Welcome to Gaia! ::

“Oh, sister dear…” Ataya shifted his weight, propping himself like an ill-strung puppet against the flat of Akara’s door frame and gracing her with a class-A pout. “I am so bored, I think I might die,” he stated with all due theatrics, “…flit from this world and pass on into the nether, joining all other rogue hybrid spirits in a sea of glorious, whimsical energy…”

He stepped in as he spun his tale, catching at her door with long, boney fingers to start it on its journey and then tapping it shut the rest of the way behind him with the heel of his boot before making his way fully into the room. There, he folded his arms as he eyed her, critical and assessing. At length, a small, cracked smile edged its way onto his lips and he tilted his head.

“I come, though, bearing a proposition which just might spare me that fate. How would you feel about…going on an adventure, hmm…?”

Ataya hummed and shook his head as he approached, propping casually against the edge of her mattress. “I was thinking something less wet and exhausting and more…explorative. We’ve been down to Taliuma many times now, we both know the way and well how to ride and fend for ourselves, but Mother and Father have never once permitted us to make the trip on our own, or even travel far from our uncles’ house once there. I thought perhaps we could…take a ride. See the city at night and explore some of the town properly without Father breathing down our necks. Uncle Lithian has paid us some coin for aiding him in his shop in the past — more than enough that we could spare a few for night on an inn if we needed, and if not, we could simply head to the beach. Even without expecting us, you know they wouldn’t turn us away.”

Ataya watched his sister, weighing her reaction after having made his proposal. He wanted to make the trip regardless, but he knew well it would be safer if he had company, and their father’s upset would be less if they were both involved as opposed to just him disappearing on a whim. Besides, he didn’t want her to worry, even if she needn’t.

Ataya gave a snort of a sound, somewhere caught between amusement and a scoff, but his expression wasn’t unkind. “Of course. If seeing your one true love is more important than sparing your brother the fate of suffocating in his own boredom and sinking into an early grave, then by all means, we can include a quest for locating your wayward dragonborn pureblood. I am sure he will be thrilled to see you. So…you will join me?”

Ataya chuckled, the corners of his lips twitching up with a narrow but amused look. “Touchy,” he murmured. “I don’t recall even suggesting that he was, but if that is the term you’d rather I use, I’ll note it.” With that, though, he stood, pleased that the issue was settled, and started towards her door. “I figure our chances of success are highest if we set out after we are intended to be ‘sleeping’ so…I will come rouse you tonight after Mother and Father have retired. We can fetch Rannah and Erion and start down the mountain.”

Once back in his own room, Ataya, too, gathered a small stash of things — though he intended to bring little, overall, they wouldn’t need much — before setting about the rest of his day as normal. After their father had caught wind of him watching matches in the pit, he’d been dragged forcibly from the scene and scolded, like a child, for risking himself simply by showing up. Ataya’s arguments — and accusations regarding his father’s own time spent participating in matches there — had fallen, of course, on deaf ears. His conversation after with Uncle Casseth had gone far more favorably, but the event on the whole had seemed only to make Detraeus all the more leery of the amount of time he and his sister spent in Taliuma.

As though, somehow, the more he kept them from it the less the world would be what it was?

Ataya did not understand his father’s logic — if there even was logic present — and had grown ever more restless with each passing week that another trip down was not even spoken of. He and his sister were fifteen, almost sixteen. They could ride, hunt, fend for themselves, and the knew the route well. There was no reason to keep them cooped up. From that logic, his current plan had spawned, and he was rather pleased that his sister had acquiesced to it. He had not been sure she would. But, as she had, her company would be welcome, and perhaps — just perhaps — after their parents got over their anger, they would see the truth in their capability to be independant.

When night fell and after their parents settled to bed, Ataya lay restlessly in his own, mocking sleep for some time while he waited, wanting to assure himself that his parents would be well asleep before he and his sister moved about. At last, though, the house was entirely quiet but for the low whistle of mountain winds outside, and he slipped from his cot. After donning proper travelling clothes, his cloak, and boots, and tucking away the few things he intended to bring with him into a satchel, he reached out with his magic, touching his fingers to the nearest shadowed wall and sinking into it. In a flicker of a moment, he was skimming the lake of shadow, under his door, down the hall, and under the rim of his sister’s door.

He took shape beside her bed.

“Awake?” he asked.

Ataya nodded. “We can leave a note if it appeases you, mm? Let them know we’ve not been kidnapped by night bandits,” he said, only half joking, and on the way out, he did so, fetching a small slip of parchment from his room and scrawling a quick passage to inform their parents they were not dead or captured, simply ‘exploring.’ It seemed like an accurate enough statement, and it wasn’t as though Father wouldn’t be tracking them immediately upon recognizing their absence.

Thus, with Akara at his side, the two of them slipped out, past the house, to the stables, and — after saddling and readying their hastars — off into the night. Rannah snorted, her breath making fog in the chilling autumn air, crisp and backed by a breeze that sent the cold edging through cloth. Not that Ataya minded, but he glanced in his sister’s direction in any case, before clipping Rannah’s reins and starting them off down the path.

As soon as they were fully out of sight of the house, he shot Akara a crooked grin. “You must admit,” he said, “it’s at least a touch exciting to be out from under that roof of our own regard. I am glad you opted to join me.”

“There ought to be,” Ataya answered. “The fire festival is celebrated this time of year and I know travelling troupes of sorts come through at different periods for that. Perhaps we can catch a night showing of firani dancers…” He sent his sister a sidelong glance, “…since you do seem to take a liking to that sort.”

On observing her shiver, Ataya flicked his fingers, silently plucking at the surrounding air. One of the portions of aiskala magic that fascinated most in its versatility was the actual process of manipulating the temperature and its effect on the surrounding atmosphere. Nominally, done on a loose and messy basis, it simply meant banishing the heat from an area, causing said heat to dissipate evenly to other areas. Cold was, after all, not ‘something’ itself, only the absence of something: warmth. Thus, the process of keeping something cold was disallowing heat from spreading itself evenly into that defined area.

An interesting spin on that, though, was an experiment Ataya had tried before — ‘creating’ a bubble of heat by banishing it from the surrounding area in a sphere and not allowing it to spread out from that defined space and into his circle of cold. It was a trick, of course, and required a great deal more precision and energy than most manipulations, particularly if he wanted to maintain a specific temperature. But, over time, it was one he had become better at.

He applied it now, forming a sphere of cold around his sister in the air, but not on her, trapping the heat therein and forcing it into a slightly tighter bubble. “Tell me if it gets too hot,” he cautioned. “I’ve tried this a lot, but it’s tricky to maintain.”

Ataya blinked, startled momentarily. “Me?” he questioned. “What interest have I shown in a firan—” He paused, and then snorted. “Dysarrin hardly counts. He can barely cast, and when he does it’s so…coarse it’s hardly casting. A bonfire or nothing. When he’s cold, all of him spontaneously combusts and then it fizzles out when he can’t maintain it. It’s actually quite amusing, now that you mention it, but I was referring to a different sort of…liking. Obviously I don’t ‘like’ him in the manner you seem to be interested in your pureblood. Dys is more like…some combination between an ill-behaved pet and a good friend at arms.”

He squinted, thinking about it.

“…can you imagine attempting to maintain a romantic relationship with him? He probably can’t even kiss without slobbering all over what he was aiming for.”

At the first line of questioning, Ataya hummed, mildly amused. “Practice, I think,” he said. “And a great deal of body language. He’s a fairly simple sort, and as such he doesn’t tend to have very complicated thoughts…it’s just, he still has trouble communicating even the simple thoughts, and at that point it comes down to inferences, mostly. And gesturing…and…”

At the latter question, Ataya frowned, lips pushing into a thin line as his gaze flit sharply her way.

“Yes,” he answered without pause. He knew full well, of course, that she wouldn’t like that answer, but the thought of it… He huffed, shaking his head. “You barely know him, Akara. I understand that you enjoy his company, though I have yet to fully understand why that isn’t my business precisely. But in the meantime, you’ve seen him…twice? Three times? He’s a stranger. Even if he were hybrid I wouldn’t trust him. Besides…it’s impractical on top of everything else. You can see him when we travel down to visit our uncles…and this visit, obviously.”