milliways_bar | Breakfast at Milliways

And Tanni did, curiously, courteously not touching cool nose or wet tongue to his hand. She wasn't, after all, some untrained, unblessed creature. The ruddy wolf was satisfied, and dropped down after.

"Richard - 'tis not a name I'm knowing, but isn't so bad as others I've heard since coming." He remembers poor Schroeder and his names that stretched longer than he stood tall. "If the clothes weren't telling me that few come from where I know, the names would be. But lad, so long as you're offering, I'd be glad to have some breakfast. Pork, perhaps?"

A tingle through the link reminded him. "And something for Tanni. She dislikes the hunting outside."

Richard nods and brings back ham and eggs for Blais and a large raw steak for Tanni.

"She's beautiful. Is she fully wolf?"

Carefully, Blais handed the steak down to his lir and nodded in answer to Richard's question. "Aye, she's as wolf as they're coming. But she is a lir - blessed by the gods. Something it seems only my race has. I don't know if you would've been hearing of us, lad," he said as he lifted his utensils. "The Cheysuli."

He inhaled the scent of the food and gave a very approving smile - this would do wonderfully.

"Lir, Cheysuli....I've heard these words before, but I don't remember where. Not on my world, certainly."

He starts cleaning glasses.

"Aye, no offense meant, lad, but you've not the look of it." He grinned as he finished one full slice of ham, quite contented by the taste of it. "There are others of my race here, I know. There is one named Brennan, one named Kellin. Tanni has caught the scent of the lir of Brennan's ruj--... his brother, Hart. And my own cousin, Aidan. I also know of an Ihlini here, name of Lochiel."

"Ahh! Yes, I've met Brennan. He's with Kestrel. I've also met Lochiel and Asar-Suti."

Still cleaning glasses.

"Kestrel is a name I know," he nodded. "The lass that looks Erinnish, but talks nothing like it." He smirked. "And you've met the purple Penguin too, have ye? It seems he's changed a right lot since he was... a pit of purple fire in the north of Solinde."

Richard laughs.

"He's a penguin now too? I've met him as a cat and a bunny-rabbit, but never a penguin. And aye, I gather that he's changed quite a lot since being vanquished in his home-world."

"Aye, he's a penguin - or he said he would be. I've yet to be seeing him as one, but he said he would go look at one, so the both of us could see what they are," Blais laughed. "He's a right bit of fun - him vanquished, me dead, what's can be happening that's worse?"

"There are worse places to go when you die. Milliways really isn't all bad."

He grins.

"Not bad at all, boyo," Blais confirmed as he ate the last bit from his plate. He ate like an Erinnish - which was just as well. He was from that island kingdom, after all. "I'm still being glad to be living in some way. Surprised, but glad of it. Having a second chance of a kind, I'd be guessing."

"Yes, it's a second chance for all of us."

He remembers an earlier point in the conversation.

"Why doesn't Tanni like the hunting? Demon bunnies not to her taste?"

"She didn't tell me just why - just that it was better we eat indoors than run and hunt together in the woods outside." Blais shrugged. "You may have the right of it. I'm not sure."

"Just wondering since Tobias appears to quite enjoy hunting here. I'd like to know if there's something he should look out for."

"Just now," Blais began, looking down at his beautiful lir, "I wouldn't be so eager to leave her either. It may just be that."

Richard smiles softly.

"I can understand that."

So Blais smiled and reached down, lightly taking the emptied plate from the floor, fingers gently buried in the wolf's ruff. "I'll tell ye sometime, if you're interested, of Cheysuli and lir."

He grins now.

"I'd love to hear about it. Is she linked to you somehow?"

That, Blais couldn't stifle a soft chuckle at. "Aye. The lir-link is what makes a Cheysuli man a warrior. In our youth, at the same time our bodies change, we come into a time of need, an emptiness. It's called the lir-sickness, and the young Cheysuli goes out into the forest, seeking, and finding, the animal meant to be their lir. As soon as it is seen that the two have bonded as should be, there is a ceremony. The warrior is given gold."

He motioned to his own - a set of armbands and a dangling earring in his left ear, all in the shapes of wolves, such as Tanni.

"But the lir-link is a costly thing. The lir lives so long as the warrior lives, the warrior lives so long as the lir lives. I died the death of an empty man because someone slew Tanni."

"That is an unimaginable horror. I'm so sorry."

He reaches out to touch the armband with a finger.

"How old were you when you found one-another?"

Blais stretches his arm forward - to him, it isn't so big a thing to allow someone to touch his gold. To others, perhaps moreso. "Older than I should have been," is Blais' answer.

"The Cheysuli are born and bred of Homana. Soon after my birth, my jehana - meaning my mother - she wed an Erinnish man and I was taken with them to live in Erinn. The magic there is different... Less bound up with tradition. There are no Cheysuli in Erinn. She came to me after I was eighteen. Most gain theirs from fourteen to sixteen. I'm thirty-three now."

"What is the magic like in Erinn? is it like the Ihlini magic?"

Richard's trying to behave him self and not touch too much. He's just curious.

"Nay, Erinnish magic is... softer. Erinnish magic is more about mercy and understanding. The cileann take the dead to their places of resting, and those in the house of Eagles, the royals, can have a magic called the kivarna that lets them know what others feel. My two cousins, Aidan and Shona, had it in full measure."

"Do the Cheysuli have magic beyond the lir-link?"

He remembers himself.

"And you can tell me to shut it if you like. I'm too curious."

"Nay, questions are how ye learn, and I don't mind - better I tell people and they understand than go about thinking wrongly. The lir-link is what gives us our magic. We have three magics, but use only two." He held up two fingers and counted it off. "One, we have the shapechange. I become a wolf, as Tanni, but black. Two, we can draw on the magic of the earth to heal. The third... It is what has named us demons in the past, though we do not like to use it. The third can take away a man's will and replace it with that of the Cheysuli putting such a magic on him."

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