OPEN;

[primrosella]

When; Saturday, June 30, evening
Rating; Individual threads may vary!
Characters; Everyone is welcome! This is an open log for Polyites and 4th Wallers alike, so just specify if it's an open thread or if you have 4th walling rules in the comment or subject line!
Summary; Whether you're a regular or a first-timer, here to stay or just passing through, the Blue Light is the place to be for good music, good food, and a sea of friendly faces to encounter.
Log;

Rosella's been to the Blue Light on nights like this before, but this is the first time she's ever been here behind the bar instead of in front of it, managing things as best she can as opposed to simply enjoying the festivities. She's still not skilled enough with bartending to dare try taking drink orders (unless, of course, they come at very special request from very special people), but she's overseeing her staff, checking up on her supplies, and just generally making sure everything runs smoothly.

The music is merry and there's the chatter of conversation in the air as the booths and tables fill with people; nearby, a space on the floor has been cleared for dancing, should any guests (local or visitor alike) find themselves with the urge to cut loose.

It's looking like it's going to be a busy night. But really, that's quite all right with her.

Comments

open;

[and_warrior_arise]

There are pressing matters. For one, his wife (his, his, his) has abandoned him for Crystalglass, a daymonth ago, and Irrylath has sought counsel from the greatest minds in the world but none have magics to undo what Ravenna had done to her, to Aeriel. So when he finds himself once more in this City, in this place where day and night are mere fractions of moments, where a fortnight is a day and a night passing smoothly, dancing around each other, he goes to the place where they met last.

Where they met last.

Irrylath hates the sound of that, hates the heart beating in his chest that is his own. He is no longer the keeper of his wife's heart, and he had squandered the time he was. But he is more royal, more regal, than ever before.

[lone_must_stand]

She has not slept in Crystalglass, in all this time, or she might believe this a dream; but the streets of the City are all too solid. And, after a moment of orientation, its strangeness is dimly familiar, and she finds herself walking.

Not Oceanus, her blood murmurs, but very like it. Like what once it was. The whisper of inherited memory-- her prime companion this daymonth, much louder than her loving shadow-- is for the first time unwelcome. Irrylath, her heart whispers. My husband has been here. Irrylath may be here yet.

Pushing open the door of the tavern-- she knows it is the same one, as surely as though it were written in beads of flame upon the door-- Aeriel cannot allow herself the luxury of hope. Still, her hand rests unconsciously against her breast, where there is no mark but that of memory. Adamant's edge is too keen to leave a trace.

Holding a breath, she searches the crowd for a familiar face.

[and_warrior_arise]

He turns to see her standing, her breath held. He would know her figure anywhere, although it was only once that his fingers traced the outlines of it, only once that he was allowed so close -

No, that's wrong. Only once that he allowed himself. She would have, for two years, allowed him all the rights of a husband to a wife, but his thoughts were consumed, and surely that is no fault upon him except that it is. Although the tavern is crowded, pulsing with people, he pushes past them.

There is no world beyond this, beyond her in the doorway, her green eyes looking for her.

"Wife." He takes a breath, he does not weep, although he knows if she were to vanish, if this were to be a dream, that he would wake and weep and that none would be fit to console him. "Aeriel."

[lone_must_stand]

Two years wasted, though in truth now she treasures every moment of it-- the disappointment of his distance, at least, meant he was within sight, if out of reach. As certain as her words were when they parted-- as proud as she had seemed, retreating on her task-- she cannot forget him. His name will be on her lips until the moment world winds down to nothingness.

For a moment, as he moves, she lets her eyes fall shut; beyond the star-marked lids people sway and move, the dull roar of conversation muted by the focus of her concentration. If she looked, she knows, she could read the tale of their lives through their movements; relations spun like tenuous threads, cause and effect, their next moments spilling certainly before them like liquor from hornblossoms, inevitable and bright.

But for her there is only her husband, his steps steady, path as keen as though cut by his shining blade.

"Irrylath," she answers quietly, a smile twitching her lips at the word wife. She had not truly expected he'd put her aside for his sharp-eyed bandit, but she had feared it. "My husband," she answers, and takes the final step to bring them together. "My heart."

[and_warrior_arise]

Two years squandered and Irrylath cannot hold back another moment, because he takes up the space she does not fill, his arms around her in another moment. "No longer your heart, you've taken yours back." Why, why would you take something so precious away from me he wants to ask, but he knows the answer as he presses his face into her yellow hair. There are spots of heat there where he breathes her in, as though he can hold the world together through the sheer force of this.

He is not a demonstrative man. People move around them because they take space, but he does not speak at first, although there are so many things to say. To affirm. To remind her that his cousin is not in his heart, that she was sent away to Bern to help rule there and Avaric is a cold place without a woman to lead, how the people think he is a cold man (but fair, always fair).

"I knew you would not come back," he says, "But I wished it, nonetheless."

[lone_must_stand]

They are bound, each, by oaths of necessity-- and though she is a princess by birth, a sorceress by circumstance, Aeriel is not a proud woman. To stay with him would be to doom the world; to bring him to her would betray the Equustel. She knows, without considering, that she is not worth that.

"I gave you your own, husband. If you love me, you love of your own free will," she murmurs into his neck, lips curving in an unseen smile. She twists her hand to rest upon his chest, to feel the steady beat of the heart she carried so long-- once gilded in lead by the water-witch, now strong and proud as befits a king. Of him, she is fiercely proud; that Irrylath could love her, that he has become this. She is proud, even, that he has kept his distance, rather than shirk his duty. It is all dearly won, but worth it.

"Nothing would please me more, than to stand by your side." But there is not a choice; there never has been.

[and_warrior_arise]

He presses harder against her when she feels the beat of his heart, his own heart, not hers. They are bound together, there is no denying that, there is no denying that what he feels for her is golden and warm and soothing like the cloth of her sari, not prickly and harsh and demanding. Loving her is easy, like breathing, like taking a drink from the bridal dram and like holding her.

"There is no will stronger than mine," he tells her. "Did you not feel that when my heart beat inside you?" His own fingers curl over the spot in her breast with her heart, and he wonders if that was truly the magic of what saved the world, her will in him and his in her, their separation only something thought up by the witch and her spell.

"We have moments, here. Will you tell me to stay away while Crystalglass cannot separate us?"

Open!

[catnapped]

[Alexander doesn't do well with crowds.

Part of it is simply his nature--he's a quiet young man, whose interests inherently run toward scholarly pursuits rather than social ones--but part of it is more notably that when one spends nearly eighteen years as the slave of an evil wizard, imprisoned high atop a mountain where the punishment for venturing down the treacherous footpath is death, one doesn't tend to get a whole lot of practice at meeting people and talking with them in general (outside of the occasional "git, boy" and "fetch me my supper").

He's also not particularly fond of taverns, largely because the last time he was in one he rather ran afoul of a band of pirates, but tonight it's his sister fussing around behind the bar, and it's taken so much just to track her down this far that he's not about to let her out of her sight now.

So instead, he'll occupy his own little corner of the bar, tucked away near the wall where he can see the whole room ("boys should be seen and not heard, Gwydion"), and watch as the crowds pass and the music fills the air.]

[lone_must_stand]

"I knew your heart before I knew you," answers Aeriel, nearly shy to speak of it. Lifetimes ago, when he had not been Irrylath-- the night they had married-- even then, sheathed in cold and bereft of blood, she had seen something of his heart. Had known she could not slay him, though she'd sworn to do it. (And she'd done it; the darkangel had died, that night. It is only that she had not foreseen Irrylath, had not known that Avaric's prince lived beneath the lead.)

She leans against him, content, the voice of her blood a dim murmur. There is no danger of this world falling around them. "I will not leave you, here," she answers, savoring the freedom to make a choice, though there is no more danger of her refuting him now than there was of her keeping him at home. Equal certainty: but here, no regret. "I am your wife, after all."

[and_warrior_arise]

He hears those words and they are almost a challenge - or a jest, he's not sure. But it's true. She knew him when he was asleep, when he was Irrylath inside the Darkangel, when his name was not his.

"We'll find a place to spend this day and night that last only hours, won't we?" He leans down to brush a kiss against her head, feeling, for once (no, not once, for the second time) absolutely entitled to it. Erin went with her, to Crystalglass, and she claimed no fear when all else feared what the sorceress might do.

But Irrylath, too, had not feared her. Once, for a time, when it was easier to find comfort in cowardice, but no longer. "The only one I will ever have."

[lone_must_stand]

The touch of his lips does bring a rush of blood to her cheeks, and for a minute Aeriel forgets that she is anything other than mortal flesh. Avaric will need an heir, she wants to say-- or perhaps it is Ravenna's ghost, seeking to keep some control over this moment. Her hand, the one not resting above his beating heart (the heart that was once her own,) is tight around his waist. Your bandit queen would be better to you than this. She bites down on her lip, then raises her chin to meet his eyes.

In this moment she is no princess, no sorceress, no engine of ancient design; no savior, only a woman in her husband's arms. No maiden, either-- she leans in to kiss him, in answer to his question.

[and_warrior_arise]

No - Irrylath has decided that this is a course no Ancient can force him on. He will have Aeriel or he will have no one, and that is the only matter that he even think to bring up about the situation. He has brothers and they will have more sons than they have kingdoms to gift. Avaric will have an heir but unless it is Aeriel's son it will not be Irrylath's.

He kisses her back, her mouth lush against his, the taste more intoxicating than the fruit of the tree once Avaric bloomed again. It had not taken long. His return already had lushness growing from the trees, mere foretellings of what is to come, but there just the same.

"Would you like something to drink, first?"

[lone_must_stand]

"Recompense for my draught?" she asks, her smile unfurling like a flower blossoming, like the golden pennant of her love-spun sari. There is an ease to this, the bittersweet simplicity of being only two souls amongst a multitude. Still she's faintly flushed, the light of pleasure in her cheeks not unlike the ruddy tinge of her skin before the sun burnt it out of her.

It is not boldness, but a sense of what is her right, that guides her to take his hand, tangling their fingers together because she cannot bear the idea of parting entirely, not even to cross the room. Their time is bound to be short. He has been away too long already.

[and_warrior_arise]

"I will pay you back forever and a day, Aeriel." He says it lightly but means it to the base of his heart, his hand tangling with hers. It's more truth than anything, that he will never give back, the debt will unfold forever and engulf him until the day he dies, or beyond. Maybe she could learn to capture his soul and set it spinning in Crystalglass.

His debt to her outweighs the one to the Equustel, no matter what anyone else might believe.

"Do you know I have never been in a tavern truly, and ordered, and not been served as a prince? I suppose you in your wanderings have more experience in this."

[lone_must_stand]

She laughs, quiet but bright, thinking of Irrylath at the head of his army, Irrylath trying to slip unnoticed among his people. Impossible for him to mistake him for anything but what he is.

"Less, perhaps, than you imagine," Aeriel murmurs, thinking of her day-cloak, of unkempt gargoyles and innocent magic. "But I am glad, to be your witness."

[and_warrior_arise]

He looks over at her when she laughs, because it is not a sound made common during the war, and it was not a sound ever made before. It makes him smile, warms him more than he had expected.

He had not expected it at all.

"I am not your king but you cannot laugh if I make a fool of myself." He smiles, then, his own smile, rare and rarer still to be seen outside the amusements that Sabr once offered him. His hand tightens on hers.

Open

[practicingforhell]

[Any and all fun, merriment, and chatter manage to stay far away from the disheveled-looking young men parked at the bar. There's an air of uneasiness about him that has absolutely nothing to do with the slumped shoulders and distant stare. For all the attention he pays the rest of the building's patrons, he may as well be in his own world.

He's not closed to conversation, though. Maybe he's not the best company, but he'll talk if someone else gets the ball rolling.]

[lone_must_stand]

"I am sure a wife may laugh at her husband if she wishes," she answers, leaning against his shoulder. His smile gives her a quiet thrill; every moment spent here, spent together, is hers. Hers, as he is sworn to be in spite of what the Ancients would have. A quiet defiance, and one that wins no more than a hum of pleasure in spite of the pearlstuff's demands.

There is no victory grander in her heart.

[and_identity]

Hello, handsome.

[Why, look who it is. Remember this lady, Henry? She comes bearing bottles. Of beer, naturally.]

Got room for me?

Open!

[want_to_talk_about_it]

[Hide in the corner all you want; it won't put off everyone, especially not the visitors who're looking to talk (and, more importantly, listen) instead of drink. Just such a visitor takes a seat next to Alexander. The kid--and he's most definitely a kid, and the suit jacket he's wearing isn't fooling anyone--smiles warmly and holds out a hand.]

My name's Charlie Bartlett and you look like you're having the worst time anyone can ever possibly have in a bar.

[and_warrior_arise]

He laughs, then, and nudges her away from the bar, to a quiet corner, a table where they are blocked from view. "Perhaps we should just be thirsty, then." He leans over her, shielding her from the rest of the world, as if the rest of the world offered some great danger to her when there is no greater lie. Aeriel always protected him. It was only once the other way around.

"Tell me what you have learned in your glass fortress, and I will tell you what I have learned of Avaric in the time I was away. I will tell you of my lady mother who never leaves my side, and of Roshka and Piirs."

[practicingforhell]

Hey.

[His memory's a little hazy, but yeah, this is ringing bells. It's not like pretty blondes show up with beer all the time. He moves aside to make room for her.]

This seat's not taken.

Open!

[catnapped]

[Good lord, save him, it's an extrovert, WHAT DOES HE DO.]

Charlie Bartlett, it's...nice to meet you. I'm afraid I'm not much for, um, taverns.

[...Oh, wait.]

I'm Alexander. Of Daventry.

[and_identity]

It is now.

[She sits down and passes one of the beers over. It's the good, classy shit, because Life ain't cheap.]

Having a good night?

[lone_must_stand]

The very fact that she does not need his guard makes it dearer, and she smiles. In truth, she would not laugh; not at him, not in a hundred day-months. But she cherishes the right, the knowledge that she could, that like as not he would simply laugh with her.

"I am still learning how to learn," she admits, settling at the table without relinquishing his hand, though her fingers loosen. "Gathering texts, finding words for what I have seen already."