Lonely Days

The lonely days started to take their toll on Voah. Her attempts at amiable contact and conversation with the locals almost always resulted in open hostility, looks of disdain, or harassment. She was growing tired of being rejected; shooed away daily by the residents to find a new place to stay. It was killing her performer's ego and her people-pleasing heart.

Although the streets of Gra'akast were not crowded, Voah learned to keep to the shadowy alleyways in order to avoid most unwanted confrontation. Once again she found herself staring at the symbols of the twin gods. Water and air, life and death, two tusks... She saw them everywhere, carved into wood and stone, staring at her from faded and chipped paint on the trim of doorways. Now the woven emblem of the two tusks stared at her from the long, enormous tapestries that dangled from either side of the basilica entrance, its great dome looming five stories up, dwarfing the surrounding buildings. The place seemed ancient, more-so than one of her own shrine cities. She missed the shrines and wanted that feeling of belonging again. She wanted to give the Twins a chance or better yet, forget about Gods entirely, but you can't easily break such long habits or change such grounded beliefs. Gonyaul had somehow managed to bend those beliefs.

Voah's lithe form slipped around the corner of a dim alleyway as she spotted a couple of priests strolling down the thoroughfare; her hand subconsciously moving for the hilt of her sword. The vibration of magik swam in the air surrounding this temple. It made her teeth itch.

The basilica weighed ever on her mind as she had seemingly endless downtime to think about it without Gonyaul around. The urge to spit on or destroy their emblems or simply grab a sorcerer-priest and plunge her sword into him was strong; a hard instinct to dampen. Instead she temporarily turned away her bitterness and disappeared into the shadows.

Yes, the first three days alone with her bitter and twisted thoughts, Voah stumbled upon an old abandoned storage room with bottles of booze, of which she promptly took three. She returned to their temporary abode and drank to the point of drunkenness, which didn't take long, she carved the tusks into stone with her dagger and then exxed them out over and over again.

She considered thieving and the prospects of the lustful men who tried to lure her into the gutters for sex. At the moment, it certainly seemed like the only option for her to make coin around here. But what kind of woman would she be if she took such offers? What kind of spouse? Besides, she was not so desperate for survival to stoop that low nor betray her soon to be husband.

Feeling useless and fraught with both internal and external loathing, Voah hated being unable to support herself or make a home for Gonyaul without committing criminal or resorting to disgusting acts.

Drinking and thinking over survival and her encounter with Vastad, strange feelings of invincibility washed over her; even though she was without her boon. Vastad had said she had a part to play, so she knew starvation and prostitution weren't in the cards, right? How in the name of Zin did this work anyway? What did that even mean? How could she have some destiny, but still choose her own path? Could she get away with some crazy stuff before death came for her? Could she just walk into the temple and start slaughtering and destroying? Was that the part she was meant to play? That they were meant to play? Was Gonyaul meant to join her in such a crusade? Impossible. Obviously she wouldn't even be alive if it was a small role in the grand scheme of the Pillars, right? She found herself wanting that importance in spite of herself. Then she carved the symbol of Vastad and repeated the same exercise of exxing it out. Voah took another drink and crumpled against the wall with the bottle in her lap and the sting of alcohol in her nostrils.

Gonyaul came home to her that night and knew that she was having it rough when he saw her staring out a window, clutching the bottle in one hand and looking dejected.