As Tears are to Ice (Alt Version/ Expanded Ending)

As Tears Are to Ice

"Five hours. Five. Hours." The Mage called Ra'tat Yirgul's somewhat vague statement was made through gritted teeth, in a very deliberate show of ire. 

"Very good, Ra'tat. You can count to five now" his usually silent Familiar, the enigmatic Futility, jibed. The two were seated in a table located handy to the fireplace, directly underneath a portrait of the original owner of this particular inn. Really, despite the fact that it was a lower-class setting than either were used to, it was pretty well-maintained and brightly lit, with a courteous staff. Yes, it might have been a more pleasant setting for Ra'tat were it not for the circumstances.

"Wow, you can actually talk-hey! That's besides the...tsk. Whatever" Ra'tat said, downing another shot from his bottle of hard cider (making that his fifth, ironically). 

The gaggle of six, comprising the three Mages of Ra'tat himself, Tyran, Jastre, and their respective Familiars were in some incredibly obscure roadside inn in some particularly backwater road in the rural nation of Sunfell at the moment. Jastre had been called on to leave the macabre Necropolis she was stationed in and return to the land of her birth to take care of some government matters, and two residents of said city in the form of Tyran and Ra'tat had basically invited themselves along, as they often did. The only reason she hadn't pummeled them halfway to senselessness fifty times during this trip was because she'd been able to converse with Trahvani. She'd just been introduced to the Frost Revenant mere weeks ago, and found it slightly comical and not a little sad that such a lovely and well-adjusted person was Tyran's Familiar.

"What I was referring to, Futility, was the fact that Tyran's been AWOL for that particular duration" Ra'tat went on. "He says 'hey, let's go take a breather in this here inn hyuk-hyuk-hyuk-fuck-shit'. And then he disappears right when it starts pouring rain outside." 

The pale-skinned Underhavener slammed his fist onto the table, but no one paid him much mind, Futility included. Angry drunks weren't an uncommon sight in most places that served alcohol, even if Ra'tat wasn't nearly as close to being drunk as he was simply bored and pissy.

"Wouldn't rain prompt him to, oh I dunno, stay inside?! And now we can't leave, because we don't know where the hell he is, and I'm stuck in here drinking liquor instead of walking in the freezing autumn wind. Not that I want to really do that either right now, but, y'know, it's like...y'know?"

"Is it getting to you?" Futility asked.

"Yeah, because-" he started.

"I don't actually care, shut up" she snarled back, glaring daggers at him. It was apparent to Ra'tat, even in his irritated state, that the only people really paying attention to him in any sense of the word were a couple of busboys clearing the tables. Perhaps they were under the mistaken impression that this was a lover's quarrel instead of a Familiar butting heads with her Mage.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but Ra'tat is right, Futility" Trahvani sighed. 

Trahvani had sharpened her silvered knife for want of anything better to do for the first hour, then spent the other four over a mediocre bottle of white wine while chatting to Jastre. She had to surrender the entire remainder of the beverage to the Sunfellian spellcaster when she was unable to finish it; maybe it was because of the difference in their body mass, but Jastre seemed to process alcohol completely differently from herself. Jastre's body was strange in a few ways, none of them really all that negative. For instance, she was overweight, but she was paradoxically quite healthy and strong, and downright light on her feet. And of course there was the matter of her natural endowments, making her one of the very few women Trahvani had met who could make her feel inferior about her own assets.

"Uh, Trahvani? Wh-why are you staring at my chest?" a somewhat amused, but mostly just weirded-out Jastre asked her, pulling Trahvani back to reality. Jastre’s Familiar Aa'anrial bonked Trahvani's head with its nebulous body, probably just to make sure she was comprehending what had been said to her.

"Thanks Aa'anrial, I'm fine. Sorry, sorry" Trahvani mumbled as she turned her gaze to Jastre's red-contact eyes. "I'm not-dammit. I'm just thinking about stuff."

"Are you now?" her conversational partner inquired.

"Yeah. I think I'd better go look for Tyran now, before my...head explodes, or something" Trahvani said with a weak smile, before leaping clear out of their booth into the central floorspace, with an alacrity which made a few of the inn's other patrons give her a small round of applause. A few even whistled.

"No one likes a show-off, Trahvani" Jastre smirked. "Pffft. If your head does explode, I hope your family gives me the theatrical rights to that story."

"Knowing my family they'll probably invite you over for a nice potluck made from the fragments" Trahvani yawned. She'd glossed over the whole "eating people" part of Frost Revenant culture in her dealings with Jastre so far, so she hoped the statement wouldn't seem too insane. After an over-the-shoulder wave from her white-gloved hand, she made her way for the heavy cedar door.

"Remind me to never ever visit your family, Trahvani" Jastre called after Trahvani as she stepped outside.

By the time she had shut the door behind her, Trahvani was already soaked to the bone. She'd never been more thankful to belong to a race that found extremes in weather to be mildly annoying at best; the rain was miserably cold, and so dense and foggy that seeing more than a few meters in front of her was nigh-impossible, but to Trahvani the splattering raindrops barely even registered as a tactile sensation. The downpour would make looking for Tyran's specific footprints difficult in the extreme, though. Difficult, but far from out of the question for a tracker as skilled as her. 

She knew that Tyran habitually kept a pair of combat daggers strapped to his boots at all times, as Trahvani herself had learned quite severely in her initial encounter with him. She had noticed it gave his footfalls a slight incline to one side; it couldn't have been good for his arches, but hey. Sure enough, she soon came across his distinctive set in the mess of differing bootprints directly outside the inn. They seemed to lead into the forest behind the establishment. Given how unstable she'd noticed her Mage could be, he could be up to literally anything in there.

"If I find him hanging by a noose from a tree...actually, I guess that'd make mean I could head back to my family again."

Did she really want to, though? Her brief stint so far as his Familiar had been interesting if nothing else. If she had to give Tyran credit for literally one thing, it was that he seemed genuinely committed to showing her that there was an entire universe out there that she hadn't seen yet. He'd taken her to plays and educational seminars, allowed her a taste of the fine things his family took for granted, and recommended books he thought she might like. 

He'd actually done this until she'd had to give him what was essentially an edict that she just needed some time to herself too. She did appreciate the gesture though, she genuinely did, and the reason for that was because she could tell he wasn't at all being pandering in his desire to educate her. He didn't hold her in bemused contempt as some sort of "noble savage", he seemed to think of her as someone who actually had dreams and felt the same emotions he did. Granted, he didn't seem to treat Trahvani as his equal, but when you got down to it Tyran didn't seem to treat anyone as an equal.

She continued following the prints on autopilot until they broke through the footpath and into a small clearing. Just as Trahvani was thinking this was fortunate, since it was easier to make sense of his trail out here in the open, a dash of maroon near the center of the dell caught her eye.

"Ah. Found you."

Sauntering up to him after coughing loudly to draw his attention, she gave him a simpering grin which faded to confusion when she saw his face. At first she didn't even fully realize what it was about him that made her pause for concern.

"Is he-no, he's obviously not hurt. Does he look okay, emotionally? I mean, he doesn't look angry or upset. He's actually smiling. It's just...not right."

Tyran seemed to sense as to why she was concerned, because he cleared his throat and seemed about to say something. After apparently struggling for the right words, he threw his hands up as he exhaled, as if giving up.

"It's because my face isn't just wet from the rain, Trahvani" he said, drawing a finger along his face from eye to cheek in the universal gesture that indicated someone had been crying. "When I was young, my mother would sometimes find an unoccupied room of the house and spend a good hour bawling. And I'd ask her why."

"Did she get mad at you for wondering?" Trahvani asked, her earlier frustration at her Mage by now completely ebbed to worry.

"Heehee. Knowing my mom, that's not a bad guess at all" the effeminately mannered young man smiled. A genuine smile, from the heart, that shone like the suns at midday. She wondered why he didn't smile like that more often. 

"But no, actually" he continued. "She'd just say she didn't know, she just had to cry or she felt her heart would burst. I think I finally figured out the reason, just now. Why do you think I'm crying right now, Trahvani?"

It took Trahvani a few moments to realize her brain wasn't really turning up anything helpful. She settled for a safe bet: giving an answer related to their current environment.

"Does the rain remind you of tears?"

"Haha, no" he wheezed. "Nothing that poetic or self-indulgent." 

He spun around on his right boot's heel in a pseudo-pirouette, managing to keep his balance despite the slippery footing. He bowed his head in a mocking curtsy, smiling, and Trahvani couldn't help but smile a bit herself. Trahvani admired this trait of his greatly; keeping one's sense of humour was a necessary part of being Human, a reminder in spite of-

"Wait. Could that be it?"

"I simply think that I don't so much have to cry, as I choose to cry" he said, slicking his soaked hair back. "It reminds me that I am Human."

"Heh. You're not nearly as tough as you pretend" she said. 

She didn't know why she felt compelled to, but she chose this time to close the physical distance between them, and maybe metaphorically as well. She strode up to him, and then hugged her Mage in a tight embrace, the same way she would have hugged her brother or mother. Or maybe even someone far closer.

"Not in the least" he murmured as he hugged her back. "I actually feel serene when I shed tears. Please, stay with me for a while. It'd make a great moment perfect."

“Tyan…”

“Yes?”

Briefly wondering why she didn’t respond to that, to took him a few seconds to realize that her lips were pressed against his, and another few to realize he wasn’t dreaming. Her skin was deathly cold, as would be expected from kissing a Frost Revenant. Like kissing a block of ice. A loving, unconditionally caring, and above all wise-beyond-her-years block of ice. He couldn’t manage to suppress a giggle.

Trahvani pulled her face away from his and eyed him skeptically.

“Something funny?”

“No. Well, I guess. Incidentally, you’re lucky I’m an Underhavener and I’m resistant to extremes in temperature” he smirked. “Kiss any other race on the mouth and you might as well force them to put their tongue on a flagpole.”

The rain momentarily fell at a practically horizontal angle due to the increasingly frenetic winds, but the two in the clearing didn’t mind. They were lost in their own little world. That was probably one of the greatest appeals of love, a universal desire to retreat into a private sanctum with one person you could absolutely trust.

“Way to ruin a genuine moment by bringing up kids with bloodied lips” she snickered at last.

“Hey, you’re just as bad if you laughed at it” he smiled back. “You see, maybe this can work.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. At the end of the day, we’re really not as dissimilar as a surface glance would suggest. I really…I really think we’re both in a world that we don’t belong in, Trahvani. We should have existed in another universe, a private place just for us. A place where we could live together for a million years, and exist as dust with the stars for all eternity after our deaths.”

“Don’t worry, that doesn’t sound pretentious at all” Trahvani tittered.

He ruffled her perpetually-mussed hair in response, giving her a peck on the cheek before continuing.

“Let’s get back to the others. Heh, Ra’tat’s probably on the verge of having a stroke right now.”