Welcome to the Caribbean, Love

[Erenthril Mael'tharias]

Cycle four of Melora, Spring, Era XIV

He eased his stride a bit – he kept forgetting just how well everything seemed to be coming together. The Syl’rosyian Elflord was so used to impatiently strutting around and constantly moving from place to place, but with nobody nagging or advising him on the events set in motion… well, he had some time to lose. It was a nice change, that. Being able to take things in stride. Being independent. Although the sojourn of the Regent and his family was more than a little unexpected, and certainly not prepared for, Eren felt he’d done an excellent job setting things up. He had the location of their rooms settled away, and with it he’d casually been able to observe the mannerisms of Milo’s personal bodyguards. He’d caught a glimpse of the rogue being escorted into the grounds, and with him the number of soldiers in his entourage. The curious Elementalist had also caught a glance of some of what could only be presumed as the familial relations to the Regent, and although their protection wasn’t mandatory, Eren had decided to keep tabs on them as well.

He wasn’t quite sure why he was doing this. Something along the lines of leaving Milo’s office warning him of the brooding anarchists running around Arium, and then to see the Regent show up unannounced in Eunesia with hardly any preparation or groundwork laid in beforehand, well, something smacked of stupidity. Or maybe he was just being precarious.

Shrugging off the nagging feeling of uncertainty, Eren took another sip of the colorful fruity drink he was holding before moving to the balcony. The Elflord had seen better days, but all things considered the brightening was relatively calm and he enjoyed the cerulean blue tint of the sky that meshed with the ocean’s green hue. Almond-shaped eyes peered over the wooden balustrade and down at the winding street below, lazily taking in the plethora of movement from the constant buzz of tourists gawking at the Inn. He was dressed rather simply, sporting a beige dyed vest with dark cargo… shorts. It was a foreign concept for the Elf, who had a tendency to hide what his cousin affectionately called ‘chicken legs’, but it had been so bloody hot on the small isle that he’d hardly found any other alternative. Adding on the unusual pair of brown leather sandals to the mix, and Eren had done a terrific job in feeling completely out of place and insecure about his appearance. Which was a pretty difficult thing for the atypically charming Elflord to accomplish.

Sipping his drink and resting his arms, the former handyman kept a trained eye on the crowd below, searching for anything more unusual than a skinny Elf in… shorts.

[Nikki L'Evienne]

Unusual was a word not often used to describe Nikki L'Evienne, but it was perhaps fitting. Having arrived she immediately changed clothes into a white skirt, floaty and cool and to the floor, a deep red vest-top and a white blouse over it with a deep red belt to match. Red shoes and a red bag flung over her shoulder completed the look. Milo's younger sister shared a remarkable likeness to the Regent, dark brown hair tied loosely up at the nape of her neck and moss green eyes wandering over the crowds, wondering who it was that she was nearby.

Walking with the young woman were two men - one of them human with dark blonde hair and a large build, and the other a lionoid who towered above the human and Milo's sister. The three of them were obviously heading to the beach, the young woman having a towel in her hands and ready to peel off the floating top in order to catch some sunshine. Nikki L'Evienne walked with graceful strides and she seemed to be completely at home in her surroundings. She was a willowy beauty and knew it, accepting the appreciative looks that she was given as though they were her due. She had a confidence that her brother often lacked, in hee opinion, for he was too quick to self doubt. Except when it came to telling her what to do, of course.

Thinking of her brother reminded Nikki that Milo and Nell were happily reuniting and that this lovely happenstance gave Nikki L'Evienne the chance to have some unusual freedom ~ a chance that she took with both hands and planned on spending an afternoon laying on the beach while her bodyguards got outrageously bored.

[Erenthril Mael'tharias]

Casting an almost baleful look over the crowd of people, it was not long before the hunter’s gaze fell across his prize: one L’Evienne. They were so easily distinguished nowadays, mostly by the others around them. The troupe of emotionless men standing around her was what initially caught the Elf’s eye, for he had a knack of picking out the small unusual idiosyncrasies in life. And after shifting his attention from the lionoid and blondie it wasn’t hard to see why. She sported a begrudging amount of Milo’s features, and although he had never considered the Regent to be effeminate, she certainly was.

What surprised him was the grace in which she was moving. She carried herself well, and she toted a zealous amount of attraction that worked towards and against her advantage as a woman. What was helpful and bent things in her favor was the small little detail that she knew she was attractive. It was a curious mix the Elflord wasn’t accustomed to seeing anymore.

Collecting himself and already premeditating the direction in which her small entourage was navigating, he abandoned his drink on a nearby side table and left the room, making his way downstairs. A minute later he was exiting the resort, stepping lively through the front doors and sidestepping nitwitted tourists who were stuck gawking at the interior lobby. Eyes bouncing off person to person, they darted and pierced their way through the crowd trying to catch sight of her. The one problem with Chelseanna was the natives’ overenthusiastic finesse for illusions. The faux windows, doorways, arcs… each one seemed to try to throw off the Elementalist’s sense of direction. Eventually, though, he made it to the beach. Eventually.

Hands shuffled in his pocket, all but ignoring the indestructible golden bracelet hanging lazily around his left wrist, he meandered his way across the repetition of short wooden planks that forged a pathway to the basking sands. Squinting his eyes against the sun as the path shifted from grass and dirt to pure sand, he risked a glance at the sun high above in its zenith before glimpsing about at the crashing waves. A few leagues down, there was a nude beach somewhere. His memory was a little too hazy to recall it precisely, but that’s probably where he would have been had he not ran across the Regent’s circus. Mumbling beneath his breath, the Elementalist brushed pass a small family of humans and neatly stole a fluffy blue towel out of the portly mother’s hefty bag. Thus equipped to deal with the sand, he tried to catch a glance at where the latest L’Evienne had set up.

[Nikki L'Evienne]

Nikki walked to the beach, although not the nudist one for that might have had her brother falling over into some sort of seizure there and then. No, she moved her way down to the beach, looking at the architecture and the general sights of the resort as she moved through. She stayed close to her two Rosemen, smiling slightly to herself as she did and then when they got to the sands, the very moment they did, in fact, she stepped out of her shoes, bending gently and gracefully to pick them up and giggling gently as the sand tickled between her toes.

Then, moving towards a clear area of the beach she laid her towel down and then stood up, peeled off her top, revealing her small red vest-top and then stepped out of her skirt, delicately, revealing a pair of clean white shorts. Her legs were long and in no way resembled a chickens, and she lay down on the towel and smiled a dazzling, beaming smile up at the Rosemen who were there.

"Make yourself at home boys, we're here a few candlemarks!" she said, her voice soft and slightly teasing. That said she laid her head back on to her arms, stretched out her long legs and allowed her body to soak up the sun. An afternoon of relaxing, sunbathing and no one, absoltely no one, telling her what to do.

[Erenthril Mael'tharias]

It wouldn’t take long before the boys came flocking, Eren guessed, especially judging by the quick glances and raised eyebrows Nikki was attracting on her short walk to the beach. Give them the opportunity to size her up a bit then invite her to play on the beach, well, even with the help of two Rosemen the situation would probably be an interesting one to handle. Shaking his head and chuckling to himself, the Syl’rosyian Elflord contented himself with a patch of sand not quite too far from her own, comfortable enough for her own space without directly imposing. The last thing he wanted to do was be taken for some creepy stalker – albeit that had been exactly what he was doing. He’d ignore that, of course.

It took a minute or two, but eventually he got situated. The towel – unfortunately a bright mixture of radiant yellow and soft blue, much to his chagrin – was fanned out properly and laid across the bumpy lumps of sand. Mumbling lazy complaints of the bright sun high ahead, Eren settled himself on his back and propped his head up with his hands, sliding his right knee forward and closing his eyes against the searing bright light. To think that humans got a kick out of this… sunbathing gig. The concept was a bit foreign to him, but he took to it readily enough. It wasn’t long until he slid off his vest and was lazily drawing elven runes into the sand beside him.

Meanwhile, Nikki had attracted all sorts of attention from the other tourists on the beach. A pair of giggling collegio girls were whispering in hushed tones and spinning their bobbling heads about at odd intervals to get a glance at the woman with the staunch looking soldiers. Several young strapping men walked by Eren without paying him the slightest bit of mine, though when they passed the long-legged beauty they didn’t bother to hide obvious gawks and stares.

Ignoring the diverted attention of those around them, Eren’s ruminating boredom quickly turned into a perverted torture of Aerternia as he felt the sun burning into his skin. It had been much, much too long since he’d really been outside for the purposes of acquiring a tan, and he was burning. Slipping into a state of quiet meditation, he very prudently conjured up a large stormy gray cloud out of thin air, nonchalantly directing the crosswind to push it towards the sun, and block out those harmful rays.

[Nikki L'Evienne]

The feel of the warm sun on her skin had Nikki laying in pleasure as she considered the few brightenings off. Well, she thought, a rather wry grin crossing her face, not that they were brightenings off for her, she didn't actually do anything to stop doing. But that wasn't the point, really. No, this was a holiday and if nothing else, then it was a chance to do nothing somewhere different.

She felt the sand between her toes and smiled. The looks of the boys as they went past, the giggling of the girls, it all seemed to pass her by. She lay on the beach and closed her eyes, ostensibly simply soaking up the sun. Of course, in truth she was listening, straining to hear what the young collegio girls were saying, wondering if any of the boys had noticed the small birthmark on her outer right thigh, considering if she looked plump in these shorts and all sorts of other worries.

But to the casual observer Nikki L'Evienne lay there and accepted the looks, the comments and the overall feeling of watching Someone Important as her due. She did not seem to be at all uneasy with herself, quite the opposite in fact.

But as she contemplated the future, for she had plans when they got back home, plans that would involve talking to Milo and maybe even moving out of the Palace, the young L'Evienne shuddered slightly in the cold. As she considered that the worries that she had for the future were to be put on hold to enjoy the present, she opened one eye and saw that, of all things, the sky had clouded over. She sighed and watched for a moment to see if it would pass, but when it did not, she sat up, pulled on her blouse and then stood in one fluid, graceful movement before stepping back into her skirt. She bent and picked up her towel, turning to go back to where her brother and Nellie were undoubtedly still fussing over J'lyara and she smiled at Sir Alaine and Sir Rolfe "A reprieve, boys... a reprieve!" she said, with a small chuckle.

As she moved away she caught sight of an elf laying on a very colourful towel and she smiled gently "I heard it was never cloudy here.... what's that about?" she asked, with the good natured humour of one tourist talking to a native. But she spoke to him when she ignored the boys who vyed for her attention, and that probably told Erenthril an awful lot.

[Erenthril Mael'tharias]

Finally… the Elf sighed in blissful harmony, wiping away the loopy elven script in the sand and returning his hands to propping up his head. Basking in the shaded paradise, he all but had perhaps two or three minutes of his own particular version of Aetheria before his ears pricked up the musical sing-song lilt of the woman’s voice. Turning his head slightly, his left eye peeped open and caught a glance of the L’Evienne and her two bodyguards making ready to leave. Suppressing a low groan, the Elf concealed his observance and instead contented himself to looking back up at the sky. Nobody else would notice it, but he was having great fun sketching out various shapes from each particular cloud’s edge, playing at his sport like an artist with a canvas, the invisible paintbrush just beyond the outer edges of most folks’ imagination.

And then a head interrupted his view.

Studying her lips as she spoke, Eren offered a simple smile and propped himself up, ignoring the itchy grains of sand that had settled into the soft lines of his stomach and chest. “You’re right, it’s hardly ever cloudy,” deliberate lie number one.. “you must have brought quite a bit of bad luck with you today!” His eyes danced about her features, recognizing similarities between her and Milo immediately, yet pleasant enough to conceal the sense of omnipotence he felt for the situation. Sitting up completely, he offered her his hand, speaking softly all the while, “I’m Eren. Have you been on the island long?”

[Nikki L'Evienne]

"Quite a bit of bad luck?" she said and smiled gently at him "Are you always so charming to complete strangers?" she smiled gently as she spoke, showing him that she was joking. As he sat up she knelt down next to him and took his hand, shaking it in a firm enough hand grip, although not overly so. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Eren. My name is Nikki, and I've been on the island ages.... maybe.. ohh, let me think.." she considered carefully and then her moss green eyes, so like Milo's twinkled in amusement "maybe three candlemarks now. I'm here on a holiday with my... with my brother and his wife" she said, the pause very pronounced which she hated hearing, and then motioned to the two bodyguards with her "And this is Alain and Rolf my.. friends!"she said, wondering why she was lying to the man who she didn't know, not thinking that two humans and a lionoid were perhaps a strange group of friends and that they were so obviously bodyguards it was unreal.

But just once in a while it was nice to be just Nikki. Not Nikki L'Evienne, sister to the All-Hail-The-Hair-On-His-Head-Regent. "So how about you, Eren? How long have you been on the island?" she asked, sitting down cross-legged and looking at him with the slightly crooked smile that she shared with her brother. "And what is there that's fun around here?" she wondered, although she was fairly sure that J'lyara or no J'lyara Milo wouldn't let her out anywhere fun if his life depended on it.

[Erenthril Mael'tharias]

Eren grinned. “Not nearly, you just caught me on a good day,” he joked, his gaze shifting from the woman kneeling beside him to the open tranquil waves coasting in to the shoreline. Oh yes.. it was a fine day indeed. Hand formally returned to him, he slid it down against the towel and leaned back, using him arms as a buttress to keeping him up. Almond-shaped verdant green eyes reflecting the canopy of time for the Elven People stared solemnly across that cerulean blue horizon, pondering the debacle of what he probably should have said seconds before in response to her question. Something a little more serious, perhaps.

“Three candlemarks sounds like an awfully long time, are you sure you’re not homesick yet?” there was an implicit smile accompanying the two-faced question, a light jab in a spar of hidden juxtapositions he’d enjoy so long as she felt it fit to keep him out of the limelight. To think that she was conversing with her brother’s part-time spy and handyman would probably horrify the imagination. No… he’d play along. To a point.

“I’ve been here too long,” the grudging knack of responsibility slipping its way into the subliminal undercurrents of the trickle of conversation; he was neglecting any form of civic duty he beheld to his people by sitting here. On a beach. What a bum! “But as to forms of activity and entertainment.. there’s always a few good cafes on the Piazza del Mare. Chelseanna boasts quite the chorus of violinists as well, and there’s plenty of hikes you can take up to that inactive volcano over…there,” accentuating on the fly, he turned around and finally located the great big hulking mountain that seemingly popped up out of the middle of nowhere. Absorbed in the frivolities of the beach, it was hard to notice things that seemed distantly trivial.

[Nikki L'Evienne]

Ohhh he was sassy. She liked that in a man, she considered and smiled a genuine, slightly lopsided smile at him. "Well, I would be homesick but I'm a poor little rich girl with nary any attention and no one to notice whether I'm there or not, sir" she said, with a smile and a wicked gleam in her eyes "So it's nice just to have someone talk to me, so it is".

But then, at the suggestion that he'd been here too long Nikki sensed some real conflict in him. She glanced at him and her eyes were piercing, seeing him clearly, it seemed. She wondered briefly what his history was. MAybe he was a former pirate, settled down and now missing his life as a rascal on the seas? Maybe he was a nobleman grown tired of the trappings of wealth and determined to live out his cycles here, on the soft golden beaches of Chelseanna? Perhaps, even, he was a thief, in hiding and unable to ever return home where his one true love thought him dead. At the last thought Nikki smiled a cynical smile to herself at her own foolishness and chuckled slightly "Well too long at something pleasant is better, I would say, than not long enough at the same, wouldnt you?" she asked, purposely teasing and gentle tone to her voice, in case he should think her pushy.

"The Piazza del Mare" she said, the words rolling on her tongue and she gazed wistfully for just a moment before turning back to him. She felt very very sure that Milo wouldn't let her go to such a place for it was sure to be full of undesirables and people that he didn't want her to meet. But it did sound nice and she glanced up at the inactive volcano and considered that if it were going to bubble into life again, it was likely to be whilst they were visiting, if current patterns of fate were anything to go by.

Still, the handsome elf in front of her required some answer and she smiled softly "It sounds wonderful, it must be said. I would love to visit there some brightening. And who knows, whilst here I might even manage it. I'm not much of a hiking kind of girl, though ~ I'm more for.. well, sunbathing" she said, motioning to the beach where the cloud still hung overhead and smiling "Sunbathing.. shopping.. that kind of thing. All dreadfully shallow.I've heard tell" she continued, leaning forward in a slightly conspiratorial fashion "That hiking might be character building and I feel that since I am so full of character already, to build any more would be a dreadful thing for those around me to endure"

Something at last that Milo was likely to agree with. She considered, briefly, inviting this Elf back to meet Milo, but that was no good and no use. He would disapprove and tut and his eye would twitch, and where would she be then? No. Better to chat here a while and then move on, she considered.

[Erenthril Mael'tharias]

“Too true, too true!” the Elf applauded the human’s rationale with an appreciative grin and a satisfactory nod, had she been a more masculine character the clap on the back signifying a job well done would have been in order to boot. Given that she wasn’t, however, and secretly knowing her position in the whole ‘scheme’ of things, that is, essentially royalty beyond which the likes of him would ever dream, he found it much more appropriate to grant her another simple smile and that charming flash of pearly whites.

And yet she had flaunted about the sense of propriety and wealth that accompanied her surname. A poor little rich girl…Jalat, why didn’t she just offer herself up to be mugged? Eren clucked his tongue in mild annoyance, none visible of course, but hadn’t she any common sense? He supposed the begrudging company of two highly trained bodyguards deterred her from thinking much merit to her own personal safety, but seriously – who did she think she was to put herself at risk? It was brash actions like these that caught the over analytical Elf (at times, for Eren was becoming more and more a ‘act first ask questions later’ sort) and made him detest everything outside of his own culture.

And then he was reminded of the radical vagabonds back at the Combine, and why exactly he’d left the snotty nosed elitists.

“Not much of a hiker? That’s unfortunate, travelling has given me some of the most beautiful vistas in life,” ever the clever charmer, he waved a hand.. directly at her, and the beach backdrop. Playing along with his joke, he added a wink before standing up entirely and fumbling with his shorts’ pockets. “But the Piazza is not that far away, so there’s no need to visit it another brightening. It’s what, ten minutes? We could stop by and treat you to the café, I’ll even be so kind as to pick up the tab,” he grinned, ignoring all precedents. Something was amiss here.

“Or would your…erm, friends, be disinclined to go?” he asked, tossing an obvious tilt of his head towards the lionoid and blondie.

[Nikki L'Evienne]

Smooth indeed as he waved his hand at her, naming hiking as the reason for some of the most beautiful vista's in his life. She smiled gently, and stood in one fluid motion beside him, smoothing down her long white skirt and brushing the sand from it. She watched the grains drip away from the stark whiteness of the cotton and smiled slightly, wondering at the reality of it all and the very.. common-placeness of it in a place so far from the ordinary.

The Piazza not so far away? Oh.. but... she didn't know this man and he was offering to take her for a visit to the cafe and she smiled a gracious smile, all ready to reply and Sir Alaine, the blonde man stepped in "I'm afraid we needs must be going back now, Miss Nikki. Your brother will be worried and would not want us to go anywh