RP:Caves, Healing, Secrets
Summary: Brennia heals a familiar face, but discovers a layer underneath "him".
Cove
The rising cliffs curve back inward just north of the barrier, forming a peaceful horseshoe shaped inlet cordoned off from the outside by rock and wave. The waters quietly pass the breaking jetty, rolling back and forth with gentle lapping movements that have smoothed and cooled the surrounding sands. Sparkles of light catch and dance delicately upon the tranquil sea as the breeze brings with it a salty mist. This calm relaxing spot makes this a favoured hideout for young lovers of all races...An immense crimson-sailed structure bobbing and swaying in the waters to the east appears to be a ship. At the end of the jetty is a tied ferry, anchored with a rope to a thick wooden pillar branded with a strange symbol. This is the only visible means of access to the vessel painting a silhouette on the horizon in the morning's light, though other moorings suggest smaller boats might be used now and then. The area seems to be a lot more busy than usual, without counting them; a fleet of ships appears to be settled on the horizon. They could merely be fishing ships, but something tells you they aren't, and if that is the case, you can almost guarantee that their long nines are trained on this position.
Reginae | Nicolau was on his way to Chartsend. He looked fresh from a battle, despite being dipped in a tank that housed jelly fish. His hair was matted with mud, his clothes thick with patches of ash as he washed his face and hands in the sea water. Water clung to his cheek bones and dangled from his chin as he studied the cave ceiling, his thoughts years and miles away. Alithrya was so close, and yet so far now. This was the last dash before this could all hopefully end. His black clothes are slightly tattered; small cuts line his jaw and arms. The scar that’s appeared since the last time Brennia’s seen him is swollen, red with stress. It runs through his left brow, the eyebrow hairs there gone with healing. He looks quite alive and equally exhausted. His hazel eyes are misted with distraction, lost in his mind.
Brennia was making good work today after finishing her errands for the Rogue’s guild and she finally got enough ingredients gathered to make more of her potions and tonics that keep her disguise up. She was sitting as far as she could in the cove on a blanket placed over a flat dry spot, but those marvelous large wings were somehow magick’d away via her repurposed enchanted ink… She still is quite taken aback how something that used to cause her so much headache turned out to be so much more, but some days she misses the ink pattern that used to cover her caramel skin. Sitting with her legs crossed under her while working quickly with an array of weird looking ingredients, most of them quite potent in colors. Brennia’s hair is shorter than when Nicholau last saw her and she even looked a little beaten up as well, but she’s been on the mend a week now so she will be fine. As soon as she heard someone enter she pulled her hood up and started to stow away her things in the deceptively small pouch she had, but when she stood and set teal hued eyes on the familiar man she whispered, “Nicolau?” Moving closer she let her hood drop while inspecting his condition, “what’s happened?” Immediately she starts sifting a hand through the small knapsack, pulling free a tin container of which housed what we would consider to be some sort of first aid kit.
Reginae | Nicolau looked up, water still speckling his face. He looks disheveled, caught off guard. Why didn’t he hear this woman. When she drops her hood, he steps back tensely, left hand reaching for one of the dual daggers in his belt. His rough fingers graze the handle before recognition starts to set in. Even without the wings and the tattoos, even with the shorter hair...Brennia’s eyes draw his attention. Some, but not all, of the tension sheds off his shoulders. The rogue’s wrist drags across his lips to dry the excess water and he gives her another look over just to be sure. Familiar but also very different. “You look...exactly like me right now.” His gruff voice chuckles mirthlessly. “What kind of trouble are you in?” He hasn’t tended to his wounds but keeps an eye on her hands and containers. Here she asks about what’s happened and he only shrugs. “Bad luck, mostly.” His frown deepens as he surveys her wounds.
Brennia remembers her time with him, but there is no security detail this time and it’s just them… There is no table between them while they share drinks in Schezerade Tavern while they share stories and she didn’t understand why she felt it was so easy to talk to Nicolau, but she was happy to see him even if her face didn’t really express it. Brennia had some faded cuts, one on her lip and some mild bruising although her wing was the thing giving her the most trouble. Patience. Her velvety alto timbre laced with a hint of a Veretian(French) accent, “I’ve been getting attacked by an underground group called the Flewminati and one of their members was running against me for Senator of Schezerade…” The slightest downturn to the corner of her lips, “as you can guess, I lost.” During this explanation she had opened the container and started to pull free sanitized tools, rags, and suture supplies. “No one left to protect me I have resorted to drifting from town to town under disguises.” She pulled free a clean rag and poured some sort of clear liquid on it, “do you need any wounds sewn closed?” She handed him a small vial, “this will help with any aches temporarily.” She raised the rag up, but before she started to clean up and dress his wounds she asks, “this might sting a little, may I?”
Reginae | Nicolau’s expression softens. Her situation is painfully close to Reginae’s, so it’s with complete and total honesty that he says “I know how terrifying that can be. Feeling like your home’s been taken away but a monsterous force.” A force that’s indifferent to your good intentions. “It’s dangerous out here…” He moved forward, replacing the step he lost before. His face is set in a stern line. There’s no joy to come from rolling up his sleeve to expose a long, jagged wound that had attempted (albeit poorly) to heal on it’s own. The fabric of his sleeve was loose enough to show peeks of it before he pulled it away. “All right.” He turns away then, waiting for the sting of ointment and burn of the needle that may cut through if she decided it needed sutures. The opposite hand continues to hold the sleeve back, up in the bend of his elbow. Dark, black hairs line the surface of his forearm. The patches nearby are matted with dried blood.
Brennia apologizes as she uses the scissors to cut the sleeve away, “I promise I’ll buy you a new shirt.” She gives a half smirk while picking free the matted and dried up patches in the wound. The avian sighs softly at their sad stories, “it is very much like that. A lot of my students and guild members are left without a home now.” This part she felt most guilty about and maybe her voiced cracked slightly when she finishes, “there are still some I must rescue who are stuck there. But I do not know how I will go about that seeing as I’ve been openly banned from the city,” She gently cleared her throat while working and asked, “so, who have you gotten into a fight with now?” As soon as she would get the rogue to start talking Brennia would softly hum a melody to help him relax and distract him from the pain of when she’s cleaning out the wound then begins the stitching of his wound shut. She’s volunteered enough in her long life to have picked up on healing basics though she is no pro and her stitch job will at least be better than what he’s got now. She ties off the stitch and cuts it before quickly telling him to, “deep breath and hold it,” she smoothed a gel like salve over his arm to help with the healing, but that would sting as well and then she quickly wraps his arm in a bandage snugly.
Reginae | Nicolau doesn’t put a fight against the spell or what she does with his arm. It feels strange, to let someone heal this body when she could easily hide the wounds. While she spoke he remains quiet, watching the waves wash in against the nearby shore. “What do you mean now?” He huffs with faux irritation. After he answers, he scuffs with annoyance. “I got into a scrap with some idiots trying to invade Chartsend…Speaking of which.” He holds his breath when she asks, left eye twitching with discomfort at the salve. “I think I owe you so forget the shirt.” When the bandaging is done, he’ll shift his hazel gaze to her. His eye soften briefly before mummering an honest “Thank you.” He takes his arm back and rolls his shoulder to test the arm. It’s still tender but it’ll do for travel. His fingers flex, he turns his palm over. “I could help you, save your people….if you can help me save mine.” He blinks casually and looks back into her teal eyes with more passion and grit that he normally shows. His lazy facade is just that.
Brennia half smirked again, “that fight with the large crustacean,” the one she had to judge. She adds with that soft smirk remaining, “I meant it when I said you fought well.” His mention of an attack brought her to look the Rogue straight in the eye, “did it have something to do with that Kahran?” She started to wash her hands and utensils in the water before replacing them into her kit. When he was offering to help her, a near stranger, she meets his gaze while tucking her short wavy hair behind a long pointed ear, “really?” A single nod as she agrees, “yes, of course. Let me know if there is anything I can do for you and your people,” then it took her a minute, “you consider nagas as your people?” It was a genuine curiosity as she still believes him to be some rogue human.
Reginae | Nicolau smiles ever so slightly at her remark about his fighting. It hadn’t been too bad of a fight, now that she thought about it. “Not that I know of…” It was embarrassing to confess her own sister had attacked the town. “It was the Naga ruler now. Jaize…” Easier to say without association. When she asks about the naga, he looks away. “Of course, they are...outcasts. Just like me. So I want to do whatever I can to help them. Most people look down on the naga and...that just makes it harder for them to survive. They aren’t harmless by any means but there is always good and evil. Well intentions and selfishly driven maniacs.” His voice has taken on a clear quality. The gruff undertone melts away, making him sound older, wiser. Here he flashes her a smile and reaches to take her hand once it’s empty of supplies. “So I understand your plight. Wanting to change the fate of those you care about but feeling powerless on your own. I’ll help you. It won’t be impossible, if we work together.”
Brennia seems to nearly grimace at the name with an eye roll, “yeah… -her-. She’s definitely no Reginae…” There was sadness in her tone, “it’s a shame I didn’t get a chance to see her in the after-” She cut herself off there and the rogue’s explanation of why he considers the naga his people, “I’ve never met a naga I didn’t like. One was even a student at one point… So I can respect that.” Her hand is taken and it’s a bittersweet moment because before death she would have definitely initiated the touch, but now she won't shy away from anyone being assertive that way even though it doesn’t quite make her all atwitter anymore. She firmly accepted his hand and gave it a gentle shake as to not aggravate the wound, “let us work together then, but the best thing for recovering from wounds is rest.” She glances back to where she had been seated and he could see a tent and the set up for a fire, “I was just about to warm up some vegetable soup with bread.” Making her way over she would motion for him to join and through the slits in her shirt he would see tattoos marking where her wings belong as it seems the shirt is made for such majestic things, “I’ve been making my way through Lithrydel to see for myself that all of the curses are gone. Mind sharing with me where you are headed?”
Reginae | Nicolau snorted, letting his sleeve fall back down over the bandage in tatters. “Afraid I don’t have much time to rest...someone’s life hangs in the balance but...I can’t run in there without some rest.” The rogue sighs and moves after her to sit. “Where are your wings, little miss? You look a lot different from when I saw you before. Sadder, sure but something else...like you’re missing something….vital.” Was it rude to say? Sure. Did he mean it? Absolutely. “The uh, naga folk are good at reading facial expressions. Since they do a lot of….” Urm, can’t mention the shifting. Too close to home. “Disguises. Like yours.” His teeth show, his smile is too wide so he stops and laughs genuinely. “You caught me a little off guard earlier, still trying to catch up with myself. Forgive me. I’m ah, heading to Chartsend to catch up with them after the battle. See if I can round up some of the allies that fought Jaize. Maybe we can ask them to support your cause as well. Free the realm from these corrupt leaders and...make vegetable soup.” His grin is cocky but tired. His arms loop lazily around his bent knees as he leans back on the rock he occupies.
Brennia humed three notes in a tune and those wings seem to sprout from her back gloriously while the left one sort of looks askew with a patch void of feathers - must be where she was recently stabbed, “enchanted ink…” she shortened an overly complicated story. She hums he same few notes in reverse and they shrink away once more while she sparks a fire and it’s small until she uses the bardic note for fire which caused the flames to liven up to a nice crackle. “Avians are too few in these lands and I would stick out like a sore thumb. It doesn’t help with the hiding and I should really invest in better shirts. Being hidden is new for me,” She got quiet when it seemed he was prying for something more, something deeper, but how does someone explain they’ve been at peace on the other side and being alive once more felt like hell… She just hasn’t found the right words yet so she moves on to his mention of reading her facial expression. A slight quirk of her brow, “yeah? I’ve been told that’s difficult to do with me anymore. I think ‘deadpan’ was a word used among dry, cold, and bored to describe it.” Brennia has been to chartsend once, but doesn’t really plan to go there again, “chartsend? I thought that was a quiet little town. Is no place safe?” Once the soup is warmed she pats the downy blanket she was sitting on for him to join her in the meal on a much more comfortable surface. “The tent looks small, but there are actually two sleeping areas within,” she motions to the rather simple looking canvas tent - what a marvelous enchantment.
Nicolau is delightfully startled when Brennia's wings reappear. Even with the wound, he's reassured that she didn't suffer a fate that might be worse than death to an avian; losing her wings. Was that racist of him?? Probably. "I'd hate to be on the wrong end of your list." He chuckles, meaning he'd hate to cross her cunning. After seeing wings appear, the fire is of little consequence and doesn't illicit a reaction from the rogue. "Great minds," He grunted, thinking if a naga was roaming the lands...it would be far too easy for someone to find her too. Hence the disguises they both wore. Both women thought alike. When the headmistress in hiding goes on to explain the 'dead pan' expression she's been accused of, Nicolau grunts. "I didn't mean -" he starts, but lets her finish. His patchy, mud covered knees hit the blankets edge with little thought given to the cloth. Shame, it might leave a stain. "I surely didn't deserve running into you." He chuckles, shifting his legs into a more comfortable position. He leans back on his palms, legs crossed at the ankles, knees pointed out in opposite directions. "Screw 'em." He says at length, casting a long look at the cove's ceiling, letting his wet hair dangle off the back of his neck. Loose bangs swept his sooted brow. His expression becomes stern, reminiscent of thoughtful distance though his presence hasn't faded beside her. He's still quite present. "If they call you boring or dull. Screw 'em all. What do they know." It's easy for people to talk, harder for them to try and understand. His muscular shoulders roll forward into his lap to accept a portion of soup with a grateful nod. "Wish I'd brought a nice wine. That's customary for these cove dates eh?" He chuckles again, the sound gravelled and rushed. The male's eager to present a composed front.
Brennia would probably confirm the rogue’s assumptions, an avian having their wings ripped away is a highly shameful event and leaves nasty scarring. His mention of not wanting to cross her gets just the slighted raise of a brow, “oh? I actually try to avoid harming anyone at all costs. My most recent sensei taught me a passive fighting style and I try to stick to that.” A pregnant pause, “although - I do rely on the strength of my loyal friends.” Smirks ever so slightly, and really, you’d miss it if you didn’t know her face or study it, “I have the same outlook, but… Sometimes people change over the course of a year while in rare times they change in as short as a month.” She went back to eating her soup while thinking if it really was only a month, wasn’t it two months? It felt like eternity, but wherever she was - it was warm, comfortable and her loved ones were there. “When nothing much excites you anymore - you do tend to be those things, though,” the avian humored him with another one of those half smirks. “If you need a drink, you could down some of the alcohol I use to sanitize wounds and my tools.” It was a sarcastic remark at their lighter tone of conversation. She doesn’t even give the stains on the cloth a glance, it can be cleaned, it can be replaced - she never cares for material things. Glossing over the fact he called this some sort of date because she knew it was just a joke. “How is this whole, ‘Jaize Betrays’ revolt going? Is there anything you think I can do to help you, since you volunteered to help me?”
Nicolau scuffs at this offer of drinking sanitizing alcohol. “I’m not a beast,” He chuckles, his prickly jaw line flexed with the sound. “I don’t get the sense you are aggressive or violent, but I can tell a powerful woman from a mile away. It’s not about blind strength. You’re cunning, clever. I think you could accomplish just about anything you set your mind to.” A beat. “Just this casual strangers opinion.” If he caught her smirk, he doesn’t give any indication of it. He wants to remark on what she’d said before, about nothing exciting her anymore, but he isn’t sure what to say. Instead, she fills the silence with her own question and he happily goes along with it. “It’s had better days,” He sighs, looking up from his soup to lower it further in his lap. “Something is wrong with the city itself. There’s some...barrier or shift. I’m not sure how to explain it.” His left hand moves free from the bowl and scratches his stubble along his cheek bone in thought. After nearly a minute of silence, he withdraws, waves his hand and huffs. “Still working on getting back IN before anything can advance. If you could help me get back in somehow...I’d owe you big time. I think she’s on the ropes, if you ask me.” His gaze drops to his bowl expectantly, in his haste to speak he’s eaten it all. Ah well. “What do you mean when you say...nothing excites you anymore?” The woman he’d spent the night in the bar with had been very excitable. She’d been outgoing and full of laughter. Reginae understood, though, how quickly that could take a backseat in dire times.
Brennia gets him some more soup and soft fresh bread slathered in butter without being asked. Even if he declined she would remind him he needs it - maybe even claim it’s magical healing soup, but after spending a day with her friend and his parents she understands that a man needs to eat. She pushed soft wavy and now short hair behind a long pointed ear which was turning a darker shade of pink at the compliments. Seems she responds better to compliments on her merit rather than her looks and she even averts her gaze to her half eaten soup with a low, “thank you.” Being humble enough to accept the compliments rather than blowing it off or arguing the points, “that is nice to hear even when my heart still feels like it’s in my shoes most days.” The common feeling of failure, haven’t we all felt it? Their conversation switches back to his own plight and those teal hues rest easy on his face while she thought out loud, “surely there is some way in. What about merchant traders? Traveling healers? Guards could be lured into sleep with a simple lullaby… I’ve been there once as entertainment for Reginae that awful day,” there it is again, that Veretian tongue seems to take the name and make it her own spell. There was power in someone’s name, but that gilded tongue of the bard’s made it like a drug sometimes to the owners… If only she knew the owner was actually sitting with her - might spark that fire of hope within her once more. “Sometimes I disguise myself as a merchant by the name of Rae. Maybe they would be open to letting some simple human in.” She seems calm and relaxed around the rogue as she repeats something she’s said to Lionel recently, “no worries with owing between allies.” She was staring back down into the half eaten dinner of her’s, but she wasn’t even hungry as she’s been just eating to stay strong and fit. She was definitely slimmer since he’s seen her, but that was Raven’s doing and Brennia cling onto a lot of what Raven once was. “I don’t know why, but I feel I can trust you, Nicolau…” her rather flat velvety timbre remaining so with what she was about to admit, “I had died a while back… I think I was gone for a month - or two?” Etched expressionless eyes eventually find herself looking upon the near stranger, “I don’t remember much of where I was, but I felt I was there for eons. It was pleasant, comfortable and I had not a care in the world or pain, but I know my mother and my brother were there. Being back here has been… an adjustment to say the least.” There was probably an uncomfortable silence to follow after that, “I’ve went a put a damper on our chance meeting, I apologize.”
Nicolau doesn’t argue. He knows when it’s better to hold his tongue and accept what’s offered. While his fingers twitch restlessly, anxious to continue his journey at a breakneck pace, he knows it would only serve as a disadvantage. Not all battles are won by sheer force of will or belief in the cause you fight for. He listens but also he eats, despite heavy disbelief that this was -actually- magic soup. Brennia’s delicate repetition of Reginae’s name gives him pause but he doesn’t show any other visible signs of being distracted or pulled from his train of thinking. When she mentions moving through the city as a traveller named Rae, he bawls in surprise. It’s startling, even to him. “Maybe we’re more alike than we know.” Humor makes the words lighter, but they are a serious consideration. Maybe a human -could- sneak in but with the way the naga were wary of outsiders? It might prove more of a challenge. The rogue is just about to make a comment about her eating when she speaks again, offering this heartbreaking truth to him about trust and death. The previous jesting joy drains from his expression. His dark brows furrow, to show he has her full attention while she explains what death itself had been like. He can practically smell when she’s about to apologize, the words hang on her lips like dew drops and already his bowl is beside him and his hands are over hers. There’s a piercing quality to his gaze now. “Don’t.” The gruff tone almost makes it sound like a command where it isn’t. He lets the silence swell, marks the occasion with consistent eye contact before speaking again. His voice was softer this time. “Don’t...apologize. There’s no damper in honesty. The truth is not always gilded, the world is better not only for the sunlight but also the rain. Besides,” He rolls his left shoulder, still slightly stiff from the nonstop assault on unseen forces in the past few days. “I feel guilty now.” He tries to chuckle but it’s all gravel in his throat. “I sometimes pretend to be a naga woman named Rae, isn’t that a funny coincidence?” He offers, as if this similarity might mend the tear of all the world has done to wrong them. “It can’t be easy, to find yourself in a peaceful state of existence, only to be pulled back to this place. I’m sorry for the experience but I’m selfishly glad you came back. How else would we meet again?” A teasing smile pulls the left side of his lips up momentarily. “But I know what you mean.” He swallows. “I actually died a while back myself. A different circumstance,” He can’t stop trying to put chuckles where they don’t belong. It’s too serious. “I almost didn’t make it back, and when I did...there was an adjustment period, certainly. And maybe it’s suicide to admit but,” Here his hazel eyes stop fidgeting between his hands, following the waves of Brennia’s shorter hair or the cut of her shoulders against their cavernous backdrop. “I feel I can trust you Brennia. And if I can trust you, let me tell you two things about me. The first, only one other knows.” He lets the tension build in the momentarily pause. “I’m a collector of secrets, as it were. I love secrets, in all forms and fashions but more than I love the secret themselves, I love the -knowledge- of them. Being part of a select group that knows the truth. It’s satisfying. Maybe that’s childish.” He’d taken back his right hand earlier to tug anxiously at his ebony sleeves, now the hand trails his fingers along the nape of his neck. “The second is a secret as well, a few people know but it’s a dangerous bit of information.” This never got easier. “Ah, forgive me. Sometimes I forget. Reginae didn’t die that day you played in the palace in Alithrya. She’s still alive...and eating some pretty damn good soup, if I say so myself.”
Brennia had set her helping down a little while before Nicolau reached out for her hands which rested on her lap in the moment. This time it was him that locked their gaze and she held it, but this time her eyes are no longer the liberty blue they used to be and one has to wonder if that same odd occurrence would spark between them once more. It’s nothing with a label and it’s as if lightning was charging the air, but whatever this happens to be is intense and somehow linking these two very different beings on similar paths. Her lips twitched into a half smirk where the joy didn’t quite meet those bored teal eyes, “that is quite the coincidence… I have been toying with the name for that disguise, though.” Mostly because only one certain friend and his family call her Rae and she sort of likes it to be specially for them, “maybe you can help me with a better name for that one.” When he was paying her a flattery she had pushed some of that wavy dark hair behind a long pointed ear which was turning a shade of pink and a glance away as she softly said, “that’s sweet.” A quirk of her brow when she looked back to him during his admission of another similarity between them, “really?” For once she actually looked a little surprised, but maybe Nicolau was picking up on the newfound subtleties of her being. She was leaning in now, interested to hear this tale, ready to ask many questions, but he was moving on and opening up some more. One secret is not all that surprising as she figured a mysterious man like himself would hold many of them… It was the second, more daunting, one wrapped in two that caused a couple of things to happen. First she looked almost on the verge of smiling brilliantly like she used to, a dimple poked in a caramel cheek when she learned Reginae was still alive. Hope blazed gloriously in her heart for a moment, ‘where was she?’, ‘Could you arrange for me to see her?’, But… Then the last uttered words halted all of it and it took her a second to catch on that she was sitting, been flirting, healed and aligned herself with the very Reginae (didn’t she admit to him she had quite the crush on Reginae, too?! Embarrassed times 1,245). Her smile faded quickly, the color from her cheeks drained and she felt a pit in her stomach open up for she felt a right fool because Brennia is not a self conscious woman, but this reveal had her wondering if anything her and Nicolau was real or genuine. On the other hand she has a chance to get to know someone she has found to be missing in her life… Her hand softly pulled away from the rogue’s while those eyes study his face and rim with the threat of tears, “Reginae?” Her words nearly a whisper in their private cave moment, but without even a response Brennia leaned into the man and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Large black as midnight colored wings spring out to also wrap around the being which enveloped them in the person’s favorite scent… The air was still and Brennia didn’t know what to say, what this meant for them, what was real or fake, but she only wanted to focus on the joy she was feeling in knowing Reginae was alive!
Reginae holds onto the Nicolau form still. It’s tempting to let it slip, but still perhaps too dangerous. Words whizzed by as he reaches out to accept her embrace. When Brennia’s eyes leave his, the reassuring smile fades into one of remorse. He lets the silence act as a further shield around them. A barrier that can’t be broken. They’d have countless time now to share their secrets, as friends are want to do. Now was just for this. A celebration of truth and secrets, of death and a second chance at life, of two women caught in a maelstrom of rebellion and change. “And everything else said and felt is still true.” He whispers, though his voice is Reginae’s now. “In the tavern at dinner, on the stage at the college, and now.” It’s meant to reassure her that Nicolau is not an entirely different persona, but she is very much herself in almost all ways when she is in this role. The only difference might be slightly less serious demeanor. Her voice sounds so loud here, while she still only whispers, the words spiral out like fireworks overhead to boom and crack with importance. With words she has not heard herself speak until now. “I’m so sorry, if you feel deceived. That wasn’t my intention. I hope you understand...my very survival depended on me keeping this secret.” The secret she’s now sharing. Together, Reginae can smell the faintest scent of water lilies. The crisp but flowered pools. The exotic perfume of hyacinth and marigolds. The water gardens of Alithrya. Brennia smelt of home. It was enough to make the naga nearly weep herself. Droplets as fine as dew pool in the corners of the male’s eyes but where once before they were Hazel in hue, they are now a blinding azurite as clear and dissonant in it’s various shades of blue. Like sunlight reflecting off a frozen lake, it catches here and there with whites or glossy gemlike aquas. “Forgive me Brennia…” And though the naga lacks the same bardic magics, the ability to spin a name so it might enchant it’s owner, she feels the weight and tug of the avian’s name all the same. What she’s said is true, her heart weighs heavy to know it and feel it.
Brennia doesn’t care which form Reginae was in at this point because for the second time since she was alive again that she really felt it; alive. When Reginae puts some of the avians doubt to rest she gave one nod though those ears pinked again, “that is… good to know. I’m glad,” a half smirk given before a simple shake of her head, “no need. It’s dangerous times and I actually understand, but…” she remembers something Niall has said to her which she still has trouble taking this piece of advice, “you are not alone in this and you do not have to do everything on your own.” Her own name said by the true Queen of Nagas darkened the blush showing on those ridiculously long pointy ears and she was taken aback by the request of forgiveness. The avain reaches out a hand over the disguised naga’s, “forgiven, Reginae. Together, let us plan how we can take back our cities and save our people.” Within those deep teal eyes sparks determination, her voice commands courage, and her lips softly smile as it seems a hint of the old Brennia was slowly coming back or at least mixed in with this new one. After a couple hours of sharing secrets, experience in the afterlife, their deaths and where they stand now Brennia realizes, “I am so sorry, we’ve been talking so much I forgot you need rest.” She stood suddenly and disappeared into the deceptively small tent to only come out once more with what looks like two rolled up linen looking things, but she opened them up one by one and filled the contraption with air to make mock beds. She takes them back inside the tent and came back out to start pulling free blanket after blanket from the also deceptively small knapsack, “I’ve got the beds ready.” Once Reginae would follow inside the tent she would see one middle area with rugs and cushions for sitting and some books, then two areas opposite each other with their own privacy flaps; overall it was rather cozy with enough space to comfortably sleep three or four people and they both could stand up straight as well. She points to the sleeping area to the left, “I’ve set you up over there. If you are still around in the morning I’m making a breakfast,” she would smile half way again, “thank you for sharing with me. I feel I really needed that in some way.”