"Aaah~! Gwenpool, you say? I'm a fan... would you say hi to her when you see her?" Basil watched him with wonder and amusement. She decided she would have to get her own pet just like him, but maybe one that chose her first.
"Well, that explains...almost nothing." But hey, the dude's not even paying attention, so...
He brought Silver Ash a roast beef sub with fries "maybe that will make you feel better"
Basil wrote:
"Aaah~! Gwenpool, you say? I'm a fan... would you say hi to her when you see her?" Basil watched him with wonder and amusement. She decided she would have to get her own pet just like him, but maybe one that chose her first.
"Mrrrm." [affirmative]
The door yielded with a rasping sigh; iron giving voice to long service. Night slid in first. It brought with it a damp cold that had ridden hedgerows and stone. It was not the clean brightness of high passes. It was the chill of roads that never truly dry. It crept along the floor like a low thing seeking purchase. It lapped at the legs of benches. It found the seams between flagstones. It curled around spilled ale and woke the sourness in it.
The bar answered at once with heat. The hearth swelled like a stirred heart. Fire roared behind a grate blackened by years. Sparks rose. They died beneath the rafters, where smoke had written its own dark history. This house was wrought in the old European manner. Timbers stood thick and resolute. Walls held close against winter’s teeth. The ceiling pressed low, as if the building had learned to bow under storms and never straightened again. Beams crossed overhead like ribs. They made a shelter that felt earned rather than granted.
The air was heavy with use. Malt lingered. Soot drifted down in faint, bitter threads. Salt and brine clung to cured meat. Onions had been softened in fat until their bite turned sweet. Wool cloaks gave off rain. Old ale lived in the grain of tables, in the cracks of chairs, in the very pores of the floor. Lanterns hung from iron hooks. Their light pooled in honeyed circles. It could not conquer the corners. It only pressed against them, and the shadow held.
Watari stepped through with a gait tempered by distance. He did not hesitate. He did not proclaim himself. He moved as one who has bargained with hunger before, and has learned to keep his pride quiet. Yet even in a snug room, he seemed to carry a span of open country with him. His Nokhoi blood lay in every line. It was not costume. It was inheritance. Fox ears rose through his hair, tawny at the rim, pale within. They turned with a hunter’s exactness. They listened beyond laughter and clinking cups. They sought what lived beneath noise; the scrape of boots, the catch of breath, the pause that follows a lingering gaze.
His eyes held the ember’s hue. Orange-gold, deepened by firelight. They did not dart. They rested. They weighed. They remembered. Across brow and cheek, thin white paint had been drawn with deliberate care. It looked like war-mark turned to oath-mark. It belonged to wind and wide horizons, not to crowded rooms. Chestnut hair fell long about his shoulders. It stirred with the draught from the door. Then it settled in heavy waves. It carried the road’s tale. Cold air lived in it. A trace of foreign smoke. Resin, faint and sharp. Horse and leather. The after-salt of sunbaked gear cooled by evening.
He wore armor without vanity. Bronze and gilt plates curved over darker layers. Relief-work ran in old patterns, patient and intricate. Lanternlight broke upon it in small glints, like sparks caught and tamed. At the seams, red cloth showed. It was deep as wine. It suggested banners kept folded until the hour of need. The tavern took note of him. Hard faces betrayed small shifts. A shoulder eased. A voice lowered. A hand paused above a cup. Then the room resumed its breathing, as if it had swallowed a new story and decided to watch it before judging.
Watari did not answer the glances. He did not seek the bright center by the hearth. He angled toward a corner where one lantern burned steady and foot-traffic thinned. A scarred table waited there. Knife nicks scored its surface. Pale rings marked where cups had sweated. The edge bore the restless bite of years of fidgeting fingers. Above it, the wall was patched and smoke-stained. A small shelf held a candle stub and a cup of bent nails. The nook felt like a forgotten page in an old ledger. Still essential. Still holding the binding.
He set down a battered satchel. The leather was worn. The straps had been mended. It looked like a thing that had crossed rivers and survived without pity. He withdrew his tools with quiet exactness. A folded cloth. A slim case of wood and brass. Brushes wrapped in leather. Pigment dark as wet earth. Another pale as ground bone. A tin cup for water. A smooth board that seemed to wait for the first line. He placed each piece with the care of a rite. No flourish. No invitation. Only certainty.
He sat in a stiff-backed chair. It creaked a small protest. He did not soothe it. He sat with the compact readiness of a mounted rider. Spine straight. Shoulders loose. Hands calm. Even at rest, he looked prepared to rise without haste. For a time he only watched. He learned the room as one learns a valley before crossing. Where heat gathered. Where the draft curled along the jamb. Where candlelight bent on glass and made it tremble. Where smoke climbed, hesitated, and spread beneath the low ceiling like a second sky.
He heard laughter that came too quickly. He heard silences that arrived too late. He heard the clink of coins. It always sounded more hopeful than it truly was. Here, walls kept memories like prisoners. In the steppe, stories are given to the wind. Here they had to share breath. They pressed against one another until even secrets grew warm. Once, such closeness would have felt like a cloak too heavy for the season. He did not recoil now. He simply accepted the fact of it, as one accepts a narrow pass.
Then his brush began to move. The first strokes were light. A test of grain. A measure of thirst in the wood. He mapped the slope of rafters. He set down the arch of beams. He caught the smoky halo that firelight cast upon dark timber. He shaped the hearth first. Tongues of flame licked the stones. The grate’s bars stood black and patient. Sparks rose like brief stars and vanished. He found the amber glow on tankards. He found the dull gleam of pewter. He laid the wet ribbon of ale that boots had smeared into the floorboards. He set the shadow under benches where knees shifted. He traced a damp cloak slung over a chair back, heavy with weather.
When the door opened again, his ears twitched before his gaze lifted. He knew the room by its breath. The draft came colder. A hush fell for a heartbeat. Patrons looked up, then returned to their cups as if ashamed of curiosity. He marked the change with a darker wash near the threshold. He thinned detail where silence had briefly lived.
The painting grew as if it had been waiting in the board. It gained weight. It gained breath. He suggested people by posture. A man bowed over ale as though at confession. A woman leaned close to catch a confidence. Hands clasped a mug as if warmth could be hoarded like coin. No line was wasted on vanity. Each stroke sought truth. His earrings shifted as he leaned in. Red beads caught firelight and flashed small warnings. His beard framed his jaw and mouth, giving him an elder cast without stealing the vigor from his eyes. He looked like a traveler from another tale, seated quietly in the margin of this one.
As he worked, the bar grew less alien. Not because it changed. Because he translated it into something he could carry. That was Nokhoi art. Make the unknown legible. Turn chaos into map. The steppe teaches that the nameless can kill. The city teaches that the named can betray. He held both lessons without sentiment. He painted with patient fidelity. Hearthlight. Ancient timber. Damp wool. Close breath. The press of walls. He recorded it all, neither praising nor condemning.
In that corner, under honeyed light and clinging smoke, Watari became a quiet hinge between worlds. Steppe-blood and tavern warmth. Fox-spirit and foreign timber. A watcher who required no words to be felt. A traveler who asked only for the room’s unvarnished truth.
The bar answered at once with heat. The hearth swelled like a stirred heart. Fire roared behind a grate blackened by years. Sparks rose. They died beneath the rafters, where smoke had written its own dark history. This house was wrought in the old European manner. Timbers stood thick and resolute. Walls held close against winter’s teeth. The ceiling pressed low, as if the building had learned to bow under storms and never straightened again. Beams crossed overhead like ribs. They made a shelter that felt earned rather than granted.
The air was heavy with use. Malt lingered. Soot drifted down in faint, bitter threads. Salt and brine clung to cured meat. Onions had been softened in fat until their bite turned sweet. Wool cloaks gave off rain. Old ale lived in the grain of tables, in the cracks of chairs, in the very pores of the floor. Lanterns hung from iron hooks. Their light pooled in honeyed circles. It could not conquer the corners. It only pressed against them, and the shadow held.
Watari stepped through with a gait tempered by distance. He did not hesitate. He did not proclaim himself. He moved as one who has bargained with hunger before, and has learned to keep his pride quiet. Yet even in a snug room, he seemed to carry a span of open country with him. His Nokhoi blood lay in every line. It was not costume. It was inheritance. Fox ears rose through his hair, tawny at the rim, pale within. They turned with a hunter’s exactness. They listened beyond laughter and clinking cups. They sought what lived beneath noise; the scrape of boots, the catch of breath, the pause that follows a lingering gaze.
His eyes held the ember’s hue. Orange-gold, deepened by firelight. They did not dart. They rested. They weighed. They remembered. Across brow and cheek, thin white paint had been drawn with deliberate care. It looked like war-mark turned to oath-mark. It belonged to wind and wide horizons, not to crowded rooms. Chestnut hair fell long about his shoulders. It stirred with the draught from the door. Then it settled in heavy waves. It carried the road’s tale. Cold air lived in it. A trace of foreign smoke. Resin, faint and sharp. Horse and leather. The after-salt of sunbaked gear cooled by evening.
He wore armor without vanity. Bronze and gilt plates curved over darker layers. Relief-work ran in old patterns, patient and intricate. Lanternlight broke upon it in small glints, like sparks caught and tamed. At the seams, red cloth showed. It was deep as wine. It suggested banners kept folded until the hour of need. The tavern took note of him. Hard faces betrayed small shifts. A shoulder eased. A voice lowered. A hand paused above a cup. Then the room resumed its breathing, as if it had swallowed a new story and decided to watch it before judging.
Watari did not answer the glances. He did not seek the bright center by the hearth. He angled toward a corner where one lantern burned steady and foot-traffic thinned. A scarred table waited there. Knife nicks scored its surface. Pale rings marked where cups had sweated. The edge bore the restless bite of years of fidgeting fingers. Above it, the wall was patched and smoke-stained. A small shelf held a candle stub and a cup of bent nails. The nook felt like a forgotten page in an old ledger. Still essential. Still holding the binding.
He set down a battered satchel. The leather was worn. The straps had been mended. It looked like a thing that had crossed rivers and survived without pity. He withdrew his tools with quiet exactness. A folded cloth. A slim case of wood and brass. Brushes wrapped in leather. Pigment dark as wet earth. Another pale as ground bone. A tin cup for water. A smooth board that seemed to wait for the first line. He placed each piece with the care of a rite. No flourish. No invitation. Only certainty.
He sat in a stiff-backed chair. It creaked a small protest. He did not soothe it. He sat with the compact readiness of a mounted rider. Spine straight. Shoulders loose. Hands calm. Even at rest, he looked prepared to rise without haste. For a time he only watched. He learned the room as one learns a valley before crossing. Where heat gathered. Where the draft curled along the jamb. Where candlelight bent on glass and made it tremble. Where smoke climbed, hesitated, and spread beneath the low ceiling like a second sky.
He heard laughter that came too quickly. He heard silences that arrived too late. He heard the clink of coins. It always sounded more hopeful than it truly was. Here, walls kept memories like prisoners. In the steppe, stories are given to the wind. Here they had to share breath. They pressed against one another until even secrets grew warm. Once, such closeness would have felt like a cloak too heavy for the season. He did not recoil now. He simply accepted the fact of it, as one accepts a narrow pass.
Then his brush began to move. The first strokes were light. A test of grain. A measure of thirst in the wood. He mapped the slope of rafters. He set down the arch of beams. He caught the smoky halo that firelight cast upon dark timber. He shaped the hearth first. Tongues of flame licked the stones. The grate’s bars stood black and patient. Sparks rose like brief stars and vanished. He found the amber glow on tankards. He found the dull gleam of pewter. He laid the wet ribbon of ale that boots had smeared into the floorboards. He set the shadow under benches where knees shifted. He traced a damp cloak slung over a chair back, heavy with weather.
When the door opened again, his ears twitched before his gaze lifted. He knew the room by its breath. The draft came colder. A hush fell for a heartbeat. Patrons looked up, then returned to their cups as if ashamed of curiosity. He marked the change with a darker wash near the threshold. He thinned detail where silence had briefly lived.
The painting grew as if it had been waiting in the board. It gained weight. It gained breath. He suggested people by posture. A man bowed over ale as though at confession. A woman leaned close to catch a confidence. Hands clasped a mug as if warmth could be hoarded like coin. No line was wasted on vanity. Each stroke sought truth. His earrings shifted as he leaned in. Red beads caught firelight and flashed small warnings. His beard framed his jaw and mouth, giving him an elder cast without stealing the vigor from his eyes. He looked like a traveler from another tale, seated quietly in the margin of this one.
As he worked, the bar grew less alien. Not because it changed. Because he translated it into something he could carry. That was Nokhoi art. Make the unknown legible. Turn chaos into map. The steppe teaches that the nameless can kill. The city teaches that the named can betray. He held both lessons without sentiment. He painted with patient fidelity. Hearthlight. Ancient timber. Damp wool. Close breath. The press of walls. He recorded it all, neither praising nor condemning.
In that corner, under honeyed light and clinging smoke, Watari became a quiet hinge between worlds. Steppe-blood and tavern warmth. Fox-spirit and foreign timber. A watcher who required no words to be felt. A traveler who asked only for the room’s unvarnished truth.
At the meantime, the door was opened again.
From the freezing temperature outside came in the same girl that escaped the bar earlier. She was noticably covered with a layer of snow, yet when she got in, she shook them off.
Within a small moment, she took a purple, mysterious bag tied on her waist, and opened it. From within glowed a pink light... Then, she got the blue coat off her, putting it into the purple bag as the pink light seemed to have absorbed it.
Taking off the coat, her full view was revealed. A fifteen-year-old girl with dark brown hair, some snow having made their way onto it. Her eyes were blue with the night sky, the space itself, as if they do not yield to entropy.
On her there was a white T-shirt, with some green text seen on it - ">hello, world._" Next was the short jeans, which didn't look anywhere sensible, as it did not protect her against the cold. However, she didn't seem to be bothered.
Breathing out a bit, the girl proceeded to wave her right hand with a smile. "Hi!"
From the freezing temperature outside came in the same girl that escaped the bar earlier. She was noticably covered with a layer of snow, yet when she got in, she shook them off.
Within a small moment, she took a purple, mysterious bag tied on her waist, and opened it. From within glowed a pink light... Then, she got the blue coat off her, putting it into the purple bag as the pink light seemed to have absorbed it.
Taking off the coat, her full view was revealed. A fifteen-year-old girl with dark brown hair, some snow having made their way onto it. Her eyes were blue with the night sky, the space itself, as if they do not yield to entropy.
On her there was a white T-shirt, with some green text seen on it - ">hello, world._" Next was the short jeans, which didn't look anywhere sensible, as it did not protect her against the cold. However, she didn't seem to be bothered.
Breathing out a bit, the girl proceeded to wave her right hand with a smile. "Hi!"
"I have returned." She winked, then saw some new faces. A witch skeleton? And someone she didn't quite know.
She tilted her head. "Oh, we having more newcomers?"
She tilted her head. "Oh, we having more newcomers?"
Welcome back!
She was scared off lol
Also the bar is meant to be peaceful tbh lol
Also the bar is meant to be peaceful tbh lol
Watari Devante wrote:
The door yielded with a rasping sigh; iron giving voice to long service. Night slid in first. It brought with it a damp cold that had ridden hedgerows and stone. It was not the clean brightness of high passes. It was the chill of roads that never truly dry. It crept along the floor like a low thing seeking purchase. It lapped at the legs of benches. It found the seams between flagstones. It curled around spilled ale and woke the sourness in it.
The bar answered at once with heat. The hearth swelled like a stirred heart. Fire roared behind a grate blackened by years. Sparks rose. They died beneath the rafters, where smoke had written its own dark history. This house was wrought in the old European manner. Timbers stood thick and resolute. Walls held close against winter’s teeth. The ceiling pressed low, as if the building had learned to bow under storms and never straightened again. Beams crossed overhead like ribs. They made a shelter that felt earned rather than granted.
The air was heavy with use. Malt lingered. Soot drifted down in faint, bitter threads. Salt and brine clung to cured meat. Onions had been softened in fat until their bite turned sweet. Wool cloaks gave off rain. Old ale lived in the grain of tables, in the cracks of chairs, in the very pores of the floor. Lanterns hung from iron hooks. Their light pooled in honeyed circles. It could not conquer the corners. It only pressed against them, and the shadow held.
Watari stepped through with a gait tempered by distance. He did not hesitate. He did not proclaim himself. He moved as one who has bargained with hunger before, and has learned to keep his pride quiet. Yet even in a snug room, he seemed to carry a span of open country with him. His Nokhoi blood lay in every line. It was not costume. It was inheritance. Fox ears rose through his hair, tawny at the rim, pale within. They turned with a hunter’s exactness. They listened beyond laughter and clinking cups. They sought what lived beneath noise; the scrape of boots, the catch of breath, the pause that follows a lingering gaze.
His eyes held the ember’s hue. Orange-gold, deepened by firelight. They did not dart. They rested. They weighed. They remembered. Across brow and cheek, thin white paint had been drawn with deliberate care. It looked like war-mark turned to oath-mark. It belonged to wind and wide horizons, not to crowded rooms. Chestnut hair fell long about his shoulders. It stirred with the draught from the door. Then it settled in heavy waves. It carried the road’s tale. Cold air lived in it. A trace of foreign smoke. Resin, faint and sharp. Horse and leather. The after-salt of sunbaked gear cooled by evening.
He wore armor without vanity. Bronze and gilt plates curved over darker layers. Relief-work ran in old patterns, patient and intricate. Lanternlight broke upon it in small glints, like sparks caught and tamed. At the seams, red cloth showed. It was deep as wine. It suggested banners kept folded until the hour of need. The tavern took note of him. Hard faces betrayed small shifts. A shoulder eased. A voice lowered. A hand paused above a cup. Then the room resumed its breathing, as if it had swallowed a new story and decided to watch it before judging.
Watari did not answer the glances. He did not seek the bright center by the hearth. He angled toward a corner where one lantern burned steady and foot-traffic thinned. A scarred table waited there. Knife nicks scored its surface. Pale rings marked where cups had sweated. The edge bore the restless bite of years of fidgeting fingers. Above it, the wall was patched and smoke-stained. A small shelf held a candle stub and a cup of bent nails. The nook felt like a forgotten page in an old ledger. Still essential. Still holding the binding.
He set down a battered satchel. The leather was worn. The straps had been mended. It looked like a thing that had crossed rivers and survived without pity. He withdrew his tools with quiet exactness. A folded cloth. A slim case of wood and brass. Brushes wrapped in leather. Pigment dark as wet earth. Another pale as ground bone. A tin cup for water. A smooth board that seemed to wait for the first line. He placed each piece with the care of a rite. No flourish. No invitation. Only certainty.
He sat in a stiff-backed chair. It creaked a small protest. He did not soothe it. He sat with the compact readiness of a mounted rider. Spine straight. Shoulders loose. Hands calm. Even at rest, he looked prepared to rise without haste. For a time he only watched. He learned the room as one learns a valley before crossing. Where heat gathered. Where the draft curled along the jamb. Where candlelight bent on glass and made it tremble. Where smoke climbed, hesitated, and spread beneath the low ceiling like a second sky.
He heard laughter that came too quickly. He heard silences that arrived too late. He heard the clink of coins. It always sounded more hopeful than it truly was. Here, walls kept memories like prisoners. In the steppe, stories are given to the wind. Here they had to share breath. They pressed against one another until even secrets grew warm. Once, such closeness would have felt like a cloak too heavy for the season. He did not recoil now. He simply accepted the fact of it, as one accepts a narrow pass.
Then his brush began to move. The first strokes were light. A test of grain. A measure of thirst in the wood. He mapped the slope of rafters. He set down the arch of beams. He caught the smoky halo that firelight cast upon dark timber. He shaped the hearth first. Tongues of flame licked the stones. The grate’s bars stood black and patient. Sparks rose like brief stars and vanished. He found the amber glow on tankards. He found the dull gleam of pewter. He laid the wet ribbon of ale that boots had smeared into the floorboards. He set the shadow under benches where knees shifted. He traced a damp cloak slung over a chair back, heavy with weather.
When the door opened again, his ears twitched before his gaze lifted. He knew the room by its breath. The draft came colder. A hush fell for a heartbeat. Patrons looked up, then returned to their cups as if ashamed of curiosity. He marked the change with a darker wash near the threshold. He thinned detail where silence had briefly lived.
The painting grew as if it had been waiting in the board. It gained weight. It gained breath. He suggested people by posture. A man bowed over ale as though at confession. A woman leaned close to catch a confidence. Hands clasped a mug as if warmth could be hoarded like coin. No line was wasted on vanity. Each stroke sought truth. His earrings shifted as he leaned in. Red beads caught firelight and flashed small warnings. His beard framed his jaw and mouth, giving him an elder cast without stealing the vigor from his eyes. He looked like a traveler from another tale, seated quietly in the margin of this one.
As he worked, the bar grew less alien. Not because it changed. Because he translated it into something he could carry. That was Nokhoi art. Make the unknown legible. Turn chaos into map. The steppe teaches that the nameless can kill. The city teaches that the named can betray. He held both lessons without sentiment. He painted with patient fidelity. Hearthlight. Ancient timber. Damp wool. Close breath. The press of walls. He recorded it all, neither praising nor condemning.
In that corner, under honeyed light and clinging smoke, Watari became a quiet hinge between worlds. Steppe-blood and tavern warmth. Fox-spirit and foreign timber. A watcher who required no words to be felt. A traveler who asked only for the room’s unvarnished truth.
The bar answered at once with heat. The hearth swelled like a stirred heart. Fire roared behind a grate blackened by years. Sparks rose. They died beneath the rafters, where smoke had written its own dark history. This house was wrought in the old European manner. Timbers stood thick and resolute. Walls held close against winter’s teeth. The ceiling pressed low, as if the building had learned to bow under storms and never straightened again. Beams crossed overhead like ribs. They made a shelter that felt earned rather than granted.
The air was heavy with use. Malt lingered. Soot drifted down in faint, bitter threads. Salt and brine clung to cured meat. Onions had been softened in fat until their bite turned sweet. Wool cloaks gave off rain. Old ale lived in the grain of tables, in the cracks of chairs, in the very pores of the floor. Lanterns hung from iron hooks. Their light pooled in honeyed circles. It could not conquer the corners. It only pressed against them, and the shadow held.
Watari stepped through with a gait tempered by distance. He did not hesitate. He did not proclaim himself. He moved as one who has bargained with hunger before, and has learned to keep his pride quiet. Yet even in a snug room, he seemed to carry a span of open country with him. His Nokhoi blood lay in every line. It was not costume. It was inheritance. Fox ears rose through his hair, tawny at the rim, pale within. They turned with a hunter’s exactness. They listened beyond laughter and clinking cups. They sought what lived beneath noise; the scrape of boots, the catch of breath, the pause that follows a lingering gaze.
His eyes held the ember’s hue. Orange-gold, deepened by firelight. They did not dart. They rested. They weighed. They remembered. Across brow and cheek, thin white paint had been drawn with deliberate care. It looked like war-mark turned to oath-mark. It belonged to wind and wide horizons, not to crowded rooms. Chestnut hair fell long about his shoulders. It stirred with the draught from the door. Then it settled in heavy waves. It carried the road’s tale. Cold air lived in it. A trace of foreign smoke. Resin, faint and sharp. Horse and leather. The after-salt of sunbaked gear cooled by evening.
He wore armor without vanity. Bronze and gilt plates curved over darker layers. Relief-work ran in old patterns, patient and intricate. Lanternlight broke upon it in small glints, like sparks caught and tamed. At the seams, red cloth showed. It was deep as wine. It suggested banners kept folded until the hour of need. The tavern took note of him. Hard faces betrayed small shifts. A shoulder eased. A voice lowered. A hand paused above a cup. Then the room resumed its breathing, as if it had swallowed a new story and decided to watch it before judging.
Watari did not answer the glances. He did not seek the bright center by the hearth. He angled toward a corner where one lantern burned steady and foot-traffic thinned. A scarred table waited there. Knife nicks scored its surface. Pale rings marked where cups had sweated. The edge bore the restless bite of years of fidgeting fingers. Above it, the wall was patched and smoke-stained. A small shelf held a candle stub and a cup of bent nails. The nook felt like a forgotten page in an old ledger. Still essential. Still holding the binding.
He set down a battered satchel. The leather was worn. The straps had been mended. It looked like a thing that had crossed rivers and survived without pity. He withdrew his tools with quiet exactness. A folded cloth. A slim case of wood and brass. Brushes wrapped in leather. Pigment dark as wet earth. Another pale as ground bone. A tin cup for water. A smooth board that seemed to wait for the first line. He placed each piece with the care of a rite. No flourish. No invitation. Only certainty.
He sat in a stiff-backed chair. It creaked a small protest. He did not soothe it. He sat with the compact readiness of a mounted rider. Spine straight. Shoulders loose. Hands calm. Even at rest, he looked prepared to rise without haste. For a time he only watched. He learned the room as one learns a valley before crossing. Where heat gathered. Where the draft curled along the jamb. Where candlelight bent on glass and made it tremble. Where smoke climbed, hesitated, and spread beneath the low ceiling like a second sky.
He heard laughter that came too quickly. He heard silences that arrived too late. He heard the clink of coins. It always sounded more hopeful than it truly was. Here, walls kept memories like prisoners. In the steppe, stories are given to the wind. Here they had to share breath. They pressed against one another until even secrets grew warm. Once, such closeness would have felt like a cloak too heavy for the season. He did not recoil now. He simply accepted the fact of it, as one accepts a narrow pass.
Then his brush began to move. The first strokes were light. A test of grain. A measure of thirst in the wood. He mapped the slope of rafters. He set down the arch of beams. He caught the smoky halo that firelight cast upon dark timber. He shaped the hearth first. Tongues of flame licked the stones. The grate’s bars stood black and patient. Sparks rose like brief stars and vanished. He found the amber glow on tankards. He found the dull gleam of pewter. He laid the wet ribbon of ale that boots had smeared into the floorboards. He set the shadow under benches where knees shifted. He traced a damp cloak slung over a chair back, heavy with weather.
When the door opened again, his ears twitched before his gaze lifted. He knew the room by its breath. The draft came colder. A hush fell for a heartbeat. Patrons looked up, then returned to their cups as if ashamed of curiosity. He marked the change with a darker wash near the threshold. He thinned detail where silence had briefly lived.
The painting grew as if it had been waiting in the board. It gained weight. It gained breath. He suggested people by posture. A man bowed over ale as though at confession. A woman leaned close to catch a confidence. Hands clasped a mug as if warmth could be hoarded like coin. No line was wasted on vanity. Each stroke sought truth. His earrings shifted as he leaned in. Red beads caught firelight and flashed small warnings. His beard framed his jaw and mouth, giving him an elder cast without stealing the vigor from his eyes. He looked like a traveler from another tale, seated quietly in the margin of this one.
As he worked, the bar grew less alien. Not because it changed. Because he translated it into something he could carry. That was Nokhoi art. Make the unknown legible. Turn chaos into map. The steppe teaches that the nameless can kill. The city teaches that the named can betray. He held both lessons without sentiment. He painted with patient fidelity. Hearthlight. Ancient timber. Damp wool. Close breath. The press of walls. He recorded it all, neither praising nor condemning.
In that corner, under honeyed light and clinging smoke, Watari became a quiet hinge between worlds. Steppe-blood and tavern warmth. Fox-spirit and foreign timber. A watcher who required no words to be felt. A traveler who asked only for the room’s unvarnished truth.
The metal clasp of the ledger rasped against cold veined leather, like a severed rib snapping into place. Ixqueya’s fingertips lingered on the binding. She pressed into the hide’s grain until pale lines flowered beneath her touch. She drew in the dusty tang of aged parchment. Soot. A faint acridity. Old blood, half swallowed by corners of pages that had never learned mercy. This was no mere volume. It was a charnel reliquary of vow and reprisal. Each leaf a register where warmth became mortuary arithmetic. Each promise bled to its skeleton. Each debt flattened into an orderly row of the dead.
Her thumb traveled the cover with the ritual patience of a priest sealing wax. The leather looked frost chilled even beside the hearth. Along the edges, a fine rime glimmered, as if winter itself had signed the thing. She let firelight prowl across embossed sigils. Runic scars hardened into the surface. Then her gaze cut aside.
Watari occupied the rim of lanternwash like a planet drawing orbit. The brass lamp on his table spilled honey thick luminance across a tarnished tankard. Smoke from the hearth spiraled upward. It stalled beneath low rafters. It spread into a second ceiling of ash gray. A fisherman in the next booth sneezed as the haze bit his throat. A canine eye, feral and appraising, slid toward her, then away. The air reeked of damp wool. Of onions melting in drippings. Of sour malt. Of brine that clung like confession to every lumber pore.
The tavern itself endured. Beams groaned under their own antiquity, as if they too remembered winter’s hunger beyond the walls. Planks held tight. A clenched jaw against the wind. Floorboards bowed with long habit. Sparks sprang from the roaring hearth and died beneath smoke-dark rafters. Tiny saints of flame extinguished before they could be named.
Ixqueya rose. The chair shrieked, a leg protesting, then slumped in relief. Tables scored by blade and fist seemed to exhale in the only language they possessed. Patrons stilled. Fingers froze on tumblers’ rims. Even the hearth’s roar felt altered, less comfort than ceremony.
She stepped forward. The air shivered, becomign gelid. A corridor of rime rippled along the floorboards in her wake. Barely audible fissures. Ancient glass yielding underfoot. Each footfall was neither soft nor harsh. It was dense with inevitability. Like an iron door closing somewhere deep beneath the earth. Murmurs curved away from her path. Laughter attenuated into whispers, then failed.
Watari remained in his corner. Posture still. Head canted just enough to register her approach, possibly. Lantern glow traced his cheekbones. It caught the corner of his mouth, where the ghost of a smile hovered.
She halted nine feet away. Neither looming threat nor demure courtesy. Hearth heat felt like sacrilege against her presence. The air around her turned blade sharp. Breath condensed into small diamond motes between them. They drifted. They vanished before they could fall.
Ixqueya’s armor drank the ambient glow and returned it in brittle shards. White carapace plates gleamed like midnight ivory. Black chitin seams mapped her silhouette in insect anatomy. The breastplate gripped her ample curves with predatory exactitude, turning flesh into proclamation. Pauldrons flared in segmented vents, as if the suit itself required respiration. Between plates ran seams of necro ice. Frozen scars. Sapphire wounds that held a faint, remembered glimmer of sols long interred. Fissures of hoarfrost cradled runic etchings. Scripture written in a polar kiss.
Along her spine, sleek ligaments of chitin arched and flexed with each micro shift. They pinned stray strands of raven hair. Deep ocean cobalt streaks flashed when firelight found them. Every lock was treated as an error. Each was swept aside with silent competence. At her lower back, thoracic plates contracted over a curve of flesh that had receded. Space yielded to alien architecture. A rising ridge of segmented bone shell. Subtle. Unsettling. A parasitic coronation coaxed into her body by unspoken rites.
Her face drew nearer. High cheekbones stole more lamplight. Features sculpted by frost and decree. Minute ice crystals clung to her lashes. Full lips. Composed. A perpetual threat held in restraint. They parted only to take in the room’s warmth, then reject it. Across brow and cheeks lay turquoise glyphwork. Lines exact as a priest’s vow. Thin threads of carmine traced angles beside her temples and down the bridge of her nose. Old blood made ceremony. Pigment fused to skin like something irrevocable.
Her headdress flared above it all. White feathers tipped in ice blue. Stiffened. Razor edged. A frozen aureole. At its center, winterglass glowed pale. A captive moon fragment. Bone and metal wove an austere lattice around the gem, declaring a single thesis. Beauty must serve. Or be culled.
Her weapons hung on her like doctrine given mass. Frostfang Mace rested at her side. A crystalline atrocity crowned with ice spines that seemed grown, not forged. Facets fractured lanternlight into cruel, jagged splinters. Gravechill Bulwark rode her back. A translucent wall of drowned sky blue, sigils submerged beneath its glossy surface. Tiny frost teeth worried its rim. It seemed as patient as tomb sentinels.
Ixqueya leaned into the plaster wall. Boards complained beneath her weight. Chalk dust drifted in small puffs. Arms crossed beneath her bosom. She anchored herself with a matter-of-fact sovereignty. Not an invitation, but boundary. Heat recoiled. Drinkers hunched around their cups, as if afraid a stray ember might offend the chill she exuded.
At last, her forked tongue flicked. Slow. Deliberate. It moistened her juicy lips with serpent courtesy. It tasted the tavern’s names. A soft chortle slipped free as if it were fresh snow settling over an unmarked grave. Quiet enough to be mistaken for the hearth sighing.
Then, she spoke. Each consonant struck like cold stone made certain.
“Cualli tonalli, Coyōtl. Quēn timotlaçōtla in īpan in tonalli?” She spoke in her people's tongue, of the tribe unmourned.
"Cosa? Sto forse sentendo di nuovo cose strane?"
“呃……好吧？现在大家都在说家乡话了？”(Uh... Okay? We speaking our mother tongue now??)
The girl scratched her head while looking for a stool.
Not long after, she found one, and took seat beside Sue and possibly Basil.
The girl scratched her head while looking for a stool.
Not long after, she found one, and took seat beside Sue and possibly Basil.
Watari’s brush had been moving with the patient steadiness of river-work. A line laid down. A pause to breathe. Another line to answer it. The board before him held the tavern in its first quiet becoming. Rafters suggested by soft angles. Hearthlight reduced to a warm stain that bled outward, as if the room’s comfort were something that could be poured and measured. He had been painting the ordinary thing that men forget to honor; a place that survived by small mercies and stubborn timber.
Then the air took on a different weight. It was not merely cold. It was intent made temperature. The lantern’s honeyed pool seemed to harden at its edges. Smoke hesitated beneath the rafters, as though even it had learned caution. The hearth continued to roar, yet it no longer felt like a welcome. It felt like a witness, bright-eyed and unable to look away.
His ears turned first. Not in alarm. In recognition. A hunter’s reflex, gentled by years and sharpened by memory. The room’s chatter did not cease, yet it thinned around a new silence, the way grass bends when something large passes through it. Ixqueya stood in the aisle of the tavern’s attention. Winter moved with her, not as chaotic storm but as hushed doctrine. Frost had found the floorboards and traced a pale corridor, a quiet signature that did not ask permission. To Watari, it looked like a trail on open ground after a night of hard sky; clear. Honest.
He let the brush hover above the board. Pigment trembled at the tip, dark as turned soil. His mouth softened, and a warm smile came to him without effort. It sat strangely beside the severity that clung to her. It was a human thing. A stubborn thing. The last hearth he carried that no winter had yet taken. He dipped the brush once, careful and unhurried. He dabbed it against the lip of his jar, as if to remind his hand that it still served creation. Not butchery. Not orders shouted into dust. He set the brush to the board and drew a short line, simple and true. A beam’s shadow. A corner’s patience. A mark that said the world was still mundane, even when the uncanny walked into it.
Only then did he lift his gaze fully to her. The room's light found her armor and broke upon it. White carapace, pale as bone given polish. Black seams that were precise and pitiless. Necro-ice inlays held a colder light that did not belong to flame. It made the air around it feel thinner. It made the room’s warmth seem almost embarrassed. His artist’s eye caught the way the plates fit and locked, not as decoration, but as a system. The suit looked grown rather than forged, as if some patient craft had learned to coax hard truth from living matter.
He saw the headdress flare above her, feathered and edged with winterglass. It carried the impression of a crown that had been earned by surviving what would have killed gentler women. He saw glyphwork upon her face, turquoise lines exact as a vow. Carmine accents like old blood made ceremonial. Her weapons, too, were part of her essence. The mace. The shield. Not merely armaments, but articles of faith given weight. In her, nothing seemed incidental. Even beauty was harnessed. Even that posture was law in it's own right.
Watari’s smile did not fade. It became quieter. More careful. He had known generals who wore cruelty like perfume, and saints who wore kindness like armor. Ixqueya did not wear either. She wore winter. That was simpler. That was harder. He answered her greeting in the same tongue she had used, his voice low enough that it would not compete with the room. “Cuix in cihuātl hualā tlācxitlaniz?”
The question rose lightly, even when its meaning did not. It carried a small humor, the kind that survives in veterans because without it the heart turns to stone. He let a chuckle follow, brief and warm. It was not derision. It was repayment. Coin returned in kind to the soft chortle she had loosed a moment before. Then he paused again, and the artist in him took the reins.
His eyes, dark brown and steady, studied her with the long attention of someone trying to understand the shape of a storm. Not with tavern hunger. Not with the flinching appraisal of men who measure danger and call it dislike. He looked as if he were memorizing a mountain before crossing it, accepting that it would not move for him. The white of her armor drew his gaze back, and with it the thought that came unbidden. White was a difficult color. It forgave nothing. It showed every stain. It demanded cleanliness or it demanded consequence. And on her, it did not look innocent. It looked deliberate.
He spoke, gentle and plain, as if speaking to a blade laid bare. “White flatters you.” His eyes traced the lines of her silhouette where plate met seam, where hard geometry served living curve without apology. “It is fitting. For one as cold as you are. For one who thinks with clean edges.” He did not linger on the thought too long. He did not presume closeness. He only gave the truth as he saw it, the way an artist offers a likeness and lets the subject decide whether it is an honor or an insult. After that, he let his gaze wander. Not to dismiss her. To take the room back into himself. To find his footing in the ordinary again.
He looked at the tavern as it endured around her presence. Timber beams groaned under their own age. Floorboards bowed with long habit. Smoke gathered beneath the rafters and made a second ceiling, lower and darker than the first. Lanternlight pooled in amber circles. It touched hands. It touched rims of cups. It never quite reached the corners where old debts slept. Patrons leaned inward, instinctively protective of their warmth, as if heat were coin and winter a thief.
He saw a fisherman in the next booth wipe his nose after a sneeze, blinking against the bite of haze. He saw a dog’s wary eye slide along the aisle and then look away, as if the animal had judged that some things are best left unchallenged. He heard murmurs thin where her cold had sharpened the air. He heard the hearth crackle, and it sounded less like comfort now. More like ceremony. All of it was paintable. All of it was a scene that would look almost gentle on a board, if one did not know what walked within it.
Watari’s hand found his brush again, not yet moving. He held it as one might hold a needle above cloth, ready to stitch the moment into permanence. He thought, briefly, of other rooms. War-tents that stank of horse and sweat. Command pavilions where maps were spread like flayed skins. Makeshift halls taken from human towns, their hearths lit under banners that did not belong. He thought of desert revolts, where heat made mirages out of men. He thought of Hextor’s invasion, where the world felt sick at the edges, as if rot had learned to speak. He thought of the defiled, and how even brave hearts learned new forms of quiet in their presence.
In those years, he had served her grandmother. He had been a general then. He had spoken with authority and sent people to their endings with a nod. He had learned how easily a name becomes a number, and how quickly a number becomes a grave. He had carried victories that tasted of ash. He had carried losses that never truly set down. Now he carried paint. He carried patience. He preferred it. It was not absolution. It was simply a different kind of duty.
He turned his attention back to Ixqueya and lifted his chin a fraction. The gesture was open, offered without insistence. “What brings the lady of purgatory to this quaint establishment in the middle of nowhere?” His eyes flicked toward the bar, to the dull line of bottles and the barkeep’s guarded posture. “May I buy you a drink. Or something steadier than drink.” He gestured with his brush hand, careful not to fling pigment. The motion was small, more invitation than command. It was the courtesy of someone who understood what it meant to share a fire when the world outside is sharp.
His smile returned, a little brighter now, as if he were willfully placing warmth between them and seeing whether it would survive. “I have learned,” he added softly, “that silence can be a fine companion. It can also be a cruel one. If you came here for reasons heavier than the road, then let the room be ordinary for a moment. Let it serve you, instead of staring at you.” And with that he did not press further. He let the offer hang in the lanternwash. He kept his brush poised above the board, ready to paint again. Ready to record the tavern’s mundane heart, even with winter standing brutishly in its aisle.
Then the air took on a different weight. It was not merely cold. It was intent made temperature. The lantern’s honeyed pool seemed to harden at its edges. Smoke hesitated beneath the rafters, as though even it had learned caution. The hearth continued to roar, yet it no longer felt like a welcome. It felt like a witness, bright-eyed and unable to look away.
His ears turned first. Not in alarm. In recognition. A hunter’s reflex, gentled by years and sharpened by memory. The room’s chatter did not cease, yet it thinned around a new silence, the way grass bends when something large passes through it. Ixqueya stood in the aisle of the tavern’s attention. Winter moved with her, not as chaotic storm but as hushed doctrine. Frost had found the floorboards and traced a pale corridor, a quiet signature that did not ask permission. To Watari, it looked like a trail on open ground after a night of hard sky; clear. Honest.
He let the brush hover above the board. Pigment trembled at the tip, dark as turned soil. His mouth softened, and a warm smile came to him without effort. It sat strangely beside the severity that clung to her. It was a human thing. A stubborn thing. The last hearth he carried that no winter had yet taken. He dipped the brush once, careful and unhurried. He dabbed it against the lip of his jar, as if to remind his hand that it still served creation. Not butchery. Not orders shouted into dust. He set the brush to the board and drew a short line, simple and true. A beam’s shadow. A corner’s patience. A mark that said the world was still mundane, even when the uncanny walked into it.
Only then did he lift his gaze fully to her. The room's light found her armor and broke upon it. White carapace, pale as bone given polish. Black seams that were precise and pitiless. Necro-ice inlays held a colder light that did not belong to flame. It made the air around it feel thinner. It made the room’s warmth seem almost embarrassed. His artist’s eye caught the way the plates fit and locked, not as decoration, but as a system. The suit looked grown rather than forged, as if some patient craft had learned to coax hard truth from living matter.
He saw the headdress flare above her, feathered and edged with winterglass. It carried the impression of a crown that had been earned by surviving what would have killed gentler women. He saw glyphwork upon her face, turquoise lines exact as a vow. Carmine accents like old blood made ceremonial. Her weapons, too, were part of her essence. The mace. The shield. Not merely armaments, but articles of faith given weight. In her, nothing seemed incidental. Even beauty was harnessed. Even that posture was law in it's own right.
Watari’s smile did not fade. It became quieter. More careful. He had known generals who wore cruelty like perfume, and saints who wore kindness like armor. Ixqueya did not wear either. She wore winter. That was simpler. That was harder. He answered her greeting in the same tongue she had used, his voice low enough that it would not compete with the room. “Cuix in cihuātl hualā tlācxitlaniz?”
The question rose lightly, even when its meaning did not. It carried a small humor, the kind that survives in veterans because without it the heart turns to stone. He let a chuckle follow, brief and warm. It was not derision. It was repayment. Coin returned in kind to the soft chortle she had loosed a moment before. Then he paused again, and the artist in him took the reins.
His eyes, dark brown and steady, studied her with the long attention of someone trying to understand the shape of a storm. Not with tavern hunger. Not with the flinching appraisal of men who measure danger and call it dislike. He looked as if he were memorizing a mountain before crossing it, accepting that it would not move for him. The white of her armor drew his gaze back, and with it the thought that came unbidden. White was a difficult color. It forgave nothing. It showed every stain. It demanded cleanliness or it demanded consequence. And on her, it did not look innocent. It looked deliberate.
He spoke, gentle and plain, as if speaking to a blade laid bare. “White flatters you.” His eyes traced the lines of her silhouette where plate met seam, where hard geometry served living curve without apology. “It is fitting. For one as cold as you are. For one who thinks with clean edges.” He did not linger on the thought too long. He did not presume closeness. He only gave the truth as he saw it, the way an artist offers a likeness and lets the subject decide whether it is an honor or an insult. After that, he let his gaze wander. Not to dismiss her. To take the room back into himself. To find his footing in the ordinary again.
He looked at the tavern as it endured around her presence. Timber beams groaned under their own age. Floorboards bowed with long habit. Smoke gathered beneath the rafters and made a second ceiling, lower and darker than the first. Lanternlight pooled in amber circles. It touched hands. It touched rims of cups. It never quite reached the corners where old debts slept. Patrons leaned inward, instinctively protective of their warmth, as if heat were coin and winter a thief.
He saw a fisherman in the next booth wipe his nose after a sneeze, blinking against the bite of haze. He saw a dog’s wary eye slide along the aisle and then look away, as if the animal had judged that some things are best left unchallenged. He heard murmurs thin where her cold had sharpened the air. He heard the hearth crackle, and it sounded less like comfort now. More like ceremony. All of it was paintable. All of it was a scene that would look almost gentle on a board, if one did not know what walked within it.
Watari’s hand found his brush again, not yet moving. He held it as one might hold a needle above cloth, ready to stitch the moment into permanence. He thought, briefly, of other rooms. War-tents that stank of horse and sweat. Command pavilions where maps were spread like flayed skins. Makeshift halls taken from human towns, their hearths lit under banners that did not belong. He thought of desert revolts, where heat made mirages out of men. He thought of Hextor’s invasion, where the world felt sick at the edges, as if rot had learned to speak. He thought of the defiled, and how even brave hearts learned new forms of quiet in their presence.
In those years, he had served her grandmother. He had been a general then. He had spoken with authority and sent people to their endings with a nod. He had learned how easily a name becomes a number, and how quickly a number becomes a grave. He had carried victories that tasted of ash. He had carried losses that never truly set down. Now he carried paint. He carried patience. He preferred it. It was not absolution. It was simply a different kind of duty.
He turned his attention back to Ixqueya and lifted his chin a fraction. The gesture was open, offered without insistence. “What brings the lady of purgatory to this quaint establishment in the middle of nowhere?” His eyes flicked toward the bar, to the dull line of bottles and the barkeep’s guarded posture. “May I buy you a drink. Or something steadier than drink.” He gestured with his brush hand, careful not to fling pigment. The motion was small, more invitation than command. It was the courtesy of someone who understood what it meant to share a fire when the world outside is sharp.
His smile returned, a little brighter now, as if he were willfully placing warmth between them and seeing whether it would survive. “I have learned,” he added softly, “that silence can be a fine companion. It can also be a cruel one. If you came here for reasons heavier than the road, then let the room be ordinary for a moment. Let it serve you, instead of staring at you.” And with that he did not press further. He let the offer hang in the lanternwash. He kept his brush poised above the board, ready to paint again. Ready to record the tavern’s mundane heart, even with winter standing brutishly in its aisle.
Not my mother tongue. The language of Ixqueya's people. Watari knows it as he served under her. Its a greeting between giantess and Nokhoi (Mongolian kitsune)
Watari Devante wrote:
Watari’s brush had been moving with the patient steadiness of river-work. A line laid down. A pause to breathe. Another line to answer it. The board before him held the tavern in its first quiet becoming. Rafters suggested by soft angles. Hearthlight reduced to a warm stain that bled outward, as if the room’s comfort were something that could be poured and measured. He had been painting the ordinary thing that men forget to honor; a place that survived by small mercies and stubborn timber.
Then the air took on a different weight. It was not merely cold. It was intent made temperature. The lantern’s honeyed pool seemed to harden at its edges. Smoke hesitated beneath the rafters, as though even it had learned caution. The hearth continued to roar, yet it no longer felt like a welcome. It felt like a witness, bright-eyed and unable to look away.
His ears turned first. Not in alarm. In recognition. A hunter’s reflex, gentled by years and sharpened by memory. The room’s chatter did not cease, yet it thinned around a new silence, the way grass bends when something large passes through it. Ixqueya stood in the aisle of the tavern’s attention. Winter moved with her, not as chaotic storm but as hushed doctrine. Frost had found the floorboards and traced a pale corridor, a quiet signature that did not ask permission. To Watari, it looked like a trail on open ground after a night of hard sky; clear. Honest.
He let the brush hover above the board. Pigment trembled at the tip, dark as turned soil. His mouth softened, and a warm smile came to him without effort. It sat strangely beside the severity that clung to her. It was a human thing. A stubborn thing. The last hearth he carried that no winter had yet taken. He dipped the brush once, careful and unhurried. He dabbed it against the lip of his jar, as if to remind his hand that it still served creation. Not butchery. Not orders shouted into dust. He set the brush to the board and drew a short line, simple and true. A beam’s shadow. A corner’s patience. A mark that said the world was still mundane, even when the uncanny walked into it.
Only then did he lift his gaze fully to her. The room's light found her armor and broke upon it. White carapace, pale as bone given polish. Black seams that were precise and pitiless. Necro-ice inlays held a colder light that did not belong to flame. It made the air around it feel thinner. It made the room’s warmth seem almost embarrassed. His artist’s eye caught the way the plates fit and locked, not as decoration, but as a system. The suit looked grown rather than forged, as if some patient craft had learned to coax hard truth from living matter.
He saw the headdress flare above her, feathered and edged with winterglass. It carried the impression of a crown that had been earned by surviving what would have killed gentler women. He saw glyphwork upon her face, turquoise lines exact as a vow. Carmine accents like old blood made ceremonial. Her weapons, too, were part of her essence. The mace. The shield. Not merely armaments, but articles of faith given weight. In her, nothing seemed incidental. Even beauty was harnessed. Even that posture was law in it's own right.
Watari’s smile did not fade. It became quieter. More careful. He had known generals who wore cruelty like perfume, and saints who wore kindness like armor. Ixqueya did not wear either. She wore winter. That was simpler. That was harder. He answered her greeting in the same tongue she had used, his voice low enough that it would not compete with the room. “Cuix in cihuātl hualā tlācxitlaniz?”
The question rose lightly, even when its meaning did not. It carried a small humor, the kind that survives in veterans because without it the heart turns to stone. He let a chuckle follow, brief and warm. It was not derision. It was repayment. Coin returned in kind to the soft chortle she had loosed a moment before. Then he paused again, and the artist in him took the reins.
His eyes, dark brown and steady, studied her with the long attention of someone trying to understand the shape of a storm. Not with tavern hunger. Not with the flinching appraisal of men who measure danger and call it dislike. He looked as if he were memorizing a mountain before crossing it, accepting that it would not move for him. The white of her armor drew his gaze back, and with it the thought that came unbidden. White was a difficult color. It forgave nothing. It showed every stain. It demanded cleanliness or it demanded consequence. And on her, it did not look innocent. It looked deliberate.
He spoke, gentle and plain, as if speaking to a blade laid bare. “White flatters you.” His eyes traced the lines of her silhouette where plate met seam, where hard geometry served living curve without apology. “It is fitting. For one as cold as you are. For one who thinks with clean edges.” He did not linger on the thought too long. He did not presume closeness. He only gave the truth as he saw it, the way an artist offers a likeness and lets the subject decide whether it is an honor or an insult. After that, he let his gaze wander. Not to dismiss her. To take the room back into himself. To find his footing in the ordinary again.
He looked at the tavern as it endured around her presence. Timber beams groaned under their own age. Floorboards bowed with long habit. Smoke gathered beneath the rafters and made a second ceiling, lower and darker than the first. Lanternlight pooled in amber circles. It touched hands. It touched rims of cups. It never quite reached the corners where old debts slept. Patrons leaned inward, instinctively protective of their warmth, as if heat were coin and winter a thief.
He saw a fisherman in the next booth wipe his nose after a sneeze, blinking against the bite of haze. He saw a dog’s wary eye slide along the aisle and then look away, as if the animal had judged that some things are best left unchallenged. He heard murmurs thin where her cold had sharpened the air. He heard the hearth crackle, and it sounded less like comfort now. More like ceremony. All of it was paintable. All of it was a scene that would look almost gentle on a board, if one did not know what walked within it.
Watari’s hand found his brush again, not yet moving. He held it as one might hold a needle above cloth, ready to stitch the moment into permanence. He thought, briefly, of other rooms. War-tents that stank of horse and sweat. Command pavilions where maps were spread like flayed skins. Makeshift halls taken from human towns, their hearths lit under banners that did not belong. He thought of desert revolts, where heat made mirages out of men. He thought of Hextor’s invasion, where the world felt sick at the edges, as if rot had learned to speak. He thought of the defiled, and how even brave hearts learned new forms of quiet in their presence.
In those years, he had served her grandmother. He had been a general then. He had spoken with authority and sent people to their endings with a nod. He had learned how easily a name becomes a number, and how quickly a number becomes a grave. He had carried victories that tasted of ash. He had carried losses that never truly set down. Now he carried paint. He carried patience. He preferred it. It was not absolution. It was simply a different kind of duty.
He turned his attention back to Ixqueya and lifted his chin a fraction. The gesture was open, offered without insistence. “What brings the lady of purgatory to this quaint establishment in the middle of nowhere?” His eyes flicked toward the bar, to the dull line of bottles and the barkeep’s guarded posture. “May I buy you a drink. Or something steadier than drink.” He gestured with his brush hand, careful not to fling pigment. The motion was small, more invitation than command. It was the courtesy of someone who understood what it meant to share a fire when the world outside is sharp.
His smile returned, a little brighter now, as if he were willfully placing warmth between them and seeing whether it would survive. “I have learned,” he added softly, “that silence can be a fine companion. It can also be a cruel one. If you came here for reasons heavier than the road, then let the room be ordinary for a moment. Let it serve you, instead of staring at you.” And with that he did not press further. He let the offer hang in the lanternwash. He kept his brush poised above the board, ready to paint again. Ready to record the tavern’s mundane heart, even with winter standing brutishly in its aisle.
Then the air took on a different weight. It was not merely cold. It was intent made temperature. The lantern’s honeyed pool seemed to harden at its edges. Smoke hesitated beneath the rafters, as though even it had learned caution. The hearth continued to roar, yet it no longer felt like a welcome. It felt like a witness, bright-eyed and unable to look away.
His ears turned first. Not in alarm. In recognition. A hunter’s reflex, gentled by years and sharpened by memory. The room’s chatter did not cease, yet it thinned around a new silence, the way grass bends when something large passes through it. Ixqueya stood in the aisle of the tavern’s attention. Winter moved with her, not as chaotic storm but as hushed doctrine. Frost had found the floorboards and traced a pale corridor, a quiet signature that did not ask permission. To Watari, it looked like a trail on open ground after a night of hard sky; clear. Honest.
He let the brush hover above the board. Pigment trembled at the tip, dark as turned soil. His mouth softened, and a warm smile came to him without effort. It sat strangely beside the severity that clung to her. It was a human thing. A stubborn thing. The last hearth he carried that no winter had yet taken. He dipped the brush once, careful and unhurried. He dabbed it against the lip of his jar, as if to remind his hand that it still served creation. Not butchery. Not orders shouted into dust. He set the brush to the board and drew a short line, simple and true. A beam’s shadow. A corner’s patience. A mark that said the world was still mundane, even when the uncanny walked into it.
Only then did he lift his gaze fully to her. The room's light found her armor and broke upon it. White carapace, pale as bone given polish. Black seams that were precise and pitiless. Necro-ice inlays held a colder light that did not belong to flame. It made the air around it feel thinner. It made the room’s warmth seem almost embarrassed. His artist’s eye caught the way the plates fit and locked, not as decoration, but as a system. The suit looked grown rather than forged, as if some patient craft had learned to coax hard truth from living matter.
He saw the headdress flare above her, feathered and edged with winterglass. It carried the impression of a crown that had been earned by surviving what would have killed gentler women. He saw glyphwork upon her face, turquoise lines exact as a vow. Carmine accents like old blood made ceremonial. Her weapons, too, were part of her essence. The mace. The shield. Not merely armaments, but articles of faith given weight. In her, nothing seemed incidental. Even beauty was harnessed. Even that posture was law in it's own right.
Watari’s smile did not fade. It became quieter. More careful. He had known generals who wore cruelty like perfume, and saints who wore kindness like armor. Ixqueya did not wear either. She wore winter. That was simpler. That was harder. He answered her greeting in the same tongue she had used, his voice low enough that it would not compete with the room. “Cuix in cihuātl hualā tlācxitlaniz?”
The question rose lightly, even when its meaning did not. It carried a small humor, the kind that survives in veterans because without it the heart turns to stone. He let a chuckle follow, brief and warm. It was not derision. It was repayment. Coin returned in kind to the soft chortle she had loosed a moment before. Then he paused again, and the artist in him took the reins.
His eyes, dark brown and steady, studied her with the long attention of someone trying to understand the shape of a storm. Not with tavern hunger. Not with the flinching appraisal of men who measure danger and call it dislike. He looked as if he were memorizing a mountain before crossing it, accepting that it would not move for him. The white of her armor drew his gaze back, and with it the thought that came unbidden. White was a difficult color. It forgave nothing. It showed every stain. It demanded cleanliness or it demanded consequence. And on her, it did not look innocent. It looked deliberate.
He spoke, gentle and plain, as if speaking to a blade laid bare. “White flatters you.” His eyes traced the lines of her silhouette where plate met seam, where hard geometry served living curve without apology. “It is fitting. For one as cold as you are. For one who thinks with clean edges.” He did not linger on the thought too long. He did not presume closeness. He only gave the truth as he saw it, the way an artist offers a likeness and lets the subject decide whether it is an honor or an insult. After that, he let his gaze wander. Not to dismiss her. To take the room back into himself. To find his footing in the ordinary again.
He looked at the tavern as it endured around her presence. Timber beams groaned under their own age. Floorboards bowed with long habit. Smoke gathered beneath the rafters and made a second ceiling, lower and darker than the first. Lanternlight pooled in amber circles. It touched hands. It touched rims of cups. It never quite reached the corners where old debts slept. Patrons leaned inward, instinctively protective of their warmth, as if heat were coin and winter a thief.
He saw a fisherman in the next booth wipe his nose after a sneeze, blinking against the bite of haze. He saw a dog’s wary eye slide along the aisle and then look away, as if the animal had judged that some things are best left unchallenged. He heard murmurs thin where her cold had sharpened the air. He heard the hearth crackle, and it sounded less like comfort now. More like ceremony. All of it was paintable. All of it was a scene that would look almost gentle on a board, if one did not know what walked within it.
Watari’s hand found his brush again, not yet moving. He held it as one might hold a needle above cloth, ready to stitch the moment into permanence. He thought, briefly, of other rooms. War-tents that stank of horse and sweat. Command pavilions where maps were spread like flayed skins. Makeshift halls taken from human towns, their hearths lit under banners that did not belong. He thought of desert revolts, where heat made mirages out of men. He thought of Hextor’s invasion, where the world felt sick at the edges, as if rot had learned to speak. He thought of the defiled, and how even brave hearts learned new forms of quiet in their presence.
In those years, he had served her grandmother. He had been a general then. He had spoken with authority and sent people to their endings with a nod. He had learned how easily a name becomes a number, and how quickly a number becomes a grave. He had carried victories that tasted of ash. He had carried losses that never truly set down. Now he carried paint. He carried patience. He preferred it. It was not absolution. It was simply a different kind of duty.
He turned his attention back to Ixqueya and lifted his chin a fraction. The gesture was open, offered without insistence. “What brings the lady of purgatory to this quaint establishment in the middle of nowhere?” His eyes flicked toward the bar, to the dull line of bottles and the barkeep’s guarded posture. “May I buy you a drink. Or something steadier than drink.” He gestured with his brush hand, careful not to fling pigment. The motion was small, more invitation than command. It was the courtesy of someone who understood what it meant to share a fire when the world outside is sharp.
His smile returned, a little brighter now, as if he were willfully placing warmth between them and seeing whether it would survive. “I have learned,” he added softly, “that silence can be a fine companion. It can also be a cruel one. If you came here for reasons heavier than the road, then let the room be ordinary for a moment. Let it serve you, instead of staring at you.” And with that he did not press further. He let the offer hang in the lanternwash. He kept his brush poised above the board, ready to paint again. Ready to record the tavern’s mundane heart, even with winter standing brutishly in its aisle.
Ixqueya’s mouth bent, just barely, at the sound of mtoher dialect leaving a southerner’s throat without stumbling. A smirk, thin as a knife’s first glint.
“So you have not let it rot out of you.” Her voice carried controlled austerity. “Good. It remains a superior tongue. It cuts cleaner. It wastes less air.” The corner of her mouth held the smirk a moment longer. “Try not to bruise it with steppe slang.”
A pause. Then the jest sharpened.
“And you are still a Nokhoi.” Her gaze traveled him with a magistrate’s appraisal. “A southerner, no less. Most of your people are a degenerate brood. Inbred nematodes wriggling in the warm mud of their own excuses.” The line landed with deliberate cruelty. It was only half sincere. Her eyes admitted the remainder. “You, however, have persisted for decades as an exception. Cut from a different cloth. That distinction has cost you. It has also spared you.”
Her smirk faded. The change was so rare it felt like an eclipse, brief and disorienting. For an instant, her face held something close to neutrality. Almost human. Almost unarmored. She seemed to realize it at the same time the room did. A few patrons blinked as if they had seen a candle gutter without wind.
“Perhaps you should have painted that,” she added, as if commenting on an accounting error. Then she reclaimed herself, expression settling back into its familiar severity. The resting contempt returned. Clean. Uninviting. A mask that fit better than mercy ever had.
When his compliment about white reached her, it met that mask and slid off.
“It figures a painter would be drawn to color before motive.” Her tone remained cool, with a faint edge of amusement. “If the palette pleases you, thank Tonatiuh. He lectured me on color theory as if it were scripture and I was a stubborn novice. I listened. Occasionally.”
As she spoke, the tavern continued its small survivals around them. A spoon scraped a bowl too slowly. Someone at the bar attempted laughter and failed. Frost filmed the rim of a nearby cup, then retreated when its owner clutched it like a talisman. Lantern glass clouded in patches where warm breath met her wake. Even the smoke seemed to behave differently near her. It did not curl with its earlier laziness. It thinned. It climbed as if chastened.
Ixqueya’s gaze wandered, not in idle curiosity, but in clinical inventory. A fisherman’s cracked knuckles. A barmaid’s careful distance. The barkeep’s eyes that never stopped counting exits. The banal motions of people who believed their lives were important because they were small. She watched Watari’s fascination with it all and found it briefly incomprehensible.
Then she dismissed it with the same unkind certainty she reserved for most living habits.
The mindless mental ambling of a mongrel, she told herself. A dog worrying a bone because it cannot conceive of the graveyard it came from.
Her attention returned. Her cold blue eyes locked on his brighter gaze. The exchange held without touch. Without tenderness. Still it felt like a sacrament conducted in silence. Ice and ember. Life and death. A waltz performed on the thin line where a prayer becomes a threat.
She let that interplay exist for a heartbeat. Then she broke it with a quip, as if refusing to let the moment pretend it mattered too much.
“Buy me a drink, if you insist.” Her lips twitched. Not quite a smile. “I will eat and drink you into bankruptcy. Shelve the bravado. Spare me the pleasantries.” Her chin lifted slightly. “Spend that coin on a maiden. Or a lord more your type. You have the face of a man who knows how to invest attention where it will return dividends.”
The levity did not linger. It was swept away as quickly as breath in winter.
Her gaze narrowed. The room felt colder for it, as though some unseen window had been opened to the night.
“Tell me something more useful,” she said, voice lowering into a tone that carried verdicts. “Sukegei. What did the Blood Fox see in him, to waste training on a moral reprobate.” The contempt in her expression was effortless. Old. Well practiced. “Your mother is not renowned for charity. She does not nurture strays for the pleasure of kindness. If she sharpened that licentious mongrel, she did it for a reason.”
Ixqueya held his gaze, unblinking. The hearth crackled behind her like a affidavit coerced to listen.
“So.” A soft finality, akin to an arbiter commanding testimony. “What is the reason.”
Mathius came out of the dishonor his his hair tied back and spashes of water were on his apron and sweat was on his face. He bloated his face with a separate hand towel and he discarded it into the laundry bin.
He approached Sue and Basil with a bit of a grin. A sad and longing grin. He reached up and patted Sue's pelt on her head. "As time passes, the more I doubt you'll ever get to meet Azumi and Ren. You remind me so much of Azumi. Usually when I'd say her name, she would poof in and make a joke, then start chasing her tails"
He approached Sue and Basil with a bit of a grin. A sad and longing grin. He reached up and patted Sue's pelt on her head. "As time passes, the more I doubt you'll ever get to meet Azumi and Ren. You remind me so much of Azumi. Usually when I'd say her name, she would poof in and make a joke, then start chasing her tails"
"DAMNIT!"
His repulsors failed in mid air sending War Machine careening through the front door and slamming against a wall. He got to his feet. He was wearing the Mark II War Machine that he had modified, but apparently he didn't fully connect the couplers to the arc power source, and the repulsors cut out. He stood and the suit opened.
"Well.....at least the door is self-repairing. One of the few good things about this place being an inter-transdimensional....thing..."
His repulsors failed in mid air sending War Machine careening through the front door and slamming against a wall. He got to his feet. He was wearing the Mark II War Machine that he had modified, but apparently he didn't fully connect the couplers to the arc power source, and the repulsors cut out. He stood and the suit opened.
"Well.....at least the door is self-repairing. One of the few good things about this place being an inter-transdimensional....thing..."
"It's 'multiuniversal convergence nexus'. That means this is one of the points where all universes meet. Well, one of the few. Welcome back, Andrew. Theo left a little while ago."
...Xueqing seemed to be asleep. On a stool.
Well, she must have been through much today to be tired out shortly after her entrance. It was impressive how she managed to keep her balance while sleeping peacefully.
She seemed vulnerable at this point.
Well, she must have been through much today to be tired out shortly after her entrance. It was impressive how she managed to keep her balance while sleeping peacefully.
She seemed vulnerable at this point.
Watari’s brow rose, slow and mild, as if her words were no more than cinders lifted by a passing draft. He did not bristle. He had worn harsher speech than this beneath more pitiless welkins. He had listened to worse from dying men. A barbed jest did not reach deep enough to find purchase in him. His hand kept its labor. The brush moved with a measured grace that did not match the war-sinew in his forearm. It was the old discipline of a rider’s wrist repurposed. The bristles kissed the board. A thin line became a beam’s shadow. A soft wash became the hearth’s breathing glow. Forms gathered as if coaxed out of smoke. The tavern’s homely shape began to resolve into a living place, stubborn and enduring, like a hamlet clinging to a hillside while storms argued with it.
He spoke without looking away from the scene for long. “I respect your people.” The words were plain. “Giants are not barbarous. Not in truth. Only in the mouths of those who have never learned to see past their own fear.” His brush slid again, laying down the deepened brown of timber where the kiss of the light failed to reach. He painted the wear of hands on wood. The small, patient scarring of time. “Your culture is different,” he continued. “It is severe. It is beautiful, in the way winter is beautiful. Not gentle. Not asking to be understood. It simply is.”
He paused long enough to wet the brush and draw it clean through the water, letting pigment loosen and swirl like silt in a shallow stream. His gaze remained calm. It did not evade her. It did not cling. It held the middle distance where thought lives. “And I have always been fond,” his voice softening into something that sounded almost like reverence, “of the Tree of Life. Of the Undying Tree. It is an intriguing pillar. Philosophical. Theological. It does not pretend decay is the enemy. It makes decay into a door.”
He turned the brush in the cup with a slow spin, bristles whispering against tin. He did not lift it at once. He watched the water cloud, then settle, as if even disorder could be taught to rest. From the edge of his vision he caught that rare smirk, thin as a blade’s first light. He answered it with a warmth that did not ask permission. He did not press it into something heavier than it was. “I cannot paint something so winsome as a genuine smirk,” he said, and the humor in him carried the ease of a man who had survived too much to be so eoffrtlessly embarrassed. “Some things are meant to pass. They are better as fleeting weather. Kept in one memory. Not nailed to a board like a butterfly.”
He let the brush go and left it standing in the cup. Then he raised his eyes fully, and the lantern’s honeyed glow caught his face and made it seem, for a moment, less carved by campaigns. “I am Nokhoi,” he said. “And I am proud.” The tavern’s small noises continued around them. A spoon scraped porcelain. A log shifted in the hearth. Smoke climbed and thinned beneath the rafters. None of it interrupted him. His voice did not need to be loud to hold weight.
“When the defiled assaulted our world,” he went on, “it was my people who answered the Verdant Dynasty’s call. Our warbands rode when others debated. When Xandera’s command went out, our banners followed. Not because we loved the work. Because we understood what it meant to let rot spread unchallenged.” His gaze dipped briefly, not in shame, but in memory. He had seen banners burn. He had watched triumph sour into ash. He had learned that survival is often purchased with ugly coin.
“I am thankful for your mother,” he said, and he gave the statement the seriousness of an oath. “The Lichqueen is, ironically, one of the few reasons there is still life in this world. Perhaps in others as well. Who can say where the consequences of her will truly end.” He did not dress it in apology. He did not sharpen it into praise. He let it stand as a hard fact. A stone placed on a grave. Heavy. Necessary.
When he spoke of Tonatiuh, there was a shift in him toward curiosity, the way a traveler’s mind leans toward a name he intends to remember. “I do not know this Tonatiuh,” he admitted. “I only know my sister speaks of him. And the Lady of Spice, Indemira, favors his habilment.” His mouth quirked. “For a man who works with needles and threads, he seems to wield influence like a general carrying a standard.”
He looked back to his board, as if ensuring the hearth’s glow was truthful, then returned his attention to Ixqueya with a faint brightening in his eyes. “Someday I would like to meet him. It takes a strong will to educate a Jorgenskull.” He let the jest land with just enough firmness to be felt. “Your line is famed for stubbornness.” Then he added, gently, and with that same warm audacity that did not fit beside her deportment.
“It is good you have friends. You need not hide it. I can hear it in the way you speak of him.” His smile grew a fraction. “It seems even the Hoarfrost Mistress can let her mask slip on occasion.” It was a small counter-stroke. Not cruel. Not timid. A nudge meant to bruise pride lightly rather than flatter it. Something in Watari suspected she could use the contact, like a blade benefits from a stone. He retrieved his brush and returned to the painting, adding the curve of a bench, the dull glint of pewter, the shadow beneath a table where boots had scuffed the floor. He had noticed her inventory of the room. The way she measured exits. The way she weighed strangers as if each were an entry in a ledger. He had not expected that attention from someone so stiff. It amused him.
“And they call me a stick in the mud,” he murmured, eyes alight with mirth as he worked. “If that is true, what does it make you.” His grin widened, sudden and unguarded. It did not mock her. It acknowledged her. “As for drinking me into bankruptcy.” He glanced briefly toward the bar, toward the bottles waiting to be purchased. “That would be costly. Thankfully, I offered knowing you do not care much for alcohol.” His voice carried an easy gentleness. “You are not exactly the life, or the afterlife, of the party.”
He let the humor sit for a breath, then softened it into something honest. “But that is all right. I like you the way you are.” He did not make the words coy. “Frigid. Dry. Determined. Those are acceptable qualities. Better than most.” He shrugged, returning to his work as if this were all as ordinary as weather. A veteran’s ease. A poet’s stubborn affection for the world as it is, not as it should be. Then her question about Sukegei settled between them with the weight of testimony. Even the hearth’s crackle sounded like punctuation against it.
Watari’s brush slowed. He drew one last line to complete the edge of a table in the painting, as though he refused to leave anything unfinished when speaking of old campaigns. Then he exhaled. “Who knows what goes through my mother’s head.” His tone held no resentment. Only acceptance. “I gave up long ago trying to unravel that enigma. She was my mother. She was also her own storm.” He looked up, eyes steady.
“If I had to wager, I would guess this. Sukegei is useful. Vulgarity is loud. Usefulness is quieter.” His gaze returned to the board, and he placed a small touch of light on a tankard’s rim, making it gleam. A mundane mercy. “Back then we needed swords more than we needed morality. Those days were dark. I hope they are behind us.” He let a beat pass. Then he lifted his eyes to her again, and his voice took on a practical attentiveness, as if he were meeting her on her own ground without turning it into a contest. “Speaking of what is not behind us.” He held the brush poised, ready to paint, ready to listen. “How is your investigation coming along?”
He spoke without looking away from the scene for long. “I respect your people.” The words were plain. “Giants are not barbarous. Not in truth. Only in the mouths of those who have never learned to see past their own fear.” His brush slid again, laying down the deepened brown of timber where the kiss of the light failed to reach. He painted the wear of hands on wood. The small, patient scarring of time. “Your culture is different,” he continued. “It is severe. It is beautiful, in the way winter is beautiful. Not gentle. Not asking to be understood. It simply is.”
He paused long enough to wet the brush and draw it clean through the water, letting pigment loosen and swirl like silt in a shallow stream. His gaze remained calm. It did not evade her. It did not cling. It held the middle distance where thought lives. “And I have always been fond,” his voice softening into something that sounded almost like reverence, “of the Tree of Life. Of the Undying Tree. It is an intriguing pillar. Philosophical. Theological. It does not pretend decay is the enemy. It makes decay into a door.”
He turned the brush in the cup with a slow spin, bristles whispering against tin. He did not lift it at once. He watched the water cloud, then settle, as if even disorder could be taught to rest. From the edge of his vision he caught that rare smirk, thin as a blade’s first light. He answered it with a warmth that did not ask permission. He did not press it into something heavier than it was. “I cannot paint something so winsome as a genuine smirk,” he said, and the humor in him carried the ease of a man who had survived too much to be so eoffrtlessly embarrassed. “Some things are meant to pass. They are better as fleeting weather. Kept in one memory. Not nailed to a board like a butterfly.”
He let the brush go and left it standing in the cup. Then he raised his eyes fully, and the lantern’s honeyed glow caught his face and made it seem, for a moment, less carved by campaigns. “I am Nokhoi,” he said. “And I am proud.” The tavern’s small noises continued around them. A spoon scraped porcelain. A log shifted in the hearth. Smoke climbed and thinned beneath the rafters. None of it interrupted him. His voice did not need to be loud to hold weight.
“When the defiled assaulted our world,” he went on, “it was my people who answered the Verdant Dynasty’s call. Our warbands rode when others debated. When Xandera’s command went out, our banners followed. Not because we loved the work. Because we understood what it meant to let rot spread unchallenged.” His gaze dipped briefly, not in shame, but in memory. He had seen banners burn. He had watched triumph sour into ash. He had learned that survival is often purchased with ugly coin.
“I am thankful for your mother,” he said, and he gave the statement the seriousness of an oath. “The Lichqueen is, ironically, one of the few reasons there is still life in this world. Perhaps in others as well. Who can say where the consequences of her will truly end.” He did not dress it in apology. He did not sharpen it into praise. He let it stand as a hard fact. A stone placed on a grave. Heavy. Necessary.
When he spoke of Tonatiuh, there was a shift in him toward curiosity, the way a traveler’s mind leans toward a name he intends to remember. “I do not know this Tonatiuh,” he admitted. “I only know my sister speaks of him. And the Lady of Spice, Indemira, favors his habilment.” His mouth quirked. “For a man who works with needles and threads, he seems to wield influence like a general carrying a standard.”
He looked back to his board, as if ensuring the hearth’s glow was truthful, then returned his attention to Ixqueya with a faint brightening in his eyes. “Someday I would like to meet him. It takes a strong will to educate a Jorgenskull.” He let the jest land with just enough firmness to be felt. “Your line is famed for stubbornness.” Then he added, gently, and with that same warm audacity that did not fit beside her deportment.
“It is good you have friends. You need not hide it. I can hear it in the way you speak of him.” His smile grew a fraction. “It seems even the Hoarfrost Mistress can let her mask slip on occasion.” It was a small counter-stroke. Not cruel. Not timid. A nudge meant to bruise pride lightly rather than flatter it. Something in Watari suspected she could use the contact, like a blade benefits from a stone. He retrieved his brush and returned to the painting, adding the curve of a bench, the dull glint of pewter, the shadow beneath a table where boots had scuffed the floor. He had noticed her inventory of the room. The way she measured exits. The way she weighed strangers as if each were an entry in a ledger. He had not expected that attention from someone so stiff. It amused him.
“And they call me a stick in the mud,” he murmured, eyes alight with mirth as he worked. “If that is true, what does it make you.” His grin widened, sudden and unguarded. It did not mock her. It acknowledged her. “As for drinking me into bankruptcy.” He glanced briefly toward the bar, toward the bottles waiting to be purchased. “That would be costly. Thankfully, I offered knowing you do not care much for alcohol.” His voice carried an easy gentleness. “You are not exactly the life, or the afterlife, of the party.”
He let the humor sit for a breath, then softened it into something honest. “But that is all right. I like you the way you are.” He did not make the words coy. “Frigid. Dry. Determined. Those are acceptable qualities. Better than most.” He shrugged, returning to his work as if this were all as ordinary as weather. A veteran’s ease. A poet’s stubborn affection for the world as it is, not as it should be. Then her question about Sukegei settled between them with the weight of testimony. Even the hearth’s crackle sounded like punctuation against it.
Watari’s brush slowed. He drew one last line to complete the edge of a table in the painting, as though he refused to leave anything unfinished when speaking of old campaigns. Then he exhaled. “Who knows what goes through my mother’s head.” His tone held no resentment. Only acceptance. “I gave up long ago trying to unravel that enigma. She was my mother. She was also her own storm.” He looked up, eyes steady.
“If I had to wager, I would guess this. Sukegei is useful. Vulgarity is loud. Usefulness is quieter.” His gaze returned to the board, and he placed a small touch of light on a tankard’s rim, making it gleam. A mundane mercy. “Back then we needed swords more than we needed morality. Those days were dark. I hope they are behind us.” He let a beat pass. Then he lifted his eyes to her again, and his voice took on a practical attentiveness, as if he were meeting her on her own ground without turning it into a contest. “Speaking of what is not behind us.” He held the brush poised, ready to paint, ready to listen. “How is your investigation coming along?”
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