Topic: The Sand Walker

Suvari Ro · Date: 2008-01-13 17:16 EST

Like a small piece of sand on the gust of wind she was carried into RhyDin when she was a child.

To say that she was born in the Dead Lands would be true, but she was raised in both places. Her mother was one of the wealthy women of perfect stature and mannerisms in the realm and world of RhyDin. But her father was a savage and lord in The Dead Lands that with his piercing eyes and leathered skin.

From the day of Suvari's birth, the battle for the girl to be in one place or the other was on. Pride demanded each to have Suvari in their home, in their realm.

It was a rift that never healed.

In her late twenties, Ro was known vaguely in the land as dressing like a man and having a talent for a handful of skills. The imperfect woman is a pearldiver, a horseracer, and excellent at handling her throwing knives. But each skill brought a downside that left a toll on her thin body.

Again, she returns to RhyDin. The faces rarely stayed the same. And even if she saw someone she had seen before, they were not the same person.

Tides came and went...forever changing the landscape and those who stood upon the sands.

Suvari Ro · Date: 2008-01-13 17:29 EST

Rumors had started. There were always those. Always there was someone who thought they knew something and guessed the rest to form a full picture. It still amazed her how swift all of it came together and how much others believed what spewed from others' lips.

Suvari left her room at the Red Dragon Inn somewhere between the latest hour of night and the earliest hour of the morning. Dark brown shirt with long sleeves was tucked into like colored britches. A cape with ends of it about her thighs was already about her shoulders with leather rainhood back against the mantle. Black hair shorn short was wrapped in desert cloth, with its veil lowered and draped over her left shoulder.

Gloves were always on her hands when she was in public, even in the pitch of night as she presently was. She fingered the three throwing knifes as she blended to the shadows heavily cast by the tall, surrounding buildings that huddled close agianst the darkness as if afraid of it.

Every alley had that same darkness, like too many corners of an inn's common room. Except one. She pulled herself up short and shimmied carefully up some crates near a storefront to its roof. When she crouched to a place where she could see better, she narrowed her eyes on the handful of the eclectic races: Human, Elf, Vampire, Orc, and a woman with a crown of horns about the top of her head.

Ro eyed them from her hawk's eye vantage point. She barely breathed, her chest nearly motionless. Fingers at the throwing knives but she didn't have a reason to remove even one yet.

Suvari Ro · Date: 2008-01-13 17:52 EST

Suvari crouched on the rooftop. Her knee pressed against her chest as her other was against the harsh surface of the roof. One hand against her throwing knifes, her free hand was at the edge of the roof as she leaned in a little.

The orc was the most curious of the group for Ro. She would not have thought him...no, another look and Ro realized he was a she. She would not have thought she would stand there and speak to more civilized races such as Humans and Elves. Suvari strained to hear what they were sayings.

"There will be plenty for all to go around." The Human muttered through clenched teeth and sounded as if he had said as much before.

The Orc rumbled with iritation. "I doo notck want golt! You said of pretty flessh!"

It was the Elf that surprisingly laid a hand on the fellow female's arm, as if she meant to soothe the beast. "Do not worry. You will have that."

The Human glared at the Elf who seemed entirely oblivious of the man's upset. And the Human was not so easily coddled as the Orc. Between all of them was the horned female stood the smallest but her ways were demissive and one born to command. Even evil and its followers had to have their nobles, it seemed.

"Do not waste my time. There will be plenty for everyone. This has already been discussed. Take the youth and the father and mother will crumble. They will be willing to hand over anything at all in order to get the boy back." Her hand swept upwards to keep the Orc and Vampire quiet. "You will have your dinner of him when he has served his purpose. Until then, all of you stay out of sight and keep your mouths shut!" The last was hissed through elongated teeth before the hornd female turns about and stalked out of the alley.

The Human male clutched the torch and muttered a string of obscenities as he moved on after the leader of their little group. The rest split and went in definitively different directions.

Suvari didn't realize she had donned her sand-veil. She blinked and lowered it as she watched until the last of the ill group was out of sight.

"Two nights back in the realm and already this?" Ro tossed the end of her sand-veil over her left shoulder. "Much will be without event." The Watcher stood and glanced over the rooftops of the shops and other buildings of the area.

Dragon wings on the air, the blue-purple light on the horizon of wizardry at practice or play, and gargoyles on the ancient cathedral that were not always dormant and made of stone.

It was very obvious that she was home.

Suvari Ro · Date: 2008-01-13 18:19 EST

For a millennia, the Watcher Cirque had been there. Unheard of, because they were butchers, farmers, or even Lords and ship captains. They held posititions from all walks of life.

Even the simply dressed and plain faced Suvari Ro. She had a steely spine but relaxed manner. Suvari held skills in throwing knives, riding horses, and holding her breath under water to bring up priceless oysters and their pearls.

The gimp wore scrolling the "*W~C*" brand for the Cirque on her the small of her back - a place that went unseen by friends and strangers alike.

Friends. The Watcher nearly laughed, if she had been known to laugh much at all out loud it might have happened. A Watcher had few friends - ever. A certain amount of distance was always kept between herself and others. Only a handful would ever know what lies behind her well built walls.

Suvari Ro · Date: 2008-01-13 19:13 EST

The conundrum was merely flesh and bone in the form of a woman.

Perhaps that was riddl enough for some. The Watcher ducked back into the inn with the pale morning light with the meeting of that handful still on her mind.

She didn't seek sleep right away. It would come in its own time. But instead, she opened her pack and took out several leather bound volumns and a stack of parchment, a stoppered bottle of ink, drying sand, some quills, and a stick of sealing wax. The last to be removed was the seal itself. Unlike larger ones seen on the desks of Lords and Kings, hers was slender and the inverted image of a desert hawk and a two very small letters (W C) were at the bottom of the coin-sized image.

When others item were placed on the table and an oil lamp was lit and pulled close, she chose a sheet of blank parchment was placed on the table before her. She scripted the date, time, and where she was when writing it.

It was the first of letters she had had to write in a while. Only a morsel of meat to put into it. Only facts, small and seemingly insignificant. For now, how many were there and the words that were overheard was all that she had.

For now, it was what she had to pass on to fellow Watchers.

Suvari Ro · Date: 2008-01-21 11:12 EST

Pains - Old & New

The Watcher.

In some circles, that was all she was called. As if it was something reverent like Mother or Lady. Perhaps because there had been a time when those who were not Watchers held them to that high regard. But that was dangerous. With such a place so high, it was one hell of a long way down with a landing hard enough to shatter bone and twist memories.

The darkness was the only thing Suvari watched for now. Hours had passed and no sleep had come to her. And pain of the past would not let loose of her. More specifically, her leg.

She finally gave up on sleep and shoved the covers off of her, but immediately regretted it when she was hit with the cold air of the room. "Argh! Damnable places without enough between me and the Winter."

The man's tunic she wore was long enough to meet mid thigh on her but did nothing to help the present situation. She stood there at the end of the bed and gripped it hard enough to make knuckles go white. She would need more herbs than usual in her tea.

"Damned....shankin'....Jofrion." The curse was spat to the darkness about her, but the face of an old enemy was clear in her mind.

It was the work of Jofrion that left her with the limp years ago and it was he whom she curse with ever jolt his bitter work had done upon her body.

Suvari Ro · Date: 2008-01-21 11:51 EST

It hadn't been Jofrion, per se, that had left her limping.

"No. That would have been too above you to have done this yourself, you Thief Baron." The small woman muttered it to herself, near to cursing the man by name again while she lit the few candles of the room.

Jofrion was the local king of theives, or at least a mongrel father of them. Only one of many who claimed to have that position, just a little more vehemently than the others. Jofrion del Morte, his surname meant death and he enjoyed taunting others with the threat of it as punishment.

Suvari had been a girl then, no more than fifteen, when she had crossed paths with the vilified lordling of filth. She had stolen a string of pearls off the sleevecuff of one of his slaves to put food in her stomach.

Even now she gave a small grunt and pulled the plain set of men's trousers on. She was starving at that time, long ago. A moment of a mistake and she would pay for a lifetime with the punishment his men had exacted on her for it.

She stomped her right foot into her boot, jarring herself with the pain shooting from her lower leg. In a way, from that day, it had been a blessing. The scars and battering that had left her on the brink of dieing for almost a week so long ago had made her into what she was.

Suvari never stole again. What was hers was gained by blood, sweat, and tears. And that had not gone unnoticed by the Watchers. It meant a life of solitude, overall, but what and who it helped far out-weighed the negative side of it.

Grimacing, she moved with little of that limp towards the wash basin and scrubbed her hands and face with the cold water before vigorously drying them. A look in the mirror was given a second gander.

She laughed quietly aloud and took a wetted comb to her short hair that was standing nearly on its ends from all the tossing she had done during the night.

When the belt that held several, hard leather pouches and three throwing knives was about her waist, she took the head cloth with its desert-veil and headed out for a walk through the ancient city. Moving with that noticable limp.

Suvari Ro · Date: 2008-01-21 12:10 EST

Watching would have told nothing with the staying inside of the inn that called so many to it at all hours of the day and night.

She had pulled the heavy wool and leather cape from its hook and wrapped it about herself before she reached the front door of the establishment. Leather buckles of it near her left shoulder were in place by the time that main door closed behind her.

She moved passed the handsome and beautiful faces of the crowds. Wealth dripped from many and some moved with soundless ways that would have unnerved the gods with such perfection.

It didn't bother the Watcher, though, as the gimp stayed on the open roadways and avenues of the ancient city today. Some untoward peoples and events happened in the brightest lights, leaving those around what?s happening simply blind to what was going on.

The cape was often worn and kept close, especially in a land where the desert seemed absent here. In the years of coming and going, she had never become used to how cool it felt even in the Summer months. Beneath the cape, hands that were never without those gloves in public held casual position: one at her side and the other was fingering her throwing daggers. But for all the world, she smiled a little here and there. The hawkers bawling their wares called her attention further and she stepped into the Marketplace.

Suvari Ro · Date: 2011-10-10 10:08 EST

A pretty face and pretty good set of scars on a leg that left her with a slight, unhealable limp.

The Watcher was in no mood that morning to simper to anyone with an ache running from her lower leg and spider-webbing pain through muscles and flesh up to her leather-clad hip.

"You smell of sugar." The gutteral voice of the male creature beside her hinted of a snear.

"I will smell as I wish, Delluk. Mind yourself." Suvari Ro gave him a flat look, full of irritation at more than a few things — and he was one of them. Delluk was a trusted man-beast but sometimes he annoyed the living hells out of her. But his senses were far stronger than hers or the other two Watchers there with her. She wondered, offhandedly, if it was to him like being dunked into a barrel of tree syrup. As they continued along the road at that morning our, she watched the path before them and spoke again. "I will...try to be more considerate, the next time that I know that you and I will be meeting."

Delluk nodded appreciatively about that. He was over seven feet tall and must have been well over four hundred pounds of grey flesh and bones. But he moved without a sound. Suvari had known him for years and still marvelled at it. Though she was trained to be as quiet, she could never be so successful at it as Delluk was. By the crazed, hideous look of him, it reminded an onlooker of an Orc, but that's where the similarities ended. He was far more intelligent, quiet, smelled better, and didn't like eating Humans.

She moved with him and the others of their group north. The meeting was not going to be a pleasant one, but neither was it the end of any world in existence. Suvari threw her cowl up and replaced her veil and put more purpose in her uneven strides.