A Quiet Crossroads (Lake Baikal, Siberia)

[Sören]

Sören had a fondness for words, and if he assumed an insult in the smoothness of her voice, he at least appreciated its grandiose wrappings. “I take but a blink, and lo, the chair becomes a throne,” he said of her demand, amused. Her shoulder tipped an inconsequential investment, her posture curled relaxed, like it just so happened Sören was the one in orbit of her vicinity. He did not care to impress her; he thought she had already decided on that, anyway, whatever he said. But the threat of apathy stung. Not of her reaction to whatever he chose to share, which would undoubtedly be as muted as her expression now, but that she might not actually want to hear how he would tell it. There was power in words, and Sören considered himself a poet.

He rubbed his jaw, obscuring the smile that was a little more boyish than his usual proclivity. “It might burn them from your skull,” he warned. “I would not be so cruel.”

He leaned a heavy hand on the table and stood, the scale pendant rocking back against his chest as he straightened. Around them the kitchen’s occupants had thinned, though they were by no means alone. His throat was parched from the first telling. If she’d truly been enamoured of the story, and desired to hear more, she might have at least offered to fetch the reward of a drink. Poor thanks, and poorer manners. Fortunately for her, he found the scathe of her wit pleasant enough company.

“Unless, perhaps, you are not so mortal as you appear.” He held out a hand for her cup, should she want her own refill while he was up. Leather strips tied with charms circled his wrist, the pale lip of a jagged scar upon his palm. “For I could believe that.”

[Kemala]

Kemala chuckled, but the sound was the trinkle of crystalline Balinese waters. There wasn’t accusation or judgement in the drip of her mirth. She was genuinely amused, a feat in and of itself. For all of her quietude, Kemala could be entertained. Most simply fell pathetically short in the attempt. Therefore, when the stranger offered, she relinquished the cup to be replenished.

“Mint tea,” she explained despite the identifiable echo of herbal aroma wafting with the ceramic. A slim smile buried in the purse of her lips accompanied the handoff. “How swiftly the king shifts to servant. Which is he, I wonder." She peered upward into his eyes, exotically pale, his skin the color of milk, lips thin as reeds. If she saw anything other than strange in the stranger, the answer sank in the deep darkness of her gaze. After a moment, she shrugged and bequeathed a generous pearl of advice. "For myself, it is best to assume all women are goddesses, and any error in judgment will fall to the side of safety,” she said with arrogance wrapped with the enchanting veil of wisdom, which, if he knew anything about women, such a rule would be writ on the heart.

[Sören]

His fingers curved around the rim of the upheld cup, though he met the directness of her gaze and held it before he plucked it free from her grasp. “A good king,” he said, “knows he must be both.”

As he turned a grunt of laughter met the pearls of her wisdom, which he mostly found to be trite. Humanity was a flawed beast, and few earned such accolade in Sören’s estimation, and least of all on account of sex alone. Charm for the sake of ego had little value, unless the ego in question was a fragile one. He treated others as he felt they deserved, else as simply suited him. Usually it served a purpose. True equals were few and far between.

He retreated to the kitchen counter to prepare the tea. Such social rituals traversed the globe, and Sören was a worldly student. Hostels rarely catered for more than basics, of course. There wasn’t even a samovar, though that was the tradition here. They favoured black, sipped through chipped pieces of sugar, and often alongside kalatch. Mint he associated with Morocco, though he did not think that was where she was from. “Little in life is ever accomplished from the side of safety. Certainly nothing of worthy note.”

Amusement still touched the words. He did not think she had misunderstood the question, yet on the nature of women he did not deign to comment. He might not agree with such a platitudinous sentiment, but sometimes speech was silver to silence’s gold. While the tea brewed, he turned back to her.

“But, let us be tame, then, and err on the side of safety. Since you would have me assume us in the realm of equals, it seems to me I am owed a story in kind.”

[Kemala]

Her laugh was a bark: sudden and disconcerting. Yet to the curl of her mouth and the gleam of her gaze, Kemala’s amusement made for a lovely sight. For she was truly amused. The stranger was all at once royal, humble, and a comedian. She would hardly infer equality between them, but if he wished to assume, it was his ass to be the fool.

Still, Kemala was easily tempted by the offer of a bargain, and she was quick to respond with her agreement. “Very well. A story for a story,” she said with a nod. When she pulled her legs up underneath her, she was quite comfortable for a long tale.

“You can call me Kemala,” she offered like it was a peek into a prize, especially lacking a surname so common to the main land nations. There was a tattoo on her collar, easily accessed with a gentle tug downward of her dress. She bared nothing obscene, no more than would be seen on a beach or boat, but her skin gleamed where her fingers trailed. “You like symbols. Do you know this one?” She allowed him to look a few moments before recovering herself once more.

[Sören]

She acquiesced quickly enough to the bargain. Sören had not been sure of that, wondering if she might instead bristle at the dangling of bait only for the lure to pull away and demand a sacrifice in turn. If a smile twitched, it did not remain on his lips long. Instead his gaze followed the dark slice of skin revealing the sweeping bone of her collar, and the image inked there.

Kemala had offered her name like a piece of treasure, but the true prize was in the captivation of an audience, and that was what he offered in kind. A scholar’s interest absorbed looping whorls reminiscent of a gleaming serpent, its head flared into a hood. He considered setting Paragon’s eye to the task of answering her question with a depth of insight she might find surprising -- assuming such a cursory search would drag anything up. But he didn’t seek to impress, and he wanted to hear what tale she would spin and the way she would tell it, whether it be truth or lies. He wanted to be impressed. Craft mattered as much as content.

"I do not," he said instead, truthfully. "And you can call me Sören." His attention remained a moment longer before he turned to finish preparing the tea. It wasn’t a job he rushed. Afterwards he held the cup out to her, handle winged out for delicate fingers to clasp.

[Kemala]

The tea warmed her from within. He did well in brewing the composition, and she acknowledged as much with a nod. She shifted herself in the seat, settling in for the duration of tale-telling.

“It is said that the gods set the tsunami upon us out of their wrath for our evil-doing. Our karma pulled the waves from the deep, fulfilling our own destruction. I was there the night the sirens wailed, and the ocean came for our reckoning,” she said. Her voice deepened as she spoke, almost as if the tale was a song relayed from generations past rather than a memory of recent weeks.

“If that is true, then the gods can screw themselves. I threw the waters back in their faces, but even I could withstand their power for so long. This is the reason I am not lost to a watery grave,” she tapped her collar.

It was his turn now.

[Sören]

Sören reclaimed his own seat, and placed his tea on the table in front of him. His arm rested there alongside, fingers flexing and curling in contemplation of her words, while the rest of him lounged at ease. If any of it surprised him it did not spill into his expression, as must befit the wonder and awe owed to such a story, but he did pay rapt attention. 

He thought of Alistair Grey, behind bars for the sort of malcontent her tale hinted. Of vengeful gods and unspeakable acts against innocents. Nothing substantiated the claim, but it was not the first time he had heard such conspiracy. Kemala’s own motivations and prejudices aside however, she meant to hook, and she succeeded. Sören’s gaze dipped back to her collar, as though his gaze might pierce the cloth that concealed it now and look again.

Beyond the tattoo on his forearm, plenty of others dotted the skin she could not see. Superstitions engraved from distant travels, mostly; ink, or sometimes scars. He’d once tried to instil the runes into the symbols, much as he might for the sorts of wards and protections he cast about his belongings, but nothing had happened. Tattoos might hint at other things, of course, not least the miasmic scent of a cult. Though if that was the case he doubted she would have shared it so freely, unless she was angling to enlist.

“Screw the gods,” he repeated, though perhaps it was fate he was thinking of as he drew the tea to his lips. Such an inescapable cloy clenched his stomach in a way the tart mint could never wash out. She said she had stood alone against the raging of the sea, and he did not scathe the assertion (though he might easily have done, to look at her), but she had still failed. Her defiance was but a howl in the wind of greater powers, heard by none but her own ears. He’d seen the newsfeeds. Read of the devastation. 

No pity stirred. He would be disappointed if she had expected it.

After a moment he rubbed at his jaw. She offered a paltry amount with the expectation that he continue, little more than a lure and hardly remuneration for what had already been paid. He might have scorned her for the trick. He did. But in the keen pursuit of knowledge, Sören would suffer the insult with little pain to pride. He wanted answers, and he would have them, for he would pay whatever fee she demanded.

“I didn’t fight the creature unaided,” he conceded. That small hint of smile wavered, but swept clean without taking hold; one might even have parsed some regret in the brief flare of his emotions. It was a moment in which he decided what and how much he would share. He glanced again at her collar. “What hero ever truly does? I was gifted a favour of the gods. A talisman worn around the neck, and imbued with such qualities even I could not discern, though not for want of trying. It came with a warning, as such gifts are usually wont to do, and it cost me dearly.”

He flattened his palm carefully against the table, resisting the urge to squeeze the first that would welcome the runes into his soul. 

“Tell me the rest, Kemala.”

[Kemala]

His declaration echoed with the promise of a co-conspirator, but there was something else sank within the darkness of disturbed waters. She couldn’t see what it was, but the ripples didn’t lie. The intrigue continued.

“I didn’t survive unaided,” she echoed his words, but didn’t continue. For now, intentions flowed toward him. Talismans were a plenty, strewn about like coin changing hands. No wonder the favor carved a deep payment for Soren. The click of her tongue snapped with tsk'ing disappointment.  “A gift given with expectations for advantage harms both giver and receiver. You paid dearly, but what know you of the giver’s fate? I wager it was ill.”

He yearned for more, and his desire was a ravishing new intoxication. Kemala’s hints and teases at the truth was as seductive as the gleam of a swirling sari. “He was a king, a mahārāja, a great ruler  – but not a god – The ruler of a diminished kingdom near extinction. Their people are not easy to find, but I will help them if they will show themselves to me again.”

[Sören]

She repurposed his own wording in a way that affected some amusement, or maybe just appreciation for the weaving parallels she made of their stories. Sören was not chastened by her sharp retort; rather he met it in challenge, not heatedly, but to offer further explanation. “The floor of that lake glittered like ivory. A coating of human bones. You could see them through the ice,” he said. “It was not an advantage, Kemala, but the bargain of a necessary survival. None other could use it. None other would have survived the deed.”

None other had survived the deed.

Sören didn’t refute the superstition of her statement, however. Rather, he meant to make it clear that the sacrifice had been made not in naivety or blind foolishness, but in understanding that sometimes victory demanded navigation by way of a path of poor choices. He would pay the cost, unrepentant, whether it was he who suffered or others in his stead, and he would surely pay again if there was no other way. He imagined she thought she could have done better. But she was wrong.

She once again offered so little that he might have found himself annoyed at the coyness, yet she did it so well it was not frustration that edged his gaze. His attention was usually a mild thing, but it was interested now, ignorant of the peripheral distractions to be found in such a communal area, like they were the only ones here. Kemala never questioned the nature of the creature he had described, as others had when they pored over the scale, imagining it the elaborate hoax he permitted them to believe because it pleased him to do so. The tattoo Kemala allowed a glimpse of had been serpentine. She wove mystery like a scent to lure closer, and he wasn't immune.

“The hook is through my cheek. You pull it sharply, but the pain is quite sweet. How does a king of a near extinct kingdom, who is not a god himself, aid against the wrathful vengeance of an entire ocean?”

[Kemala]

It was with a sheen of morbid fascination that Kemala watched the story unfold before her eyes. She pictured the maw of ivory teeth rising from dormancy. A small figure dwarfed by the shadow of a beast of whose remains only the small fragment remained. She wondered by what designed Soren found himself in a fight for survival, where only the only recourse was nefarious bargain. She would certainly wage her wisdom better had his experience been hers.

“I expect the hook to be firmly set. I am an excellent fisherwoman,” a brow rose expectantly. “But while I was casting, I did not notice another snagging my lip.”

She next fit a joke into the tilt of her head if he was astute enough to see it buried in the flood of her expressions. “Perhaps a king who is good at swimming,” she laughed for her own amusement. “Perhaps this is why you come to another lake, seeking another beast? Do you swim, northman?” she asked. He was lithe and fit enough to endure wave and wind, but for all his chiseled face, Kemala guessed that he could do little more than float.