15 - Sophae 04 - Unanswered Questions

The handheld radio crackled into silence with a deft twist of the knob. That conversation, Sophae decided, had been a little too strained. She wasn’t always the most self aware, but as the tedium of this morning’s updates drew on, she had felt herself getting rather impatient. A terse goodbye ended things before she lashed out. It wasn’t Piscary Port control’s fault, although she was grateful Walter was not on the radio that morning. That would have been worse. Sophae pulled out the object again. It was a coin, of yellowish hue, with a large 1 on the side facing up right now. She flipped it over, revealing the double headed bird on the back. It looked predatory, although birds were not her strong suit. She stepped in front of her dinghy, scavenged mirror, coin in hand, and pushed her hand /through/ the mirror. Her hand, almost effortlessly, pushed through the silvery plane, causing less of a ripple than if it were water. Upon retrieval, the mirror had just been an ordinary mirror. But a bit back, Sophae decided she needed a covert place to store items of significance aside from her skin. So she traded a favor for a little magick, and she had returned to her boat with her mirror, and some extra storage room.
She opened, and then withdrew her hand from the mirror, the shiny surface warping for just a moment before returning to the usual flat, slightly weathered appearance. Sophae tried to put the coin, and the body it came from, out of her mind as she slipped on her skin. It didn’t work. As Saephra headed back into the harbor, a seal, the alpha male of the local colony, alerted towards her. Saephra swam over, her mind already clearing into an alert state. He didn’t often signal to her. He began to speak to Saephra in seal tongue, although Saephra was having a hard time believing what she heard. The body she had nudged to shore had returned earlier, and as an autonomous, seemingly living, creature. The concern she heard in the male’s tones worried her. She responded, doing her best to reassure him, and then returned to her boat for lunch.

The Stout Lighthouse was less fun when Naylia wasn’t there. Wednesdays were one of her days off, and so Sophae ordered her meal, sat in the corner instead of at the bar, and mulled over recent events. She was reticent to involve others in her job, but from the sounds of it, there might be something unnatural about the body she found. Which still didn’t explain the mysterious lights from /The Windy Isle/ from yesterday, or why Clarize had arrived in the first place. Sophae resolved to go to Clarize and try to begin to unravel some answers. The first trick was figuring out where Clarize /was/, Saephra thought as she finished guiding the last boat of the day into the harbor. She didn’t know where Clarize was staying, and didn’t have a way to contact her directly. She had been thinking this over while keeping an eye out for that body the male had mentioned all afternoon. So far, nothing had come to fruition for either problem.
So it gave her quite a shock when she surfaced within her boat, and came eye to eye with Clarize, who was sitting comfortably on her cot. She was immediately aware of her own nudity, and lowered herself partially back down her boat’s water side access shaft. “Stars above Clarize, you can’t keep doing this! Can’t a woman get a little privacy around here?” she choked out, the day’s annoyances coming to the forefront of her voice.
“See, I /told/ you that you should have knocked -” Melvin murmured from somewhere within Clarize’s clothing, cut off by Clarize firmly pressing her elbow into her side.
“I would have thought we were quite beyond that, but as it is such, I will wait outside for you to clothe yourself” Clarize spoke stiffly, then removed herself, the sounds of Melvin’s strangled hissing accompanying her out.
Sophae dressed hastily, slipping on a warm dress of blue and greys, making sure to safely stow her skin first. When she had securely fastened her boots over her thick socks, she opened the door. Clarize was not on the boat, nor was she on the harbor dock where her boat was fastened. Sophae found her standing outside a nearby building, looking up at one of the gargoyles perched, frozen on the side of the building. As if on cue, as though something had come to an end, Clarize broke her eye contact with it, and looked towards the approaching Sophae.
Clarize broke through Sophae’s beginning of a half apology with a question Sophae did not expect. “What do you know about your employer?”
Sophae was struck by the timing of this question, but she began to answer slowly, not completely understanding where this was going. “When I came of age, I began to listen to the news and requests from the larger community. I received an offer to work here, with the instructions on protocol. Being a Harbor Warden isn’t the most glamorous position, but it is reliable and honorable. So I accepted, and directions were awaiting me when I arrived. I’ve never met my connection to this job with regards to the community, but the older man I met with upon arrival in Piscary Port Control is named Mr. Treward.” Clarize didn’t respond immediately. Then, with a slight air of defeat, she said, simply “Well, I think I just spoke to them. They requested we meet them. Let’s go.”
Sophae was brimming with questions, but Clarize’s attitude pushed to the front. “What are you worried about? What’s wrong?”
Clarize met Sophae’s eyes. “I believe your employer is a gargoyle. A particularly damaging one that has inflicted a lot of losses with those I care about. So I worry about how this meeting will go. But mostly - I worry about what she’s scared of enough to call this meeting. She wants us to work together”