taxonomites | [Holo] First Performance [001]

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[Holo] First Performance [001]

"This shouldn't be happening! It can't be happening!" Stefen hadn't intended to speak out loud, but the frustration and the fear obvious in his voice had, it seemed, other plans aside from stunned silence. Maybe not stunned, if the look of resigned terror on his face said anything--like someone watching their worst nightmare come to life, only they had been expecting it. Nothing was ever simple, and the half of him that was still a child wanted to complain about how unfair this all was, while the half that was more what he should have been--the half that was Master Bard Stefen, performer to the King-- knew that it wouldn't have changed anything if he did.

"Well-guarded, indeed. One moment in Haven, the next here..." Not that he hadn't heard of stranger things happening from the Heralds and with his particularly strong ties to both King Randale and Herald-Mage Vanyel, he was a particularly prime target.

Vanyel.

Oh gods. He had been right. If they knew who he was, it was only a matter of time before the worst happened and if they didn't know how important he was to either, it was only a matter of time before they found out and...

"V-Van...?" But he wasn't really expecting an answer. This place looked too alien, even for the kind of "company" that Van tended to keep. And if the Herald wasn't here, then there was only one real option left--Stefen was being used as leverage. Abducted by some invisible force with some phantom goal in mind. Vanyel had enough enemies that there was no telling what any of them wanted.

It wasn't until he reached up to run a hand through his fiery red hair that he realized that he was still clutching an instrument against his slight body. That added a whole other level of confusing to the situation. This looked enough like a strange prison, so...why was he permitted an instrument? And his favorite, no less.

"R-Rosewood? What are you doing here?" He held her a little more gently against his chest, but she was a small comfort in the face of abduction.

Calm down, Stef. You've had training. Nothing is wrong with Vanyel or you'd know. He closed his green eyes and took a few deep breaths to steady himself. He was supposed to be attached to the palace, not dealing with magic or prisons or any of...well, this.

Someone has to be looking for me. Let's face it, at this point I'm too important for someone not to have noticed that I've vanished. But that would only make them--whoever "them" were--try even harder to hide him. After a few moments of silent internal struggle, an oath that would not have been very welcome at Court all but exploded from him and the look on his face turned into a mixture of frustration and rage. There wasn't anything that he was capable of doing to get himself out of this--all he could do was wait to be found.

And that was precisely what he set out to do, dropping to sit on the floor and sulk (even if he would never have called it that) very much like the child that he had barely outgrown.

"Havens..."

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She knew it was hyperbole. Living with a professional writer of a father got Alexis used to hyperbole at a young age. But still, she clapped a hand over her mouth and blanched when he jumped. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to interrupt, but I didn't want to keep you waiting either."

Alexis took a step forward and hesitated again, shouldering her messenger bag. "I'm glad you found your way out."

"No, I shouldn't have gotten so distracted. And I shouldn't have shouted." He did know how to be charming when he put his mind to it, and he smiled at her in a mixture of apology and thanks. All that time surrounded by Court ladies paid off after all. "I'm sorry I scared you."

He held Rosewood a little closer as he stood up, shaking his head. "Where is this place?"

She smiled back, nodding. Alexis set her bag on one of the chairs and held out her tablet, which was still displaying a map of the city, to Stefen. "Everyone tells me the city's called Taxon," she explained. "And that we were brought here by some people who have more technology than we do."

She hoped she wouldn't have to explain aliens. Especially hamster aliens. She wasn't sure she understood them either. She pointed at the center of the map, at the Sanctuary where a little dot labeled 'Alexis Castle' floated next to one labeled 'Stefen'. "This is a map of the city. And it tells you who everyone is."

Stefen had certainly never seen anything like this before. All of this...technology was more than a little overwhelming. He couldn't even begind to conceive of devices that would let him do things like that and yet...here they were. Giving him essentially the same abilities that the Heralds had.

All of it seemed more magic than mechanical.

He had been afraid that he'd been brought, but...if it wasn't just him maybe it wasn't as leverage after all, and that thought made him breathe a little easier. Van was safe for now, but that didn't mean he'd go spreading tales either.

"I've...never heard of Taxon." Which wasn't really saying much since he hadn't heard of Valdemar until he was ten and that was where he lived, but he had thought that his decade at the Collegium had cured him of that particular ignorance.

Evidently not.

Alexis sat down in one of the chairs as she watched Stefen take in what she'd said. It was a lot. After all, she'd sat in the steel room for an hour and cried before she'd left, and she was considered mature and levelheaded for her ~~family~~ age. "I hadn't either, before I got here," she admitted, tucking her legs beneath her. "I don't think anyone else did either."

She rested her chin in her hand. "It's strange, being here alone." Well, she wasn't all alone. Alexis knew she was lucky there. But she still missed her family desperately.

Alone was something that Stefen knew quite well, but that didn't mean that it hurt any less. As far as he could tell, he didn't know anyone here, but then, he hadn't really met a lot of the people here--and he assumed there were more than a few of them. And if he didn't know anyone here, then that meant that Van wasn't here either.

He could deal with that. It wasn't as if Van had never left for months at a time to do his duty. It was just like that. That's all that was going on...

"I guess it is."

He seemed to be taking things calmly, which made Alexis curious. She knew, intellectually, that people processed differently, that everyone coped in different ways, but she was never certain, seeing people and talking to them, whether they really were.

"Are you used to it?" she asked, the question quiet and hesitant, as if she wasn't certain whether she should ask. "Being somewhere alone?"

Stefen only shrugged, lightening his expression a little. He had always been around people, but he had never really felt like a part of them. In a way, he had never really been alone, but in another, the most company he'd ever actually had were Medren and Vanyel.

"It's nothing I'm not used to. I'm mostly just background at Court as it is."

The easy way in which he said that made Alexis' expression falter, uncertain. Having been showered by affection and attention from a father with far too many resources and time to lavish on his only daughter had a habit of skewing people's ideas of what was normal, and it didn't help that Alexis was empathetic by nature. Which meant she felt far more concerned for his lack of companionship than Stefen probably did.

"I'm sorry." She chewed on her bottom lip uncertainly. "So this thing brought you from court?" Unfortunately, her mind had gone straight to judicial courts.

It was all in the past--done and overwith. He'd been rescued and that's all there was to it. Sure, it had hurt at the time, but now he had a future with the Bards and with the Court. He'd never go back to the streets if he had any say about it. And he sure as hell did. He had made his choices and no one could send him back there.

"Not from Court exactly, but not long after."

Unconsciously, Alexis had picked up the habit of running her hand over the silver bracelet fused to her skin as a nervous gesture, and she did it now, rubbing absentmindedly at the silver metal. "I was on my way home from school," she offered, hoping that it would help draw Stefen out a little. "Everything was normal one minute and the next I was in that room. But the people here have been really nice. I think everyone remembers what it's like to be stuck here and alone."

"I was--" back in Vanyel's room. But he couldn't very well say that. They weren't precisely a secret, but better to be safe than sorry. No one here needed to know just how close he actually was to anyone important. Any number of Bards were at Court on a given day (but not so much anymore), so he was safe there. But now he needed some answer to give. "--heading back to my room."

Fortunately, the pause went unnoticed, and Alexis merely looked thoughtful. It wasn't much of a theory, as theories went, that the aliens picked them up while they were going somewhere. Most everybody went somewhere most of the time. If they had all been asleep or eating dinner that would have been easier.

"And you play music, right?" Alexis gestured to the instrument Stefen had been playing when she'd walked up. A thought clicked in her mind, his words, her initial misunderstanding. "Are you a court musician?"

At hearing that, Stefen nodded, presenting Rosewood to be examined. He was always careful with her, but proud to show the instrument off. His favorite of all the instruments that he could play, and he could play a damn lot of them. "I'm a Bard," he announced proudly--and he was proud of that. Youngest Master Bard in remembered history, personal musician to Randale himself. But they needed him, needed that strange Gift he hadn't even known that he'd had until they pointed it out to him.

Alexis' eyes widened in surprise when he offered her the instrument and she shook her head. "It's beautiful! I don't want to hurt it or anything," she explained. She wasn't particularly clumsy, but Alexis was smart enough to realize that had been what the aliens had brought for him, which meant it had to be important.

She furrowed her brow in thought, thinking about what she knew about bards. Unfortunately not a lot; Richard Castle's research had tended away from the historical, and given how proud he obviously was about being a bard, Alexis didn't want to risk offending him if she remembered wrong. "We don't have bards back home," she confessed. "So I don't really know what it means to be one."

Stefen had never actually had to describe what a Bard was before, and now that he was trying to, it was more difficult than he had thought it would be. His expression slipped into thoughtful for a moment and he shook his head after thinking about it.

"It's...hard to describe. Bards are kind of...well, it really depends on what the King needs them for. Mostly, they travel around the country with news and they perform for the people." That about covered the basics. He gestured to his dark scarlet uniform and shook his red hair out of his eyes, continuing. "A Bard can always be identified by his Scarlets."

She listened carefully, brow furrowing as she tried to understand. It was obvious they were from very different places, and Alexis was realizing there was no real analog in her world of what he was saying. At least, none that she knew of. Haley Blue had been a star, but she wasn't exactly important, not in an aid-to-the-president sort of way that Stefen seemed to be.

She pushed a lock of bright red hair behind her ear and nodded thoughtfully at his clothes. That helped. "Do you all work for the same king?" A pause. "There's probably a lot of kings, aren't there?"

"A few, but anyone in Scarlets is from Valdemar and works for King Randale." If one could even call it working. In a way, it was, and no Bard would disagree that it was actual work that took actual energy, but there were precious few who realized that it was more than music and entertainment and charms.

"Bards are pretty much welcomed anywhere, though. It doesn't really matter who sent them."

She smiled at that, bright and cheerful. Alexis might not have understood kings and bards and what working meant for someone like that, but she could get behind being welcome. "You must see a lot of your kingdom that way. A lot of strange things most people don't get to see."

She had a sneaking suspicion though, that Taxon would be able to surprise anybody.

"I've...never left Haven." There wasn't much reason--or any means--to leave the walls of the city, and once he was whisked into the care of the Collegium he'd been sheltered in the Palace because of all that damn Talent. And then he'd been assigned to the King with that Wild Gift of his that let him continue to even hold Court. He didn't have much--alright any--experience outside the city's walls aside from the one trip to visit Vanyel's family at Forst Reach.

"Oh." Good job jumping to conclusions, Alexis. A faint pink flush rose in her cheeks and she dropped her gaze to the floor. "I just thought, since you said bards--"

She trailed off, her hand rubbing along the silver bracelet again. "Sorry."

Stefen just shrugged the whole thing off--he did have extenuating circumstances after all.

"Not, it's fine. Usually, Bards go out for their Journeyman, but they kept me in because...well, for a lot of reasons. And then they jumped me up to Master so they could keep me there. By rights, I should have stayed at Journeyman for at least another five years, but they needed me at Court and that's the only way I could stay. So you were right, and I'm just...well, a little strange."

Her brow furrowed, trying instinctively to follow, to make sense of what he said. It took an extra moment or two to work through, but Alexis thought she at least had a good idea. "Do you like it, at least? Being at Court?" It seemed to her that it would have been worse, to be promoted and not like where you ended up.

"It's where I always wanted to end up," he answered with a shrug. He had worked hard to try and get a position there, and had it thrust on him, which was well enough.

Until he'd actually met Vanyel. And suddenly it didn't seem all that important where he was sleeping that night as long as he was helping people. And that's exactly what he was doing at Court. Randale couldn't keep going without him there.

"But..." he finally continued after a few moments in contemplative silence, "it isn't easy. And sometimes not very pleasant, either."

There were many ways in which Alexis was different from her father and grandmother. Being responsible was one of the most obvious ones. Another was the fact that she tended to listen rather than react, and a thoughtful smile played across her features at Stefen's words, emphasizing the quiet, thoughtful mind behind the youthful, optimistic features.

"But it's worth it, right?" She shook her head and fine red hair fell across her face. She pushed it back with an idle hand, her bracelet winking silver in the light. "I'm sorry you can't be there now. But maybe you can find something to do here that's worth it too."

A little flicker of uncertainty crossed Alexis' face at her own words. It was easy to say but some little part of her knew she hadn't done it yet.

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