RP:Unlikely Sisters

Summary What started out as a drinking game turned into an interrogation, bringing up the past of two people, and a drastic turn of events that linked these two histories into one separated by misfortune and reunited unlikely sisters.

Emilia sat at table in the middle of the Inn surrounded by a few of the local men that had also come for a drink in these trying days after the fight for the bridge. The Genasi had bathed and changed into a fresh outfit for this drinking outing. A pair of black leather pants with a black corset set overtop a a light blue ruffled top, and barefeet. Sitting there with the men all laughing before one turned to the white woman saying “Your turn, Doll, two truths and a lie.” Some of these men she’d grown up around, others knew her from being treated by her as a healer. Lifting her mug up to her frosted lips the Genasi took a swig before giving a wink to the man who just called her ‘doll’ then began, “I once had a puppy when I was little that could cause trouble all throughout the town, I have hidden ink across my behind with the name of my true lover,” Another swing from her mug as she had revealed her first truth followed by the lie, “When the farm was still up my four brothers and I would chase each other through the yard by the grape vines smashing the grapes beneath our bare feet and staining not only ourselves but our clothes, oh how angry that did make my parents!” She would chuckle at the memory of her siblings, long dead, and take a long drink this time. The men around her all shouting out different answers of which one was the lie, “Oh, I bet it is the dog. I don’t remember a dog about these parts like that.” one would hiccup, and another, “Must be the grapes! You are an orphan child!” and the other debated against the first two, “Oh, no it is the ink on your behind! No soul would get that inked!”

Lita was a bit disappointed in her day. She hadn't been able to find the person she'd come to Larket looking for in the first place. Not yet. She wasn't giving up but she was worried. She knew he'd been in the battle at the bridge and there were so many who hadn't survived. She didn't want to think that she might have to start looking through bodies next. She was trying to tell herself it wouldn't come to that but her resolve was waning. Nothing a good drink wouldn't help with. It wouldn't be Simon's honey-cooked concoction she loved but whiskey was whiskey, no matter the city it was served in. She made her way barefoot towards the bar, trying for all the world to avoid the crowd of people gathered around one of the tables, apparently playing some game. She wasn't in much of a mood to play but she perked up a little at hearing that familiar voice of the ice-woman (her vocabulary still didn't include the word genasi). She grinned at the story about the puppy and even the tattoo. She kind of hoped that one was true. She'd've been impressed by someone's prowess- and the girl's daring choice. She murmured a thanks to the tender as her drink was poured and lifted the whiskey to her lips for a sip. It would do. The drink flooded warmth through her veins and let the room fade away a little at the edges, like she might not have to worry about it so much. She was asking for a refill as the woman told her third story. It sounded so familiar. Somewhere in the shadows of her memory she could hear their laughter. Their faces were all but gone, names long since forgotten but she could hear it. Dark eyes fixated on the glass in her hand, brows furrowed and it was only as one of those men slammed his mug against the table, debating that the lie must be about her ink, that she was tugged back to reality. Coincidence. Had to be. How many farmers had tended to fields of grapes for wineries, after all. She downed the second shot in a hurry either way and waited for her third glass before sauntering barefoot towards the gathering. "You c'n ink it as long as it's skin an' the soul is willin'." she drawled as she nudged her way through the crowd to the girl's table. "I'm bettin' as nice as she looks, there's a sordid past of secrets hidin' in that pre'y li'l' head." She tipped her glass towards the ice-woman and offered a playful wink in greeting as she nudged her hip against a gentleman in a nearby seat who gladly stood to let her take the seat at the table. "My money's on the farm. No kid runs through a fresh field ruinin' good crop and doesn't get their hide tanned." She lifted her glass to her lips for a sip. "Though, that could explain the tolerance for pain durin' the tattoo." she grinned playfully.

Emilia had leaned back in her chair with a smirking grin across those frosted blue lips watching the gentlemen around the table debating with one another over which one was the lie out of her three tales. The liquor in her glass was not enough for the frozen woman to get drunk on, her tolerance had long built up to the point she almost seemed more drunk without alcohol in her than when she was drowned in it. Then there was a new voice joining in the debate, a familiar one even it if was a bit slurred to the recent shots she’d downed. Staring at the dark haired woman seat across the table from her the ice-lady leaned over, with elbows upon the table a sparkle in those icy eyes, “Oh, but only you would know of how much I enjoy those spankings for being naughty” there was a wink when she leaned back away from the other barefooted lady. The drunken men gathered about the table glanced between the two ladies as their faces turned different shades of red. Then Emi would continue on, “but I would never get a named inked into my flesh. The lie as it comes out is that there is no name inked into my behind!” The men would use this reveal as a way to down their mugs and then walk away hiding their dirty thoughts to themselves, leaving the two woman alone at the table for the time being. Another drink of her glass, it was empty however, so she’d flag a server to bring her another. The order being sent off into the crowd the icy gaze landed on Lita, staring at her intently. “Oh, we got our rear ends tanned for ruining the grapes, but we did it anyways, all five of us. And then we got to scrub our own clothing to get the stains out of them. Between the dog and the siblings, Miss, that is the realest tale that I told this night. And perhaps it is the drinking or the fact we are in a lighted area, but you kinda look like the me’ older brothers.”

Lita was a picture of composure as the ice-woman leaned forwards across the table some to murmur those words about enjoying spankings for being naughty. She lofted a brow at the girl, seeing too much of the fire she'd found in the Fox- and fallen in love with- years ago. Despite her sudden want to spit that drink of whiskey back into her glass for choking over those words, she managed to swallow and keep the drink down but didn't dare another one in the aftermath. She lifted a hand to rub idly at the tattoo inked across her right clavicle, a white lily whose petals fell over the curve of bone and the name 'James' scrawled beneath it. It was the only tribute she still carried for her son and a past she'd long since come to terms with. Or so she'd thought. Dark eyes averted from the girl, watching the men as they drited from their table in search of more drink, some grumbling over the game having been interrupted. Lita hadn't meant to interrupt. Or had she? It was certainly a blessing to see a familiar face, however brief their past interractions had been. "Mus' be the lighting." Lita concluded at the girl's words. "I had brothers once, I think." She couldn't always remember. It seemed like a different world away now. "Never had a dog though. Not as a littlie." She had Chio, now, who was mostly a dog sometimes. She wasn't so sure of that either. She lifted her glass for another drink. Maybe trying to build friendships was a bad choice for tonight. "I never did learn to enjoy wearing shoes." she managed. "Seems we've that in common as well."

Emilia chuckled softly, “Ah, well I once had four brothers myself, they all died in a fire at the farm many years ago though. Or perhaps I had five and just cannot remember correctly, there was six names in the book my mother kept at her bedside, Korina, Elijah, Parker, Marcus, Joshua, and Emilia. I remember finding the book after the fire...the names surrounded by crispy black edges before it too crumpled away into dust like everything else around. I seriously only ever remember four boys and myself the youngest, but the first name perhaps was what she called the prize horse of hers. I cannot remember for the life of me what she called that animal…” Ah, well her drink was present now as she finished rambling about how many brothers she did or didn’t have once upon another lifetime ago. Fate was strange. The woman accepted her drink in hand from the server and lifted it almost to her lips, then stopped, “I agree, foot-ware is something I cannot stand, something not many seem to agree with. Glad to meet another who doesn’t like to have their feet weighed down.”

Lita remembered that name. Her name. But Emilia couldn't know that name. Couldn't. No one did, save for the warrior now. They were friends but he wouldn't have told her. Lita felt her blood run cold, ice in her veins and gone was the sunny little buzz the alcohol had inspired. She could hear it in those memories in the back of her mind, somewhere in the distance of time, through the laughter of young boys. 'Korina, stop running!' But she hadn't stopped, she'd never stopped. Her fight-or-flight response had always been heavily weighted in favor of her own survival. She could hear it through the tears of a woman who might have been her mother. 'You have to be strong, Kori. You have to keep going and don't look back.' She hadn't looked back, not once. Not since she'd left home, not since returning decades later to find a rebellion had left most of the city in ruins, not since deciding Rynvale would be wear she'd keep her heart from now on... She was staring down at the glass in her hand as Emilia had kept talking. Something about a horse and more about shoes and it took her a moment to realize the girl might be waiting for some kind of response or at least acknowledgement that she'd been heard. Instead her fingers trembled and the glass in her hand shattered against her palm. Glass danced across the tabletop and skittered across the floor in brilliant display, the shards all refracting the light of the room. It might have been beautiful, save for the little trickle of blood that followed in its wake. One of the serving girls brought a rag and Lita murmured a thanks as she pressed the towel against her palm. Her brain was on auto-pilot though as the girl moved to clean up the broken glass. "Happens all the time, Miss." the girl was saying with a smile. "No need to worry, I'll get you a fresh drink. Is your hand alright?" Lita moved the towel from her palm. The bleeding had already stopped and the cut would heal soon enough. She was grateful for the girl's distraction, gave her a minute to find her composure again. She was suddenly more than a little eager to leave Larket. She had a bone to pick with a certain warrior. "Reckon I should be drinkin' water, instead." she managed, trying for a brief smile. "Less of a waste an' all anyway." But the serving girl was bringing her another whiskey and Lita downed it in one go. She let the liquor wash through her, easing the tension from her shoulders. "Your brothers all like you too?" She meant the ice-woman part. She wasn't against being blunt sometimes.

Emilia was silent for a time after she had spoken with the woman across from her about odd things they seemed to have had in common, yet there was not a response from her, nothing at all...just silence. It had been a time since the two had spent time together beneath the ground, little time at that, but had she said the wrong thing? Then there was sound, not a vocal reply from Lita, but the sounds of glass shattering across the table and the floor. It was followed by a scurrying of a woman with a rag for the injured woman before the sounds of the mess being cleaned were happening. The frosty woman had no idea that this name from her memory meant anything beyond a name on a burned page of a book from long ago, yet here she uttered Lita’s name aloud to the woman herself when she shouldn’t of known the name at all, just Krice knew it, not that Emi knew any of this, but Emilia knew Krice this much was well known. Not only did the lady across from Lita know her name, she also shared a very matching childhood memory with Lita, one whom she had shared with another person of the land, another person that Emilia had been seen with in the past. It was a strange puzzle to piece together that the ice-lady was the connecting piece between the stories, yet Krice wouldn’t have told the other who knew the childhood memory the name and the one with the memory known wouldn’t have told it to the warrior, and highly unlikely that both of them would be sharing it with this woman, who knows, perhaps it was just a coincidence or perhaps this frosted woman drinking across from Lita wasn’t who she really claimed to be and was spying on the other woman for some twisted unknown reason.Turning her attention to the question finally poised her way the Genasi shook her head slowly, “No, my brothers were human, all four of them were human...just as I used to be once upon another life ago…”

Lita had in part been hoping that it wasn't a coincidence. She didn't believe in coincidence, didn't believe in chance. She believed in skill and planning, in careful calculations. And okay maybe a bit of dumb luck from time to time but not this. Hanan had known her name, but they'd been married, and Hanan was dead now. Not dead but gone and to the world thought dead. Only Krice knew otherwise. The warrior, the man who also knew her name, the only other one left in Hollow. But he wouldn't have told. He'd protected her heart, her soul, he'd seen her. There was no way those lips would have told Emilia that name. But maybe Krice wasn't who she'd thought him to be. She deserved it, after all this time, after everything she'd done, after everything she'd put him through. She deserved worse, even, surely but he wasn't that person, not so petty and vindictive that he would stoop so low. And it was low, even for her, who'd lived in shadows for two decades now, lived in the lies and the secrets and the schemes and lost herself to it time and time again. This was low of someone. A name was powerful and her name, despite all that she'd wished otherwise, held a power over her still that she hadn't been able to quantify let alone shake. She'd been Lita for more than twenty years now and she'd earned that name, lived it, breathed it, created it. It wasn't just a part of her it was who she was. Korina was a person she wouldn't recognize, a girl who could have been and should have been but wasn't- like a shadow before you turn on a light. Lita had hoped that if the girl's brothers had been like her, born with ice and cold, that maybe she could chalk this up to being another puzzle but they'd been human too. So Lita leaned forward a little, her right hand slipping beneath the table, beneath the hem of her dress where that little dagger nestled in its sheath against her right thigh. She brought the blade up calmly, set it beneath her palm on the table beside her empty glass and she narrowed dark eyes at Emilia. She might have been a little tipsy but she was sober enough to be cautious. Sober enough to listen when everything in her screamed for her to run. "Anson tell you that story?" He wouldn't have told either, not anymore than Krice would have. He wanted a little farm of his own, wanted to make moonshine and own a little land. He'd wanted Lita to be a part of that dream and she'd even talked him into letting her tend a little land with raspberries. "About a farm with grapes and the kids runnin' through makin' a mess?" She tried to remember how long it had been since she'd told Anson that story but her head was reeling. Her fingers shook slightly so she closed her fist around the hilt of that little blade, squeezing until her knuckles whitened. "Dog was a nice touch, I'll give you that."

Emilia was not prepared for a fight here in the Inn, nor was she ever really ready for a fight. The woman was as carefree in appearance as she acted with little regard to self-protection, which had in its own right gotten her into a few pickles not being able to defend herself. This little drinking game turned into a visit with a woman and now into something entirely different, a dark twist, one neither of them expected to happen when they walked in for a drink. With the exception of the tale about her lover’s name ink’d into her behind all her tales shared had been of truth, yet she didn’t expect a stranger, especially a intoxicated one, to believe the words that left her frosted blue lips. There was a reason folks were cautious around her and it wasn’t because she carried weapons, it was because she was so vastly different in her appearance and left trails of frost in her wake. That ice magic that flowed in every fiber of her being was enough of a scare to keep most on their toes about her or carefree lost to that natural charm the Genasi had. Neither Krice nor Anson had shared secrets with her. Not about Lita or anything else for that matter, but Lita wouldn’t know this.There was a dagger placed upon the table, held tight fisted in a hand with knuckles turning white, this couldn’t be good. Perhaps, there was something along the lines that she had said that had truly upset the woman in her drinking state, yet Emi didn’t and couldn’t understand the paranoia of Lita at this very moment. The two were very opposite from one another, yet their stories were inwoven and one of them didn’t believe in the coincidence as the other did. Then, through harsh words Lita finally talked again. Emilia kept her gaze upon that shaking hand with the blade held tightly, “I didn’t lie about the dog. I had one once that caused trouble in town, but it wasn’t when I was a little girl. We didn’t have one on the farm,” a pause, “I have spoken with Anson, yes, but nothing about my childhood memory of siblings destroying the grapes...I think you should stick to water. Less poisonous on the body.” Ah, the most wrong of word choice to use when regarding another already set to slice your throat open, poison in reference to the drinks she’d been having since arriving.

Lita furrowed her brow as she watched the girl. There she went bringing up that memory again and the ringing of laughter trickled through her memory again. She turned her head slightly, glancing over her right shoulder as if she might find the source of that laughter there. Her brain playing tricks on her. She closed her eyes for a beat, drea a deep breath to steady her nerves. She was supposed to be trying to fix it, she had wanted to forget entirely. Her brain kept trying to remember and she didn't want to. Remembering parts of her past she couldn't go back to enjoy hurt too much, she'd learned that the hard way in having spent twenty years to find her son only to watch him die. She was vaguely aware that the woman had started talking again and she redirected her attention once more. She admitted to knowing Anson. So that was it, then. The puzzle pieces all fit. Emilia knew Krice, knew Anson. So all of this had been what, some ploy to get to her? What was the end game? She glanced down at her glass on the table, the most recent drink left untouched. "We're not playing your little game anymore, no need for lies, darlin'." She hadn't let go of that knife but her fingers relaxed a bit in their grip. Her free hand reached for the glass of whiskey and leaning back a bit in her chair, she slid the glass onto the table behind them, a playful wink given the gentleman there. "On the house, from my friend here." she nodded back towards Emilia. "She's a bit shy." The stranger lifted the glass in thanks to Emilia, perhaps a bit awkwardly and then slowly turned back to his associates. Lita turned back to face Emilia. "Is that how you got them to talk, then? A little poison in their drinks." It wasn't quite a question anymore. Underhanded but perhaps admirable. She'd seen Anson down his fair share of moonshine and if the woman was a healer, there was no telling how she'd gotten to Krice. She'd just given what she assumed had been a poisoned drink to a stranger without batting an eyelash. No telling what she planned on doing with Emilia if she deemed the girl guilty.

Emilia watched in silence as the lady Lita handed away her drink to the gentleman behind her without a care in the world, lucky for the man now drinking the whiskey that it was perfectly safe and untainted by poison. His gesture was returned with an awkward one of her own, Em didn’t dare move suddenly or act against the other woman if only because she was still holding tightly onto that blade in her hand. The ice woman was really trying to avoid losing blood tonight. She kept her attention focused only between the blade and Lita, a bit of nerves showing faintly through her confused look. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t a real confused look but a well faked one just to play against the paranoid Lita. Shaking her head, sending white curls dancing about her small frame, Em replied, “I am not playing a game with you. I was playing a drinking game with some locals before you showed up, but that game ended when they left the table…” Then she turned to look past Lita for a moment, a look for the exit as she studied the crowd looking for a possibly chance to escape the crazy lady across from her. Nothing, there was no getting out of here at the moment. Her icy gaze landed back upon Lita, “Miss, I have never drank with Anson...not to my knowledge anyways. I have not seen or spoken with him in a very long time…” She wasn’t lying, or she was and a great actress pretending like she didn’t know what had riled up this woman. What did she need as proof that she wasn’t lying to her? Beat her or whip her until she was telling the truth because she couldn’t bare the pain any longer? But then it would still be the same stories from the ice woman.

Lita chewed at her lower lip. She wasn't sure what to believe anymore. Her head telling her one thing, her heart telling her another. Her head wanted her to run- that would be the smart thing to do, wouldn't it? To run until her lungs burned and her muscles ached, until she couldn't see this gods-forsaken town anymore, until she couldn't hear that laughter? To run until she found someplace safe. But her heart told her to stay, to find out the truth, to dig deeper, to press that steel blade into the girl's hand and through the table, damn the fact that they were in a public place, she'd demand the truth! She chewed at her lower lip and managed to keep her hand still. "How else would you know that story?!" her voice pitched a little louder than she'd meant it to, a little more urgent and forceful. People at the nearby tables paused their conversations to turn and look in their direction but after a moment, they'd turn back to their own company and go on about their business. Lita leaned a bit closer across their table and managed to reign in her emotions for a moment. "How else would you know that name?"

Emilia flashed the crowd that had looked their way a most alluring smile that carried with it no hint of fear or threat, like whatever had happened was just some random drunken outburst. Soon the staring eyes were no more, people were busy into their own drinking worlds again. Now the crazy lady was leaning closer to her, trying to keep from making a scene again, just in cast she choose to later gut the frozen woman once she left the Inn so that not a soul would think she’d killed the healer or caused her grave amounts of injury and pain. Taking in a breath the chilled woman then leaned in closer to the other, as if they were making some secret plot for a slumber party or some such to any on looking eyes, then she’d whisper, “I told you. The names, all six of them Including my own were found on a page in a burned book in the farm house I grew up in after the fire. I told you, the memory is from my past when life was simpler and innocent for the most part beyond being talked into squishing grapes by my elder brothers. I don’t see why you are mad at me because of my past memories, of things that happened to me. Why does my childhood bother you so much? Why does the name of a horse make you upset? Why does my four older brothers and farm life irk you so? Unless, that name is yours which makes you so mad because I know it. Unless, you’ve shared the same past as I only being older than I and sharing the same brothers before I existed, otherwise...that could not possibly be…”

Lita wanted to reach across the table, take the woman by the shoulders and shake her until she stopped talking about it. She didn't want to remember it. She'd had brothers once, four of them, parents. She couldn't remember their names or their faces but she could remember that name, their voices, bare feet running through dying fields, the stains they'd have to scrub for days. It felt like a distant story she'd read once, something she almost remembered but couldn't quite feel in her heart. She didn't remember what it meant to love them, not in the ways you should a family, she wasn't that person anymore. To accept that this girl might be her sister, to believe it, felt so very impossible to her. Not only had she been sold and sent away but she'd been replaced. Replaced by a girl her polar opposite, sitting across from her with snow-white hair and those little blue freckles, a stark contrast to her raven tresses and paled but blemish-free complexion. She didn't know what to say to the girl, where to begin. To admit now that that was her name would be giving in to the game in its entirety. She didn't know what the girl was playing at. She leaned back in her chair and returned her knife to its sheath. Her head felt like it needed a gallon of whiskey to swallow all these new puzzle pieces. "I knew a girl once with that name." Her voice was soft, her tone somber. "She grew up on a farm, like you. Had four younger brothers, too. Don' know their names but she told us that same story- me and Anson. Said we were the only ones she'd told. Don' know what happened but she said she'd left home at a young age. Never did mention a little sister." She shrugged bare shoulders, trying to relax, despite that every fiber of her being was screaming for her to run.

Emilia let out a deep breath of relief the moment that Lita finally put away that blade and had calmed herself down, at least enough for her to speak without gripping a weapon wanting to stab her hand into the table. Yet, Em didn’t lean back into her seat yet, instead she spoke a response, “Once upon a time there was two parents that wanted a girl but had four boys and couldn’t have another girl. Desperation and witch spells brought them a pregnancy of a baby girl that stood out from the rest of them. She was tiny with pale skin and fair blonde hair in a family of dark haired people. She wasn’t meant to live, she was cursed to die because a terrible act of theirs cost them the ability to ever have another girl. Yet, she lived. If only because a silver haired warrior save her life. I know you know who I am talking about. Why don’t you ask him about me sometime. He can tell you that I had four older brothers, all dead now. That I too was once human like the rest of them. That a fire took everything away. If you can’t believe what I have to say then go ask him about the little farmer girl with golden blonde hair and a dog. And, Miss, I don’t fancy a liar so please don’t lie to me and try to make up a story to calm your pretty little head with. No soul would get that enraged over a story about someone else that was told to them. Don’t worry, Sister, your secret is safe with me.” The word sounded foreign on her tongue, but it was thrown at her as the ice woman had put the puzzle pieces together finally. It was put together, impossible and unbelievable.

Lita felt a familiar chill captivate her brain. It was what let her escape, created personas and it was too easy to slip back into a life she'd all but tried to leave behind. "That girl- the one you think you're related to- she died a long time ago. Before the fire burned any evidence left, she was little more than smoke so whatever you think you know, forget it. And that name-" she paused here, rose from her seat a little too fast and the wood of the chair legs scraped a little across the floor. "Don't speak that again." She didn't try to cut the warning from her voice. She had every intention of hunting down the silver-haired warrior for a chat and she'd probably need her knife to be clean for that. "Whatever we have been-" acquaintances? Friends? People who just knew of one another? "Whatever we are, we are not family." Her family was dead, she'd buried that darkness a long time ago. "So whatever ideas you're gettin' in that pretty little head, Snowflake, you can just forget 'em." She waved a hand at the girl over her shoulder as she turned on her heel to make her exit from the Inn.