Date: The evening of the first night ------- Location: In the passanger quarters of the Greenest Dolphin
The silent night-sway of the boat creaks through the wood of the vessel, whispering the sea-sounds of travel across the close-spaces of crew and passenger quarters. Swaying hammocks whine their ropes, leather-bottom shoes and slippers hush as evening movers try not to disturb others. But within the quiet, a question. "Are you awake?" It comes low, baritone and hushed, strained by the exertion of Belhajj as he hefts ever his stone.
(Belhajj): The silent night-sway of the boat creaks through the wood of the vessel, whispering the sea-sounds of travel across the close-spaces of crew and passenger quarters. Swaying hammocks whine their ropes, leather-bottom shoes and slippers hush as evening movers try not to disturb others. But within the quiet, a question. "Are you awake?" It comes low, baritone and hushed, strained by the exertion of Belhajj as he hefts ever his stone.
(Illi): Illi is awake, and he'll say so, though his counter-tenor voice is weak, and not just with the late hour. "Yes; Belhajj? Forgive me if I do not get up; and even if you do not, I am afraid a fit is upon me, and I cannot get up." He lays in his hammock, holding to a book, of no particular value or beautiful make, a personal journal, it seems. Illi is bed-ridden--or hammock-ridden, as it were. "I am awake," Illi admits, pain in his voice, even as he adds: "And I would not mind visitors."
(Belhajj): It is with eerie silence that Belhajj squats by the sea-swaying hammock Illi is resigned to. From a pocket he draws out a familiar length of indigo fleece, a darkened spot of ware marking the center where it has been folded several times, multiplying the thickness of the material. With the strange distorted motion of a strong-man he hefts the stone to one shoulder, shifting his center of gravity as he reaches down to arrange the bit of fleece with enormous care before he turns, placing a nub of the slab down to balance against the makeshift cushion. Holding the stone with both hands, balancing it in a position not unlike a knight with both hands on his great sword, blade in the earth, he smiles quietly at Illi. "Tell me, how did you come to your faith?" He asks at a whisper, his attentive, knightly position shifting with the sway of the ship as he comes to sit on the ground, legs wrapped around the stone, and arms too, in a bear-hug, as he looks over at Illi, childlike in his curiosity.
(Illi): Illi watches Belhajj though eyes that often swim and search, half-hooded by his eyelids. For this occasion--bed--he is wigless, his natural, short, curly hair exposed, sweaty and clinging to him.
He explains in a quiet, weary, pained voice voice--tired, but clearly finding company welcome, however long it takes Belhajj to settle in and ask. "My salvation is not so dramatic; or perhaps it is...a process that is only partly begun. My head splits, and I see what others do not...or, some say, what is not there at all. Signs and shapes in the Heavens and on our mundane globe, all around us. If it is a portent, usually...it is a portent of pain. Were I to try standing, now, I would stumble--were I to try walking, I would collapse; maybe even vomit," he confesses, with some frustration and shame in his voice.
"My beloved aunt showed me kindness; told me of her faith, of what it meant to her to be a Kalentic. Sitting with me through many of my fits, and always, always praying for me," the young man shares tiredly. "At first, I listened politely; I love my aunt, and of course respect her...but I did not convert. Still, she above all my family...would dote on me when I fell into these periods of illness. Many in my family instead hid them away from me, whatever their Faith--Azadi or pagan, for we havy many faiths in Amunat." He goes quiet for a while after that, eyes swimming about.
(Belhajj): While the resounding echo of his prayers above-deck was a ritual thing, a singing thing, a bright and a boisterous thing, what follows now is not. Quiet as a breeze, as a lover's breath, Belhajj's fingers tap against the rough surface of his stone. The percussion itself cannot be heard, but the stone begins to resonate, to purr, a noise perhaps audible only within a few feet. The stone tunes to Illi, humming between the sickly man and his mountainous attendant. "There are stories." Begins Belhajj at a whisper... turning in his seat, closer to Illi so as not to rouse the others. "Of sacred singing stones, their tune healing the sick in the Sirdab. Many such are places of pilgrimage for just such a reason..." he suggests, looking not at illi, but at the stone he holds. "I do not know if this is such a stone but...the Sirdab around it was my salvation, and within the quartz veins I hear..." The large man swallows, his dark eyes quicksilver-wet even in the low-light of the sleeping quarters. "I hear my daughters, lost to me, their singing in the stone...Azadi or Pagan, Amunat or faye fyre, perhaps to listen is to at least ease as it does to my heart..." he suggests, continuing his soft, near-silent drumming in the night, the wetness of tears now visible across his tan cheeks.
(Illi): Illi listens; little else he can do, so much speech having drained him. Belhajj prays, Belhajj whispers, Belhajj swallows and speaks, and yes, Belhajj cries.
Illi takes it all in, bit by bit, piece by piece, attention drifting and gaze swimming, though he returns, eventually, to the...now?
"Ah; loss, and a return. That's what pulled me along. And you. Not your daughters; you. You believed yourself dead...and were given yourself back. A resurrection." He'll weep with Belhajj, silently, sympathy mingled with pain.
"Maybe your sirdab is what will bring me relief; perhaps not...but bonding between the Faithful always has." His gaze is not fully coherent as he continues. "My aunt; I was told she perished--but I prayed. I saw a bird of fire in the sky, and prayed--the Kalen Phoenikos. And, miraculously--she returned. Did you pray in the desert; pray for life, and find it returned to you? Not your daughters; I am sorry, my friend. But whether it is rock, garden, Saint, or vision...it is God." He is in part ranting, features screwed up with pain, even as the visit, the prayer, the speech of the mountainous man and the singing of the stone all work to bring belief.
(Belhajj): "All God" Echoes the mountain of a man, nodding solemnly in the night. The sweet near-silent hum of the stone, like rain on the roof, like the chatter of neighbors, like the sleepy singing of midnight birds, resonates between the pair as they rest in quiet. The night stretches around them as through exhaustion or solemnity they keep quiet amongst the snores and the coughs of their fellow passengers. For the span of breathes, half a hundred, two hundred Belhajj plays his stone, drumming and praying and nodding in silence at the side of Illi's bed like a family member or a nurse. "It may do nothing...but perhaps in the right place, in a proper Sirdab this stone can heal. I would take it to any healers you seek, an effort to focus its power, to give it purpose beyond the great weight." He decides, choosing then to lift the stone, hefting it back to his shoulder and retrieving the neat fold of indigo from the ground "Sleep well, my friend." He says, a sad smile on his broad face.
(Illi): Illi drifts in and out of awareness any time silence stretches on, coming to a state of greater, if not full awareness as Belhajj speaks again. Still, the drumming and the praying and even the presence in silence do offer him some comfort, as does the offer.
When he speaks, it's to say two things: "I do not know what I seek," whatever that may mean. He may not even know. And, "If I sleep any, it may be because of you." He falls into fitful silence and sometimes, quiet moans, taken over by the pain. Still, whenever he was lucid, the company seems to have been some comfort.
(GM): OOC: The scene fades to black.