SIORDANTI ESTATE, VIENDA | DAYTIME MAYBE?
Home.
Sunshine was blinding. Arova-level air was suffocating when laced with the scents of progress and industry the Anaxi capitol was known for. Heat was oppressive compared to where they'd all just escaped from deep in the mountains of frigid Gior. Hailing a taxi felt empowering, however, despite the fact that Naul was so frayed at the edges he was merely pretending to have his shit together by the time they arrived outside of Vienda's walls at the sprawling, quaintly picturesque Siordanti estate.
There was so much confusion upon their arrival—familiar staff surprised to see the prodigal failure return because they'd certainly heard rumors of his disappearance in Gior from Hadrian and Iralia once they'd been told by the Headmistress herself. Despite years of estrangement, Incumbent Siordanti did not take the news well at all and had run himself ragged in negotiations that had ultimately failed to turn into anything close to a rescue.
To say that his parents were shocked to find their eldest on their doorstep along with his blonde fiancé and a pair of disgraced Huanes would have, of course, been the understatement of the moment, but no one was turned away. Baths were run. Food was made. Beds were given. Clothes were provided. Important things were hidden. Being the well-practiced politician that he was, Hadrian asked no questions at first, not of Naul nor of Athrym nor even of Kaelum, and while he was wary the company of a very passive albino child with them, he also wasn't stupid. Leyenak had been a priestess of Imaan and she was still a Huane, that much the Incumbent knew not to mess with.
As far as the redhead professor knew, his father didn't even reach out to the Bruthgraves. Whether it was out of respect or fear for their safety, he didn't know and truth be told, when they'd first arrived, he didn't even clocking care—
Naul crawled his way into a bed and disappeared in it.
A day of hiding.
And then another.
And another.
Some of it was real exhaustion: he slept for long stretches, ate and made some modicum of conversation. Some of it was feigned for his own sanity: the Physical sorcerer withdrew from everything he possibly could for as long as possible—and nearly everyone save Athrym who he certainly didn't deny his company, regardless of his family's Anaxi perceptions of what a proper relationship should look like before a betrothed couple were wed—longing to finally weep over and process through months of fear and confusion, anger and distress, pain and frustration.
Eventually, he knew, he'd have to sort through everything—legally, intellectually, scientifically. Eventually, he knew, he'd have to sit down and sift through the ashes of his relationship with his father in the desperate hope for some kind of assistance in assuring everyone's safety. Eventually, he knew, he'd have to go through all of their stolen notes and dig deep into their shared experiences in an attempt to make sense of it all.
He just didn't want to.
The Roalis heat had seeped slowly through the thick glass windows of his old bedroom, sunlight dancing over the back of his eyelids though he'd been awake since before dawn when he'd snuck to the windows to purposefully open the curtains so that he could watch the day begin. He'd drifted in the waiting, disappearing into his thoughts, curled beneath sheets, but when the sun sparkled, he couldn't help but stir again.
Nauleth stared at his desk, piled with all of his notes, piled with legal documents, piled with paperwork he'd avoided. He felt the weight of his own field like some second atmosphere, heavy with all of his worries and doubts, and he felt the rumbling of his stomach reminding him he was hungry.
He'd probably wasted enough time, but Gods! how everything seemed like too much to deal with—it was a selfish fear, that. So clocking selfish to shy away now. Now! After all he'd already faced! After all he'd survived to get here, and yet he was still hiding in bed!
With a groan, he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, watching the scattering of particles of light not through the glass windows but off the dust motes that drifted in the air of this room he'd grown up in, the room his parents had quickly turned into a guest room for dignitaries and foreign important people whose names he had no interest in ever knowing once their eldest passed his examination and was shipped off to Brunnhold. His mind immediately ran through all of the various theories for the way light reflected off small molecules and large molecules differently while fingers traced idly over the freckled skin of his chest and lingered over the now-familiar scars that outlined the vicious shape of a mythical beast's maw permanently etched into his flesh.
Finally, with a quieter sigh, he rolled to his other side, feeling the tingle of nerves all the way down to the tips of his fingers as he put weight on his left shoulder, and let his gold-rimmed gaze wander over the face of the young woman curled with such aching necessity in the bed next to him, mingling his field with hers without subtlety and reaching up to brush platinum locks from her face.
They'd both made conscious choices to hide, crashing and burning like airships in the night since their arrival in Vienda, both keeping their separate realities, their deeper hurts, from each other even in the same room and as well as avoiding shedding light onto everything that had sought to destroy them in Gior. It wasn't sustainable. It wasn't pleasant. It wasn't progress. It wasn't healthy. He'd been bent by the mass of it all, gravity of the dark dragging all the light away, but they'd been through too much to let it win. Something had to be done—something was wrong in Vita—but something had to be made right in himself, in Athrym, too, given how their lives had changed together, before he could take on such a daunting task,
"Are you awake?" Naul knew the answer to his question asked not in now-familiar Gioran but in Estuan, waiting to meet her verdant gaze. He didn't hover too close, unkempt and unshaven, wild but less haggard than when he'd arrived, choosing perhaps to stay more hidden under bed linens lest the petite blonde be displeased by his forwardness, "Before anyone attempts to ply us with breakfast, maybe—we should, you know—" The redheaded professor paused, not wanting his words to sound like an innuendo so much as a serious sort of invitation,
"—talk through some things we've been avoiding."