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[Vryn Vhae'Naliek]

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Vryn stood and dressed with a silent, practiced ease. In the diffused, half light of pre-dawn, he seemed an impossible black shade pinned upon a static background. A memory of a night that was slowly fading away. Already the first sounds of wakening life filtered into the rented room, disturbing the illusion so suitably created within. Reminding him that this could not last.

Despite the swamp's heavy, moisture laden heat, even at so early an hour, the room was cool. It's high ceilings and many windows adding to it's airy, wide open feel, and designed in such a way as to catch the breeze from the large lake just east on the inn.

Beyond the doors, Papua sprawled out like some overdone painting given an oppressive force of life by the hand of some enthusiastic god obsessed with variety. The land did not simply thrive, it teemed.

This total feeling of strangeness, of being in so alien a setting, seemed completely right to Vryn...all things considered.

She hadn't made a sound, but he knew she was awake, and watching him dress. Her lavender limned eyes shone like stars in the early morning gloom, and drank in her surroundings.

Shifting herself to attract his attention, Shri'hrae groaned contentedly as she stretched out the prior hours' exertions from each limb. Arching her back, pushing her hips up and releasing a long pent up, and drawn out yawn in a display that could only be described as purposeful.

If she felt any lingering self consciousness about her nakedness with him, she did not show it. Her careful, if not showy, play, extirpating any pretense of covering herself back up in the sheets.

"From here, you look as though you'd been cut of of polished stone, and placed carefully in repose," he said, watching her casually, "It's the light, I think."

Laughing softly, Shri sat up slowly, and stared at him, a tiny smile on her face.

"Shri...don't. I have a hundred things to see done today."

"I didn't say a word," she cooed.

"No pout?"

"No pout."

" There is a large cross section of the local fruit on the table here. I had it brought in just before you woke, it's all fresh..."

"Vryn!" Shri'hrae said, cutting him off in mid-sentence, and stopping him in his tracks, "...Once more. Then see to your day."

Silence, bridging the two young drow, hung for long moments in the still air, before Vryn found his voice, and his nerve.

"I can't. I have to be somewhere, " he lied.

Shri, her face dappled in the first touch of a new day, smiled prettily, laid back down, and let him go.

[Shri'hrae]

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The first thing a Princess learns is when to pick her battles. Watching Vryn's lanky form walk out of the room with his fingers still on the buttons of his shirt, was not the time for an argument. So she had let him go. The night had been perfect from the moment she said, "When." And it had remained so until just before dawn this morning. There were conditions granted and conceeded on both sides. And one rather large pebble had been thrown into the lake that was their lives last night. This morning, it was time to avoid the ripples.

Carefully Shri'hrae folded the violet negligee matching her eyes she had purchased specifically for this event and placed it in her pack. She slipped her thigh high boots back over her pointed feet and stood up. The textured yellow-brown of the lattice seemed to soak in the morning light. Choosing a rather odd looking reddish-brown fruit with her pristine nails, she bit into it threw her over her shoulder.

The night's conversation lingered in her mind. Vryn had asked about her day. He had kept her talking as best he could to ward off the nervousness so evident in her movements. Normally careful, graceful and well poised; She shook from head to toe. A frown crossed her face at that thought. Sometimes talking could take a dangerous turn, and it had.

One foot in front of the other she walked out, turning back one last time to gaze at the place things had changed. In that instant she didn't know whether to buy it and keep it in Drow hands or to burn it to the ground.
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*Kitrye Ilhar's Yathrin, Kitrye Ilharn's Mirshann, Jal degahr*