Jezyk Haeren, Speaker of the Stars in the Krynnian city of Silvanost, let out the air he had been holding in his lungs since his second in command had arrived. It had been almost minutes since she had begun speaking, and if she asked he would tell her it was to give her every bit of his attention. But she never asked; both of them knew the real reason was her scent. The Elvish advisor was truly a rarity among the Silvanesti, having thrived in blood magic rather than become sterile as most other elves were"a lingering aftereffect of the War of Souls catastrophe that had nearly decimated their entire population. Despite the detrimental, altering effects of the shield the general in charge had erected, Larien's fertile body had remained blissfully enchanted"not in Wild magic, but in White. As a result that scent"the clean, intoxicating smell of a god's blessing"followed her everywhere. A quirk of their naturally magical Elvish anatomy, the scent drew others of their kind to her with debilitating ease, encouraging propagation and the ongoing evolution of a stronger, more magical line of descendants. Larien's scent alone could ensnare the heart of any elf, and if one factored in her ethereal pale skin, rich golden tresses and bewitching silver eyes, she could easily elevate herself to any position she desired. It had always amused Jezyk that she chose to serve him instead as his right hand and personal advisor, trading prospects of wealth and authority for servitude and monastic austerity.

If nothing else, she was very nice to look at.

"That marks the ninth this month, does it not?" Jezyk asked, calmly fitting the dragon orb in his possession onto its ceramic pedestal. The pedestal itself was unnecessarily ornate"almost as tall as he was in all his six-five majesty"and built to accommodate the massive overflow of magic the orb often exuded, potent enough to paralyze any lesser man. Jezyk was one of only two elves he knew of who could physically touch the thing. Fortunately the other was now worlds away on Rhy"Din and not his concern.

"Tenth," Larien corrected evenly. "On the fifth of Winter Come Orthos" offspring was also born incapable of harnessing magic."

Gold and silver mosaic tiles blinked up at Jezyk as he crossed the room and folded his hands behind his back. The topmost room in the Tower of the Stars unfortunately wasn't large enough for proper pacing, however, and he soon found himself right back where he had been standing. Out of professional courtesy Larien pushed closer to an open window, giving the Speaker and his long satin robes mastery of what space there was, but no sooner had she stepped back then he stepped forward, bringing her a hairsbreadth away from his piercing emerald stare.

"Well?" Jezyk prompted her, pleased when she did not cower beneath his looming physique. Not that he expected her to. Larien quite nearly knew him better than he knew himself. Nearly.

His right hand studied him evenly, from the aquiline contours of his jaw to the elegant feathering of black fringe brushing against his collar.

"Well what?" Her returning look was not one of defiance'she was never so careless"but the sheer amount of control there irritated him. Purposefully Jezyk drew in a deep breath, and he detected the slightest twitch of amusement on her lips when the intoxicating scent of unbridled magic made him shudder involuntarily.

Jezyk smiled, and when he breathed her in a second time and forcibly willed away the dull ache growing beneath his robes, Larien's eyes glinted briefly in submission. She knew very well who was in command. "Well, what do you recommend?"

Her steady gaze did not ebb. "I have told you before, Speaker, what I recommend."

Larien was a most excellent advisor, but the solution to the magic issue in Silvanost had been the one topic they could never agree upon. Years ago the Council had enlisted the assistance of a one General Cyredghymn to construct a barrier around Silvanost in order to escape the hazards of war. Its purpose had been effective in protecting them from their adversaries, but at an enormous cost; too late the Silvanesti had learned that the construction itself fed on the magic of their people, and countless elves had died before the Council ordered the general to take it down. It wasn't until after the general's ensuing banishment that they discovered the shield's lasting effects"namely by making innately magical elves incapable of using magic. And since magic for them was an intrinsic component of their longevity, the already decimated population had since begun a steady decline that would inevitably bottom out in a matter of only a few centuries.

The Shade, they called her. He knew she had done it on purpose. What he would never understand was where Sivanna found the audacity to defend what she had done.

A myriad of solutions had been explored and failed, not to Jezyk's surprise. But Larien's suggestion still remained. It was the most plausible and frankly the one with the highest chance of success.

It was also the only one that Jezyk adamantly refused.

"You can come up with something better," Jezyk replied, looking past his second and through the window. It was dark out, but the stars lit the city better than any torch could. "That is out of the question."

"We know it will work."

"Do we?" Jezyk carefully harnessed the growing upset inside him as he regarded her. "All we know is that direction will invite an anomaly. She wasn't something we could control before; what makes you think we could do so now?"

Larien made no movement. "Perhaps she has changed."

"Doubtful," Jezyk breathed. He stared out the window a moment longer before caging Larien in his gaze. "I will not be responsible for bringing that thing back into our lives. It is better that she is gone."

"And yet she is also quite possibly the only one who knows how to solve this problem."

"She can't be reasoned with."

"You don't know that."

Jezyk's irate look invited obvious regret on Larien's face. Of course he knew. He had known Sivanna her entire life. Too well, even. It was no coincidence he had permitted Larien to be his aid'she bore a striking resemblance to the former general. And despite everything that had been done, he had never been able to help that.

Larien seemed to sense the direction of his thoughts. "My lord," she said cautiously, "if you believe your feelings for Sivanna may impact your abilities, I would go in your stead."

He reprimanded her with another look, but it was short lived. "No," he acquiesced, "I'll go. And if the lovely Shade does not wish to assist us," he quite nearly spat the nickname, "then I shall force her to."

There was no relief evident in Larien's features. "Very well. I shall make the necessary arrangements." Almost coyly, she bowed her head. It was an unexpectedly familiar gesture, and one that made Jezyk involuntarily touch a fringe of champagne hair laying on her shoulder. It was an amusing game of control she was playing"testing his limitations, first with her scent and then with her uncanny way of adopting the former general's mannerisms. In the past he had given into his temptations and bedded her, and he had no doubt he would continue the habit long into the future. But not tonight.

"You do that," he answered, turning away to once again face the pedestal in the middle of the room.

"I shall," Larien said, not bothering to disguise the amusement in her voice. "Rhylin, yes?"

"Rhy"Din," Jezyk corrected. "We go to Rhy"Din.?

Sivanna was bored.

It wasn't a fleeting boredom. It was the raw kind. A lethal restlessness that burrowed into your bones hard enough to make you feel hollow and jittery. Cleaning up all the vomit in the world and patching all the wounds in Rhy"Din that went through Shambles couldn't ease that boredom. Not much could. Not even a lucky bottle of liquor in her lap outside a not-so-boring bar.

Hello, ye olde friend, the Red Dragon. Thus is what body language seemed to say. The way he hugged the wall, cheek to mortar, arms and fingers loosely splayed, palms flat. With his eyes closed, Salvador Delahada inched along that exterior wall like a kitten slithering through catnip, enjoying every intoxicating moment of brick chafing skin.

It began as all stories did after that: With the girl outside a bar. This one was pale-skinned and dark-minded; paper-thin and damn near ethereal with too-sharp crystal eyes and crystal-cutting smile. Who knew or cared when she got there. It was just a girl outside a bar. A copy of a copy, where other girls drank alone and bled their petty troubles out like a wounded gazelle in the savanna until a predator came. They always came. And this gazelle smelled one making his approach through the screen of spicy smoke in her nostrils. A tequila bottle was lifted and dangled from a comfortable elf's fingers like a Yule ornament, already festive and pre-frosted from winter's chill. It sang his name, Salvador's, swaying with porchswing cadence.

Soon enough, stone was traded in for wood, as his fingers crept along the floorboards that made up parts of the porch. He stretched to wind his fingers around the uppermost crest of the railing and pull, oozing himself up onto the rise that looked out over the lawn. Not that he bothered to look out over it. The swaying of a swing held his attention, and the head of hair occupying it that he could see from behind. He sidestepped and slid to creep around into the periphery, fingers twitching anxiously with uncertainty and anticipation. One could never be too careful. He might be seeing a ghost, or a hallucination, for all he knew.

Leathered shoulders, stiff and shiny from fashionably skinned animal carcass, rose and fell. As they rose and fell, whistling plumes of coiling smoke floated skyward. "You smell like death." Oh, but the pointy-eared hallucination said it with such pleasure.

Her voice caused his head to twitch into a new angle, ear honing in on the sound. But his eyes were roving. He wasn't the only thing that smelled like death nearby. A gruesome makeshift club caught his interest for a full count of ten before moving on to look at prettier things. His fingernails tippy-toed across the back of the porch swing, creeping in on a she-elf shoulder to poke. Was she solid" Was she real" He didn't bother with a retort, nor a hello. While his fingers investigated one beauty, his eyes tracked another one.

A wasted clove flew over the porch railing, end over end with dying embers scattering like shattered glass. Finally that she-elf profile turned, but only enough to click a set of too perfect teeth at nosy fingers. We mustn't touch things we don't know.

The reaction was instantaneous, purely animal. Salvador's fingers withdrew, curling back into a claw, but not the hand. His lips peeled back to bare teeth that were not pearly nor white; they weren't sharp and jagged either. Though, he still didn't look at the she-elf daring to threaten him. Part of a retaliatory growl arrested itself in his throat, and he made something more like a chuffing noise before finding the will to force his arm into a retreat. He still had eyes for a tattooed devil who took pause at the top of those steps, though. He was almost holding his breath too. Torn!

It was a pretty smile. Sivanna smelled of dead carcass and old death and fake perfume, but it was a pretty smile. One cut with too perfect teeth and precariously dangerous eyes. A downward tick of hello at a fellow smoker was nearly lost in a wisp of blonde bang as the ghost shifted. Searching. Searching. Something changed in her, and with no nicotine the ghost followed a girl's hasty outbound retreat with a gaze all too quickly losing pigment. All was left were ink-stained fathoms, shrink-wrapped in glistening, depraved euphoria. Angelhair curtained behind the swing as the elfess leaned back, far too comfortable in the company of lions.

Once a man with a gruesome club was through the Red Dragon doors, Sal exhaled. Then he remembered to breathe again. Remembering to breathe again triggered his other reflexes, and he blinked too. He spared some attention to the elf-ghost on the swing. A glance became a new focus of staring, though.

It was a cold, comfortable lean Sivanna had, head turtling in pretty lace and dead carcass with a rapt stare at the dying smoke in the yard. This is your life, and it's ending one second at a time.*

Distractions came and went. Salvador's head tilted again to watch a backside sink into the depths of the common room. When she was gone, he didn't bother pressing up against the window to creep on her. Not today. He was liberated by, perhaps, concern. And when they were alone, he stepped around the side of the swing to the front to loom over this new and unusual shriveled up scrap of she-elf. He bent over her and made to peer into those dark, dark eyes. "Are you in there?" he asked, tilting his head this way and that to look deep into all the angles.

"From this close, you look almost handsome," Sivanna teased, baring a smile that may as well have had fangs. Pink eyelids shuttered closed, damming that empty spill of ink only long enough for a spill of drink. "It's cold." She was. He wasn't.

"Hm." An amused sound with an accentuating curl of the lip. Sal unbent, standing upright, and turned aside to settle himself down on the swing next to her. As if it were any given day of the week, he tossed an arm back behind her head, offering himself up as a body to nestle in against. Not that he had much warmth to offer, though.

"You're late," she said. It could have been for anything. And she was restless. But the scolding didn't last long once her heavy head dipped onto his shoulder. Don Julio hopped onto his crotch, but nicely. She wasn't suicidal.

Salvador's arm slid down and curled around her shoulders, then, fingertips teasing idly through strands of golden hair. "Am I?" Two simple words placed in subdued inquiry asked so much. Late for what? How late" What catastrophic event had he missed out on this time" Draw your own conclusions.

"Mm." She didn't answer any more than he did, save for the unwise pillow-press of cheek against his neck. "I dreamed about you last night." Warm breath fogged the wedding ring on her finger.

"Did you?" he asked, gently prying again with only two words. He lifted his chin and turned his head to nestle it on the crown of her hair. Ears caught the sound of wingbeats overhead, but he was not alarmed. Closing his eyes, he got comfortable with Sivanna nestled in against him.

A rumble of confirmation vibrated against his skin. "But I may not be Awake yet." The twist of words were warm and dangerously sweet, notched in all the right places. A curl of her spine later, that thought was lost to winter as Sivanna's lashes fluttered and her eyes cleared from missing magic. "Are you back?"

Curious observation she made, but he didn't question it. There was a story in those words he could almost imagine. Almost. And he let the implications curl around his subconscious for a few before gracing her with a reply. "For now," he mumbled over her hair. He wiggled his fingers at Icer through the window before slipping them back into Sivanna's hair to resume the mindless combing.

"And Her?" He knew.

Capitalization that sent a tingle through his body. "Sleeping." Yeah. He knew.

"For how long?" The utter verbosity of their conversation was staggering.

"Until March." Musicians would be moved to compose an opus based on their entire conversation.

"At which point?"

"First of Spring." Which, coincidentally, was his birthday, but that was hardly a landmark occasion in which he was often inclined to celebrate.

"How long have you been back?"

"Nn." This required thinking. The past several months had been pretty cloudy, with a chance of thunderstorms, which Salvador had avoided by locking himself away in another country far, far away. "I saw the lights in the Glen, and Fio was giving out prizes." Not long before the first of winter, officially.

"Prizes?" It took a long pause before some clarity came to her. "Oh. The thing." Yes, the thing. Sivanna had spent the past few months in and out of a Sleepless daze herself, you see. "Did you bring Sin?"

"He was there." Sal wasn't exactly in control of the sinner's actions, see.

And she knew that. But every now and again, just to soothe her savage sadist side, she teased and prodded lions with small sticks. Silence hung in the air then like a smell one couldn't place. Salvador didn't speak much, but when she asked he always did. "I'm bored," something soft crooned, crouched from the same place that lifted her fingers to tousle his twisted tresses.

"Mm." An introvert's noise; a cue to the onset of thinking. Eyelids slid shut over rusty eyes. Always a dilemma. Boredom never bothered him. In fact, Salvador often welcomed boredom; it was a nice change of pace to the usual calamities and drama that cropped up here and there. He was more accustomed to childish displays of random fun-finding, see: Rekah. Solving boredom wasn't particularly on his resume. "Want to do something?" Well duh.

He didn't understand. "If I could," Sivanna replied. Her grin was far too sharp and feral for the delicate carve of marble features it cut into. "We should walk." She was trembling. It might have been from the cold. Might. "And then we should do something." Because walking wasn't something to do.

There again was that trigger to the imagination. Her tone was so suggestive, and it caused a brow of his to hike up curiously. The expression was gone by the time his face came back into view. Sal removed his chin from the crown of her head and pulled back his arm from around her shoulders. He rolled up off the bench of the porch swing and offered her his hand, silently giving into her desire to walk, and then maybe do something. Whatever she had in mind.

Barely touched bottle was left abandoned on the swing as the cleric attached her hand to Sal's and unfurled upward. "Unless you have watching to do." She knew his habits scarily well. Most likely from a scary amount of Sal-watching herself.

A shadow of a smile tugged on the corner of his mouth. For a flickering, fleeting second, he was amused. Maybe more touched by the fact that she knew him that well. "No," he said. A single word that implied he had nothing better to do at all. He pulled her in against his side once more so he could coil an arm around her shoulders and walk with her to the stairs. She had been shivering, after all. Even though he didn't produce much, if any, body warmth to spare, he could at least extend the courtesy.

They were similar, the two of them. She smelled like carcass and fake perfume and old magic and he smelled like death and him, but they were similar. His was a dangerous set of feet that descended the steps, wrought with stealthy threat and effortless intimidation. Hers were quiet and mirrored his. "Glad you're back." It was the first honest thing she had said that day that was truly, honestly decipherable.

And that made him actually, honestly smile. Though even his most genuine smile remained a subdued and fleeting thing. He turned his head to feather a kiss into her hair, gave her shoulders a squeeze. A silent method of passing off some thanks. Though he wasn't about to say whether or not he was glad to be back, because he hadn't yet decided.

Sivanna was bored. In her boredom she stole a Spaniard. They would walk, neither would speak to excess, and then they would part ways. She would go home, then, and debate the merits of a stolen Spaniard as she closed her eyes and attempted to steal some sleep. It wouldn't come easily. She never knew why.

Maybe it was simply because she had Slept long enough.

((A collaboration between me and Delahada. Thanks! *Paraphrased: Chuck Palahniuk))