He's back at Mom's targets because he can't just throw knives at Gabriel every day. And besides, sometimes he wants to get experimental. And nostalgic. Like tying long strips of cloth to the end of each knife and tentatively seeing if he can swing it anywhere near the same. Usually, the answer is no, but that doesn't stop him from trying.
But as the second cloth snaps in half mid pull-back, with a quick catch and a curse, he starts to think that maybe this just isn't going to happen. Nothing is as good as him. Which feels simultaneously bolstering and truly, deeply disappointing. He frowns down at the useless knife and sighs. Gotta make do. There's no way around it...
It's not unusual to find Aletheia wandering around the Meadous. She makes patrols twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening--and sometimes during the middle of the day. This place is her home. There's no reason she can't just enjoy being in it.
But she comes across that strange boy again, and there he is...playing with knives in front of that woman's home again. His mother, he'd said. She tilts her head a little as she smells him, a bit of a smirk on her lips.
"Hey, Cocoberry," she calls, stopping and leaning on the white cane with the dragon head that she's taken to carrying around again. "Getting pretty good with that."
The cloth thing is clever. Not perfected, but she can't help but be just a little impressed with the ingenuity.
He looks up, frowning at the nickname and at her. And then at her comment.
He scoffs in offence. "First off, I'm not 'getting pretty good' I am good," He says. "Second... it's this cloth that's the problem. The cloth and the balance of the knife, with only so much improvement available for either."
He looks down on the knife again with disdain, the sort of judgement one reserves for another person that's disappointed them as opposed to a tool that's not doing it's job.
"Which is why I said Pretty Good. And not Good." There's an air of teasing in her tone that she turns on him for just a few seconds, but not more than that. She already knows he doesn't have much patience for games.
He huffs, but her shortened teasing wins her favor. He doesn't sour towards her, this time. Of course, he doesn't look all that happy either. Her mood is always bright and a little mocking-- like he usually is, and it bothers him just as much that his first reaction is this. He tries not to think about that.
"Ugh. No." It's admitted rueful and reluctant. "And don't offer rope, I am not going to practice a lasso."
"Lucky for you, I was going to suggest a sword. I'm not a one trick hoofbeast, you know."
Whether he knows what that is or not, she continues on, leaning more heavily on her cane. "I wouldn't be much of a guard if all I could swing around was some perfectly knotted rope."
He straightens up, a definite look of surprise upon him. And confusion.
"The way I recall you talking about hanging, I'd think you were. I thought you hadn't an interest in swords." A pause. "How much of a guard does this place even need? The most fighting that's happened has been around me."
"I can like more than one kind of weapon," she chides him, like that's the most obvious thing in the world.
"But the guard isn't really about keeping people from fighting. You guys manage yourselves. It's more about keeping a watch on anything that might have come in to mess with this place." She smirks a bit at him. "Serves as a welcoming party too, if you remember."
That gets another scoff from him. "Oh, I remember. Crazy alien hiding in the trees. Some welcome. I've met enemies with more grace," He says wryly. That's not entirely true but still.
And with that he lifts a brow. "Do things normally come in here to mess with this place?"
She just shrugs back at his retort. He implies that she lacks grace, and he's free to think that, even if he's wrong. He's still in better spirits than he was when they first met.
"Not anymore. They used to, at least a couple times. There's not many people who were around for that anymore. These days, Zephyr guards us pretty carefully. Nothing gets in or out without their knowing."
"No late night sneaking out?" He says with mock disappointment. "Oh, isn't that just going to break the bitty little hearts of these villagers. How will they ever cope?" His words are drier than most deserts.
He doesn't ask why she bothers then. A little extra protection can go a long way.
"So does that make you the old guard then? Tales of yore featuring these terrible things?"
She can't help it. She laughs at his dryness because it's the same attitude she's had towards most of them for a while now. A bit of kindred spirit between them.
"Yeah. I'm old guard. I've been here... Only a few months shy of when the Meadous started existing." She pauses, giving him a raised brow. "Are you really asking me for horror stories from the old days?"
"Of course I am! You can't just tease me with the fact that there are stories and leave out the details," He says, snickering.
But aside morbid fun and curiosity, it's just smart to know these things. If there are complications down the line, he wants to know what they're up against.
If she could, Aletheia would roll her eyes at him. It's a shame he wouldn't really notice the difference--but she still makes the physical gesture just the same.
"Alright. Well... I guess the worst of it was when Pai showed up. They're Zephyr's cousin. I'm not sure why they did it--maybe they got jealous of this world or something, but they tricked Zephyr into letting them in. And once they were in, they started messing with us. Taking minor grievances and fanning them into huge disasters. One person every day, and we never knew who that new person was going to be until some tragedy was already upon us."
"A lot of people died. Kelt managed to put them back together, but it took us weeks to pull together enough to give Zephyr the strength to kick Pai out again." She gestures back towards the workshop in the distance. "I used to live over there, actually. Where the workshop is now. When Pai got to me, I turned my resentment at being here on the house that Zephyr made for me. And I burned it to the ground."
She pauses, frowning a little more. "I also tried to hang the mail sloth... and I attacked a friend, when he tried to stop me. It feels kinda surreal, thinking back on it. It was all stuff I was feeling, but without all the other stuff that kept me from acting on it. Or directed in ways that don't make any sense anymore."
For all his teasing, he listens quietly and looks thoughtful. Not much shock or horror, but no scoffing either. Everyone, filled with rage and stripped of inhibitions in a go? Yeah, he can imagine what that looks like.
Making it happen to only one and changing that every day is both sick and an interesting psychological play. The solution is one to give thought to as well. As much as he'd never admit it, it occurs that if uniting the masses is what it takes, Ichigo probably could have had them out of here in a day.
He turns to that workshop, but he can imagine a burned down heap. When he turns back though, this of all things has his brow lifted.
"I can't say I like being interrupted either, even if it were a friend, but I've gotta wonder what a sloth managed to do to you. And how someone who apparently resented this place turned around to being town guard." Not that he's judging, but he is curious.
"The sloth didn't do anything. She was just a part of all this." She gestures around to the village, then drops her hand back down to her hand. One finger taps against the white dragon head. She chews on her lip as she thinks. She could probably make a joke about all of it--dismiss it without too much thought. But it's a hard thing to joke about for her with so many feelings attached to it all.
"I can't say it made a lot of sense. I went back and forth on it a lot. When it started, I was just trying to keep a friend company. She'd promised some asshole to make patrols around the village, and it seemed shitty and boring for her to do that alone. When she disappeared, I kept it going. Because it was needed. People live here, and I wanted to give them a safe place to live." Or a safe place to rest, in some cases. After hearing all the crazy places out there, it made this place seem all the more unique.
"But I still wanted to go back to the place I came from. There were people trapped back there, being put through the same hell I escaped from, and I couldn't just leave them there. I had to go back and save them." Her frown deepens, and the words get stuck in her throat. She licks her lips, then inhales a deep breath, trying to loosen them. The pressure in her chest doesn't ease, but the words do, quiet though they may be.
"About a year and a half ago, I realized that was never going to happen. They were already dead, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. People had been trying to tell me that since I got here, but I didn't want to believe them. So when it finally sank in, I realized this is the only home I have left. So I don't want anything happening to it."
Her justification is enough for him. It still leaves the question of what changed with all that anger, but he can wait for that, and in short time, she delivers her answer.
It starts pretty straight forward. He can't even say he questions her choice to keep the habit going, even if he knows he wouldn't do the same. She's a hero type. He's not even sure he's surprised. So many he knew before... but it doesn't change anything. It's all just a ploy, an act, some thing they fool themselves into. The knowledge doesn't sting, it's scalded over to uncomfortable numbness.
And they believe it. He's sure she does too. It's the latter bit that unsettles more.
"So, you were angry at this place because you thought it kept you from them." Probably easier than being angry at herself. He could see Ichigo thinking the same way, that there had to be a way...
He doesn't want to ask, but he doesn't think he can leave it unsaid either. "... What made you realize?"
She shrugs a little at his conclusion. He's not wrong. Angry, resentful--it's the same emotion, and in the end she hated being here because it wasn't where she was needed. Or where she thought she was needed.
"...We had something like that memory tree before. It was these frogs that appeared one day. Touching them would trigger remembering things... I touched one, and I remembered something that I couldn't remember before. A memory that I didn't have."
She exhales a breath, that tension still present in her shoulders and her chest. She might be blind, but her attention shifts from the ground to the village around them--anywhere but on him. "See, I knew what happened. The place where I was before... It was a space station, and it crashed into a planet. I was told there were no survivors. But I thought because I was taken from a time long before that, I could go back to when I came from. I thought I could change the future--or at least make a new future where everyone didn't die." She snorts a bit, and there's a hint of bitterness in her expression for just a moment. But it's gone again as she continues. She picks up the cane, twirling it idly in her hand just to fidget with something.
"That's... not really how time works. I should have known that. But when I got that new memory, I realized something was wrong. My memories were jumbled together--I thought I had skipped around in time already, so going back would be just more of the same. So when I got those sorted out... I realized I had already lived and died on that space station. So there wasn't anything to go back to."
He knows what that's like. Learning about White hadn't been enjoyable and that hadn't had any magic frogs involved. He can't tell where her attention is now, but he wouldn't want it on him if he could.
There was another thing that learning about White had shown him. It was that there'd never been any hope at all of going home.
"But there was still something worth fighting for. Even if you thought you lost it all." The word come out quiet, his eyes boring through the earth.
And then, suddenly, he's shaking himself out. "Well, I don't know anything about time either but it sounds like you've gotten smarter for all that, so at least there's that. Plenty of fools who'd just keep beating their head against a wall and calling it progress."
He turns his knife over and flips it in his hands. It's an obvious topic change but better than an apology. "You mentioned a sword before. Does that mean you know where there's just some laying around?"
While her attention hadn't been on him to start, she does sniff his way when he responds in that quiet voice. There's something more to that. She can tell. It strikes a chord in her, and it's another brief moment of feeling like they're closer to the same wavelength than she previously thought.
But he acts like he didn't want her to hear that... so she pretends that she didn't.
"Yeah, there's people like that living here," she mutters. People that she sees herself in and wishes she didn't. John and Stephen mostly. It's not fun, knowing they're probably going to crash and burn like she did, and there's nothing she can do to stop it.
The abrupt topic change isn't quite what she expects, but it's better than lingering on this topic. It reminds her that they were talking about something a bit less heavy a few minutes ago.
"Some? No. I know where one is. Mine, to be precise."
He doesn't know who exactly she's thinking of as she mutters, but he smirks anyway, a laugh behind his teeth. It's the general feeling he understands.
"Way to let me down. A sword pile is what this place really needs," He jokes. Even if the idea of using a sword that's not him and his makes his guts roil.
And with that, his arms fold and his head tilts. He looks at her close, up and down. "So you're a sword person. Really?"
"I don't think a sword pile would solve anyone's problems." Except maybe his. He seems to really be gunning for one.
But when he turns his skepticism on her, she can't help but laugh. He's eying her up like that, and she just leans on her cane again, angling herself forward and grinning. "What's so unbelievable about that?"
"If done right, a sword pile could solve everyone's problems," he says, snickering.
His grin does not diminish as she leers back. Not this time.
"Mmm, I didn't say unbelievable but even aside the rope thing there's a certain sort of people with... greater proclivity. I'm not sure if you seem like one of them yet. Maybe you should show me you're made of."
Her laugh is more like a guffaw, loud and abrupt. "Maybe if you get a sword, Cocoberry. As it stands, you're kinda lacking..."
She stands up straight again, lifting the cane to twirl it nimbly in her hand. Once it makes a full cycle, she grabs just below the dragon's head with her left hand, holding the cane horizontal--and unsheathes a portion of the blade hidden within. "I'm already ready. Any time, any place."
His temporary mirth is indeed temporary. It evaporates in an instant as she reminds him of the central problem, bringing him to make a face, one of deep unhappiness.
Then suddenly, the cane is spinning. It takes him a second to guess what's about to happen, but it's overridden by the sudden rush, the adrenaline over the possibility of a real fight mixing and entangling with that choking sense of jealousy. The cut of the blade through the air, the weight of it in hand, the feeling of swinging out... There is, he thinks, one single thing he hungers for more than those around him.
And then he shakes himself of that, ridding that longing look for one of firm resolve. "I can still take you with a knife. Lets do this."
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timeasmymeasure
[Around the Meadous]
Date: 2018-09-27 10:44 pm (UTC)But as the second cloth snaps in half mid pull-back, with a quick catch and a curse, he starts to think that maybe this just isn't going to happen. Nothing is as good as him. Which feels simultaneously bolstering and truly, deeply disappointing. He frowns down at the useless knife and sighs. Gotta make do. There's no way around it...
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 03:07 am (UTC)But she comes across that strange boy again, and there he is...playing with knives in front of that woman's home again. His mother, he'd said. She tilts her head a little as she smells him, a bit of a smirk on her lips.
"Hey, Cocoberry," she calls, stopping and leaning on the white cane with the dragon head that she's taken to carrying around again. "Getting pretty good with that."
The cloth thing is clever. Not perfected, but she can't help but be just a little impressed with the ingenuity.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 03:16 am (UTC)He scoffs in offence. "First off, I'm not 'getting pretty good' I am good," He says. "Second... it's this cloth that's the problem. The cloth and the balance of the knife, with only so much improvement available for either."
He looks down on the knife again with disdain, the sort of judgement one reserves for another person that's disappointed them as opposed to a tool that's not doing it's job.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 03:28 am (UTC)"Don't you have anything better to work with?"
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 03:40 am (UTC)"Ugh. No." It's admitted rueful and reluctant. "And don't offer rope, I am not going to practice a lasso."
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 03:49 am (UTC)Whether he knows what that is or not, she continues on, leaning more heavily on her cane. "I wouldn't be much of a guard if all I could swing around was some perfectly knotted rope."
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 03:58 am (UTC)"The way I recall you talking about hanging, I'd think you were. I thought you hadn't an interest in swords." A pause. "How much of a guard does this place even need? The most fighting that's happened has been around me."
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 01:23 pm (UTC)"But the guard isn't really about keeping people from fighting. You guys manage yourselves. It's more about keeping a watch on anything that might have come in to mess with this place." She smirks a bit at him. "Serves as a welcoming party too, if you remember."
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 01:55 pm (UTC)And with that he lifts a brow. "Do things normally come in here to mess with this place?"
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 02:15 pm (UTC)"Not anymore. They used to, at least a couple times. There's not many people who were around for that anymore. These days, Zephyr guards us pretty carefully. Nothing gets in or out without their knowing."
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 02:46 pm (UTC)He doesn't ask why she bothers then. A little extra protection can go a long way.
"So does that make you the old guard then? Tales of yore featuring these terrible things?"
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 02:55 pm (UTC)"Yeah. I'm old guard. I've been here... Only a few months shy of when the Meadous started existing." She pauses, giving him a raised brow. "Are you really asking me for horror stories from the old days?"
no subject
Date: 2018-09-28 03:05 pm (UTC)But aside morbid fun and curiosity, it's just smart to know these things. If there are complications down the line, he wants to know what they're up against.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-29 02:53 pm (UTC)"Alright. Well... I guess the worst of it was when Pai showed up. They're Zephyr's cousin. I'm not sure why they did it--maybe they got jealous of this world or something, but they tricked Zephyr into letting them in. And once they were in, they started messing with us. Taking minor grievances and fanning them into huge disasters. One person every day, and we never knew who that new person was going to be until some tragedy was already upon us."
"A lot of people died. Kelt managed to put them back together, but it took us weeks to pull together enough to give Zephyr the strength to kick Pai out again." She gestures back towards the workshop in the distance. "I used to live over there, actually. Where the workshop is now. When Pai got to me, I turned my resentment at being here on the house that Zephyr made for me. And I burned it to the ground."
She pauses, frowning a little more. "I also tried to hang the mail sloth... and I attacked a friend, when he tried to stop me. It feels kinda surreal, thinking back on it. It was all stuff I was feeling, but without all the other stuff that kept me from acting on it. Or directed in ways that don't make any sense anymore."
no subject
Date: 2018-09-29 06:32 pm (UTC)Making it happen to only one and changing that every day is both sick and an interesting psychological play. The solution is one to give thought to as well. As much as he'd never admit it, it occurs that if uniting the masses is what it takes, Ichigo probably could have had them out of here in a day.
He turns to that workshop, but he can imagine a burned down heap. When he turns back though, this of all things has his brow lifted.
"I can't say I like being interrupted either, even if it were a friend, but I've gotta wonder what a sloth managed to do to you. And how someone who apparently resented this place turned around to being town guard." Not that he's judging, but he is curious.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-29 07:24 pm (UTC)"I can't say it made a lot of sense. I went back and forth on it a lot. When it started, I was just trying to keep a friend company. She'd promised some asshole to make patrols around the village, and it seemed shitty and boring for her to do that alone. When she disappeared, I kept it going. Because it was needed. People live here, and I wanted to give them a safe place to live." Or a safe place to rest, in some cases. After hearing all the crazy places out there, it made this place seem all the more unique.
"But I still wanted to go back to the place I came from. There were people trapped back there, being put through the same hell I escaped from, and I couldn't just leave them there. I had to go back and save them." Her frown deepens, and the words get stuck in her throat. She licks her lips, then inhales a deep breath, trying to loosen them. The pressure in her chest doesn't ease, but the words do, quiet though they may be.
"About a year and a half ago, I realized that was never going to happen. They were already dead, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. People had been trying to tell me that since I got here, but I didn't want to believe them. So when it finally sank in, I realized this is the only home I have left. So I don't want anything happening to it."
no subject
Date: 2018-09-29 08:41 pm (UTC)It starts pretty straight forward. He can't even say he questions her choice to keep the habit going, even if he knows he wouldn't do the same. She's a hero type. He's not even sure he's surprised. So many he knew before... but it doesn't change anything. It's all just a ploy, an act, some thing they fool themselves into. The knowledge doesn't sting, it's scalded over to uncomfortable numbness.
And they believe it. He's sure she does too. It's the latter bit that unsettles more.
"So, you were angry at this place because you thought it kept you from them." Probably easier than being angry at herself. He could see Ichigo thinking the same way, that there had to be a way...
He doesn't want to ask, but he doesn't think he can leave it unsaid either. "... What made you realize?"
no subject
Date: 2018-09-29 09:03 pm (UTC)"...We had something like that memory tree before. It was these frogs that appeared one day. Touching them would trigger remembering things... I touched one, and I remembered something that I couldn't remember before. A memory that I didn't have."
She exhales a breath, that tension still present in her shoulders and her chest. She might be blind, but her attention shifts from the ground to the village around them--anywhere but on him. "See, I knew what happened. The place where I was before... It was a space station, and it crashed into a planet. I was told there were no survivors. But I thought because I was taken from a time long before that, I could go back to when I came from. I thought I could change the future--or at least make a new future where everyone didn't die." She snorts a bit, and there's a hint of bitterness in her expression for just a moment. But it's gone again as she continues. She picks up the cane, twirling it idly in her hand just to fidget with something.
"That's... not really how time works. I should have known that. But when I got that new memory, I realized something was wrong. My memories were jumbled together--I thought I had skipped around in time already, so going back would be just more of the same. So when I got those sorted out... I realized I had already lived and died on that space station. So there wasn't anything to go back to."
no subject
Date: 2018-09-29 10:00 pm (UTC)There was another thing that learning about White had shown him. It was that there'd never been any hope at all of going home.
"But there was still something worth fighting for. Even if you thought you lost it all." The word come out quiet, his eyes boring through the earth.
And then, suddenly, he's shaking himself out. "Well, I don't know anything about time either but it sounds like you've gotten smarter for all that, so at least there's that. Plenty of fools who'd just keep beating their head against a wall and calling it progress."
He turns his knife over and flips it in his hands. It's an obvious topic change but better than an apology. "You mentioned a sword before. Does that mean you know where there's just some laying around?"
no subject
Date: 2018-09-29 10:16 pm (UTC)But he acts like he didn't want her to hear that... so she pretends that she didn't.
"Yeah, there's people like that living here," she mutters. People that she sees herself in and wishes she didn't. John and Stephen mostly. It's not fun, knowing they're probably going to crash and burn like she did, and there's nothing she can do to stop it.
The abrupt topic change isn't quite what she expects, but it's better than lingering on this topic. It reminds her that they were talking about something a bit less heavy a few minutes ago.
"Some? No. I know where one is. Mine, to be precise."
no subject
Date: 2018-09-30 09:39 pm (UTC)"Way to let me down. A sword pile is what this place really needs," He jokes. Even if the idea of using a sword that's not him and his makes his guts roil.
And with that, his arms fold and his head tilts. He looks at her close, up and down. "So you're a sword person. Really?"
no subject
Date: 2018-10-01 01:20 am (UTC)But when he turns his skepticism on her, she can't help but laugh. He's eying her up like that, and she just leans on her cane again, angling herself forward and grinning. "What's so unbelievable about that?"
no subject
Date: 2018-10-01 05:53 pm (UTC)His grin does not diminish as she leers back. Not this time.
"Mmm, I didn't say unbelievable but even aside the rope thing there's a certain sort of people with... greater proclivity. I'm not sure if you seem like one of them yet. Maybe you should show me you're made of."
no subject
Date: 2018-10-03 01:46 pm (UTC)She stands up straight again, lifting the cane to twirl it nimbly in her hand. Once it makes a full cycle, she grabs just below the dragon's head with her left hand, holding the cane horizontal--and unsheathes a portion of the blade hidden within. "I'm already ready. Any time, any place."
no subject
Date: 2018-10-04 01:42 pm (UTC)Then suddenly, the cane is spinning. It takes him a second to guess what's about to happen, but it's overridden by the sudden rush, the adrenaline over the possibility of a real fight mixing and entangling with that choking sense of jealousy. The cut of the blade through the air, the weight of it in hand, the feeling of swinging out... There is, he thinks, one single thing he hungers for more than those around him.
And then he shakes himself of that, ridding that longing look for one of firm resolve. "I can still take you with a knife. Lets do this."
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