Eleos walked south back toward the Harbor Wall. He took the road on the western side of town, avoid passing through the bustling Frost Markets: the stretch of street connecting the eastern and western checkpoints of the wall, just south of the docks, where vendors would crowd to peddle their wares without paying the wall's import taxes. Most locals knew that any vendor selling something worth buying wouldn't be so roadblocked by the wall fee, but occasionally there were things worth venturing into the frost markets for. Coffee was one of those things. The plant grew just fine down south across the mountains, making it inexpensive and hard to sell at ports - but up here in the north, it was a rare commodity locals were willing to venture into the Frost Markets for.

He wiped his bare feet on the doormat as he entered the West Checkpoint. 

"Vekla, Oso," he greeted Oso as he passed through.

"Vekla, Eleos," came the reply from the checkpoint officer. He didn't bother asking if Eleos had any newly purchased goods to declare - other than coffee, which locals weren't taxed for (a rule enacted by the governor himself, who actively encouraged local nature mages to try and get the stuff to grow), Eleos never bought anything from the harbor. He curtly nodded to a guard blocking the southern exit, who then moved out of the way before Eleos even broke stride.

He exited onto the western road, which passed by the entrance to the town's Office of the Harbor - a small walled-off keep connected to the main harbor wall - and the town's few other government buildings. The houses were all packed together further south. Most of them, anyways - the rich folked lived on the river bank on the east side. Eleos…Eleos did not live on the east side. When he came to the fork in the road, he did take the east path, however.

It led east along the southern wall of the Office keep, until that wall ended and it continued to lead across a south facing wall of trees. At the end of that was the Garden - a community-kept garden snuggled into the corner of forest between the Wall and the Office keep. There was a small, usually frozen, stone fountain, and a few stone tables where people would come to eat with other locals. It was something of a community hub. Nestled into the furthest corner was the Temple - a small building, no larger than most of the houses, that served as the village's temple of the Twin Faith. With Kodu just a few leagues northward, it was the prominent religion in the Cold Harbor.

H̊ilsıt sat hunched over a scroll on a chabudai when Eleos entered. He looked up and smiled when he saw Eleos pass through the noren over the Temple's entrance. "Ah, vekla Eleos!"

"Vekla, H̊ilsıt," he said. He walked to the back of the room, past the Sozrın H̊ilsıt, where some scrollshelves were filled with what amounted to the town's library. The knobs at the end of the scrolls' rods all had a thin loop of thread dangling from them with the title of the scoll knotted into the thread in the traditional Andurin rope-writing style. Eleos ran his fingers through the rows of threads until he settled on that read "Ononav": Shamanism. He pulled the scroll from the shelf and sat at another chadubai, facing away from H̊ilsıt. The Sozrın saw which scroll Eleos had picked out, however.

"İo̊t lůrem om uşans?" You're going to read that scroll again?"

"So̊şmo̊so," he affirmed.

"Jat muşům?" Why is that?

"Ko̊ lononrınelm jaůl," came the automatic reply. I'm a shaman.

"Tsi sajaůl," the Sozrın laughed, shaking his head. No you're not. "Tsi şoseo̊v ja." You dream to be.

Eleos sighed, rolling the scroll along to the next page. "So̊şmo̊so," he insincerely agreed. But despite the tone of voice, H̊ilsıt's truth-sense didn't tell him Eleos's agreement was a lie. They'd had this argument before, but this was the first time it seemed Eleos's internal confidence faltered - even if he refused to show as much externally. 

"İklo, iklo," the Sozrın exhaled. "Iklo, tsi jaůl." Nevermind, you are.

Eleos looked up, surprised. He opened his mouth to say something, but sharply closed it after a moment's pause, and went back to reading. 

Ruvi sat on the edge of the jetty, dangling her feet over the open water of the Sacred Bay below. The water got its name for what laid further North, on the other side of it: Kodu, the sacred monastery. Sacred, at any rate, to the followers of the Twin Faith. Ruvi's thoughts, however, were far from the monastery, despite how close to it her actual problem resided. 

Why does he do this? she thought. This was not the first time Eleos had inexplicably refused her company. She was as close as somebody could ever get to him, or at least she thought she was, and yet she still couldn't understand. All she wanted was to be next to him - why was that so bad? Why wasn't he okay with that? No, it was more than that to her. Why didn't he want that?

Although she couldn't grasp exactly what it was, she figured she must have been doing something wrong. All she ever was to him was supportive - for the life of her, she could understand why he had such adverse reactions to that. It must have been something she was saying. It must have been, she was totally sure of it. Unfortunately, she had no idea what that thing might be - she felt like she had tried everything. Every way of being kind and gentle and loving: if she knew it, she had tried it with Eleos. And yet still, in spite of it all, she had no idea what he wanted from her and felt as though she had come no closer to finding out.

Suddenly exasperated, she huffed outwardly in her frustration. As she did, she realized that down below her in the water of the bay, a small whirlpool was spinning up. She was angrier than she had realized, and not any less frustrated that Eleos could work her up like this, she now consciously spun the water into a frenzy, faster and faster until she lost her grip and it dissipated. She wished her frustration could have dissipated with it. Instead, it only annoyed her more that she, a world-bound ocean mage, couldn't hold the whirlpool for longer.

She breathed deeply in and exhaled slowly. The bay off the breeze was bitterly cold as it sifted through her fur, and her winter coat was still growing in for the coming season. She looked up at the overcast clouds blocking out the twin suns, missing their warmth almost as much as Eleos's. She wasn't ready to be plunged into winter, not yet. It had come so soon; she hated that. While her tattooing day was still some months away, she was beginning to feel the haste with which months of the adult years rushed by. She hated that, too.

Needing to get her mind off of things that bothered her so much, she stood and turned to walk back down the jetty. There were only a few places in town Eleos ever actually went to, which made her options narrow enough. He had most likely gone off to the Temple to sift through its old scrolls like the old soul he was. As she walked, she briefly wondered why she bothered with him. She pushed the thought from her mind.