Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ataya slept solidly, locked in a deep, satisfied slumber. Warm. Comfortable. Tucked in. Nothing could disturb his—

He stirred, making a muffled, fussing whine when something first pushed at him from the outside. His mind fought it. It couldn’t be time to wake yet. Far too early. Far, far too—

“…uuuuppp, little brother…mmmrmrmr…city…”

Ataya squirmed, hair sprawling out all the more as he rolled and attempted to bury himself beneath the nearest pillow. “S’not even…” He yawned beneath the cloth, “…morning’n’m…gonna go…way…”

Ataya stilled, narrowing his eyes — still beneath the pillow — and briefly burying his nails into the mattress, like a feline digging in claws. “You wouldn’t…”

“Nnnnnnhhh-nngghnnnhn…” Ataya whined, scrabbling uselessly for pillow and sheets before pushing up onto his elbows to eye his sister blearily. His hair, like a limp mop spilled all down around his face — in addition to everywhere else — and it was only through the long dark strands that he managed his rueful glower-pout. “Woe befalls me for my sister of fifteen faithful years betrays her helpless brother in his weakest hour, leaving him to…”

Ataya frowned, trailing off as the actual surroundings sank in. He blinked, and a moment later pushed up, combing a handful of fingers back through his hair to guide it out of his face before squinting around the room.

“Oh. Right,” he recalled. “Right, I…” He yawned, layering a hand over his mouth and sinking slightly in posture. “I remembered that…fully…perfectly…” Sinking, he flopped back onto the cot with a mumble. “Five, just…five moments, lovely sister, I’ll rise just…pity, take pity and…” He nested his face into the mattress. “Mmm.”

A pause.

“…hair brush?”

“Mmmhn.”

A grunt.

Shifting.

A stretch, wherein Ataya rolled back and forth twice, preceded by an extensive, weathery sigh. Then, finally, at long last, he pushed himself upwards, fumbling blindly until his fingers fell on the brush. He mumbled something that was probably a, “Thank you…” but muddled enough by a yawn that it became impossible to tell for sure. He did, though, manage to begin the careful and methodical process of brushing his own hair.

By stroke fifty of his typical one hundred, he was feeling at least among the living again, and hummed as his gaze moved for the open window. “Evening,” he observed aloud. “It sounds lively…did you look to see if anything was going on in the streets? We’ll be all the more fortunate if there are festivities. Longer for Mother and Father to find us and something interesting to do with our time…”

When he finished with his hair, all of it a great pool around him now of neatly tamed black-purple strands, he pushed to a stand and held the brush out to his sister, offering it up before moving over to begin re-dressing properly. By the time he was fully dressed, he felt more or less fully awake as well, and his mind was up and alive again, the giddiness of the night prior returning to him anew. He walked to the window, perching his elbows atop its sill and peering out.

“It looks promising…any idea where your wonder boy lives?”

Ataya lingered at the sill for some time, eyes darting from one thing to the next. Though the view wasn’t magnificent, it was decent enough to tell that something was certainly going on, and clear that afternoon had long since bled into evening, bathing the scene in red-orange, soon surely to darken into night. After thrumming his fingers once atop the wood, he leaned back, pushing off of it and sparing his sister a glance.

“I am glad to spend this time with you, sister,” he said. “I appreciate your willingness to partake in endeavors with me despite them being fated to end in admonishment if nothing else. It would have been lonelier without you. Are you ready?”

After Akara left, Ataya grabbed his cloak, prepared to slip it on over his shoulders, but then hesitated, frowning. He often wore it, now, particularly when travelling in public, because apparently figures in hoods and bulky clothing with shrouded faces were less objectionable and suspicious than gaunt teenage hybrid boys. But despite it being late autumn, approaching winter, he didn’t need it to stave off the cold. While still suspended in his indecision, though, his gaze caught on the small dresser mirror near the door. Immediately, his shoulders stiffened, back straightening, and brow pinching together as his face stared back at him.

‘Ugly, ugly, ugly. You’re hideous. Look away, why don’t you? You know what you look like. It won’t change no matter how many gods you pray to—’

Sneering, Ataya jerked his gaze away and tugged the cloak over his shoulders before turning stiff on his heel and leaving the room. The door CLACKed violently shut behind him. He pulled the hood up on his way down the steps, and that was how he was as he stepped out, over the threshold and into the evening air to greet his sister. The smile that he pushed onto his lips then was less convincing than those prior.

“Come, then,” he said, “let’s see what this city is made of past curfew.”

As they wound their way through the crowds, it became clear some version of festivity was definitely going on, from the occasional outlandish, festive outfit, to brightly lit lanterns of all sorts of decorative shapes and sizes, stalls opening instead of closing for the evening. And music. In spite of himself, Ataya felt his brief surge of a foul mood from earlier edging away again as his eyes darted about, greedily drinking in the details.

“Well, sister,” he said at length, “…it would seem the night is ours. Since you are the honored guest with me here on this journey, where would you like to start?” As he asked it, his eyes landed — and lingered, despite his best intentions — on a stall of especially promising-looking, golden, caramel-glazed fruits and other assorted sweets.

Ataya blinked, startled at first by the unexpected gesture. A moment later, heat crept up his neck and into his cheeks. But he didn’t pull away. Instead, he nodded in silence, following his sister’s lead towards the stand and eyeing the array of options with new relish. All the members of his family criticized that he ate both too little and not often enough, but often he simply didn’t have the appetite or desire. Sweets, though, seemed to hit a particular vein in him, and — particularly those things labeled by others as ‘icky’ sweet or simply too saccharine to bear — appealed to him immensely.

The woman running the stand eyed them narrowly. “Oi, you’ll need coin for them, y’know, we’re not passin’ out donations for the beggin’ poor. Show coppers or more your noses along.”

At his sister’s side, Ataya stiffened, eyes narrowing and mouth opening, an unintentional chill rippling outwards.