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[R17, Late Evening, Umbida's] Student of Life [Ellie, Open]
unwanderinggirl
Member
Iyoas had joyfully slept through the grand beginning of Turgamrhit, and it had been more of a blessing than any traditional new year celebration could ever be. Weeks of long, sweltering hours filled only with printing, preparing, and more printing were swiftly washed away by a flood of utterly inescapable unconsciousness, waters of sleep returning the half-blooded oshoor from the work-induced numbness that had consumed him some time between the sleepless blurring of the beginning of Roalis and the night before Poster Day Eve. Sleep, more than any ceremonial wash in the Turga that he was not culturally welcome to completely enjoy or partake in anyway, had restored the printmaker to himself just in time for the long, somewhat lonely stretch of holidays everyone in Mugroba seemed so keen on enjoying.
Posters printed with his ink and sweat were already forgotten.
Without close family ties to bind him into happy get-togethers and with even more complicated friendships that only reminded him of his unasked for cultural exile, Iyoas often found himself somewhat purposefully, somewhat unwillingly alone. As the afternoon heat slowly succumbed to the reluctant cool of evening, he’d simply slipped away from his shop quietly, knowing full well he was acting the inappropriate host to his apprentice and guest but unable to bring himself to entirely care, choosting instead to weave through the surging crowds of imbali celebrating the holidays in their own way on the streets of the Turtle. He crossed the Bridge of Discernment as the sun cast long, hot shadows across the river below to squeeze himself into a busy cable car full of Thul’Ka citizens in their finely embroidered holiday garb, laughing and smiling on their way to some gathering or some washing or some dinner party. The tall bookbinder watched their faces and listened to their conversations, felt the brush of the fields of the arati and wicks or noticed the hole of their absence in the dura and imbali, always assuming himself a note of discord among the ceremonial symphonies though no one really noticed.
Clean of ink and grease for the first time in weeks and dressed as if he had somewhere just as important to go for once, the truth was he was aimless, willing to waste his hard-earned Estuan coinage on a crowded cable car for the views of the city as the ending day cast it in bronze and fire and to waste his time watching the crowds ebb and flow with anonymity.
Sometimes, it felt okay to be nothing, to know no one, but other times it was just salt in an open wound. Tonight was neither. It just was.
Darkness fell, phosphor lanterns lighting the roads and bridges, and Iyoas found himself off the cable cart where he got on it, roaming through Deja Point in the direction of Umbida’s Coffee House, aware that it could be crowded and full of music and other such Turgamrhit jovality. Outside the Turtle, the printmaker found he could often pretend to be who he wanted, so long as he didn’t have to play any parts with the truth. In the Turtle, he could only be himself.
The coffee house was indeed full of patrons, groups of folks enjoying each other’s company, but he was either still early or between acts for the place was full of a myriad of mixed conversing voices instead of the sounds of performance. The half-blood wove his way to the bar and squeezed his way into a worn seat, untamed weight of his field causing the human on his left to shift and mutter while the wick on his right could have cared less. He briefly wondered if that Anaxi waitress would be working or not. The short one who seemed to enjoy offering him a smile, as unaware of Mugrobi cultural taboos as he was of her own. Maybe she was off exploring all the foreign festivities with her equally foreign family, but probably not. It wasn’t like Anaxas refugees were all that welcome, anyway. He twisted his tall, narrow frame into a somewhat comfortable position, elbows resting on the sticky, rough counter top of the bar, fingers listlessly tracing gouge marks scarring its surface, content to wait to be noticed.
Comments
((I posted. And redacted. And will return with an edit shortly. My bad.))
((Sorry, this turned out a bit longer than I expected.))
Iyoas had drifted into studying the various typefaces on the labels across from the bar instead of bothering to order anything for himself: coffee and tea tins, bottles for various drinks and flavors. He recognized some, knew the foundries and even the faces of others, and wondered about the rest, whether they were from type foundries in other countries such as Bastia or Hox or even Anaxas. That last thought was a little sad, but only from a slightly selfish perspective, considering he wasn’t really entirely concerned about the Anaxi people so much as their printing equipment and supplies. He was sure good type and better presses were being destroyed alongside the living, breathing bodies involved in all the fighting there, confident that the arts and good printing were some of the first things thrown out the window when everything else turned to violence. It was a shame, really, to think of all that lead and wood pulp and cast iron up in flames alongside all the other horrors the tall printmaker couldn’t even wrap his mind around in the first place—
His rambling thoughts were interrupted by the brush of an arata field; living and working among imbali meant that anything well-trained and stronger than what wicka wore as their own always felt distracting, heavy, and strange. Not to say he didn’t assume he had some opposite but similar sort of effect on others, his monic pathways must have felt like they were inhabited by feral things, free radicals, and experimental theory to any studious sort of arati. Frayed edges in a neighborhood full of students and professors. Oh well. The truth was hard to swallow, sometimes. All the time, really. Iyoas shifted in his seat out of politeness, making room at the somewhat crowded bar, and only looked over because he realized he was being looked at. Not quite stared at, but noticed.
Lagoon blue eyes blinked at the somewhat uncanny, familial but effeminate resemblance with fleeting thoughts of his sister passing behind his slightly almond-shaped lids—Was she with what was left of their family? The ones that were so quick to disown him once the plague claimed their father? Was she still at Thul’Amat? Did she have a new family of her own? Did it matter?—before he managed to offer a lopsided, awkward smile and a casual nodding of his head in informal greeting instead of just staring,
“Ayah,” The tall bookbinder found his voice above the crowd, beginning to move as if he was willing to offer his seat, miraculously inkless hands moving from the countertop to the worn wooden stool he perched on, “Pe’a, care to sit while you wait?”
She may have already had a seat elsewhere for all he knew, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be quite some time before her order appeared on the bar. Any long-term resident would have recognized the faint lilt of the Turtle in his Mugrobi, though with the woman’s obvious mixed heritage he wasn’t too concerned, “It’s a bit more crowded here at Umbida’s fine coffee house than I expected, so you’re welcome to it. Sometimes I forget that even folks who live outside the walls come back into Thul’Ka for the holidays.”
Iyoas was sliding out of his seat just as Ellie’s familiar face appeared on the opposite side of the bar, looking as disheveled as he’d felt in the weeks before Poster Day, though not really. That level of wreckage was surely impossible for anyone who lived less of a self-destructive lifestyle than a printmaker. Unfortunately for all parties involved, he was utterly oblivious to any particular level of interest the Anaxi refugee (or anyone anywhere at anytime, for that matter) could possibly ever take in him. That was not to say he had never enjoyed being even the most brief object of attention for anyone in his lifetime (because he had) so much as his usual assumption was that the attention given to him was not unlike the attention one had to give to one’s sandal after stepping in camel dung. He was an oshoor. It was complicated. Those willing to wade through the often negative mythologies surrounding his person were few in Thul’Ka, and fewer still in the traditionalist imbali isolation of the Turtle. Foreigners, like children, were free from the burden of such cultural bias, however, but it was difficult for the half-Mug printmaker to believe that anything was really, honestly, all that different outside of the small, quiet world he operated mostly by himself within.
So, he simply smiled back at the much shorter, fair-skinned arata on the other side of the bar even as he happily surrendered his seat to the other woman next to him, should she take it, and realized he had no real desire for any more flooding coffee. He probably still had some in his blood thanks to Poster Day, dark roasted grit permanently etched into his very veins. Unaware of what Ellie was assuming about himself and Mira, Iyoas shrugged and put her on the spot,
“I think I need a break from coffee. What can you surprise me with instead?”
Iyoas stood awkwardly for a few moments, half out of his seat, one hand on the bar, unsure as to whether it was simply his presence or his smile that surprised the woman. Living among imbali and only venturing out of the Turtle to make deliveries and visit his suppliers made him feel almost as overwhelmed as the human that quickly abandoned his place at the bar when the other half-Mugrobi clenched her field. His eyes widened for a heartbeat or two, but his smile didn’t fade. So fleeting was much of his time with arati that he found each experience both strange and fascinating. He’d assumed he was being polite, offering his seat in the midst of a crowd, and was afraid he’d insulted her. Not that such a thing would have been the first time he’d insulted a stranger; usually his very existence was insulting enough should those around him find out what he really was: the unwanted arata offspring of some imbali union.
But then the woman was laughing and sitting and waving at him to do the same.
“Family? Yaka, I don’t—” The tall bookbinder stuttered a moment, reminding himself he owed the woman no explanation, no personal history. She wasn’t asking whether he had a family, or whether what family he had cared. He rolled his narrow shoulders in a shrug and settled back into his seat next to her, one hand straying to rub the back of his freckled neck absently, his tone as wry as his lopsided grin, “I don’t have any obligations this fine evening, despite the holiday. I have to admit, though, I’m not even sure I’m here for the music. And … yourself?”
His expression softened in time for him to turn back to Ellie, catching some of her words, but not all of them. He heard ice and tea and sweet tooth and tried to picture frozen tea … Was it drinkable? Iyoas also noticed her nervous laughter, and remembered his last visit a week ago. Surely, he’d confused her with the hiding of his field. She assumed him another arata, like herself, and most arati had no need for the kind of magic he knew. He didn’t even know if he’d ever be able to explain, sure of what kind of a reaction he’d receive from a Mugrobi, but unsure of how any Anaxi would react to the truth. He’d heard of how Anaxi arati treaded their imbali; his mother had been one. He was neither … and yet both at the same time.
Still, he kept his grin and nodded to the shorter, dark-haired refugee behind the counter, “Ea. That sounds … different enough for me. I’ll try it, domea.” He wondered if she had to work all night, or if perhaps her shift would be over. The thought of owing her some kind of explanation still nagged at him like a paper cut, all sting and not enough blood.
His blue eyes followed Ellie as she disappeared to make his mysterious iced tea, watching her disheveled black hair bob away into the crowd, though it was easy to follow with her pale foreign skin amid a sea of dark desert people. Not that she seemed comfortable showing it off, which may have been unfortunate had Iyoas an idea of her interests in himself. He wondered briefly if, like a few of the other baristas, she was also a Thul’Amat student instead of an Anaxi refugee. That thought was perhaps a little more cheerful than the alternative, though he knew very little of the circumstances Anaxi arati were living under. Unlike both Ellie and Nai, he’d never been out of Mugroba, hardly out of Thul’Ka proper, and barely out of the Turtle. Given that his mother, in the short time that he knew her, had never wanted to speak of her life in Anaxas, Iyoas was forced to admit he'd grown up curious.
With that, he shifted his gaze back to the woman next to him in time to watch her awkward dance to reach for her coffee. He took the moment she disappeared into her cup to travel over their differences, though he managed to look away into the crowds again before her introduction. Iyoas offered a reciprocal, polite bob of his head once she said her name, mentioning her family business, and he realized he had a decision to make.
“Ma’ralio. My name is Iyoas—”
He began carefully, foregoing the usage of Hulali’s name as was imbali custom in favor of a tamer greeting, curling his fingers into his palms to keep himself from the temptation to sign a familiar spell, to pull his field tight against his freckled skin and hide it. He reminded himself that this was normal for arati, that this was the sort of thing they did in greeting, that this is how they got to know each other. He reminded himself that this was expected, even as Nai’s field brushed his. Hers was a well-tended garden, all trimmed hedgerows and planned out flowers, the way an educated and well-practiced arata field should be, though he was not entirely knowledgeable enough in the various disciplines and their minutiae to be able to pick out what kind of mona favored her field. His, in relative comparison, was a scraggly patch of greenery somewhere thriving around an oasis in the desert, all wild and strangely untamed but not necessarily any weaker than her own. His form of magical discipline was self-educated, fringe magic, pieced together from illegal books and from other oshoori willing to share their ways. His relationship to the sentient particles of magic was far from distant, despite it being illegal for an imbala to practice anything of the sort, trapping him between both worlds like a scorpion under one’s thumb.
The mona in his field felt more like ink and grease than anything else, however, but there were still lingering hints of the living magic he used to keep himself awake during poster season when coffee wouldn’t do, hints of a poster-induced magical addiction that frayed the edges of his already feral field. Coffee never did enough during poster season. Ever.
He paused for just a heartbeat before his full name tumbled off his lips, deciding whether or not he was going to be himself or if he felt like someone else. The half-blood would either have to be all in or all out. He didn’t particularly feel like lying. It was always too much work in the end,
“My name is Iyoas Tar'iku Esef Roh, printmaker and bookbinder.” His long name marked him as either an islander or a traditionalist imbala, though it was obvious that neither fit his appearance nor his magical person. “And I do believe that you were staring first, Mira Nai, poa’na of salt traders.”
“Perhaps you’ve seen my work somewhere this week, pasted onto walls with some smiling Assembly member vying for your attention on it? It was a busy year for posters.” He laughed then, a mix of self-deprecating humor and honest amusement.
Annnnnd that was it.
His evening was over before it began.
Should he get up now and go home?
Passive.
Drown the whole Circle, Iyoas hated the Estuan word and the contempt that came with it off of Anaxi lips. Here in Mugroba, it was imbala. And yes, there was a flooding difference. Imbala was at least a word that carried with it an air of defiance when used in the company of galdori. There was hope and empowerment instead of ignorant, branded enslavement. He remembered his juela’s tattoo.
Although, in all honesty, the tall printmaker enjoyed none of it.
He wasn’t imbala. He wasn’t arata, either … at least according to arati themselves. No, he was oshoor. He hated that word more, bearing the weight of its ignorant superstitions squarely on his narrow, freckled shoulders.
He watched Nai fumble, watched her attempt to keep a smile on her face despite the color that rose to her creamed coffee cheeks. She was embarrassed. Ashamed, even. To be speaking with him? To be seen in his presence? Really? He had that effect on people, it was true. He wished he was used to it, but somehow he just continued to hope it would go away. It was probably why he chose to be honest most of the time. It was his filter. It was one of the many reasons why he stayed awake with his cast iron machines all night instead of sleeping alone.
Her use of the word passive revealed that for all her Mugrobi appearances (or half-Mugrobi appearances like himself), she’d spent more time across the sea than in the sand. While plenty of arati here in Thul’Ka were uncomfortable around the imbali population, it was a different sort of distance. There was at least the pretension of acceptance instead of outright horror. That kind of reaction was usually saved for oshoori instead. So, little did the woman know just how flooding used to her response the bookbinder was, but for entirely different reasons.
He’d made the choice, it was true.
Iyoas had given his full name, his real name, and his profession. He had found that regardless of galdori assumptions on his ohante, of his supposed lack of a soul and cursed inability to be honest, he was one of the most honest people he knew. Most of the time.
His feral field dampened, not so much retreating against his person as hardening in his indignancy like the tall walls of the island he called home. It was all he could do to contain himself from basking in the living magic runoff from Nai’s half-hearted spell casting, still weaning himself from too much magically-induced adrenaline thanks to poster season. He opened his mouth to answer, an almost smug sort of grin beginning to creep across his features, when suddenly there was his iced tea and a concerned looking Ellie begging a different question with the same answer. He should have ordered wine. He should have already been drinking wine. Lots of it. These kinds of conversations were better when he was drunk. Very drunk.
Lagoon blue eyes fluttered for a moment in impatience instead of indecision. Iyoas did not struggle with shame. He was not ashamed of who, or what, he was, even if he had been told to be for almost twenty years. What he struggled with was humility: he was good at his craft and was tired of being trapped by other peoples’ ignorant presumptions. Did Ellie remember his hiding of his field from a week ago? Had she forgotten? Isn't that what brought him back here in the first place?
Anaxi. Their ignorance was no less offensive than his own people’s superstitions … just … even more displaced. Still, he offered the shorter, dark-haired galdor a softer, almost apologetic expression despite the frustration that was obvious in his field.
“We call our passives imbali, you know. We are to some degree free, legally speaking, especially compared to those in your home country. We have our own island here in Thul’Ka,” Iyoas chose to answer both questions at the same time, fingers tracing listless lines in the sweat that already clung to his glass of iced tea. Identifying himself as a cultural imbala made him uncomfortable, but it was the truth. It was not often he referred to himself as "we" when talking of the imbali as a people group. It made his tongue feel like glue to do so. It felt like a lie, but it wasn't. Not entirely. He was far more an imbala than an arata in terms of social identification, regardless of his magical abilities that set him apart, “The Turtle, where I live and operate the business my jura, my father, left to me after the plague.”
The printmaker shifted in his seat, pausing to finally taste his iced tea, choosing to look from Ellie to Nai from over the rim of his glass as he did so. It was cold, which was refreshing, but sweeter than he was used to … sweeter than he was in the mood for now. Putting the glass down, he exhaled through his teeth before finishing his answer, unable to hide the hard-edged, rebellious tone in the deep timbre of his voice as he did so, “I have an imbali name because my imbali parents gave it to me. It’s not like they, or anyone else for that matter, could ensure that I would stay non-magical upon my coming of age.”
Iyoas looked away from both of them, to the obviously mixed crowd of students and professors of an acceptable variation in races, that bustled in the cafe, though his somewhat smug expression didn't entirely fade. He was well aware of what he was, but also aware of the denial and stigma that carried. Even in Mugroba, imbali weren't legally allowed to marry. They had their children anyway and no one could stop them now. All galdori society, both in Anaxas and Mugroba and probably elsewhere, denied that their magic-less offspring were as capable as they were (despite obvious evidence of the contrary), and even further denied that his existence was both possible and acceptable.
He didn't need to say the rest.
He wasn't a passive and the two galdori knew it.