Post by Mittens Mckittens on Jul 2, 2024 23:39:09 GMT
Co-written with ever inspiring dee
“Hello Calla." Comes a familiar voice suddenly from behind Calla as she stands surveying her options for luncheon in the bustling sunny district of The Dawn Market.
Calla freezes for a moment, but then turns, smoothly. “Mittens”. She’s taller now, heading firmly into Summer.
Mittens stands still and placid behind her, his form much the same but for the unusually calm expression he wears. "Good to see ya. Out for lunch?" He inquires, rocking casually on his feet, the swish of his cloak and tail casting shadows in the cobbles.
She nods, “As usual. Would you like something?”
It’s unclear whether she means food or some other thing.
"Well I thought I'd treat you!" Mittens admits, procuring a pair of paper wrapped parcels behind her. "I thought you might like to join me for lunch?" He proposed, eyes flicking from her to the parcels and back again.
Calla’s glasses are darkened, but Mittens sees a familiar furrow in her brow. The kind that deepens when she’s working a puzzle. It eases out quickly. “Yes. I think I will.”
"It's a cacao and raspberry quinoa slice." Mittens explains as Calla unwraps the sizable compacted wedge from its paper coating. "Pa started growing some a couple years back when a merchant passed by with some seeds, it does surprisingly well in Faerun. Really good for ya and makes great savoury sweet treats and, well..I know you like chocolate." Mittens finished, letting slip this piece of intel.
The two are now seated at a table across from one another amongst a few others assembled from some empty crates, barrels and spare planks of wood, a cloth canopy stretched between some trees to provide some welcome shade for shoppers to sit and rest on a corner of the market.
“So”.
"Hm?" Says Mittens, stopping mid bite of his own baked treat to glance over at her.
Calla raises an eyebrow. Yet to take a bite.
"Ooh. Um...Right." Mittens places down his quinoa on its paper again behind nervously pulling at his blue collar necklace with a claw. "T-that was..a lot with...Queen Merla the other day. How are you..doing?" He asked tentatively.
“It was. Everything is right now. I think she’ll be okay though”. Calla’s expression is distant, hard to read, but she believes what she says.
“How about you?”
Mittens' eyes cast over Calla: her posture, her manner, that hard to read expression, and then onto the new scarlet streak that ran through the front of her hair. A loose splatter of red across her fringe that contrasted with Calla’s so controlled, often so prim and precise outward appearance… A sudden flash of sunlight glares in his eyes, as a dark cloaked individual on a nearby stall examines a large well polished dagger, turning it expertly in their fingers with calculated precision. In that light Mitten sees Calla again in the Summer Court clutching the limp figure of Queen Merla in her arms, her hair and front glistening with the crimson ichor of the archfey's blood, her face cold and calculated. Mittens looked down, away from Calla, spots dancing before his eyes. No. He-he wouldn't judge Calla. He wouldn't judge Calla by her appearance that day. He had had enough of that himself, people calling him small and meek. A foolish child way too young to go adventuring, or to learn magic.
But Calla, Calla had been different. She had taken him as he was and hadn’t wavered at him partaking in their first ‘adventure-together’ as they’d solved that mystery in Fort Ettin. She hadn’t even corrected him on getting her name wrong at first. He thought back to that vision of her as a child, standing scared and alone behind that column in the dark as she watched her family plot the ‘use’ for her very existence. To the shy formal bookish ‘young’ woman he had met on his first visit to Fort Ettin. To the day Calla had almost, fully, truly, revealed herself to him. When she’d laughed on that early spring walk back to town from Fort Ettin. Her pale blue cheeks flushed, happy tears spilling down them, her mouth twitching with the barest, the smallest but so obvious, smile. It had been a wonderful sight to see. “Calla,” Mittens said, his voice flat and empty as he could make it, afraid even the barest hint of emotion could be read wrong by her, could be interpreted by her to have any ill or alternate intentions. “You know you can tell me anything right? Are ya really, okay?”
"Mittens. I'm going to ask you something, and I need you to think about the answer before you give it, because it's important, and if you say yes, you can't change your mind later". At this point Spring, or even Winter Calla would have sighed, would have looked away, would have fiddled of fussed with her glasses. But they're not here. Only a merciless Summer remains. "Knowing that you can't go back once you have, that it's not just respect, but responsibility, not just adventure, but consequence, and that your friend is sitting here, advising against losing it at all costs, are you truly ready to abandon your youth?"
Mittens felt the intensity of Calla's stare. Her words seemed to ring in his mind again and again as if she had cast Telepathic Bond between them both, seeming to dull the bustle of the busy market around them to a low dull hum. 'Are you truly ready to abandon your youth?' Well normally he would have just said 'yes', he was thirteen after all, he had his gold Herajui 'Heart-marks' to prove he wasn't a child anymore. Yet..Calla's words met something different. He scrunched his toes in the dirt between them, an action he had always found comforting. He was a 'farm-cat' afterall. But was he?
Mittens thought again to that day he’d met Purrchance in that Orchard on the Celestial Plane, when the old taxbaxi had told him of his Heradjui-heritage. If that had never happened he might never have known. He still didn’t know how to feel about it. Should he feel angry? His parents had ‘hid’ a whole part of his life from him. Would he be the same person he was now if he had never left with Miss Kennari?… That was another matter too. He knew now that the ‘Miss Kennari’ he’d seen back in ‘that inn’ a few months back hadn’t been real, it had just been a mental manifestation by whatever entity controlled it. Yet, ‘her’ cold words still stung as he remembered them. “…I got bored of you…You’re just a child Mittens…You won’t achieve anything…” He recalled the rain soaked embrace he’d held with Levkoi after, the tears of pain and sadness he’d felt…
And then fear. Fear caused by the words of that weathered old woman, Cassandra, as she’d eyed him outside the temple of Lathander in the Coldshaw Valley. “How many times have you 'died' Mittens?” The old crone had asked, an almost gleeful smirk spreading across her face as she acknowledged the concern she had instilled within him, “Shall we find out what happens if you die one more time?” She’d asked, as if she were merely proposing a fun game, before she then vanished unintelligibly. “Why don’t we find out if you die again!…” Her words had rang out loud and manically during the battle later in the dark temple against strange shadowy beings. To just the other day, when they had faced her on the sea on the two ‘party’ boats of the various religious sects of the Dawnlands, he’d ‘Messaged’ her directly, why was she targeting him, why did she want to kill him? And her response. Announced loud and proud so everyone could hear, as if it was the epic punchline to some great elaborate gag she’d long been setting up. “Oh. Why Mittens? You want to know why I want to kill you? Why, because it’s funny!”
As if fuelled again by that sudden strange aura of rage that had overtaken him the last time he’d faced Cassandra, in that moment Mittens had known. If the other’s hadn’t finished her off, if she hadn’t sacrificed herself into that portal to bring forth that horrific-unexplainable ‘Elderitch’ being she'd served-that now inhabited the nearby sea of the Dawnlands…He’d have killed her. He’d have killed her-utterly and without mercy! He had almost killed before. He’d almost done it the day he’d watched Calla be cut down in front of him in Sigil. He saw again Calla' shocked expression as she was struck, blood spurting from her wound and soaking deep into her smart scholarly robes, her blue face turning deathly worryingly pale… Calla had changed so much since then Mittens acknowledged, looking up to and meeting her eyes that were still staring intently at him… And so, he realised had he. “Yes.” Mittens said, resolutely.
Calla rolls out her shoulders, tilts her head side to side, and Mittens can all but feel the crack of tension long held, releasing. It’s a motion he’s seen in fighters before a bout, not in wizards. She looks down at the lad, and for the first time it feels like it. She raises an eyebrow, and it’s clear it’s meant as a question. A last moment of grace. An ‘are you sure?’
"Mh." Mittens confirms with a nod, his face set.
She nods, mouth downturned, and speaks. Her tone calm, warm, heavy. Like an early summer evening gone slowly too hot. “Then know that you cannot help me, and you never could. That there is nothing either of us can say to alter a single moment of how we got here. That I have lived ten times your span, and every repeat beyond the first has laid a fury into my burning bones. And none more so than the last. There may come a time when you must choose between your friends, and if that time comes I would have you choose any of them but me. There is little that any of them could do by accident worse than what I might do by design”. Calla smiles, but it’s not especially pleasant. “Make no mistake, I have done the best I can with the tools available to me, but I have had to make my own virtue: My word, and little beyond it. I have never forsworn a debt or broken a promise, I never twist my words, and I do not promise something I cannot do.” Her smile vanishes. “I promised to protect you and I have: nine times over for the once you saved my life. And I would have let any of your other friends die to fulfil that oath. I nearly have, in fact. But that debt is now done, not just by number, but because you have given it back. You’ve told me you want mastery of your own fate, and so you shall have it”.
She leans in close, and there’s an odd smell to her, like lightning on the horizon. “Listen then, when I tell you, not as part of that debt but as a friend. One of my very few friends. Stay out of the Feywild. It cannot be trusted, and it is not on your side. Everyone will do everything in their power to look after and heal Merla, because she’s part of it, and that’s how it works. But do not get in their way, and do not risk yourself for them. You are not fully part of their world, and thus their care for you, their attention, is fleeting at best”. She sits back, a sour look on her features. The Fourth Cantor’s easy smile summoned to mind. “Even when you have it, it is always to their advantage, and never yours”. The oppressive weight fades out of her voice a little, as if the cool of night is creeping in at the edges. “I will help, of course. But at a step removed. And I advise that if you must, you do the same. Do not give them an opportunity to kill you by carelessness. Not only will they do it, they’ll do it for a thousand years, one cut at a time”.
"But that aside, know that I've promised to help Orianna win a war, that you're no longer under my wings, and that I'll see half your friends dead if it means the rest of the Material survives".
Mittens stared back at Calla, eyes wide. He'd expected her to talk more openly with him, to perhaps give him more of an inkling to what was going on behind the glamour mask she wore. Both physically, and mentally...But this... He had feared it...Had hoped it couldn't be true..but...He saw again, that cold. Calculated...Perhaps now even..merciless 'face' Calla had worn as she'd clutched Queen Merla in her arms, Merla's blood dripping from her hair. "Y-you..." Was all Mittens could say.
“I… what?” Calla takes a small bite out of the wedge in her hand. Raises both eyebrows. “Oh…. Okay, this is actually delicious. What are these berries?”
Mittens heard again the words of one of the dark figures sitting around the table in that vast chamber in that memory of Calla's childhood home "..'this Child’ is of the greatest potential, ‘Calla Prim’." "Raspberries". He said absently, unable to watch the scarlet juice stain her lips as she ate. "W-what's your next move then?" He found himself asking, "What's your..goal."
“My next move?” Calla tilts her head, narrows her eyes. “Speak to Kesserax, maybe become a Herald, go home”.
“Ah, I see”. Calla’s expression drops. “I’d hoped you’d think more of me, but never mind.” She puts a gentle hand on Mittens’ knee. “I spent a full minute with Merla, incapacitated, defenceless, inside a nigh impenetrable globe that cannot be dispelled. And now she’s within the embrace of the summer court, receiving the best care possible. I expect that, in time, she’ll make a full recovery. And if I can help I truly mean to”.
She sighs, takes off her glasses, polishes them, puts them back on, and gives a weary chuckle. “If I wanted her dead…. she’d be dead”.
"Calla..W-what do you actually want? What do you want out of life?" Mittens pushed, he was getting answers, even if all they gave him was more questions, more uncertainties about the girl who sat across from him, his friend, her friend as she'd assured himself. He may as well go for it now. Even if it was because he realised may not be able to walk if he'd tried, his legs felt like lead.
"One minute you're seeking an education, the next you're going off on some knowledge seeking pilgrimage. Then you're bouncing back and forth playing nice with the fey like it's some great elaborate fancy-ass tea party where someone could just suddenly turn around with all their great fey'wild wisdom and stick a butter knife in yer because you sneezed the wrong way. Then there's all that stuff with the dragons and the mountain and being a herald'n'all...To me it seems like to me you're not able to settle on anything. Like you're pulling yourself left, right and center. Live up to promises? Right wrongs?"
"Flaming heck Calla, Do you not think you're over'doin it a bit to yourself?" Mittens finished, a bit of hot ferocity coming into his voice.
Calla makes full eye contact, letting it last until it starts to become uncomfortable. “I’m literally squaring up to creatures that are thousands upon thousands of years old, trying to out manoeuvre something that’s known me since I was a babe, and the question is, ‘am I overdoing it’?”
Mittens stared back at her. He'd always been quite good at squaring off with his Pa playfully on who would claim the helping of his Ma's cooking at dinner times, and in returning to the old habit in doing it Levkoi over the last couple months with Yin's cooking, he'd perfected it. "I mean, doing it all 'by yourself'! I only found out about your..'patreon' the other week for instance, and that was only cause the wrong door seemed to get left ajar in your mind. Turns out it's something your family has been planning to use ya to 'control' since..birth! That's gotta have been eating ya up from the inside! I-I can't imagine how that must feel..."
Mittens spoke not with anger, but with concern. Calla seemed so alone in all this. So set that killing and removing people that could get in her way like they were merely empty obstacles, just faceless game pieces was something she had to do to meet her own ends.
She takes another bite of the parcel. Chews. Swallows. “Certainly. I’ve likely been designed as a tool even before my birth. There’s a reasonable argument that I was made on purpose, like a thing, not a person at all. But we’ve spoken about this. And it’s almost irrelevant. If the Mountain aims to harm the world, and is only in it due to my actions, I’m as bound to hamper him now as I was to help, before. The fact it lines up with my desire to best those who’d use me to their own ends is, well, ideal, really”. She gestures with the remains of her food. “Meanwhile, you’ve launched yourself into the teeth of death at every possible opportunity for… well, no reason at all, that I can discern. So you might want to explain that before you take the high ground”.
Mittens recalled the talk they'd had at that lab back at the Academy-after they'd 'explored' Calla's mind. Calla had said some extreme things then, talks of turning the academy to ash in spite, and then being taken out by a party of adventurers assigned to take her down. Heck they'd even talked of ending folks' lives and the reasons of why or why not to. But that had seemed a conversation with a different Calla altogether, one who'd accepted his silent conforming embrace. She held him to her, in fact. He was unsure this 'Calla' would do same.
Her next statement had started him.
"W-well it was never actually intentional!" Mittens admitted, which was true. "Miss Kennari said it would be a good experience to see other casters and adventurers at work on jobs, she encouraged me to go on them. S-She didn't know ho..how dangerous it could be..." He faulted. He saw again those words he'd exchanged with the False-Kennari, his angry desperate voice ringing in his ears, “B-but why bring me here then? Why go to all the bother." Before she gave her almost shrugged response. “It was an experiment.. I got bored of you.” He heard her say it again as the message hit home. Perhaps she hadn't ever been encouraging him. Perhaps, she'd just been trying to get rid of him.
"And where is she now?" Calla inspects her nails. "I can't help but notice you've not once asked for my help in finding her".
"You, me, Rae, we all came to the Dawnlands at the same time. And look at us now. We might as well be on different continents".
"Rae...Mr Ke...Keros mentioned them." His voice sounding somehow maturer. "He lent me a ring from a pair he had the other day to try and..protect me." Mittens eyes glanced up at her from where he sat. "He said he'd promised you he'd do it. Bit shoddy workmanship dat ring I must admit."
"Do ya miss home Calla?" Mittens asked suddenly, his voice softer as he looked out across the market. "You say about going home, but are there any good bits you miss?" He saw again that afraid younger Calla in his mind.
"I do miss the place itself. It's... beautiful. Full of things other people have discarded but that have never given up their value. A whole... garden of loss".
"Garden of Loss?" Mittens asks, genuinely intrigued.
"Mmm, it's the place things go when there's nowhere else for them. I have a lot of feelings about why that is and what it means and how it could be better".
"And it's like..your ancestral home? In the Feydark?"
“Yes, it’s where I grew up”.
"I'd like to see it one day." Mittens replied. "When you're ready to show me."
"Once I've tidied it up a bit, maybe"
“I’ve got a spell two to help with that.”Mittens grins. “Don’t look too surprised! I do actually practice me magic ya know!”
"Mittens I... I don't doubt your ability. I just... when I say 'tidy it up', I mean 'unpick a conspiracy centuries old, quite possibly with fire', and I think we can both agree that you've been on fire quite enough already". She smiles, and this time it's genuinely warm. "When I need you, or when it's even a little bit safer, I'll call you by name. I....". Her smile stalls. Her voice flattens a little. "I think it might actually suit you very well, kind of, some day".
The thought flits through her mind and is diligently packed into a deeper recess. Somewhere among the shelves. "But for now, let's not worry about it. Afterall," She sets out to unwrap a second parcel. "These raspberries are very good".
Calla had actually started to eat Mittens' lunch, but he didn't mind, he just smiled.
"And I'll be there for you Calla." He thought back silently in response.
“Hello Calla." Comes a familiar voice suddenly from behind Calla as she stands surveying her options for luncheon in the bustling sunny district of The Dawn Market.
Calla freezes for a moment, but then turns, smoothly. “Mittens”. She’s taller now, heading firmly into Summer.
Mittens stands still and placid behind her, his form much the same but for the unusually calm expression he wears. "Good to see ya. Out for lunch?" He inquires, rocking casually on his feet, the swish of his cloak and tail casting shadows in the cobbles.
She nods, “As usual. Would you like something?”
It’s unclear whether she means food or some other thing.
"Well I thought I'd treat you!" Mittens admits, procuring a pair of paper wrapped parcels behind her. "I thought you might like to join me for lunch?" He proposed, eyes flicking from her to the parcels and back again.
Calla’s glasses are darkened, but Mittens sees a familiar furrow in her brow. The kind that deepens when she’s working a puzzle. It eases out quickly. “Yes. I think I will.”
"It's a cacao and raspberry quinoa slice." Mittens explains as Calla unwraps the sizable compacted wedge from its paper coating. "Pa started growing some a couple years back when a merchant passed by with some seeds, it does surprisingly well in Faerun. Really good for ya and makes great savoury sweet treats and, well..I know you like chocolate." Mittens finished, letting slip this piece of intel.
The two are now seated at a table across from one another amongst a few others assembled from some empty crates, barrels and spare planks of wood, a cloth canopy stretched between some trees to provide some welcome shade for shoppers to sit and rest on a corner of the market.
“So”.
"Hm?" Says Mittens, stopping mid bite of his own baked treat to glance over at her.
Calla raises an eyebrow. Yet to take a bite.
"Ooh. Um...Right." Mittens places down his quinoa on its paper again behind nervously pulling at his blue collar necklace with a claw. "T-that was..a lot with...Queen Merla the other day. How are you..doing?" He asked tentatively.
“It was. Everything is right now. I think she’ll be okay though”. Calla’s expression is distant, hard to read, but she believes what she says.
“How about you?”
Mittens' eyes cast over Calla: her posture, her manner, that hard to read expression, and then onto the new scarlet streak that ran through the front of her hair. A loose splatter of red across her fringe that contrasted with Calla’s so controlled, often so prim and precise outward appearance… A sudden flash of sunlight glares in his eyes, as a dark cloaked individual on a nearby stall examines a large well polished dagger, turning it expertly in their fingers with calculated precision. In that light Mitten sees Calla again in the Summer Court clutching the limp figure of Queen Merla in her arms, her hair and front glistening with the crimson ichor of the archfey's blood, her face cold and calculated. Mittens looked down, away from Calla, spots dancing before his eyes. No. He-he wouldn't judge Calla. He wouldn't judge Calla by her appearance that day. He had had enough of that himself, people calling him small and meek. A foolish child way too young to go adventuring, or to learn magic.
But Calla, Calla had been different. She had taken him as he was and hadn’t wavered at him partaking in their first ‘adventure-together’ as they’d solved that mystery in Fort Ettin. She hadn’t even corrected him on getting her name wrong at first. He thought back to that vision of her as a child, standing scared and alone behind that column in the dark as she watched her family plot the ‘use’ for her very existence. To the shy formal bookish ‘young’ woman he had met on his first visit to Fort Ettin. To the day Calla had almost, fully, truly, revealed herself to him. When she’d laughed on that early spring walk back to town from Fort Ettin. Her pale blue cheeks flushed, happy tears spilling down them, her mouth twitching with the barest, the smallest but so obvious, smile. It had been a wonderful sight to see. “Calla,” Mittens said, his voice flat and empty as he could make it, afraid even the barest hint of emotion could be read wrong by her, could be interpreted by her to have any ill or alternate intentions. “You know you can tell me anything right? Are ya really, okay?”
"Mittens. I'm going to ask you something, and I need you to think about the answer before you give it, because it's important, and if you say yes, you can't change your mind later". At this point Spring, or even Winter Calla would have sighed, would have looked away, would have fiddled of fussed with her glasses. But they're not here. Only a merciless Summer remains. "Knowing that you can't go back once you have, that it's not just respect, but responsibility, not just adventure, but consequence, and that your friend is sitting here, advising against losing it at all costs, are you truly ready to abandon your youth?"
Mittens felt the intensity of Calla's stare. Her words seemed to ring in his mind again and again as if she had cast Telepathic Bond between them both, seeming to dull the bustle of the busy market around them to a low dull hum. 'Are you truly ready to abandon your youth?' Well normally he would have just said 'yes', he was thirteen after all, he had his gold Herajui 'Heart-marks' to prove he wasn't a child anymore. Yet..Calla's words met something different. He scrunched his toes in the dirt between them, an action he had always found comforting. He was a 'farm-cat' afterall. But was he?
Mittens thought again to that day he’d met Purrchance in that Orchard on the Celestial Plane, when the old taxbaxi had told him of his Heradjui-heritage. If that had never happened he might never have known. He still didn’t know how to feel about it. Should he feel angry? His parents had ‘hid’ a whole part of his life from him. Would he be the same person he was now if he had never left with Miss Kennari?… That was another matter too. He knew now that the ‘Miss Kennari’ he’d seen back in ‘that inn’ a few months back hadn’t been real, it had just been a mental manifestation by whatever entity controlled it. Yet, ‘her’ cold words still stung as he remembered them. “…I got bored of you…You’re just a child Mittens…You won’t achieve anything…” He recalled the rain soaked embrace he’d held with Levkoi after, the tears of pain and sadness he’d felt…
And then fear. Fear caused by the words of that weathered old woman, Cassandra, as she’d eyed him outside the temple of Lathander in the Coldshaw Valley. “How many times have you 'died' Mittens?” The old crone had asked, an almost gleeful smirk spreading across her face as she acknowledged the concern she had instilled within him, “Shall we find out what happens if you die one more time?” She’d asked, as if she were merely proposing a fun game, before she then vanished unintelligibly. “Why don’t we find out if you die again!…” Her words had rang out loud and manically during the battle later in the dark temple against strange shadowy beings. To just the other day, when they had faced her on the sea on the two ‘party’ boats of the various religious sects of the Dawnlands, he’d ‘Messaged’ her directly, why was she targeting him, why did she want to kill him? And her response. Announced loud and proud so everyone could hear, as if it was the epic punchline to some great elaborate gag she’d long been setting up. “Oh. Why Mittens? You want to know why I want to kill you? Why, because it’s funny!”
As if fuelled again by that sudden strange aura of rage that had overtaken him the last time he’d faced Cassandra, in that moment Mittens had known. If the other’s hadn’t finished her off, if she hadn’t sacrificed herself into that portal to bring forth that horrific-unexplainable ‘Elderitch’ being she'd served-that now inhabited the nearby sea of the Dawnlands…He’d have killed her. He’d have killed her-utterly and without mercy! He had almost killed before. He’d almost done it the day he’d watched Calla be cut down in front of him in Sigil. He saw again Calla' shocked expression as she was struck, blood spurting from her wound and soaking deep into her smart scholarly robes, her blue face turning deathly worryingly pale… Calla had changed so much since then Mittens acknowledged, looking up to and meeting her eyes that were still staring intently at him… And so, he realised had he. “Yes.” Mittens said, resolutely.
Calla rolls out her shoulders, tilts her head side to side, and Mittens can all but feel the crack of tension long held, releasing. It’s a motion he’s seen in fighters before a bout, not in wizards. She looks down at the lad, and for the first time it feels like it. She raises an eyebrow, and it’s clear it’s meant as a question. A last moment of grace. An ‘are you sure?’
"Mh." Mittens confirms with a nod, his face set.
She nods, mouth downturned, and speaks. Her tone calm, warm, heavy. Like an early summer evening gone slowly too hot. “Then know that you cannot help me, and you never could. That there is nothing either of us can say to alter a single moment of how we got here. That I have lived ten times your span, and every repeat beyond the first has laid a fury into my burning bones. And none more so than the last. There may come a time when you must choose between your friends, and if that time comes I would have you choose any of them but me. There is little that any of them could do by accident worse than what I might do by design”. Calla smiles, but it’s not especially pleasant. “Make no mistake, I have done the best I can with the tools available to me, but I have had to make my own virtue: My word, and little beyond it. I have never forsworn a debt or broken a promise, I never twist my words, and I do not promise something I cannot do.” Her smile vanishes. “I promised to protect you and I have: nine times over for the once you saved my life. And I would have let any of your other friends die to fulfil that oath. I nearly have, in fact. But that debt is now done, not just by number, but because you have given it back. You’ve told me you want mastery of your own fate, and so you shall have it”.
She leans in close, and there’s an odd smell to her, like lightning on the horizon. “Listen then, when I tell you, not as part of that debt but as a friend. One of my very few friends. Stay out of the Feywild. It cannot be trusted, and it is not on your side. Everyone will do everything in their power to look after and heal Merla, because she’s part of it, and that’s how it works. But do not get in their way, and do not risk yourself for them. You are not fully part of their world, and thus their care for you, their attention, is fleeting at best”. She sits back, a sour look on her features. The Fourth Cantor’s easy smile summoned to mind. “Even when you have it, it is always to their advantage, and never yours”. The oppressive weight fades out of her voice a little, as if the cool of night is creeping in at the edges. “I will help, of course. But at a step removed. And I advise that if you must, you do the same. Do not give them an opportunity to kill you by carelessness. Not only will they do it, they’ll do it for a thousand years, one cut at a time”.
"But that aside, know that I've promised to help Orianna win a war, that you're no longer under my wings, and that I'll see half your friends dead if it means the rest of the Material survives".
Mittens stared back at Calla, eyes wide. He'd expected her to talk more openly with him, to perhaps give him more of an inkling to what was going on behind the glamour mask she wore. Both physically, and mentally...But this... He had feared it...Had hoped it couldn't be true..but...He saw again, that cold. Calculated...Perhaps now even..merciless 'face' Calla had worn as she'd clutched Queen Merla in her arms, Merla's blood dripping from her hair. "Y-you..." Was all Mittens could say.
“I… what?” Calla takes a small bite out of the wedge in her hand. Raises both eyebrows. “Oh…. Okay, this is actually delicious. What are these berries?”
Mittens heard again the words of one of the dark figures sitting around the table in that vast chamber in that memory of Calla's childhood home "..'this Child’ is of the greatest potential, ‘Calla Prim’." "Raspberries". He said absently, unable to watch the scarlet juice stain her lips as she ate. "W-what's your next move then?" He found himself asking, "What's your..goal."
“My next move?” Calla tilts her head, narrows her eyes. “Speak to Kesserax, maybe become a Herald, go home”.
“Ah, I see”. Calla’s expression drops. “I’d hoped you’d think more of me, but never mind.” She puts a gentle hand on Mittens’ knee. “I spent a full minute with Merla, incapacitated, defenceless, inside a nigh impenetrable globe that cannot be dispelled. And now she’s within the embrace of the summer court, receiving the best care possible. I expect that, in time, she’ll make a full recovery. And if I can help I truly mean to”.
She sighs, takes off her glasses, polishes them, puts them back on, and gives a weary chuckle. “If I wanted her dead…. she’d be dead”.
"Calla..W-what do you actually want? What do you want out of life?" Mittens pushed, he was getting answers, even if all they gave him was more questions, more uncertainties about the girl who sat across from him, his friend, her friend as she'd assured himself. He may as well go for it now. Even if it was because he realised may not be able to walk if he'd tried, his legs felt like lead.
"One minute you're seeking an education, the next you're going off on some knowledge seeking pilgrimage. Then you're bouncing back and forth playing nice with the fey like it's some great elaborate fancy-ass tea party where someone could just suddenly turn around with all their great fey'wild wisdom and stick a butter knife in yer because you sneezed the wrong way. Then there's all that stuff with the dragons and the mountain and being a herald'n'all...To me it seems like to me you're not able to settle on anything. Like you're pulling yourself left, right and center. Live up to promises? Right wrongs?"
"Flaming heck Calla, Do you not think you're over'doin it a bit to yourself?" Mittens finished, a bit of hot ferocity coming into his voice.
Calla makes full eye contact, letting it last until it starts to become uncomfortable. “I’m literally squaring up to creatures that are thousands upon thousands of years old, trying to out manoeuvre something that’s known me since I was a babe, and the question is, ‘am I overdoing it’?”
Mittens stared back at her. He'd always been quite good at squaring off with his Pa playfully on who would claim the helping of his Ma's cooking at dinner times, and in returning to the old habit in doing it Levkoi over the last couple months with Yin's cooking, he'd perfected it. "I mean, doing it all 'by yourself'! I only found out about your..'patreon' the other week for instance, and that was only cause the wrong door seemed to get left ajar in your mind. Turns out it's something your family has been planning to use ya to 'control' since..birth! That's gotta have been eating ya up from the inside! I-I can't imagine how that must feel..."
Mittens spoke not with anger, but with concern. Calla seemed so alone in all this. So set that killing and removing people that could get in her way like they were merely empty obstacles, just faceless game pieces was something she had to do to meet her own ends.
She takes another bite of the parcel. Chews. Swallows. “Certainly. I’ve likely been designed as a tool even before my birth. There’s a reasonable argument that I was made on purpose, like a thing, not a person at all. But we’ve spoken about this. And it’s almost irrelevant. If the Mountain aims to harm the world, and is only in it due to my actions, I’m as bound to hamper him now as I was to help, before. The fact it lines up with my desire to best those who’d use me to their own ends is, well, ideal, really”. She gestures with the remains of her food. “Meanwhile, you’ve launched yourself into the teeth of death at every possible opportunity for… well, no reason at all, that I can discern. So you might want to explain that before you take the high ground”.
Mittens recalled the talk they'd had at that lab back at the Academy-after they'd 'explored' Calla's mind. Calla had said some extreme things then, talks of turning the academy to ash in spite, and then being taken out by a party of adventurers assigned to take her down. Heck they'd even talked of ending folks' lives and the reasons of why or why not to. But that had seemed a conversation with a different Calla altogether, one who'd accepted his silent conforming embrace. She held him to her, in fact. He was unsure this 'Calla' would do same.
Her next statement had started him.
"W-well it was never actually intentional!" Mittens admitted, which was true. "Miss Kennari said it would be a good experience to see other casters and adventurers at work on jobs, she encouraged me to go on them. S-She didn't know ho..how dangerous it could be..." He faulted. He saw again those words he'd exchanged with the False-Kennari, his angry desperate voice ringing in his ears, “B-but why bring me here then? Why go to all the bother." Before she gave her almost shrugged response. “It was an experiment.. I got bored of you.” He heard her say it again as the message hit home. Perhaps she hadn't ever been encouraging him. Perhaps, she'd just been trying to get rid of him.
"And where is she now?" Calla inspects her nails. "I can't help but notice you've not once asked for my help in finding her".
"You, me, Rae, we all came to the Dawnlands at the same time. And look at us now. We might as well be on different continents".
"Rae...Mr Ke...Keros mentioned them." His voice sounding somehow maturer. "He lent me a ring from a pair he had the other day to try and..protect me." Mittens eyes glanced up at her from where he sat. "He said he'd promised you he'd do it. Bit shoddy workmanship dat ring I must admit."
"Do ya miss home Calla?" Mittens asked suddenly, his voice softer as he looked out across the market. "You say about going home, but are there any good bits you miss?" He saw again that afraid younger Calla in his mind.
"I do miss the place itself. It's... beautiful. Full of things other people have discarded but that have never given up their value. A whole... garden of loss".
"Garden of Loss?" Mittens asks, genuinely intrigued.
"Mmm, it's the place things go when there's nowhere else for them. I have a lot of feelings about why that is and what it means and how it could be better".
"And it's like..your ancestral home? In the Feydark?"
“Yes, it’s where I grew up”.
"I'd like to see it one day." Mittens replied. "When you're ready to show me."
"Once I've tidied it up a bit, maybe"
“I’ve got a spell two to help with that.”Mittens grins. “Don’t look too surprised! I do actually practice me magic ya know!”
"Mittens I... I don't doubt your ability. I just... when I say 'tidy it up', I mean 'unpick a conspiracy centuries old, quite possibly with fire', and I think we can both agree that you've been on fire quite enough already". She smiles, and this time it's genuinely warm. "When I need you, or when it's even a little bit safer, I'll call you by name. I....". Her smile stalls. Her voice flattens a little. "I think it might actually suit you very well, kind of, some day".
The thought flits through her mind and is diligently packed into a deeper recess. Somewhere among the shelves. "But for now, let's not worry about it. Afterall," She sets out to unwrap a second parcel. "These raspberries are very good".
Calla had actually started to eat Mittens' lunch, but he didn't mind, he just smiled.
"And I'll be there for you Calla." He thought back silently in response.