The peace that formerly reigned in Terra Nova has eroded, now little more than a memory. War ravages the continent. Disputes divide kingdoms; ideals divide families. The quest for power consumes absolutely and indiscriminately. None are immune to its allure.
Who will rise and who will fall? Only time—and ambition—will tell.
UPDATES
05.26.2023
2 month character creation hold for all existing members begins 6/5/2023. Ended 8/5/2023.
10.29.2023
Change in how times flows. Was 4 IC seasons, now only 2 IC seasons per 1 OOC year.
5 whole years of Heir Apparent goodness! When I started the site, I knew I was hunkering down for the long haul, but I never could have predicted the numerous twists and turns this roleplay site has seen. Hundreds of plots, characters, and members have come and gone, all leaving marks on the site. I am so very thankful for those who have invested. Because you keep coming back, keep getting on, and keep writing, Heir Apparent has the legacy it does today. Three cheers to us!
(Thread for @kester set one week prior to wall destruction)
While Calanthe had much better things to be doing with her time, she had promised to keep. The Dresmondi with her otter dyr had become her pupil, and she wasn’t about to go back on something as easy as sign language. Especially when the more trust she got with this one the better. It would be easy to fit her and the otter in the cage if she so chose. Or maybe she’d just use this trust like interest and accrue it until another Dresmondi could end up in the cage. Time would tell, and these lessons were the way through no matter what.
”Yes exactly, right from your chin outwards typically towards who you are thanking.” Doing the motion again she waited for Kester to do the same. There would be no half-assed training, even if she wasn’t doing it for the best of reasons. And even if she was just a Dresmondi with limited thinking capabilities.
Today’s lesson was taking place in a coffee shop where she had rented a study room, something many students did while working on enlightenment with tutors. She just was teaching something else, and to someone who was probably not accustomed to learning at a higher degree. This wasn’t hunting and gathering, this was living. ”Always make sure to pay attention to your fingers, in this case keep them all together.”
After their initial interaction and brief lesson by the fountain, Kester had expected Calanthe to lose interest in teaching a Dresmondi refugee Arynnite sign language, but instead, this study room and ones like it had quickly become familiar locations. Entertaining himself by watching passersby and repeatedly freezing and thawing a bit of water nearby, Walnut lounged in the window of this particular room while Kester sat at the table with Calanthe, more comfortable with the friendly woman now than she had been when they first met.
Theoretically, after Akagi had gifted her an enchanted quill that wrote down what she said, Kester’s communication challenges with everyone who didn’t have a dyr were resolved, but she wanted to have a contingency to fall back on in the event that the quill and parchment were lost or stopped working. So her lessons with Calanthe continued.
Kester repeated the motion she’d just seen the Arynnite perform, motioning with her right hand from her chin to the woman sitting across from her. At the mention of her fingers, she nodded and did so again, this time making sure that they were together like they should have been before. “I used some basic signs before I found Walnut,” The Dresmondi mused, knowing that her voice would be heard in the quiet of the private room. “This is similar to the one I had for expressing gratitude. That’s a little funny, isn’t it?”
Nodding her head, Calanthe figured it made a lot of sense. A lot of sign language was very easy to guess at even if you didn't know. It was similar to a bow, wave, and motioned from one to another. In the grand scheme of things, it made sense that Kester might have come up with something similar on her own.
Of course explaining that to a smaller mind such as the Dresmondi before her, it was going to have to be dumbed down a little. But she could figure that out. "Fascinating. Kind of like a waving, most places do the same thing naturally." That seemed like a good way to explain the complex nature of human beings.
"Have you been settling in well, clearly you're making plenty of friends." Smiling she signed friends at the end, interlocking c's of both index fingers and then flipping the other way.
Huh. Kester hadn’t thought of it quite like that, but now that Calanthe mentioned it, the similarity seemed rather intuitive. She wondered idly if people in other kingdoms would have signs similar to the ones that the Arynnite had taught her, though she doubted that anyone in Coheed understood anything other than fighting and killing. Now that she thought about it, however, the sign for death was probably fairly universal as well. Funny.
Calanthe’s question had Kester casting her a smile and a nod. “We’ve been in Elyusian longer than I thought,” She admitted with a slight shrug, before focusing on trying to copy the sign that the Arynnite had demonstrated. Friends. Walnut would argue that she didn’t have many of those, not really. “But Walnut and I have met a lot of people. It’s different here than it is in Illianar. Bigger. Fancier.” And not as many refugees walked the city streets.
Kester glanced down at her fingers, comparing them to Calanthe’s, and her brow furrowed slightly. Something didn’t look quite right. “Can you show me what you did again?”
Longer than she thought, well that wasn't ideal for Calanthe. That meant she might leave at some point in the near future, and this whole being nice thing would be a waste of time. An annoying thought she had to swat away because it just meant she had to try harder. "We would visit Illianar when we were younger, had a vacation home there, the coast was beautiful there. But I prefer Elyusian too, where all the learning happens." She actually hadn't been back since her father went missing, mostly because she had been too busy. At least that was an easier way to put it in her head.
"Here let me..." Moving her hands across the table she reached out to Kester's hands to help them form the correct shape. "The shape is more curved then sharp..."
Calanthe offered such a typical Arynnite – and at this point, Calanthe – answer that Kester couldn’t help but smile and let out an amused exhale: Illianar was a beautiful city, but Elyusian was better because all of the big discoveries were made there. “Do you ever get tired of it?” She asked, half genuine and half good-natured teasing. “All that thinking and learning.” The irony of her asking this question while receiving a lesson on sign language did not escape her. “It always sounds like your mind never sleeps. Sometimes it’s nice to just pause and enjoy something instead of trying to figure out everything about it.”
Life in Dresmond was more predisposed toward simplicity, she thought, than life in Arynn Frey. They had their caravans to provide for and their lands to defend, and while existence might not have been as easy as living in this kingdom, their work had provided them with enough purpose that they didn’t feel the need to go finding it on their own. She missed the evenings spent sitting around a campfire with Kaveri and Nephys, enjoying the satisfying tired that followed a good day of work. Some meat from hers and Walnut’s kill would be cooking over the fire, and the warmth of the flames would dance along her skin—
Calanthe’s fingers were also warm as they adjusted Kester’s own, and she relaxed her hand so the Arynnite could move them into the proper shape. Looking at her sign, she could see – and feel – how her fingers more closely resembled what the other woman had shown her. “Oh, I see. Less tension.” Something that Kester historically was not great at. Unhooking her fingers, she shook out her hands and then tried again. The sign felt different this time, more natural, though Calanthe would be the judge of its correctness. “Like that?”
"Never." Calanthe was pretty sure the day she died would be the day that she stopped thinking. She hated to get drunk and dull her mind, the one time she did it leaving her with a headache for a day that made it a wash. Doing nothing was a bane, and she could relax when she was dead or where she wanted to be in the world. "I enjoy thinking, working on new ideas, and learning from others, it's what makes me happy." Poor thing would never understand what it was like to have a high-functioning brain.
It wasn't a skill you could teach, and she wouldn't expect those of a nomadic lifestyle to want to sit and study. They were born different and they would always have their differences. Mainly that Calanthe was better than the woman before her, but that wasn't something you said to anyone.
Watching as the woman corrected her form she nodded with a smile. "Yes, exactly like that."
Taking a breath she looked at Kester. "Is this helpful Kester? Or am I wasting your time on something you don't want to be doing?"
Of course Calanthe would never tire of learning. Kester had expected such an answer, and with a smile and shake of her head, she let the matter drop. The revelation that she had correctly performed the sign had her smiling again, albeit with more satisfaction than fond exasperation. However, her good humor faded quickly.
Uncertainty flickered across Kester’s expression at Calanthe’s unexpected question. Were these lessons helpful or were they a waste of time? Dark eyes scanned the Arynnite’s expression for any clue as to what had prompted the question, but she found none. Had Kester done something wrong, something to displease the other woman? If the wrong person found out, the consequences could be disastrous.
Calanthe might have been nicer than Kester had first expected, but the Dresmondi never totally forgot who occupied the chair on the other side of the table. One of them was the pride and joy of a prominent Arynnite family. One of them was a refugee counting on the mercy of a foreign kingdom for her continued survival.
“I know I have the quill now,” The latter began, hesitant but eager to put to rest whatever troubled Calanthe, “but I don’t think you’re wasting my time. I’m enjoying the lessons.” Her somewhat concerned gaze found the Arynnite’s. “If you’re tired of them or maybe too busy with your work, I don’t want to inconvenience you. We can stop.”