[PRP Sauti] Things Left Abandoned [Aki/Cal]

[Fluffesu]

Painted Moose

They’d all left him.

Akiyal had known they would, of course. That had been the plan. They’d told him they would. His aunt, Ahdaia had claimed that she’d fulfilled the duty that had called her here. Her brother and his child were safe and had managed to find each other and no one was offended at her, so she was free to return home to her own life and family feeling accomplished and content. That was fine. Aki didn’t much care for the estranged relatives he’d only had chance to meet once in his entire life. She could leave whenever it pleased her or sooner than that, even. Besides, she was a Fire woman, and Akiyal didn’t trust any of his father’s race or relatives.

Really, he could only stand to be surprised that Xilarn did trust this woman enough to let her into his home, for all the s**t Xil had talked of them over the years. It wasn’t surprising Aki didn’t trust, know, or like any of them, since all he had to go off was his own father’s negativity. So if she wanted to bugger off out of his way, that was fine.

He was slightly more offended that Xilarn had also departed.

Seperate from Ahdaia, but away nonetheless. With another Fire boy with a nice a** who was scarcely older than Akiyal was himself. There was surely something not right about that. Akiyal had always feared that his daddy would replace him with someone Xilarn considered to be ‘better,’ more like him or actually born of his blood or… Or something like that. It was difficult to explain but certainly unpleasant. And though it would have been difficult to classify Damissan as a replacement son (on the grounds that Akiyal wasn’t entirely stupid and knew there was other screwy hanky-panky about), whatever they were was equally dissatisfactory.

They’d left together to return to Oba and no one had mentioned anything about ‘coming back’ to Sauti. To their home. Where they lived. And now he was alone, in his own home, and miffed about it.

Well, perhaps not entirely alone.

Akiyal flopped his head back over the end of the couch and peered through critical icy-colored eyes at the man nearest to him. For whatever reason, he had convinced Callum to travel to Kesris with him. He thought the guy would’ve put up more of a fight or maybe had his own life that needed tending to such that he couldn’t stay at Akiyal’s side for as long as he had, but that didn’t seem to be the case? Akiyal didn’t really understand. And wasn’t especially of any mind to try to. But even after the awkward and surely unpleasant confrontation with his old man, Cal was still there. So at least they were alone together.

“Man,” Aki groused, rolling from the couch to flop to the floor on his stomach. “This is lame. I shouldn’t have bothered coming back here if I knew everyone was gonna just ditch at the first opportunity…” He huffed, grunted, smeared his face against the wood floor.

It wasn’t really a fair thought… He’d been frightened enough by the dretch and their ways that it was a relief to have seen his family and know they were safe… But it felt like it hardly mattered if they were all just going to leave again. Aki wanted to assure himself that he wasn’t scared. Nothing would happen to him if he also wanted to leave, but… Why press it? He’d traveled, and it had turned out that there wasn’t much different to do away from home as there was to do near it.

Just different people to experience it with. And Callum was here now.

“Hey, where do you live, anyway?” Aki prompted, propping himself up on an elbow. “You must not like it very much if you’re here. Is it not very exciting? Not that here is, I suppose… Kesris is so small…”  

[Painted Moose]

Fluffesu

Callum didn’t know why he was disappointed.

During the entirety of his time with Akiyal’s family he tried not to judge them based on the outline Callum had created with his own family. Scattered and eclectic as they were, Callum had always known the family to be ‘warm’ to one another. Surely Nimueh’s sisters wouldn’t have left their children on their own, should either one of them decide to walk away, whatever the reason. Akiyal was grown in the physical sense and while he could handle himself to a certain degree there was a fair amount of emotional vulnerability that made the windling...prickly, at best. Perhaps that's why he and his father got along so poorly; he’d seen several similarities between the two, enough to tell they needed to air things out, but again, Callum had tried not to intervene. His own relationship with his father was non-existent, and the one between he and his son was strained, at best. He’d remained as pleasant as he could during their time together, for Akiyal’s sake, but when all was said and done he’d expected to be on his own once again.

And yet, here he was, picking up where Xilarn left off.

Oban p***k.

Callum wasn’t stupid; he didn’t have to hear Akiyal say it to know the boy felt replaced. It was in his manners, his tone, the very flash in his eyes...It was a feeling Callum had felt more than a few times in his life, but while he internalized it all, turning it into something more ‘appealing’ to gain favor with his father, Akiyal chose to become stubborn.

It was as if Xilarn showed himself for the sole purpose of stirring the winds, and running before dealing with the aftermath.

Callum sat mulling the event while he cleaned his various bits of jewelry. Spread out on a brightly colored bit of cloth were his various piercings, rings, necklaces and bracelets, each in various stages of buffing. Nimbly he picked up one of his larger hoops and wrapped an oiled cloth around it’s gilded edges, scrubbing and polishing while his hoary eyes looked downward. It was so easy to focus on the simple ministrations that at first Callum didn’t notice Akiyal’s huffing and puffing, let alone what he was saying. His mind’s eye was still trained on the Oban a*****e who was probably halfway back to Oba by now and-

“Hrm?” He peered up, looking around a lock of white hair towards the younger man. “My husband’s family lives between Eia and Coeld, and we had a cabin on their land.” It was both an answer, and a rebuff, all at once. It had been the one place Callum had called ‘home’ for the longest period of time in his life, but not anymore. His son owned it now, though he seemed content enough to stay in Sauti. Callum turned his eyes back to his work. “I like it well enough here. It’s better than some of the other places I’ve stayed.” His thumb followed the curvature of his earring, buffing the gold until it gleamed and caught his eye. When he was satisfied Callum sat it off to the side and started on another.  

[Fluffesu]

Painted Moose

Eia and Coeld... Akiyal hummed softly in contemplation. He wasn't the most familiar with geography or the names of all the settlements, but he was pretty sure those were Zenan towns. The area between them was pretty one hundred and fifty miles much directly north of where they were now, as the kinfa flew, so certainly a distance on foot, but... Not really that far for someone with a mount like Faulina. The Windling watched the other man from over the couch's armrest and wondered why he bothered staying here with him at all when home wasn't impossibly far away...

And then he wondered why someone with very obvious southern Shifter blood would have a home so far north.

There were plenty of things about Callum he didn't understand, but Akiyal was familiar with grouchy southerners who retreated northward to escape whatever unpleasantness they'd endured in the past, so maybe it wasn't really that strange. Aki had already decided he wasn't much fond of the south either, but neither was it his native land. Maybe the world was just complicated. He decided to leave it at that.

Instead, he rolled from his perch on the couch and slithered across the floor to retrieve the polished bit of jewelry Callum had just finished with. Akiyal didn't wear much gold. Xilarn had always thought too much of it was gaudy, ostentatious, and girly, never mind that they'd never really been able to afford such things. Xilarn didn't generally wear jewelry, so Akiyal didn't wear jewelry, and that was all there was to it. He rolled one of Callum's bracelets between his fingers, then set it back on the cloth. The bright pink and purple cloth. Pink was girly too, something else Aki hadn't really been allowed to fully explore.

And yet... He squinted in Callum's direction. 'Girly' wasn't the first word he'd use to describe the other man. Though maybe not the last either, and 'manly' wasn't really at the top of the list... But he wasn't built like a girl, so that had to count for something.

Akiyal settled in at Callum's side, crossing his legs and fiddling with gold pieces as Cal finished polishing them. "So you kinda like 'ostentatious' stuff, huh?"  

[Painted Moose]

Fluffesu

Callum passively watched Akiyal pick up the jewelry out of his peripheral view with a soft little smile. He didn't seem like the type to wear too much of this kind of thing, so his interest was both surprising and also a little interesting. Watching the bracelet slip in and out of the younger man's fingers reminded him of the boys father; the man who exemplified what every 'masculine' man must dream to be. The man who very clearly could not have been less happy to have his son traveling with someone of Callum's ilk.

"If that means bright, then yeah, I do." He wasn't a very scholarly type, so the word itself sounded like a jumble of syllables. Akiyal may as well have spoken a different language, but the meaning was there, all the same. "It makes it easier for people to see you." With a little dab of polish, he re-oiled the cloth, and set about working on yet another earring. "I was pretty plain until I was around your age; I wore the same old clothes as any other nomad, and while the color changed when I moved to Jauhar the trend didn't. Plain, simple, traditional. The easier it was to blend in the better. "

He held the earring up in front of his limpid eyes, twisting it this way and that in the dim light to make sure he hadn't missed any spots. "I guess I reached a spot in my life where I didn't much care to be traditional anymore. I don't really belong to any nation, so why should I have to dress like them?"
 

[Fluffesu]

Painted Moose

'If that means bright...'

Akiyal squinted down at the shining jewelry and silky cloth that lay on the floor before him. 'Bright' was certainly a word to describe Callum't accessories. In a village where everything was either grey stone, brown earth, dim clouds, or sooty water, bright pinks and purples and blues were probably among the prettiest things one could hope to come across. Aki liked bright things, but they were something of a novelty. There wasn't a need for any fabric or jigglies like that in a working farming village, and when Aki had been small, there hadn't been much opportunity to go anywhere else. There hadn't been much opportunity to see anything but brown and grey and dim and sooty.

He'd always assumed ostentatious just sort of meant annoying and anything that drew too much attention to people trying to hunt or calm herd beasts was classified as pretty dang annoying. Even tavern girls just wore brown and orange and yellow, and orange was an ugly color. Orange was ostentatious.

But Aki didn't want to hunt or calm herd beasts. There wasn't much reason for him to find pretty pinks and blues annoying. "Mm, I guess I dunno what it means," he admitted. "But I like it, so I guess it don't really matter what you say about it beyond that."

"They had a bunch of stuff like this in Oba, though," he hummed. "All clinking coins and little sequins and bright colors. Made a whole show of just selling it, seems like." Maybe he couldn't precisely define what ostentatious meant, but he knew that whatever it was, Oba was definitely it. "I prolly don't care enough about clothes to go out of my way to buy weird stuff. Just gonna end up getting taken off at the end of the day, anyway."  

[Painted Moose]

Fluffesu

Callum lifted his little bottle of oil and tipped it into the cloth. Once it was sufficiently moistened he set it to the side, picked up the latest trinket and set about his work once more. There was nothing unique about his oils save for the scent; it was little more than decorative polishing oil, but the smell of light snow flowers never failed to calm him. They weren't flashy, nor were they particularly pretty to look at, but the scent was pleasant enough that most northerners had some form of it in their home. Candles, bath oils, perfumes...

Nothing like the ostentatious displays of Oba.

In his youth Callum had found the city of Sulburi to be one of the grandest in the world. He'd been suckered in by promising of coin, jewelry so bright it rivaled the stars, and fabric so rich in color that it was as if he were wearing the rainbow itself.

Oba had many things to offer, but they were never worth the price.

"I don't know about that." Callum passively smoothed his thumb around the circumference of his earring, and tossed a smile Akiyal's way. "Clothing is an extension of yourself, so I think if you wanted to try something new now is the time to do it. With eyes that bright I'm sure you could pull off any color you wanted."

Setting his freshly polished bauble to the side, Callum reached for a discarded scarf and held it up to Akiyal. The bit of cloth was incredibly pink; so light in the middle that it may as well be sheer, but dipped a deeper hue on the ends with just enough of a golden design to be fashionable. "Go find a mirror and tell me what you feel when you wear it. I'm sure this room has one."