The water ripped slightly as he waded half-naked along the shorelines, plunging his long and gangly arms into the mud.


Shriveled and wrinkled, the old man laughed with a youthful-like glee as he caught the premature afanc in his hands and threw it into the wooden bucket.


"Got'chee!"

Jashen rolled up to his feet easily, as graceful as his brother but diffrent. Where Crispian walked and stood like a grappler, always balanced and ready for a hit, Jashen moved with a limberness belied by his also-thick build. Sometimes seeing him move like that, Arcalan observed, was like seeing a fat person dance. To be so thick of body, in very different ways, but to hold such grace. She almost let a sigh escape.


"Really, Arcalan," he said as he joined her to look out over the night of Lyn Barfog, "sharing your past is, in a way, to decrease its hold on you. If you hold it in, then it is always there to torment you, to claim you." He had managed to keep the wine glass and now sipped from it again. "Sharing it, though, can strip it of power and meaning, make it just a *thing* that's there. It took Toby to really teach me that." He laughed.


"Of course, if you prefer to keep it all bottled up, that's fine. It should make for a good wager as to when you'll snap and start to fly apart." He took another drink and stepped a bit outside the tower.


"ea, Cris will bring me back here, eventually, I imagine, but sometimes, it is nice to discover things without him." He sat on the worn stones of the step, back resting toward the tower. "Deadly and beautiful," he commented quietly.

 

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Her ears perked up as he said that and she turned round to see him staring at the vast lake, Llyn Barfog. She felt crushed at first and then furious. "ou sleep on the groundfloor of the tower, I'm taking up - stairs. 'Good' Night! Hrumph!" she pronounced every syllable clearly as if it was a different word, and through gritted teeth. She began to storm off into the tower but Jashen called her back. She felt a moment of hope and stopped ready to extract the best deal she'd get from this apology. She didn't stop to consider that he hadn't actually said anything offensive.


"Look out there" he said softly and she allowed her self to be coaxed to look "I can see firelight down by the shoreline.. "

She shot him a look like a Nightshade's dagger and then squinted out to the lake.

"WHere I don't see anything... how can you.. oh, wait yes.. what's that flickering light there.. campfire? Or a torch?"

"I think we might find out" Jashen said slipping off the wall and finishing his glass of wine.

"Humph.. I suppose I'd bbetter come too then" she grumped back at him. he looked at her with confusion.. what on earth was she angry about now?

Thinking that she was so typically taking something with the wrong turn of mind, he slipped into shadow, quickly vanishing from sight and moving carefully down toward the lakeshore.

 

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She grudingly followed him down towards the lakeshore, making no attempt to remain hidden and trailing a lumbering golem in her wake. the cold night air and chill breeze from the lake went right through her, making her both a good deal more sober and also keenly aware of her bladder.

As she nearerd the shoreline she could see it was two torches planted in the sand atop poles that were shedding the light. She could make out the naked torso of an old man wading into the sea at this ungoldy hour, and some wicket basket looped over his arm. The inhabitants of this region were a little odd it was true, but she thought it best to announce herself to this old codger now she was down here anyway. She cast her glance up and down the shore to look for Bwgan Hunters, but seeing none moved closer.. Jashen was nowhere to be seen.

"Hail! Old man!" she cried out. She thought for a moment and then concentrated, casting a defensive shield around herself and causing a considerable lightshow of swirling oil-slick colours to form around her. The figue in the water stopped, obviously aware of her now.

"Old man speak out! Hail to you!" she called.

Jashen clung to the shadows, his senses at a heightened state as he watched Arcalan walk into the pools of light and begin to talk to the old man.

 

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(no message)

His ears perked up as he looked past the inky darkness of night. Looking down to his rolled-up leather leggins the old man, nearly dripping wet still, waded clumsily out of the waters.


Wringing his hands of water and running his fingers through his visibly-thinning hair, he fumbled up the hill with the bucket of afanc fish in his hands. Basaia gave a toothless grin as he approached the woman and her construct.

"Hail old one, I hope the fishing's good at night here? We've been travelling quite a way and we saw your light. Have you hospitality you can offer to two weary travellers?" She asked, returning a pleasent smile to him.

/up to the top.


Toorc, send me a PM if you would.