RP:I Drinks a Vodka Drink

A wandering she’ll go, and a wandering she went. South and then north, maybe she veered somewhere in Xalious. Who knew where a drunk and brokenhearted girl might end up. The doorstep of an old friend. Jarith seemed to be dealing with his own heartbreak.

Sabrina must have zigged when she should have zagged, landing herself in an unfamiliar setting of a forest she thought at one point she knew better than the back of her hand. There is a porch, and with a shrug she takes a long draw from the empty bottle in hand and for a brief moment becomes ruffled over its lack of substance. A hand grasps the rail to the porch to assist in her ascension to its door. She knocks three times. She is loud for this hour, even more for a stranger’s doorstep. “I need to pee.” Finally, she had managed to rob the elegant language of its grace and beauty.

Jarith was intoxicated himself, but his was more the soul-wrenching loss, and something he’d been suffering through for near a week, alone. The events that led to the loss of Tethys, and the unborn enough to turn him solidly into that shell. The northern borne hadn’t done more than rinse his hands, clean his face from the mess. Her body would, as no doubt she would appreciate was returned to be buried by her family in Rynvale, a burial which he was not permitted to attend. Some did not approve, a high borne, marrying lower in the caste to one like him. So, he’d watched from afar, complete with tribal guard. His mother, as well the twins had been struck by the loss but his mother had the children, and for that he could only rejoice. The male reeks of alcohol and stale sweat, and after much noise, the sounds of bottles and glasses being turned over and destroyed, and a heavy weight hitting the door, Sabrina would have her first sight of Jarith in a long while, His head is shaved on the sides, shorter than the short but longer styled mohawk on his head. It’s tribal, and the four braids, though disheveled add to the motif. Those blue eyes are dull, and he seems to glare a hole into what could only be a mirage. “ The ‘ell do you want? “ But his words seem directed not at the drunken female, but lift with his bale-filled stare into the sky. “ I think, I have enough damned loss t’deal with right now… You rutting bastards, without showing me th’ ones that ran away…” He turns, apparently ignoring her real presence to stumble to a couch, one Tethys had helped him pick out and grab a dark bottle from the perch of the arm, downing a hefty swig.

Sabrina was silently taking focus of the asshole that opened the door. He was dingy but familiar enough. “The hell ran over you?” She invites herself in, she did, after all, need to pee still. “Latrine?” She starts wandering down the hall doing some version of a pee-pee dance but she stumbles and shoulders hard into the wall. As she did make her way past him she definetly recognized the stench of unbathed flesh under the layers of alcholic sweat. “Frak, Jarith… really man. What happened?” She didn’t smell so sweet herself, bit of whiskey from the pores and salt from the sea still clinging to her like day old fish market doused in salt. She was still in a bit of a mood, the booze helped to dull the vivid pain but not truly forget why she had been drinking in the first place. She took advantage of his facilities, and after some time of a long good drain she came out, walking crooked but determined towards his stash of Vodka in a crate off in the corner. She looks about. He almost looked like a smuggler, and she knew the sort too, growing up where she did. She rolls her eyes, not asking questions because, well, because she wasn’t stupid. Her small frame plops down next to his and the clear yet dusty vessel is de-corked and taken with zero kindness or consideration. “Wanna talk about it?” She didn’t seem wholly interested or able to truly pay attention, but she did recognize when a friend was having it rough. Drunk as all hell and the chick is still ‘working.’

Jarith rough? Intriguing thought, and yet Jarith was still fairly certain that this ‘woman’ was a figment of his intoxicated mind. He settled against the couch rather than sitting upon it, but soon slid down into the chair anyways. The thump of her into the wall and subsequent use of his facilities seemed to stoke some actual reaction yet the knight doesn’t seem inclined to comment. Not until she is joining him for more food. Between the two, they were ominously pungent, perhaps too much so. “ Talk? Yeh vanish, ask fer help, scold me-help, n vanish again? “What happened? The poor girl who feel for him and, he for her, his curse put the poor woman in a box. “I happened.” Guttural, and soured, he turned those blue eyes into the flames of his fireplace. “ What drove you into th’ bottles?”

Sabrina cradles he bottle in her lap, staring at it. “Im trying to slow my head.” And she begins to overshare. “He picked out a place, we were gonna build a home… then he…” She sighs.” Started sleeping at the barracks, and the next time I saw him he broke it off. I’m trying ta…” a finger twirls around her temple. “It doesn’t make sense in my head. It is illogical. The process.” And she lifts the bottle again, murmuring something about ‘when you’re not good enough, your just not good enough.’ Before tipping it to a full chug. The slowing she was attempting wasn’t working in the ideal fashion. “I think the fates are pissed, or laughing.”

Jarith didn’t exactly wish to hear her tale of woe. Still, it sounded so decidedly like his own, a cruel notion that made him grind his teeth. A flick of his own bottle was given and he mirrored a salute to the last words the healer had offered him. “ Fer me… They are always laughing… “ He paused, Sabrina had bore her soul in a form, so was it impolite for him to do much the same, “Tethys… bled out, and lost the child… I lost both my fiancé and a child in the same night…” The words still choked him, he winced when he spoke her name. “If she had never fallen for me, this would not have happened… If she had not believed that ‘good things’ would come if I simply willed them… she would not be dead now. I killed her.” He turned the bottle up wards again, and leaned further, sinking into the chair despondently.

Sabrina guessed she didn’t really have room to be upset now, not with this news. She had kept tabs on him to some extent, she knew of Tethy’s, that girl being one reason the Elfess was sure to stay so far away. If it made him feel better she would encourage his judgement. “If I had chosen you, she would have never met you, I killed her.” The point was, it didn’t really sound reasonable. It didn’t make the tragedy any less, but he couldn’t go on blaming himself for such a thing, she was in the business of this very thing. Women died all the time during pregnancy, she didn’t want to tell him he was lucky it was not in childbirth. That would have been more painful to watch. The least she could do, given his state, is redirect his target for hate. “Safe to say you are easy to fall for, it’s not a curse.” She smiles, though it wasn’t convincing. “At least you know someone can choose you. She chose you. She loved you. It isn’t right to dishonor that.”

Jarith gave a cant of his head. Her attempt to lessen his pain only rose up the broken smirk before it crushed back into the desolation of his more brooding features. “ I don’t see a way you would have chosen me… You had a better offer. “He gave a sigh, looking around the cottage before speaking with a closing of those eyes. “ This place, she made it a home… And now all I want to do is burn the damn thing to the ground. This is where I planned to hang my blade, forever, Sabrina… “ Truth, the fact was his family sword was still hanging above the mantle. The children’s rooms were all prepared, his bedroom also had been filled, but all of her things were secluded, hidden in a room that had yet to receive a color, or anything beyond her things. The room meant for a child that would not come now. “ Eirik left? That makes little sense to me…” A grousing statement, he did not understand it… but then again, Sabrina was one he had easily fallen for, and drank himself into a stupor over for a few solid weeks. Even now, much as he might have been loathe to admit, the knight was more broken at the knowledge he had cost Tethys her life, than that he had lost their love. He loved her, yes, so very much… but it was different, and something he was himself unable to explain. This pain was a lost love, a lost life, and bitterness with himself at what he felt he caused, but such clarity would no doubt elude him for a time.

Sabrina frowns. A better offer? That was what he thought of her? The bottle is left at her feet and she stood. She was very clear about why and how her decision came to be. She gives him a smile though, he was too distraught to go back, to a time where this could or couldn’t have been prevented. And all ‘fairness’ aside, her decision-making process was simple. She had a previous engagement. What did it matter anyway, she was trying to refocus his frustration, and it was working on some level wither she agreed with it or not. “Another person can’t make you whole, I guess.” But what did she know, she was a walking husk and that part was decidedly shut down. The statement was meant for both men in question. Tethy’s was everything to Jarith, it was endearing. There was a time she thought she had that with Eirik, that time was three days ago before he came in with his tail between his legs and a shrug-that was all she amounted to a ‘so-we’re-cool-then’ Of course she said yes, was she supposed to -make- him stay when he was so clearly out the door? She had been standing in silence for a few minutes now. It was awkward and still as she stood frozen in time, the only movement in the vision were two hot streams of tears burning down the sides of her face. The liquor was losing its effect, it was bound to happen working the way she did. Confounded metabolism. She turns from Jarith, ‘taking in’ the details of the home built for a loving family, also, wiping that wetness from her features because she does not believe she has the right to be pissed. Eirik never loved her in the first place, that was the only real answer and probably why she was more pissed. Because once more her touch infected a victim and tricked him into…what? It was irresponsible to entertain the idea that anyone could be capable. “It’s good.” She says, checking out the décor, likely picked by a woman who had a strange eye for ‘pops’ of color that just ‘fit’ in the spaces provided. She could make out a folded apron with bright yellow daisies draped over the kitchen chair. Had he even gone in there since she passed? Probably not. “You were building a good thing here. A real thing.” She envied him, those moments of true affection that would always elude her. She turns back now, a half smirk lifting the corner of her mouth. Hands slide into her back pockets and she meanders toward the door. “I’m sorry for your loss, Jarith. I mean it. You deserve…” Her voice cracked. He did deserve a lot more. Even for her he stepped back to let her have that ridiculous shot at happiness. Maybe he dodged a bullet. No, he did. He did dodge a bullet. “You deserved her.” He needed that love, well, everyone did, but it was Jarith’s life thread. Nothing could replace that.