Full Moon Evening (Tag: Marsayis)

[neeuqtar]

Selenitas. It was very different from Southern Hold. The dragons everywhere, of course, but the society itself was different. More war-like, less slow and focused on the rhythms of the ocean and jungle. But, like Southern Hold, the people of the Weyr slowly faded away as the darkness fell, retiring to glow-lit rooms and withdrawing into the carved halls and weyrs. It was a relaxing ritual, when the day-dwellers had withdrawn from the world and the night-dwellers were first leaving, to wander about and learn the lay of the land.

She'd discovered the massive Weyr-beach that afternoon, inhabited by dragons and people alike. Now, by the bright light of the two full moons (bright, at least, in comparison to the starlight), Kinstar descended the cliff to what appeared to be an abandoned stretch of the beach. By the way the water moved, it looked like a slightly submerged sandbar was a short swim across the channel. A good place to bathe.

Once on the sand, Kinstar laughed softly, dashing across the wide expanse of beach to splash in the water's edge. The water was cool, but the night's air was still heated from the day. Without further ado, Kinstar stripped off her clothing, bundling it up and chucking it at the small island across the channel. It snagged on a tree branch before falling onto the ground, several feet away from the water's edge.

Kinstar waded in to her hips, shivering slightly at the change in temperature, before splashing her face and chest to acclimate herself to the temperature. The current didn't look strong, but Kinstar knew that looks could be deceiving. Still, she'd seen people on the sandbar earlier in the day... it couldn't be too hard to swim across. And besides, her clothing was over there!

[glamourie]

Selenitas Weyr was too hot during the day to do anything and as a result, Marsayis had taken to only coming outside during the evening and night time hours, when it was cooler, the wind was blowing, and the harsh sunlight didn’t threaten to turn him into a crispy-critter (he didn’t think red was much his color). Though candidate “lessons” took place during the day (and he was supposed to attend them – but supposed to was for children, not him), Marsayis usually fell asleep with the sun, and woke in late afternoon when the worst part of the day faded. In the end, he hadn’t made many friends or associates (the latter being more likely, considering his demeanor) since he arrived at Selenitas, since most of the nocturnal weyr members had those obnoxious whers. Those he’d seen at Ruatha and they were just as ugly at Selenitas as they were at the Hold; not impressed. He avoided them for the most part, though he was only marginally successful; everyone was babbling something about one of them spitting out eggs. He didn’t even know that their eggs were a big deal. They weren’t dragons, after all. Just ugly mutant salamandyrs, and he didn’t even like the one he had.

Becoming nocturnal had a few pros; he never had to listen to people babble at him, he got to spend most of his time alone, and he didn’t suffocate from the heat. It also had a few cons; he had to make his own food most of the time, he still got lost, and by Faranth, he was bored. So bored, in fact, that after he’d gathered up a bowl of food (primarily composed of mixed fruit), the Ruathan wandered out of the Weyr itself and actually took to exploring the surroundings. He’d left Calamari as little more than a fat brown blob on his pillow that actually mumbled insults in his sleep. Was it normal for salamandyrs to trail off in shpeels of ‘Stupid no like’ while they were dead to the world? Well, nothing about Calamari was normal. Absolutely nothing. So why did he expect that to be? Stupid salamandyr.

He’d already wandered along the edge of the jungle – despite comments about felines living there – and the dark-haired male’s feet carried him down to the river midway into the evening. And he probably would have continued wandering around the river’s edge, back into the Weyr, before inevitably going back and repeating the process the night through (or building new contraptions for his illusions) if not for the sound that caught his ears:

Splish.

It was almost undetectable, but Marsayis had very heightened senses. Such was the result of spending most of his teenage turns in a caravan that traveled: he detected even the smallest sounds and that sounded like someone or something climbing into water. Curiously, he angled his head and then set down the bowl behind a rock before darting behind one of the trees that lined the river’s edge. Examining it with his hands, the candidate narrowed his midnight blue eyes. A heartbeat later and he scrambled, awkwardly, up the tree, using a low hanging branch to pull himself up. Once in the tree, he pulled himself higher, counting on the wind to disguise the ruffling branches as he reached higher limbs. A few moments later and he rested, perched on a particularly large branch high enough up to give him a view down the river of… a very topless woman. Bathing in the night? How bizarre. Not like the water was cold, though – at least, not to him. To Marsayis it was actually very comfortable, but he was from a place with a much cooler climate than Selenitas.

Turning his head, he worried his lip thoughtfully. And spotted a shirt hanging from a branch near the river’s edge. Amusement flashed through his eyes and the bowl of fruit was forgotten as he rose, grabbing two branches at his side to walk along the large limb – heading toward the movement in the river. His hat came off, snagging on one of the branches, and he knocked it down with his hand. It fell lifelessly to the floor behind the base of the tree – still far enough away to not be easily noticed, not with the sound of the waterfall becoming steadily louder. Several footsteps away and he reached the end of how far the branch would carry him without bending. His head tilted, watching the ripples, and then he flung himself from the branch onto a group in the nearest tree. The branches ruffled, leaves falling, the sound unmistakable, and he scrambled up into the branches before stilling perfectly. There was no way she’d not hear that. He was too close now to not draw attention. Had to be careful if he was going to sneak up…

… but how much attention to her surroundings was she paying, really?

[neeuqtar]

...Not that much, apparently. Luckily for Marsayis' sneaking, Kinstar was more interested in splashing water on herself than on movement in the trees. Had she been home at Southern, alone in the jungle, perhaps she would have been paying more attention to the trees -- on the lookout for the ever-present dangers of wild felines and wild whers. But here, in the cleft of a canyon, surrounded by dragons and strange noises? Kinstar would have gone crazy trying to pinpoint where all the sounds came from in the unfamiliar jungle surrounding Selenitas. With a cliff at her back and a river at her front, Kinstar was more preoccupied with the current than with the riffling of branches.

The woman shivered slightly at the chill of the water, and ducked her head underneath the water, coming up with a gasp of air. The water was much cooler here than the water used at Southern. Even the water of the ocean at the Hold was pleasantly warm, except during far-asea storms when the wind blew from the north, sending cooler water in towards the beaches. With a slight sigh, Kinstar waded forward until she was chest-deep in water. The current wasn't nearly as strong as she had feared, and with little warning, she struck out swimming. She was a powerful swimmer from living so near the ocean; many a pleasant evening of her childhood had been spent with Jekisk and her mother in the water.

Soon, she reached the sandbar she was aiming for, and standing upright on it was barely covered to her knees. Kinstar laughed, once, a bark of sound marking her happiness at success. The woman knelt, picking up a handful of sand. It was clean and the right consistency to scrub with, and she smiled faintly, sitting down in the cool water and starting on her legs, displaying remarkable flexibility as she lifted her first leg up, grabbing the heel with one arm and scrubbing with the other.

[glamourie]

He held perfectly still, eyes narrowed cattishly; there was nothing to indicate any acknowledgment of the woman before him in his face, save for the barest hint of mild amusement – amusement, surely, at her expense. Watching. Waiting. Examining. His head cocked to the side and he watched from his perch high in the trees. Some people might have been surprised by a girl brazenly wandering around naked – but some people weren’t Marsayis. Why should he have cared? It wasn’t like he found her attractive – or even noticed. In fact, the thought didn’t even dawn on him as he crawled through the branches, carefully moving to stay out of sight. It was dark enough that his black clothing would help disguise him, and he wanted to wait until the opportune moment. He grasped the branches for balance and swung himself downward, twisting, until he managed to reach the bottom rung of branches… and then he reached out and snatched the nearest piece of clothing to his grip – her bottoms. He immediately darted back up the branches, almost as if he were built just for that purpose, and only after he was high enough up to not be in immediate reach, did he set them down (all without looking). Pants hooked on branch, secure. Time to amuse himself.

“You’re not particularly attentive to your surroundings, are you? Considering that Selenitas has been attacked numerous times, complete with disappearances, you’d think that your attention to details would be higher. You are new.”

Okay, so it might’ve been strange to have a male voice coming from somewhere above. The voice of a higher power, perhaps. The thought amused him and Marsayis made himself comfortable, his back pressed up against the trunk of the tree. He draped his legs over the large branch on which he sat and he wrapped his arms around the branch above his head. Braced himself, more like. In the dark of night, he was actually very difficult to locate. While his skin was fair, even in the intense heat, Marsayis wore long pants of darkest black, and at night he usually wore longer sleeves too. There was a reason for that: he liked to sneak around too much to wear short sleeves and give himself away. His trademark hat was gone, but the rest of him blended into the darkness of the canopy. Only the moonlight creeping in through gaps in the branches gave any indication as to his location – well, that and the sound of his speaking.

And he didn’t intend to do so again until she did something interesting. Rarely was a bored Marsayis a good thing; he started to scheme. And in that moment, he couldn’t help but wonder what Miss Sing-and-Hum Happy would do once she discovered that her pants were missing, which basically meant she would have to go back to wherever she was from (who was she, anyway?) without them. Her shirt didn’t look nearly long enough to preserve her modesty, either. Though, he supposed modesty was for people who didn’t swim naked. He definitely wasn’t modest, after all.