A Heart of Scale & Sea Featuring: Derya (@nereidofneed) & Kaladin Locale/Time: The Black Cabinet, Afterhours
The child lay sleeping in one of Kaladin's private rooms in the penthouse of the curio shop, guarded by the most trustworthy in his company. Since they fished her little body, motionless and pale, from the arms of a warm vent in the ocean, she had not blinked open her eyes, articulated movement, nor parted her lips to expel one clarifying word for him. For days, he sat vigilant at her side, counting shallow breaths, dabbing her pallid brow, studying the pearlescent scales on her forearms. So like his own in every way but color. It took him little time to decide that she was, at least, part-scalewalker. No where else had he seen scale-patterns like those on her skin, though they were a decidedly contrasting hue from his own — opal instead of the oily obsidian of the Kagetsuki Clan.
He also observed that whatever state she was in, it was not quite like true sleep — instead, he got the impression that she was frozen. It was either a mode of self-preservation ( a hibernation state to reserve corporeal resources ) or a some sort of spell that kept her just beneath the veil of consciousness. Suspended. Out of his reach.
Kaladin avoided feeling helpless in everything he did. It was a clawing feeling in his gut that drove him, and that determination always rendered the results he wanted. The cost of blood and sweat was little to him. But all the effort poured into research, tracking, and understanding was beyond him in this instance. There were no clues at the site where she was recovered; the brine of the ocean had a way of purifying or breaking down remnants or clues that he might have otherwise followed — tracks, relics, ruins. At the heart of everything he did was the hope that, one day, he'd discover another living scalewalker, a silvery thread he could follow towards answers with enough gravitas to dispel the aching questions eating him from the inside out. Hell, a ruined civilization deep in the belly of the ocean with the bones of his ancestors would have, ironically, brought him more peace than the child had, thus far.
She brought anxiety, fear, confusion, and a newfound desire to protect another life with his own. A feeling he had not felt since childhood. It was not welcome, in truth. It went against everything he had taught himself about survival — this solitary dragon had only needed to worry about his own blood & hide so long that extending his power out to protect another felt taxing. It was a sacrifice he was not ready to make, and yet he'd already expended himself towards that effort in ways he never had for another living soul outside of the Kagetsuki Clan. Perhaps he was selfish, but that had kept him alive, allowed him to continue his search.
Perhaps the search itself had overshadowed his need for answers after all these years.
But if his unsatisfying journey taught him anything about the world, it was that whatever he was seeking was never going to find him the way he expected it. This ...discovery, this strange, catatonic girl, would simply require him to pivot, to grow, to flex muscles in his mind and heart he'd thought long dead. To what ends, Kaladin did not care. It was time for a fork in the road, a crux to conquer. It was incumbent upon him to rise to the task or turn to unworthy ash at its feet.
When his frustration had evolved to worry and desperation, his orders to track down scholars and tomes landing him at countless dead & useless ends, he had exploded in a rage of blue flame. Most of his inner circle had not seen his true form nor the reach of his power — convinced only by the taste of his blood that he was, in fact, a brood scalewalker. But that night, they had seen a glimmer of it, and it had terrified them enough that, the next day, he was given a name: Derya. A local scholar borne of the deep.
In the windowless, hearth-lit Room of a Thousand Drawers, he waited for her to arrive. His letter had been penned by his closest associate, but he'd stood over her shoulder and dictated the words with the exacting precision of a wakizashi heart-strike. If Derya was anything like the rumors whispered to him, she would read between the complex lines of the formal letter and see this was beyond a request for her consultation. If nothing else he gleaned about her was correct, he supposed a healthy curiosity and an academic mind would bring her to him. What more he revealed would depend on her character.
He sat close enough to the fire that its warmth flushed his cheeks. It felt good in the same way a cold-water plunge shocks the nervous system. He imagined himself in a crucible, fortifying himself for the task ahead of him: becoming a worthy advocate for the nameless child of unknown origin sleeping upstairs.
