[ morning comes. the sun rises. time passes. and what kaveh will thusly wake up to is this: a fresh change of clothes on a little pedestal by his divan, fit to his size and carefully embroidered in the colours of black and green, save for the blood-red needlework along the inside of its seams. new toiletries, pale silver bangles fit for thin wrists, a silk bathrobe faint with the scent of fresh silkflowers, a comb carefully carved and inlaid with mother of pearl.
a dark, woven blanket draped over his back, curved like the tail of a long, ancient beast.
at noon, a servant comes in her swaying skirts and brings in a profusely blooming bouquet. sumeru roses flower alongside of the gentle sway of padisarahs. not true padisarahs, never true ones. not since the last ones along the hills of vissudha river faded, never to return, never to the land where it is said the goddess of flower shed her last tear. the card reads thusly: long may the eagle's eyes adjudge.
alhaitham doesn't return. not on the first day, not on the second. the third day, music fills the halls, loud enough to permeate even the deepest of rooms. zithers and sitars, the pattering footfalls of light-spun dancers. gentle laughter and the wafting smell of food. kaveh gets his. dinner rug by dinner rug, day by day, savoury curries and herb-like stews and little paper-thin layered desserts topped with dried green ajilenakh nuts. on the third day, there's a portion of a sumpterbeast turducken, layered with crocodile, and deer, and avidyan peacock, and rabbit, all wrapped up in one another in carefully designed layers. it is, in fact, a significantly proper cut of meat.
it's not until the evening of the fourth day, long after the quiet servant in her swaying dress had come and gone to leave kaveh with a sketchpad and charcoal - drafting paper woven from the toughest fibers of lotus stems; charcoal ever-burnt from the sprouts of adhigama trees - that alhaitham re-emerges from the depths of the palace. the steel of his gaze glances past kaveh as if he were decoration. it lingers upon the bouquet, still-blooming, just a little less profusely, and ignoring it, lets the door fall behind him before his shoulders shift. his cloak is discarded half-way across the floor as he steps to his bed. his face meets its covers, and he is still.
god would have at least made it to day seven, but alhaitham is no god after all. ]
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a dark, woven blanket draped over his back, curved like the tail of a long, ancient beast.
at noon, a servant comes in her swaying skirts and brings in a profusely blooming bouquet. sumeru roses flower alongside of the gentle sway of padisarahs. not true padisarahs, never true ones. not since the last ones along the hills of vissudha river faded, never to return, never to the land where it is said the goddess of flower shed her last tear. the card reads thusly: long may the eagle's eyes adjudge.
alhaitham doesn't return. not on the first day, not on the second. the third day, music fills the halls, loud enough to permeate even the deepest of rooms. zithers and sitars, the pattering footfalls of light-spun dancers. gentle laughter and the wafting smell of food. kaveh gets his. dinner rug by dinner rug, day by day, savoury curries and herb-like stews and little paper-thin layered desserts topped with dried green ajilenakh nuts. on the third day, there's a portion of a sumpterbeast turducken, layered with crocodile, and deer, and avidyan peacock, and rabbit, all wrapped up in one another in carefully designed layers. it is, in fact, a significantly proper cut of meat.
it's not until the evening of the fourth day, long after the quiet servant in her swaying dress had come and gone to leave kaveh with a sketchpad and charcoal - drafting paper woven from the toughest fibers of lotus stems; charcoal ever-burnt from the sprouts of adhigama trees - that alhaitham re-emerges from the depths of the palace. the steel of his gaze glances past kaveh as if he were decoration. it lingers upon the bouquet, still-blooming, just a little less profusely, and ignoring it, lets the door fall behind him before his shoulders shift. his cloak is discarded half-way across the floor as he steps to his bed. his face meets its covers, and he is still.
god would have at least made it to day seven, but alhaitham is no god after all. ]