To Make a Mask

[Darastrix]

Life had been surprisingly normal after Zira had used the Vice district for its actual intended purpose.  Not that he'd expected any specific sort of fallout, but given that he never did anything risque outside of his extremely anonymous online writing (and reading), he'd felt sure that he would be the one to end up with a "The one time I do something..." consequence dropped into his lap.

He almost wished he had.  Absent any repercussions aside from a review from one of his subscribers who had picked up on some shift in tone in his last story and asked if something "new" had happened (Zira hadn't responded, not that it mattered.  Mastermind was almost supernaturally insightful, despite only knowing him online, and his silence was a good as a confession), he kept thinking about going back to avail himself of Sohail's services again.

But just because nobody in his circles had found him out this time didn't mean they wouldn't later.  Sohail was right; he could wear a mask.  Really, what were the odds of someone he knew being in the same place at the same time and able to see him from an angle that would make a mask useless?  He wasn't sure, but it was a non-zero chance, so he wanted a bit more insurance.  Besides, he reasoned, there were other, more innocent settings where a bit of anonymity would be something of a relief.  And he could keep telling himself that those were the reason why he'd ventured into the Scholar's District to learn a bit of illusion or shapeshifting magic.

Yes.  He was looking into shapeshifting to hide his identity for bars, clubs, and karaoke and not at all for a repeat visit to Hopes and Dreams. Totally.  Zira rolled his eyes at himself as he pulled a book from a library shelf and began to flip through it.

[Avian]

"Excuse me!" A friendly voice by Zira's shoulder interjected with confident, but appropriately subdued--this was a library, after all--enthusiasm. The voice belonged to a tall-ish, brown-skinned human in a tweed jacket and oversized glasses with a sunny smile and wiry black hair that had at one point been combed into some semblance of order which had now deserted him. He bore the easy authority of someone intimately familiar with his surroundings as he smiled and pointed to a book on the shelf in front of Zira.

"Yes, hello, I was wondering--could you maybe hand me that book there? Terribly sorry to interrupt. With the greenish cover."

[Darastrix]

"Oh!"  Zira flushed slightly at the realisation that he was blocking a fair portion of the shelf; a common enough occurrence in a library, but his wings tended to exacerbate the problem.  Another point in favour of shapeshifting spells.

"Of course," he murmured, holding his own book in one hand while he pulled the text that had pointed out with the other, automatically glancing down at the title before offering it to Osyris.  "I do beg your pardon," he said, drawing his wings in closer to his back. "I didn't mean to block anyone's way."

[Avian]

"Not a problem in the slightest," Osyris replied good-naturedly, dismissing the incident with a wave of his hand. "Honestly, I'm just delighted to see other living creatures in the library. It warms my heart to see all of these books put to use. Even the, er, slightly less honest-looking," he admitted with a slight flush, taking the book Zira offered and displaying with an offhanded shrug. The tome, a dusty old thing embossed in bronze lettering, read 'Lies Throughout the Ages: A True History of Deceit'.

"I'm teaching a course on religion this semester," he explained without invitation. "As it turns out, the history of religion and the darker implications of its usage in large-scale manipulation are irrevocably intertwined. I'll leave it up to my students to decide which is which."

[Darastrix]

"My present pursuit isn't so driven by scholarship," Zira admitted.  "I've an interest in learning shapeshifting or possibly illusion magic for my own use.  Partly due to religion in a very general sense; angelkin are often expected to hold certain moral standards because of our ancestry, nevermind that we each have our own beliefs like any other person.  It gets tiresome."  Which was true enough (and probably why he was rationalizing the hell out of the decision.) 

"With so many religions in Rune alone, and their varied origins and histories, you must be spoiled for choice of examples," he said. "Are you focusing on any in particular?"

[Avian]

"Not particularly," Osyris replied. "It's more of a large-scale investigation of the role various religions play in the cultural evolution of their respective homelands, though obviously it's impossible to do that without offering a more specific lens through which to teach by example, so we will be touching on a few major religions as a way of offering concrete investigation. Terran Judeo-Christianity, Arcanimisian polytheism, Runic traditionalist idol-worship, to name a few. Though you raise a very interesting point about institutionalized morality! If ever you'd like to come speak to the class, I would be delighted to have you. Or simply to have a discussion with you about the topic sometime. Ah! I'm ahead of myself. I'm Osyris." He offered his hand with a smile, his eyes glimmering with scholastic excitement.

[Darastrix]

Zira's pleasant expression froze into a deer-in-headlights look at Osyris' first suggestion, half a dozen excuses as to why he couldn't possibly springing up to wrestle with his reluctance to be rude by rejecting the proposition.  Thankfully, he had a much more low key suggestion to follow up with before Zira talked himself into an uncomfortable position.  His shoulders eased a bit as he shook Osyris' hand.  Okay, maybe overly enthusiastic, but probably not likely to try to twist his wings.  Hopefully.  "I'm Zira," he replied.  "And I wouldn't mind talking, but I rather doubt I'm qualified to talk to a class on the subject."

Not to mention, he'd never spoken to a class on anything before.

[Avian]

"Oh, of course," Osyris replied, taken aback slightly by Zira's obvious discomfort but smiling in an easy way to try to diffuse the situation somewhat. He resisted the urge to relax the mental leash he kept on his latent psychic abilities just enough to discover the cause of Zira's unease. The angel's subconscious was sending out a powerful "DO NOT DISTURB" vibe that indicated it was full of things he very much did not want strangers to know. It did nothing to color Osyris's opinion of the man--most people felt they were keeping secrets, even if they were utterly innocuous in nature, and he did his best to respect that--and so he dropped the handshake after the briefest of clasps and removed his glasses, folding them into the pocket of his jacket.

"It's nothing urgent, of course," he reassured Zira. "But I think you'd find that qualifications are a very broad and sweeping sort of distinction in my classroom. We are all students of the world. And," he added with a conspiratorial grin, "we are all categorical experts in the field of our individual experiences. But I wouldn't dream of dragging you in against your will. That would rather defeat the purpose of criticizing the institutionalized obligation of religion, hm?"