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((Oh look at what you all did. This is so long. I’m sorry. But not. Neither is Iyoas. He never is. He may even lie a little at the end for once. Attaboy.))
The tall bookbinder’s eyes widened, the tide shifting in their blue depths as he let the barrage of questions sink in under his freckled skin. Maybe too deeply. Maybe not deeply enough. He said nothing at first, long fingers sliding away from the iced tea he was confident he no longer wanted.
For flood’s sake, why didn’t he order wine?
Nai’s questions reminded him of Shai’zara’s answers just a handful of days ago, of her abduction by the League for the Restoration of Souls and how they sought to “reintegrate” her into arati society because she had been born galdor among passives. Happy, successful, passives who owned a spice shop and contributed beautifully to an ignorant, superstitious society that still did not allow them to marry legally and forbid them to ask for Hulali’s blessing because obviously the River God had cursed them since they had been born unable to ever form a functional relationship with the mona … Passives who, like his own jura, may have actually made the decision to care about their daughter regardless of her abilities had they been given the chance to do so. No. Just, no. This sort of arrogance was obviously why Anaxas was in civil war, gutted and bleeding across the sea only to let their bits and pieces wash up onto Mugrobi shores.
Birthright?
Heritage?
Breeding?
Iyoas felt less like a person and more like someone’s prized moa.
An animal.
A student’s experiment.
A bug in a jar.
He shifted his lanky form in his seat, hand straying to rub sweat away from the back of his neck. And then, instead of answering either of their questions, he laughed. It was loud and coarse, carrying a bit over the din of the crowd in the holiday-packed cafe. He was too flooding sober for this, but perhaps this is why everyone else always chose to lie. Unfortunately, being uncomfortable only made the half-Mugrobi printmaker more honest. And being horribly sober only made him crass. He inhaled, sucking in the coffee-fumed air through his straight, white teeth, slightly almond-shaped eyes narrowing as he leaned forward as if he was poised to share the most profound series of secrets the two mostly foreign arati women had ever heard in their entire lives. He rest his elbows on his knees, deliberately entwining his long fingers together to keep them from twitching. Iyoas’ tone was quieter than his laughter, but it was just as coarse, willfully impolite, and directed at Nai first.
“If you really, really want to hear my opinions on genetic theory and how society should be run here in our grand empire of so much sand, then I suggest you put your so-called heritage where your mouth is and get a bottle of wine between us. Otherwise, I feel that my existence as a body of proof to be sufficient for your questions." He grinned and it bordered on the mischievous, but he was neither joking nor flirting, not entirely. If every galdori reacted the same way, why should he talk about such things, no matter how much he wanted to?
He’d be happy to tell her how after centuries of being isolated and interbreeding, he was confident that most imbali could only produce other imbali children. It was, in his humble opinion, when first-generation passives, such as his Anaxi mother, re-introduced their magical genetics into the mix that oshoori were born. Passives were rare outside of the Turtle, but oshoori were rarer still. Or at least, he thought they were. He knew a handful of other oshoori, his apprentice and guest among them, but most were of different ages and generations. After hearing details of the League, he realized that many other oshoori could be wandering unknown in the arati populace, successfully rescued from their deplorable life among imbali for the good of society. Or some such godsbedamned nonsense like that. Iyoas would be happy to share those thoughts, because no one ever did talk about them. And he wanted people to talk about them. If that’s what this daughter of salt traders really wanted to know, if that’s what any galdori really wanted to hear. Instead of continuing to justify their own social position, of continuing to justify their own self-righteousness, if a galdor really wanted to think about deeper realities, Iyoas would be happier to oblige them, considering he existed outside of everything anyone was willing to accept about the way things were. He was the wrench in the system, and he loved to turn the screws when given the chance. No one ever gave him the chance.
Shifting with a roll of his narrow shoulders, he glanced sideways at Ellie behind the bar as she stopped fiddling with napkins and silverware,
“Legally? No. The imbali as a people are not allowed to marry—” Iyoas smirked as he fought to hide the mix of emotions from his field as he spoke, feeling burned by his own answer as it continued to roll off his tongue because none of it applied to himself as an oshoor. He had genuinely wanted to explain things to the shorter, dark-haired galdor, and yet he realized this was not at all the situation he had planned on finding himself in. Perhaps he hadn't anticipated her reaction, and it stung a little more than he wanted to admit ... that all Ellie could react to was the knowledge that passives did the same things together in the dark when no one else was looking that galdori did, “—but there are no laws preventing them from forming relationships, having all the se-uh-children they want, and living a happy, productive life as a family. Legally, imbali are allowed to own property, conduct a business or a trade, and even take the Telling to attend Thul’Amat. There is a very limited acceptance of their participation in the government, too. They don’t breed. They live.” As they should.
He paused, letting the full implications of his words sink into the cracks of their Anaxas-inspired worldview, but he couldn’t keep himself from questions of his own. They fell out of his mouth almost entirely by accident, trapped as he was between them in a crowded cafe,
“So, how do you keep passives alive in your country, in Anaxas? If they can’t love? Can’t live a life outside of slavery? How do you have any at all? Surely, your suicide rate is deplorable. I suppose if you view them as animals, as non-persons, you all can sleep at night. Then again, given the current state of—”
He stopped himself there, nostrils flared, feral field softening, realizing he ran the risk of getting carried away, of hurting feelings. Maybe he should have kept going on principle, but he didn’t really want to. It wasn’t like anyone thought of his feelings, anyway. He didn’t sleep at night because he was alone, because he’d rather be printing and perfecting his craft than reflecting on a life he’d been told he was too cursed to have,
“—Epa’ma. I-I’m sorry. I have said too much.”
Iyoas reached for his tea again to hide behind it, creamed coffee skin unable to hide the color of regret on his freckled cheeks. He lied. He wasn’t sorry, not really, but he knew he should be and regretted his inability to feel that way.
"No," she said, turning her body toward Ellie to slam a fistful of too much currency on the counter. The clatter of fist and metal colliding with wood silenced the din that encased them just long enough for the other patrons to glance around in confusion. Almost everyone returned to their own business without hesitation. Those cursed by their place at the counter either stared on, shifted their stools several inches away, or got up to leave altogether. "You heard him," she told Ellie, making intense eye-contact with her for the first time, "I'll have all your wines, one bottle of each. Choice is the topic at hand, right?"
((Hahaha. It’s okay. Apparently, we are impatient people. I know I am when threads are exciting. Yay for no internet. Sometimes, that feels good.))
“Yaka, I didn’t mean—”
Iyoas didn’t flinch at the sound of too many concords slamming onto the wooden countertop; printmaking was not a quiet process and he was used to the sounds of metal and wood. He blinked in obvious surprise, though, sitting up and resting his work-worn palms on his knees as Nai turned her accusing glance on Ellie to demand entirely too much wine. Enough wine to drown the whole Circle, judging by the amount she left on the bar, but not necessarily enough wine to stir him to sympathy. His expression hardened only slightly at Ellie’s barely-audible apologies, and he chewed the inside of his cheek to keep himself from denying her excuses with a rude retort.
She wasn’t sorry, not really.
She meant it, even if she didn’t know it.
Her shock that passives could do almost everything they wanted here in Mugroba was real, but perhaps the tall printmaker would have felt more comfortable had the dark-haired Anaxi woman been more sure of her convictions. Her lack of confidence held his curiosity for a moment, realizing there was a genuine struggle beneath the surface of what she was trying to say, but Nai’s words touched a nerve that redirected his attention. He would have preferred to address Ellie's hint of social discomfort, to have a conversation that was not already decided. Unfortunately, Iyoas realized nothing was going to go the way he wanted. His freckled countenance slowly pooled into a scowl and he shifted back to the woman next to him. He was not shy about letting his lagoon blue eyes drift to where her shawl hid what was missing as if to make sure she was telling the truth, both making it obvious he was more than casually curious about catching sight of her injury as well as making the connections over her earlier awkward motions in reaching for the coffee she was swiftly downing as he did so.
“Choice? What choice?” Iyoas finally spoke, warily shifting his gaze from his lingering, impolite examination of Nai’s person to the trouble his words and her coins were shaping into on the bar in the form of too many glass bottles. This did not bode well for his sobriety, let alone his ability to stay on topic. While drinking would definitely soften his hard edges, he’d also find himself more easily distracted: he wasn’t surrounded by ugly. On either side of things. “You assume I somehow simply must want to be a part of your heritage. I don’t. I really don't.”
The oshoor’s tone was dry, obviously speaking to the half-Mugrobi woman next to him even while he looked to the pale Anaxi behind the bar instead and pointed randomly to one of the wine bottles between the three of them as if indicating that one at a time was the sane thing to do, that whichever that particular bottle was would be a decent start for now, even if none of them would matter in the end. Maybe starting with the most expensive ones were the better choice, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
“Epa’ma, but I don’t think I can get sunk enough for what you’re asking.”
Iyoas sighed honestly, watching their glasses be filled even as his allowed a cautious grin to creep back into his freckled features. There had truly been a time when he thought he did want his share in galdori heritage, when he was very sure that being accepted as one would have made all the difference in his life. However, he had since come to change his mind. He already knew he was not imbala, either. He never could be, despite his cultural upbringing among traditionalists who were proud to be non-magical. He’d lived a life so disconnected from arati society that regardless of his genetic birthright, he saw himself as being far outside their narrow, oppressive and no less arrogant worldview. He was free to practice magic as he saw fit, though he was severely limited by the superstition and social stigma that surrounded his person as well as the illegalities of practicing as someone seen as imbala even if he was not. He didn’t fit into either set of expectations, if only because neither race wanted to recognize he was a possibility, let alone that he existed. He had been forced to choose his own path, and while it was not entirely what he’d hoped for … anything was better than being trapped in between,
“Those children you protected will be the first in many generations to have the kind of choice you pretend to speak of but know nothing about. They will get to choose to recognize that no one—not even those born passive—needs nor wants your flooding protection, especially if that protection looks like slavery. Or exile, if you would prefer to look back at Mugrobi history instead.”
“You were both told lies. And you still believe them.” Iyoas’ words rolled off his tongue without malice, though inside he was seething. He looked at Ellie first, watching her prepare plates as if what she had said was weightless, even as he felt a tightness in his chest. Shifting his gaze to Nai, his tone was incredulous, “Do you even hear yourselves talking, for flood’s sake? Experts to contain them? Putting them in a place? Giving them a life purpose? They were living beings, not valuable property. They were all capable of making their own way in life. They had names. My juela, my mother who bore your Anaxi tattoo on her arm, had a godsbedamned name. She had a life here, in Thul’Ka, on the Turtle. So did my imbala jura, my printmaking father, and his imbala father and his father’s imbala father before that. And in my whole life, I can say I’ve never, ever seen a diablerie that required some arati to come rescue anyone. My sister even passed her Telling. Studied at Thul’Amat. As an imbala. Drown the whole circle, listen to you both …”
What did privileged expat arati know of restrictions? Of enslavement? Of exile? Very little, it seemed. And yet, even here, they still did not know enough. Even in Mugroba, had nothing changed?
Iyoas chose once again to hide behind his drink, this time his glass of wine. Despite this, he found it hard to stay too angry, to maintain some facade of self-righteousness he had no desire to put on, no matter how harshly Nai seemed to desire to play up the galdori position of superiority in all things and no matter how Ellie stumbled through the standard set of excuses galdori must have put themselves to bed with at night when it came to dealing with the problem of passives. Perhaps Nai’s was a defense mechanism, for it was obvious the other half-Mugrobi had her own wounds to assuage that ran much deeper than the physical. Ellie, too, had come to escape a war that maybe she never wanted, her contentment in the Anaxi status quo shaken by bloodshed and now burned away by so much desert heat. It wasn’t like the bookbinder couldn’t relate, no matter how inexplicably different his situation was from either of theirs. His injuries were just not as obvious as scarred flesh or homelessness. He was just so tired of the way things were that his very bones ached, “Who’s to say I couldn’t have passed the Telling? Even if I had wanted to, I’m nothing more than an imbala who has learned to manipulate my diablerie as an oshoor—”
He gave his kind a name for their sakes: oshoor. He was neither galdor nor passive, or so it’d been decided without his input, without his permission. Neither wanted to claim him as their own. And that was fine by him. Most of the time,
“—at least that’s what I’ve been told, that’s how the superstition goes regardless. As far as either of you should be concerned, I’m just another passive as my family name implies. You can believe what you wish. However, my connection to the mona is hardly wasting away, domea.” Iyoas practically purred the end of his statement, voice full of a bravado-filled promise that had more place on some schoolyard he’d never had the permission to step foot on. His wild animal of a field only emphasized his words, “Though, you’ll just have to take my word for it as this is hardly the place for proof.”
He risked saying too much, however, and stopped his own words with more wine instead, pausing to all but empty his glass and let the din of the cafe fill in his silence. If the two women wanted to assume his magical abilities were somehow inferior, that he’d somehow missed out on an official education with all the acceptance it came with, that untruth was in his best interest to let them believe, regardless of whether or not he felt otherwise, regardless of the fire that burned in his gut to prove the opposite. Nai’s hint of godsbedamned conceited pity dug under his freckled skin; such sentiment was what drove him deeper in his dark and dangerous pursuits to begin with. He wasn’t about to tell them his entire education was illegal. But thorough. No, not here, not in a cafe full to the brim with students and amati celebrating the holidays but still within the shadow of their university. Any magic he practiced was an heretical aberration, mentored under other oshoor, gleaned from illegal studies, and completely hidden from public view. Black market magic, like the books that filled his shelves and earned his far from insignificant fortune. Real magic, free from the confines of convention and rules. It was, perhaps, a little too soon to admit such things, and he was still perhaps a little too sober to be so willing to bare all his secrets to strangers.
“Bhe … Are you saying I can’t afford to drink on my own?” Iyoas couldn’t help but laugh again, changing the subject without warning, trailing a long finger in lazy circles around the rim of his nearly empty glass, carefully keeping his indignance from seeping into his feral field. He'd had just enough to drink to feel a bit warmer on the inside, but not enough to entirely soften his words, “Pe’a, but I’m not some poor human from the Gripe. Just because I have to get my hands dirty for my concords—”
He hesitated with obvious difficulty, well aware that Ellie was a refugee most likely struggling to put food on her table somewhere near Onzur’s Bazaar and lucky to have been shown kindness by Umbida considering most Mugrobi weren’t interested in employing Anaxi expats. No one wanted that kind of baggage. He didn’t know her situation, whether she had family to support or whether she was alone here, far from home. Nai had proven herself in an entirely different state of exile than the shorter, darker-haired galdor behind the counter when she’d placed entirely too much money on the bar. His tone softened as he buried his frustration somewhere underneath the deep tenor of his voice,
“—doesn’t mean I don’t have any in my pockets. And just because you’ve been told that imbali are dangerous, that the only way to contain them simply must be by magical means, doesn’t mean it’s true.”
The tall printmaker shifted in his seat, legs too long to entirely find sitting at the bar comfortable for extended periods of time. He’d never witnessed a diablerie in his household growing up surrounded by three imbali, let alone on the streets of the Turtle, and while he knew that some could be dangerous, even explosive, he’d come to understand that the real truth was arati mostly over-emphasized the risk in order to maintain their superiority. Stress, fear, and physical harm seemed far greater triggers than the kind of life most imbali lived on the Turtle, though there were very rare occurrences of injury and death because of a diablerie gone wrong. Did they need containment? No. Did some divinely-appointed expert with the mona need to come rescue them? No. Non-magical healers were always available, and the Saffron Street Runners did their militia jobs quite well on the island. In his opinion, the plague had done more damage than an imbala ever could. And even that had not required magic to end, though he couldn’t deny its usefulness any more than he could deny himself its privilege. Did Iyoas feel like explaining that imbali just accepted that part of their lives, embraced it without fear as their portion? Not really. He doubted either of the galdori women were truly willing to accept that at this point. That fear seemed to be such a cornerstone of arati society, for it was one of the few ways it seemed they could lay claim to their divine superiority.
“Yar’aka! I don’t idolize the traditionalist lifestyle, either.”
He finally grumbled with uninhibited honesty and a hint of injured petulance, looking to the bottles on the bar between them instead of meeting Nai’s accusing glare, blue eyes staring past the glass into nothing, “Traditionalist imbali are just as stuck in their ways as any galdor, despite the blessings of the spice trade. In all the centuries since those magicless exiles have been free, only a handful have truly managed to break out of the walls of the Turtle. I run a business that is four imbali generations old, and if you ask me, I’m flooding good at my craft, but there’s hardly an imbali on the island that’s willing to see me as one of them.”
It was impossible for Iyoas to keep the bitterness out of his voice with his last words. No amount of wine would be enough to drown his frustration at having everything but nothing at the same time, his family’s so-called heritage like sand through his ink-stained fingers. He was left to build something new out of his life, practically alone, and it often felt like an impossible task. The floodwaters would never be deep enough to wash away the stain he’d been told his existence was on his lineage. He refilled his glass without a second thought, his various printmaking-induced addictions having long-since taken him off the list of featherweights in the drinking arena, “I’ve come to find that it’s impossible to live within the boundaries of both expectations, and that even trying to do so has proven itself horribly unsatisfying anyway.”
Iyoas’ words almost implied he was something better. Almost, but not quite. He most certainly was not, and he knew it. He woke up to that truth every time he allowed himself to sleep. He was just something other, and as a somewhat unwilling outsider to both cultures believed he could see the chinks in every suit of armor, culturally speaking. His vision was not always clear, hardly unbiased by his own sense of personal injustice, and he was not always correct in his assumptions, but a life lived without acceptance from both races had left him jaded and longing for something else entirely. He just didn’t know what that else could possibly be. That River God whose name he couldn’t speak out loud could drown it all as far as he was concerned. All of it.
Caught between the somewhat conflicted words of both galdori women, the tall bookbinder traced a finger lazily around the rim of his empty glass, sitting wordless for a few moments, narrow shoulders sagging as he realized he was no longer floating, but sinking instead, slowly. Definitely. Iyoas had drank enough wine now that everything felt softer around the edges, warm. He’d had enough alcohol muddling in his bloodstream that the walls he’d built during his life on the Turtle felt a little less necessary. Still, it was always easier for the oshoor to be angry, to hold onto that feeling of injustice even if, honestly, he knew it didn't matter in the end. He knew it didn't matter for him. If Nai’s words had set his teeth on edge, had brought some vehement response to burn on his tongue, Ellie’s words cut him short and took the wind from his sails. He simply hissed a non-committal noise and let his stormy seas for eyes wander the rest of the cafe without saying anything in return. To either of them. The sound of breaking glass dragged his gaze back to the shorter, dark-haired Anaxi, and he blinked in surprise as she fled, leaving him to deal with the wake of her sober statements.
The problem with blindly shoving things into categories was eventually you found something that didn't fit. Pied type could be melted and reused, wooden furniture cut down to size, and leading trimmed. Living things didn't work the same way as a print shop, and Iyoas often felt this was a shame. For him, machines were far less complicated.
Reluctantly, he turned back to the salt heiress next to him, well aware that the expat barrista’s words had been directed at both of them. He’d heard Nai’s somewhat unintentional curiosities, and like Ellie’s sudden storm of thought, they’d caught him entirely off guard. He was close enough to feel the effect of the other galdor’s harsh words as a shift in her field. Perhaps he, too, should have grown angrier, but instead he simply felt chagrined. Instead of wanting to react to both accusations, he felt the stirrings of something else entirely. If he couldn't change anyone else’s mind, it was probably about time he accepted things about himself instead.
And it only took one bottle of wine to convince him.
Well, maybe a bit more wouldn't hurt in the process.
Nai’s questions and Ellie’s words once again begged the same answer in his somewhat uninhibited mind: he was the third option. And, most of the time, that was just where he wanted to be. He wasn't always comfortable with it, no. He didn't always enjoy defending his abilities to those who feared what he was. However, ultimately, the truth was that being nowhere socially and belonging to no one suited him. He didn't want to be pinned down as some over-achieving imbala, it was true, but he hardly wanted to be just another flooding arata either. Had the label of oshoor not carried with it some level of contempt and disgust, some fear of acknowledging the possibility of his existence, some unwillingness to admit that galdori and passives were actually two faces of the same coin, then Iyoas would have gladly worn the word as a label. However, he was an anathema. Something to be wiped off shoes. To be avoided like the heat of the day. This kept his secrets for him. And he should have appreciated that more than he did.
Because, the truth was, he did indeed do things best kept in secret. Dirty, dark things. Illegal magic, illegal spells. Printed and sold. Freed from the confines of some university, of some well-respected educational institution that played by the rules, of social expectations about how things should and could be done. He did what he wanted with much of his life, from choosing his Poster Day clients to crafting Monite into metal type. He had much more than ink and grease under his skin, even if it indeed bothered him to see how hard he worked on his own. Perhaps the social acceptance he really wanted wasn't something that necessarily had to encompass an entire nation, a government, or even a neighborhood.
“Dirty enough.” He finally spoke up as if nothing had happened, as if everything was moving in slow motion, lagoon blue eyes suddenly desperate to catch the attention of golden ones before something terrible and violent happened. He was not one to waste opportunities as they presented themselves, slow as he often was to notice them in the first place and horribly unaware that he may have been making a choice that favored one direction over another path he didn't even know he could have even taken. Without much extra thought, Iyoas shifted in his seat, hooking a sandaled foot under a rung in her bar stool and giving it a swift, sudden tug. Inappropriately close and utterly unconcerned, he snatched her remaining, uninjured hand and rudely removed her glass without asking permission, drunkenly making a show of delicately placing the empty thing on the counter top with his free hand before turning to face her, invasive in both his physical and magical closeness despite the wry warmth of his expression.
He wanted to make sure no one exploded, if he was at all reading the field next to him well despite his blurred judgement, but he also felt compelled to prove that he didn't need Nai’s heralded education nor Ellie’s well-meaning pity.
“Are you sure you’d rather be something else? To live someone else’s life?” He chided, voice quiet and heavy but not yet slurred, practically a husky whisper in the narrow space he’d made between them, no longer inhibited by sobriety, “Are you really sure? Because, as Ellie said, it's not impossible.”
He grinned then, lopsided and bordering on the wicked. His question was somewhat ambiguous, both a not-so-subtle response to Nai’s distracted curiosities as well as a direct denial of her less than focused admission. The tall bookbinder didn’t wait for the golden-eyed woman to answer, however. He was slow to focus, enough wine comfortably in his bloodstream to make gathering his field feel somewhat like a joke with too long of a punchline. The untamed wilderness that was the mona around him reluctantly obeyed his distracted will, coming together around his narrow, lanky frame for whatever he wordlessly planned to do with it all. His grip on her hand loosened only slightly.
As long as Nai didn’t struggle, he held her gaze with a mocking sort of seriousness, her palm facing upward in the very narrow space between them but still visible to them both. It would have been easy to mistake the color that rose to the creamed coffee skin of his cheeks as just proof he’d definitely had too much to drink, but that would not have entirely been the truth given his intentional vicinity to the salt heiress. With his free hand, he began to trace slow, almost taunting symbols against her palm with a single finger, dark ink a permanent stain under his nail despite his willingness to comply with Turgamrhit holiday standards of cleanliness. He ceased his almost unrecognizable writing just as suddenly as he started, simply falling quiet, staring, but something was happening.
He said nothing, casting without words. To any casual observer, even a student or amati nearby, he may as well have been scandalously flirtatious or indeed reading a palm, both hands on her own in a way that was not normally appropriate for strangers, even in Mugroba. It was hardly obvious that he had already or still was crafting a spell. If someone hadn't been so close to him as Nai or Ellie, his motions would have seemed insignificant. He took the risk anyway, well aware that he was putting himself in danger doing so. Not only was he revealing to Ellie what he had done a week ago before approaching the table of galdori and introducing himself as an imbala printmaker, but he was also revealing just the kind of unsettling, dark, and more than just slightly illegal magic he was capable of. Because he could. Because even in the crowd of the cafe, he was anonymous enough. Normal gollies just simply didn't need to do this sort of thing.
It felt like the tide shifted in his field, like standing at the edge of where the sea met the sand and watching the waves recede instead of wash ashore. All the mona in his field began to filter inwards, shrinking away. It was somewhat dizzying to the senses, especially when already plum guttered, to be so close (too close) to the oshoor as he hid his field, though because he was touching Nai she could still barely feel the mona’s presence between his skin and hers as he was not so skilled that he could hide his field completely. Iyoas’ grin faltered by the time he was finished, the process for him familiar but still uncomfortable every flooding time, bordering on the painful no matter how used to the experience he had become. Despite the over-stuffed, nauseated feeling this particular spell caused, he allowed both his hands to linger longer than was necessary, longer than was at all acceptable, before releasing her to do what she wished, whether that amounted to physical harm to his person or to simply pour yet more wine in her glass.
“The question you should have asked would have been better.” The half-Mugrobi finally spoke again, all-but-purring with a wink, “What can’t I do with magic and printing? You’re right, you know. Ellie, too—”
Iyoas reluctantly shoved Nai’s stool back to it’s place with his foot, if only to keep himself from more distraction, too close to her to know what to appropriately do with his hands if she stayed where he’d put her. He exhaled through his teeth, ending his spell with a muffled grunt that left him feeling dizzier than all he’d been drinking, exaggerating the effect of so much wine already in his system with sudden intensity. The mona in his feral field crawled away from their tight confinement against his person, expanding slowly enough to raise the fine, faintly red-tinted hair on his creamed coffee skin. His relationship with the magical, sentient particles was incomprehensibly, wildly different but not strained or alienated.
Another creature entirely. An impossible heresy.
“—I don’t have anyone stopping me from doing what I want. Not really. Do you? Besides yourself, that is.”
“The question you should have asked would have been better.”...“What can’t I do with magic and printing? You’re right, you know. Ellie, too—"...“—I don’t have anyone stopping me from doing what I want. Not really. Do you? Besides yourself, that is.”
"No," she responded after a moment, her voice quieter than it had been all night, just loud enough to be heard over the humble multitude of people around them. There really wasn't anyone stopping her from doing anything but her own sense of shame, one she liked the pretend she didn't have for a very long time. But when all was said and done, she'd just been a kid acting out to spite a culture that saw her as a stranger merely for how she looked - a half-Mug golly in a school full of pale, straight-haired Anaxi children, never lesser but always an oddity - and indulging in faux rebellion to trick herself into thinking she had the courage to defy her father, the lawmaker. These epiphanies took on foggy existences in her intoxicated consciousness. They weren't new epiphanies, just ones whose significance was renewed within this new, off-putting context. The only clear thought in her head was that she didn't care what anyone made of what she was about to get herself into...
"Fine," she added pointedly, meaningfully, and without prompt. It was the closest she would get that night to formally conceding the debate they were having. To be frank, given what she'd just witnessed, her concern for what happened to the other theoretical oshoori she would probably never meet was far away. "I want to see more. Your hands must get dirtier than that."
She meant her double-meaning this time, but if he only agreed to one version of her request, she hoped it would be the version that entailed her learning things about the mona she was never meant to know. As the request left her lips, she asked herself quietly, bemusedly, Could a high-society sorcerer really have much to learn from an imbali-born magus? Given the events of the past hour alone, she was tempted to consider that nothing was impossible.
Iyoas did not immediately feel a sense of victory wash over him, so overwhelmed for a moment by just how sunk the runoff from his own spell had left him. He hadn't physically consumed enough wine to feel as godsbedamned guttered as he did, but he had been well aware of the risks he took when casting in his current state. He blinked slowly, lagoon blue eyes struggling to focus on the various bottles on the bar instead of looking back to Nai's face with his amused, lopsided grin or looking for Ellie after it dawned on him that she'd disappeared. One hand gripped the countertop, long fingers curling into the worn wood to steady himself, finally letting the blonde's words sink in through his swirling thoughts. There was plenty more to see, yes, and he was aware she was far from interested in watching him get simple ink on his hands.
His expression warmed then, waxing back into something wicked with flushed cheeks and freckles, and the printmaker's slightly slurred words were suddenly lighter, answering the challenge of both her meanings with the tone of his voice, "It's a flooding long walk to the Turtle, poa'xa of salt traders, but I can show you all the dirty things you could possibly want to see."
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that was not the entire truth or at least not the most truthful way to say things, just as much as this evening was well out of his normal range of behavior. Ever since Tendaji had been so thoughtlessly left on his doorstep in Yaris, none of Iyoas' life had felt normal any more. Then Lidya had brought Shai'zara to his workshop, again assuming that oshoori somehow wanted or even needed each other. She had assumed correctly, though Even the insanity of poster season had taken so much more out of him than usual, it felt like. The tall bookbinder was not always comfortable with change, it was true. It was easier for him to hide behind his own tall walls like the island of exiles he called home. There were plenty of things in his possession, in his rather wild library of illegal tomes, that he was not about to let anyone, especially not a Brunnhold-educated galdor such as Nai appeared to be, simply open and read. Not now. Not yet. Possibly not ever. It was all very blurry in Iyoas' sinking mind that he was confident the one thing he couldn't do at this time was be entirely sure as to what all he'd exactly agreed to.
Although, those ideas did spark his rather illicit curiosities. He sold to educated galdori all the time, amati even. They were a few of his best customers.
What would the difference be should one actually want to study?
"Drown all the Circle," he groaned, hauling himself up to stand, one hand on the bar and the other carelessly placed on the other half-Mugrobi's knee, turning his head with a bit of wobbly reluctance to spy Ellie attempting to make a get away without another word. That was his fault, he knew, and had he been more sober or less unaware of her feelings on the matter, it might have stung a little. He slid away from his place, requesting Nai wait for him to escort her with a wry wink, "Let me just pay my tab."
Iyoas, though drunk, was well aware that he owed nothing, that the woman who'd chosen to sit next to him had also chosen to place more money than would ever be necessary on the counter for both the opened and unopened bottles of wine that still littered the bar. But, at the same time, despite his lack of clearest judgement, he had also made the choice to even come to Umbida's this evening not because he wanted to drag someone home with him but because he had wanted to explain things to Ellie. He had left his apprentice and his guest with that purpose, only to become horribly distracted in the process. It wasn't like he'd ever brought a galdor home, anyway ...
Wait. Focus.
The printmaker made his way through the crowded cafe to stop Ellie from leaving, reaching a hand to fumble for a moment in the pocket of his vest while the other one raised in a sign for her to wait. He blinked slowly again, putting words together in a way that he only hoped made sense,
"I came all the way to Umbida's here between Nutmeg Hill and Hlunn, but you were working." It wasn't like he knew where she lived or what she did with her spare time. It wasn't like he'd ever want to get caught willingly wandering Little Anaxas without good reason. He had more to say, namely that he understood what it meant to feel out of place, but found it impossible to string the right sounds in a row to keep from sounding like an idiot. Instead, he pressed his card into her hands as best he could, which was awkwardly and somewhat sloppily. It had the name of his press and the street it was on along the Way of the Book, "When you're not working, which all that coin may afford you some time off after all, come ... read some books."
Iyoas wasn't sure what to invite the dark-haired galdor to do, given just walking across the bridge from Thul'Ka proper onto the island of once-exiled imbali was often an uncomfortable experience. He left his words at that, though, aware that he'd made other arrangements and clueless as to just how much those decisions may have affected Ellie. Then, he was walking back to the bar again, wobbling his way past another rowdy table to finally come back to where he hoped Nai was still sitting,
"Now," he breathed, aware that by the time he did make it home to his presses he'd most likely be sober, that the same chance was possible for the galdor he propositioned with promises of magic more than anything else, "Still sure of yourself?"