Bella

[Anaris]

The cinnamon-skinned Ayr'Dal sat on a cliff overlooking the Coldwind Coast.  Her gaze was lost somewhere in the shimmering ocean, letting her mind drift off.  A voice, both piercing and ancient-sounding, brought her back to her senses.

"The boy is lying," said the elderly voice.

"He is not lying.  You don't know what you're saying," said Bella in an almost whisper.

Ethos, the kitten with the ever-changing fur, curled up next to Bella, hoping to purr himself into a slumber.

The ancient voice continued, "Do not be naïve, Bella.  He is using you as bait, or as a scapegoat.  They both are.  You should remove yourself before you become a victim.   Before you become the victim."

Bella sighed deeply and hugged her knees to her chest.  Ethos purred again, looked up at her inquisitively, and rested his head on her bare feet.  "Not this again...  I think I'll nap, Bellsie, if you don't mind," murmured Ethos, in his child-like soft voice.

The ancient voice, taking the shriveled shape of an ebon-colored drake with razor-sharp scaly wings, perched on Bella's knee and looked into her clear-blue eyes.  It spoke again, shrieking:  "You need to stop caring about the boy.  He is not your brother.  He is not even your friend.   The boy has a history.  What have we concluded from our research thus far?  At best, he is problematic.  At worst, he is a murderer. "

Bella rolled her eyes at the drake.  "Problematic at best?  Well that really narrows it down, Logos.  That can apply to just about anyone in Qeynos, let alone someone who was born in Freeport!"

Logos hissed.  "What makes you think he will not turn to his old ways again?  What makes you think you are safe?"

"Let it go, Logos...  We don't know that.  You are only speculating based on the bits and pieces of information we've gathered.  You're coming up with your own conclusions without even giving him a fair chance to explain himself.  He is my friend, and I will help him as I see fit whether you like it or not so get used to it," whispered Bella to the old drake.

"And...I don't think he's a murderer," she added as an afterthought, almost like she only meant to say that to herself.

The old drake flew off Bella's knee and set itself on a rock next to Bella. "I am here to guard you from those that prey upon the innocent.  You do not have to heed my advice, but consider yourself warned."

Bella scoffed.  "You don't really care about me.  You only care about the fact that if I die, so will you.  You're looking out for your own interests.  How am I to believe an old, bitter creature like you?  You begged Solusek Ro for mercy, and so it was granted at the cost of your freedom!  You are stuck with me and you hate every minute of it but you know you can't survive without me.  That's the only reason why you care about whether I live or not!"

Logos shrieked in disdain, fiercely flapping his wings against the rock.   

Ethos looked up lazily.  His sleepy gaze reminded Bella to control her temper before she'd burst into flames again.  Bella patted him on the head and he yawned, returning to his resting position.

After a long pause, Logos spoke again.  "Think what you will, Nixabella Swanfeather, but mark my words:  That boy is no good.  He is poison."

Bella looked at the elderly drake.  "I'm sorry, Logos.  I... I didn't mean any of that.  I don't know what came over me."

Logos fluttered its wings once, almost in slow motion.   Its coal black eyes glistened against the golden Antonican sunset.  "I know you did not, Bella.  I know you did not."

The trio sat in silence until the sky turned pitch black.

[Kagemaru]

((Standard disclaimer:  I don't do spell check of any sort of proofreading.  Deal with it. Hope it makes sense. ))

Rafe was alone in the house, struggling to slide a bookshelf towards the wall of its new home.  The base stuttered against the wooden floor, failing to move and  making very annoying whale like sounds.  It was these same sounds that were just loud enough to drown the sounds of clicking tumblers and faint footsteps, even to Rafe's trained ears.  It was his futile exertion that distracted his heightened senses just enough for a literal shadow to change shape into something less conspicuous. 

He grunted and pushed, and again, the shelf failed to move sufficiently to be even remotely be considered progress, unless progress was defined by how many different tones he could generate by clumsily vibrating a bookshelf agianst the floor grain.  Even in that case, he was doing a poor job.

What his pointed ears did managed to catch, though, was a toneless voice, from a shadow that he just now realized wasn't there a minute ago.

"Always reluctant to ask for help, aren't you?"  A gravely rasp voice, with every word driven hard into stone with purposeful tone and precision emotionlessness.

Rafe swallowed a hard pill when he recogized the voice.  It foamed heavily in his stomach, choking him on his own words."What... what do you want? Dare trespass here in my home?"

"Not just your home, remember? I heard you two were living together. I had to see it for myself."  Still, the voice came not from a man, but rather shadow resembling a lamp Rafe hadn't even unpacked yet.

"At least face me if you're going to talk. Enough of the smoke and mirrors!"  He was irritated moreso by the direct nature of the confrontation rather than flashy entrance. They spoke through workarounds like dead drop letters, coded courier messages and sign post graffiti.  In fact, this would only be the second time in months they've met face to face.

The deception ended as though it were a coercer's spell of deception, but truthfully, it was a mortal's command over the environment around him, honed through an insurmountable number of years as a master of deception.  Where a shadow once was, there stood a man, barely taller than Rafe and with hair as red as the blood he spilled.  This, was Kagemaru.  No sooner than he appeared, he immediately began to speak again.  Every rasp churning the pill in Rafe's stomach.

"If you don't tell her, I will."

Rafe was going to throw up.

"Leave her out of this," Rafe exploded the words, luckily managing to hold his stress to words rather than actions.  He was furious that he would dare intrude on his home, yet more afraid to the fact that he managed to in the first place.  Extra guards everywhere, a house deep inside the city walls, next door to a knight and his lady... should have been impossible.

This was the part where the blood hair assassin would really irriate people: Straight to the point single phrase replies designed to do just that. "I tried to, but you pretty much insisted on it," but he wasn't going to stop there this time, "stringing her along on a leash from one false answer to another. Cut the cord. Be a man."

Easy advice for a man who lied for a living, even holding the title of Deciever in his lifetime.

"It's not that easy," Rafe struggled to find a lie to back up his stereotypical retort, "I can't just-"

"Shut up. You're going to listen."  He barely spoke louder than Rafe, but it was enough to stutter his words and make him do just that. It wasn't that Rafe was completely submissive, it was that he knew he in his heart that he was fighting on the losing side of an argument. "You asked for my help, and you're getting it.  I agreed because you weren't yet acting like an idiot."

Rafe stood there silently, leaning his back on the bookshelf in the same exhausted posture of a man that would have actually managed to move the shelf to where it was intended to go.  Except that he used twice the force for a fourth of the results.  The perfectly lame metaphor for his current situation.  If Rafe followed any of the gods, this would have been taken for a sign from one of them to act. Instead, he leaned on the shelf like a beaten sack of kittens.

"Tell her, or I will." Kagemaru reiterated his threat before offering more help, "Now, let's move this shelf."

"Forget the shelf.  I've to speak to the winds," which was his way of saying he was venturing out to the Antonican highlands to clear his head before doing the right thing.

"Do that. Don't worry, I'll lock up when I'm done moving the shelves for you."  Ending on a note like this was something this assassin prided himself on.  It's not worth doing, if you can't do it in style, he had always said.
Rafe, on the other hand, was the complete opposite.  It wasn't worth doing, if you had to use effort.  He would learn, even if it would kill him.

A bitter pill to swallow, indeed.

---

[Anaris]

Bella was making her way back home to South Qeynos at dusk, after spending a lovely afternoon in Steamfont Mountains with one of her paladin friends.  Ethos skipped happily in front of her, already having learned the way home from the Saga hall.  Logos trailed behind her, half walking and half flying, like a kite being dragged through a field.

"Ethos, you are the most un-cat-like cat I've ever seen," giggled Bella.

Ethos meowed his version of a giggle.  "I'm really happy Pants and I get along, Bellsie, we are friends now!"

Logos hissed, in clear disagreement of what he thought was Bella's and Ethos' groundless contentment, but didn't say a word.  Logos was aware it was only a matter of time before Pants, Rafe's kitten, shredded him to pieces.

Bella reached her doorstep and pulled out her key, but hesitated entering the house.   She felt as if she was forgetting something.  "Hmmm... Perhaps I should check with Sage Surion before retiring and see if there's any reading material for me this eve..."

Bella walked toward the Mage Tower just in time to catch Sage Surion before he departed.  She collected a few tomes from the Sage and purchased an extra quill since it was obvious, from the size of the tomes, that she'd be up late scribing notes from the evening's research.  She arrived to find the house empty, save for the kittens. 

"Hello Pants!"

Pants meowed back at her.

Ethos, Silvannos, and Pants resumed whatever kitten game they had been playing the night before.  Logos perched on his favorite dark corner, sulking himself to sleep.  Bella went upstairs to settle in a corner of their library-in-the-making.  Her bright blue eyes lit up when she saw that the bookshelves had been neatly lined up against the walls.  She was ecstatic in finding that the shelves were stocked with her collection of tomes, all arranged in chronological reading order, just how she liked it.   She couldn't believe her luck.  One thing about the move that she was not looking forward to was unpacking all her books and arranging the study area, but she desperately needed a place to read.  Apparently Rafe had taken on the daunting task, and she couldn't help but think how kind that was of him.

"What a pleasant surprise!  Dagger is so thoughtful!  Solusek bless him," she whispered to herself.

Far off in the distance she could hear Logos' echoed hiss of disagreement.

"Go to sleep you old drake!"  She yelled half-jokingly at Logos.

Bella walked toward one of her bookshelves and noticed one book was out of order.  Or was it two books out of order if one was mistakenly placed before the other?  She pulled out the misplaced book.  Wedged between The Precious Fairy Book and The Siren's Song, was The History of Frogloks.  One of her favorites, because it read so much like a children's morality play of sorts.  Her grandfather had given the book to her precisely for this purpose, seeing as he doubted that his son's dubious lifestyle would be a good example for his fiery little granddaughter.  But she did read it before the Fairy book, so it needed to be in the right order.  She couldn't stop herself from opening it and reading a favorite passage again:

We are the children of Mithaniel Marr, god of valor. He has given unto us a greater share of honor than was given to any other creature. We would rather die with honor than extend our lives through deception of any kind.

This can be challenging for others--the concept that laws are not meant for the breaking. While we try to be understanding that not everyone shares our belief, it is still distressing to see rules bent and broken. The laws of the land are not simply suggestions, as some seem to think.

She took a deep breath and inhaled the pages of the aged tome, another favorite thing she liked to do.  And then, just as quickly as she had been filled with joy when she saw the new library, she was consumed by terror. 

She caught a scent, nothing like the old pages in the book.

"Someone else held this book.  And it wasn't a ranger."

She froze in fear.  Not even the sudden flames that engulfed her body could melt the tremors off.  She wondered if Rafe was still alive.