Words Left Unsaid

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Phalaenopsis returned to the house after tending to his Aconitum Napellus, his gloves stored safely in their bag. He made his way to his room, stashing the bag under the bed out of the way, dug out a few Elixirs from his box, and took a moment to look at the sketch on his nightstand. He'd figured it had to have been Calan who drew it, just from knowing that whoever left it for him had access to the house and that is would be very strange for anyone else to have drawn and left it for him; Jinn had been so preoccupied with research up until his departure that he barely left the library, let alone had time to draw him, Rohnan seemed too focused on more important things to do anything like sketching him, Ruki just wasn't the type to spend his time with people drawing them, and Mal seemed to be constantly off doing research of their own... So that left Calan. Unless Phalaenopsis had somehow done it, but a) he knew he was a terrible artist and b) it wasn't the kind of thing he'd Amnesia himself over. He had been waiting for weeks to see Calan again, to thank him for the gift, but after the first week, he slowly got more inwardly annoyed, which had slowly turned to anger over the last week, as no one seemed to know where he had gone or why he'd left without telling anyone where he was going.

A quiet sound snapped Phalaenopsis out of his thoughts. A very faint sniffle, and a quiet moan that was very clearly more of the sorrow kind than the pleasure kind; in a house with 3 other Tari-Nor, you learned to tell the difference quickly, one way or another. He followed the sound to Rohnan's room, and knocked on the door. "Rohnan, are you back? Is something wrong?" he asked through the door, "Do you need to talk?"
 
Rohnan shot up from her laying crying position at the sound of Phal’s voice. She had completely forgot to close the bedroom door and didn’t mean to disturb anyone in the shared house. She quickly rubbed the tears away from her eyes but the splotchy red face was still an obvious sign that she had been crying for quite a while now.

“Sorry if I disturbed you Phal”. She croaked out. She cleared her throat before continuing. “Nothing is wrong exactly.... at least not physically. It’s just...” Rohnan struggled to find the words to say, so instead she handed over the letter.
 
Phalaenopsis raised an eyebrow as he took the letter, before smiling his usual calm smile. "I promise, it wasn't a bother at all." he said, putting his hand on her shoulder to comfort her, "Just glad you're back safe, if a little teary-eyed." He pulled his hand back to open and read the letter. He pursed his lips and furrowed his brow as he reached the end, looking thoughtful, confused, and angry all at the same time. He chewed his bottom lip for a moment before his face cleared, returning again to the calm demeanor he held moments before. "Ah, yes, I think I understand." he said solemnly, "You came back without any memories of anyone here, but..." He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "If you didn't really remember anything as 'recent' for you as the Lux, I'm guessing you forgot all of your earlier memories as well, and... I'm guessing it was a shock to learn about your family in a letter."

He folded the letter along the creases and handed it back to Rohnan. "I can't imagine what you're going through, but I'm sorry you found out this way." he said, shaking his head and his face falling, "From the sounds of the letter, you can't go and make up for the time you lost with your mother, either..." He pondered a moment, before returning his hand to her shoulder and giving a comforting squeeze. "But if your father says she'd be proud of you, I say to take his word for it; if you can find out where he is, you might be able to reunite with him and your brothers, and maybe she'll feel a little closer to your heart."

Not really knowing what else to say on that, Phalaenopsis fell silent, but continued to sympathetically squeeze Rohnan's shoulder. "And if you need to cry, you can; no need to apologize. You're allowed to be sad, and you can also ask me to listen if you need to talk." he paused to glance over her shoulder at the gorgeously crafted sword laying gleaming on her bed, "And if you need a sparring partner to practice using her memento... I'll happily supply the Potions to get them back on their feet after you slice them open."
 
Rohnan sighed. “It’s hard to explain what memories were taken from me because of the manner that they were taken. Everything that was important or cherished is gone. And then I was back for little over an hour, viciously angry at what Calan and I had gone through, before I decided to take on the memories of hundreds of people who were trapped on that shard. Even what I can remember from my life I doubted so much as being my memories when I was still processing all of the new information in my mind. There are pieces though, shards of memories that weren’t important enough to be taken but not insignificant enough to be forgotten with the passage of time. I’m pretty sure those are mine.”

She took the offered letter back. “As for reconnecting with my family that seems like it is going to be harder. This letter is decidedly unhelpful. No names are listed, not even a city to start looking in. I was going to head to Turom once things quieted down here to see what I could find, but it seems that my father wasn’t Tari-Nor. Maybe I have no family there. Maybe I’ll find some records. I don’t even know my own family name.”

She rubbed her hands through her hair. She didn’t realize until she started talking how much she had been holding on inside. She laughed at Phal’s joke about her sparing partner.

“Or I might need them just as badly. I was actually going to ask either Calan or Jinn tomorrow if either were available to help. Calan was willing to once before.”
 
Phalaenopsis tilted his head back and forth as Rohnan talked about her mishmash of memories, some which might be hers and many of which were likely not; he gnawed on his finger absent-mindedly as he considered what to say about it, and also how to solve the dilemma of finding out who might have written the letter. "Well, if you're not sure which ones are yours, does it really matter? There's a question I've had for a while now, about how much our memories dictate who we are, and whether losing all of their memories would change a person so drastically as to be a completely different person." he rambled, his tone shifting from somber to light-hearted, "I can say with some confidence that outside of a few slight changes, you and Calan seem to be mostly the same people as you were before you lost them; Calan is more forthright with people and seems much more comfortable in his own skin, but still has a hard time expressing how he's feeling, and while I only knew you a short time before the loss, you still seem as confident in yourself and your decisions as you did before, but you also seem to put more thought into your duties to yourself and others. I don't doubt that having to rebuild relationships mostly from scratch is hard, but from what I can tell you've both settled in to the lives you had before quite naturally; I hesitate to call anything 'fate' or 'destiny', but sometimes life just kind of puts people where they need to be, and perhaps that's what's happened to the two of you."

"As far as finding your family," he continued, his tone changing to sound almost artificially cheery, "it's possible that the Earth Weavers have some kind of matrimonial or family lineage archive you could dig through, or the elders at Turom Falls have something similar; it might at least be a start to look when you feel up to the task." Phalaenopsis was hoping this chat was cheering Rohnan up, because he was pretty sure what he was going to say next was going to send her mood nosediving to match his own on the topic.

"When it comes to sparring with Calan... You may have to wait a bit. I haven't seen him in about a month, since the night he left the picture outside my door and the guitar outside of Ruki's." Phalaenopsis said, his voice crashing drastically to a cool and even tone as he spoke, but with an unusual intensity in his eyes.
 
Rohnan listened to Phal about what he was saying about the person who she is and was but disregarded it. It wasn’t anything that she hadn’t thought of herself over the last three months. But nodded along politely. She knew he was only trying to help.

What he said about Calan was a bit odd. “When did he leave a picture outside of your room?” She vaguely remembered a guitar sitting out in the hall the morning she left for Calanhelm. Now that she thought back to it, it was Calan’s guitar. “Wait, he’s been gone for a month?” That alone wasn’t overly concerning, Rohnan herself had just returned from being gone for about that long. “Not alone though, he’s probably off doing research or something. Right?” She felt that it should be fine, but there was something in Phal’s voice and demeanour that made it seem that he knew more than he was letting on.
 
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"Well, I don't know for sure it was him, but I don't think it was anyone else, so..." Phalaenopsis shrugged, "Process of elimination it was him. And if he is doing research, I haven't seen him; I've tended to the Aconitum Napellus at the Sanctum every day and haven't seen him in the halls or when passing the library, nor did I see him in the Annex when I went to research the Oasis; I haven't seen him in the tavern, and I also haven't seen or heard him go into or come out of his room; I don't think he wandered into the forest, or I'm sure I would have bumped into him there, and he didn't leave with Jinn, because Jinn left the morning after the guitar and picture were left in the hall; he didn't leave with you, and I can't think of anyone else who went missing overnight who hasn't come back yet; he also hasn't come back through the Circle, or I'm sure I would have heard about it from either Thistle or Hamish and yelled at him already about this."

He said all of this very fast, almost like he was checking off a list he'd been keeping in the back of his mind and waiting for someone to ask him to read it; his voice stayed mostly in the same even tone, but he ran out of breath near the end and took a deep breath to steady his voice, and spoke again much slower and more naturally. "In short, I have no idea where he is, and from what I can gather, neither does anyone else. The fact that he hasn't come back through the Circle is either good or bad news with about equal probability, and could mean anything from 'he's alive and safe and on his way back as we speak' to 'he died scared and alone and his Spirit couldn't resurrect again'; I do certainly hope it's the former, of course, or that he's met up with Jinn and they're just having some time to themselves, but..." Phalaenopsis bit his bottom lip again, and raised his arms in a shrug, "It hasn't stopped me from worrying, and none of my hawks can track him yet, so I can't even just write a damn letter and send one of them off to him to find out what's going on, and now I'm just hoping that next time I see him he's not in a damn coffin."

Phalaenopsis took another deep breath. "The picture is quite lovely, though, if you'd like to see it." he finished lamely.
 
Rohnan sat there and listened to Phal’s ramble stunned with alarm bells going off in her mind. ‘Calan you idiot, what did you do’. She thought to herself. Clearly Phal was worried and that wasn’t helping Rohnan keep a clear head to analyze the situation. She stood up and scrambled across the hall to the room where Calan and Jinn slept. She scanned the room looking for... something.

“He still has his things here so it doesn’t seem that he left permanently.” She said out loud to herself and to Phal if he cared to listen. “It is possible that he went through the portal to Calanhelm. Even if he is doing nothing official, maybe he just needed to get away for a few days. Maybe he decided to meet up with Jinn, after Jinn is done getting up to whatever it is that Jinn gets up to....”

As Rohnan yammered she was thinking ‘Where would he go, why wouldn’t he say anything? Maybe he did? No. At least not to me. Who then? Jinn? He’s not here to ask. Evo? Possible. Worth asking at least. Phal says that he didn’t mention his wandering off to anyone so that means that he’s probably already asked Ruki....’

She shook her head almost as if she was trying to clear away her thoughts. “This doesn’t explain why though. Why would he just up and leave?” She asked rhetorically. “Okay, lets look at this step by step, it looks like he packed some things and tidied up a bit. Left you a picture and Ruki his guitar. But he didn’t leave anything for me and he didn’t leave anything for Jinn that I can see.” Rohnan looked down at the white skull hanging from her waist. They were a tribe, they were family, he would have left something for them before anyone else though... right?

‘If he was planning on coming back, why would he give up his guitar?’ An evil self doubting part of her mind peeped up.

‘If he wasn’t coming back, why didn’t he leave anything for me?’

‘Maybe you don’t matter to him as much as you think.’

“He’s probably okay and just off with Jinn.” She said out loud as if she was trying to convince herself and the nagging parts of her own mind. “He’s probably fine.” She went back to her room to grab her ‘new’ sword and strapped it to her belt. She needed to go find something to hit.
 
Elinor strolls at a leisurely pace towards Calan's house. It's awfully nice to be out of doors after being shut in for much of the past month. Stars know, she enjoyed thumbing through the old tomes immensely, as the dusty smell reminded her of home, but the fresh air was good, too.

She knocks on the front door. For anyone who looks outside, Elinor is there, shifting from foot to foot. She wears a new black tunic and a purple scarf is tied around her belt, a sheaf of papers in her hand tied with a leather band.
 
Rohnan had calmed down quite a bit after her emotional episode the previous day. Going out and smacking around her new sword helped with that.

She was just getting ready for the day when she heard knocking on the front door. Opening it she saw the human who was chatting with Calan and Jinn in front of the sanctum a few weeks back. Ella she thought her name was? It was hard to keep track of all the ‘new’ people Rohnan keep on meeting.

Either way she greeted the girl with a smile, “Hello, what can I do for you?”
 
Elinor smiles brightly, looking over Rohnan's shoulder. "Hi! It's Rohnan, right? Just looking for Calan, got a quick thank you note for him for helping with my spells and whatnot," she says, rustling the papers. "Is he back just yet?"
 
Rohnan cocked her head to the side at the mention of Calan’s name. “No he’s not just yet.” Rohnan said carefully. “He actually forgot to mention to anyone here that he was leaving. Did he happen to say anything to you?”
 
Elly deflates somewhat. "Oh, I see. No, I don't think I'd heard where he went, I just assumed he was off with one of you or Jinn or something. Tell you what, I'll bet he's just at the tavern or something, drinking after a successful vacation, you know." She gives a conspiratorial wink. "I'll run over and check - if he's there I'll give him a scolding for you."
 
“Ha! No, if he’s with Jinn, which I damn well hope he is, then everything is fine. I just tend to worry about him. Since I was off in Calanhelm doing research for the last few weeks I didn’t even know that either of them wandered off.” Rohnan sighed. “Your welcome to look for him in the tavern. People will be trickling in through the portal all day. He might stop off there first. If you do see either Jinn or Calan, can you let them know that I’m looking for them?”
 
"Of course!" She waves over her shoulder and starts her way back towards the tavern. Her smile falters a little as she goes. She certainly didn't know any of them well, but Calan seemed awfully nice - it'd be dreadful if something bad had happened... She brushed away the thought. Everyone here was so tough and capable. He was fine, she was sure of it.
 
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