Breakfast at Milliways

[go-between.livejournal.com]

Richard steps behind the bar and ties on his apron.

"What'll it be?"

Comments

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

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."

[go-between.livejournal.com]

"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?"

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

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."

[go-between.livejournal.com]

"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.

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

"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."

[go-between.livejournal.com]

"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."

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

"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."

[go-between.livejournal.com]

Richard shivers.

"That last one sounds frightful. But changing your shape could be fun. Chanterella can be a nightingale and a kitten."

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

"It's a wonderful thing, boyo, being able to have that freedom... There's not a thing like the shapechange, except one." His lips uplifted in a bit of a grin. "We call it sul'harai."

[go-between.livejournal.com]

He tries to approximate the sound of the word.

"Sool-har-aye? What's that?"

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

The accent gained him a bit of a grin. "It means the moment of perfect union between lovers."

He's actually become careful to say it that way, other than the translation others would call more literal.

[go-between.livejournal.com]

Richard blushes bright red and grins at this.

"I-I think I know what you mean. I am bloodlinked to my lover."

He can't stop grinning.

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

A chuckle at that and he just smiles. "Aye then, I'd guess you would know. But that is the shapechange, that joy and perfection."

[go-between.livejournal.com]

"That just sounds amazing. I'm learning a bit of magic now, but I doubt I'll ever get that far."

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

"I'm sorry to say, lad, but without a lear, I don't know if you could do it or no. But your magic, I don't doubt, is differing from mine. You can likely do things I can't." Not that it bothered him in the least.

[go-between.livejournal.com]

"I only know a little magic. Just a few things Sooty taught me. Like this.."

He casts the light rune and a small globe of lavender light appears.

"Useful, but not powerful."

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

"Says something for you that you're able to do it in my presence, though - usually Cheysuli and Ihlini cancel each other this close. Maybe it's that you don't have the blood." Blais shrugged. It didn't matter to him. He had Tanni, and if this lad could do Ihlini magic, well then, who was he to protest?

[go-between.livejournal.com]

"Really? I didn't know that. Must have made fighting one another challenging."

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

"It made Cheysuli and Ihlini face as men to men. It made the fighting fair." He shrugged. "Or as fair as it ever can be, when Cheysuli are known for bows and knives. They ever tried to wipe out our race. Near succeeded. But we never fully died."

[go-between.livejournal.com]

"That's horrid. Sooty did that?"

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

"The driving force behind it, aye, but never the direct hand. His will was that the prophecy fail - that the Firstborn never be given life, or did it come to be, that the Firstborn be his to control. The methods were up to the Ihlini that were, at the time, serving him in Valgaard. I don't know what came of it. I died when the only one with all the right blood was ten."

[go-between.livejournal.com]

Richard is pretty troubled by this but says nothing.

"I don't know any of the stories of prophecy. I just know that Asar-Suti and Lochiel were defeated."

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

"Now, look you, lad..." Blais sighed, leaned forward so he would be heard more easily. "Don't you be thinking ill on them now. Here, they aren't what they were. Here, they're men, same as you and I. ... Lochiel wasn't, last I was looking, on the outside. But inside, yes. They've got magic, and they've got pasts that have more trouble than mine. But they're changed."

[go-between.livejournal.com]

He nods.

"I'll try to remember that. Sooty has been kind to me."

[erinnishwarrior.livejournal.com]

"If either of us has more reason to hate him, 'tis me. 'Twas an Ihlini that took Tanni's life, on behalf of Lochiel - on behalf of Asar-Suti. Here... 'twas Asar-Suti I laughed with near to the point of crying about these silly birds called penguins." Blais shrugged. "To me, here, they aren't the ones I knew of."