▼ Zekiel

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ These Words Are My Own ▼

“Star-board.”

“Starboard,” Marleya repeated. “In inner city folk terms, the right side of your vessel, aye? Don’t miss a spot now.”

Zekiel bent forward, knees bent beneath him as he stretched out, scrubbing a sudsy brush up the tough, dry stretch of an old sail stretched out on the floor and caked with sea salt and dust. “Star board vesssssel. El, ves, selvessel, vessessess…I like it. I want one, two, three, four, five…” He nibbled at his lower lip, and then stuck his tongue out over it in thought as he scrubbed at a particularly stubborn patch of brown. “Five, five, five, five…siiiiiix…”

Marleya’s calloused fingertip pushed her needle through the sail in her lap—cleaner, smaller, and in need of more fine tuned work than could be trusted to a child. “Do you know that’s how old you are?”

“Five.” Ze’s eyes snapped to her, wide with interest, and he beamed, beginning to bounce from his crouch as he scrubbed. “Five, five, five—”

“Five what, now?”

“Vesssssselss.”

“Years.” Marleya snipped the thread short with her teeth, and fastened a tiny, tight knot before moving to the next area in need of stitching. “You are five years old.”

“Five vessessess…els. Five year vessel…”

“Zekiel.”

He glanced up.

“Go fetch an old woman some water, mm? Sewing is thirsty work.”

After the half-second it took to nod fervently, Ze popped up, on his feet in a moment and darting across the wet sail, over the floorboards of the workroom, and into kitchen of Marleya’s adjoining home. It took standing on tip-toes, but the task was familiar, and he managed it quickly enough, filling a cup at the sink and then darting back in. Small, hasty bare feet on a slick, soaped sail, however, proved to be more treacherous than he bargained for, and as his steps lost traction, a peeped, halting yip escaped him, and he thudded down, bashing his elbow in a futile attempt to keep the cup from escaping him.

“Oh, gods, boy—”

With heat swimming for his cheeks, he scurried forward, wholly ignoring the red trickle down his arm as he retrieved the cup, and hastened immediately back towards the kitchen to refill it. Marleya’s call went temporarily unheard over the thundering in his ears, and when he returned, it was only just slowly enough to avoid the same error, the glass full. He held it out to her.

“Boy…”

“It’s better now, I put more water in it, I didn’t mean to put water on your floor, is it enough? I can get more, there’s lots of water in the kitchen and it’s all very wet—”

Marleya tisked, puffing to shush him and then reaching for his bashed elbow as she took the water. “You’ve busted yourself up a good one now haven’t you? Oish…look at this…”

“Yes, Miss Marleya, I’m looking,” Ze said. “The skin broke. Like a bad sail on a vessel. And the rain got through. But it’s red. Like the sun when it’s tired before bed. And rain isn’t red. I didn’t mean to break it…”

He watched, holding very still as her fingers moved up his arm, touching gingerly. At length, she seemed satisfied. “Well. It seems the gods have spared you this time, too, nothing more than the skin is broken, though you’ll have a right nasty bit of a bruise.”

“Will it color like the sky after the sun goes to bed?”

After shooting him a pinched, quizzical look, Marleya pursed her lips, and waved him off. “Go wash it. Carefully—” she interjected the moment his small body bounced to turn and run back towards the kitchen, “—and then if it doesn’t hurt terribly, I’ll wrap it in something clean and you can be back as you w…”

A curt tapping at the door interrupted her. Ze, already to the threshold of the kitchen, paused, bare toes curling against the hardwood as he eyed the source of the noise. When he glanced to her, Marleya hesitated, and then began to move the folded sail off of her lap, notching her head at him as she did.

“Go on then. On with you. Clean it. It’s my door, I’ll answer it.”

Zekiel would never know exactly what was said between Marleya Taler and the representatives from the Sanctum that came for him that day. It wasn’t the first time strangers had come, and after the last, Marleya had told him that if they returned, it would be the gods’ blessing onto him. Jevan seemed to think it would be a blessing, too, but of a different sort. Marleya had never told him, but somehow, word had gotten around between the huts. Those people had been by, from the capitol. They’d spoken with Jevan’s boy. Yes, that one, who’d killed the Osgrey woman on his way into the world.

Ze sprinkled water at his elbow, watching the way the blood ran and then washing again. Down, down it trickled along his skin and he thumbed at it. It was just a quick little mistake, that was all. The strangers didn’t understand yet that he wasn’t good or special, but that was alright. It was nice to meet new people, after all. He did like to speak with them and everyone else, and that all seemed pleasant enough that it didn’t matter that they wouldn’t stay. It would be wonderful while they were here, and after, there would be other things to do. Like clean sails.

Except they didn’t leave without him.

After speaking with Marleya, one of the strangers came for him, and they spoke with him for longer than he thought he’d ever spoken with anyone, but that was wonderful because he got to use almost as many words as he knew and many of them he got to say a good many times. She asked him if it would make him sad to leave his home, and he told her that nothing would make him sad, because all the huts and all the fish and all the winds would still be here and continue standing and swimming and blowing even if he went to a different place, and the sun would still go to bed at night, and all those things were wonderful.

She asked him if he would like to learn to read, and though many things were exciting, nothing had ever sounded quite so exciting as this.

She asked him if he would miss his father.

“I think,” Zekiel said, “Jevan would be very happy if you took me far away. And I would like to make him happy…”

Result: Zekiel is adopted to the Sanctum in his first step to becoming a priest.
Cast: Marleya, Zekiel, Jevan || Word Count: 1,126

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Everything Is Blue ▼

Warrek came from the capitol. A high city boy whose parents were Jaran and Elras Traever. He had six older sisters, two of which had been taken to the Sanctum before him. His family was god-touched, especially blessed to have so many who had a deeper connection to the heavens. His grandmother, too, had been a priestess in her time before her passing. Warrek was the first male ever to be taken in their line.

This, of course, only made him all the more unique and gifted.

He spoke of his room, often. The room he had in the city before he was taken. The one his parents made for him, and all the things in it. All of them were blue, he said. Blue rugs, plush underfoot and always soft. Hanging blue curtains thick and embroidered, dark blue as the night for the body and silk, but decorated with paler blue threads that made intricate, repeating patterns up the sides, and inner lace ice blue so pale you might think they were white if you failed to look close enough—because some people were like that, Warrek would say. Some people simply did not notice things or look closely enough, but of course he looked and he noticed. He knew. They had to be blue, and he told his parents so, so they were.

He also had blue sheets and blue pillows, blue pants and shirts and stockings, and dyed blue leather shoes and toys. He ate colored rice and porridge, berries, and the juice that came from them.

Zekiel thought it was all very wondrous. That Warrek could have so many blue things. That his parents would give him so many and that it pleased Warrek to have them when he did. Warrek was the only one of them whose sheets were not white, green, and beige in the temple style. The sheets that hung from his cot were not the same as those in the room he came from, and Warrek often reminded Ze of this fact when they sat into bed for evening reading in their adjoining cots, but they would have to do.

Sometimes, if Zekiel had happened to recently engage him in pleasing conversation and Warrek’s mood was right and his blue sheets were of a shade that put him in a mind for it, Warrek would share one or two of the small sweets that came packaged in intricate boxes for Warrek from his parents in a bi-weekly delivery.

Those were always especially good days.

Result: Zekiel meets Warrek.
Cast: Zekiel, Warrek || Word Count: 462

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ His Hair, His Smoke, His Dreams ▼

Azlas needed his hair to be exactly eleven and seven sixteenths of an inch long. Always.

He measured it every morning with small ruler the width of two fingernails and the length of six inches, and he kept it with him always. If the day progressed strangely, or anything occurred to stir him into anxiety, he would re-measure it then and there to reassure himself that he had done it correctly and hadn’t cast the day out of alignment. When it became too long, he took tiny, silver scissors to it with such care and precision that it might consume a good portion of the day.

No one could touch his hair. No one could touch his scissors. No one could touch his ruler.

All of these things were exactly as they ought to be, and only his fingers knew what to do with them, and the consequences of anything else were so drastic, his panic at the thought would send him into enough disarray and distress that he could no longer voice how terrible it would be. Zekiel promised him on their first day of meeting that he would never touch them. Each morning, when Azlas sat two feet and eleven inches from the foot of his cot with both his feet hanging perfectly even over the edge of it, Azlas would unwrap his measuring stick and set out his scissors and have Zekiel reaffirm his promise.

He always did, and this seemed to please Azlas, which in turn pleased Zekiel, and if it pleased him enough, and if Azlas was in an especially good mood, they might sit together, Azlas on his cot and Zekiel on his own, watching as the other boy carefully drew small sections of his hair out and applied his measurements to them. Immediately after, the measurements were recorded in neat, fine print on his notebook.

If all was well and the measurements were what they needed to be, they might even begin their day together.

Those were always, in Zekiel’s opinion, especially good days.

Result: Zekiel meets Azlas.
Cast: Zekiel, Azlas || Word Count: 349

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Your Little Brother Never Tells You ▼
[ But He Loves You So ]

Rekal’s brother, Nithan, had been seven years old at the time Rekal was chosen by the Sanctum, one year and seven minutes younger than he. They had grown up together, played together, told stories and ran the long stretches of Yaeli’s soil on the outskirts of Ilidan, close enough to the sea that on good mornings, their father and mother would walk with them to watch the sunrise so that it would bless their day, and their two children could chase each other along the dark sand. Rekal had never said it himself, because he had not spoken a word inside the Sanctum, but Zekiel heard from the others that Rekal’s father fought it when he was chosen and that his mother cried. They said the heavens saw their happiness and became jealous that anything could be so good, so the gods took a child from them.

Neither Rekal, nor Nithan had spoken since the separation.

Just the same, Zekiel thought that Rekal was a good and special boy. He slept in the cot fitted against the wall opposite to Zekiel’s in the room they shared with six others including Warrek and Azlas.

Rekal wrote especially beautifully.

He wrote of everything that he considered worthy of being put to paper, and would fill journals with coiling, precise but intricate letters that looked more to Zekiel like art than words, but they were words, and it was such a beautiful thing to do to words that Ze would sometimes feel something almost akin to envy, that Rekal could honor words in this way as he pleased. When Zekiel struggled with his letter studies, for his education was ‘behind’ according to the priests and priestesses handling their early scholastic endeavors, Rekal would sometimes take an evening to sit with him and help him shape his words.

Zekiel’s were never so good, special, or beautiful as the ones Rekal wrote. The other boy didn’t need to speak to say it, and of course he never did, but Ze knew it. This did not make it any less pleasant, and Zekiel found that soon, little by little, his progress before their teachers improved. Even after they did, Rekal did not object to time spent together writing, and so they continued that tradition when the moment seemed right for it, settling together on Rekal’s cot—for he, unlike the others, did not mind it—and taking ink to paper together.

Those were always especially good days.

Result: Zekiel meets Rekal.
Cast: Zekiel, Rekal, Nithan || Word Count: 422

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Dafiel's Lament ▼
[ A Daughter of the Land Forgotten ]

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel has a wondrous experience with Seziah.

Word Count: - || Posts: -

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ All Things Great And Small ▼

“Ask of the gods anything you please. All persons high and low, rich and poor, of any station in life have this right and freedom…” Father Nyrris spoke a voluminous, if wandering tone, but his words filled the room, dominating the space. From the pews, Zekiel listened. “But be bitter not. Whether they choose to answer or withhold themselves is beyond the purview of mortal minds, and we all may trust that regardless of the decisions laid down to us from above, it is this world, and the path we walk each moment, that is right and was chosen for us.”

In the pause that followed, there was a soft murmur and then round of quiet clapping as it became clear this was his sermon’s closing. As the commemoration died down, Father Nyrris gave a nodded bow of his head, thanking attendees and blessing their exit. When he stepped down from the lectern, the city people around Zekiel stirred, rising from their seats, gathering their things and speaking amongst themselves.

After lessons and between chores or other various tasks assigned to the trainees of the Sanctum, all prentices — as well as new young ones and fresh acolytes for that matter — were encouraged to sit in on the public sermons given to the people of Yael within the temple walls. After all, though not all of them would be suited to or even interested in personally administering such speeches in their future, many would, and for the others, it was still a valuable lesson in the ways of the gods and their message to the people. A lesson ever in need of refreshing, as their tutors would oft repeat.

“Well. It’s over.” One, two, three times Edeline ran her hands over the front of her robe skirts, dusting them. She stood, drew a breath, sat, stood, sat, and stood once more before glancing to Zekiel. “What will you be doing next?”

Ze stood.

Edeline had accompanied him to lecture, as she did on occasion now that Zekiel sometimes studied under Sister Mortrem, who Edeline frequently shadowed herself. The day was just over half through, the sun tipping into its downward path toward the horizon. Warrek wanted Zekiel to check once more if any packages had arrived for him, Rekal was near out of ink in the stopper by his bedside table, and Ze had yet to complete his evening assignments. But.

“I might help you, if you’re going to be about?” Ze asked.

Edeline took a moment, then nodded thrice. “Sister Mortrem requires mouroot and palsamar for an ointment. I need to go to market and fetch her them for the house of dying. I don’t like the market alone. It’s unkind to girls, you know.”

“Then I will walk with you and you won’t be alone, and we may like the market together.”

Edeline lead the way. After passing the threshold of the Sanctum, retreating, and stepping through twice more, they were off.

Zekiel did love traveling to market—and through the city in any way he could, for that matter. Travel meant bustling activity, new sights — for it was never the same thing twice — and words exchanged all around. Edeline also made for a good conversation partner. Not three minutes in, she was already well under way.

“When I found the small thing, you understand, it hadn’t a left eye. It reeked of death from a stone throw away. I thought to myself for certain it couldn’t be naught but a handful of carcass when I got to it. But I said to myself, ‘That creature, that was a creature made of our gods, and it deserves the earth over it just as any other creature of the gods.’ And, left as it were, the smell might have killed something else for all I knew. And I couldn’t be having that. So, I took to it. I went to consider how to bury it, and it jerked. You understand, I thought at first it was a muscle pull. The dead do that, sometimes, just as they s**t themselves. But that wasn’t it. It made a sound. You couldn’t imagine how pitiful if you tried. It was as though you took the smallest being you could imagine and it began to…” Edeline ‘demonstrated,’ throat convulsing with muted, keening garbles, and Zekiel stared, openly at first, and then with more delighted amusement.

“It sounds very excited.”

“It was dying,” Edeline explained without missing a beat. “But I took it to me, and I cleaned it, and Sister Mortrem said it wouldn’t last a night before passing to the gods. But you understand, Sister Mortrem thinks everything is on the footstep of climbing to the next world. It’s what she does, so she thinks it. But I told her, I said that I would care for it, you understand, and I did as I said. I cleaned it, watered it and in days had it to a state you wouldn’t know looking at it had close it came to leaving the world…”

Because once she got to speaking it pleased Edeline to talk at length, Zekiel listened, following along as they made their way further from the Sanctum through the market and to the physician shop Sister Mortrem preferred. Were the trip any further out, an escort might have been required of them, and they never would have been permitted to travel so far alone after first being admitted. Now, however, with both of them being prentices and certain tasks sometimes being assigned to them which required some travel, the restrictions were at least marginally more lax.

Zekiel enjoyed it. It meant they could be out in the world.

After fetching the ingredients needed, Edeline took the lead again, winding them back towards one of the residential sectors, and to a small house Zekiel had never been to. The door, though, was open, and from within Sister Mortrem’s voice was familiar. The other speakers were not. When Edeline stepped in, Ze followed, his gaze trailing from the door, in to the shadowy interior, skimming the sparse room — naked brown walls, carpetless floor and stiff wooden chair in the corner. It smelled of tobacco smoke, cheese, and old liquor.

“—three days, but I felt her kick within me, I felt her…” A woman’s voice joined after Sister Mortrem, strained and brittle at the edges, and faintly rasping as though she were short of breath.

Sounds of shuffling and scuffed movement followed, and when Zekiel made it into the room, he felt distinctly that the gods were present, or had been recently. A hanging weight permeated the air, and whatever child was in the woman’s belly had either already been carried from the world, or would be soon. Upon spotting Edeline, Sister Mortrem beckoned her over. From his vantage point, Zekiel watched.

It was an odd, if not unfamiliar ritual. To him, such moments felt especially rich with meaning. In coming into the world and leaving it, mortals were as close to the gods as they would ever be, stepping across the threshold separating their own world from those beyond and, in the case of death, passing into the waiting embrace and security of the afterlife. It seemed exciting to him. Uplifting. Inspiring.

He had learned at funerals that most did not share in his enthusiasm in this regard.

Parting rituals were not as welcomed as births despite both being equally necessary for balance, and over the years, experience had taught Zekiel to tame his more jovial attitude when it came to giving his blessings to those who had experienced or were experiencing loss. Often, it meant he would simply keep his words to himself. In this case, as murmurs passed between Sister Mortrem, Edeline, and her patient, small exchanges soon petering into full quiet, Zekiel felt it was one of those times.

Then came the screaming.

Sister Mortrem handled most of it, guiding the woman through her fits and instructing Edeline where necessary. When the screaming ended, however, an eerie, strangling silence filled the corners of the room. Then:

“Zekiel.”

Over the rise of quiet, questioning sobs, Ze stepped forward, paying as little mind to the, “No, no…no, please, she can’t be—” as he could, and taking the small, still bundle that Sister Mortrem passed to him when he arrived at her side.

“Take it out back,” she instructed. “There is a spade by the far wall on the east side. Find a clean space and guide the spirit to the gods.”

“No, please, let me see—”

In Zekiel’s moment of hesitation, Sister Motrem gave a single stiff shake of the head, and Zekiel spared the other woman a parting glance before setting out as ordered. As he left the confines of the house, the outside air was fresher, but thick and misty, a damp, summer drizzle of a rain trickling from the sky. After finding the spoken of spade and a workable location, Zekiel set his bundle down carefully, and knelt to work.

“Do you know,” he began conversationally, but quietly enough that his voice wouldn’t carry far, “I came into the world much as you did. Instead of me, the birth took my mother, so I never met with her in this realm. She’s met the gods as you will, though, I know it. You may even find her before I do. Wouldn’t that be a peculiar sort of wondrous? And one day, you will meet your mother, too, when she follows you, as I will meet mine. It’s part of all. And everything the gods create is wondrous in time, it only takes longer for some to see at first. But that’s alright also. They will when it is time for them to, and it will be all the more wonderful for them when they do. But you won’t worry for any of it. The gods found you so special, they wanted you with them before even sharing you with this world. I think it’s a special honor…though this world is beautiful, too. One day if I remember it, I may find a way to tell you of it.”

And so he went. And when the hole was large enough to fill its purpose, he settled his delivery within it. Soft footsteps padded by damp soil approached through the rain, arriving at his back just as he finished.

“It is not always as glorious as some imagine the gods’ work to be, is it?”

Zekiel touched his hands to the soil, gently evening it over the small grave. “It is all glorious to me, Sister.”

“Is this what you wish to do with your life?”

Zekiel gave pause, watching as raindrops plucked at the loose earth in their descent. “To bury the small dead?”

“To do all the gods’ work, great and small. Glorious and inglorious. In the halls of their temples, and in the mud that our people live and build their homes on. Not every child taken into the Sanctum takes the robes and title. Some…find that they are better suited to a different path.”

After dusting his thumb over a single, whetted black pebble, Ze stood. “If I should be worthy of anything, I would pray that it is to serve and please the gods and all that they create in every way they find me capable from this breath until my last breath.” Turning, he faced Sister Mortrem and found her eyes on him, transfixed on him as they had been the day he’d been taken for the Sanctum. “I have and will never want any more than this.”

A silence stretched between them, broken only by the tittering rain and the wind that skirted through it. Then, she notched her head.

“Come. Get yourself out of the wet. There is more to be done today.”

Result: Zekiel speaks with Edeline about beasts, and with Sister Mortrem about the path of service to the gods.
Cast: Zekiel, Edeline, Sister Mortrem, Father Nyrris || Word Count: 1,987

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ To Each Their Station ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel travels out of the Sanctum and engages with a city guard along the way.

Word Count: 2,784 || Posts: 13

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Multitasking in the Rain ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel encounters Malta and a beast none too pleased to see him.

Word Count: - || Posts: -

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Dusty Shelves Make For Dusty Minds ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel gets some study help from Fallon.

Word Count: 2,378 || Posts: 11

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Not Long For This World ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel is tasked with giving blessings to patients at a local medical facility, shadowing in the footsteps of one of the healers-in-training there, Tacrith.

Word Count: 2,809 || Posts: 10

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Everything Is Blue ▼
[ Reprise ]

“Do you like it?”

Zekiel stood in the doorway to Warrek’s new single room, his arms looped under a stack of three boxes, none of which were light, and all of which seemed determined to overspill from his arms onto the floor at any given moment provided the slightest excuse. Though he couldn’t see from his vantage point, Ze knew Warrek stood several steps ahead of him, the heels of his boots clicking the hardwood when he moved further in. Ze attempted to peer around his burden to see the room—with limited success.

“Ahh…it’s—” As his load shifted, Ze muffled a yip of a sound against the cardboard, bracing it with his forehead and rebalancing. “It’s wondrous,” he said. “Or I’m, I am sure it is—”

“Oh. Do put those down. Over here, on the left, by the dresser.”

Keeping careful hold on his balance, Zekiel moved as instructed, and almost made it to where Warrek had initially indicated when—

“No, wait. Stop.”

Ze stopped.

“Here, to the far side, near the window.”

Zekiel moved, stepping carefully past the bed and into the light by the window.

“No, wait…”

Zekiel waited, fingers stinging under the weight of the boxes in the pause that ensued. It felt like half an eternity, sun lighting up and warming his left shoulder where it spilled through the window and nose pressed to the cardboard. Finally, Warrek laughed.

“I am only joking with you, Zekiel. Put them back where I said initially, then. On the left. By the dresser. And set them gently. I have a vase in there that Mother had shipped from across the sea. We had it checked for curses and blessed, don’t worry, but if you knew how much it cost to deal business with those black-blooded foreign spooks, you’d know why I say to watch your hands.”

Zekiel breathed out, tucking a small smile to the box and moving again.

“When you’ve set it, come here. I’m going to show you something.”

This time, at least, Warrek did let him set the weight down, which Zekiel managed with as much care as he could before rubbing his friction-burned fingers and stepping over as told to Warrek’s side. His eyes moved about the room as he did. It was all Warrek’s, now, a recognition of his advancement, in accordance with his choice to continue on the path to priesthood and coming with the passing of his eighteenth birth year. Much in it was already blue. The lace that hung from the inner lining of the curtains; the curtains themselves a deeper, richer shade; the lampshade was a soft majorelle, and the sheets a dark prussian.

When Zekiel had first been adopted to the Sanctum and moved into the temple, he had roomed in a long hall lined with twelve beds, six to each side, all younglings. When he graduated to prenticehood and began his more serious tutelage in earnest, Warrek had been among the three other boys who shared their starting room, which they had shared throughout prenticehood together. In the beginning, especially, Warrek had delighted and indulged at length in explaining all that he had left behind in his room in the city. Everything blue, in all the best shades.

Warrek’s tastes had not changed, and if he could not dress in it, eat in it, sleep on it, and see it, there was something wrong in his world and he refused to proceed. Any room which did not have a single article or item of blue in it could not be entered until the dilemma was remedied. For this purpose, he often carried about a small satchel of fine powder when he travelled so that he could pinch a tiny portion and dust the threshold of an offending room with a faint scattering of it in order to continue in.

“I have something for you.”

When Warrek gestured, Zekiel sat, perching at the edge of Warrek’s mattress and looking up to the other as he pulled out a small box.

“But first, this.” Plucking a sweet from the box Warrek held it out, pausing with a short tisk of, ‘ah!’ when Ze reached for it himself. Zekiel dropped his hand. “Open your mouth.” After Ze obediently caught the sweet between his teeth, Warrek dusted off the tips of his gloves. “I was thinking…I very much enjoy having this space to myself. It was quite an adjustment not to have a space that was mine when I was taken in. I do like having things that are mine. You will have to show me where they assign your room when your nameday is recognized and you follow me to acolyte. Until then and even after then, I suppose…we will be spending greater periods apart. That can put strain on a friendship.”

Zekiel blinked, having been tonguing the sweet about in his mouth and enjoying the flavor until those words. “I will still be about,” Zekiel said. “We will—”

“Don’t speak with your mouth full.”

Zekiel closed his.

“Now. As I was saying…we will be spending more time apart, though of course we will still see each other. Still, since you are going to be out and about…frollicking, or whatever it is you do, I thought it better you have something to remind you to come see me from time to time as the opportunities arise. Of course I will not always have time for you either, but…”

Tap, tap, tap, Warrek’s bootheels clicked the floor as he moved over to the boxes of stacked belongings Zekiel had carried in for him. He picked through them, plucking and setting aside items one by one until he came upon what he was looking for and returned. It was not a sweet box, though it was wooden, squared off and hinged. From it, he pulled a single ribbon of cloth that caught the light on one edge as it hung from his fingers. Zekiel couldn’t have said what exactly the shade or hue of it was called, only that he knew instantly upon seeing it that this particular blue was reserved for special things. All the shades seemed to suit different moods or purposes for Warrek and Ze had never figured them all out, but this hue was recurrent and specific.

“This,” Warrek said, “is the best that there is. Of course all the other varieties have their use and place and it couldn’t be everywhere or it would not be what it is, but…” He ran his thumb up the smooth side of it, lingering on it a moment before holding it out to Zekiel. “Wear it in your hair.”

Zekiel blinked, but took it.

“Tied or in a braid, I don’t care so long as it’s visible. You never wear the right colors and perhaps that will make partly up for it.” Warrek waited, watching as Zekiel inspected the strip of cloth with intrigue. He tapped his foot once. “Well?”

“Oh,” Ze said, a swell of heat dusting his cheeks even as his expression stretched to a beaming smile and he hopped upward, catching Warrek in an all-encompassing hug. If the older boy immediately stiffened and puffed with startlement, the reaction was lost on Zekiel. “It is wondrous and beautiful, I will wear it alw—”

“Don’t speak with your mouth fu—”

Zekiel clapped his mouth shut, pulling back and flushing but still beaming, eyes alight with enthusiasm. He sat, perching back to the mattress’ edge and fiddling to braid the ribbon as requested into a portion of his hair. It was quick, messy work, his fingers excited and not quite positive what they were doing to begin with. If in the end it was a bit of a loose wreck, Zekiel was none the wiser.

Warrek, however, stared. Eyed it. Held himself still for all of six seconds—and then gave a crisp shake of the head, reaching and unfastening the work himself without a word. Zekiel held himself still, waiting while Warrek rebraided it: slowly, and with precision, each strand folded as though being placed into a pattern and the ribbon strung among it so that it was always flat and ran with the hair. When he finished, he fastened it.

Zekiel’s smile hadn’t dipped. “It does look better when you do it.”

“Yes it does.” Warrek sat back, studying his handiwork for a moment before giving a contained, satisfied smile himself. “It looks very good. I quite like it just like that. Now…there is one other thing I would like to try with you.”

“Mm—mmhm?” Zekiel, already lost to the distraction of fingering over the new braid himself and inspecting it with pleasure, glanced up at the inquiry. “Anything you like, what is it?”

The mattress dipped at his side with Warrek’s weight. When Warrek reached for his wrist, guiding it over to him, Zekiel let him, watching with curious interest as the other boy unfastened the low buttons there and pushed up some of his sleeve to expose skin up to his elbow. “You have especially pale skin…much paler than mine, and most everyone’s. Do you know some people consider the skin a canvas? They’ll mark it up in all sorts of ways. With ink, or with other things…but everything shows best on paler skin, not like mine. My mother, though, she had pale skin. Not so much so as yours, but…”

Zekiel blinked, silver eyes following Warrek’s fingers as they looped around his hand, just above the wrist—and then began to press. He gave a startled, instinctive twitch to pull away when the pressure became enough to hurt, but Warrek’s grip latched tighter, anchoring him.

“Ah—”

“You mustn’t pull away yet. Sometimes, when my father and mother disagreed you see, afterward her skin would darken in places. If you press just the right amount…”

Zekiel caught his bottom lip between his teeth, holding himself still despite the hurt and the sting that it brought to his eyes. When Warrek’s grip abruptly released him, his breath came in a rushing gasp and he blinked the sting away, fingers moving to touch gingerly where Warrek’s had been, but pulling away when that only inspired further hurt.

“Well.” Warrek’s eyes flicked over where he’d touched, then away. “You may cover it again. For now it will only be an ugly red and no one needs to see that. We will not know if the color comes out properly until tomorrow or later. In the meanwhile, you may go.” He stood, dusting over the front of his vest while Zekiel pulled back at his sleeve, obediently adjusting it into place and refastening the buttons as they had been. “I do expect to see you about though, Zekiel. It would please me.”

Zekiel felt a strange, uncertain heat move into his cheeks, conflicting with the tightness in his gut. Usually it only ever pleased him to please others in his life, but in this moment…

He tucked the thought away, ushering it beneath layers of other thoughts and nodding as he too stood.

“And Zekiel…” When Warrek’s hand caught his shoulder, Ze tensed before higher instincts kicked in, and he forced himself to relax. Warrek’s gaze was on his now-covered wrist. “If it does come out well, or even if not, those are my marks, do you understand? Ours. No one else’s. No one else should be able to see them. It would displease me a great deal if they did.”

Zekiel hesitated only a moment before nodding and smiling, though there was a certain fragment which didn’t seem to make it to his eyes. “Of course. I understand.”

“Good.”

And Warrek permitted him to leave. And Zekiel went.

After the day ran its course, night fell, and morning came again. Zekiel woke in his own space, cognizant always of the throbbing soreness that reared its head anew if he were clumsy enough to bump or press anything to his wrist, and when he rose from his sheets and looked, a strange chillness settled in the pit of his stomach. In all the places Warrek’s fingers had clasped and pressed hard to his skin, darkened, blue-purple imprints had begun to form.

Warrek would be pleased.

Zekiel, for once in his life, was not entirely sure this pleased him in turn.

Word Count: 2,079

Quote:

Zekiel is a compulsive people-pleaser, tending generally to allow himself to be 'walked all over' in order to fulfill the whims of those around him and while this might be distressing to others, to Zekiel it has never been a real issue before. So long as what he does pleases someone, it pleases him and he feels that he is fulfilling his role as a vessel through which the gods may work their will in making the world a better place. This solo is meant both to highlight and develop the extent of that portion of his character, while also challenging it in Ze's perspective. He must eventually learn that a) he cannot please everyone, and b) sometimes people do not want good things and that however difficult it may be, he must sometimes take his own personal choice into account when deciding who to follow and what he is willing to do. Sometimes fulfilling the gods' will is not as simple as doing what everyone says they want. He has not learned this lesson here, of course, since it is a major lesson which will take a long time to swallow and sink in, but it is being introduced here, and forcing Ze to at least begin grappling with the concept - the first step in a long arch of development for him.

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Upon The Sanctum's Steps ▼

PRP: Link
Result: The gods bring Zekiel a task from across the dark sea in the form of a broken body delivered to the church's doorstep.

Word Count: 6,607 || Posts: 18

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ Come All Ye Faithful ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Worshipers come in many forms and dawn brings interesting visitors.

Word Count: 817 || Posts: 2

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

▼ A Playdate With Prose ▼

PRP: Link
Result: Zekiel brings Ottolo some entertainment, and they discuss words.

Word Count: 2,623 || Posts: 10