Welcome to Gaia! ::

The wind whistled over the city walls and out over the trees beyond. From the gray sky a drizzling, intermittent rain trickled down, light and thin. Because of it, Zekiel had been ushered in by one of the city guard commanders on duty, insisting that an acolyte from the Sanctum would not be exposed to the elements on her watch. She was a blustery, rigid woman who reminded Zekiel of a stiff bird, her hair like feathers in a disarray but nose pointed and sharp like a beak. He told her that he loved the rain. It felt wondrous on his nose and in his hair like gifts from the gods which had traveled so far just to reach them.

But, he also allowed her to pull him under the overhang of a watch station on the ground, and from beneath it, he watched as, over the lip of its roof, the rain pooled and spilled in streams like watery ribbons. All the while, the wind played through the chime wards, dispelling evil spirits with the tinkling notes set about by the gusts.

There could never be too much protection, after all.

That was why Zekiel — and Azlas and Edeline, as well as a handful of other acolytes in training — had been sent with a supervising priest to check and bless the wards circling the city limits. Between the whispers of unnatural creatures in the area and continued skirmish raids of citizens by the tall invaders, moral had to be kept up and their well-being safeguarded by whatever means available. A little help from the gods never hurt.

“Are you chilled?” the lieutenant guardswoman asked. Janala Meeirn. She held her hands folded behind her, shoulders straight, and spoke as though words were unruly subjects which had to kept strictly in line and spoken quick before they were furnished the opportunity to get out of hand. “I can have something warm brought for you.”

Zekiel, whose attention had wandered to a particular ribbon of rainwater streaming over the shelter’s overhang to the earth, glanced over at the words and beamed, shaking his head. “Oh, I am very well,” he said, “and not in need of anything, though I do like warm things and I imagine they would be wondrous to have—do you keep some about?”

Those who worked with the Sanctum on any sort of regular basis must have become accustomed — to whatever degree one could become accustomed — to the various oddities and eccentricities of those that the gods ‘chose’ and took into their keeping. Some handled it better than others, and of course, some quirks were easier to accommodate with others less so. Zekiel considered this from time to time. It wasn’t something he quite understood. Yes, his fellows all had their ways, but to him, while they were each unique, they were only all separate things to find wondrous in their own way, not the ‘hurdles’ that some seemed to see them as.

Lieutenant Meeirn, at least, did not seem bothered by his words and moved off with a stiff nod, presumably to fetch a warm beverage. In her absence, Zekiel’s attention wandered out to the city gates and beyond, to an approaching figure. One who, as became immediately evident when the young man came into proper view, was not a city guard or, from the looks of things, a native to the city at all. While clearly Yaelian, the boy otherwise looked almost wild, with air about him of great quiet and untamable energy.

From his seat, Zekiel watched, his interest peaked at least as much by the aura — for lack of a better word — that he brought with him, woven in between the more physically visible things such as his trade goods, and the beast at his side. Zekiel’s curiosity, already always alive and about, stirred beneath his skin.

The guards were not going to permit him in. Though he hadn’t anticipated, or even considered it at first, it became evident as they formed a pseudo-unit before the boy, blockading his entry and barking some variety of objections at him.

Zekiel rose from his chair.

He walked unhurried, but steady, and apparently quietly enough — or enough out of focus of their attention — that when he spoke, his arrival seemed ‘sudden’ enough to startle the guard nearest him.

“Good morning! And blessings be upon you,” he said, ignoring the jerk and stares he got from the trio—though their attention was quick to flit back between him, the jungle boy, and the beast, which they seemed to be especially concerned about. “You smell like the jungle’s shadows and places only the animals climb to…have you come to see the city?”

“Sir—with all due respect, acolyte…” One of the guards was moving to put himself between Zekiel and the newcomer, but Zekiel’s steps shifted like water spurned into rolling at a push, keeping him in view of both the boy and his pet—so wondrously fascinating were they both. “This boy and beast may be dangerous. If you could take a step back…”

“They may be and I could,” Zekiel answered, smiling, “but then I would be further away, and I walked this way so that I wouldn’t be further away than this. Would your beast be displeased if I touched him? He is quite wondrous. Or is he a she? In which case of course she is still wondrous, I have never been so near to a janarim before, but I have a friend in Mirka who has one that keeps company in her barn on some days…”

When the wild boy nodded and patted his beast, granting unspoken permission for Zekiel to do so as well, he beamed. Service to the Sanctum provided few opportunities to interact with beasts generally speaking, and he had no special talent or affinity for them, but he appreciated every opportunity to interact with them just the same. Beasts were fascinating things, after all. More minds crafted by the gods, but fitted into wildly varied shapes and purposes.

He knelt (despite sideline sputtering and an objection, none of the guards seemed especially willing to get close themselves), and extended a hand. After the beast had been afforded full opportunity to examine his scent if it pleased, he reached, stroking the pads of his fingers gently along the hard scales of its snout. It was possible, he supposed, that the beast could have decided then and there, with its great jaws and teeth, that he no longer needed his hand.

But that didn’t appear to be the case.

He glanced back up to the beast’s keeper. “Will you take him within the city?”

“He can’t—”

Whatever the first guard to speak up intended to say, however, there came a nudge and some beneath the breath utterances from another. Zekiel glanced to them, but very quickly decided it was really more their business than his what needed to be said between them, and the man was clearly well-intended but wrong besides. Of course he could bring the janarim within the city walls. There had been at least one there before, after all, so the gods evidently made it possible.

“We can’t have a dangerous beast and an outsider wandering loose within the city,” the guard who had done the nudging said, piping in. “They could become lost, start trouble…someone could be hurt.”

Zekiel tipped his head. “Oh, if they’d be lost I could walk with him.” He blinked, and then beamed anew, rather pleased with the idea already—though, if he’d looked to see the guard’s face, it might have been evident that wasn’t the reaction he’d intended to procure. Zekiel’s attention, though, had already flit happily back to the jungle outsider. “Is it your first time within the city? It is a wondrous place and even if it isn’t your first I should say I think there would be more to see a second or third, or many times later. Would it please you to have company? I could show you wherever you like.”

Zekiel was in no great hurry.

He had been summoned to the city’s outskirts to help with blessings and religious wards, but he was fairly certain that purpose at least had been served. So, when the man agreed to his company and started forward, he followed. No one moved to stop him. And evidently, this stranger did know where he was going after all—or was going to unknown places with a great deal of self-assurance. Either way, Zekiel was onboard.

Since the man did not seem talkative himself, Zekiel filled the silence himself with periodic commentary. Not an endless stream, in case the man did choose to talk, but a peppy string of words here or there as they went. ‘That shop there, Miss Itazsa owns it and has with her family since she was a girl she says. They sell ceramics they make themselves and paint them with great colors they make from the jungle plants, and she walks to the Sanctum every holy day to speak with us there, did you know her daughter is recovering? She was brought closer to the gods by illness, but is happy to be healing and I spoke with her not long ago…’

And so on, and so forth, sprinkling periodic bits of thought about their surroundings into the walk. Until the man did speak, at which point Zekiel’s attention flicked immediately his way again, and he beamed.

“Oh! What a wondrous name,” he said. “He seems happy to have it.” He glanced to Teymaw, who did indeed seem to be conducting himself in as well-behaved and unobtrusive a manner as could be hoped for. Much like his master: silent, straight forward, and moving with clear direction at the other man’s side. “And to trade is good, as I think many here will be pleased with what you bring—we do not most of us go so deep into the island and it is some wondrous bravery of yours to do so. I should like to see more of the land one day, but Sister Mortrem, and Father Borath, and…” The list actually went on for some time before he came to its conclusion, “…say that there are dangers which make the tall trees and jungle shadows their home. Do you think it dangerous there?”

It wasn’t that Zekiel didn’t believe them. He did. But at the same time, it couldn’t be unpleasant in every respect if there were those like this man who still made it their home. The concept fascinated him.

Wet rock…?

Zekiel blinked.

A moment later, however, he laughed openly, a soft, rolling sound that bubbled up of it’s own accord. “They are!” he agreed. “When I was very small, I lived in a village by the sea with Jevan,” he said. “He was a fisherman, you know, and there were many wet rocks there, especially just after the tides came in and begun to pull away again, and all of the sea was fresh upon them and would gleam against the stone with evening before the sun slept. It was easy to slip upon them and be hurt if your feet were bare and not accustomed to it, but the other children still played…and I did, when I was allowed by the sea, those were only especially good days.”

He tipped his head, pausing to stand beside the man when he stopped and watching him and his beast as it was instructed to stay and as the jungle man unloaded it. “When Sister Mortrem took me to the Sanctum, I did not see the sea or wet rocks for many sunrises. So many, I grew nearly so tall as I was then all over again before I did. But it is beautiful there, too, in the Sanctum and about this city…if you come here again to sell what you gather, you should come to see it if it please you and I might meet with you again. Or if they do not remember you next you arrive and think it too dangerous to permit you past you might tell them it would please me to see you.”

It occurred to him then that, despite it being his usual introduction, he could not actually remember having told the man his name. So, abruptly as that, he held out his hand, expression and tone still bright and casual when he spoke.

“I am Zekiel, acolyte of the Sanctum of Pajore and at your service, be it the will of our gods.”