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Lyric

With her face turned away, she could only her the Lady's words. She wiped her weloling tears before they streaked her cheeks. In it's own bittersweet way this too was an experience. It was the first time she had felt these emotions since leaving her home, and ironically it was about leaving her home. But she had no choice. What was done in the Then decided her course in the Now, but What May Yet Come in the What Will be was yet to be determined.

She nodded to the Atterran and wiped her eyes again to make sure they were dry and to hide any evidence of that they had ever threatened to mar her happiness.

"Yes, we will keep fighting," she whispered as she trailed her fingers across the few scraggly flowers. It was encouragement for them and herself. "We will survive."

She rose and dusted herself off and gathered her tunics to shake them out a bit and make herself presentable again. With a couple of deep breaths she fell in behind the Lady, a couple steps back and started for this market place.

Lyris wasn't believing she had made the best impression upon the Lady of Attera, for it seemed the woman kept a distance. Perhaps approaching her had been in bad form or showed disrespect. After all she was an Imperial type and Lyric... was not."

Pietro


"A particular reason? Yes, I would say so," he mused, his gaze taking on a faraway, unfocused look. He paused and held out the wagon wheel pendant toward Keiko.

"My mother was Rhoni," he said after the pause. "At least that is what I have been told. I never knew her."

Again he paused and took a couple of breaths before continuing.

"I am of the Festival Born. My mother died of childbirth fever."

Keiko

“Oh, Pietro, I’m so sorry.” Her violet eyes reflected sincere sorrow over his loss. “To never know one’s mother is a heavy burden for anyone’s heart.”

Keiko looked again toward the hamlet they approached, although she wasn’t looking at anything in particular.

“There is no shame in being Festival-born — or there should not be,” she said quietly. “And... Well, by our customs, you would still have been fostered with your father. I hope you were not ill-treated because your mother was not Imperial.”

She knew some Festival-born children were often shunned; it was something she did not understand even after many lessons with the elders. Although a Festival-born child of a Rhoni parent was not considered Rhoni, they were not generally treated as most Gaija were either. It was an odd middle ground between currents on which these folk walked. It was rare for a woman to spend Festival nights with a Gaija, however.

Blinking and then shaking her head, Keiko looked back at Pietro ago, this time, more soberly.

“Do you know anything about her beyond the birth gift she left you?” She hesitated then... not wanting to pry, not really. But the Squire did seem distressed and not-distressed at the same time. “‘Do you even want to know?’ would probably be a more polite question. I apologize if I have offended by being so bold.”

Pietro


He smiled rather sadly and shrugged in response to her sympathetic statement.

"It is not necessarily a burden, or I do not feel it as such." He shrugged again.

"How can you be burdened by what you have never known? There is a certain... curiosity, though, about my mother's people."

Pietro frowned and thought over what she'd said next.

"Not mistreated... nothing so blunt or direct, I would think, although I always felt there was a certain amount of... well, I suppose disdain is the word."

His smile returned, but it was a faint one.

"No, nothing, just this," he said, gesturing toward the pendant. "How do I know whether I want to know... what I do not know?"

"And I take no offense. After all, I started it."

Keiko

She nodded at the simplicity of his statement. She didn’t quite understand the lack of heaviness one’s heart felt when a loved one left this World to sleep with Krysta. But perhaps a loving foster mother had balanced his loss. The whole of her Family more than balanced the sadness when Grandfather died.

But then Keiko shrugged. “I’m not sure there’s much to tell. Family is everything, but you are outside the Family.”

While there was much she could say about who the Rhoni were as a people, it was not likely he could really understand. It takes a Rhoni to understand a Rhoni — that was a saying that came from a time not long after the Shattering, something the first of the Ancestors had said... or so it was relayed in the stories of the Rhoni. But then she considered the social faux pas Lady Bekkah’s friend had apparently unwittingly made, the dilemma she had agreed to remedy.

And the... the disdain Pietro spoke of for the Festival-born children was another thing she didn’t really understand either. Perhaps she was, as Grandmother sometimes said, too young yet for that understanding.

Looking at the wagon wheel, listening to his words, Keiko had to chuckle.

“You do not know,” she said simply. “And that might be a key to understanding the Rhoni, if just a little.

“There are two sides of knowing — that which you know you know, and that which you know you do not know. I know I could probably not even lift Broke’s sword, never mind use it. But I do not know how long we might Dance on the field before I am sent tumbling toward the rock, but I would like to think everyone would at least have a chance to breath three times. Still, it is a thing that I know I do not know.

“Just as there are two sides of knowing, there are two sides of knowledge — you can know what you know and do not know, but you can never know what you do not know. Here, the balance is between knowing and not-knowing.”

She looked across the market field, not yet close enough to hear any of the gossip that always flew around from person to person.

“Come, Lady Bekkah will introduce us to her companions. Well, she need only introduce me to their Rhoni friend, for I have already met Dama Kadri and the Jvrillian, Mikal.”

She walked a little faster to catch up with Bekkah, then whispered in the healer’s ear before moving closer to Lyric — perhaps it was to help the other girl, even in a small way, to remember herself. Or perhaps it was just the fact that Keiko was coming to rather like the unique young woman.

And perhaps one reason was the same as the other.

Pietro


Her words seemed obvious but, at the same time, perhaps there was something deeper, more substantial, in the meaning of what she said.

Pietro decided he'd have to think on it when he had time to do so.

"Broke? Is that a name?"

Something else that he'd have to ponder because she'd quickened her pace to rejoin the Lady of Attera.

Djinni following, the squire followed the others, his gaze moving to take in the surroundings.

Lyric


The girl from the High Tarn village of Kethy's Woods still trailed the Lady of Attera by a couple of steps, regardless of the pace the Lady set. She didn't want to be underfoot and the Lady obviously had a purpose in being reunited with her own companions.

When Keiko passed her to say something privately to the Lady, Lyric slowed her own step again, pretending something caught her eye. When one whispers they usually want privacy. She would wait for Pietro who was leading Djinni and catching up quickly.

Lyric held this new pace, 3 steps back, and Keiko dropped back to walk beside her now. Lyric smiled wanly and didn't say anything.

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