The Home of Zou, Mentor and Musician

[Aura Thesin]

Aura glanced from Zou, not really noticing his reaction as he pulled his comforting hand from her shoulder, to Naris, to Koloque. She licked her lips nervously at all the eyes on her. It didn't, however, escape her notice that Koloque now stood between the door and herself. She didn't really have the intention of leaving, not yet, but it was disconcerting at the least to no longer have the option.

Of course, she had taken down another big man just the night before, with little effort and a brief distraction from Zou, but he wasn't much more than a brawler. This fellow looked more likely to be able to handle himself in a fight.

Finally, Aura stood up from assessing the situation before her, and had the good grace to blush slightly and look embarrassed. She offered Naris an apologetic smile as she righted her chair, gesturing Koloque back to his own chair with a wave of her hand, a frown, and a shake of her head. It was intended to let him know that she wasn't going to run out on them, but Aura wasn't really thinking of the confusion such a mixture of signals might send a person into.

Instead, she was already thinking of how to answer Naris' question, when she didn't really know the answer herself. At a loss, she looked at Zou, smiling to let him know she was okay. Setting the now empty tea cup on the table, which had somehow remained in her hand through the entire ordeal, Aura quickly moved into the kitchen to grab a rag to wipe up the puddle of tea on the floor where she had had her coughing fit.

Over her shoulder, with the excuse of cleaning to help prevent her from having to make eye contact, Aura replied slowly, "Well, we're not ... exactly ... sure yet what ... er, I mean, why I ... oh." She paused, hovering above the puddle momentarily as she looked to Zou with a plaintive expression. "Maybe you should tell them? I realize it's not something that should be spread far and wide, but I believe that everyone in this room has reason to want their secrets kept in confidence." She glanced meaningfully at the tea cup in Naris' hand.

Again breaking eye contact, she dropped to a knee and began wiping up the puddle on Zou's floor.

[Zou]

Zou saw the sense in Aura's promptings, and stepped out of her way to allow her to clean up in peace.

He returned to his seat, and assumed a look of weight and import, alternating between those two pairs of blue and brown eyes. "Yes, I suppose that would be only fair. You see, friends, Aura here has displayed a most curious trait. She seems to have some sort of magic null around her, something that effectively muffles any connection with the astral plane. We have yet to determine its peculiars, but I have, ahhh, reason to believe that it is restricted to touch."

His head inclined slightly, and his violet eyes flashed with a dark sort of emptiness as he finished this last sentence. He never wanted to feel that feeling again... But the book, still before him on the table, provided him with adequate academic distraction, and he looked at the gnome, a curious light returning to his eyes.

"I- I don't suppose you would let me look through it, would you?"

[Jaspenellar]

The Jaspenellar siblings' joint reaction to their kindly host's words about his other guest might have come as a surprise had their earlier meaningful gaze gone unnoticed. Their attention instantaneously caged to Aura. Koloque abruptly abandoned his post at the door and moved swiftly to rejoin the table, despite all his bulk appearing to be a child eagerly hungering after a promised gift. Naris looked intently at the young girl as if sizing her up for the first time, sharing the same eagerness as her brother, though her brown eyes belied something deeper, something strangely hopeful.

Zou's meek request fell on deaf ears and the after-effects of touching Aura went unnoticed. "Amazing! Our sister has such a peculiar null around her, and though she's the only one we know so far..." Naris trailed off, her mind moving much faster than her mouth could process.

The blond man looked thoughtfully over Aura, a different, more academic appraisal than his earlier shy gaze. He ran a large hand through his thin, short cropped hair, an unconscious habit of pondering. "Can it be mere coincidence we stumble over another such as our half-elven sister?"

[Aura Thesin]

Aura finished cleaning as Zou asked to see the book. She brought the cloth into the kitchen and turned back, only to see both sets of eyes of the peculiar pair of siblings locked on her. She paused before cautiously making her way back to the table, although much slower than Koloque. She pulled her chair up and sat.

She found the comments that the pair made strange, although somehow familiar. Aura shot a glance to Zou at the mention of a half-elven woman with a similar magical emptiness as herself. As Naris had mentioned, there couldn't be that many people afflicted with this type of issue, so it led Aura to believe that the woman that had had dinner with them the previous evening was in fact their sister.

Aura decided to defer to Zou, to let him tell about Lo'en or not, as he decided would be best. After all, they were his guests in his house, and he knew much more on magical matters than she did. And hopefully the complete lack of magical abilities.

Aura did, however, begin to look uncomfortable from the stares of the siblings.

[Zou]

Zou's awkward and staggering encounters with Ms. Lo'en refused to show themselves in the markhor shifter's mind. Though Koloque's mention of her half-elf blood raised a spark of familiarity to his senses, he could not make head or tails of who this sister of theirs might be. Ye gods, I have not yet reached that pitiable stage in one's life where one drinks to forget, have I? And now that he thought on it, he wasn't entirely sure why he had drunk at all. It certainly didn't help his social skills. In point of fact, it had nearly gotten him killed.

He refrained from examining the book for the present time, neither wishing to ask again, nor to impose his hand on a treasured artifact without permission. This restraint left him with his thoughts, which were, sadly, rather idle for the time being, and he therefore found it a great relief when Vilnem poked his head through the window and called out cheerily to him.

"Alright, sir? Bad time, perhaps?"

Zou had been tutoring the young hare shifter in the ways of the astral plane for some small time now, and helping him come to terms with the changes that were taking place in his shifter body. He now looked around him and thought, well, this couldn't possibly get more secretive and illegal, at any rate...

"Not at all, Vilnem, let yourself in."

The door creaked open, and a lad of ten or eleven bounded through, feet outstretched in front of him, to land with a muffled slap of abnormally large, bare feet on the dirt floor.

"Who they, boss?" he asked, pointing rudely at the group. He wasn't sure if he should mention the book that Zou was supposed to lend him or not, until he saw it... on the table! Bouncing up swiftly, he plucked it up with a grin.

"This'll be the one then eh?" He would realize his error soon enough...

[Jaspenellar]

"Why, hullo there lad!" Koloque's voice boomed as he swiftly stood, mere moments after the unexpected newcomer grabbed the book. His tone overrode the more amiable words and nearly drowned out the higher pitched squeak of indignation from his sister. His bulk towered over the lanky youth, blatantly ignoring the large, leaping, unnatural-for-normal-human bound as he took a step closer, within half a thick, muscle-bound arm's length.

In a huff, Naris stood on her chair, leaning close to the boy, purposefully invading his private space. With the large, brawny man behind him, it wasn't difficult to do, and the lad found himself looking slightly up, for probably the first time ever, to a very affronted, very angry gnome. Any child-like similarities vanished from Naris's face as her brown eyes flashed suspiciously and her wide mouth turned into a stern frown.

It was difficult to determine which fight would be easier to slip out from.

[Aura Thesin]

Aura looked from the siblings to Zou and back again. The siblings kept their curious gaze on her, while Zou simply looked confused. An uncomfortable silence of several seconds followed where it seemed that everyone reevaluated their first impressions of each other.

It was also to Aura's great relief when the young man poked his head in the window, then entered at Zou's behest. She could tell that Zou wasn't sure what to say next, and his excitement over the book was tempered by the siblings' interest in his overnight guest. She smiled at the young lad as he came over, then frowned in surprise when he snatched Naris' book off the table.

The reaction that followed was exactly what Aura would have expected, and she leaned back in her chair to watch it play out. There was little she could do, and she doubted the pair would hurt the lad provided he could offer a good enough excuse for picking up the book. At least, she hoped they wouldn't.

[Jaspenellar]

Vilnem was face to face with Naris, and though he felt the looming presence behind him, the boy found himself staring up at the angry gnome. As any young hare would, when confronted so readily, he froze on the spot, quite paralyzed, and quite unable to do much else but stare and quiver back at those large brown eyes burning holes through him.

"I should by all rights turn you into a toad," Naris sputtered after a long moment of silence, finally breaking the tension.

Koloque's slow chuckle further relieved the scene. "However great your powers be, dear wizard-to-be sister of mine, I've yet to see you... what is that word... transfix? Transchange? Trans...." The large man's jovial teasing of his sister quickly dissolved as he scrambled for the right word. It was apparent in the siblings' manners that the gnome's aspirations were often the focus of amiable jibes. It was also apparent, if one's ears were so tuned, to pick up their slight accent, not marking them as foreigners to the language, but visitors to Marn in particular, remarkably reminiscent of the half-elf visitor from the previous night.

[Zou]

Vilnem's terror was slowly eroded by the larger man's fumblings, and his grip on the book loosened as did his jaw's grip on his frown. Slowly placing it back on the table, he grinned sheepishly up at the two strangers, and entered into a very pronounced slouch, tucking his hands behind his back. "Not the right book, huh, Master Zou?"

Zou, who had sat back down on the table, shook his head, his brow held firmly between two pinched fingers as he tried to rub away a sudden wave of nausea. The weariness was thick in his voice. "No, Vilnem. No harm done, though. Why don't you take a seat for a moment and let your mentor collect his thoughts? I acted a bit silly last night, and I am feeling rather... incapacitated."

Sluggishly reaching for his tea, Zou managed to rock its surface and splash some on his sleeve. His only recognition of the stain was an inward sigh. "Everyone, this is Vilnem. He is safe. Vilnem, this is Aura, Koloque, and Naris. They, too, are safe."

When the nausea passed, and Zou got his strength back, he pushed himself up from the table, looking a good ten years older than he was. His disheveled mane and his sedated carriage furthered this impression. When he returned to the table, he was holding a leather-bound volume that had already been perused by not one, but two people in the room. It was the very same book that had piqued Aura's interest on the previous night.

[Aura Thesin]

Aura let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding when the young man sullenly handed the book back. She watched Zou wander over to the bookshelf and a pull a book from it. When she realized that it was the book she had been reading earlier this morning, she sat forward to object, but quickly remembered that she wasn't to have looked at the books on the shelf Zou had taken that book from.

She instead turned the movement of sitting up into a shift of positions, leaning forward to place her elbows on the table. Aura looked from the book to Vilnem, wondering what a young fellow like this would want with that particular book. She also worried that she was going to lose the one lead she had to finding out what had happened to her, and how she managed to be on this world.

It was quite obvious she was looking at the book more than she was watching Zou bring it to Vilnem, but she couldn't help herself. She wanted to read more of that book.

[Jaspenellar]

(Y'all need to kick me in the head sooner, rather than later when I slack... I don't mind, really, I like pain...)

Naris and Koloque both settled back to their seats, the crisis averted quickly and painlessly. Of course, neither one would have been inclined to inflict the threatened pain, both Jaspenellars realising the lad had simply erred in youthful haste. The gnome watched with great disinterest as Zou pulled a book from his shelves for Vilnem.

Kol, on the other hand, as far from interested in books or magic as he was apt to read or practice. With not much else to study, he returned his attention, furtively, to Aura. He watched as she leaned forward on the table, eyes trained on the volume their host was bringing to the boy.

The gnome was far more eager to continue trying to find out about her own books, the reason for seeking out Zou. Though she had had her doubts that he had been the correct man they were seeking, his abode and clear interest in magic things had allowed her to put aside her uncertainty. Even if he wasn't the original target, they certainly couldn't have done much better. In other circumstances, Naris might have considered rudely pushing away the boy; however, she figured a negative attitude would rub their polite host the wrong way, so she held her tongue for the time being to allow their exchange to pass, quickly, she hoped.

[Zou]

Vilnem snatched up the book as eagerly as he had snatched up the ancient tome moments previous, the curious greed in his eyes corroborated by a twitching of his stubby nose. As Zou sat down again, he laid mark to the impatience of his house guests, and bade Vilnem take his leave. The young hare shifter bowed meekly before rushing out, seemingly relieved to be out of the room.

Zou put his hand once more on the mysterious volume, and took the liberty of opening it and flipping through it. He stopped on a page that was written in an early Phoenician script, and plucked a magnifying glass that had been sitting on a nearby coffee tray, furrowing his brow and studying the page in silence. "I have found what appear to be some personal notes from the author. They are early Phoenician. This suggests to me that our author was a very learned man, as the Phoenician alphabet was the first, and the grammatical structure employed here suggests an Eastern application of poetic form to the Phoenician structure, combined with Zhaltevi writing laws that were used long before the meeting of minds between Eyropa and Tian Xia would have made such practice prevalent. Therefore, I also peg our author as a well-traveled man, and one that must have had similarly well-traveled associates, to whom such personal notes would have been of some use. Hmmm..."

He continued reading for a good few minutes before he spoke again. "The things he speaks of suggests a time frame between 850 and 700 BCE. Shifters and other magical beings are spoken of candidly, and information on their particulars seems commonplace and widespread, at least among those likely to read works such as this. Yet there is no mention of the Changers' War, nor of the Changers themselves. Tensions have seemingly not escalated to that point. He refers to prior discourses with a group of runic scholars known as the Ziiehk, which can be roughly translated to mean "The Lighted Path". They were dedicated to establishing institutions across Pal Tahrenor of what became known as the Gentler Magic. Their explorations of the astral plane, and their research into, and combination of, the early healing arts from all corners of the known world, were pioneering and iconic. What you have here, however, seems to branch out a bit from their usual focus. The author is beseeching his colleagues to review the runes which he has inscribed here, and consider them for "peacekeeping" application. It would seem that he disagrees with the, and I quote roughly, purely pacifist approach of the Ziiehk, hereto. If we, as a community that moves beyond borders, are to cope with the growing threat of the shifters in and around the regions we visit, we must learn how to disable them effectively. I therefore beseech you, consider these works of runic defensive craft. We cannot continue to allow our healers to walk the lands unprepared. Yours in writ and action..."

Zou looked up at the three. "Eroch Khae, Zhaltevi Chapter."

Leaning back, violet eyes flashing with unrest, Zou closed the tome and stared at it for a time. His demeanor was dark, and he pursed his lips in thought. "You seem to have stumbled across an early treatise for anti-shifter magical practices. Though runes of this nature do not appear to be the sole focus of the book, they undoubtedly make up its greater part. It seems natural that he would include all recent findings and studies of the Zhaltevi Chapter of the Lighted Path in a sort of annual compendium of works, perhaps to be delivered to their headquarters at the changing of a particular season, as was often the way in times past. If I were you, I would be careful with many of these runes. Chances are, they are experimental, perhaps dangerous."

Zou leaned forward in his chair and poured himself some more tea. It was now sufficiently cooled, and he drank without incident. "You know, I have a friend that could perhaps tell us more. She is a psychometric, meaning in her case that she can connect with different moments in time through objects related to these moments. She cannot see the future, but she can maybe tell us something more concrete of this book's past, following its creation."

[Aura Thesin]

Aura watched Zou hand Vilnem the book, then watched disconsolately as the book went out the door with the young lad. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her breasts, a slight frown on her face as Zou commenced his perusal of the book Naris and Koloque had brought.

After several long moments of introspective, Aura pulled herself together. There would be plenty of opportunity for her to find a way to get back to her own world. She never allowed the thought that there may not be a way back to enter her mind, as if the thought would make the possibility a reality. She knew she couldn't give in to despair.

With that in mind, Aura began listening to some of what Zou was saying. Most of it went over her head, and part way through she was further distracted by the realization that Koloque was looking at her. It was mostly circumspectly, but she noticed from the corners of her eyes that he often looked her way when no one else was paying attention to him.

She furiously refused to blush, reminding herself that she had a girlfriend back home. It wasn't that she didn't like men; it was more that she had very little experience with men in any kind of intimate, relationship-type way. Instead, Aura glanced over at Koloque and offered him a shy smile, then proceeded to ignore him as she bent all of her attention on what Zou was saying.

When Zou had finished, Aura leaned forward to indicate she had something to say. "As little as I know about magic, I do know about fighting. At the monastery I was training at ..." she swallowed the lump welling in her throat and continued, "... back home, we learned that though pacifism is a worthy cause, it needs to be tempered by the act of defending oneself. If we were all to lay down arms, thinking that by defending ourselves we will be perpetuating acts of violence, we would only be another victim."

Aura paused and looked at everyone for a moment. "I know that has nothing to do with magic, or probably even why you're here," she smiled, indicating Naris, "but he is correct in that thought, and if this is a book on defensive magic, then it probably has some particularly nasty 'spells' within it."

Aura smiled again, a little shyly. "I guess I'm saying I agree with both Eroch Khae and Zou."

[Jaspenellar]

At first, the gnome seemed to grow even more impatient at Zou's explanation, unable to comprehend exactly what the man was trying to say. She had seen the side notes, blank spaces on the pages filled with scrawled notes, but lacking the language skills to translate the script, the runes had captured her full attention. Naris had been studying the symbols so intently the past year and a half that she had quite completely dismissed the actual written portions on the pages. Koloque's gaze turned to their host as he elaborated in his translation. Unlike his sister, the history of the book interested him; also, the fact that it caught Aura's attention was not lost to the large man. He smiled at Aura's words, finding himself agreeing and liking the philosophy behind them. His expression was not entirely free of some small amount of condescension at her mentioning being a fighter- she was so small and young, could she really take on an opponent twice her weight like him? In his naive experience of brawling, the heavier, brawnier one typically won.

"How about the magic itself? How can I read these runes and actually use them? Is there a way for me to be more efficient at it?" Naris realised she was bombarding their kindly host with questions so she made an effort to slow herself down. "We come from a rather ignorant background of goat-herding, and all I ever knew about magic was that it was an innate ability, that people were just born and could do it. Before we found this, I had as much magic "ability" as a dwarf."

[Zou]

Zou took Koloque's and Aura's agreement with the author of the compendium heavily, and he gave them what in his gentle vocabulary of expressions amounted to a disapproving look. Lowering his head, he allowed two finely tapered horns to spiral out of his skull, the horns of the eastern markhor. "In theory, you are both right, of course, but history tells a different side of the story. In 600 BCE, it was the common practice of 'defensive' runes such as these that drove my people into the hills. Before those volatile times, we were a peaceful tribe. Now, my people are violent savages. Life in the hills has not been kind to them, and they do what they must to survive, having long forgotten the knowledge and wisdom of their ancestors. It would seem that anti-shifter magic would never have made it far east enough to be used, in violence and in hatred, against the gentler shifter tribes of Tian Xia, were it not for the entreaties I see before me. There is always at least two sides to every tale."

Letting his horns retreat into his mane, his features softened once more, and he addressed Naris' concerns.

"I, miss, am no rune expert. To the best of anyone's knowledge, Zhaltev, in the north, is the birthplace of the runic arts. There are you certain to find those with the answers you seek. But use caution. Rune readers are a capricious lot, and not all of them would take kindly to one that is ignorant in their ways toting about an original tome of such import as this. My previous offer stands, if you wish. Czeyla runs a massage parlour and catering establishment across town, I'm sure she could pay us a visit. We take care of each other here in Marn..."