I Could Have Been... [Aurin]

[Arvælyn]

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The Royal Residence
Palatium Umbrarum, Umbrium
47 Searing,
125 Steel

With a half-empty bottle of red wine swinging at his side, the Crown Prince of the Umbrium sauntered into his bedchamber and plopped down with a sigh. He had fulfilled his duty and entertained the Zaichæri delegation with aplomb and continued drinking with his cousins after they'd left, but now that he was left to his own devices he found that he wasn't tired. He disrobed lazily, having dismissed the valets who might have otherwise helped him out of his vestments, and hung his crumpled clothes over the backs of chairs and tucked them under tables. He rewarded himself for his independence with a swig of wine as he padded over to his bed and placed the bottle down on his nightstand as he crawled onto the mattress with a sigh. Falling onto his back, he scooted himself back so he was seated upright against the headboard and crossed his legs before him, one hand rubbing the arch of his foot absently.

"Zaichær." He said aloud to no one, as he pondered the place that had been the subject of the evening. He'd never seriously considered visiting the so-called 'High City of the North'. The tales he'd heard by and large sounded too much like the slum in which he'd been reared, but the High Admiral's take on the place had made it more appealing. He'd all but formally accepted an invitation to visit, at this point, which set the wheels of his curiosity spinning. His tipsy mind turned, as it often did, to Aurin and on this occasion it was for good reason. He had a relationship with the place and might have insight as to how he might pay a visit that didn't cost him more than he was willing to countenance.

It was such a simple thing to reach out to Aurin, through their preternatural connection. It was a wonder he didn't do it more often. But he did it tonight, with a simple query more wondered than presented:

"...you up?"

[Aurin]

Aurin had been drowsing. It wasn't a troubled conscience that made falling asleep a trial sometimes, but his work as an impresario was strangely normal most of the time with occasional lapses into something more akin to his days and nights managing the neighboring cabaret.

He wanted to get out of Kalzasi, but he also didn't want to give up the prestige he had earned there even if some of it had been a perk for efforts made on behalf of others. Well, he wasn't charitable, but landing the job at the theater had been in order to secure Arry a spot in the company. Then Arry moved in to greener pastures and Aurin...

Aurin awoke. He was in Solunarium...

No...

He wasn't alone. But he also sensed Arry and so he didn't jerk awake, but rather blinked blearily. The thaumaturgical entanglement or whatever Valencia had called it wasn't something he understood except intuitively, and so he closed his eyes in his little cottage behind the cabaret and opened them in the royal bedchamber, naked under the crown prince's sheets.

Looking around, he saw no husband. Apparently he was still in Drathera, no doubt attempting to play their senators like one of his instruments.

"Oh, my sweet prince," he said, amused, "you know I'm always up for you."

He shifted under Arry's sheets—or an illusion of him shifted under an illusion of Arry's sheets; he wasn't entirely sure how this worked—but didn't pull down the sheets to take the jest too far.