2018-11-12: Tears Before Fiends
- Log: Tears Before Fiends
- Cast: Neriah Parringer, Skylr Paer, Eryon Rast
- Where: Northern Elru
- Date: November 12, 2018
- Summary: Skylr follows a ray of cold light to its source, and confronts the Sinbringer....
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
It's cold in the northern reaches of Elru - cold and lonely. The continent has been largely depopulated, at least in the north, with no sign of the kingdom of Arctica itself, much less its alleged control over these broken, lifeless hinterlands.
Yet it is these lands in which the land of the Metal Demons is said to lie. It's the place that must be searched through in order to find where the Photosphere lies. The hideous, powerful monsters living out here must be eluded or confronted if one is to make it through the cold, bitter winter.
Those exploring this barren section of northern Elru will find that something is out of sorts, though. A sense of foreboding begins to grow in the air as one meanders through a network of icy, snow-covered black rocks, jutting from the landscape and broken into shallow valleys. They're old - probably as old as time.
What might be less old than time is the ray of cold white light rising up from the middle of the stone circle. The light reaches up towards the heavens, like a beacon - and yet, it barely seems to glow. Appearing just moments ago, it simply shines upward, pale and difficult to miss.
Something suspicious is happening here.
<Pose Tracker> Skylr Paer has posed.
It is cold. Cold is not great. Skylr Paer has bundled down in a fully sort of dark blue overjacket, over which she has woolen gloves, scarf, and hat. The hat has a red pom pom. It is very cute and cinnamon-roll like. The rest of her is dressed in her normal long dress and boots, which help her face this weather.
Breathing on her fingers through her mittens, she rubs her hands together as she comes across, eventually, a stone circle - a circle with a light reaching towards the heavens. A light beckoning one, any, to come near it. Skylr shifts around uneasily.
Perhaps she shouldn't have explored more about the Metal Demons, but... here she is. Ready. Waiting to go.
"Oh dear..."
<Pose Tracker> Eryon Rast has posed.
You know what isn't cute? Dark lords.
You know what's not here? A... a dark lord.
. . .
"A-achoo!"
A nearby snowy nook between ominous stones... sneezes. There's a quiet shuffling of feet over there. Footprints appear where there weren't any, and where nobody is actually standing. There's another moment of quiet, and then the kind of sniffling that comes from someone who, say, sneezed during a church service and doesn't want anyone to notice them cleaning up the boogers on the sly.
"...knew I should'a knit a scarf or something," someone who is Definitely Not Eryon and who is Definitely Not Sneaking Around mumbles. Snowflakes drift upwards off the ground near the footprints a moment after and hang in the air. They start falling sideways, a little cloud of them slowly making their way into the mazelike rock formations.
Perfect stealth, Eryon thinks to himself, smugly.
Eryon Rast
ERYON RAST, BEARER OF MANY SECRET NAMES is a figure constantly wreathed in a veil of shadow. His silhouette, dark even against a sunny sky, is that of a sorcerer of sinister, nay, fel might. An uneven peak, headwear pointed but climbing irregularly, with a wide brim; a collar high and concealing, with hardly a razor's edge of light to seperate it from the higher adornment; clothes loose and flowing, indistinct layers rippling with waves of darkness and hiding whatever terrible shape may rest within. Tremble with fear, viewer; you may be looking upon your last sight and greatest terror...!
Or -- or! -- a kid who is trying way too hard. It's... kind of worked out, though.
With Eryon's sorcerously-summoned shadowy shroud set aside, he's not actually terribly impressive to look at. He's maybe five-foot-three without the hat, and a fair bit taller only when counting it. The thing is wide-brimmed and pointed like any stereotypical wizardly sort, covered in black fabric and wrapped in three apparently totally superfluous belts that make the point bend and sag. He keeps it pulled low over his face, pinning unnaturally black hair against the sides of his head to either side of his pointed ears, with bangs falling (totally accidentally, he really just needs a trim) over his left eye. His skin is fair, and his eyes a washed-out sort of shade of pale green.
Eryon's clothing is dark colors trimmed in red and decorated in ostentatious gold. The bottommost layer seems to be a black long-sleeved robe, with the extra layers stacked on top of it. A charcoal-grey cloak falls over his shoulders and bunches up with the too-long cloak atop his feet, and a high-collared mantle in crimson with arcane-looking glyphs sewn across it rests atop that, stiffened at the shoulders with leather plates between both to make the cloak hang straighter and probably look more impressive. Two crisscrossing belts rest on his waist, both brown leather with a ring and seemingly attached together with an unnecessary loop of narrow-linked chain, with bags and pouches featuring prominently. His footwear seems to be broken-in, well-worn brown boots, and are probably the only practical part of his outfit.
In dim lighting, he can kind of make the dark wizard thing work out. In brighter places, the ramshackle nature of it all is made clear, showing hand stitching in places and uneven cuts to what should be (and is not) rich fabric. Worse, his small stature is exacerbated by the way he moves on foot, making it pretty clear to the attentive that he's pretty scrawny under all of that clothing, and that he's been cursed with the gangly physique of someone doomed to be a late bloomer and stuck in an awkward middle ground between pubescent and fully grown. Maybe there's a good reason he plays up the whole 'darkness' thing...?
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
After a couple of moments, the ray of light peters out, a few shimmers of it fading away into the sky. But that foreboding feeling lingers. It only begins to recede slightly. Something feels uneasy. It's an unnerving sensation, like something lurking just at the corner of one's eye, unable to be seen or comprehended.
Drawing closer reveals the source of the ray soon enough. Standing at the centre of the circle of stone is a figure in a big red overrobe, trimmed at the neck and shoulders with white ermine fur. The cloak's shoulders bear a curious emblem within it - a talonious shape locked within a delta outline, stencilled in black.
"Now that's interesting," the woman says to herself, her voice rich and a little throaty. "Very interesting. I wonder if it is what I think it is...." As she speaks, she reaches up and pushes her hood back, shaking out a long cascade of black curls.
Then comes the sound of a sneeze.
With a blink, the woman turns slowly towards the sound. Her robe ripples around her. Skylr - the quieter one - can recognize who it is as soon as her face comes into view - pale orchid-coloured eyes, smoky eyeliner and shadow, full lips, nice red dress, facial structure just like those brooding-looking wanted posters the Church was circulating. The Sinbringer - the one who called herself Sister Domitia, who slaughtered the innocents of Lastonbell, who tried to take over Rolance, who summoned Sin itself to annihilate Azado.
Neriah Parringer.
"You realize that you're collecting snowflakes," she says to the invisible space in the air. "And that I can hear your sniffles."
<Pose Tracker> Skylr Paer has posed.
"You sneezed." Someone that is very visible and very warm observes to someone that is not as stealthy and possibly not as warm as they think they are. Skylr is side-eyeing the pile of snowflakes that is Eryon Rast. However, her gaze goes from him over to the woman she spots.
"Ah, hello--"
Skylr's 'hello' fades from somewhat friendly to shaken. For the one that's been in the Guard as long as she, the image of the 'Sinbringer', the Lastonbell slaughterer, the ... just the woman that has been the one that the Guard has been laying low with words, accusing her of everything and everything, and Skylr's voice chokes out a couple of words, a slow stutter.
"N-Neriah Parringer...?" Her voice finally gets out the others' name. "I-in the name of Althena's Guard, you're und... you're..."
Skylr promptly falls apart. "You're... why?" Skylr looks and sounds like she's about to start crying.
<Pose Tracker> Eryon Rast has posed.
Eryon has the problem that, when something defies his comprehension, he goes out of his way to find out what it is so that he can give it a definition. Some people might call it wizard's hubris, but he likes to think of it as a sorcerer's prerogative. You don't weave world-shaking magical arts and not understand how it all works. That's just... lame!
His little cloud of snowflakes (which, as I remind, are Definitely Not Him, and should not be taken as proof of his presence or absence) ventures closer. It gets to about the edge of the figure within the stone circle's line of sight, out a step or so from a rock formation. It's drifting very, very slowly, listing slightly to one side, and doesn't stop until she turns to look at it. Under his cloak of invisibility, Eryon feels a complex mix of emotions that he can chalk up to one part the perils of adolescence, and two parts the underlying problem with having a good memory for what he would call 'a villainous visage.'
Maybe he should come back with a group of two to four plucky friends.
"Uh." Beat. No. No, he absolutely didn't. The snowflakes abruptly drop towards the ground alongside the light sound of feet following suit. Neither of them can see Eryon looking back and forth frantically. "...yyyyes. Yes, of course I did. It --" There's another sniffle. He sounds stuffed-up now, which does not help with the menace. "It wouldn't be sporting of me to... to lack a sign for the skilled observer to spot!"
(nailed it.)
The invisibility is replaced with a patch of inky darkness. Eryon appears. Or, well, his silhouette appears. He's brandishing a gnarled branch like a wooden rod, curved like a crook at the end. "I," he begins, "am --"
Totally off-balance. Eryon turns around and waves his arms at Skylr. "No! Hey! Don't! Y-you can't just- just-" Okay, it's less 'waving' and more 'frantically flailing.' He shuffles over to Skylr, muttering sotto voce, "C-c-come on, get ahold of yourself. That's not how you make an entrance...! How's she gonna take you seriously like that...?!"
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
When the invisible snowpatch blurts out an 'uh,' Neriah just lowers her eyelids ever so slightly. She touches a single well-manicured finger to her cheek. "Well, I appreciate how clever you are," she says mildly, not outright condescending, but there's a certain... hint in her tone.
When he finally does emerge from the darkness, the woman in the red robe arches her eyebrows ever so slightly. "You are," she begins to say - before someone else makes her appearance. Someone with a sigil of Althena carried with her. Someone with cute glasses. Someone who knows her name and is about to arrest her.
Someone who's about to start crying.
Neriah opens her mouth a little, but as Skylr breaks down in front of her, the Sinbringer does something that might surprise: She presses her lips together and folds her arms around herself loosely, lowering her eyes. With a soft sigh, she scuffs a toe in the snow a moment.
The mysterious creepy shadow has already descended on Skylr, seemingly all too intent on hugging her better. Neriah doesn't immediately say anything. She actually looks to one side.
When she looks back, it's with a small sigh - and it's one that seems genuinely sad. "Oh, sweetie," she says with a little shake of her head and a rueful smile. "I don't know exactly what I did to hurt you... to be honest, there's a list now. But whatever it was that I did, if it helps, it was nothing you did that made me do it."
<Pose Tracker> Skylr Paer has posed.
Grasping onto the most rational thing she can muster, Skylr looks at Eryon, her eyes glassy and wet behind her glasses. "You have a cold." This is before a shadow descends on her to hug her and she visibly flinches away from it, practically squishing herself down in an attempt to scuttle back behind him.
"I can't-- I am totally allowed! I told you I'm from Azado, d-didn't I? I don't care if she doesn't take me seriously, that's why I have you." Skylr sniffles. "Of course I want to know why... Why that thing would come to Azado..."
"And now we're stuck here on this feckin' planet a long way from home and Althena and I don't know why Althena didn't do anything."
*sniff-sniff.*
Chin-wobble.
<Pose Tracker> Eryon Rast has posed.
Eryon makes a mental note about that certain... hint. He'll destroy her later. Probably. Maybe. ...Eventually. ... ... shuddup.
"Y- n- th-" Okay. Here's the thing: Eryon has a brother and a sister. It's just... he's the youngest, so he's the one who gets all woobly and then has to get comforted. Er, was the one who did that, because as the superb master of the utterblack, he's clearly above such behaviors. But that doesn't mean he has any idea how to handle someone who is ostensibly his... fff... frr...... ropecquaintance getting all emotional. "I-it'll be fine! It'll be fine!"
He's even less prepared to deal with the CREEPY SHADOW. He hops a half-step backwards, his shadow visibly and belatedly following him, a circular patch on the ground that is a little bit lagged staying directly beneath him. Skylr ducks behind him, and he lets himself be used as a shield, even if, in proper traditional party line-ups, he should be behind her. (Clerics have a larger hit die.) "Althena helps those who help themselves, Skylr! So --!"
He faces off with the Kinda Sorta Rueful Neriah, narrowing his eyes. They're the only things on him that aren't all shadowy and indistinct, actually. They're green. A really light shade, too, and not one that could be mistaken for a more sinister color, either. Stupid genetics. "So... why, then?"
Neriah Parringer(#809PenACck)
Before you is, presumably, a Priestess of Althena - albeit one whose hood is so deep that her face cannot be seen.
The woman stands about five foot six or seven, though a couple inches of that belongs to slightly-too-high white heels that can be glimpsed beneath the train of her robe and the hem of the sleek white underdress she wears. The dress is simple and with a slight ruffle at the fringe, sliding straight across long legs and caught at the waist with a black sash patterned with a crisscrossing pattern of blue, gold and silver. The tails of the sash dip nearly to her ankles. The top of the dress nips at the waist and flares to a feminine upper half, though more often than not it's lost in the voluminous spill of a huge white overcloak, clasped at her collar with a sigil of Althena. The cloak sports a broad trim in the same colour as the sash and spills down to touch the ground. While the deep hood conceals her face save for a glimpse of red-painted lips, a few raven curls can occasionally be glimpsed slipping free.
The priestess carries a simple staff - wooden and with a curling head crowned with a clear blue gem set in gold. It doesn't look very useful for fighting.
GAME> Neriah Parringer looked at you.
[SYSTEM] ERROR: Invalid switch! Valid choices are: DELETE, NOISY, RENAME, SAVE, and VIEW
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
A not-insignificant part of Neriah wants to just reach out and hug Skylr.
When the broken girl reveals that she's from Azado, Neriah presses her lips together again - and once more, there's a pregnant silence from the Sinbringer. For just a moment, her implacable expression breaks. If Skylr's looking carefully, she'll catch something unexpected.
Neriah's lower lip trembles, just a little.
She draws in a breath, reining in the sentiment as best she can. When the Mysterious Shadow moves to confront her, though, Neriah's demeanor shifts entirely. She narrows her eyes ever so slightly. Beneath her robe, her shoulders shift just perceptibly. She may be five six or so (with another couple inches because she has heels on today), but the way she draws her stance up and fixes her eyes on the shadowy Eryon makes her seem like she's a thousand feet tall.
"...What happened in Azado was more than I expected. But nothing happens without a reason," she says, her voice steady and low, that throatiness coming through. "And the reason, I think, was to reveal something to the people of Lunar."
Neriah looks up towards the sky, gesturing with one hand towards the silver moon - so small in the sky compared to the Blue Star. "You both come from up there, I assume," she says when she looks back down, her eyes moving from the shadow boy to the broken Skylr. "I'm sure you noticed. How Althena changed. How the things she once loved, she now abhors. Song, especially. Have you thought about why that is?"
<Pose Tracker> Skylr Paer has posed.
Here's the thing: Skylr's always been that kind of small person that requires delicate handling and gentleness when it comes to bad things going on around her. Skylr sniffles again behind Eryon, before she leans in against him, peeking around his Dark And Mysterious shoulder.
"I don't ... " Skylr shifts her weight visibly. "I was... talkin' to a Seraph. ABout that. Kinda... strange one, from all the stories I know, but he... he was makin' me think the same thing. The songs, the dances, the drinking... so many good things, that was done before. Sure there was bad... too much drinking caused deaths, bawdry dances, in-inappropriate songs... but ... just as many raised our hearts and stuff to her."
"... til moon and heavens ring..." She says, faintly.
"A lot of people knew before Azado was destroyed." Skylr says, finally. "So what sort of blow was that, but senseless? Momma... papa..."
<Pose Tracker> Eryon Rast has posed.
Neriah is already taller than Eryon, hat included. Heels only make it more exaggerated. Her particular attitude making her tower above him only doesn't make him cower because -- and this is important -- when you put on the mantle of Dark Wizard, you have to have steel in your spine. It doesn't matter what else you do, or what else they see; an instant of quivering fear is an eternity of an absolutely ruinous reputation.
So, no. Eryon doesn't back down. He shields Skylr by virtue of planting his feet, and he meets Neriah's gaze with one of his own. The trembling in his legs, only visible from up close, is surely due to the cold.
"Yes, of course," Eryon scoffs. "There's surely a logical explanation for it," he says, gradually falling back into his more proud and self-assured persona as he speaks, "but it eludes even my prodigious intellect. What sort of goddess, served best in song, in places made to channel a harmony of voices and foster a sense of togetherness... bans music?" He puts a couple of fingers to his brow. (Skylr, peeking over his shoulder, has her face vanishing in the weird silhouette effect Eryon projects, at least from Neriah's point of view. It's really weird.)
"A test of faith? Perhaps she thinks that the worthy will defy her, and she will bestow upon them power and favor in this life and the next." He spreads his arms, tilting his head back. "What else? Madness? Inconceivable that someone so powerful could be so twisted. But then, if history tells us anything, it's that darkness best hides by masquerading as a force of light."
There's a brief pause. Eryon lets his arms fall, but lifts the one holding the crook again, gesturing at Neriah. "But that doesn't answer the question of why you thought it was necessary to destroy Azado. Do you claim to be the hidden left hand of the Goddess?"
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
Slowly, Neriah closes her eyes, seeming to simply digest the last two words Skylr says. Her parents died there. She processes that statement.
And then her long lashes lift again. "It was to show you that things weren't bad for no reason," she says quietly. "Think of how Malevolence spreads. It preys on the dark emotions in your soul. And how do human beings cope with their emotions?"
Neriah lifts one hand and snaps her fingers a couple of times. "Sometimes they sing them away. Sometimes they drink them away. Maybe getting drunk isn't the best way to manage your despair, but it's a way. And now, with those things banned... all of a sudden, using them to cope with your emotions is wrong. So what do you do?"
Neriah brushes a curl back with a little flick of her head, turning her eyes to Eryon. Long lashes dip briefly across eyes of light orchid, and she breathes out through her nose and lets him talk.
"The hand of Althena?" she scoffs. "Please. I'm the Will of Valmar."
She moues her lips. "As for Althena.... Perhaps it is a test of faith. But the result of that test is not the blessing you would assume it to be."
Neriah begins to move. Stepping slowly to the left, she begins to circle, the stance letting her find Skylr's eyes through the impeding shadow Eryon is throwing up. "You seem like you understand things, miss.... and I understand why you're confused. And I was too, when I first got to Lunar. You can see the Hellions walking through the cities, I'm sure. And now you know that there was a Hellion at the heart of Rolance - a Hellion who was a Cardinal of your church. One the Dragonmaster wasn't there to stop. Just as the Dragonmaster didn't try to stop Sin from destroying Azado, or me from all that I did. Because the truth isn't that Althena is just doing things that seem odd.
"It's that Althena has done more than anyone to spread Malevolence... and she knows it, and for whatever reason, is doing it deliberately."
<Pose Tracker> Skylr Paer has posed.
Neriah steps up towards Eryon, and by extension, Skylr. Skylr is just as short as he is, and she doesn't even have the magnificent hat that adds extra, false, imposing hat. Instead, she has... a pom pom. A slightly fluffy, lovely, pom-pom, on top of a hat of wool.
The pom-pom is deflating with the weight of the water from the melting snow.
Skylr looks between the two of them, her own dark brown eyes a startling comparison between Eryon's lighter green and Neriahs' orchid. She listens to both of them. Skylr has always been happy and confident in her own intelligence, and that understanding as Neriah talks at her shows in her blaze of her eyes. A hellion in the heart of Rolance... a Cardinal. A Dragonmaster, not there. No Dragonmaster at Azado. But...
"Leo was there... so was Pearl." Skylr whispers, silent tears streaking down her cheeks. "So was I... at Azado." She struggles with her words. "So what if the Dragonmaster wasn't there? We were... my family was. My simple faith alone shows in the light she's given me... It's my guide against the dark."
Skylr pulls off of her hat, and then, with a ferocity that simmers deep in her bones, flings it off, pom-pom first towards Neriah. She does not typically throw things. It probably has all the effect of, well, a snowflake on Eryon's shadow-hidden head. The point is there, but it's kind of useless.
There's a glassy, dead look in her brown eyes.
"Wanna go home."
<Pose Tracker> Eryon Rast has posed.
The Will of Valmar. That's... altogether worse, Eryon finds.
Gosh it's cold out here.
"Althena wouldn't need mortal heroes if she could and would stop everything by herself," Eryon reasons, trying to find some way this all makes sense and doesn't end in 'ALTHENA IS EVIL AND FAITH IS A LIE.' The testing angle is his best one, and that still isn't a good one. "But still, something of that scale... One such incident would be understandable, but multiple --"
Something flies past Eryon's head. He flinches underneath his shadow-cloak, half-turning and looking between them in alarm. He's momentarily not sure if he's more worried about Neriah striking out in anger or the look on Skylr's face. He hardly even knows her, but that expression is just... heartwrenching. It doesn't matter what kind of person you are, good or evil; if you're looking at a face like that and you don't feel some kind of sympathy, you really just aren't human anymore.
(Un)fortunately, Eryon does not have the black heart he claims to. He sniffles again, exhaling a breath in a cloud, finishes his turn, and gives Skylr a (slightly snowy) hug. His shadow-cloak, whatever it is, goes away about the same time; it makes him look far less oddly shadowy and more... normal, and kind of run-down. "We'll find a way," he mumbles. "A-and I'm sure your mom and pop are safe, too -- somewhere. So you just -- you just gotta be tough until we can make it back, alright?"
This was not the first impression he was hoping for.
<Pose Tracker> Neriah Parringer has posed.
The sight of the sad Guardswoman unable to hold back her tears is enough to make Neriah feel like utter shit about herself.
And then Skylr flings the hat at her. Neriah blinks once, and then the hat hits her in the face, pom-pom first. It tumbles down, bounces off her chest and lands at her feet. A second later, her eyes track downwards, towards the fallen garment.
She dips for a moment, collecting the hat. If she does catch Eryon's flinching, she lets him off the hook; her attention remains on the hat. A long moment passes as she just stares at the handful of fabric she's holding.
When Eryon pulls his arms around Skylr, he gets his moment, before there's a quiet click of heels against cold rock. Neriah's approaching. She steps past Eryon, the hat in her hand.
And then, quietly, she reaches down, takes the hat in both hands, and gently sets it on Skylr's head again.
"In some ways, I wish that I had the light inside that you do," Neriah admits, her voice tangibly softer and with a quiet, sympathetic ache to it. "And I'm sorry that I've been part of dimming it. You have every right to hate me. I could never tell you otherwise.
"But don't let your light go out," Neriah says quietly, straightening again and taking a slow step back. "And don't give up hope of seeing Lunar again."
Closing her eyes, Neriah reaches up to pull her hood over her hair. The shadow partially swallows her face, the moment of kindness vanishing into the dark once more. As she draws her cloak around herself, she slowly begins to fade out of view, thin lines of ghostly white energy tracing the boundaries of her shape and garments before they, too, fade away and carry her out of sight and presence.
<Pose Tracker> Skylr Paer has posed.
Don't worry, Eryon, Sky will freak about the Will of Valmar later.
"Sorry." Skylr whispers to Eryon. "Couldn't help myself." There's a burn of shame across her cheeks at the reaction she got from him. "Didn't mean to scare you." He'll probably protest, but that glassy look in her eyes is fading away back to the normal glow they have as he gives her a bit of a hug.
When Neriah steps closer, however, she goes very, very still, even as she gets her hat given back to her. When she feels the pom get put back down where it goes on her head, she shivers, slightly. "... I don't hate you." Skylr whispers. "I'm sad for you."
When Neriah steps back and fades away, Skylr pulls on Eryons' sleeve. "Let's go back. I want hot cocoa." That and if Eryon lets her out of his sight things might go really bad.
<Pose Tracker> Eryon Rast has posed.
Eryon has the briefest, most infinitesimal urge to do something incredibly unwise when Neriah gets closer. It accompanies a momentary surge of what he will later decide is misplaced and erroneously-felt righteous indignation, and what he presently instead thinks of as unexplainable frustration. It isn't just this situation, though; not just the idea that someone would do something so heinous and then speak as if they would be a source of sympathy and support for the one they've wronged. It's something else.
Something in his blood.
They're standing on stone, surrounded by stone, shaded by stone, and all of it -- all at once -- howls at him to act. The astoundingly ancient earth is slow in its anger but seemingly depthless in its capacity for erasing what has wronged it, either through immediate eruption or slow, grinding defeat. Right now, it's like that well of strength has bubbled up in his chest, straining against his ribs for him to let it out, be it in spell or scream.
Valmar.
Valmar.
Eryon... exhales. The moment passes. No such wrath is called forth; no such protest is cried out. He's not that person, whoever that is. He's some kid in a funny hat, trying to keep one of the only people who seems to tolerate his presence on this dustball of a planet from totally breaking down. He doesn't know if he can call her his friend, and isn't sure that he could bring himself to voice the word. It's a delicate one, and he'd be too afraid to break it.
He keeps silent until he can't feel Neriah's presence anymore. He lets Skylr go after a moment more, clearing his throat. He suppresses one more urge, this one to bolt and run, and starts to lead her out of this place, damp hat and all. "...okay. That sounds pretty good right about now."
He sneezes again. It's funnier the second time. Laughter soothes the soul, you know.