Gifts - RPLOG
Participants
Date
9/8/477
Log
A fine morning in the rolling foothills south of the range that makes up Silvervein. As midsummer approaches, the land's bounty begins to show on field and bough alike, and beings are out under the sun, shoring up irrigation ditches, weeding, and the other maintenance work that's easy as opposed to the hectic pace of planting and harvest.
Between the fields and furoughs alike a dirt path winds, less and less coherent as one moves away from the main road; in the distance, an estate looms. Trace has walked this path before, and it feels familiar...yet not quite so, when one is alone...
A soft mumble as Trace walks the path, silently, looking about the road and muttering softly to himself. Yes, he would've much rather had Sveta here with him, but oh well... Can't have everything, one supposes.
Silently, he moves along, his feet carrying him closer and closer to the doorway as he looks about between the fields to his left, and those to his right...
By now, the familiar sight of the Kuznetsov family estate looms over Trace, the slightly haphazard yet stately homestead casting its shadow in the morning sunlight. If one looks closely, one can notice some of Sveta's many siblings in the fields...but what is more important is Ibronka, Sveta's mother, hanging out the wash to dry on a line between two old trees.
Upon seeing Trace, the matronly goshawk greets him with a small curtsey, much more reserved that she was at their first meeting. Almost unsure. Afraid. Worried? "Welcome, Master Blackwing. I...well, Svetlana said in her letter that you would be coming. I am afraid that...well, there is nothing much for me to say. My husband is waiting for you in the rose garden. Do you still remember where it is?"
Trace nods a little meekly as he looks between the house, Ibronka, and the fields. "O-out back, I believe," he mutters softly, looking towards the door, before looking for a path running around the building, before silently heading along the path, fiddling a little with his robes... He isn't even 100% sure of what Sveta put into her letters.
The rose gardens are as beautiful as when Trace last visited - perhaps a little more, now that more of the flowers have bloomed. Reds, whites and yellows, common colours for roses, all lovingly tended.
Alexandrei himself is dressed in a vest and gardening gloves and boots, and doesn't seem to notice Trace as the latter approaches. Instead, he works industriously away with a pair of shears, slowly clipping away dead wood and imperfect roses from the bushes and woody vines, humming a low tune to himself all the while.
Trace silently, Trace knocks on the wood of the house, silently waiting for Alexandrei to stand up and acknowledge him. Even so, and although he hides it well, the kite is more than a little shaky at the moment, quite possibly expecting the worst from this encounter...
Slowly, Alexandrei sets down his shears and turns, the stolid goshawk flapping his wings a little as he studies Trace and the gash on the kite's forehead. "You have arrived. Svetlana said that we were to expect you, even in your condition. How is your injury?"
"It is... Alright. It stings a little, but that's to be expected, I suppose," he mumbles. "Sveta is... Worse off. But she'll manage, even so," he mutters after a moment of consideration, still waiting for whatever question that seems to have spooked him... He's not too conversational, just yet.
"I know of her injuries. While I have my own misgivings, she is grown, and able to make her own decisions and bear the consequences thereof. My daughter may be my daughter, but at some point, I have to let go and let her fly where she will. But there is something else I would like to inquire about, if you are agreeable to such. Come, would you mind walking with me through my roses, and tell me the details of how you came by this frightful wound on your head?"
Trace nods and mumbles softly, trying to straighten his thoughts momentarily. "It happened four days ago... Early morning. The same day that Sveta was attacked. Same time, too."
"From what I understand, they tried to keep Sveta busy, while going after me... Because... They thought I was an easier target, I suppose," he mumbles after a while, shaking his head lightly. "Two felines... One of them heavy folk, the other an apostate... Apostate panther had a knife, the jaguar had a rather large crossbow," he mumbles, eyes closed as he wanders alongsides Alexandrei...
Alexandrei nods without a word, quietly leading Trace through the serenity of the rose garden. It's nowhere as elaborate as the one Sveta's managed to grow on the grounds of Longtail Manor, but there is its own rustic charm to it and it's easy to see where she inherited her love of the flowers. He stops to inspect one of the bushes, applying bare hands to thorny stems to carefully pick off a lovely white rose.
"That is quite the entourage to off one being, indeed. No doubt they wanted the job done well. And what happened after? You drove them off by yourself, I take it?"
A small nod, a slight shake of the head. "Well, I managed to incinerate the crossbow after the first shot they fired," Trace mumbles. "Guy wasn't too good a shot, luckily, even though he did aim for my head," he mumbles, pointing at the gash... "The proprietor of the building came in a while later... I'm... Still not quite capable of controlling all my magic, which turned out to be a good thing, this time. In a time like that, it's better to overshoot your defenses than undershoot them, I'd say," he mumbles, pulling up a sleeve and showing some singed feathers.
"I see." Alexandrei appears to be considering something as he continues leading Trace through the gardens. It's one long circle past the newer plants, the beehives, and finally coming full to where they began. "Ibronka and I prepared these earlier on, not knowing if they would be needed, but it seems they will be."
With that, he reaches into the rosebush he was tending to at the outset, and pulls out two small items. One of them is a snippet of a rose cutting in a clay pot, and the other...a ball of thick red yarn, about the size of a fist. He glances at the latter, turning it in his hand, before holding both out to Trace. "I told Ibronka that you wouldn't need so much, but she was worried something would happen...a whole ball is overdoing it, though."
"I... Erm... T-thanks?" Trace mumbles after a while, taking the yarn and staring at the rose-clippings for a while, before accepting those too, looking a little awkwardly at them, as if there's a question he's unsure of asking...
