(OOC: This is the beginning of a self modded daggers/ acrobatics thread
)
Darkening, 1st of Cryxatum, Summer, Era XIV
"Does anyone speak that gypsy rabble language?"
Kella lifted her head from her plaken, and looked across the tavern at the shouting bartender. To her chagrin, she felt honor bound to answer the man.
"You mean Aire?" she yelled back with little decorum.
"Whatever it's called, you speak it?"
Dropping her fork and straightening up, she responded,
"Yes. I do."
Half her circus troupe was Air'riela, a colorful band of tale-spinners, artists and thieves. Gads, she loved them, save how they always nicked her earrings. She'd been unable to keep a matching pair for fifteen years.
Her tutor Massimo would mutter at her in his mother tongue, denying her supper if she didn't learn to mutter back, so she picked up enough.
"Well tell the gypsy trash in the doorway to take a long walk of Prime's shortest pier," he spied her uniform,
"As a servant to the empire and its peoples."
"Bloody Aeternia." Kella pushed her chair back and threw her napkin on the table.
Slumped over the doorway like a festive sack of feed, was a lean Air'riela wearing the tasseled sashes, high boots and braids of his people. The smell of whiskey rose from him in billows.
Kella sighed and began to address him in Aire.
"Mira Didikai, the kertsheema owners want you to sherp."
A growl came from the man, bolder than he had a righ to be.
"I'll sherp when I damn well please," the man lifted up his head, revealing a bruised and cut face that turned immediately warmer on seeing her.
"Sastimos, Kells-bells. Baxtalo."
The Vagaran fell to her knees, and tried to help the man sit upright, touching him with a familiarity that was rare for her.
"Dordie Yoska! What in Aeternia are you doing here?"
"Trying to find you. Fussy Legionnaire said you were here, but I made a stop or two on the way."
"Jalat, Yoska," Kella's brow crinkled with sadness and memories,
"You look worse than your old man."
The Air'riela grinned, he was still a handsome devil when he smiled.
"That may be, but I have all my teeth."
His eyes softened as he looked at Kella, daring to see something through the fog of his drink.
"You look healthy Kell-bells. I've missed you."
Kella gave a bittersweet smile. That was a road she couldn't travel anymore. They both knew it and it made the phrase all the more wistful.
"Well next time, aim before you throw the dagger."
Yoska laughed drowsily and said,
"You know I don't have to aim anymore. I'm too talented for that."
As he passed out on her boot tops Kella huffed a laugh.
"Yeah, talented."
Chances were he still was the best dagger handler within 200 miles. Too bad he was also one of the saddest stories within 300 miles.
Hooking her arms under his, she began to drag him back inside to the smothering air of the tavern and its yellow light.
Gods this brings back memories. At least I'm not in a corset angry over being stood up anymore.
"I'm gonna need a room for him," Kella explained to a rather cross looking proprietor-ess.
Feeling the waves of resentment from the woman, Kella dropped one of Yoska's arms to dig in her pockets. A generous heap of crowns was pressed into the woman's hands as Kella explained flatly,
"Don't worry, I'll pay in advance. But I expect help up the stairs, at least."
The woman bit the coins and nodded brusquely, unashamed of her suspicious hostility. As the crowns went into her apron she walked to Yoska's ankles for their ungainly procession up the stairs.
Kella muttered at the man in her arms,
"You owe me, Yoska." A quick sigh,
"Again."
~*~
Yoska dreamed of a room of various colored coins, that didn't belong to him. They were in cascading heaps barring windows and filling doorways, but he did not feel the joy of a treasure seeker. He was here to sort the coins, every bloody one of them, into neat towers.
It was an infinite a tedious chore, but some force compelled him. His stacks were beginning to take a neat shape after the first three candlemarks, and he looked at them with a sliver of content. But then a white gale of light flooded his room with such force it made the towers of coin shake. He covered his eyes and tried to fumble for the source of the light as he heard his work fall with a sliding chiming song.
As Kella pushed open the shutter, dumping sunlight on Yoska's form, he began to writhe, raising his arms over his head like bracers against the morning.
With little mercy for his hangover, Kella jumped on the bed like a twelve-year-old on her birth-brightening.
"Up you lazy-arse! I've only got so much time!"
Yoska moaned and opened his eyes, they felt rimmed in salt and his head had certainly been used in a riotous game of kickball, or at least as a training tool for attack hounds.
"Feth, Kell-bells. What time is it? And where is the cat?"
"It's time for you to repay my kindness," her jumping barely slowed,
"And what cat?"
"The one that crapped in my mouth while I slept."
The Vagaran laughed and gave the Air'riela a light kick to the ribs.
"Always charming, Yoska. Now make yourself pretty. I've decided how you're going to pay me back for pulling your sorry…"
"Yet well-formed," he interjected.
"…Arse from the gutter."
Yoska pushed himself up, wiping his eyes. His long black hair had a few wisps making a spider-web halo about his head.
"And what is this grand payback, Kell-bells?"
Kella stopped her jumping and grinned crookedly.
"You're going to visit the Military District and teach me daggers. Air'riela style."
"We're doomed," Yoska moaned falling back on his pillow.