[PRP] Searching.

[Baneful]

It took a long time for Alva to gather himself enough to dare to go out. His entire life had been held together by threads of family and tradition and in one catastrophic sweep, all those threads have been cut. He felt like a marionette, hardly able to stand on his own two feet. He'd lost everything, everything he once held dear, it was unbearable.

And the most agonising wound of all he felt was the very real possibility that he had lost his other half. His twin, the other side of who he was. They'd been visiting other lairs when the catastrophe struck and he'd heard nothing from her. He'd heard that some of the lairs had also fallen prey to misfortune and the more time he spent on the reserve the deeper rooted that dread, that terror of loss became.

It was this desire to know for certain what had happened, if he'd failed to protect her with finality, if he was alone forever that sent him out seeking. He didn't know what he hoped to find or how he would really deal if she was gone. It had been hard enough to cope separated from her in the first place, the idea of this being a permanent state of affairs was an abyss of horror.

He said nothing to anyone he passed along the way, simply walked through the crowd, another distraught figure scrabbling for threads of meaning.

 

[Saliru]

Lily yelped in distraught and confusion as faceless stranger after another jostled her about in the chaotic mess that was to be her new home now. Tearful eyes darted about in search of something - anything of comfort.

Everything was gone.

Nothing was the same.

She was alone.

It was all she could think of as she collapsed to her knees to bury her face in the palms of her hands, several horsemen promptly cursing at her for tripping them up.

What could she do? It just wasn't worth it anymore.
 

[Baneful]

A glimpse of violet through the crowd, he didn't hope it was her. He didn't hope for anything in this world, hope was illogical, it went against the cold functioning blankness that was his existence now. Strings cut, lifeline missing, when you danced over the abyss everything looked like a way out.

He moved closer, features creasing in a frown.

And then a moment of clarity as he saw it was her.

He closed the distance between them at a run, a rare lapse in control for him, shouldering aside one of the callous horsemen who didn't realise the delicate and wonderful creature they were harassing. He laid hands on her shoulders, slipping down to hug her.

"Sister. I thought you were dead." The words were flat and emotionless as so many of his words were, but their meaning was not. He had found the strings that held him up, he had found his other half. The disaster was lessened, he could breathe.

He buried his face against her shoulder. She smelled like he remembered.



 

[Saliru]

She shuddered in terror as her shoulders were touched and then froze solid as it soon slipped into a hug. What was this? Was this it? Was a stranger here to take her away and no one would ever miss her? Terror gripped her... but then was immediately gone as he spoke.

She spun around in his arms to wrap her arms tightly about his neck and bury her face in his chest.

That was brother's voice, she didn't even need to see him to know it. He was still alive and here and hugging her and he's never allowed to leave her again, okay?

She was sobbing again, but this time with an uncontrollable joy. She had him. She felt more whole again. All was not lost.
 

[Baneful]

He felt like he'd lost her the day their parents had gently but firmly explained to him that sometimes growing up meant a separation. She was no longer a girl but a lady, one day she would have to marry and he would have to carry on the family name. He didn't know what any of it meant, it hadn't seemed logical. She was his sister, they relied on one another, splitting them up seemed needless and a step in the wrong direction. He'd resented it but he'd taken the indignity with the quiet grudging hollowness he'd learned to meet all slights with.

But here and now he had her back.

And in a dark and violent thought, he realised that he would gladly sacrifice their world, their culture, everything he had, all over again just to have her.

He hugged her tightly, feeling as if somehow he drew his very emotions from her, feeling as if he could breathe again after being hollow, a statue, for much too long.

"Never leave again." It was a plea, an order, a prediction.


 

[Saliru]

"I never wanted to." she also never understood it. Her brother was her conviction. Her decider when she wasn't certain which way to go. He knew all the facts of situations and when reality was being deceptive. Her heart ruled her, but his brain kept her heart from wandering off cliffs.

She pulled her face back, tears and hair messy and wet, "Did anyone else?..."
 

[Baneful]

"I've found no one else." he stated matter-of-factly.

No one else mattered.

Family was an unfortunate loss, their parents hadn't been bad people, their family had done its best to climb the endless ladder of rank, hindered forever by the fact their blood was not of the direct imperial line. But now even that imperial line was ashes. Sometimes you had to incinerate the world he reasoned, to build a new one.

"They may yet live, patience is all that matters." he stoked her hair dotingly, oh how he'd missed her, her tears a refreshing breeze to him.

He was certain of one thing however, no matter who survived, they would never take her from him again, it was a sentence to a life of living death.

 

[Saliru]

"Where are we to go? What are we to do? I'm lost... I just want to go home." Lily stammered as she clutched him that much tighter as if he'd just disappear leaving her with nothing but the unanswered questions as company.

"I just want to go home..." her frown deepened further as she fought not to cry again.
 

[Baneful]

"There is no home to go to. Its gone. Destroyed by enemies as yet unnamed." He wasn't sure who were the perpetrators behind the destruction, he'd heard it was a final act of rebellion by the cattle, the humans. Some spoke of hunters, he wouldn't glorify them with a name. Humans were humans and he'd drawn many of their great victories against them. This was merely a setback, a large setback but one nonetheless.

And it had opened up innumerable possibilities. You could climb high on the shoulders of dead men.

"But we shall make a new home here. A new home amongst those who would scorn us. But conquest is about victory and victory.." he gently reached up to wipe the wetness from her cheeks with a sleeve. "..inevitably we shall have."

 

[Saliru]

Lily offered him such a sad little smile. He always knew just how to make her feel better, "Thank you, brother, maybe this home I can make how I like?"

She sounded hopeful now but her heart was still aching. Mother, father, their home, all gone forever. What would happen to traditions in this mess? There are none.

"I just... some things I..." she lowered her voice so only he may hear, "the people here are so scary."
 

[Baneful]

"We can make it exactly as we wish, There is no one telling us what to do, how to act, what we should or shouldn't believe. There is no more weight of family expectations, only what we, ourselves choose to create or desire." It was terrifying and liberating all at once.

"The people here are not scary. They are like us, unsettled from their lands and traditions, adrift in this place. They are no more scary than you and I, less so in fact as many of them have no one else for strength or comfort." he felt so alive with her there, it was hard to be sad, even at the losses.

"No harm will come to you while I am here."

 

[Saliru]

"W-where do we even start?" she turned her green eyes on him more distantly, thoughtfully. As if she were staring right into his soul in this very moment.
 

[Baneful]

He met her gaze unflinching with his own normally cold green one, softened only for her as he smiled.

"Well. Firstly my dear sister, we stop being so very sad." He got to his feet, hopefully helping her up in the process, still holding her to him in a hug.

"And then we find ourselves somewhere to stay, there are buildings to that end to start us off, but I feel even there we won't stay long. We are artisans, resourcefulness is where we excel."
 

[Saliru]

Lily was helped up without fuss and simply frowned, "A-at least there's a shelter, I guess?"

She was hoping for something more permanent, more stable in the face of all this uncertainty and how she felt was plastered all over her face unashamedly.
 

[Baneful]

"Shelter indeed, a chance to regroup and rearrange ourselves."

He gave her a reassuring squeeze. "And then you have my word, as soon as we get the chance that I will earn us both something better, that we can find a place that does not rely on charity of others. A home."