough to strain the limits of his lungs was a feeling. He ignored it, though, like Luha's tears. For now.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): After a few minutes, Antimony shifted, straightening somewhat to lean back from the bed, though she remained on her knees. Unbidden, her eyes shifted to the right, to the profile of a face agonizingly familiar, but this lasted only a moment before her chest clenched, locking her breath in her lungs, and she had to turn away.

 

"She needs more than I... can give her," she spoke after another long pause, during which she smelled a memory of blood and burnt flesh. But no, she was in Ul'dah, and the only smells in the room were the fading bitterness of medicine and those of K'luha and K'ile. "I've taken the poison from her blood, but if it's not... allowed to heal, it will return." Her voice remained quiet, exhausted, directed down towards her lap as though her neck hadn't the strength to keep her head up. "She needs rest."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: For once in her life, K'luha didn't feel the immediate urge to get up and move about. She didn't want to fight against the healing process, nor did she want it to speed up. All she could do was lie still and feel numb and saddened.

 

*

 

Twinflame: The Tia stood and walked over to the bed. He put a hand on K'piru's shoulder, squeezed slightly, he hoped reassuringly. "Thank you. I'll make her rest." He looked over at K'luha and said, "Can you rest for me, Luha?"

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: Finally a word which described her feelings came to mind. Betrayl. Yes, that was the sickening feeling that turned her stomach. Betrayed by K'ailia, and K'ile, and long ago by K'piru. Less K'piru, more K'ailia and K'ile. 

 

Luha turned he head limply towards K'ile, eyes still accuistory but now hollowed with with a deeply hurt look in them. She did not answer, but she did not move either.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): With a long breath, Antimony dragged herself to her feet, then wondered dimly when K'ile had gotten so near. She mumbled something, an excuse of some kind, and stepped around him towards the sink on the opposite wall. Her legs felt weak, and she leaned much of her weight on the metal dish before running the water and splashing it on her face.

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile met K'luha's gaze with an unaffected look. It was not one without feeling. There was concern there. But it was so strictly controlled that it did not vary. It was the same expression he'd been wearing since he'd put her down. He turned his gaze towards K'piru, but watched her half-heartedly.

 

This wasn't right. The feelings between all three of them were wrong. But he couldn't change what they were. He realized that he blamed K'luha for this, and that was prudent. She was being selfish, as usual. But blaming her didn't change anything, and it didn't change how K'ile felt about her or K'piru or anything else.

 

He said to K'piru, "If we got a room for she and I, would it be safe to move her there?"

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): Her ears drooped as she straightened. She could feel a few damp strands of hair sticking to her cheek and forehead, but through the numb exhaustion, she could not bring herself to fix them. Her thoughts answered K'ile's question with a 'yes', echoing that still dominant part of her that wanted to hide. "She shouldn't be moved more than necessary," she said instead.

 

*

 

Twinflame: "Maybe she should stay here for..." K'ile said, thinking over the prposition. K'luha would take more than one night to heal. Did K'piru want her around that long? Did she want her around at all? She'd only just barely agreed to spend more than five minutes with K'ile, and he was sure this hadn't been what she thought she was getting herself in to.

 

So instead he said, "We can figure it out. Maybe use the blanket as a cot." He was still afraid of chasing K'piru off, but maybe it was a bit late for that. If he left now, she might disappear. There was no right answer to this problem! There was no way to make this work!

 

He shook his head in a small display of frustration. "I don't know."

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): Turning back to face the rest of the room, Antimony looked to the wall behind the bed and removed her glasses to dry them distractedly with one sleeve of her dress. This was no different than the night she had readily sacrificed to help Mitari, she told herself, stifling the tremor in her hands by gripping the frame of her glasses harder. The vague blur of the room without the lenses made it easier to ignore the ache of loss in her chest.

 

"I can request an additional pillow and blanket from the front desk, if you wish to stay," she spoke dully. She did not bother wondering where she would sleep; she knew dreams would not be her friend after this.

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile shook his head, "I won't stay unless you ask me too. If you want to get a different room for yourself, I'll stay and take care of Luha."

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): "It is not in my budget." Which, was actually mostly true, but Antimony still wondered why she seemed to be trying to hard to... what? To keep them here? Even though she very much did not want any of the memories or feelings they stirred? There was no sense in that, especially not when even just thinking of the words K'luha had wailed brought old wounds festering to the surface. She closed her eyes, hugged herself.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: It was blatantly obvious she was in the way. And that K'piru wanted her anywhere but here now. And so K'luha finally spoke up.

 

"I can't move." She sighed loudly, hoping to draw both their attentions. "If you just put me somewhere it's not like I need taking care of. I'll just lay there. I'm sure you could throw me in a different room. Or with some help I could just Aetheryte to somewhere else if arrangements were made."

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile ignored K'luha, hearing her words and choosing not to respond to them. He repeated to K'piru, "I won't stay unless you ask me to." The statement felt so heavy in his mouth that they might have knocked him over, but he did not so much as sway on his feet.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: Really? What was even the point of going out of their way to save her when they were just going to ignore her? How was this suddenly all her fault? Wasn't K'ile the one in the wrong here? He was the one who abandoned her with no word! Why was this... suddenly all her fault? 

 

K'luha gripped her hands into tight fists. She wanted to rip her stupid leg off and beat K'ile and K'piru to death with it out of sheer spite.

[12:40:40 AM] Antimony (K'piru): "You aren't going anywhere for the time being, so lie still," Antimony spoke suddenly, and with an only half-realized, unbidden vehemence at K'luha. No sooner had she let loose the words did she shrink back, looking away from the woman only to find her eyes on K'ile. She blinked at him for a second as though seeing him for the first time, and then looked hurriedly away.

 

Her head ached with a conflict of interest and need, and in the moments following her words the inn room felt very, very small. "I will--" her words cut off and she forced shaking hands to replace her glasses, the world once again slipping into focus. The physical world, at least. Her mouth opened again, and in the span of a second, she tried to say a million different things. When that failed, she tried to do another million, but even with the door so close as to be only a few short steps away from freedom, Antimony froze.

 

She recalled loneliness. She recalled nightmare.

 

"... Stay. It's not a bother," she finally managed in a weak voice.

 

*

 

Twinflame: "Alright," K'ile Tia exhaled, and felt as though some strange, steely thing slipped out of his body as he did so. He felt... better.

 

Even after all this, K'piru had not told him to leave, and she seemed to intend to stay as well. It was baffling to the point of unbelievable, and he almost expected to be mocked by some vision only to realize that he was dreaming. But he wasnt' asleep. Nobody was trying to recruited him into a magical flying all-male tribe, so he probably wasn't asleep.

 

K'ile sat down on the bed next to K'luha, leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, knit his fingers together. "Alright."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: 'Please. Something just kill me now before they start making out.' Was all the half-sarcasm K'luha had to think as she stared at the ceiling.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): Air, Antimony thought and instead said, "I will see about the additional blanket," before turning to head towards the door.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: 'Oh good. Azeyma has some mercy left for me. Now please just let me die before I have to bear this bullshit any further.' Only half sarcastic thoughts.

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile exhaled and nodded, strangely relieved by K'piru's declaration of a (hopefully temporary) exit. "Alright. I'll be here." He looked at K'luha, trying quickly to form words.

 

*

 

Antimony (K'piru): Perhaps a little too quickly, Antimony disappeared through the door, shutting it quietly behind her. Once in the hall, she leaned back against the wooden door for several moments, as though it were the only thing holding her upright, and blinked at a wet blur across her vision.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: Well. Finally. Silence. 

 

"Well. As thankful as I am for you picking me off the desert floor, which you left me on by the way. I'd like to remind you that you left me on my face. On the desert floor. With a child that you helped adopt. And a broken hip. And you left. With no weapon. With a flimsy lie. For over two weeks. And yet, everything is my fault." And K'luha left it angrily silent as she glowered up at the ceiling and hope it would toppled in and just kill everything.

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile didn't delay after K'piru left, igoring K'luha's rant and turning his gaze on the woman to forcefully declare, "I love you." Which was stupid to just blurt out on its own, but damn it.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha opened her mouth to speak. Then closed it. The opened it again. Then closed it. There was a long pause before she frowned at him and shoved a punch at his stomach.

 

"Then don't fucking ditch me in the middle of the fucking desert with a broken hip and vanish for two goddamn weeks! And DON'T let the way I fucking find you be K'ailia telling me we're going home together and that she saw you!" K'luha was blushing fervently and crossed her arms beneath her chest. Stupid idiot K'ile. "And you're not like K'yohko..." She added in a very hushed afterthought.

 

*

 

Twinflame: Cringing at the punch and spinning to his feet, K'ile said, "I know! I'm sorry! It's not like I planned on it. Listen." He gestured with hands, tail and ears as he spoke, walking in a circle so tight he might as well ahve been spinning, "Everyone I love dies. I promised K'thalen I'd become Nunh and take care of K'piru and her kids, but they didn't even make it back from Cartenau. I bet everything I had on K'piru," he pointed at the door, "And she left! Walked right off into the desert and left me alone in the middle of the night!"

 

He stopped and held up his hands to K'luha, "And I know I did the same thng to you and that's not fair, but I've been TRYING to make everyone HATE me ever since Piru left and I wasn't ready for you to screw with that so, yes, I ran away and went looking for Piru. And I don't even know why I did it!"

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha was somewhat taken aback by his sudden confession. Simultaneous happy he was confessing to her, and furious that he was such a fucking idiot. Also somewhat angry at herself for liking his stupid ass. It was a fine ass... wait what? Off topic.

 

"You could have just fucking told me you needed time to yourself! Or that you were looking for K'piru! I would have stayed out of your way and wouldn't have gone fucking nuts worrying about you!" K'luha shot back, grabbing a pillow and chuking it at his face. "And you're really good and bad at making people hate you! You know that? Because I want to punch your face and kiss you at the same idiot you retard!" Luha flushed, her tail and ears frazzled that she even bothered to admit such a thing.

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile took the pillow to his face and caught it in his teeth. Biting down on it helped his nerves, and he gave it a feral shake before letting it drop to the floor and walking over to the bed. "Well I've just about given up on making you hate me. If you don't hate me yet I can get away with just about anything. Look." He put a hand on each of her shoulders and pushed her back down against the bed. "No moving around!"

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: Luha snorted, half-heartedly laughing at watching him shake the pillow around in his mouth. He looked like a jackal doing that sort of thing. She remained still as he pushed her shoulders down into the bed and hovered nearby.

 

"My hip is broken, not my arms." K'luha retorted, her tail wiggling out from beneath her and lightly tickling K'ile's side.

 

*

 

Twinflame: Uttering a neutral huff of disreggard, K'ile dropped his body down over K'luha's and kissed her lips, hands still on her shoulders.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: Soooo much shit. She was going to get so much shit from everyone back home. She was already in a lot of shit with the elders for being stupid and taking the fall for things that weren't even her fault, and yet. Most of her didn't really care right now. Momentarily, at least, she just let her entire frustration with everything drop to return K'ile's kiss.

 

*

 

Twinflame: Ignoring his earlier insistence that she not move, K'ile put one hand behind her neck and let the other run down her side and behind her back, pulling her slightly up and against him as he kissed her longer. Her familiar smell mixed with the taste of her kiss, the feel of her body, each sensation magnifying the others. His senses were full of K'luha.

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'ile was really good at being a hyporite. Like, really good. She would make him a medal or something for it someday and promptly beat him with it at some point. Still, K'luha was compliant and happily shifted her arms to hug his lower torso lightly. She somehow felt like she was calming down, and wondered if they had just done this stupidity earlier if it would have helped.

 

*

 

Twinflame: Letting his lips move off of hers, he lid his mouth over her cheek and tasted the dramtic flavor of her sweat and the dirt she'd in. He liked it, and lay a wet kiss on her jaw. "Hate me yet?"

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha made a soft noise as he finally relinquished her lips, only to slobber on her cheeck and jaw. Again, she let out a soft noise, though this one was lower before sighing. "No. But we're in so much shit right now." Luha whined softly, whishing the elders would lighten up a little bit on it. She probably wouldn't be too badly punished because she had a broken hip but... she was a little worried for K'ile. Maybe if they just never had sex the elders would let them do whatever it was they did. K'luha could live with that if it was allowed.

 

*

 

Twinflame: Holding her tight against, K'ile nuzzled his face down by her neck, laying a small kiss there. "Right now? No. Right now we're just here."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: Luha bit her bottom lip lightly and carefully hugged him in return, mindful of her hip. Which by the way, hurt to sit up but she sure as fuck wasn't about to ruin the moment. Not this moment. It was too important. 

 

"I'm... thank you. I feel... better. Much." Luha whispered softly, rubbing his back tenderly with her hands.

 

*

 

Twinflame: "Good," K'ile lifted his face and kissed K'luha's lips again, then leaned back and began to slips his arms off of her, "I'm not going to let K'piru catch us making out, though."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: Luha savored the last precious kiss before allowing K'ile to shuffled away. A small smile turned the corners of her lips before she glanced away. 

 

"Mmm... that would really scare her away. Although... I never got to really see her after you all returned from Cartenu save for when I fell through that tent. I know she left. You told us that but... Does she hate us?" K'luha looked to K'ile with concern in her eyes. She was yes, still concerned for her aunt K'piru. Or whatever it was that she called herself these days.

 

*

 

Twinflame: "No," K'ile said, adjusting the harness on his chest. "She's afraid, actually, or at least that's how she smelled. But she's..." he froze, suddenly, as he remembered the warmth of K'piru's hug, the shivering voice with which she'd apologized. He recalled her scent, and her touch, and the taste of the air she'd breathed. He swallowed, and said, "She might run away again. I don't know what to... I keep trying to..."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha paused and glanced about the room. All of K'piru's things were here. And K'ile had her scent pretty much down didn't he? It wasn't as if he couldn't find her again but... if she was just going to keep running away. Luha shifted her hands and moved to grab K'ile's in reassurance. 

 

"You can go after her. It's not like I'm going anywhere. Maybe two of us is just too many for her. You can go after her and sent someone from the front desk to move to to another room if you want. I love K'piru too. She's my aunt. She helped me deliver two children and recover from the first loss. I've always wanted to help her, but I don't think I can. So go after her."

 

*

 

Twinflame: He shook his head, "No. I won't." He sat on the bed next to K'luha, looking at her hand, "If she wants to run away I'll let her, because... She wouldn't be doing it if she didn't need to. She loves us, and the tribe. If there were any way for her to stay she would. So I won't chase her. I won't hurt her." He looked away from K'luha to hide the tears in his eyes. He felt sick, and a wave of cold rushed over him. "Anyway. She just went to get a blanket. She'll be back any second now."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha found it very... strong of K'ile to think that. He was stronger than she had thought. Stronger than he probably gave himself credit for. Part of her wanted to think something bitterly about him not ever wanting to hurt Piru but not giving a shit if he hurt herself... but the thought died before it ever happened. Piru was delicate. K'luha decided K'ile was right. If she needed to run, then she needed to run. 

 

Ignoring the pain in her hip, she shifted to wrap her arms around Kile's waist and press her head lightly against his back. 

 

"She'll come back then... It might take a little longer but... I think she'll come back." Luha assured him softly, leaving a soft kiss on the small of his back. She wished she could be more reassuring but, this was all she had.

 

*

 

Twinflame: K'ile accepting the reassurance coldly despite its warmth. He wasn't so sure, and he was terrified and nauseous, and he just closed his eyes and ducked his head to try and calm himself down before he started crying like an idiot. After a moment, he took a deep breath and pried K'luha off of him, turning to push her back down. "No moving this time. For real. I'll tie your ass to the bed."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha felt a bit disheartened that she wasn't helping him at all. Maybe he just needed to freak out. Although... Luha faintly thought if K'ile broke down and K'piru went missing she was probably going to die on the bed this time since she couldn't very well move to take care of herself. 

 

"Alright..." K'luha gave in, dropping her arms in surrender. "I won't move. But you have to breathe, okay?"

 

*

 

Twinflame: He smiled, "I'm breathing. I'll be just fine."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: K'luha raised a brow at him, but decided trusting him and listening was the best way to decrease his stress. There was nothing else she could do now but lay still. 

 

"Alright but... don't be stupid like me and run off to have a breakdown? Can you just... have it right here if you're going to have one? So I can at least try to help?" Luha pleaded, ears flattening against her head.

 

*

 

Twinflame: "I'm not going to have a breakdown," K'ile said, reaching out and putting a hand on K'luha's face. "This isn't like last time I tried to help Piru. I'm going to become Nunh for you, not her. And I need to take care of Tahj and the tribe. So I'm not going to have a breakdown."

 

*

 

K'luha Haaz: Luha smiled faintly as he pushed his hand on her face and reassured her he wouldn't. She reached a hand up to place hers own top of his hand before pulling it lightly off her face. 

 

"Right well. I had things to take care of but that didn't really stop me from breaking down. And of course now I'm on bad terms with K'ailia again too. She just makes me so upset when I see her." Luha pouted for a moment before glancing back to K'ile wonder if distracting him was helping at all. "But... I'm glad you and K'piru found me. I think I'll actually be able to lay down and heal finally with K'piru's help... I'm very grateful to her..."

 

*

 

Twinflame: "You just needed that Sagolii touch," K'ile said, adding a lighter tone to his voice. "And try nto to worry so much about K'ailia. If you do that, I'll try not to worry too much about Piru, alright?"

 

*

 

 K'luha Haaz: "Deal." K'luha nodded. That was something she could really get behind. If Piru was alive after five years then, she was okay. She could manage on her own right? That's what K'luha was trying to convince herself of at least.

[Naunet]

"Your room is only signed out to one occupant, Miss Jhanhi," the innkeep replied quizzically to the weary looking miqo'te's request for an additional blanket and pillow. "We do appreciate your patronage, of course, but our rooms are not homes. If you'd like to add an additional occupant, I'll adjust your bill accordingly."

 

Antimony's ears swept back and she blinked reddened eyes at the innkeep, silent for several seconds before shaking her head. "No, there was just an, ah, unfortunate accident. They won't be staying. Please, I'll pay an additional fee for the items."

 

The lalafell squinted at her for a time, then seemed satisfied, for he flashed an understanding smile. "Very well. You have been quite the financial b--er, customer for us, Miss Jhanhi! Happy to assist."

 

"Thank you," she replied, bowing her head. A weight pressed down on her shoulders at a thought. "And, ah, please, if you don't mind... let them know that I won't be back for a.. a time." Coward, her mind whispered, but in a different voice, one she hadn't heard in a while. Selfish.

 

After settling the minor request with the innkeep, Antimony turned and made her way for the Quicksand's doors. Each step away from the inn halls felt as though she were dragging her feet through molasses, but the awareness of who waited for her back in the room simultaneously pushed her away. Her throat tightened, but she told herself she would not cry again. She passed through the doors into greater Ul'dah with the bulk of her attention drawn inward.

 

***

 

K'ailia prayed a bit longer at the Sultana Tree silently, before finally getting up. She had calmed considerably, but she still had no inkling where to find her mother or K'ile.

 

The only option she thought to herself, would be to go back to Ul'dah and wait. But before then she pulled her bandana off and looked at it. She'd been wearing the bandana for five years. Perhaps it was now time to put her past behind her.

 

"That life is behind me now..." she said to herself, and stuffed it into her pouch on her hip. Turning, she headed back to the Gates of Thal. It was a relatively lengthy walk to get there, but she finally arrived at the market. Thankfully the goblin with their cheese were gone.

 

But she wasn't concerned with the market. Instead, she made her way towards the Quicksand. Perhaps her mother or K'ile will be there? But she had a feeling her relationship with her mother at this point was over. Every time she tried to maintain a relationship with her mother, she'd be pushed away, yelled at and in one instance, even struck. These memories flooded her mind as she walked, not paying attention to where she was going now.

 

Perhaps it was how full of memory her senses had been that day, or perhaps it was only chance, but a familiar scent pushed at her dwelling enough to bring her eyes up. She thought at first K'ile had followed her out of the inn and was prepared to beg or flee or apologize, whichever it took, but those urges fled when she caught sight of the small, young form of another.

 

Someone she had avoided for weeks.

 

Antimony paused at the top of the steps leading to the Quicksand, watching the young girl approach. Her jaw worked silently and her throat closed around words. She could feel that common panic building again; she thought she would run.

 

As K'ailia passed her, Antimony shocked herself and reached out with one hand, touching the girl's shoulder lightly and uttered a quiet, "K'ailia, wait."

 

K'ailia snapped out of her thoughts feeling the hand touch her shoulder. She turned and her mouth drops open, "K'piru?"

 

She turned fully to face her former teacher, sadness evident on her face.

 

She couldn't look at the girl, just like she hadn't been able to look at K'luha, or K'ile. There was a certain degree of guilt over that, but something in her chest twisted painfully enough that she felt... justified. Almost.

 

Still, the way K'ailia had said her name... Her tail swung once in a slow, sad arc. "Your... mother will be alright. You should know."

 

K'ailia's ears flattened against her head, "I don't think she will... She no longer behaves like the mother I grew up with. She used to be brave and strong... now all she does is run away." She let out a sigh, "I think she needs time away from me. If seeing me creates such anger and fear, that she is willing to hurt herself... then it is time I find a new home..."

 

Now it was K'ailia's turn to not look at K'piru, instead she looked down at her own feet, unsure of herself anymore.

 

Run away. She couldn't fault K'luha that. Or, it seemed, K'ailia, and yet... she hated the thought of them both falling prey to the same desperation that had driven her from family into self-imposed isolation.

 

She kept her hand on K'ailia's shoulder, a light touch, not holding, just letting the girl know she was there, and spoke facing down towards the street, "Perhaps time will be enough." What had she intended by stopping K'ailia here? Her stomach churned itself into a dozen knots. A memory of the girl, far younger than she was now, flashed with painful clarity across her mind. It was a quiet memory, happy. Young K'ailia had always been willing and wanting to help, to care.

 

It left Antimony's eyes burning and she added in a stiff voice, "I want to apologize. For what you've gone through. If you need..." She hesitated, struggled with words through a sudden rush of fear and that all-persistent grief she'd thought she'd outpaced years ago. "If you need anything, let me know. I... will try."

 

K'ailia Yohko: K'ailia looked to Antimony, "I'd like to go somewhere... that isn't Thanalan or Ul'dah... to get time to think. I don't know..."

 

She trembled a bit, remembering what brought her to this Inn to begin with, "K'ile had wanted me to go back to the tribe camp as an outsider... to represent the outsiders... but if it is going to make my mother go crazier... how can I?"

 

Now tears were starting to well up in K'ailia's eyes. She had left the tribe to be free to do what was necessary to ensure the safety of the tribe from the outside. But the one she loved the most seemed to hate her.

 

"Would you... be my teacher again? I been learning to read, with a little arcanum on the side... but the teacher I was learning from... I don't like his methods..." she looked at K'piru hopeful.

 

It had been hard enough to call out to K'ailia, to reach out and touch her. When the girl put forth her request, Antimony thought for a long moment that she might crumble, simply break down into sand and blow away like the dunes of the Sagolii. Her eyes roamed the street in front of her but saw none of it.

 

"I don't..." She should have expected such a request, should have heard that lost tone in K'ailia's voice, known what it meant. It was familiar, after all. Her fingers curled slightly against K'ailia's shoulder before her hand slipped down to hand limp at her side. "Anything but..." It was too soon. Too much. With K'luha and her agony, K'ile and his needy desperation, K'ailia and her lonely want for a mentor... Antimony had not prepared for any of that.

 

She had never intended to.

 

The older woman sighed, closing her eyes briefly before turning her head to look at K'ailia. She saw a smaller girl in her place, skin dirtied and burned, crying for her mother, crying for help. She hadn't helped then. "I still need time." A breath. "But if you... come to me in Limsa, maybe... I might be able to help you there."

 

K'ailia nodded at that, "I had not considered Limsa... And I understand. I'm sorry if I ever made you uncomfortable K'piru."

 

She gave her a reassuring smile, "Maybe I should consider moving there for a while. At least until mother is ready to see me again. But... I think she may of either lost the pearl I gave her, or threw it away at this point... maybe I should give one to K'ile?"

 

"That you are considering means that you should," Antimony murmured and at once felt like a hypocrite. How many things had she considered and yet turned away from regardless? But K'ailia deserved to make better decisions.

 

Her strength reminded her of...

 

Choking down a sob that threatened at the back of her throat, Antimony coughed once and added, "Do not think worse of your mother. Or yourself."

 

K'ailia's ears dropped again thinking, "I don't think either of us are bad. Ever since five years ago, everything changed. I've changed... but I do not know if it was for the better or worse."

 

She looked up at the sky, "All I know is... what I've learned terrifies my mother. Why I do not know. But I've also felt deep within myself, ever since my trip to Gridania with her, that something in me was different..."

 

She looked back at K'piru, "And when I went home to the tribe, I felt like I did not belong. I tried to continue on as though nothing changed before I left... but I couldn't."

 

Using her sleeve she wiped away the tears in her eyes, "I felt like a caged bird. Loyal to the tribe, but yearned to escape, and fly in the sky. And it felt as though even Azeyma was pushing the circumstances to the point I did leave the tribe."

 

K'ailia's words left Antimony feeling cold, even in Ul'dah's oppressive, wretched heat. The fine lines of wrinkles in her features deepened with a strained expression. "You left... K'ailia..." Had no one recovered from that night of fire and death?

 

Her arms moved of their own accord, reaching out to grasp the girl by the shoulders and pull her to her chest. She held K'ailia for only a brief moment before a shaking in her limbs and a scream in her skull forced her to pull away, but the significance of the gesture remained. "I need to go." She turned her face towards the street once more. "Look for me in Limsa in... a few weeks' time. I..." She breathed out slowly.

 

K'ailia took the embrace and felt for once, after five years, that for that brief moment, everything was like they were. Upon the release she nodded, "I understand. I still have things I need to do before I goto Limsa Lominsa. I will come in one month’s time... alright?"

 

Antimony could only nod. The shrill panic she felt broiling in her gut earlier had built suddenly, without warning, and she felt terribly cornered. Not by K'ailia, but... "Until then." The walls of the Quicksand seemed to launch her away, down the stairs, and the crowds in the street below swallowed her readily.

 

***

 

When Antimony became aware of a thinning of the crowds and a narrowing of the streets, she slowed her pace. The buildings here crowded in ungainly piles against one another, tattered rags hung out over some doorways like awnings - a weak attempt at class in a neighborhood far below class. Her steps slowed further still, and then stopped very suddenly when something large and white slammed into her chest.

 

Letting out a small, "Oof!" she cast a shocked look down only to see a tightly wrapped parcel shoved up towards her face.

 

"Urgent delivery, kupo!" cried a small, cheery voice, and then whatever had spoken was gone, the package left in her hands. She stood in a net of confusion for over a minute, clutching the package to her chest, before she managed to shake free enough to consider what had happened.

 

The brown paper was tied snugly about something soft and heavy, but not overly so. A letter was tucked under the twine, which she removed with one shaking hand.

 

Inside, messy but mostly legible handwriting read:

 

Dear Miss Antimony,

 

I hope you are still in Ul'dah as I am sending this message post hast and I fear the delivery moogles might kill me if you're not. The journey to Coerthas has gone well and I am back in the snow. It's really lovely this time of year, I hope that you will come up someday to visit. In honor of the Starlight Celebration, I've sent this coat for you. You know, if it gets cold or if you want to come up to Coerthas and wear it. Or sell it. You could do that too. But I hope it will be of more use to you in wearing and not selling. 

 

My sincerest reguards to you this day. In meeting you I have found the strength to go back and face something that I have most feared. I was running away from my fears, but for some reason you've inspired me to go and fix the things I have broken. A little bit like you fixed my head. 

 

I wish you a wonderful day, and I hope that this message gets to you safely.

 

Your Friend, 

Mitari Xerxes. 

Aka that one miq'ote dude you healed and got you thrown in jail in case you already forgot. 

 

P.S. I dont' know why this Elezen noble sent me these... but they look like they'd fit you better. Or you could just burn them or something. Maybe a nice regift? I just thought maybe you could find more use for them than me.

 

Blinking still somewhat grief-swollen eyes, Antimony looked between the letter in one hand and the package in her opposite arm. "A coat?" She sighed. "Mitari..." In her mind, a vision of a mountainscape she'd only heard of played out and offered sanctuary in its cold, icey embrace.

 

Someone brushed past her roughly then, knocking her out of her reverie and causing her to nearly drop the package. Steadying herself, Antimony hugged the item and letter, bowed her head, and then let her feet continue to carry her down the street.

[Naunet]

K'ile Tia had learned too well how to pass nights and days like these. The strange, affectionate equilibrium he'd struck with K'luha hung like a polished boulder balanced on a pedestal in the center of the room. Elsewhere another pedestal roamed alone, out of sight, but K'ile could almost hear the creaking weight of the hold he and K'piru exerted on one another. The pillar he'd carved to hold his love for his sister was made of cracked ice, and the blistering heat of Dalamud had been searing away at it for five hears. The Tia had tried to dance with that fire, but even with all five soulstones on his wrist, he'd failed to control it. Hellfire poured from his fingertips, it seemed, and the pillar weakened.

 

He should've just left those boulders in the sand, unpolished. Now their weight loomed.

 

K'piru hadn't returned to her inn room. Not in the minutes he'd expected nor in the hours that he'd hoped, and as he began to predict the coming of dawn he sat staring at K'luha's broken body as though he were chained to it. Bindings wrapped his heart and throat, squeezing each a little more minute by minute. He felt cold even as his body sweat to try and compensate for the heat in the room.

 

*

 

It was both difficult and easy to sleep. She was too tired not to sleep, and yet concern for K'ile kept her awake. She was less concerned for K'piru, as the woman had seemed to make her hold on life in the city fairy well since leaving five years ago. She would come back... she had her things here. Important things. Even if it took a long time, K'luha was sure that K'piru would come back. 

 

And the reassurance to herself helped her sleep. Although her dreams were plagued with the backs of her family members and K'ailia's cruel words. She tried not to believe that she was the things K'ailia called her. She tried not to believe her own daughter disregarded her like so much dirt. But to her, it was pretty clear that she did. Did K'ailia really think that K'luha should just be okay with it all? 

 

The thoughts and half-lucid dreams of Luha made her blink away, startled when she realized something. 

 

"My linkpearl..." Luha mumbled, grasping for the necklace. It was gone. She must have left it in the other room before she ran. Luha frowned and looked over towards K'ile's form. She could almost see his body shaking and sweating with fear. "Not yet...?"

 

With a blink, K'ile Tia's gaze snapped from K'luha's tail to her face. He rolled his neck to loosen his muscles, resetting his posture. The slight movement stirred nausea in his stomach, but he ignored it as much as he could and it settled within moments. He shrugged at K'luha and said, "Not quite yet. Something must've come up. She's a..." he searched for the words. "I don't know. She works with money. Ul'dahns worship money, right?"

 

"An... accountant?" Luha offered. She'd heard the word before. She had hired one before as well, but they usually fucked her over. Metaphorically speaking of course. "And they do. I'm sure she'll be back." K'luha breathed out slowly, glancing up to the ceiling. "Could you check the front desk? I left my linkpearl in the room I was in before I..." K'luha trailed off and frowned. "Anyway, I left it behind. Maybe they have it at the front. Maybe you'll see her walking in if you check. You don't have to. Just... I do want to see if my linkpearl's still around." K'luha frowned quietly, still grasping for it at her neck but grapsing only at her skin.

 

"I can check on your pearl," he said, though his very first thought was to hope the thing had been lost permanently. Though that would leave K'ailia with a direct, unmoderated line to Tahj. Like a demon corrupting the girl in secret.

 

With that in mind, he said, "Yeah, we'll find it. No problem," as he stood and moved towards the door. "There anything else you need?"

 

Something else... K'luha faintly realized that she was above the bed's blankets and the lack of movement had her utterly freezing. Hadn't Piru gone to ask for more blankets and such? Maybe that was the problem...

 

"Didn't Piru go to ask for blankets...? Well... maybe she left a message with the front desk. See if you can't get an extra blanket. But wait... my pocket... ah... that's bad." K'luha realized she had left all her gil in that room as well. All her things were in that room... "Better idea. Go check the room. I had paid for it for a few days so maybe they left my things in there. And if not, see if you can't manage to get anything from the front desk. If they took all my gil, they could at least not charge us for having extra people in this room." Luha frowned faintly, also finally half realizing that Piru had pulled down to expose her hip injury... but that she was pretty much in her underwear which Piru had pulled half off. Awkward. Ah well. At least everyone was too tense to realize it.

 

This was starting to sound a bit like a chore. K'ile grimaced and stretched. Sitting on the floor all night had not been kind to his body, and there was an ache radiating downward from the base of his tail. "Alright, alright. I'll find your stuff. I'll be right back, and unlike some people, I'll actually come back."

 

He stepped out of the room in no great hurry, but closed the foor firmly behind him. His senses, once free of the intimate scents of K'luha and K'piru, were assaulted with the stink of Ul'dah. He shook his head against it and pulled on one ear, lingering for a moment, and then walked down the hallway, taking the turn towards K'luha's room.

 

What splintered wood had lay in the hallway had been cleared and a piece of rope hastily strung across the entryway, a dangling sign that read "No entry". For once, something simple enough that he could actually read it. And ignore it.

 

K'ile flicked the sign and fire flickered to life on either side, the soulstones on his bracelet glowing dimly for a moment. He pulled on the weakened rope and it snapped wasily, the fire snuffed as it fell away. He stepped over the pile of wood immediately inside of the room and perused what had been K'luha's accomadation until... What, K'ailia had attacked her? He was still had no idea what had actually transpired.

 

When the Tia returned to K'piru's inn room a few minutes later, he carried a multitude of items. In one hand were a blanket and pillow, pulled conveniently from the bed of the broken room, and in the other was a satchel (presumably K'luha's) into which he'd stuffed everything that he found that might belong to the woman. Her gil was included. If the work-people at this inn weren't so lazy, they might've robbed her, but they apparently hadn't given the room more than a few seconds' consideration.

 

K'luha felt bad for asking so much of K'ile... but maybe the task would keep his mind pre-occupied from K'piru's delayed return. She would come back... she would. Again, K'luha had to reassure herself that Piru would come back. Then again...

 

The silence in the now empty room was somewhat deafening. Luha laid still and bit her bottom lip, her ands carefully grabbing her clothing and readjusting it for comfort. She straightened out her pantlettes and pulled up on her camise. Despite being cold, it simply felt more comfortable to have less shirt-like things covering her at the moment. 

 

In the rest of the ensuing silence, K'luha tried not to think about K'ailia's cruelty. She tried not to think of K'ailia at all. Maybe if she could just calm down, she could accept it. Maybe... maybe if they would allow tribe members to come and go more freely... maybe then K'ailia wouldn't have to be exiled. She could be free to be herself, and then she could still have her family. Truely, it was her own self-imposed exile and rejection of her family that most bothered Luha. If she could be brought back, even if she wasn't in person then... then maybe Luha could accept that. It would be easier for her if things were like that. 

 

Sometime between thinking and K'ile's return she fell asleep. The door's opening startled her awake again and she partially jolted to sit up, only to inhaled sharply and lay back down. "Owowowowowowow..."

 

"Luha!" K'ile snapped when he heard her, half-expecting the woman to have decided she could do laps around the room and had her leg break completely off her body when that proved untrue. Seeing the woman still on the bed, K'ile huffed anyway, "Can you really not just stay still?"

 

"N-no I-ow- just was-ow- startled when the -ow- door opened-ow." K'luha hissed and rubbed gingerly at her hip. She was too used to sitting up whenever K'ile walked in a room. She was really going to have to learn to lie still around him.

 

Tossing the satchel off to one side, K'ile walked over to the bed and looked down on K'luha, "Maybe Piru has some kind of paralysis potion we can use on you for a month or two." He smirked and dropped the pillow on her face.

 

Luha frowned, hissing taking deep breaths to try and stave off some of the pain. A paralysis potion? No way. She wasn't going to be paralyzed for however long this took to heal. She reached up and took the pillow off her face before pouting at K'ile. "No way. I'm just hoping it heals well enough to walk at this point."

 

"This'll be a good experience for you," K'ile said with a chuckle, dropping the blanket on K'luha's face. "You can only walk once you learn how to not walk for a while."

 

"This is horrific." K'luha pouted in return, grabbing the blanket he had put on her face and covering herself with it as much as possible. Which wasn't terribly well but better than before. "I can't move. How will I use the bathroom? How will I clean up? How can I do anything besides waste resources at the tribe?" She whined loudly and covered her face with the blanket. "Damnit."

 

"It's not that bad, Luha," K'ile said, sitting down next to K'luha on the bed and then shifting on a whim to lay next to her, though he was half-off the bed in order to fit. "You're not going to be completely immobile for a day or two, I bet, and once the feast we bought gets to the tribe nobody's going to complain about you not being able to contribute."

 

K'luha tried to move over a bit to let K'ile lay down, but swiftly gave up when it hurt. Instead she settled for dropping her arm on his chest and frowning at the ceiling. 

 

"Problem. The Brass Blades are holding our feast shipments in Ul'dah here you know. They sent me a letter in Drybone. We'll have to try and argue our food out."

 

"What!" K'ile started, half sitting up, "That's bullshit! It's just FOOD!"

 

K'luha's arm slid down to lay across his lap and she frowned over at him. "I know that. But now we've got to argue about it with the Brass Blades."

 

Remaining rigid for a moment, his eyes flicking around in confusion for a time, K'ile slowly realized it wasn't something he needed to jump up and see to immediately. He eased back and lay his hand over K'luha's then readjusted himself so he was laying on his side and facing her. "The tribe's hungry. They need that food. Brass is flimsy. Can we just break them and get the food back?"

 

"We could just buy new food." K'luha suggested, glancing back over to K'ile. While she wouldn't mind just breaking in and stealing their food back... "If we steal back from them, we'll be in trouble. We won't be able to come here ever again. And if we fail, they'll lock us in metal cages until we rot."

 

"I don't understand," he admitted, "How can Ul'dah just take food we bought. That's our gil. They worship gil!"

 

"Something about an investigation...?" K'luha pouted and patted his chest lightly. "I don't know... I hardly understand it myself."

 

He let his head drop and lay next to K'luha's,  muttering sadly, "I need that feast so I can be Nunh for you."

 

"We'll get it back K'ile..." K'luha frowned, disliking the sound of him being sad. She reached over to take his hand and shook it lightly. "We'll get it. Or we'll get a new one. We'll figure it out. Okay?"

 

Exhaling a sigh, K'ile breathed, "...Okay, Luha." He lay very still. His tail lifted and fell a single time.

 

Luha bit her bottom lip and just watched him for a few moments. Did he really believe her? She thought so and yet... Luha reached up with a hand and pressed it softly to his cheek, turning his head towards her. She didn't say anything, but just looked at him, eyes shimmering with a deep and burning compassion. It was something she always had burning in her eyes when people really looked at them.

 

The Tia blinked his blue eyes, his bright hair partially obscuring one of them. His hands lay limply against the covers that K'luha had wrapped herself in, his ears pitched back on his head in a sign of displeasure. His gaze, however, appeared contemplative, as he looked very closely at the curve of K'luha's nose, the circle of her cheeks, the two colors of her eyes.

 

K'luha left her eyes lingering on K'ile's. They were stunning really. It was... probably her favorite feature about him. Those eyes. They burned so intensely that the fire was a brilliant blue. She felt like she could be satisfied just staring at them for a while, but her hands moved on their own, pushing the blanket to cover K'ile as well as herself. At least he didn't have to be cold if he was hanging half-off the bed.

 

Smiling at the gesture, K'ile moved to fascilitate it. He reached one hand over K'luha's body and took holdy of her shoulder, pulling himself against her and pushing his forehead into her hair.

 

K'luha smiled a bit despite herself and let out a soft breath of air. It was natural, being like this. She didn't feel like she needed more even. With K'yohko, no matter how close she was she had always needed more from him. The things she needed, he simply couldn't give her to. But it felt so much better with K'ile. She didn't feel like she constantly had to have his body. Just this the way it was, she was happy.

 

***

 

Her feet ached. Antimony had noticed this well before she noticed night had fallen over Ul’dah, but it didn’t stop her motion. Her legs moved mindlessly, carrying her down an alley, around a corner, into another street, and onward through the circular maze of the city. She passed the Quicksand twice, but both times she could not bring her legs to stop or her feet to carry her back up those steps. Instead she continued to walk, paper-wrapped package held close to her chest and head bowed so that much of her view of the city was reduced to dirty, cobbled streets and a multitude of foreign feet. Sand and fire and loss dogged every step, voices and words she hadn’t thought of in years echoing in her skull. Coward. Selfish. They’re gone. I couldn’t save them. You couldn’t save them.

 

Her pace quickened despite the pain in her feet that had begun to lace up into her shins, but there was no escape from any of it in a city that took her in nothing but circles. For not the first time, her thoughts flitted to the parcel in her arms, to snow and cold and a warm invitation. No one would come looking for her in Coerthas. She had heard it was as isolated as anything could possibly be. Even if she didn’t find Mitari there to greet her, perhaps the cold could swallow the memories better than ocean and books.

 

But she had told K’ailia…

 

Walking became significantly more difficult around the time she also noticed the shadows along the buildings shifting and gaining a grey-blue hue. Her head felt impossibly heavy, and on more than one occasion she found herself on a side street with no memory of the steps that had taken her there. But there was a blessing in this exhaustion: her thoughts and memories, the pain and loss, the sharp ache of guilt and the creeping illness that churned her gut and flung harsh, vindictive words, had fallen back, buried under the weight of a tired mind.

 

One foot caught on an uneven stone then, sending her body lurching forward and the parcel flying from her arms to skid across the ground. At such an early morning, the street she had wandered into was largely empty, so no eyes turned to watch her tumble. She lay numbly on the stones for several minutes before grimacing at the needles lancing up her legs and the stinging in palms of her hands where she’d tried to catch her fall, and pulled herself to her knees. She blinked at an unbidden wetness in her eyes – a childish, instinctive reaction – and a moment later managed to stagger to her feet and scoop up Mitari’s gift.

 

When nothing but a keen awareness of her exhaustion greeted her mind, Antimony let out a long breath. She could finally return.

 

***

 

How she found her way back to the Quicksand, Antimony wasn’t certain, but the innkeep gave her an odd look when she walked past. The back halls passed in a blur, and when she pushed open the door to her inn room and stepped inside, she found herself blinking dumbly at K’luha and K’ile on her bed as though she’d forgotten they would even be there.

 

When the door opened, K'ile rolled out of the bed in a reaction so sudden one would think he was about to be attacked. But it was just K'piru. Just K'piru. It was the last and most important person he'd ever expected to see walking through a door, barring his dead brother, and every sense he had, every drop of his attention, focused immediately on the woman.

 

K'luha blinked as K'ile semi violently ripped himself away and off the bed. She was worried for a moment he'd gone and hurt himself, but then she realized the door was open. She carefully propped herself up lightly to note K'piru at the door and smiled. So she had come back after all. Thank goodness... 

 

Luha dropped herself back down on the bed and decided she'd done enough interfering for the time being. Sleep would suit her fine for now.

 

Antimony looked between the two for several seconds before letting the door drift shut behind her. She could feel an echo of those gut-wrenching pains from before, but they were blissfully muted by the deep aching in her feet and the stinging in her hands. She wondered if she could just fall asleep standing and murmured a faint, "Hello," in greeting.

 

"K'piru," K'ile darted forward to the woman, putting one hand on each of the woman's shoulders and saying, "Are you alright? You look exhausted! You're covered in dirt."

 

Her ears shifted back when K'ile approached suddenly, the deep, familial scent he brought with him invading her senses. To distract herself, she adjusted her grip on the parcel in her arms and leaned to one side as though to move around him. "I... needed some air," she said by way of explanation, keeping her eyes averted.

 

Feeling as though he'd been struck, K'ile pulled back his hands and stepped away from K'piru, trying not to notice the onrush of nausea. "I understand." He looked around the room. "How were you planning to...?"

 

She stood still for a moment after he stepped back, as though unsure what to do with the space given. The weight in her arms brought out sluggish action after a time, however, and she moved to deposit the parcel on as empty a place as one could find upon nearby table. The air displaced by its arrival pushed at a precarious stack of papers, sending them scattering to the floor. A thin sound caught in the back of her throat at the sight, and she half bent as though to chase after them but stopped about halfway through the action.

 

K'ile was all too eager to pick up the pages on K'piru's behalf. "I've got it, don't worry. You should rest. It's fine. I've got it." His teal flicked back and forth behind him.

 

If K'ile hadn't said it earlier, K'luha wouldn't have believed that he loved her. But she took deep breaths and tried not to listen in on private conversations and sleep instead.

 

Rest. Not with either of them here, not when she was breathing their scents and hearing their subtle sounds, and each moment was a struggle not to fall apart. If she slept now, the dreams that would haunt her would not allow for rest. Instead she murmured, "It is morning now." She watched his hands on the papers, almost warned him to be wary of reading them as they were private documents, but that life seemed so far removed from his existence that it hardly seemed necessary.

 

At least, it had once been far removed.

 

She found herself reaching out to still his hands with one of her own while the other picked up the remaining pages quietly. "I'm sorry," she sighed and leaned against the table when she straightened.

 

It was pretty close to impossible to miss K'piru's state of weariness. Even her protests were weak. "You should sleep," he said. "If I'm bothering you I'll leave."

 

The papers in her hand struck the table with surprising force, sending a short ripple through the rest of the disorganized pile, and Antimony blinked at them for several seconds, wondering who had thrown them down.

 

Oh.

 

"You will stay with K'luha," she said simply and forced her attention to the parcel she'd brought in, fingers moving to toy with the knot of twine holding its wrapping together.

 

K'ile stood, took a deep breath, and frowned. He wished he had even a slight bit of understanding as to what the inside of K'piru's head was like. Maybe then he'd have a clue as to what she was getting mad about.

 

"I have things to do anyway," K'ile said. "Apparently someone took some stuff we bought for some reason, and with Luha resting, it's up to me to find it and figure out what the Ul'dahns want with it."

 

The knot came undone with minimal effort, and the paper followed, crinkling under her hands until fur and leather and red and purple cloth were revealed. She tried to feel grateful, but instead a strange, nervous guilt settled on her shoulders and dragged her tail down to her legs. K'ile seeing the gift made her want to hide in shame, as though it would tell him every horrible thing she had thought while walking Ul'dah's streets, every act she had contemplated that it had stood testament to.

 

Where had the protection of her exhaustion gone?

 

Her fingers dug into the fur collar of the coat, and she finally processed K'ile's own words. "Took?" She blinked slowly, frowned. "Who...?"

 

"Uhm," He looked over towards K'luha, who seemed to be trying to sleep, and then back to K'piru. "Brass swords?" he guessed, mostly sure he'd gotten the words right even if he didn't understand what they meant.

 

"Brass Blades." Luha corrected.

 

“The Blades," Antimony echoed and then sighed. "Customs. Or..." The thought that her... that K'ile and K'luha had run into the type of individuals she was investigating made her uneasy. Yet it was likely. This was a problem, however, and Antimony latched onto it as a ready distraction. "Did they give you a contact to speak with to reacquire the goods?" Lifting the folded coat from the paper then, Antimony froze and paled at something beneath it before dropping the item hastily back in place.

 

Luha propped herself up again and waved  a hand at K'ile before whistling. "Skirt pocket. On the bottom. Yellow paper."

 

"Lay down," Antimony said firmly, without looking fully at K'luha.

 

K'ile stepped back and said, "Okay, you two know what's going on. That's good." He paced over towards Luha and spoke more or less at the same time K'piru did to say, "Lay down."

 

Letting out a small sigh, still looking shaken from whatever she'd seen in the package, Antimony continued quietly, "If they did, it is good. Documentation means... it will be harder for them to justify losing it."

 

K'luha sat up a bit further out of spite and reached over to try and grab her skirt.

 

K'ile saw this coming and pushed K'luha back down into the bed, "We talked about this. You were about one inch away from adding on another day of not being able to move at all." He paused. "Probably."

 

K'luha flopped back without much effort and snapped her fingers at him before pointing at her skirt.

 

Frowning down at Luha, K'ile snapped back at her buit grabbed her skirt anyway, searching the pockets for...

 

Swallowing confusion and an unhealthy degree of anxiety and guilt, Antimony stepped up alongside K'ile and made to take the skirt from him. "It will be a notice of search and siezure, likely marked with the local Blade seal," she muttered and removed a folded sheet of paper from one pocket. When opened, the page displayed a declaration of suspicion of unlicensed cargo shipment. Antimony blinked at it and tried to recall if any such regulation existed, but her knowledge of Ul'dahn laws was rather limited to the scope of her own work.

 

Letting the skirt get pulled from his fingers, K'ile protested dumbly, "Search and seizure? But we bought it. What is wrong with Ul'dah that they make us buy things and then just take them?"

 

Pursing her lips, Antimony examined the paper more, her eyes catching on a familiar name that brought a frown even further down her brow. "They monitor the goods going in and out of their lands for legal reasons," she explained distractedly and then sighed. "... I... may be able to fix this."

 

"That's..." K'ile let his hands fall to his sides and grimaced. "You don't need to. Just tell me where to look and I'll find it."

 

"It's not that quite so simple," Antimony spoke quietly, eyes down on the paper. "Suspicious shipment... if your... ah, food?" She blinked in confusion and then continued, "If it still exists in Ul'dah, you will need to clear it with the Blades. I... know the woman involved."

 

"The woman involved?" Luha questioned faintly, against slightly propping herself up so she could at least see Piru properly.

 

K'ile almost absent-mindedly pushed K'luha back down, having no input on the situation, too confused to understand it completely.

 

"Stahp that," Luha grumbled, pushing his hand off her and trying to prop herself up again. "It doesn't hurt. It's only a little bit."

 

K'ile stubbornly pushed Luha back onto the bed, "No. You don't even understand what 'stay still' means."

 

"Miss Loughree. She is currently under... ah. It..." Antimony hesitated, worried the paper in her hands and flicked her eyes briefly towards the others before turning away once more. "Suffice to say, I'm certain I can resolve this."

 

"I don't doubt it," K'ile Tia responded. "I just don't like that I seem to have brought you so many problems."

 

Ears drooping, Antimony managed only a faint, "It is no trouble."

 

"It's not about causeing trouble or not..." K'ile muttered, looking to K'luha for help.

 

K'luha looked back to K'ile and sighed. "We... could really use her help though K'ile. I don't know how to wade through these legal things..."

 

"I will resolve this for you," Antimony repeated lowly. The hand that held the notice dropped to her side while her other moved to rub at one temple.

 

K'ile pulled on one ear in frustration and sat down on the bed next to K'luha, looking suddenly exhausted. With K'piru's return rendered and her inserting herself forcefully into K'ile's problems, he found the obsessive worry that he'd had over her... not gone, but distant. As if he had placed it in the hands of someone he could trust for a short time.

 

With that weight off his shoulders, his tiredness fell on him like the rush of a sandstorm, and sagged under his own weight comfortably. He'd eaten very little and slept very little in his eagerness to get to K'piru, in his worry since then.

 

"Thank you... K'piru." K'luha called, a small smile peeking out towards her aunt. Maybe things could be resolved finally. Maybe... everything could be okay again. Although, that sense quickly faded at K'ile sagged down and dropped onto the bed next to her. 

 

She carefully put a hand to his back and let her fingers soothingly run along his spine. 

 

"Hey, everyone needs some rest and food. Piru, I've got enough gil in my purse to cover a second room if you'd like some proper rest." Luha offered, staying flat on the bed this time.

 

"There's no need." As she spoke, she moved back to the table and, after a moment, added uneasily, "I will need you with me to testify, K'ile."

 

"Alright, I am stupid, but my turn to tell you morons something. Everyone sleeps and eats first before we do another damn thing." K'luha interjected loudly.

 

His head popped up, ears standing straight up, when K'piru said she needed something from him. "What? Uh. Alright! I can do that!" His ears shifted to point at K'luha, and in a moment's time his tone shifted down, "That's true. You really need to take care of yourself more than you need to take care of us."

 

"She is not in a shape to move, nor do I wish to sleep at this time," Antimony murmured, distractedly smoothing out the creases in the notice.

 

***

 

A dark haired, lankey Elezen approached the Quicksand's receptionist. She exchanged a series of words with the man, causing him to frown considerably. He shook his head, causing the woman to set her hand down heavily on the counter. She pulled out papers from her dust covered satchel pushing them over the surface. 

 

After a few minutes, where the man ducked away from his post, he returned, telling her a room number. The woman nodded her head, tucking the neatly folded papers away into her satchel, and walked up the Inn's stairs.

 

Walking with long, sure strides down the hallway, Illira Carceri scanned the room numbers listed on the doorway, eventually stopping at one at the end of the tunnel, near a stairwell. She looked it over, before planting her feet down and brushing off a few traces of sand from her red linen shirt.

 

She took a breath before knocking firmly on the door.

 

***

 

Sighing heavily, K'ile gestured over his shoulder, "Piru, when it's Luha telling you that you need to take a break, that's pretty-" He stopped suddenly at the knock on the door, turning to look at the doorknob as though it had been trying to say something to him.

 

"You don't have to sleep now, just before you go out and try to deal with the Brass Blades." Luha continued after the initial silence of the door knocking. She glared at the door a little bit, but turned her gaze back to Piru after a second.

 

Antimony looked up sharply at the knock, her ears shifting back further. "Ulanan...?" She muttered under her breath and gave an uneasy look over her shoulder in K'ile and K'luha's general direction. How would she explain to her friend what she had...

 

She hesitated and as a result, took significantly longer to answer the door than was likely polite. In the end, however, her unwillingness to leave a friend hanging pushed her to action, and she moved to open the door. Her gaze shifted down automatically to greet her shorter companion but saw only a pair of long legs. She blinked at them dumbly for several seconds.

 

Illira stared down her long nose at the older Miqo'te in front of her. She pressed her lips together tightly, the very edges of them turned upwards slightly in an almost sardonic manner. "Were you going to leave me hanging forever Antimony? For someone normally so eager to leave a good impression. This is not the way. Especially after last time." She turned her head up, looking over Antimony's head. "Oh, but you have company. How rude of me to interrupt thusly on such an..." She drifted off, casting her steely eyes over the other woman stretched out on the bed, "… obviously personal moment."

 

It probably didn't help that K'ile wasn't wearing a shirt, which he never was, so he was ignorant of the implications of such as he stood from the bed and crossed his arms. He didn't know who the woman was, but he did not miss her tone.

 

"Ah...?" Antimony's eyes dragged up the legs and then widened as her features paled significantly, her ears pressing tight against her skull. "Miss... Miss Carceri...! What are you... That is, I--Oh..." She fell back a step from the door, looking faint with sudden realization. "Oh no."

 

K'luha grasped for K'ile's tail and quietly tried to make him sit down again. She too felt a little... intruded upon but, there was very little she could do.

 

"Oh no is right, Antimony. Have you been using company funds on such... what is this even? A late-in-life journey of self-discovery?" She shook her head, braids flapping. "I sent you messages for news, after I recieved none. And thusly have dragged myself back into this... sad pit." Her lips clenched tighter at the last thought, looking as if she wanted to spit viciously at the mere thought.

 

K'ile sat down next to K'luha, muttering to the woman, "I don't understand. Journies of discovery are good, right?"

 

"I think so..." K'luha whispered back, nervously petting K'ile's back. More to calm her own nerves than his at this point. She hated being quite so defenseless when someone seemed to be on the offensive.

 

Antimony's tail puffed up rather dramatically in distress. "Whaat?" She squeaked, coughed to try and clear her throat, and found her thoughts spinning. How could she have forgotten? How could she have possibly...! Of course, she knew how; every moment of every day in this city had seemed bent on splitting her attention until she just tore apart at the seams.

 

And it seemed Miss Carceri was here to finish the job.

 

"I promise you this is not--not what you are thinking it--I'm not... they are family!" She swayed a bit dizzily and looked up towards Illira, at a loss as to how to defend herself, knowing there really was no defense. Antimony wilted, bowing her head so low that her spine curved forward to join it. "The delay is inexcusable, I realize. I am deeply sorry," she managed weakly.

 

At K'piru's distress K'ile rose from the bed without consideration, moving towards her.

 

Illira lifted a brow, "Family? I apologize. But I do not believe that I have ever found myself in such a situation with my own."

 

K'luha frowned as K'ile walked away from her. Goddamn it. She hated this stupid broken hip.

 

"Though,” the elezen continued, “I'm sure that you'll say it’s not what it seems. And that would be mistaking my curiosity for care. Trust me. It’s not."

 

Antimony winced at Illira's words. "It is not... ah, I was only assisting... she is injured!" She tried rather helplessly to explain, gesturing behind her towards K'luha. "Please, you did not--there was no need for you to have traveled so far to... I am very sorry!"

 

K'ile inserted himself between K'piru and the newcomer, "Hey! For your information the woman over there was seriously injued and possibly dying. I don't know what family you come from that doesn't drop everything for that, but you'r not making yourself look good, miss... Ul'dah person."

 

Something spasmed in Antimony's expression as K'ile thrust himself into the situation and chastised Illira. Her hands flew up as though to stop him but froze mid-air.

 

Illira tucks her head in further to take in the shirtless man that has thrust himself between herself and her degenerate employee. "I rather think this is not your business, Mr... ladies-man."

 

"Please!" Antimony burst out, hands still hovering uselessly in the air. "Just... allow me to explain, you must allow me to explain! I am simply helping them recover--recover her health and, aah, I was going to look into a lost shipment but only on off time and I wouldn't dream of using company funds on any of this, I swear I have not, I've been very careful, but so much has been going on since my report to you and I was nearly arrested but not really and one of the clients is targeted for assassination but I promise to you I was making very solid progress up until this point, I've only been distracted and--" She ran well out of breath at this point and gasped for air before squeaking out with an aimless gesture towards the table, "See??"

 

The table, for inquiring minds, was covered in a mess of papers, one headless doll, and a folded winter coat just unwrapped from a mail package.

 

Not backing down a single millimeter, K'ile leaned forward to focus his glare on Illira's chin, "Lots of big words, but she sounds respectful. You better be, too."

 

K'luha just laid still quietly and cursed everything for it being a broken hip.

 

Illira narrowed her eyes at the table, ignoring the man below her. "It has been three weeks since your last report. If you were having such trouble you should have reported as such and requested some back-up or for another to take over. As it is, you have wasted valuable company time. Time is money, Antimony. You should well know that. As it is... your... collection on appears to be a mess worthy of D'hein's own desk."

 

K'ile hummed, and looked over his shoulder to gauge the woman's reaction, unable to discern on his own if the Elezen's words counted as rude or not.

 

"Aah," a faint, worried sound escaped Antimony's throat and she brought her hands together in front of her, digits shaking. The room spun and she spoke again in rapid fire: "I know. I understand. I do. I know. I promise you. I've tried to--I've found a--I... nngh--" Her words cut off suddenly as she stumbled to the side and caught herself on the table. She felt light-headed, her thoughts fuzzy as she murmured weakly, "There will be no more delays."

 

"I am here to help you, Antimony, if you need it. But I think that it’s too late to simply say, 'There will be no more delays.' It is not only yourself that is responsible in this instance, as I am responsible for you as your supervisor on this investigation." Illira shook her head again, before pressing her hand down on the man's shoulder, pushing him towards the inward swung door.

 

Standing solidly against the pushing hand, K'ile knocks the hand away, gives the woman a smirk, and then moves away of his own volition, back towards K'luha.

 

Sinking into the lone chair next to the table, Antimony held her head in her hands. "Too much," she whispered to herself, "This is far, far too..." She drew a shaky breath and peered up at Illira once more. "What do you wish me to do?"

 

Stepping into the room, Illira looked around closer, taking in fully the pair of Miqo'te by the bed, and the lone woman now hunched over her desk. "To do the job that you are being paid to do. It is early morning, and yet you languish in your room with your... family..." She motioned towards the bed. "I am here to help expedite the process as necessary. But I cannot do your job. If you need something not directly involving those under investigation I may lend my hand. But this has to make headway. I can practically smell D'hein's fowl breath on the nape of my neck."

 

"Of... of course," Antimony sighed, casting a strained look towards K'ile and K'luha without really focusing on them. Her ears and tail hung low, shamed, as she slowly returned her attention to Illira. "I... right away. I will get back to work immediately," she declared quietly.

 

K'ile lifted the satchel he'd earlier tossed on the floor up onto the bed and gave Illira a frown, "Nobody's languishing and K'piru is exhausted from her work already. She needs to rest."

 

"Oh? She's exhausted from her work is she? That’s funny. You know nothing of the matter except how to distract her. Such is obvious from her short, but already full history of such matters."

 

"No, she is correct," Antimony shook her head at K'ile's words. "I've... obligations that cannot be ignored. I... had not intended to ignore them." She grimaced, rubbed at her eyes behind her glasses where an itchy dryness had set in. K'ile and K'luha had not felt so distant now since that night in the desert, so long ago; the thought chilled her. "Immediately," she repeated. "I recall I'd found certain individuals I need to... I can go now. I apologize, you shouldn't feel the need to linger here." And as heavily as she had sat moments earlier, Antimony pushed to her feet.

 

Ignoring the Elezen woman, K'ile focused his attention on K'piru. "You have an obligation to yourself. How much real work are you going to get down without rest or food? You should know better than any of us."

 

"And why do you purport that she is so exhausted? It seems that you, yourself has had such a part to play in these matters. She is not in town to entertain and attend your needs..." Illira walked over to the bed where the undressed woman lay. "You both cannot stay here. As this is paid for with company funds, it is single occupancy company housing."

 

K'luha glanced over towards the satchel where her gil would be. Thankfully K'ile had sat it on the bed. She carefully reached forward and rummaged about it before picking up a small coin purse. 

 

"I can reimburse you for the room." Luha offered, picking up the nessacery coinage from her purse.

 

Antimony straightened and made to protest, "I've already discussed it with the front desk - all... all additional fees are to be sent to my personal account! She cannot move with a broken hip."

 

K'ile shook his head at the woman, "She doesn't care. She's just being a bitch."

 

"K'ile..." Luha called, reaching with her other free hand and grabbing his tail. "Stop. Don't make it harder for... Antimony." The name sounded strange to Luha, but if that's what she was going called then Luha would respect that for the time being.

 

Casting her hooded gaze back onto Antimony, "Even so, those papers that you have on your... desk are confidential in nature. And as your... friend is so eager to point out, you need your rest. And you will not get that taking care of an -injured- woman. That is not your job. That is a medic’s. Which is where she should be, if she is really hurt. Not tucked away in a tiny inn room meant to hold one person. I highly doubt the inn would approve of such stretched room occupancy." Shaking her head, she addressed the man. "If you insist on calling my personage names, perhaps you should give me your own, so that I might return the favour someday, hmm?"

 

His tail straining against K'luha's grip a bit, K'ile thrust his finger at Illira's chest, "It's not a name. it's an observation. Name's K'ile Tia if you want, but I don't even want your name."

 

Antimony rather shrunk at Illira's none-too-friendly lecture and turned away from K'luha and K'ile. Her hands shook so she clasped them together in front of her. She felt a chasm forming between her and them, driven on by Illira, but could not find any means to protest it, was not even sure she should want to. Instead, she kept her eyes down, sensing bits of herself fraying horribly and helpless to prevent it, and said flatly, "I will have them moved. I apologize."

 

This wouldn't have all been such the problem if K'luha hadnt gone and... The injured woman sighed heavily. She just wanted to walk out of the damn room, but she didn't have the choice to do that anymore. Instead, she limply let go of K'ile's tail and hid her face away in the extra blanket. She really did not want to be in Ul'dah anymore.

 

Illira nodded her head, thick brows dipping inward slightly. She did not look away as she said, "That is the right course of action Antimony. I would suggest moving your Tia out as well. He does not seem to have been a good influence on you, even if he is family, I surmise that that he is not blood kin. At least I should hope not, especially given what I know of Seekers."

 

Placing himself directly in front of the Elezen, K'ile demanded, "What is wrong with you? Why is everyone in Ul'dah so crooked and greedy, just barging in and bullying and taking what they want? Dealing with everything sideways instead of straight on."

 

"K'ile, stop," Antimony uttered lowly, a faint strain of pleading in her voice in the way it shook, not looking up or towards him. "Don't... make this... I... can help you find a physician for K'luha. I'm sorry."

 

Illira brow furrowed heavily as she took in a heavy, steadying breath. Her jaw tight and squared, she said, "You've been out in the desert to long Tia. You obviously know nothing of work, much less Antimony's, or you would not be saying any such a thing. You think I like it here in Ul'dah? I am only back in the cesspit because my subordinate has neglected to even send a report in three weeks. I would not set foot back in this city if I did not have to, the very air within this place riles my blood, its corruption lies so deep. So do not speak with me about such matters. You will find none so forthright as me."

 

Looking to the side for one moment, the short Tia very suddenly and with no warning whatsoever subjected the Elezen to one of his better uppercuts, a punch that harkened back to that one time he beat K'yohko half to death for treating K'piru in a similar way. "How's that for forthright, bitch!?"

 

"K'ile, stop!" Antimony cried out uselessly, spinning around to close the distance between her and him and grab frantically at his hands.

 

Illira's head was knocked back, as K'ile's uppercut caught her chin. She stepped back, catching the blow that if given to a person his own size, would have likely knocked them on their ass. In reality though, the punch thrown onto the much taller woman wasn’t able to do deliver such a knockout. 

 

She reached a hand upwards rubbing her jaw, as she moved her other foot back a step. "You should run back to your dunes little Tia. I know you mean well, defending what you believe to be Antimony's honor. But intention only takes you so far, assaulting me is neither the moral, the legal, nor the right course of action. I will forgive one such thing though as you are obviously so far gone to your baser instincts."

 

K'luha's head emerged again as K'ile went for the aggressive. Yes the woman was a bitch but... She watched nervously, internally furious that she literally could do nothing but lay there and watch it all happen. What was there to do? The only thing she could do was get out of the way as fast as possible and talk with Piru later.  Luha looked towards Piru and mouthed something that would have been missed by the others. Hopefully, Piru saw her silent apologies. 

 

Slowly, K'luha sat up and pulled the blanket around her form. Maybe she could catch K'ile's attention doing something stupid again. But either way, getting out of the way was her goal and a winning situation. Carefully, painfully, she moved herself towards the edge of the bed to maybe limp or hop out of the room.

 

K'ile wasn't precisely sure what all of those words the Elezen woman was using meant, but he knew her tone hadn't changed any. He would've hit her again if K'piru hadn't gone for his hands. He didn't want to be violent anywhere within arm's reach of K'piru, so his arms fell quickly and he pulled himself away from the Elezen, letting her blathering continue.

 

As he turned his face away, he could see K'luha moving, and he should've known she would. He pounced on the woman almost as fast as he'd struck the Elezen, grabbing Luha by one shoulder to stop her movement. He said sternly, "Luha cannot be moved. That is not an option. No cowardice, intentions or self-important vomitting can change that."

 

K'luha halted when she felt K'ile suddenly stop her with a strong hand on her shoulder. She just... didn't want to be a part of this Ul'dahn nonsense anymore. She wanted to go back home to Tahj and fuck everything else. But she didn't move again when K'ile stopped her, instead pulling the blaket further around her form and almost hiding in it.

 

Antimony fell back almost immediately when K'ile relented, twisting away once more to stare half-panicked at Illira. "He did not mean it, I--I assure you! Just... let me deal with them and I'll... they will not be a bother further!" She turned to the table and began to rather desperately try to sort through the papers there, searching.

 

Still rubbing her jaw, "Then please see to it. She does not have to move, but if that is the case, then you must relocate. Though I would highly suggest that she see a real healer, if it is as bad as you believe. You are an accountant. Not a medical or healing arts practioner Antimony. I should step outside for you to clean up your own mess now and arrange for my own unfortunate stay."

 

Closing her eyes, hands shaking so much that the papers in her hands rattled, Antimony nodded hastily. "Yes, I understand, of course. I'll... it won't take long, I assure you. Everything will be taken care of, and I'll--I'll get back to work."

 

K'ile pushed K'luha back down into a laying position, one hand on the woman's back to make sure the movement was easy and slow.

 

K'luha complied, laying back down slowly and continuing to avert her gaze and hide her face as subtly as possible.

 

Illira walked towards the door, opening it back up, "We will talk later this morning Antimony, in a less... raucous environment if you would. I would not want to be the reason that your Tia is arrested for assault."

 

K'ile observed somberly, "She just wants to be able to bully you without being called on it."

 

Swallowing thickly, Antimony could only nod once more to Illira's words. She straightened the papers in her hand a fourth time without thinking.

 

The elezen walks out of the room, closing the door behind her.

 

K'luha listened to the woman walk out of the room, but the tension in the room did not lighten as she left. It felt to K'luha that it was only getting worse. "I'm sorry..." Luha called softly towards K'ile and Piru.

 

"You didn't do anything," K'ile said to K'luha immediately, "Except try to move around. That was stupid."

 

The documents in her hands blurred so much that she had no way of knowing what was what, but Antimony continued to gather them up, trembling fingers moving them to piles in hasty, jerky motions. "You do not have to move," she murmured after a moment, voice shaking just slightly on the tail end. "I will... take care of everything. Don't worry." A breath and then, "I'm sorry. I never should have... I'm going."

 

K'ile stood away from the bed and walked over to K'piru. "Hey, are you alright?"

 

Of course she wasn't alright. Luha could see it without looking. That was her boss and now she was in trouble because of them... because mostly of Luha and her stupid injury and her stupid child and... Couldn't things ever look okay for more than six seconds? Again, Luha pulled the blanket over her head and tried to be as small and out of the way as possible.

 

The small stacks she'd gathered combined to become larger stacks; she couldn't remember when she'd managed to collect so much evidence. At K'ile's approach, she flinched and uttered again, "Don't worry. I'm going." One hand caught on the headless doll, and she gripped it white-knuckled.

 

K'ile put a hand on K'piru's shoulder, "That's not what I'm talking about!"

 

She turned to search for her satchel only to find K'ile in her way and blinked past the blur of her vision to his nose. Something keened in the back of her mind, a desperate wail that tore through a grief-stricken desert camp. "I have to go now," she repeated faintly. "You needn't worry. I'll pay for the room. She won't have to move."

 

"Piru, I'm worried about you!" He put a hand on each of the woman's shoulders, holding her, "You're too tired and stressed for this. You don't have to let that woman bully you."

 

She wasn't sure she would call it bullying, as she understood where Illira was coming from as an employer, but she knew K'ile would not understand that. Even standing face to face with him, Antimony found that whatever crevice Illira's words had carved now seemed insurmountable, terrifying in its vastness. Instead she shut her eyes briefly and tried, "I will be fine.” She didn’t know. “I can take care of myself well enough." A pause, and then a strained, "I need to go."

 

Looking behind him to the form huddled on the bed, K'ile said, "Luha, help me out."

 

Luha fearfully peered over at the two. She was trying to get out of the way, why did K'ile have to bring her back into the middle again? "I... I can understand that you have to work for your employer... but you should really make sure that you get rest as soon as you can." Luha looked nervously at K'ile. "If she doesn't listen to that women, she could lose her job and her livelihood. She couldn't live out on her own with no gil and no way to make gil K'ile... Employers get to boss you around... that's... just how the cities are. I've run enough jobs myself to know that..." K'luha was fairly certainly she didn't help. Probably did the opposite, but she wanted K'ile to understand that much at least. "But you should eat for sure... and rest when she allows you to..." Luha added after a moment.

 

Antimony did not reply to this, save for a subtle shifting of her ears and slight bowing of her head. The stack of papers she held in her hands shivered

 

K'ile released K'piru, turning back to K'luha and declaring, "She's not some Amal'jaa slave! She hasn't been tempered by her 'employer'!" Luha cringed visibly and slunk back as far away from the both of them as she could. She had nothing else to say.

 

K'ile's assertion brought a pained look to Antimony's face. "It is not that simple. My obligations..." The words seemed to light a flame beneath her feet, as she moved then, to the side, in search of her bag, papers clutched to her chest.

 

Obligations. For just a moment, the hearing that word come from K'piru's lips stung. She'd shirked every obligation she had to her tribe and family when she'd left him behind in the Sagolii, careless but for what she wanted to do. And now she would hide behind 'obligation' to some Ul'dahn as a reason to deny herself food and rest?

 

No, there was more to it than that. K'luha's words, about gil and about how cities just were, did not make any sense to him. He couldn't imagine any person from the tribe -- much less K'piru -- humbling themselves before some alien master in exchange for coins dropped ccallously on their heads.

 

"I don't understand!" He said, his tail swatting at the air viciously. Anxiety boiling in his gut calmed his words, but not his thoughts. "Do what you need to do. We'll be here, I guess." And K'piru, he was sure, would not be here. She would leave and hide in her obligations, fleeing from him again. Only this time, she thought she needed to lie.

 

There, against the opposite wall. Almost blindly, Antimony crossed the room and began to hastily stuff papers into the bag. Her vision blurred again; her eyes stung with a biting heat. Too much. It was too much. She couldn't--

 

"Aah," the wavering sound choked from her throat before she could stifle it fully. Bowing her head to hide the wetness on her cheeks, she stumbled to her feet, back to the table, feeling the weight of K'ile and K'luha's eyes as some monstrous flame at her back, pushing and pushing and threatening to consume her if she did not go. The arm not carrying the bag snatched at the doll and the coat, the paper wrapping and letter slipping to the floor unnoticed.

 

Miss Carceri's words loomed over her head like soot-laden clouds swelling from the fury of the flames, the haughty disapproval, the deserved judgment of her own failures. She had been a fool, she realized, fingers digging into the fur and leather of the coat. The texture of it sent a bolt of ice down her spine. She could not face K'ile, or K'luha, or anyone else who came for her, even when she thought she might, after all these years, have wanted to. They had clawed open a hole, an old wound wrapped around keening isolation, and she knew of only one way to escape such a feeling.

 

She made for the door.

 

And there was nothing K'luha could do about any of what had transpired. She was just as useless here as she was with the tribe. So she did nothing, which was all she could do.

 

Not moving from where he stood, K'ile watched K'piru. he felt like iron spikes had been driven through his joints, a red-hot rod stabbed into his gut. "Please take care of yourself, K'piru," he said, and muttered, "I'm sure you're going to do just fine."

 

Antimony fled blindly in a high panic, pushing through the door with the desperation of one fleeing a burning building. The action was irrational, childish, but she was not in a place to recognize that, just as she hadn't been amongst the sands, beneath the empty gaze of an absent god. She stumbled into the hall with all the self-awareness of a drunkard, turned one way and then the other. Long walls loomed menacingly in narrow, endless tunnels no matter which way she spun, and in the grain of their wood she saw faces twisted with pain, burnt nearly unrecognizable.

 

A small voice reminded her of Illira, who awaited her papers, her words, her excuses and reports, but the whole of it joined the flames threatening at her back and drove her forward through the hall, through the tavern, into the city streets. The brief thought of the repurcussions for these actions only served to push her further. The snow would hide her, she thought.

 

***

 

There was finally silence in the room as Luha and K'ile were left alone again. She felt the need to apologize, but somehow she felt like an apology would only serve to make things worse. She had managed to somehow ruin K'ile's reunion with Piru. And K'piru just ran like she had five years ago. Was family so torturous to her now? K'luha couldn't understand wanting to run from family. But she only knew now that she would probably never see K'piru again... and K'ile probably wouldn't see her either. And the latter was her fault for scaring K'piru away in the first place. She blamed herself, but she doubted that it made the situation any better to blame herself or voice that pain. She could only hope K'ile didn't blame her, and if he did that he would forgive her for it.

 

K'ile Tia just lingered where he stood, stock still and silent, for a few moments. And then he said, "I don't know what to do."

 

Luha peered up at K'ile's back, and pulled the blankets away from her face. "What did you do that last time she left?" she asked softly.

 

He turned and looked at a spot on the wall right next to K'luha. His face was a plain mask, like something an actor might wear to obscure their character. The flame of his hair was dim and still, his blue shivering subtly. "I don't remember. I think I just stopped being for a few years."

 

K'luha carefully lifted her hands and motioned for K'ile to come towards her. "Come. Sit."

 

The idea of moving in that moment was bizarre to K'ile. She might as well have asked him to lift Dalamud back into the sky. If he could move maybe he'd go after K'piru. He'd tried to once. He'd waited five to try again. He hadn't even told K'piru the things he'd waited five years to tell her. If he could move now maybe he would leave, too. K'ile could imagine himself walking out of that woman, carrying all of his pent up feelings with him.

 

Maybe if he were a little bit more like K'piru, he could just walk out and leave K'luha here and not come back. He would find someplace out there where he wouldn't have to deal with these things. "I hate that woman," he said. "She's the most selfish, cowardly person I've ever met. Maybe that's where K'ailia learned how to abandon people and pretend it's..."

 

K'luha felt her chest ache. He didn't hate K'piru. He probably wanted to with everything he had, but those promises he had made were still holding him back. She motioned with her hand again. She couldn't reach K'ile. 

 

"K'ile... come here?" She asked softly again. There was no way to limp after him like she had before. She couldn't stop K'piru. And if he was going to go after her, she couldn't chase him either. All she could do was lay still, at the mercy of whatever torrent of emotions were assaulting him.

 

In a swift motion punctuated with a stubborn huff of air, K'ile moved as though cut free from iron bindings. He took two heavy steps towards the bed and turned his back on K'luha, dropping to the floor and leaning back against the bed.

 

It wasn't what she had really wanted, but at least she could reach him now. K'luha shifted herself over to the edge of the bed and place her hands softly on his shoulders. He could shrug her off he he wanted, but she wanted him to know that she was here. 

 

"K'ile... I don't think I could ever make up for what K'piru meant to you, but I want you to know that I'm here for you. I always have been. Even when you didn't want me to be there five years ago, I'm going to be here to help you however I can. And I'm not going to run away anymore. I can't run anymore. So I'm going to be here. Okay?" She meant a lot of things both metaphorically and physically, but mostly she hoped that he understand what she was trying to say. And it was going to hurt if he pushed her away again, but K'luha was going to endure it.

 

"Meant," K'ile stated. "Not what she 'meant' to me anymore than what K'ailia 'meant' to you. It's what she means. She's not dead, she's just gone."

 

"I'm sorry... I meant... means...." K'luha replied quietly, casting her eyes downward. She had hoped that a grammar error would be his sole focus, but apparently it was. Just like K'piru was his sole focus most of the time. She loud out a long breath and bit her bottom lip.

[Twinflame]

Some time after K'piru vanished from her own hotel room, K'ile finally stirred from where he sat against the bed. He left K'luha on the bed and leaned forward, eyes on the thing K'piru had grabbed at as she had left, as though it had been precious. She'd taken papers -- signs of the Ul'dahn's obsessions of gil and paper setting into her mind -- and something from this box. There was another peice of paper on it, and he recognized it as a letter even if he couldn't make out the penmanship with his meager skills at words. Paper wrapping about some obscured item.

 

"Luha," he said, "Can you read this note?" He held it out to the woman on the bed.

 

K'luha was half asleep, tormented by the dreams of people's backs growing further away until they were swallowed whole. But K'ile's voice stirred her from her sleep and she blinked a few times before looking over. A note...?

 

She carefully took it and moved to sit up a little bit so she might read it.

 

K'ile dug into the package, turning aside the paper wrapping, then frowned and closed the wrapping again. "What's it say?" He walked over to the bed and sat down next to K'luha.

 

Luha struggled to read the letter very well, and stumbled over a few words, but eventually got the whole letter read out in tact. 

 

<<< 'Dear Miss Antimony,

 

I hope you are still in Ul'dah as I am sending this message post haste and I fear the delivery moogles might kill me if you're not. The journey to Coerthas has gone well and I am back in the snow. It's really lovely this time of year, I hope that you will come up someday to visit. In honor of the Starlight Celebration, I've sent this coat for you. You know, if it gets cold or if you want to come up to Coerthas and wear it. Or sell it. You could do that too. But I hope it will be of more use to you in wearing and not selling. 

 

My sincerest reguards to you this day. In meeting you I have found the strength to go back and face something that I have most feared. I was running away from my fears, but for some reason you've inspired me to go and fix the things I have broken. A little bit like you fixed my head. 

 

I wish you a wonderful day, and I hope that this message gets to you safely.

 

Your Friend, 

Mitari Xerxes. 

Aka that one miq'ote dude you healed and got you thrown in jail in case you already forgot. 

 

P.S. I dont' know why this Elezen noble sent me these... but they look like they'd fit you better. Or you could just burn them or something. Maybe a nice regift? I just thought maybe you could find more use for them than me.' >>>

 

K'ile frowned deeper and looked down into the box, moving the paper again to look at the gift which he now concluded had been sent with the letter, from this Mitari person. He took a deep breath, and held it, closing his eyes. He muttered gravely, "I see."

 

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Illira had been sitting down in the tavern portion of the Quicksand for sometime now. After having collected herself for a little while in her own innroom, she had returned downstairs to await for Antimony to come meet her, so that they might get about clearing up the mess that this investigation had turned into. She had a strong tea sitting down in front of her, though it appeared to not have had much drunk from it. Instead, she glanced around impatientally. Surely it shouldn't take this long to have moved her things to a new room. 

 

She sighed. But this was Antimony. Delays were to be expected.

 

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K'luah wasn't sure what to make of the letter, but apparently K'ile didn't make anything positive of it. She instead folded it carefully and moved to hand it back to K'ile.

 

"May I have it back?" K'ile reached to take the letter from K'luha.

 

K'luha handed it back without another word.

 

K'ile stood suddenly, throwing the box in front of him and singing his hand against the note. The small scrap of paper burst into flames and dispersed in the air. He shouted angrily, "She's left us to go to Coerthas and be with some foreign lover! Look!" He held forth the suggestively tight holiday pantalettes that had been contained in the box, "His choice of gifts and words of fake just-friendship tell me his intentions are unworthy! I won't stand for it!"

 

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Illira sipped a bit from tea, tapping her leather clad foot on the floor. Upon realizing that she was doing so, she immediately put a stop to such and set her down her barely touched drink. She looked around again, taking in the fact that many people had come and come already in the time that she had been left to sit and wait.

 

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K'luha flinched and looked to K'ile's sudden violent outburst. A lover in Coerthas? It hadn't really sounded like that to her. Although, part of K'luah was about ready to tell him just to hand over his damn braclet and chase after her for the rest of eternity. But that wasn't fair to him. He had been very patient with her. She owed him the same. 

 

"K'ile..." K'luah called softly. "The letter said he didn't know what to do with them and that she might have some other use for them. Those were originally sent to a man from someone else it sounds like. He didn't really sounds like a lover to me." She sighed heavily and looked at him wearily. "I don't think she's running off to Coerthas to meet a lover."

 

"And what would you do," K'ile said, tossing the pantalettes towards K'luha, "If I gave these to you and said," his voice depended and turned into something smooth, with a smirk. "Hey, let's find some 'other uses' for those. Hm?"

 

K'luha picked the pantlettes off her face and examined them. Clean... and a nice color. "I would do this." K'luah remined somewhat smugly and reached down to remove her own pantlettes. They were flifthy anyway and she tossed the dirty pair at K'ile before putting on the clean pair. "Much better."

 

K'ile spasmed and recoiled.

 

"Well excuse me. You didn't lie dying on the desert floor for hours. I was sick of having sand everywhere." K'luha frowned and looked away from K'ile, faintly upset that he was spasm and recoil. She opened her mouth and closed it again, fighting the urge to tell him to just go chase K'piru.

 

 "We can get you a bath, then!" K'ile protested.

 

"There's still sand... everywhere." K'luha grumbled, pulling at her top as if to illustrate her point. "The sand out near Ul'dah is not the sand in the Sagolii. I dislike it. But yes. At some point, a bath would be good." She took a long sigh and glanced back at K'ile.

 

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Between the many that had moved across the Quicksand at that moment, was a lalafell carrying a basket. She was not wearing rags, but almost: a bulky hooded coat, yellowed more by use than by age. She carried a basket, big for her size, and wore a smile in her face. She walked among the adventurers and drunks, her head barely visible above the tables. She walked next to Illira and did not recognize her, but the Elezen might have noticed that it was Ulanan. Also known as "Antimony's pet lalafell". Or so some evil tongues said. She passed by and went towards the room.

 

Illira watched as a tiny figure walked by her, her eyes narrowed in faint recognition, before sitting back in her chair, having decided to give Antimony a few more moments before returning to her room to see what the hold up was, not wanting to deal with the headache that dwelled within its walls.

 

Ulanan reached the room's door with surpising swiftness. She aligned herself properly with the frame, placed the basket down at her side and raised her other hand high into the air, stretching her arm and yawning. With that formality out of the way, she knocked the door three times.

 

K'ile stilled when he heard the knocking on the door, giving K'luha a look. Of course a thousand thoughts went through his head as to who it could be. One of them was K'piru's "boss" and the rest were all K'piru. With a deep breath to steady himself, K'ile walked to the door. It's important to describe K'ile now: he is a shirtless, tribal Miqo'te, covered in dirt and sweat. His extremely red hair is topped by a bandana that does not fully conceal it. His tail swings about behind him like a thing on fire.

 

He thew open the door, looking and finding... nothing. What? He leaned forward and looked to either side, very confused.

 

Ulanan's confusion was unparalleled. She did not waste any time staring at the shirtless man, instead using those precious seconds to step back, cough, and think brief unlady things. "Excuse me, sir, but I'm...looking for Antimony. Did I get the wrong room?" she said, leaning away from him and looking to the other doors in the hallway, checking their numbers.

 

The door? Oh god, not that woman again. K'luha pulled the blankets over her head again and frowned. She couldn't do that again. Not again but... When she didn't hear rude comments, Luha paused and pulled the blankets from her face. Antimony...? It sounded really familiar for some reason.

 

"What?" K'ile looked down. A short... Hyur? Lalafel! He stepped back quickly. "Oh! That's... hi. Uhm. This is K'piru's room."

 

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Illira once again took a deep breath, this time, getting up out of the chair. She glanced down at her tea, as though considering what its fate should be. Apparently it was to be left cold and unappreciated, since the Elezen walked away from the table and towards the Inn stairs that led to the Inn rooms.

 

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A shadow crossed the lalafell's face. One hand moved to pick up the basket from its resting place, but did not lift it. "K'piru." she echoed. "Are you members of her tribe? Did K'ailia send you?" she asked with a deep frown.

 

"Uhm," K'ile stepped back again. A dark premenition washed over him, like a cool wind blowing out of the Lalafel's tiny shadow. Something terrible was about to happen. he could feel it in his bones. Every fold on the Lalafel was suddenly dark as night, and that basket it... what terrible secrets did it conceal?

 

The Tia's feet caught on K'luha's discarded pantalette as he backed up, and he began to stumble to try and rid it from his foot. "Nobody sent us!" he said as he struggled, "We're friends! She invited us!"

 

Well that was the most blatant lie K'luha had ever heard. She cast her glance over towards K'ile, but her face didn't betray anything. Friends... bah. K'piru had looked like she would rather die than ever meet with them again.

 

Walking up the stairs for the third time this day, Illira saw instantly Antimony's old room at the back of the hallway, though curiously, it had a Lalafell standing in front of it this time. She paused, frowning, before letting her long legs carry her the rest of the way to the room, stopping just short of the viewing range from withinside the room, the tiny miscreant just a few feet in front of her.

 

Ulanan paid no attention to the lingering Elezen. She was too busy squinting suspiciously at K'ile. "Where is she?" she asked. Her eyes moved from the man to the rest of the room until they met the woman on the bed. She did not squint at her, though she did raise a brow.

 

"I think," K'ile freed the pantalettes from his food and held them awkwardly. "I think she's run off to Coerthas to be with some guy? Wait! Who are you?"

 

"She didn't run off to Coerthas to be with some guy K'ile." K'luha retorted, frowning at him. "We had no idea where she is. She just left. Saying she left to go be with a man in Coerthas is like you telling me to meet you in Drybone." K'luha huffed, still bitter over the incident.

 

Twinflame: "But she took a coat!" K'ile protested.

 

"A coat does not mean a lover in Coerthas! It means he invited her to come and sent her a coat out of goodwill." K'luha snapped back.

 

Illira steps behind the Lalafell in full view of the doorway, having heard enough, "So Antimony has runaway then? I should not be surprised to hear such news. She is much to fragile for her own good."

 

Ulanan turned around and stared, first at Illira's knees, and then to her face, like social customs dictate one should stare at people. "Hello, miss Greetings-are-not-my-thing. It's good to see you!" she said faking a smile so well faked it could have been actually sincere. The lalafell moved to a side of the door, losing eye contact with K'luha but gaining the advantage of not having a tall elezen creepily standing at her back.

 

K'ile frowned at Illira's appearance and pointed at her face, "I don't need to remind you to watch what you say."

 

K'luha flinched visibly at the appearance of... that woman again. Why was the room suddenly assualted with so many people? "No one knows where K'piru is right now!" Luha huffed irritably at the door.

 

"Do not threaten me, Miqo'te. You are not in the right. But you say that she left? She has not come to met me to begin to remedy her mistake."

 

Ulanan growled. "We get it: Antimony's not like you and that makes you angry. Get over it." She leant forward to take a better look at K'ile and smiled in approval of his reaction. "Why do you say she ran off to Coerthas?"

 

"There was a letter from some guy," K'ile said. "And it- wait! Who are you?"

 

Luha took a deep breath and tried to stop herself from getting angry at all the people that for some fucking reason, had decided to show up.

 

Illira frowns before saying, "This is Antimony's pet Lalafell. I don't remember her name. But she follows Antimony most everywhere. For her to have left the woman behind is strange."

 

"I'm her friend, Ulanan." She stopped only to cast a murderous glare to Illira. Then she added in more friendly terms to K'ile: "Can I see that letter? I doubt she will go to running to Coerthas like a headless dodo. No matter how much your tribe scares her off!"

 

Nope. Anger reached. K'luha sat up ricikedly in the bed, her tail bristling outwards in anger.  "I'm sick of all of you people! What do you know about what happened? What do you know about why she left? You know nothing! I never did anything to my aunt other than love her and try to help her! I don't understand why she feels like she does! Get out! All of you, get out!" K'luha voice was quite booming and could be considered intimatdating if a half-naked miq'ote with a broken hip was intimidating. Which was to say, it probably wasn't.

 

K'ile was intimidated, because K'luha had prolly beat him up before. He swallowed this and walked over to her. "Hey, the Lalafel didn't mean anything. I think." He also put his hands firmly on her shoulders and pushed, saying gently, "Lay back down or I'm going to strangle you until you pass out."

 

"GOOD." Luha spat back furioulsy, pushing back up to sit up again. "GET OUT! SHE'S NOT HERE SO GO FIND HER ALREADY!" She screech insanely towards the door.

 

Illira takes the opportunity to enter the room, as K'ile has left the doorway. "I cannot leave the information that she did gather. I am sorry for your loss, woman, but I have reason to believe that the both of you have played a significant role in Antimony's breakdown. Do not turn your ire to me, you'll only injure yourself more."

 

Twinflame: Pushing K'luha down hard and pinning her there, he says, "I am serious, Luha. You don't get to move. I dont care what's going on around us. Keep your back on the bed."

 

Ulanan stood where she was, at the side of the door. She leant to look inside, though, managing to get half of her hooded self popping from the door frame's side like some kind of tiny yellowed ghost.

 

K'luha was about ready to launch herself onto Illira and scratch her eyes and throat out. If K'ile hadn't been holding down, she probably would have tried it. K'ile was much stronger than her however and she flopped down against the bed as he pushed her down with more force. 

 

She was going to listen to K'ile and try and calm herself. 

 

But then the lalafell spoke up.

 

"I know exactly why she left your tribe," Ulanan said. And then added a non sequitur: "Did she take anything with herself...besides the coat?"

 

K'luha hissed and tried to push back up against K'ile. If she could just be free she would tear the lot of their eyes out and use them as decoration on a fucking necklace! "GET OUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT! I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU FUCKING KNOW YOU LITTLE SHIT! GET THE FUCK OUT BEFORE I GET FREE AND RIP YOUR NECK OUT!" K'luha howled again like a women utterly possessed.

 

Stepping over to the desk, Illira was beginning to rifle through and collect the documents and findings as relates to Antimony's investigation into the Pearl Lane Brass Blades, when K'luha began yelling. She looks over her shoulder at the woman, saying with some fervor in her voice, "You are not the only one she left in the lerch. Do not wallow in selfish interest. I intend to collect the documents and leave."

 

K'luha could practically picture her claws digging into the Elezen's neck and ripping it to pieces. She reached a claw hand out, her eyes straining to see that neck that she might shred...

 

For a woman that couldn't possibly get up, K'luha did manage to make herself difficult to hold down. K'ile Tia made a face at her and Luha and said, "If you weren't struggling I'd have thrown them out by now."

 

Her ears twitched as K'lile spoke to her and she slowly turned her gaze towards his blue eyes. He would get rid of them then? K'luha inhaled deeply, cooling her temper and dropping her arm back against the bed. 

 

Ulanan pouted. All of the women in the K tribe she had met, who were not Antimony, were giving her terrible impressions. She stepped fully into the door, grasping the basket with both hand. "May I speak with the sensible male outside after the room is empty of strangers, then?"

 

"..... sorry...lost my temper..." K'luha muttered half apologetically towards K'ile. She took another deep breath and clenched her fists together. "I cannot stand that Elezen woman one second longer. I am sick of outsiders. So sick of their ways and corruption and big mouths that can't possible know the hurt that they vomit from their sick mouths. I hate this place." K'luha ranted quietly, mostly to herself. She pressed her hands to her face and tried to inhale deeply, trying to keep calm. If that damn Elezen woman spoke one more time though, she was going to flip her shit again.

 

K'ile rose from K'luha as she calmed, taking a breath himself, turning away from her.

 

Her jaw tightening and her lips pressed tight together, Illira turned back away from the bed to the desk, to shuffle through the mess once again, in an attempt to find the what work Antimony had done on the case, so that the next person may not have to start from scratch. Not that it would be her, even if she knew anything about finance analysis, it would be impossible for her to make any headway by sheer virtue that it was Lamandu Tyremandu that was under investigation. It would come as no surprise to her if the man would attempt to have her thrown in the same jail that held Amaury, if she attempted to investigate in what was now his domain.

 

Ulanan made two incredible discoveries. First, that the woman in the bed had a short temper. She was almost like a bomb, grinning while it waited to jump out of the blankets and explode on someone's poor face. Second, that this woman could be set off prematurely if any 'outsider' spoke. Armed with this knowledge, Ulanan stated: "So she took only a coat."

 

The Tia looked towards Ulanan and said, "She took a coat and a bunch of papers. Like an Ul'dahn, taking papers and gil everywhere." He approached the Elezen, stepping well into her personal space with his arms crossed. "You need to leave, 'boss'. Or I'm throwing you out on that long neck of yours."

 

Illira paused at the mention of papers having been taken, she continued to stare down at the desk, braids framing her long face. She slowly removed her hands from the desk, not having succeded in making it much more of a mess than it already was, "You know, for people who purport to tell me that I am a bitch for my own mannerisms. You miqo'te have shown me nothing but venom, harsh words, and violence." She turns around at that, "I can see why Antimony left you. I won't tell her that she should return once I find her."

 

"No more than you deserve!" K'luha hissed sharply at the Elezen. "You're not welcome here. Get out." Feeling her temper starting to return, she tried to inhale deeply again to ward it off. She had never been very good with the whole... anger management deal.

 

Ulanan took turns staring blankly at them while they spoke. After Illira spoke, she said: "If Antimony -or K'piru, as you know her- comes back, please tell her to wait for me? I had a present for her."

 

Somehow Ulanan's request soften K'luha's anger. A present for... K'piru? Then... K'luha's ears flattened a bit. Was this lalafell K'piru's friend? That K'piru could abandon even her friends... What exsisted that her aunt wouldn't abandon? Perhaps nothing...

 

"She could still be in the city. She only just left. She may just be clearing her head you know. There's no evidance that she actually left for Coerthas. I don't even know how she would get there..." K'luha suggested softly. "She couldn't have gotten that far... Really, I think you could find her in Ul'dah still..." This was directed at Ulanah, because as far as K'luha was concerned that Elezen bitch needed to be put down.

 

K'ile looks over at K'luha and says, "I could find her for sure, but I think I comitted to not chasing her." He pauses after saying that, looks at the floor, gets lost inside himself for a moment. Then he shakes his head and looks back to K'luha, "Hey, what was the name on the letter again? The guy who sent it?"

 

Illira's thin lips pressed together further, almost disappearing entirely as she continued to listen, not having left the desk area yet.

 

"You could..." K'luha suggested softly, but stopped herself. "If it's me you're worried about I'll live. If you want to chase her than you can, but if you're committed not to, I won't push you to either." She clarified calmly before thinking back. The name? Name,... something weird. "Mitari... Xerxes? Yeah, that was it. Mitari Xerxes."

 

K'ile grabbed Illira by one arm very roughly and began to pull her out of the room, "I was patient!"

 

Illira looks down at the man's hand, that threatened to pull her arm out of her socket. The man may have been much shorter than her, but he was obviously to hard work. "Let go, savage hypocrite."

 

"Hells with that, Ul'dahn hypocrite."

 

"Excuse me!" Ulanan said out loud, taking care that her tone came as friendly and explicative. "I suggest you do not start a fight here because we are on the Adventurer's Guild." She gestured with the free hand vaguely. It probably had some meaning to someone. "A place filled with armed adventurers that will not take kindly a fight in their own guild."

 

The man would continut to haul the woman towards the hall, "I'm not going to let some haughty lady come into K'piru's room and boss me around. She's got no hold on me."

 

Illira sets the hand that isn't being tugged along, and tries to pry the mans fingers from her wrist. It is doubtful that her having dug her heels in is doing much, as K'ile's lower height would help him in his current quest. "This room is not Antimony's. It is the CRA's. You have no right to oust me at this time, not that one as simple as you would understand."

 

At this, K'luha sharply reached over and grabbed a small coin purse from her bag. She carefully took aim at Illira's head and chucked it at her.  "There's your damn gil!"

 

Ulanan opened her mouth to speak, but by the time she did that the purse was already flying. She thought that talking at that point would just fall in deaf ears, and maybe a hurt head. She watched it fly towards Illira.

 

The gil glanced off of Illira's head. Illira took a breath, this time letting herself get taken out of the room. The sheer moment bringing heat to the back of her neck and cheeks out of embarrastment. But the man's grip was strong, and it didn't right his wrong to return the favor, as her life was not in danger.

 

Ulanan did not laugh when the purse hit Illira. She wanted to. She also wanted to cheer as if it was some kind of military victory. However, in the name of diplomacy, she sighed. "You know, she is right. Antimony isn't paying for this room. She is. If you kick her out of here, she will call the authorities and kick you -and- K'piru away for causing trouble." She rubbed her forehead with one finger. "So let her do what she came to do, please. She'll leave soon enough anyway, specially if Antimony took the papers she wants."

 

"You Ul'dahns and your laws!" K'ile snapped at the Lalafel. He genuinely didn't understand how the Elezen could walk in, abuse them, and then hide behind ephemeral words that may not actually exist. It was, to him, the greatest corruption, the very darkness of the world itself. To him, it was the same thing that had caused Cartenau; laws, gil, papers, and those who fought over them.

 

He deposited Illira in the hallway and said, "Fine, you want papers? I'll give you ever scrap of paper in the entire room! I hate them!" He turned and stomped back into the room.

 

K'luha did a small fist pump when she hit the woman's head. So she could still throw and had good aim! Excellent. As for the Lalafell's warning... Luha groaned. She was right. Unfortunately. But that's what the gil thrown at the woman's head was for. 

 

"K'ile... come here." K'luha sighed, motioning for him to come to her. She wasn't sure if he would listen but, maybe.

 

Ulanan shrugged. "Your tribe must have laws, too."

 

Illira let her steely, angered gaze fall back over the grimy man that had just thrown her out into the hall. She rubbed at wrist, just as she had rubbed at the jaw he'd meant to shatter earlier in the morning. "Laws are inescapable. They are all that seperate us from the beasts and allow us to function on a higher level. Not that you currs care about more than your next meal." She turns on her heel, walking back down the hall.

 

"What?" K'ile said to K'luha, not approaching her. He went instead to the desk and began to pile up papers, saying as he did, "Oh, we have laws. Plenty. I enforce them. They don't include being able to abuse people and hide from the consequences. They don't give fake power."

 

Well. That went swimmingly. K'luha gave up on K'ile for the time being and instead rubbed at her aching hip. She probably shouldn't have tried to eat their eyes out when she got angry. Ah... well. Too late now.

 

Ulanan took a step into the room. "Forget about the laws, and those papers, for the time being. You should help me find K'piru." she said to K'ile.

 

K'ile stopped his paper-rustling, looking over at Ulanan, and said, "I shouldn't. I can't keep chasing her down if she doesn't want to be found. I'm not that kind of Tia." His eyes went to the empty doorway, and the empty hallway, "Hey, the Elezen ran off."

 

"While I'm quite confident that she will return here eventually, I don't want to take the risk of sitting here, waiting, while she runs off northwards and gets mauled by qiqirn or ants." Ulanan stated her worry to the room. She clenched the handle of the basket with both hands and raised it. "You can come back here as soon as we find her. If she's in town it won't be long."

 

"I said 'no'." K'ile turned from the papers to look down at the Lalafel. "I don't know you, and she can run off if she wants. If you really want to find her, you need to do it the old-fashioned way."

 

Luha glanced towards K'ile again. She wondered if he would go to find her. Or had he enough of chasing women down for a lifetime? Kluha had to admit, she was surprised when he said no. But perhaps some things were more important than chasing down a woman who wanted nothing to do with them anymore. 

 

Luha grunted faintly at the agitating pain, but made no comments.

 

Ulanan shrugged and turned around, picking up her basket. "Please tell her I stopped by. Goodbye!" She smiled and waved one hand in farewell before leaving the room and walking down the hallway.

 

Frowning at the Lalafel as she walked off, K'ile was too confused by the nature of the exchange and unprepared for the sudden departure, so didn't even think to say goodbye to the tiny woman.

 

K'luha was indeed surprised as well, but nonetheless extremely happy to have all of the damn intruders out of the room. 

 

"Next time someone knocks, we don't answer. " Kluha grumbled bitterly.

 

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Illira made her way down the stairs, stopping short when she saw the hotel clerk. Her jaw is still clenched, and she breathed hard; angry from her embarrasment at being hauled out. She leaned against the wall, forcing herself to take some deep calming breaths. The man had no right to do what he did. But they were all angry and riled and hurt, emotion obviously ruling the hearts of the savages. She knew that she could have them ousted, arrested. And she wanted to. Oh, she wanted to. But was that merely her wounded pride and own personal desire run wicked?

 

It was certainly something that many of her former compratriots in the blades would not hesitate to do. But so many of them were too far gone in their own self-interest to do what is right by the law, but their law is not hers and the man did not seem even to grasp the concepts of society outside of his bubble. The woman was obviously in a great deal of pain and not in her own right mind. 

 

Illira swallowed deeply, her eyes closed. When she opened them, she took another breath and walked over towards the clerk's desk.

 

Motioning the clerk over, Illira asked for a paper and something to write with. When he returned with the requested items, Illira began to write, though her hand shook slightly as she did so, still full of excess righteous anger that she was. But it wasn't so blinding now. She sealed the letter, writing the word, "Tia" on the front of it. She left it and a some gil with the clerk, asking for the letter to be taken up to the room that she had just left. 

 

She still needed to find Antimony before she left town. And time was of the essence.

 

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After he overcame his momentary confusion, K'ile walked over to the door and closed it, frowning as though the action were a complicated task and the ability to complete it caught him off guard. After a few seconds he looked up to K'luha, "Alright, yeah. ... I don't know what to make of all this."

 

"Only that K'piru has run again, possibly but not for sure to Coerthas, and that two people are looking for her, and she knows and is friends with a man named Mitari." Kluha replied without a moments hesitation. "Also that I really want to go home." She added as an afterthought.

 

Moving towards K'luha, K'ile said, "I think we need to wait until your hip heals. And how are we going to find the food without K'piru? I don't even know where to look."

 

The innkeep sent a young woman up to the room that K'luha and K'ile are currently occupying. She knocked softly on the door.

 

Hearing the knock, K'ile makes a face, and states, "Not answering."

 

Kluha glared at the knocking door like she might murder whomever had the audacity to do this bullshit again. She looked to K'ile before grabbing for his hand very suddenly. When he said he wasn't going to answer she relaxed a bit. "Well, then we can figure things out more in the morning."

 

The girl knocked again, "'ello? I have a letter 'ere?" She waits a few moments more for an answer before sliding it underneath the door.

 

K'ile frowned at the envelope slid under the door. He observed, "The Ul'dahns are sticking paper under the doors now. Outsiders are insane."

 

Kluha eyed the paper like it would explode on him. She was tired. So tired. Maybe K'piru would come back. Maybe she wouldn't. Kluha was too tired to care. "Open it later." She huffed. "Come here. You should sleep."

 

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<<< Tia.

 

You hate me, just as I hate you. My laws are not your own, and you sought to protect your territory as beasts do. I could send to have you arrested, but the only best interest that it would serve is the pride that you damaged. I would be playing into the very hands of the Ul'dah that we both hate. I would not have my emotion best me, the way that does your kind. Your woman needs medical attention, even I can see that. I have paid for your room for the next couple of nights, and for a healer to her. It would be the best thing for her. The clerk can send for someone. 

 

After she has been seen to, and her healing is on its way. Leave. If we cross paths, and you lay hands unjustly on a person once more. I will see you behind bars, ignorance of the law will no longer be an acceptable excuse.

 

- Illira Carceri >>>

 

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