4:7 Any mirror.

Out in the open air, immediately in front of the still-closed leather sheet that separated the open side of the smithy below the Raibeart home from the Suzailian street beyond, one grey-clad Shadar-kai had her arms sweetly wrapped around the waist of a slightly-shorter Tiefling.  They had been standing that way for some time- it had been the dark of early morning when they first came out, but the sun was climbing its way over the city's buildings with determination.

"Again," Silveredge said with quiet glee.

Obediently, Mi'ishaen gave her a quick and gentle peck on the lips.  Niku, just as excited about the repeated interaction as Silveredge was, turned useless circles while panting out thin, high whinnies.

"You'll get it from them, if they care whether or not you make it over there by a certain dial position," Mi'ishaen joked.  "I could do this all day."

"There is no time, in the hells- or so I've heard," Silveredge smiled.  "Endless torture- and no sun, no dial, no hour glass to measure it by."

Mi'ishaen snorted ungraciously and rolled her eyes.  "Asmodeus should rethink that.  He should have an hour glass with sand that falls through the spindle at the rate of one grain per hundred years."

"Oooh, what if he attached an hour glass of blood to his victims, and when it fills and it's time to flip it, he just... doesn't?" Silveredge suggested as she squeezed Mi'ishaen just slightly tighter for a moment.  "What if he makes the blood disappear from the bottom bulb, then lets it fill with fresh stock?"

For a near half minute, the two stood, hips to hips, their fingers laced behind each other's backs, contemplating Silveredge's idea in silence.

"That bottom bulb would get really dirty, after a while," Mi'ishaen finally said.  "Maybe a blood dial, where the blood inches all the way around the disc as slowly as possible before spilling out on the ground.  You pull the supply every so often.  Clean the groove."

"How clean is anything, though, in the hells?"

Mi'ishaen shrugged.  "When I get there, my space will be clean.  'Outside mess, inner stress,' my brother always said."

Silveredge's eyebrows arched upward incredulously.  "You intend to manage a stress-free space in the hells?  How?"

"Well, the first step is keeping it clean."

Silveredge laughed freely, a sound that brought a warm and genuine smile to Mi'ishaen's face.  Niku padded back and forth for a few moments, then actually gave a sharp, solid bark.  When the two women looked down at him, he got extra excited, and began bouncing around like a much-smaller puppy.

"Did you notice that he got a bit taller?" Silveredge asked off handedly, after she'd recovered herself.  "His nose used to meet the middle of my thigh, but now it is nearly to my hip."

"Must be why he was so tired coming over here," Mi'ishaen sighed as she leaned her head on Silveredge's shoulder.  "Doing two inches worth of growing takes a lot out of you."

Niku took advantage of the fact that Silveredge was wearing her wide, permissive training slacks, and nipped a bit of the cloth in order to gently tug at her.

"Mo luran, eh?  Mo luran," Silveredge said quietly as she looked down and scratched the backs of his ears.  "Tha mi còmhla riut, mo laochain."

 Niku let go of Silveredge's slacks and bounced a few steps away, then began running a few sideways steps back and forth, as though he were trying to outmaneuver some invisible prey.

 "So you're making him learn your mother's language too?" Mi'ishaen said with a playful groan.  "Dog, you're gonna be smarter than me, soon.  Take care of her while you're gone, or I'll make a coin purse out of you."

 "Oh!" Silveredge exclaimed as she let Mi'ishaen go completely to put her hands over her mouth.

 Niku gave a few whimpers, but laid the front of his body close to the ground while valiantly trying to wag his stump of a tail.  Mi'ishaen let Silveredge go and took a half step backward, so that Silveredge could more comfortably decide to follow him.

 "He knows I don't mean it," she joked, squatting down to his level.  Niku, clearly overjoyed by the prospect of Mi'ishaen being within tackling distance, did just that, slamming himself into her with a force that provoked a few frustrated puffs from her.

 "With you, you might," Silveredge replied, taking her hands away to reveal that she was smiling.

 "Oh, go on; get out of here," Mi'ishaen said with a dramatic huff as she struggled against Niku's weight.  "That prancing almost-elf will have you on your knees for hours, if you don't hurry up."

 "No, he won't," Silveredge corrected, suddenly serious.

Even Niku realized the change of tone.  He hopped off Mi'ishaen at once, and she sat up.

 "I was planning to simply be quiet, as I have been at other times that I've been owned.  But the heat of your rage...I felt it so strongly, it was as though you'd been right behind me.  So I let my memories punish him.  If he ever goes to the marketplace, I know you will delight in robbing or harming him, but while he is closer to me than he is to you, I will haunt his mind with every wound I have ever suffered at the slavers' hands- and they were many."

 Mi'ishaen nodded, satisfied, but speechless.  Silveredge leaned down and gave her one final peck on the lips.

 "I'll return."

 And off she went, playfully hopping over Niku, who bounced up and chased her into a full run down the street.  A few neighbors who had been minding their own business gave short yelps of alarm as they raced, since Niku was somehow less nimble than his two-legged mistress.  His claws scraped and scrabbled on the street's cobblestones.

 Mi'ishaen watched the two hurry down the mostly empty street with a long, clear sigh.  Behind the buildings, the sun gained greater and greater dominance in the sky with each passing moment.  As she gazed at the moving shadows on the ground, she noticed a large figure out of the corner of her eye.

"Morning, Lyosha.  Really early morning- why are you awake?"

 "Dark sky, dark liquor.  This makes for the sleeping.  Clear sky, clear liquor.  This makes for the waking up.  It is a good morning, is it not?"

 "Well, it's a morning, at least.  You can't really tell whether or not a morning's going to be good until it's almost noon."

 Down the street, somewhere on the other side of some other houses, children began screaming and splashing water, likely wasting the supply with which they were supposed to be washing their hands and faces.

 "Off to join the city guard?" Mi'ishaen teased, looking over her right shoulder at the Dragonborn.

 Aleksei scoffed and sat down next to Mi'ishaen.  He laid his sheath-less kilij over his knees, and Mi'ishaen raised an eyebrow at him.

 "They're gonna get you, these people, for not having the ribbon on that," she noted.

 "They maybe are not putting the ribbon in the right place," Aleksei replied with a non-plussed tone.  "Is it the fighting they are wishing to prevent, or simply the weapon leaving the sheath?"

 "Who knows," Mi'ishaen sighed, taking her weight off her arms so that she could lay all the way down on her back.  Once she did so, she closed her eyes.  "They prevent knife fights, but not tavern brawls, which can kill a body just as fast.  You gonna show 'em how it's done?"

 "I am now so long not moving, that I must now find desire to move," Aleksei laughed.  "Every liquor will make the one that kisses it maybe a little lazy."

 "Pfft, that's the first bad story you've ever told.  Call it what it is.  You don't like that pack of thieving assholes."

 Aleksei laughed even harder.  "How is it that you are angry at the guard for doing something that you also are doing?"

 "Oh no, no way," Mi'ishaen retorted immediately, turning her head so that she could look at Aleksei momentarily.  "When I steal something, there's skill involved.  Those good for nothing plate armored prancers just take things and then conveniently forget to give them back.  Not the same."

 "Then maybe it is that we are both angry at the guard," Aleksei relented, "but each for our own reason."

 "I heard they took somebody's prayer book," Mi'ishaen continued as she turned her head straight again.  "That's filthy.  You know I wouldn't do that, right?"

 "I do know that," Aleksei nodded gravely.  "In this, you are honorable, like a true warrior."

 "Me?" Mi'ishaen laughed half-heartedly, turning her head so she could look at Aleksei again.  "A warrior?  Out to the fields and graze, with that."

 "Oh?" Aleksei asked, ducking his head down slightly.  Mi'ishaen found herself wondering why he bothered, since it wasn't possible to see her on his left side. 

 "Who is this woman then, who when I was in chains, even while struggling against poison in the air, is killing others so that I may live?  This is not that same one?"

 "They were attacking everybody, Lyosha," Mi'ishaen answered, lifting her head and laying it back down straight.  The sky had melted down from the fiery oranges and reds of early morning toward a calm, but cloudy blue.  "If I'd have ran, they'd have killed me; why would I let that happen?"

 "Another person might let attackers take them or kill them," Aleksei reasoned.  "Letting someone do these things to you is strange to you, because you are warrior.  Maybe a little quieter warrior than I, but not by much."

 In the house behind them, some rustlings, rattlings, and thumps made it clear that the Raibeart children were being awakened, either by their mother or by their matronly eldest sister.

 "Do you have family somewhere?" Mi'ishaen asked suddenly, turning her head to look at Aleksei again.  "Still living?"

 "You are blade daughter, and Rasha is chain daughter.  This is enough for me," Aleksei replied without a moment's hesitation.

 "No, really," Mi'ishaen insisted, sitting up and crossing her legs so that she could comfortably lean forward to see the other side of Aleksei's face.  "Aunts and uncles?  Brothers, sisters?  Anybody?"

 He had blissfully closed his other eye, as though he were in prayer or meditation.

 "You really are my blade daughter; I believe this.  You are protecting me, and also things that I am owning, as though they are your own.  I have no other reason for this, but that we are kin."

 And despite her hesitancy to claim kinship, Mi'ishaen found that she had no more reasonable explanation for her actions toward Aleksei either.  She laid back down on her back without speaking for a few moments, listening to the conversations sparking up and down the streets, the sounds of doors and windows opening and closing, and the banging of marketplace stalls as they were being put together and set up for the day.

 "You are feeling well?" Aleksei asked calmly.

 "No," Mi'ishaen admitted.  "I feel like a cart full of shit.  No feed, no straw.  Just shit.  What kind of liquor works for that?"

 Aleksei smiled a very slow, faintly uncomfortable smile.  " 'Any mirror will reflect your image.' "

Mi'ishaen turned her head toward Aleksei again, and noted that he was still in a position of meditation.  " 'Any mirror wi-'... wait... any mirror?  Does liquor even count?"

 " 'Be still,' my staff father is once telling me," Aleksei replied, " 'and you will see your reflection even in a stone.' "

 Mi'ishaen thought better of making a smart remark, and sat up.  As soon as she did, Aleksei opened his eye, picked his kilij up off his knees, and laid it across her lap.  Mi'ishaen noted the weight first, of course, but kept quiet about it.  She took her time simply gazing down at the kilij's side, which shone with the effort Aleksei had put into cold hammering, sharpening, and buffing it some days before.

 Sarai had walked around the house to get to the outside of the shop, whose front flap was still closed, but stopped cold when Aleksei held up a single scaled finger to slow her advance.  He remembered that she was terrified of his half green-scaled right hand only after he watched her tear back around the house like a frightened rabbit.

 "I can't do all this meditation stuff," Mi'ishaen replied simply, looking up from the sword.  "But thank you- maybe I'll at least understand, one day.  How do I give this back properly?  Is there some sort of ceremonial way?"

 "Da, but managing not to cut yourself while you lift her is ceremony enough," Aleksei said smilingly, twisting himself to reach his clawed hands over to her.

 The Tiefling considered her reflection one last time as she carefully positioned her fingers under the flat of the blade and its hilt. Aleksei, with both his palms turned upward as though he were going to beg alms, put his hands next to hers and took the weight of the weapon away from her before lifting it completely to his lap.

 "It is a good piece, I'll tell you that," Mi'ishaen commented as she laid back down on her back, somehow wanting to console Aleksei for what seemed to be a failed attempt at guidance.  "When we first made it to Urmlaspyr and you were just taking the heads and arms off those rat folk-"

Sylvester ambled, slowly and discontentedly, around the side of the house.  The sound of his sandal soles sliding and scraping on cobblestone stopped Mi'ishaen's words in her mouth.  The young boy loped directly up to Aleksei and plopped down on his other side.

 "Mama set out all the places for breakfast and won't serve, since you two are missing.  Sent Sarai, but of course she came back running, and- ugh, I just didn't want to listen to them anymore.  I just left.  Papa'll have my hide, but the sound of them makes me want to- to just- I don't even know; I just hate it, that's all.  I wish I could just tell them both to shut up."

 "So then do that," Mi'ishaen sighed, vaguely irritated by the child's interruption.  "If you've got breath to complain, you've got breath to do something useful.  Go in there and tell them that they sound like a pair of cuckolded fishwives."

 Sylvester leaned forward to stare with amazement at the Tiefling.

 Aleksei got up, letting out a gusty sigh as he did, as though it took him a great deal of effort to rise.  "You are seeing your reflection after all," he stated without looking back at Mi'ishaen.  "Come, little quill brother; we will go inside.  Mishka is maybe having little more repairing to do here."

 "Mama's not going to serve without her," Sylvester warned, looking up at Aleksei.

 "I am remembering that blacksmiths with the blessing of your rulers are not able to say, 'I will not work this day,' " Aleksei explained as he put his green and silver scaled hand on Sylvester's narrow shoulder.  The child got up immediately, as if commanded to do so.  "Already others are readying their wares for the selling.  I am very much doubting that your father will open his shop without eating, so I am also very much doubting that your mother will continue to refuse him food."

 Mi'ishaen watched them walk back around the house with a dry, half-hearted chuckle stuck in her throat.  Surely enough, just as Aleksei had said, the absence of their conversation left the sounds of the awakening marketplace ringing up the streets.  The Tiefling watched the sky pale from its orangy red glory into a calm, but cloudy blue.

 "Gods, I thought you'd never be rid of that lizard."

 Peace drained out of Mi'ishaen instantly.

 "Let Greyscale hear that," she spat without even turning her head.  "He'll choke you to within an inch of your life."

 "No, he won't," the Gnome replied as she leaned on the support beam that was off to Mi'ishaen's left.  "He's only ever done that to you.  And you damn sure deserved it."

Because I'm an actual challenge.  Maybe even a threat, Mi'ishaen thought.  Where she lay, only the wrinkling of her nose indicated the disgust that Cloud's words had incited.

 "What do you want?" the Tiefling finally asked, when she could manage to keep herself from snarling.

Cloud sighed before she answered, but at least attempted to sound amiable.  "The only way I can get rid of your assignment is to get you back on it, so here I am, again.  In person.  To ask you to pretty, pretty please come back and do your job."

 "No."

 "Come on, it's a quiet job."

 "I said no."

 "I could use the help, is that what you want to hear?  I almost blighted; it was this close."

 The sound that forced itself out of Mi'ishaen was quite close to a genuine laugh- she had to admit to herself that was genuinely amused at the prospect of the second best high-flier nearly getting caught at what she'd just marketed as a 'quiet' job.   "Be more careful, I guess."

 "Nothing will happen to you.  You won't be jumping around like before."

 "So how'd you almost get spotted, if it's that easy a job?"

 "You know, if I were Greyscale, I'd have fired you by now," the Gnome burst, unable to contain her frustration any longer.  "It's been weeks, and you-"

 "Almost died, I thank m'lady so very, very kindly," Mi'ishaen hissed, instantly furious.  "I played a stacked game dealt for three with just one hand.  You don't get to bitch to me about me not doing my job when you not doing your job almost cost me my fucking life."

 "You act like you're the only one who's ever gone to jail!" Cloud snorted.  "Guess what, princess?  You're not.  And- oooh, surprise, surprise!- there'll be more after you."

 "So go take your turn," Mi'ishaen snapped back, finally sitting up.  "Go vomit up half-rotted food and mossy water.  Alone, in silence, and darkness, until time stops making sense, and you're actually grateful when a jailer shows up."

 "Oh, boo-hoo-hoo!" Cloud moaned in a mockingly sorrowful voice, turning around the pillar so that she could look at Mi'ishaen's radiant ruby eyes.  "Look, I'm sorry you went to the lockup, I am, but being jail shy doesn't get you out of doing your job!"

 "Was yours before it was mine," Mi'ishaen said scornfully as she laid back down as though the confrontation were over.  "So you do it.  Bye.  Scat.  Go on."

 "Ugh!  You're a waste of time," Cloud frowned.  "Lying on your back and whining like a child, while living in somebody else's house, on your girlfriend's coin."

Mi'ishaen turned her head as she laid on the ground, and took a moment to simply look at the Gnome in front of her.

In a stone.  Got it.

She turned her head straight and closed her eyes, taking one deep breath.

"You want me back?"

The Gnome turned her head slightly and raised an eyebrow.  "Cypher does; I don't give a shit.  Who knows what Grey-"

Mi'ishaen slammed both hands on the ground and sprung up with a single beautiful surge of energy.  Cloud ducked the Tiefling's right hand, but not her followup strike, and in the moment that it took to right herself after the duck, Mi'ishaen had enough time to crack her bare left hoof into the Gnome's jaw.  Cloud staggered, and Mi'ishaen caught her in the nose with a vicious left handed straight punch.  Predictably, the smaller creature twisted and fell to the ground face-first.  When she did, Mi'ishaen put one hoof on the other side of the Gnome's prostrated body, scooted both her arms close to her sides, then picked up her tail and slammed herself down.  She listened to the guttering gasps that Cloud offered for a few seconds, then leaned forward so that she could whisper calmly into Cloud's ear.

"Listen very closely, because I want you to take this back to Greyscale word for word.  I was told that both the operations I got accidentally drafted into were the culmination of at least a solid year of chess mastering, so I had to be careful.  I sat and watched while the 'girlfriend' of whom you so blithely speak suffered.  I couldn't speak to her, send her a note, even, but for everybody thinking I was gonna blow the job.  You said you were gonna run recon on the Dragons, but you didn't.  No one even knew the confiscation chest that I found, by accident, even fucking existed.  Go-time rolled around in the market square, and you ran, like the weakshit, useless bitch you know you are.  So go tell Greyscale that if I ever, ever, have to work with you again, I will finish the job first, and then I will kill you, in the absolute coldest of blood.  There will not be a spell, not a choke hold, not a single fucking prayer in the deepest of Baator that can stop me.  Not.  One."

When Mi'ishaen got up and turned around, she found a visibly stunned Iordyn staring at her with astonished eyes.

"I know, I know; she doesn't want to serve until we're all there," she crabbed, flapping a hand as though she were waving away a fly as she walked past him.  "That conversation just took longer than I thought it would."

"Polite conversations don't leave people face down in the ground," Iordyn countered, unsure of whether to follow Mi'ishaen or check if the Gnome were alright.

"How many polite conversations with pickpockets have you had?" Mi'ishaen asked, suddenly stopping her advance.  Iordyn turned to look at her, but was cut off before he could answer.

"If the answer is 'none,' do your purse a favor and leave her right where she is.  Your sister sent you to get me, and I'm coming.  Don't make her have to send somebody else to come get you."

When Iordyn turned around to look back at the figure on the ground, he found that they had gone- disappeared as though they had never been there.  He sighed and shook his head as he turned to follow Mi'ishaen, feeling that something wasn't quite right, and suspecting that he would have to get used to that feeling.