A sweet goodbye to the white roses. He found that curious. A turn of the head, so that he might see her better.

That she would put them at her place of study. Near to her then. He trailed after, step by easy step. Boots knocking gentle against the path.

I do appreciate your help, Syr Iramene...

"Of course," he offered. "A tender in its time," he said sweetly. "A little Hold's wisdom," trailing in the drift of her stride. Open to hear the story she told as they moved about the shift in green along the gravel trail.

Wildflowers sprout their gentle daring from corners more safe to them. Shade lovers hidden in the cool, while those that preferred the blaze fanned tall in the easy breeze. Tips of her fingers playing across the bolder blooms.

I am like a bee pulled by nectar of these flowers...but the tart bite of a lemon?

Her smile bloomed bright and full. And his smile cut across his lips in sharp measure.

Must be something in the zest.

"A proper zing," he added with a wink. "Cuts through just about anything," he looked to the crawl of jasmines, sprouting and springing across the crevices of the dry stone fence. His fingers cupped about a bloom, thumb to the pollen, he let it slip, and spread the film over the treads of his prints. Rubbed it into the bundles of nerves at his wrist, "Why do you think that is?" he tried, taking a hint of the sample from his skin. "That you crave such poisons?"
 
Caelia had wondered that herself for some time, when her she began to notice the strangeness of seeking out the taste of poisons. She had a theory, of course, as all scholars would have, but Caelia had a truth she wanted to speak. It may be easy to say it now, before Syr Iramene... and yet to tell a truth, one may as well open themselves to wounds. Some could be so deep, ivory bone became visible.

She had a theory on that, too.

Hesitation played on her lips, stifled only when her front teeth bit down on her bottom lip as she hummed. "Curiosity, perhaps? When we delve into discoveries within the Pursuits, the shroud, it is not all the same for everyone in what we encounter." For Syr Kerrigan, dabbling in such things was new to her. Slow, even. Her mind liked to find information in text and histories, but there had always been a sort of disconnect of putting much into practice. She trained hard like many others, and yet they excelled far better than her.

Lifting her chin, eyes turning skyward, she collected her thoughts in the momentary quiet.

"It's a dance between Wild and Death, I like to think. I am dancing to a waltz when poisons are simply in a quickstep... similar in their practice, but differing..." Her eyes fell upon him, a smile twitching. "Of course, my tolerances are finite. I may very well find something I cannot simply ingest."
 
"No, it is never quite the same in our line of work," Knighthood, and Shroudweaving. Each gave its own results to whoever applied them. Changing as much as in the how it was all applied. He let his hand fall.

Still, and quiet. That was part of Matvi's way. Give room to a person, and they would grow, right in front of you.

He watched her eyes, and his traced up to follow as he listened. A cold and familiar shiver down his spine as she mentioned the dance macabre so many of them seemed drawn to. Ever trying to keep pace, while all the rest rolled on by.

She looked to him. He could feel it before he saw it. My, she was beautiful when she was sad, wasn't she?

"It almost sounds like you wish to find that end," he said, matter of fact. Picked up a fresh jazmine flower, and nibbled on a petal. "Eating all this, poison, you so dance with," he twirled the little flower between his fingers, spinning by the stem, and offered it up to her. "Or is that just my own, dark sensibilities spilling out?"
 
She lifted her chin, her eyes never wavering from his as a sly smile now rested on her lips. Syr Iramene was sharper than most, perhaps to her opinion, but anyone that did not assume her to be strange and beyond help would certainly strike her so. It also meant his presence here was rapidly growing on her.

Her eyes narrowed a little, amused.

"Darkness is a tongue we both speak, it seems." Caelia took a few steps forward. With only a few feet between them now, she leaned forward to test the scent offered. Her hair fell forward in a thick curtain of auburn, framing her face. A quick inhale, followed by a deeper one, and as she drew away, a pleased expression lit across her face.

"Soft to my nose... and yet it is alluring." Caelia reached past him and plucked her own small prize. Crushed it a little before bringing it back to her nose.

In this quiet garden, Caelia called to a power and the shroud answered in turn. Two seats, distanced respectfully, created by vines and roots that offered them each a place to rest. It was a soft invitation for Syr Iramene to stay and talk.

And if that did not tempt him, her next words should tickle his intrigue.

"I was brought up to feel like a god, to be invincible. After a few years, you begin to wonder what could be your end... and then you wonder if you could conquer that too." Caelia perched on her seat. Smiles and sly receding behind open honesty. "I suppose even now, free from that life, I still seek for a morsel of that feeling."
 
The spill of auburn, the pull of breath, just made his smile ache the tiniest bit more. Her arm reached out, and he found his neck turning, just to see what those long fingers found.

Plucked her own flower, crumpled its delicate petals, and brought it to her nose.

"Alluring indeed," he couldn't help but agree.

When she straightened up and wove the plants into two seats, he could not help but smile a bit wider. Just a touch of a laugh, like a babble spill over a cistern's lip, come full with just a drop of too much rain.

Then came a hint of her story. Who she was. Where she had come from. Brought a soberness to him that was all quiet and listen. She gave a smile, and took her seat.

He gave a small bow, and he slipped easy into the seat closest to him. Impressed by how the woven construction of wyld held his weight. Snug as a glove.

"You'll have Brambleshell on us by days end," he looked about himself. "Where is the old tortugan..." coast was clear. His eyes back to her, an easy look about him as he rest his weight back. None bothered by the alarm he had just displayed. The smallest of shrugs, and nods that showed his thinking. "Was that what your family believed of weavers?" he asked. "That they were akin to the gods?"

And they wouldn't be alone in that. Many a soul thought too much of those gifted with the touch to pull upon the shroud.

"I was never too convinced weaving was something wholly bound by the happenstance of birth. At least not in so much as many noble families would have one think," he laughed at that. Cast his eyes out unto the sky. "And why would they? Their power, their influence, it all hinges on such fancies as, the power of their blood, does it not?"

And here they were. A pair of parlor kittens. Noble of blood. Parked by the garden. Renounced their titles to take up Oaths to Wyld and Small Folk.

"I can't blame anyone for trying to find an escape to such a twisted way of being,"
 
Caelia averted her gaze. How so close to the truth he was just now, and to have the past now revisited put her in a ponder of whether it was time to talk about it.

Her shoulders lifted as she straightened her spine, an inhalation full of the jasmine florals lingering, and that breath was held only a moment before she emptied her lungs of it. A release. Her body relaxed and her mind was made up. Hazel gaze lifted and peered at him through her lashes, to him seated there before her and wearing the aftermath of a laugh. It suited him to smile, to laugh, to fill this space with his mirth. Caelia could not help put pick up on the energy he put out.

Reassured.

"My parents refused to let me learn. They wanted a daughter to marry off and be rid of, and instead they were given a daughter that loved to rip the sunshine from behind clouds brought by storms all because she enjoyed feeling warmth. My governess used to smack my palms with her cane when she caught me. Called me strange. I was hurt the most when I left home and no one came to find me." Caelia turned her palms upwards on her lap, the pale skin clear and unharmed. Healed from the moment she felt no shame for weaving. "Because I had an education, the ability to read and write, I found work as a scribe. Found my love for exploring the spines upon shelves..."

Caelia grinned. She could not help it, for books and her love for reading of worlds known and lands left to be discovered had always pulled her out of her unwanted realities. That was the true way of weaving the shroud residing in her mind. The ability to go elsewhere when the current world was too noisy or too calm and quiet.

"I became god when the hand that fed me nurtured me to listen to my instincts. Is that not how it always went for when we turned six and ten? That the praise we were fed for so long, we did not realise we had been attending a feast. One that celebrated gluttony." Her brows furrowed. Her nose scrunched delicately along with it, in turn making her eyes crinkle.
 
A stillness. The sort that came over ponds come the death of a cold wind. Reflections of the world beyond its black mirrored surface, clear to the eye as all else around it.

The sunshine off the clouds, the storms that blew warm world's breath over skin and joints, balmy as it clung and settled there.

Did little to dull the imagined pain of smacked knuckles and palms. Or the loneliness that dawned on one, far from the delicate world all that power blood had promised but failed to keep.

"Such is the power of the imagination," he found himself chiming in. Warm smile there on his face. For he too had learned to shape the world, through all the words he had learned to wield like tools for shaping clay.

A slow nod at the finish, while bumble bees buzzed, and finches flitted from brush to brush. Somewhere, a fly had snagged into a spider's web. The long legged queen, spindled and stalked its way across the delicate shimmer of its home. The thing it used to take life, so that it could stave off death, just the bit more.

"Well, what can one expect from such ways of thinking?" he surmised, after a moment's pause. "What purpose can one hope to find, if praise as empty as a god's home might fill their ear and set them too meander. Full on the falsehood, yet," he held his tongue a moment.

Noble born himself. He recalled the praise ushered on to his younger half brother. Vendrick. How his stepfather had praised his every fart. Ven was a good young man. Matvi knew it. But he slowly turned into a little monster. Felt the world owed him everything he could take.

Even when Rodrick had set flame onto Matvi.

How he saw the boy he thought his brother smile.

He shook his head. "Let them have their feasts, while we enjoy the garden grown from our labors," he said with a shrug.
 
She could not help it, especially when he spoke in such a way that tugged at something in her chest.

The last sentence he spoke had drawn her in; Caelia leaning forward upon her seat as if he spoke in a lure of some sort. She blinked, frowned, and felt the memory of his words play through her mind again. "It was not easy to leave, I can assure you. I had gorged myself so much, I was sick. My first lesson in the price magic had in store." She offered Matvi a weak smile. Even now, Caelia still felt shame for being rendered so humanly as taking too much.

"When I got no help, only cruel words of disappointment, I... threw myself before a gilded knight." Caelia looked down to the arm of her vine crafted chair. Blossoms twisted and turned, facing her as if she were their sunlight. Her slender fingers ran over their petals and stems, magicked influence making them grow through their stages before wilting and withering. "You recall the late Syr Ikann?"

Emory Ikann had been a long serving knight within the Order, and father figure to a good many. He had gone out of his way to help Caelia at the time, had made sure to visit her before he left for Astenvale again and did not tell her differently when she asked if she could go with him. Nearly a decade now since his passing, but she was forever grateful for his kindness. "I was to move on from here once we arrived, but I saw the way he received so many of the squires and Sworn... I longed to have a family that cared for me."

And Caelia stayed. A family gained and loved, and she repaid her gratitude by transcribing and helping about the Monastery.

"I am glad to be here, to meet so many... to have met you." The pink petals of her flowers bloomed again, but not at the behest of her fingers orchestrating them. They reflected the flush in her cheeks, as Caelia now averted her gaze from Matvi. "I only mean in that... you being someone nice and..." She trailed off, lost in the blurting of her thoughts.
 
He watched. Sharp eyed as she eased forward. "No, I can't imagine it ever is," he shared.

It was easy for him. As he had been all but cast out.

With the memory of Syr Ikann invoked, Matvi gave a nod of the head. Listened on at the telling. Hummed soft as she gave that bit on the care that was found here.

Order that it was. The comradery, the bonds of kinship founded through oath and purpose.

To have met you.

Like a splash of cold water. His brows raised, and his eyes widened as he straightened up. Saw the flowers bloom about her. Cheeks painted rouge across her gentle face, and there too against his own marred features.

He cleared his throat. Nod again his agreement. "Handsome, I think you are looking for," he tacked on, sharp. "Quick witted, perhaps?" he feigned ease, and rolled his head some as he let his eyes lull shut, wrist rolling as if he whipped up some new phrase. "Ah," his eyes cracked open, sharp in their cool as they spied her. "Keen eyed," a nod.

A clearing of ancient throat. A shape like a boulder unfurled from the bushes just beyond the bushes they sat so beside.

brambleshellav.webp"Unscrupulous you mean, Syr Iramene?" ta voice like ancient mountain's side. Root come break through the stone. "Perhaps frivolous, and wasteful with the gifts of the shroud?" all tease. The sort of an elder, who knew just the right touch of pressure, to correct a youth's mistake.

Master Brambleshell, Oldest of the Masters, eyed Syr Kerrigan. "Syr Kerrigan, what have we spoken on in regards to wielding our gifts, without due cause, hmm?" a kindly smile shined in her eyes, but lost none of the sharpness.

Matvi made to get up, but with an easy wave of claws, Brambleshell undid the seat from under him. The plants turned brittle, dried and died. Their shroud, a scatter of whisps the old master wound tight, and sent back into the soil from whence it came.

Matvi fell on his ass with a laugh and a grin. "I knew it," he said with a shake of the head and looked to Caelia. "The old Tortugan is out to get me, see?"

Brambleshell laughed. "You deserve nothing less, Matvi," she nod, and turned her great shell onto them. "Neglecting your studies of the wyld, as per usual,"

"No argument there," he said as he got up, and dusted himself off.
 

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"Handsome, I think you are looking for,"

Caelia was compelled to agree with him, to every word he said, but the shock and surprise of Master Brambleshell happening upon them gave her such a fright that her nod of agreement was forgotten. Her cheeks now bloomed deeply, and awkwardly, she shot up from her seat as if she were seated on thorns.

"Master Brambleshell!" Her voice a few octaves higher as she desperately tried to compose herself. Her smile twitched and strained. "I... was merely demonstrating how useful these gifts are!"

It was clear that Caelia did not do well under the scrutinous eye of a higher up.

She was allowed some time to breathe and calm as Brambleshell turned her attention back to Matvi, and the loss of his seat only made her throw a hand up to her mouth to hide her laugh and smile. She pursed her lips to stifle her smile, but it was her hazel eyes that gave way to her mirth. "Perhaps Syr Iramene would have newfound respect for the wyld after seeing my examples, and your own, Master Brambleshell."

When she looked to Matvi again, she let out another soft laugh. Crossing the distance, she reached a careful hand to pick at a stray petal from atop his head, and slowly and carefully dusted off a patch from his shoulder. All too aware that she should pull her gloves back on so as to protect anyone from a chance of symptoms, but she could not help but wish to be near Syr Iramene.
"Hmm... perhaps I liked it better when you wore a petal for a hat."

If Brambleshell were not near, she would have made the methods of enlarging the petal to the size of a proper hat.
 
Master Brambleshell tut her tongue. "Do not encourage the scoundrel, Caelia," she said, all bright tease. "He gets plenty of that as it is,"

Matvi looked all pleased cat, with too much fish for his own good. "She's not wrong," he said with a wink toward Syr Kerrigan, who plucked a thing from his head, and dusted him off.

He rather liked the attention.

Hmm... perhaps I liked it better when you wore a petal for a hat."


A little laugh from the knight, who pushed himself up off the ground, and got up onto his feet. "I would pluck myself a new one, but I worry Master Brambleshell might take a finger from me if I did,"

A snap of the old turtle's beak.

A nervous titter from Matvi, standing all too close to Syr Kerrigan. "I had a feeling..." he smiled easy. Looked back to Caelia smiled just a touch wider. Didn't mind so much that the scar over his eye would be so easy to see so up close.

"Syr Kerrigan," the old Tortugan called out clearly. "Do you remember how to restore shroud reshaped to its original run?" she tilt her beak towards the seat of vines, twined and bloomed with blushing flower petals.
 
As soon as Syr Iramene chose to stand closer to her to be away from the Master should she make good on her promises to take his finger, Caelia's hands when to clasp and rest at her lower back. There was no need to hide the flush to her cheeks, for they settled there indefinitely now, as was her curse of her complexion. Why would she be thinking of that when Syr Iramene was close enough she could become lost in his face? The ever constant reminder of his scar had never fazed her, perhaps it was morbid of her to think it suited his face...

But even as she stared at the Syr, he would be able to see the freckles across her face. Evidence that she indeed enjoyed the sun in small doses.

"Syr Kerrigan," Brambleshell called for her attention.

Her head whipped around, so quickly done that her hair nearly whipped at Syr Iramene's shoulder. Her eyes widened, a small nervous smile pulling at the corners of her lips as if she had been caught by the Master for ogling at Iramene.

"I... yes, I do." She fumbled.

When she did not make a move for several seconds, the Master motioned for her to demonstrate.

"Oh!" Caelia let out a laugh, hands falling from where she held them behind her. As they came to rest at her side, a finger brushed at Syr Iramene's sleeve. The Poisener took a few steps to where her seat still held shape, proudly arranged in blooms and greenery that it could grow into a throne. "A hard thing to master when it comes to the pursuit of the wyld..." She pursed her lips, beginning the motions of returning her borrowed mastery to the source of how it came to be. It took some nudging, some pretty words meant to compliment as she soothed the shroud to retreat back into the earth.

It was a slower process than when she had brought the seats to life; as it would be to anyone that was gifted the ability to play in the sunlight and then convinced of returning to dark soil.
 
Matvi stepped back a moment, to let the Knight Weaver do her work. "I can imagine," he said as a quiet aside.

And perhaps that was a bit of the trouble between he and the pursuits of the Wyld.

Loch, now that made sense. All flow, ease, never sticking too long in one spot, less it turn to ice. A simple matter really. Energy lost. Turned to stone. Or something very much like it. Expanding, all its own.

Plants? Beasts?

He shuddered at the thought.

They had near wills of their own! The plants, he would clarify if ever anyone asked. Beasts of course had a will of their own. That went without saying. He had met plenty a cat, horse, and the odd badger.

To will the shroud through them. Well, that was something he could hardly make sense of.

Different than using the touch of loch to mend a wound. Correcting the body's fluids. Flows. Blood was not the person. The entity. The being.

So when she nudged the chair. Proud and budding as it was. Whispered pretty sweet things to it to help it shrink back. Give up its flowers, and green stalks. Return to the earth.

"Well, that was a wonder," he said, all short of breath as he stared at the spot the last of the green had returned to. Looked to Caelia, all freckled and nerves. "Steal the sunlight off clouds, eh?" quirked a brow. Nod with his smile still worn. "I can see it now,"

"And now," Master Brambleshell went on. "The soil might not lash back, for what was worked from it so quickly," the old Tortugan nod. "We must remember, our use of Shroud is not a thing to be played with, all comes with a cost," she went back to tending the tender green shoots of yarrow shrubs, tender and fuzzed as they pushed up from the soil on their narrow stalks. "Even if we can't see it now, might be, we ruin the harvest of the next summer," touched the fuzzy fronds with the end of claw. "Or bring drought two generations down,"

Matvi looked to the old tortugan. "You're the only one who would live long enough to see such a thing, Master Brambleshell," a bit of sorrow in it.

"Then you should heed my word, more than most, shouldn't you, Syr Iramene,"

A nod. "Suppose so,"
 
Caelia hung her head as she thought on the words of wisdom being passed from Brambleshell, words that had been told to her many a time in her education of weaving, but old habits were hard to squash when one had been so used to using it for no other reason than to do something others could not. Was that not the reason why her family were relieved she had left their home full of loveless halls?

She turned at the waist, peering at Syr Iramene with furrowed brows. Wonderment settled in the slight frown of her lips. What lessons were between the Master and the Knight? That so much could be conveyed in such vague exchange of words?

"It is quite the privilege we are awarded, to weave." Caelia piped in. "I apologise, Master Brambleshell. I could not resist." Her smile turned sheepish, her hands wringing. "I should have heeded the warnings Syr Iramene gave me... you see, I got carried away thinking I would not... be caught."

If she were a squire, surely she would be put on dish duty. To be put to work, where long stretches of time would allow her time to reflect on the lesson learned.

The sheer stern gaze of the Master was enough to put Caelia in her place. Nervous laughter tittered from her lips.
 
"As much a privilege as a bird has to be born with its wings," Master Brambleshell added. tut her tongue at the nervous energy that seemed to emanate from the young Kerrigan. "If Syr Iramene were truly worried, he would have tried harder to convince you. Isn't that right, Matvi?"

The Dusker couldn't help but smile neath the Master's scrutiny. Raised to hands at his side as he keeled his head with the motion. "I would be lying, if I said I was not curious to witness a talent at work, Master Brambleshell,"

Something sharp there in the Master's eye. Though not unkind. "See the rose for all of its thorns, Syr Kerrigan?" she laughed, and went on with her work in the garden.

Matvi gave the sort of smile only the shameless, and blissfully, if not sinfully, unaware could give as he looked on to Syr Kerrigan. "Well, I feel like, mayhaps, I should get going then," he said quieter between them. "Seems like the Master has some lessons to teach?" he bounced with quick humor. "But maybe, we can have another walk some time? Find a, bench to chat on?" his fingers wrapped about a jasmine flower. "Make some perfume?" Held it tender there betwixt his pads, and let his thumb run over it. "You know where to find me," hes said, as he let go, and gave a little two finger salute. "Syr Kerrigan," put upon formality. One last bit of play as he bowed. "Till next we meet," and he strode away.
 
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