SPACE STATIONS > The Libra

That old familiar feeling [DragonSong]

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Marjorie:
It had been six years ago when Neese had feel the familiar ebb and flow of the old magics of the universe. Neese was a thing undying... but always alive. His magic was the oldest kind. Tied to the earth, the universe, creation... the natural ebb and flow of existence. He was made from Aedolis, his people created by the Gods to serve them from the time before the first mortals walked on that plain of existence. He had existed sense time immemorial. He couldn't even tell you how old he was... but he remembered the dragons when they were truly mighty, he remembered the times before man had harnessed the use of electricity, much less steam. How many hundreads of thousands of years old was he? Well... he had lost count long ago in Aedolis' middle ages.

It was the old familiar touch of magic, the kind he possessed, the sort that he was made of that had urged him to seek to find the source. It ad taken him six years to track her across the vastness of space. But Neese was not tied just to the land of Aedolis, like creation himself he was tide to the moon and the stars, and all the stardust drifting out there in space. Besides that... Neese had other things he had to do as well, though he never lost sight of that old familiar feeling.

So it was, that Neese arrived on the Libra. He didn't come by ship though. No, Neese stepped right out of the reflective surface of a computer screen inside the little magic shop. How quaint. He hadn't seen such a place in an age.

It was steeped in old magic - magics of nature and had the comforting pull of natural energies. He took a deep breath in, as if he could take those energies into himself and then breathed out again. He didn't take his natural shape here... Fae like him were all but extinct now, most of them lost to the dilution of their genes over time. The pure breads, like the Fae courts, we things of myth now... but Neese didn't mind being a myth. There was a kind of romanticism to it that he liked.

What Neese looked like at the moment though, was certainly not human. He was tall, very tall, nearly 7 foot tall, in fact. He was lanky, and skinny in a way that looked unnatural, but he moved with the sort of grace that could made dancers and acrobats green with envy. His skin was the palest cream, though there was a touch of grey-green to it. His hair was moss green and his head crowned with twigs ad leaves, that if one looked ever so closely at, they would be able to tell that those leaves and twigs were a part of him, and not merely decoration. His eyes were the purest shade of emerald and certainly did sparkle in the light like gemstones. His clothes were rather nondescript, black pants and a black long sleeved shirt... cut so that they accentuated his height and the slender lines of his body... but he was striking enough that he didn't think he needed fancy dressing.

DragonSong:
The raven perched up near the right-most corner of the ceiling of the little shop cawed harshly as Neese stepped through into his tiny realm. Sharp, glinting black eyes trained on the fae creature and the bird clucked, shuffling his wings and puffing up his feathers.

The noise drew the attention of the shopkeeper, who had been in the backroom checking their stock of vervain--it was a difficult herb to get out here, she'd probably have to make a stop at one of the official gardeners' place of residence and beg or barter...

Turning possibilities over in her mind, Raven pushed through the heavy, midnight blue curtains that separated the storefront from the back room and stepped into the little space behind the counter; she wore a blouse and skirt of almost matching fabric, cut in a high-collared, long-sleeved style, with the skirt nearly brushing the floor, that seemed to hearken back to whatever time the shop itself called to.

The shop was small, perhaps it could be considered "quaint", and unlike most of Libra seemed to be made of wood and glass rather than chrome and steel. At least, it did at first--a closer look would reveal that the walls and ceiling beams were actually a nano-fiber substance shaped into imitation wood, but it still lent a cozy, old-fashioned sort of feel to the place. Every wall had floor-to-ceiling shelves, and each shelf was packed with the odds and ends of Raven's trade: herbs, crystals, the rare paper and leather book, star charts, even a few implant upgrades that were advertised to help with luck or love and other such nonsense.

It was a tight, rather cluttered space, and so it wasn't as though their strange guest had anywhere to hide. Raven's eyes snapped to him immediately and widened fractionally, but then she smiled and leaned against the counter a bit, tilting her head.

"Visiting, stranger?" she asked pleasantly. It wasn't a far-fetched guess; most of the people who came to her shop were regulars, or their families had been since her great-grandmother's time. It wasn't often she got new blood, and when she did they were normally visitors to the station rather than residents.

The bird cawed again, sharply, and Raven twitched, her eyes flicking toward him for a moment, almost as though she could understand the sound like human words. Her gaze moved briefly to the computer monitor that was hooked up to the register, then back to the tall gentleman, eyes both curious and wary.

She brushed a lock of hair back behind her ear and clasped her hands together on the desk in front of her. "Anything I can help you with?"

Marjorie:
Neese regarded the bird with an intense look. "Not what you appear to be," he said as the creature got rather stirred up by his presence.

"Ah-ha," Neese said and pinned Raven with both a wide smile and an intense gaze. "You're the one I felt. I've been looking for you, for six years now... I haven't felt magic like yours in, well... a few ages of man. "

He nodded, causing the little crown of leaves and twigs to rustle, but something about that rustle seemed more like purposeful movement, as if the leaves and twigs moved of their own volition, instead of just with the shake of his head.

"Indeed I am, my Lady," he swept into a formal bow the sort that hadn't been in fashion for a few thousand years, "both visiting and a stranger. Perhaps we can change one of those things." He held his hand out to her, "I am Neese, Lord of Oaths." If she accepted his hand, he would bow over her hand slightly and then release her fingers. "May I have your name?" Have was a distinction, compared to knowing... to Fae creatures like he, the giving of a name was a gift, and one with power in it.

He smiled, indulgently. "I think," he said, casting a thoughtful glance at the large Raven which was eyeing him with distrust, "that I can rather be of more help to you than you can to me."

He reached out his lanky fingers to brush her cheek with his fingertips. "You're a Fae child," there was great pleasure in his tone at that remark, "though much diluted... I haven't seen another of my kin in so very long." Most, like herself, had been lost to the dilution of their boold into the species of others.

DragonSong:
Six years?

Raven went very still, the polite interest in her expression hardening into something cooler, more wary.

The bird cawed again, sharp and jagged, and suddenly burst into flight, swooping low over her head to glide through the gap in the curtains and into the back room. Raven hardly blinked, still studying Neese cautiously.

Very, very slowly, she reached out to take his hand. And then he asked for her name.

"...You may not have my name," the young witch said after a long moment, soft and even. "But you may call me Raven."

The Verns women hadn't survived this long without remembering the old ways. She was no faerie's fool.

His fingers brushed against her cheek and she resisted the urge to flinch back. Her eyes widened a bit, as though she was somehow surprised that he hadn't intended to strike her or otherwise hurt her with the touch. "I--I am," she managed to sort of stammer in reply. "There's a long history of Fae lovers in my family, every few generations... Though I think the last was some three thousand years ago."

As far as she understood it, many of her ancestresses had attempted to avoid the fate their Contract brought on their daughters by coupling with inhuman, often powerful entities, perhaps believing that stronger magic in the blood would somehow be able to break the curse.

Of course, it hadn't worked.

But yes, Fae and even Fell magic was present in her blood, though thinned considerably by time and distance from Old Earth.

"That's...why you're here?" she asked cautiously, her eyes sweeping over Neese again. "If, ah...if you wish to meet others, most here on Libra are descended from the old Serenians. I'm sure there's at least one or two bloodlines on the station that still hold a trace of faerie magic."

Marjorie:
Neese smirked. A whistle choice. She was weary of him. She was smart. Neese liked her already.

His gaze flicked toward the massive bird when it yelled at him and swooped off.

He shook his head in the negative. “Oh no, child,” he said and flashed a grin at her, “nothing so mundane as that.” He shrugged. “Serenian blood was diluted in the old days of their Kings... you’re probably more related to my kin than they are now.”

Oh, a mere coupling wouldn’t be strong enough to break the kind of old magic that bound her line. He should know... he had made such contracts in the past. “It was the magic. Old magic. As I said, I’m the lord of oaths, Arlan, among other things.

“Oaths are more than just promises... they are contracts, and bindings of all manner of types. It’s a powerful, old magic, like I haven’t felt in so very long, that binds you to him.” He looked past her to where the raven had retreated. “It spoke to something in me Raven, from worlds away. Magic like that courses threw the lay lines that cross the universe. I felt it’s pull, and I was intrigued.”

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