Fariare
Lunch had been ravishing. Red wine, roasted fruits, soft cheeses and dark bread on one of the many verandas of the Palacio Deimos. A few languid rounds and glasses of various drink. Fariare was beyond well-sated.
That evening, he had plans, pre-existing. Diplomatic ones that he wasn’t particularly looking forward to, but the unpleasantness would be offset by his splendid afternoon of company and wine.
His companions, new ones Fariare met early that morning, bid him goodbye with a fleeting kiss on the cheek. They waved softly, giggling to each other as they faded into the mobs of the Palacio, draped in luminous cloth and metals.
A part of Fariare’s heart panged as left.
hE IgNORED IT
He ignored it.
Fariare briskly walked back to his chambers, stopping to chat up two different glowing, golden priestesses outside of the local devout quarters. He blanketed them in soft, comforting words with only a hint of lust. They giggled and laughed, charmed.
Why was this all so easy?
They followed him back to his chambers, Fariare guiding them with gentle hands on either of their backs.
A few hours to spare... why not have some fun?
A few hours of soft touches and easier thoughts. A few hours of forgetting all of the difficulties that he was burdened with-
It’s fine.
It was always his line of thinking. Put off the inevitable with some pleasant distraction. Things were easier that way.
He led the two to one of the doors of the wing that the Imperian were housed in. He opened the dark wood door for them with a slight bow. They both giggled, fanning their blond, Victusian lashes at him.
But, upon entering the room, Fariare eyebrows raised with surprise. Not that Markis sat, waiting for him as he so often did, but rather that his ikan had a companion with him, holding a rolling joint of herbs.
This companion was taller than Markis by an inch or two, wearing a brown sleeveless top and a woven, leather band on her wrist. Her pants were a shining vermillion, geometric embroidery on the cinched hem of the ankle. Her eyes were striking as all Victusian eyes seemed. They were like soft embers, a heat in need of stoking. Copper brown hair waved around her face, bangs framing her careful cheekbones and rounded jaw. Her form was composed of soft-looking muscle, well-fed but toned. Worn, but not worn out.
She blinked at him.
She noticed me staring.
Fariare quickly looked away with an easy laugh, Markis beginning to speak but Fariare only half listening, “Fariare, this is Albany. She’s a priestess from the eastern mountain who’s visiting Diamus.”
Fariare reached down, ruffling Markis’s hair. He looked up to Fariare, eyes shining and pressing into his own gaze.
His chest tightened uncomfortably.
ConNEction is JUST HORRIFYING!
Fariare’s eyes darted away, a tittering laugh leaving his chest as he wrapped his arm around the waist of one of his new companions.
He turned to them both, emerald eyes gleaming in the sunlight and krystallin.
“How about I see the two of your later this evening? When the deeds of the day are long over?” Fariare voice curled and writhed as he leaned down to speak nearer to the ears of his companions.
They flushed and giggled at these warm words, nodding and nearly dashing from the room, smitten as one would expect.
Nothing less for the heir.
“Join us, Fariare. We’re just sitting down for some tea and catmint,” Markis moved Fariare from his thoughts, guiding him to one of the cushioned lounge chairs in the corner, perfectly placed in a sunbeam from the skylight above.
Fariare sat down, stretching his long legs over one of the low arms of the seat. His eyes stayed pointed to the krystallin clusters above, yet ever aware of the girl in his periphery.
The ember priestess followed them to sit, setting herself within a rounded, pitted chair the color of sunblooms. Markis handed both of them cups of steaming liquid, amber. Tea, undoubtedly one of Markis’s special tea blends. Fariare held his cup in one hand, twirling it idly.
I wish this was wine.
PiTy.
“How did you find this little priestess, Markis?” Fariare took a long sip, eyeing his ikan beneath heavy lashes.
Markis sipped his own tea, cross-legged on his own low-backed stool, “We ran into each other in the stores and have been getting along quite well. Wouldn’t you say so, Albany?”
Albany nodded, sipping her tea with closed eyes, “It's been a pleasure speaking to you. It’s an honor to meet one of the Imperian heirs as well.”
Albany gave a courteous nod to Fariare, signing the prakriti with a small (obviously forced) smile.
Why is she acting like that?
Does she not want me here?
You’re a goddamn heir, you can be wherever the hell you want, he reminded himself.
His stomach churned with his rolling anxiety as he took another deep swig of tea.
Markis passed him a joint.
Fariare’s heart pounded as he took a deep drag, exhaling the smoke slowly, allowing it to fill the room, floating upwards. The scent of cannabis and rich incense mingled together, shrouding the room in a pleasant haze.
His anxieties clears within moments. His chest felt lighter. His limbs felt heavier. He rolled his shoulders back with a smile. Fariare could feel Markis smiling at him. It was the soft euphoria of feeling better-
“How have you liked Sol Victus, solasis Fariare? I mean, in the time that you’ve been here”--
That he basically forgot the little priestess was there.
He languidly tilted his neck, shining her a simple smile, “I’ve loved it. It’s very different from back in Cielen.
“I can only imagine,” Albany sighed, resting her head in her hands and sighing. “I’ve only heard about it from the stories of the orantio at my temple.”
“Does each temple have an orantio in Sol Victus?” Markis asked, raising an eyebrow.
Albany chewed her lip, shrugging, “Every temple I’ve ever heard of has one, if not one training another in some capacity. Is it different in Terrinum Imperia?”
“Cielen, maybe,” Fariare languidly let his gaze drift to the little priestess, stony eyes appraising her without mind. “There’s only one temple with several orantio.”
“Wait.” Albany raised an eyebrow, leaning forward in seat, legs crossed. “Are you telling me in all of Cielen, the largest city on the landmass, there’s one temple-”
“Is there not even a technical temple in Diamus, dear? Only this Palacio?” Fariare beamed at her, loving the way her face visibly flushed, a smattering of rose appearing on her bronzed cheeks out of embarrassment of her own accidental fallacy.
“Technically, this isn’t even a temple. It’s the palace of the Lux Deorum.” Despite her slight mistake, Albany’s voice remained level, even if her gaze glimmered with embarrassment. She looked up to meet his gaze, a determined grit sparkling in her irises. “But, I suppose you’re right.”
There a moment, just a mere fragment of a second that there was a tension that hung in the air. The kind of tension Fariare craved and latched onto. Burning embers, beginning to light, met his own with a newly genuine smile.
This is different.
I think it's good.
“Are you staying in the fields with the rest of the traveling devout?” Markis asked Albany, sipping from his own cup, gaze intent but calculating just behind it.
Albany nodded, “We’ve only just arrived today, but my temple has got a spot quite close to the Palacio Deimos.”
“Lucky, I suppose,” Fariare mused. He had briefly seen the wide fields that the external devout had made their temporary home. It was wide, sprawling into the low, rolling hills beyond the Palacio.
“Well, it was reserved for my temple specifically,” Albany’s face changed as she spoke, an expression adjacent to doubt.
“Oh? Any reason?” Markis had picked up on Albany’s lowered brows, changing his angle as he sipped his tea.
Markis has always been so good at seeing through people.
Fariare supposed he had gotten better at it as well.
“Uh, well,” Albany sat up in her deep chair, running a hand through her hair. “The High Priestess is quite... aged. She suffers from a chronic illness that makes her a bit weaker than someone of her age and being. I suppose they reserved it so she could move to Palacio more easily.”
“What sort of illness?” Markis asked ‘innocently’. “Does she have an ikan?”
Albany shook her head, sighing, “Not a personal ikan, no. She has refused one as long as I have known her. The temple’s ikans help her a lot, but she refuses to have one devoted just to her. Besides, the ikans can do much but ease her pain. Her chronic illnesses stems from the after-effects of a... plague for sorts.”
The little priestess went silent, sipping her tea, gaze unfocused, towards the floor.
“A plague? That seems severe,” Markis asked, coaxing.
“Uh,” Albany pressed her mouth in a thin line, “She rarely talks about it. But, I know it ripped through the landmass about... seventeen suns ago? I don’t remember it well; it was before my time as a devout... I didn’t know the high priestess at the time, and I lived far away from Jezoa and where she libed at the time, but I know it hit all of them. The entirety of Sol Victus. Struck.”
She sipped her tea.
A short silence.
Ah.
Fariare recalled this plague, deep in his memory. He had her of it in his youth, so many suns ago.
Comments (0)
See all