Heart of a Wick [Memory, Closed]

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Fishing villages, mining towns, and the mineral-rich border with the Kingdom of Anaxas are highlights of the Western Erg.

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Faizra pezre Taci
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Wed Oct 02, 2019 8:48 pm

Late Afternoon, 21 Roalis, 2713
A Floating Settlement, The Turga
Faizra ducked back out of the hut, lingering behind her parents.

Ibo and Taci glanced at one another when Oisin spoke. Ibo grinned, releasing his wife. “Ne, adame,” the wick said, simply. “Yer a guest here, ye chen?”

“‘ere,” Faizra ducked forward and tugged the crate from Oisin’s hands. She carried it back past Ibo and Taci, and deposited it in the shed.

“Da, anythin’ else need doin’?” Faizra asked, hopefully.

“Yaka, nanabo,” Ibo grinned.

Faizra let out a whoop. “Habi!” She called. There was a faint giggle from a neighboring walkway. Without the faintest hesitation, Faizra dived from the boards into the Turga, swimming with effortlessly, easy strokes. She pulled herself into a neighboring walkway, vanished behind a hut, and emerged with Habi clinging to her back, his arms wrapped tight around her neck.

“Whoop!” Faizra took off, practically running down the boards. Habi shrieked with laughter, and Faizra let out a loud yell in Mugrobi. There were answering cheers from the water, and in a single smooth motion, Faizra slid into the water again. She and Habi vanished below the surface again, and then two heads emerged, Faizra holding her little brother up as he shrieked and kicked and laughed. She towed him with her to the other young ones, although frankly Habi seemed to swim quite well on his own.

“One must learn to swim early on the Turga,” Taci said, smiling. “They say the child remembers it from the womb.” She and Ibo exchanged a last look, and Taci left.

“Kofi, adame?” Ibo asked, smiling. “F’ye wish t’ do somethin’, then take kofi wit’ me ‘n m’ daoa. M’ mother,” he translated.

Ibo led Oisin through the winding planks of the village. Here, now, there were others, wicks whose glamours reached out in a friendly way as Oisin passed, exchanging greetings with words and glamours as if it didn’t matter which was used. Here or there Ibo would say something in Tek or Mugrobi, usually accompanied by a laugh.

The hut they went to was at the center of the great sprawling web of boards and homes, a large thing with a heavy thatched roof. A garden spilled around the edges of it, neat rows of plants fitted together. Ibo winked at Oisin, and gestured to him to remain for a moment, then stepped inside. There was silence for a moment, or at least the murmur of voices too soft to be heard.

“What’s takin’ ye so long?” A woman asked; her voice was starting to roughen with age, deeper than Taci’s. She emerged from the hut; she looked older, with lines on her face, her back just starting to bend - but her hands were strong and supple, and her glamour flowed around her like a pool of water, still and deep and cool. It sunk into Oisin’s, mingling deep and welcoming. Like Taci, she wore a colorful wrapping around her head, a match to the cloth draped over her body, comfortable and light and cool looking.

“Come in,” Ibo’s mother said, simply, raising her eyebrows at Oisin. “I am Kaya pezre Zalana. Sana’hulali, Oisin Ocasta ‘f t’ cities of Anaxas.”

Inside the hut was a small garden, plants which needed less of the sun in sprawling circles. Kaya’s glamour stirred as they passed the plants; she murmured to them in monite, words of encouragement, and ran her fingers through thigh high stems, releasing fragrant smells into the air. At the far end was another opening, and through it they would reach a small room. Ibo was already inside, kneeling at the hearth, coaxing life into the fire.

There were no chairs, not here, but Kaya sat easily on a cushion on the floor, and patted one nearby.

Ibo moved to a small bowl of water; he scooped it up with his hands and rinsed his mouth, spitting into a dented metal bowl. “I pledge m’ honor t’ Hulali. I speak truth here,” Ibo said.

Kaya did the same, and the bowl was passed to Oisin. Once he had finished, Ibo would take the bowl outside, and return with wet hands, having emptied it and washed himself. He began to gather the supplies of the ceremony from the small shelves next to the hearth, laying out a roasting pan, a mortar and pestle, small mugs, a tray with bowls on it, and a traditional kofi pot, made of battered metal but polished to a shine.

“Why have y’ come here, Oisin ‘f Anaxas?” Kaya asked, turning her sharp dark gaze on the wick.

“I’ve invited him, daoa,” Ibo murmured.

“Ea,” Kaya did not look away from Oisin. “I have no’ asked ye, boch. I ask Oisin no’ if he wa’ invited, but why he accepted.”

Ibo ducked his head, smiled, and went back to his work.

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Oisin Ocasta
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Sun Oct 06, 2019 6:15 am

21st of Roalis, 2713
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Oisin was hardly a man known for underthinking a question, but the sheer weight that Kaya pezre Zalana had placed upon it gave even him pause. Then there was the oath, the pledge to Hulali that Oisin had echoed as best he could. I speak truth here. The context and the significance had been lost upon him, but the sentiment was not. To Oisin, the gods were something confusing and unknowable, something he struggled to conceive and certainly had no context to understand, but words? Words were everything. Words were what connected him to the mona. Words were what turned thoughts into stories. Words were how you presented your story to the worlds. True, there were those who presented a story that diverged from reality, whose words told a story of who they wanted to be, or who they felt others wanted to be, but Oisin struggled with that as well. You were what you were, until you weren't, and in the end, a few altered words wouldn't change how your story ultimately went.

"That is hard for me to answer." It was a truthful response, but not much of one, and Oisin's brow furrowed as he contemplated how to continue it. It would have been a lie to say that he didn't know the answer: he did, he felt it in his bones, he was merely struggling with how to turn that into words, and that wasn't the same as not knowing. He was here because he wanted to be. He was here because it felt right. He was here because it felt good to be lauded as a hero for once, even if it was likely undeserved. It felt good to be lauded as one by Ibo in particular, though that was a complicated feeling of its own. Then there was Faizra, and her unbridled joy. There was the way the children had laughed and played in the dust beside big-tree-in-the-river’s-bend. There was the way that the community had come together, in many ways literally, a sense of unity and welcomeness that had sparked a sense of jealousy as he had watched from the outside. This opportunity, this chance to cross to the other bank instead of watching from afar, was an offer he would never have been able to pass up, and each moment since had rewarded him with a sense of wonder.

He offered a small, almost sheepish smile. "I do not get invited to places often." His voice was slow, not quite with reluctance, more caution. His body language reflected it, a slight slump to match his quiet tone that wasn't shame so much as a desire to seem - or be - as small as he felt. "I am a wick who grew up in the city. I have no family, and no home to speak of; I barely even know what it means to be a wick, even though that is what I have been shunned for all my life. I was poor, and unwanted, and stayed out of the way; and then I came here to Mugroba, to feel unwanted, unwelcome, and out of place in all new ways. I do not belong, not anywhere I have ever been."

His eyes tried to fall away, to peer at the floor as if it somehow held answers or solace, but he fought against that urge, insisted upon himself to meet Kaya's gaze with his own. "Save for a fleeting moment today, when I was invited to .visit your home. I know I do not belong here, but your family has made me welcome. For me, that is a gift too precious to refuse."
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Faizra pezre Taci
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Joined: Mon Jun 03, 2019 4:59 pm
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Wed Oct 16, 2019 1:02 am

Late Afternoon, 21 Roalis, 2713
A Floating Settlement, The Turga
Kaya’s glamour swirled around them still as Oisin spoke. Even Oisin would be hard-pressed to ignore the feeling of it, like an oasis in the desert; as if he had been wandering a long time, through the dry, parched earth, and had come upon soft, cool water, clear and clean and flowing, and had plunged himself in, renewed; as if he were one of Kaya’s plants, because in the coolness of her glamour one could feel why they wished to grow for her, a gentle strengthening and encouragement all together.

Ibo was easing a ceramic jar from the shelves now; he reached in, and took out a handful of kofi beans, green and soft to the touch, with a faintly fresh smell that spilled into the air from them. He took the roasting pot and added the handful of beans to it, settling the flat metal sheet onto the fire, and gave it a gentle shake, with the ease of long experience, scattering the beans over the surface without knocking a single one over the edge.

Kaya had never taken her eyes off the wick, though neither had she spoken again between his first words and his sheepish smile, sitting on her cushion with an expression of infinite patience, as if encouraging a bright but hesitant child. Ibo glanced up as Oisin began to speak again, watching him from across the room, and held the roasting pan still for a long moment, his hand resting lightly on the cloth-wrapped handle of it.

“Then b’ welcome,” Kaya said, simply, into the silence that had fallen when Oisin’s words stopped. “But b’ careful wit’ your tongue as well, f’r while ye are ‘ere ye do belong. Pray wit’ me, now, and do no’ thin’ ye need t’ know the words.”

There was silence then, and sometimes words; Kaya offered her prayers through Hulali, but beseeched him to go to the Circle on her behalf, to carry her words on His waters. Sometimes she spoke in Estuan, sometimes Mugrobi and sometimes Tek, and sometimes the three seemed to mingle together on her tongue, as if they were not three languages but one; as if, to the Gods, it did not matter in the least.

Eventually, the soft sound of popping echoed from behind her, and Ibo tended to the beans, the fragrant smell of kofi rising into the air. He set the roasting pan aside, and set the kofi har pot above the fire, letting the warmth fill the water. Ibo tossed the beans, gently, and transferred them to a woven basket, grasping its edges in his hands and shifting them slowly, evenly, to send the heat wafting from the beans into the air. When they were cool enough, he poured them into the mortar, and began to grind them with the pestle, his skin glistening faintly in the air as he worked, the beans cracking beneath his strength and releasing even more of the smell of kofi into the air.

Ibo took the ground beans in the hardwood mortar and rose, carrying it first to Kaya. He knelt before his mother, smiling, and extended the mortar to her. Kaya inhaled the scent, deeply, and nodded. Ibo took the bowl to Oisin next, kneeling before him. “Smell them,” he explained, gently.
Ibo returned to the fire, then, the water crackling and boiling in the pot, and poured the ground up beans into it. He knelt before the flames as well, touching his fingers to his forehead, and began to chant a prayer to Hulali, repeating the same words again and again. Once he had finished, he took the kofi pot, and poured the rich, dark liquid into three mugs. He offered the first to Oisin, and the second to Kaya, and took the third for himself. He settled on his own pillow and eased the tray with its small bowls in front of the three of them – sugar, salt, and what looked like a blend of ground spices.

Kaya took a pinch of the spices and sprinkled them into her cup and offered the bowl to Oisin for if he wished to do the same. Ibo took nothing, lifting the cup to his lips and inhaling the deep scent, then taking a small sip of the hot, fragrant, bitter liquid.

“We call this takin’ th’ blessing of Hulali,” Ibo said, smiling at Oisin. “Enjoy ‘t.”

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