Welcome to Gaia! ::

Before Lithian so much as made it out the door to follow Ysette’s advice and seek out an audience with Kavanna, Syrikk pulled him to a halt again.

“Lith!”

Pausing at his brother’s voice, Lithian turned and blinked in surprise as Syrikk came towards him carting two noticeably large, leather-bound books — tomes on history, if he were to guess from a quick glance at their spines — certainly not Syrikk’s usual first choice as far as leisurely activities were concerned. Immediately after he opened his mouth to ask, though, Syrikk began talking, cutting him off.

“You’re headed over to talk to that healer lady, right?”

“Er. Ye—”

“And Araceli. You know Araceli, right? My classmate? You’ve met a couple of times. Or she’s been over. Or uh, she’s been here. We’ve done some classwork together. Her and I, that is. I mean we’re friends. You know that. Um. What I’m saying is, I gotta go head off toward the market quarter before dark to get some stuff for the trip down. Do you think you could stop by her place and drop these off with her? They’re hers, and I keep meaning to return them but always forget when it comes to it…”

Lithian staggered a half-step under the weight of the books as Syrikk handed them over, but nodded nonetheless. “Sure, I can, uh…”

“Thanks a bunch, Lili. Good luck with your chat with the healer lady!” And with that Syrikk was off, leaving Lith to realize in his absence that he couldn’t even remember what the girl’s family name was, let alone where exactly she lived. Huffing to himself, Lithian shrugged the thought away and resituated the books regardless, resolving to figure it out as he went.

It couldn’t be that challenging, right?

Nearly an hour later, shoulders hurting, fingers stiff, and back sore from the awkward positioning and weight of the books, Lithian stood anxiously at the door of the Doryu family, wishing that he’d had the foresight to at least pack the books in a satchel before heading off on a wild hunt through the outer-lying residences of Astral City. With some difficulty, he managed to prop the books up under one arm and knock, but immediately had to jerk his hand down again afterwards and catch the slipping tomes.

Lithian’s cheeks burned, the girl’s tension radiating off of her in waves so potent he half expected to feel them crashing up against him. Perhaps he ought to have let Syrikk handle this after all.

“I—uh, er, no…I’m not. And yes, they are. I’m…” Lithian swallowed, stifling the instinct to reach up and rub at one of his horns — or simply dump the books in the girl’s hands and flee — and he scuffed the toe of his boot against the ground at her doorstep instead. “I’m Lithian? Bhard…varis. Syrikk’s brother? You know him? I think? He said you knew him…these are yours. He asked me to…give them to you. Are you alright? Maybe I should go…”

Lithian masked his breath of relief as Ara took the extra burden off his hands, cheeks heating afresh at the thought of how obviously ridiculous he must look, fumbling around just under the weight of a couple school books. The majority of his attention, however, shifted quickly to the girl’s progression of emotions, particularly her expressions as she talked about his brother. The way her mood perked up — if only briefly — at the thought of him made Lith wonder whether the two really were just friends. Her vacillating range of responses from hope to disappointment reminded Lith pointedly of Syrikk’s attitude when talking about Asaria.

Lithian shook his head, pushing his focus back to the present and smiling up at the girl sheepishly as he did. “It’s no problem. I was heading by anyway…sort of. He asked me to drop them off on the way, so it wasn’t really an issue. Do you…want me to tell him you’d like to see him?” Lith asked, eyeing her curiously. She’d seemed so upset when she answered the door, it felt wrong somehow to simply drop the books on her doorstep and walk off, but he couldn’t think of any smoother way to handle the situation.

Moments before giving in to his instinct to step away from the situation before he messed anything up, the tap, tap, tap of rapidly approaching footfalls cut off whatever Lith might have said, and just as he turned to look, he had to shield his eyes with his palm, squinting against the abrupt, unnatural gust of air and dust that came with their visitor.

“Araceli!” Syrikk’s voice cut in as the ‘wind’ died just as quickly as it came. “And…Lithian. Lithian?”

Lith brushed himself off, but just after opening his mouth, Syrikk continued speaking.

“I wasn’t expecting you’d still be here, but uhh…Ara.” Syrikk turned towards the apparent reason for his arrival with a grin. “Sorry ‘bout holding onto those books for so long. Meant to return them sooner. But just a bit after I sent Lili here off with them I, uh, realized this had gotten left behind too,” he said, pulling what looked like an intricately etched bookmark out of one of his pockets. “It was in one of the books I think, but fell out. Certainly not mine, and it looks nice enough I was pretty sure you’d want it back, so…” He tilted his head as he held it out, his eyes darting Ara assessingly for the first time since arriving. “Are you alright?”

Lithian opened his mouth to answer Ara’s apology, but again, before he could get a word out, Syrikk was speaking up again, in a huff and fervently defensive of his — and Araceli’s, apparently — clan. Lithian spent the next several minutes of their conversation awkwardly lingering to the side, dusting himself off and silently bemoaning the fact that the effects of his impromptu ‘bath’ in the river had been thoroughly ruined. Walking off at this point, though, would have felt stranger still, and so he simply listened in, waiting for a convenient breakpoint to make his ‘escape’ so to speak.

In the end, to his surprise, Syrikk managed to convince the girl to come along with them on their approaching trip down to the lower realm and across the ocean to Eowyn. Lithian wondered privately, when he finally made it back on his path to meet with Kavana, why Syrikk did not seem to show any more obvious interest in the Aryala girl in the same way he did Asaria. She seemed nice enough — and was clearly far more interested in Syrikk than Asaria had ever been. Perhaps Syrikk took issue with her eyes…?

Lithian frowned at the thought and tucked it away for examination at a later date. His brother’s matters were his own, after all, not precisely Lith’s business, and Lithian honestly found it difficult to understand what any of his brothers saw in any of the girls they took interest in. But perhaps, as Syrikk insisted frequently, his opinions on that matter would change with time.

Nothing to fret over for the moment, in any case.