Five minute drabbles with context:

[dagas_isa]

From caer_awen's October Game.



A song the Noraiuin sing takes Inori back to her childhood
Inori should not have known the game the Noraiuin played around the fire.

Lai started, a high voice improvising a song about the ocean and fish. Persei mimicked her, a deeper modulated voice about catching the fish and cooking it over the fire, and Kaitos now singing in a gravelly voice of the torch as they made a night migration along the river, and Jin walking that river to the ocean, with his own voice.

She should not have known those songs, or that game. Saidenese played group music, and instruments, but the lyrics were never improvised in such a way. Except...

After dark in the rows, when the day's work ended, and the cookfires went low, some of the adults, not all, not her mother, but her father among them, would take their ration of rice liquor, and sit in a circle, and play a similar game.

And Inori sat back and watched, too young to play, too old to go somewhere else. Her brother leaned against her shoulder and her sister tapped behind singing the song...


Jin and Kage talk of Inori's recovery

"I cannot make anyone do anything." Kage said at last.

Jin nodded.

"All I could do, is let someone find her and hope that someone would take care of her."

Jin stared down at Inori, who slept eerily soundly for Inori right now. Strong yes, but as Kage said, fragile as well.

"She doesn't want to be taken care of." Jin said at last.

A tightly wound smile emerged in Kage's voice. "No, she would not be that way."

"And though she doesn't admit it to anyone, I don't think she's entirely sure that she wants to live."

"I am not one to let her die. I just keep thinking, if she survives and becomes safe again, that she will be changing her mind about that. Tell her to go rescue her sister. Tell her that the world is needing her."

"I think she knows that already. I've told her, that she could live among us, and still she insisted on returning to towers." Jin had to face that fact.


Kozan shows Landra one of Utame's great treasures

"What type of place is this?" Landra never thought to ask it before, but then, she had never viewed Utame as a place to live.

Kozan smiled. "We call this in Saiden, a garden of stories." He pointed to the statues all around, not hidden per say, but not displayed either. "The Stargazer up in the blooming trees. The child waits by the stream. We walk the paths, reflect, and remember the stories that create us."

Landra looked again, the flowers, the birds that made their home in trees, all of the beautiful plants--Tercio had waxy foilage and evergreens and tiny flowers that hid from the cold behind rocks.

"It's beautiful."

Kozan said nothing, but the smirk told her the line he had the grace to hold back.

"Utame's gardens are renowned, even though we're such a small tower." Kozan said, "My great-aunt Aferi created it herself. Sold thousands of gems to buy the first plants from all over the world."


Kozan thinks of an excuse to go out and personally search for Inori.

Kozan paced in his office. No one actually saw his nervousness, the one thing about the innocuous looking paper that sat on his desk. It was there. His parents weren't.

"I have to..." he trailed off. Talking to oneself, never a good sign. If his seneschal had been there, he could have called her in. No one else had a need to know how much the correspondence bothered them.

"I have to find a way to search, without them knowing. And I have to give them an answer. Preferably a good one."

Drinks on the counter. Tea this time, instead of wine. Will or no, he needed his head clear to think. "I need to leave, and someone to cover well for me. I need an excuse."

"I can say, search for a criminal. Justice always appeals to my father. No...I can mention that we're cutting down on Noraiuin raids, finally. Hah!" Kozan smiled. "I can tell my mother that I've gone looking for a wife."

That might have even been true once upon a time.


Maki sets herself up for a dangerous game

"You have to listen!" Zomi sounded almost desperate, to her ears, and Maki wondered if she could, perhaps, be innocent after all.

Still, in the end, the clues led straight to the other woman. "I don't, really. No one else wants to chase you. They tell me to get over it, but I've seen you." Maki spoke calmly. "If no one else is going to bring you to justice, then that leaves me." She cracked her knuckles, habit.

Zomi stared her down. "I'm warning you. It's best to leave this."

And Maki knew better. She had just stopped caring, long ago. "And I won't. I know what you did."

Zomi sighed. The eyes changed, they narrowed. Fists at the sides clenched, and Maki knew she risked bringing down destruction.

In the final days, Trist is losing his authority.

Trist looked at his scryers, displeased. "And why has there been no word on the Final Shadow?"

One of them mumbled something, cowered under Trist's glare.

"What was that?"

"Sir," she said, "everyone's afraid to even come close to him. We know what you told Rodion up top. And if an Elite has been advised not to do his job, what are the rest of us to do."

Trist waved it off. "He's Icaran, isn't he, a weakling. So control him."

Sometimes, Trist trusted his scryers, those able to gaze into a part of him that even he couldn't. Most of the time even, but other times, such as now, he felt them concealing something from him.

The scryer raised up. "It's more complex than that sir..."

"No." Trist said with certainty. "It's actually very simple. The Final Shadow is Icaran. He is weak. So send someone up and get control of him."

"That's exactly the point. He's the Final Shadow, because there's no way our laws can contain him. If we didn't send him up, he would have done the same in Sombrelucia."


Dangling sentences were completed, but otherwise, yeah, 5 minutes.