Faerinn (prime)/There's a point to all this

There's a point to all this.

Originally posted on the official forums by DIEHLS on 01/10/2020 at 11:31 PM CST.

After a time Faerinn found Naamit again in her gallery in Ta'Illistim.

She peered at him through the door in her garden open only a crack, backlit by a flickering of candlelight that did nothing to reveal her features but illuminated a pillar of Faerinn's face - the side with the scars.

"Good night to you Faerinn," Naamit said, "But its late, and I'm in no mood for callers this evening."

"I just wanted to know how you were feeling well-" She shut the door, but he was faster and wedged his foot into the doorjamb. He didn't manage that with her very often. *Maybe it was a side effect of the drug?* he mentally mused. As Naamit continued to push on the door, Faerinn was thankful for whatever combination of strong bones, faulty nerve wiring, and magical slipper enchantments that kept his poker face in place.

"Also to show you these drawings of the dart since it may be fresh on your mind," he said and a grimace slipped out. "To confirm its the same one."

She retreated further into the gallery and left the door open. Faerinn followed behind her. He offered her a two stacks of parchment and a flask of water that just seemed to appear in his hands. She took the parchment.

"The first stack is from Restday, and the second are from yesterday. I drew them from memory less than an hour after their appearances. What do you think about them? What sort of impressions do they give you?"

"The dart from Restday and the one I saw yesterday...." She flipped through the pages between sips of hawthorne tea. "Assuming your memory can be trusted, that is. Your first one's line work is sharp and rigid suggesting looking down from a great height, almost nauseating. The other one you've mixed blue pastel to hint at sadness? Why bother?"

"I wanted people to feel that same thing when they looked at them that I felt."

"Well, they're the same once you stop trying to personify them."

"Makes me wish I knew a thing about runes, " Faerinn added. "Darcena mentioned they were familiar to something of Socius's, but I have no clue what she's talking about. What runes are associated with Socius?"

Naamit stared silently into her tea for a moment before returning Faerinn's sketches then searching the cubicles of parchment lining the wall. She came back shortly with rolled vellum in hand. Faerinn unfurled it and examined the sketch.

"Is this knife what I think it is?" he asked.

"One of Socius's before you started getting involved with Mist Harbor. He lent one to me once and it stuck around for about a week before it vanished."

"I didn't know those knives existed away from him much less returned," Faerinn glanced back and forth between the runes on both. "What color were these?"

"Red."

Faerinn rushed straight to his The Messenger Vision Board when he got home. Ok, well, first Faerinn feed Kitty, or she would just get into Rohese’s trash again. But then the vision board. Well, right after taking Altahuan for walkies, of course, because Faerinn did not want to clean that up again. Then this time, for sure, he attended to his vision board like he did every night before bed. He pruned and attended to it like a shrubbery until now it had blossomed to such lengths that it had spilled over with new facts and links from the original vellum onto to a small chalkboard held by a lobster statue.

On the other side of the statue was an oil painting of a silhouette cast in crimson shadows just glowering at him in its easel. Faerinn looked closer at the detail his subconscious finally gifted him - the ears. He glanced between the outline of the figure’s ears in the silhouette then back at his own reflected in the vanity mirror. There was a slight point to the silhouette’s ears, implying some sort of Elven blood, perhaps? Not enough of a point to assume full Elven heritage anyway.

Faerinn took up his brush and ink. He drew a line from “Socius > Knives” to "The Messenger > Dart", and labelled the line "Returner, glowing red runes". With thick blotches of ink, Faerinn marks out "The Messenger > Has Access to Chronomage Magic and Tools" and replaced it with an identical entry from the Socius box "Reality Bending Powers Resulting from Paternal Heritage". He then erases "The Messenger" altogether from the chalkboard and in its place he writes:

THE HALF SISTER