The distance from the Clearer Skies Society headquarters to the Warden Patrician’s current residence was not nearly as far as the distance from the Yecine main estate to a little private home had been. Once clear of the bulk of the cheering crowd, the tall blonde with a small brunette folded over one shoulder stopped looking like a triumphantly exiting couple and started reading instead as... a willing abduction in progress. A thin distinction.
"Where are you taking me, you bold scoundrel?"
"Can you not loudly say those words while tickling the back of my neck?"
"I could... but where would the fun be *now* in holding my dramatics back?"
The ancient cultivator hadn’t even needed to decide whether she minded being her loved one’s cargo. But what she did need time to finish deciding on was the location she was being ferried to. As her feet met cool and coated wood, the city dropped away to a hush with the click of a heavy door. She realized where it was instantly, and had the firsthand experience that the Warden Patrician’s office was... small. That was the worst and best thing about it.
There was a certain amount of grandeur - like the glass casing holding her cousin’s sword and the suit plus chain-of-office she wore at her Hero ceremony. However, after the stately spire construction in the Astral Exclave that El had worked through, as well as the sprawl of the Yecine estate - and to a similar extent the size of the Goltbred estate... it was a stark difference.
Those were all places where, for her, she felt certain reminders of her time as Uvraneht. Hints of every sprawling location that she had ever been a proper scheming cultivator instead of just a quiet until provoked spouse and/or artisan. Yet, her husband-wife had chosen a much more minimal simplicity than those places. The handful of rooms spreading off to the sides in the building wouldn’t amount to much more space.
’Certainly it would be right to call most of it functional and spare. Like the place mother bought for us. Scaled up, of course. It is still an important leader’s place of official business. Mostly.’
"Your face looks very complicated."
Qat judged while taking her hand gently and leading her deeper inside. Elua had already used her spiritual sense to get the shape of what was next up the stairwell. A room that a tall person could cross in a few strides. A furnishing on the wall, by the door, with one empty bracket waiting for the weapon the room’s owner was currently wearing - and the other filled for now with a practice blade. A small table with a few stacked books that had clearly been used for writing private correspondence more than taking meals.
And then a number of things that almost hurt.
A dressing bench sized for two, at the foot of a bed too big for one. Shelves that a woman shorter and with less reach than Qatrand... could grab things from, without even thinking about straining. Two hooks on the wall for cloaks and coats, two of everything that mattered. Even the practice blade looked more like a place-holder than intention, as there actually was a larger rack of them in the office space.
Numerous details that proved the young woman had chosen to spend her nights - at least some part of these separated years - in a place much too cramped to rattle around in... with that vague sense of loneliness and vacancy that a grander room might impart.
’...But only because she has all but tortured herself further. With components always in sight that amount to a missing life-partner’s daily, functional things left waiting so unused.’
She too had built *everything* to account for Qat taking a place inside the Exclave mansion, but the Goltbred heiress also knew herself. She truly could personally clap her hands and wash away all that spent effort... if her beloved admitted she did not want it. El could not ever ask her to be the same way, even if every sentimental duo-detail felt like an affront that she almost wanted to tell her to clean away.
For all of it felt like a promise the blonde had made with the cosmos. One that the brunette had been holding back from fruition all this time. And even the time spent together since being back, the acknowledgement that moving forward was what mattered most, didn’t stop it from turning the butterflies in her stomach into poison moths.
"You are looking at my private room like it has done something wrong."
The low and dry voice came from behind her as Elua stood just three steps past the doorway. An empty bracket on the rack finally received its usual blade while the other one was emptied. Grabbing casually for her wife’s floating copper weapon, the ancient cultivator willingly let go of her Adhesion technique. Allowing the only person she ever would to ’disarm’ her... even if she was potentially more dangerous even without that sharp lever.
Spiritual privacy rituals woke as the room’s owner slotted a keyshard into a spot on the wall, designed by the ancient sigilist but manufactured by Dima to certain specifications that would allow the swordswoman a nice and unnoisy meditation area. A feature ruined by the static being put off by the emotions in an invited-in cultivator, which was also sparking the glow of their mint eyes.
"...My favorite tea is on that shelf."
"It has been, for two years."
"That is precisely my complaint."
"Oh, it’s not the same container. I replaced it regularly."
"That’s not what I-"
Strong hands found her tense shoulders from behind and turned her. They ended up on the bench, where calloused fingers stroked down the length of her spine before pulling away. Qatrand didn’t have perfect words to combat the moodiness, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t think of appropriate actions. Instead of trying to fix anything... she just kept up the mundane. Bending over and beginning to take off her own shoes was the first step.
Technically, the first was the moment she had given a look to Leysah and Hoolov while pointing at Aurehl and Onya - having her people help and deal with what should be her wife’s other current concern. But the point was that letting the rather complex feeling woman try and fit into this open space, kept just for her, was all that could be done. Which is why neither of them said much of anything more, despite both of them gradually changing into more comfortable attire.
And despite a cloud of spirit clearly cataloging every item with much too great care.
"So, tea? You’ve had nothing since the last station."
"Okay."
El watched as hands trained to wield a heavy blade smoothly set the pieces together. The lack of stove in this room should normally have been a problem, but the reborn cultivator wasn’t concerned. A bespoke kettle, in so many ways, was what Qatrand had obtained for their use in between taking care of so many other important things... because even if her wife liked the drink more than she did, the sharing of it was equal in their hearts.
The exterior itself was modeled after a beautiful object that the sigilist had once sent back, the Copper lattice work translated onto a kettle’s shell thanks to finding a competent enough user of the Element. However, instead of the spaces in between being seen through, like that memory sphere which had linked her with her spouse’s view of her disciple’s wedding day... what was inside the artistic and showy-metal design was a double-walled steel vessel.
In that regard, it contained a memory of a *different* kind. One of rambling explanations that the young Gaseous Element cultivator had toward their doting spouse, who was listening more intently to the physics lessons between practice sword swings than one might have figured. Combining that absorbed knowledge with other things Qatrand had learned throughout her years, by dealing direct with artisans under her territory, had led to a series of secretive project steps with various cultivators.
Including Sevra who had stopped in once for the Air evacuation step of sealing the two parts together, the seam flawless thanks to a formerly unrelated to the project Iron cultivator who had been tested for competence ahead of that important step. Finding two highly specific elementalists had not been that difficult with access to Order and Void Defense Society records and cultivators... though Vice Master Rensha of the Order had somewhat caught on to the purpose of the object when she agreed to set up a meeting with her son.
’The cost was just to make the next for her, if the concept held together. A pretty small price.’
Cordierite had been specifically grown by her father-in-law and served as a thermal insulating lid as well as a mount for the heating element hanging down at the bottom. Appearing like a repurposed steel broadhead arrow facing point down from the end of the stone cylinder, the former liaison but trained sigilist had painstakingly etched script extremely small, for these modern times, into its surface. Altogether it made Qat’s object, this *essence appliance* that she was now feeding her own energy into, with her hand on the ritual contact point... a rather unique to the continent piece of technology.
"I see she actually used it, then. Part of me expected that text to sit on a shelf, with her too wary to experiment with its contents."
"She was plenty wary, but also... even if you don’t like her that much, she is a spiritualist, no?"
"...No. She is whatever this continent thinks people who use their minds more than their bodies are. Scholars, I suppose is most fitting, but not an actual spiritualist."
"You told me that it was her highest energy of the three?"
"Not. A. Spiritualist. Do you call *everyone* with a higher physical energy magnitude a martial cultivator?"
The blonde decided not to argue and foul the brunette’s mood further. Still, when Dima had been approached with the idea to make the key piece for this kettle - after being kicked out from the Exclave - she had recognized that the ask *was* possible. To produce reliable and efficient heat, with some of the available designs in the book she had been given. The concept of micro-sigils and their etching was well out of her depth, but a success with this would help facilitate the main purpose for the branch she ran.
Research, experimentation, and small ’replicable’ findings that the Goltbred heiress had been intending to share, very slowly, was its whole reason for existence. As far as she knew. El still never told her directly that quite a good chunk of her agreeing to the Coiled Serpent’s overtures was to... make Dima happy - so that the woman would stay out of her and Qat’s hair. Only for her to somehow continue to remain quite more involved in their lives than the schemer wanted...
’Maybe I really should have just pushed her onto those tracks... ow!’
While the woman was distracted, and with her defenses still lowered thanks to being in the private place, a small candy had been tossed at quite the speed into her forehead. The culprit didn’t even try to hide her still extended fingers - or try to look ashamed at all!
"Be nice. She is a hard worker and a good person... I believe. Hasn’t flirted at all with me since then."
"Isn’t that it’s own sort of problem? Does she think you aren’t worth flirting with?!"
Pigeon blues stared at her, just as unflinching as before, and watched as her mintdrop picked up her namesake and cleaned it off... before popping it in her mouth. Privately pleased at the sight until the well-designed opening of the kettle steamed out with a short whistle.
"...How contrary are you going to be, today?"
"Very. You bring me to this private place of yours, you make me correctly frame my power and choices to your people publicly, and now you want me to accept *that* woman? A person who has done everything in her warped Clarity to treat me as a snake in the grass?"
"Yes."
"I can only handle two of those three things darling, so you should pick which!"
"The last two. We can just leave this room after the tea."
"I refuse."
Elua stood from the bench and launched herself onto the bed. No matter the complexity of guilty feelings that the place was giving her, she was absolutely *not* going anywhere at all... unless Qat left the room and didn’t seem like she would return. Then she would rethink her stubbornness - but only then. So for now, as the near-boiling water was poured from kettle into a similar aesthetic designed teapot to steep, she just stuffed her face in the pillow that smelled the most like her husband-wife.
And her toes curled as she tried to come to terms with the fact that this little sanctuary of the swordswoman was only now ’complete’...
’Her *contentment* is so incredible, but her spirit has really been very cheeky since we got off the train!’
...with herself in it.