[SE] 100 bad days make 100 good stories

// Ring around the rosie - Pocket full of posie //

Take me with you Lena! I'll help you! It'll be fun.

What the fuck was he thinking? There was far too much, nature, here. For someone born and raised in the stone city and used to the comforts those cobblestone streets and slate walls offered, the way it kept a lot of natural things out, he found himself very out of his element. His steps had turned leaden a half mile back, and now he dragged behind her, unable to contain the look of disdain from his face as they trudged on. "Can't you ju-" Kaisel's voice cut off abruptly as he faceplanted. His toe had snagged on a vine—an easy feat out here, especially when dragging ass like he was.

Rather than own up to his faults, Kaisel thumped the ground with one of his fists, blaming the nature for his misfortune. He rose to his knees, looking reverent for a moment. The moment ended as he spit out a coil of moss and dry heaved. Twice. "Awful" he moaned, brushing residual soil from his clothes while his tongue hung out of his mouth, tainted.

Kaisel

// I'ma fucking blow all the ashes down //

Lena

Lena, well versed in nature due to her occupation, lifestyle, and recent back and forth ventures, remained wholly unbothered by the landscape. The same could not be said for Koa’s cousin, and though she was used to the antics, she couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder and stifle either a grimace or a laugh. Probably both.

Stopping on their walk to lean upon a nearby rock, essentially giving him an opportunity to catch his breath, she wondered if she’d have to heal him before they made it partway through the thickets. “Are you all right? I’ve got my staff if you need it,” and her brows furrowed, watching as she spit out moss and dirt. Mittens, ever indifferent to anyone else’s suffering, rolled its stone eyes, then continued to hover, floating on by the other Dragoon.

sunlight on mist; summer lightning
your choices outweigh your substance

// Ring around the rosie - Pocket full of posie //

He ought to feel the burn of shame for fumbling like a buffoon—after all, it was his duty to protect her. It was part of why he'd insisted he come out here with her, to nature. Although it could be argued their home wasn't very safe anymore either, he knew the wilds had been treacherous as of late, infections cropping up in the plants and animals. It didn’t seem right for her to come here alone to pick flowers—even though she was capable. Sometimes, being alone was all it took for even the strongest to fall. The power of friendship and all that.

Kaisel spat a few more times, then rubbed his tongue along the inside of his shirt. "Tastes like dog water," he grumbled, rising to his feet as the creature drifted over. He offered it a smile, a bit of a softie for the companionhood the little critters people liked to keep. He hoped to get a dragon of his own one day, having been in awe of Pipsqueak since day one. "I'm good!" he called out to her as he finished peeling a leaf from his cheek. "Like I was saying, can't you just grow this plant back home? Save yourself the trouble of coming out here all the time?

Kaisel

// I'ma fucking blow all the ashes down //

Lena

Lena, unaware that he’d intended to be some sort of bodyguard (when she could protect herself), watched and waited for him to recover, hand already going for the staff in her bag. When he refused, she tilted her head, mouth coming to a slight frown until he said he was good. Not intending to argue with him, she opted to simply hold the object in her grasp, and swung along the beautiful instrument as she lifted off the stone.

“That would be nice if we could,” she granted, because the idea had been there once upon a time. “But they’re quite rare, and can only be grown in certain locations.” So even if she wanted to snag one and bring it home, to cultivate and produce hordes, it wouldn’t be a feasible option. “There are some in Frey’s Breath too. Rae’s Lilies.” And she hadn’t had any luck with those either.

Withholding a sigh, they persisted onward, her eyes on the ground and flickering back up from time to time as Mittens steered them about. Though, once they passed a certain threshold, the abominable snowball began to shriek, eyes upon something in the midst of all the encroaching darkness beyond their makeshift grove.

sunlight on mist; summer lightning
your choices outweigh your substance

// Ring around the rosie - Pocket full of posie //

Kaisel nodded along as if he understood, something he'd perfected long ago when his mother was lecturing him. Still, he didn't understand why the plants could grow here, but not elsewhere. If they took the plant, and its roots, and hell why not just a bunch of the ground around it to reduce disturbing it and to make sure it was cozy in its own dirt (let's not pretend he understood anything about the soil ph and phosphates and nitrates and shit), wasn't that enough? What more did plants even need. Water? Check, they had that. Sunlight? Check, they had that too. Temperature maybe, if he thought about the way he'd seen plants wither after a frosty morning or wilt under a longheat day. They had means to control that though. Humidity perhaps too, if he wanted to think about his bad hair days at all, but he didn't really want to.

Ultimately he trusted what she said, because if anyone could have done it, he was sure she would have been one of them. As long as he'd known her, she had tended to the natural world around her, paying attention to the details that helped the unnoticed thrive.

He was about to speak again, to inquire more about what conditions they needed so he could better watch for those, but the cry that Mittens raised had Kaisel's teeth on edge. He palmed a dagger. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as goosebumps razed his skin. "What is it!?" he called out to the snowball, dashing forward with a nimbleness that would have saved him earlier. His time to shine was here; he'd save them!

Kaisel

// I'ma fucking blow all the ashes down //

Lena

Seemingly unbothered with Mittens’ screeching, as it happened on such a regular basis, the Caretaker simply stepped forward, gazing into the shadow. Moments later, her Attuned adaptations shifted her eyes into something piercing for shades of darkness, cat-like, as she peered into the swallowing depths around them.

Rationale and calm, she placed a gentle hand on his arm, willing him to put the dagger down. She understood the reasoning for the violence and protection, but it might not have been a necessary thing for the moment. “Void vipers, I believe,” as she watched them crawl amidst the trees in the Stygian abyss. “If we leave them alone, they will probably do the same to us.” At that note, she arched her brow at the younger Dragoon, before beginning to back away, snagging at Mittens with her. “Come on. I know of a good spot by the Mathair further up.”

sunlight on mist; summer lightning
your choices outweigh your substance

// Ring around the rosie - Pocket full of posie //

A jolt sketched up Kaisel's arm under her touch, such was his focus into the gloom where the threat seemed to originate. He whipped his head to her, dagger still gripped tightly in his hand. Yet, when he looked at her, the complete calm she was in thrust all that anticipation off his body. Like a thick jacket in summer heat he shrugged it off, his shoulders rolling faintly with the notion as his hand slackened at his side. He frowned. "Do they eat snowballs or something?" he asked, glancing back at the agitated creature with confusion. He'd put his trust in Lena over Mittens any day, but her response was much more underwhelming. "Sooooo, nothing to fight?" he asked just for clarification sake as the dagger spun lazily in his hand. "What if they don't leave us alone?" he wondered, staring at the gloom still. He squinted, unable to adjust his gaze as she had, so he could barely make out anything. Just a shadow moving within a shadow once in a while.

She was already back on the flowers.

He exhaled loudly and slipped his dagger back against his side. "So what do you do with these flowers again?" He trotted up to rejoin her, having lingered by the gloom longer to discern for himself that the void vipers were safe.

Kaisel

// I'ma fucking blow all the ashes down //

Lena

“I don’t believe so, but Mittens takes any threats very seriously.” To which the snowball gave a raucous screech again, before hovering above her shoulder, his head beginning to rotate around, similar to an owl. She arched a brow at the notions of fighting, hiding a long sigh threatening to ward its way through her lungs. “We don’t have to pick a quarrel with everything we meet,” she considered after a few moments, perhaps as life advice or hint of the moment sagacity. “If they don’t, then we can do something about it.” For now though, the vipers crept and crawled their way through the dark, and both Caretaker and Dragoon’s strides were long enough to sweep away along pathways.

As for the flowers, she hummed a little under her breath. “They can be used for a variety of things, but mostly cleansing – either a person or land infected by the void.” Making them a valuable item for the multitudes and masses.

sunlight on mist; summer lightning
your choices outweigh your substance

// Ring around the rosie - Pocket full of posie //

Lena's matter-of-fact responses came like someone who was tired. Kaisel might have suspected he was the cause, if he had any faith at all that he was nothing but charming to everyone. Delusion was an exceedingly great way to live. Still, Lena did not withhold, and little by little her answers chiseled his curiosity into a better point. Although he listened, he did cast one glance back to the gloom they were steadily leaving behind, where the vipers had been. She said Mittens took threats seriously and well, that had felt serious. If it wasn't, Kaisel was certain he didn't want to hear Mittens being serious, that had been more than enough.

"Ooooh, so these are the flowers I've heard my mom talk about in briefings." Kaisel straightened up, a bit more interested in this nature trip now. These were the things directly responsible for keeping the purple fuckers a bit at bay. This was important work. He began to noticeably search around rather than merely trudge behind her like a living shadow.

"Lena?" he asked again after a pause. "How did we let Dahlia take over our city?" He remembered the panic, the aftermath, the way many had fled for safety not long after. The streets were emptier and the halls echoed more than he remembered. It felt as if many had given up and left Stormbreak to the wolves. He knew it was more than that, or guessed it was at least. He supposed many of them had run to here to find flowers, but he wondered why the might of their mighty city had not been enough to stop the Violet.

Kaisel

// I'ma fucking blow all the ashes down //

Lena

The pinpointed area on her latest trip, from what she could recall from the twisting and turning pathways, was seen along the trail, and so her walk became a more good-natured exercise, an elegant and refined pace, as they searched amidst the greenery and foliage. “Probably,” she smiled in return; brushing her fingers across some leaves and then meandering further.

She didn’t quite expect the question, and while he couldn’t see her face as she turned to gaze upon the route again, there was a slight grimace there. It wouldn’t hold within her voice, and by the time she’d recovered, there was the same gentle ease about her – serene despite the impending tale. “I don’t think it was a ‘let’ thing.” Her gaze shifted to bramble and brush, brushing aside portions of lush ferns and lichen again, by her feet, before moving on. “Sohalia was kidnapped, and we had no idea. It didn’t take long for Dahlia to simply seize the throne then, given that they had our leader in their custody.” A sigh pilfered through, but she didn’t let it hang through the air. Mittens grumbled something incoherent, and hovered near her shoulder again. “And I don’t think we have anyone that could challenge her one-on-one for the seat.”

What she didn’t say was there’d have to be an invasion, a planned and plotted attack, some reign of rebellion – but with who? Who would dare to set such a precedent, knowing the consequences could just as easily be an infection, or a swift death? Because for all of Sohalia’s hopes and dreams, the sedition hadn’t come to fruition yet – because the rough edges of a plan could only go so far.

sunlight on mist; summer lightning
your choices outweigh your substance

// Ring around the rosie - Pocket full of posie //

He was still learning about the threat that faced them all. He understood the generalizations, but the nuance of it all escaped him, or rather had been kept from him. His mother who feared for his safety, had sheltered him often. Even when he became a Draghoon, he was just a low rank, untested and untried against casual threats, least of all world-ending ones. He'd been forced to wait time and time again, and all the while he'd watched the illness take root and poison things he loved. It was an awful thing, feeling powerless.

"What about more than one-on-one?" he asked quietly. "If we got all the Dragoons? All the demi-gods and the leaders... surely everyone could be allies against an enemy that stands before us all?" He said it with the inexperience of someone who has never had to organize a group of people. He said it with the dream of youth, where the complex felt simple and obvious, because he hadn't yet experienced the world and been jaded by the flaws that thrived in every corner of it.

Kaisel

// I'ma fucking blow all the ashes down //

Lena

She pressed her lips together in a vague line. The notions hadn’t been out of the realm of possibilities, but stretched quite far. “You mean like an invasion?” She murmured, glancing back at him as they came further to her preferred spot. “I think it would be very difficult to get all of those people on the same page.” The Caretaker could recall how the last war had gone – and even then, sides upon sides mustered enormous excuses and conditions – tried to explain away their crimes. “And the potential of putting someone else in that seat – and then leaving – means the same thing could happen all over again.” Unless the entire Family was extinguished, but given their track records, the unlikelihood seemed in the far greater probability measures.

Taking in another long inhale, she drew upon the rock, leaning up against it as she began to go through her bag. The sun dappled through the canopy, dusting along troves of lichen, moss, and wildflowers - a beautiful area to admire, search, and construct poems. “I wish it were that easy.”

sunlight on mist; summer lightning
your choices outweigh your substance

// Ring around the rosie - Pocket full of posie //

Kaisel was not fully convinced by her words, similar to his failure to understand the difficulty of transplanting the special flowers elsewhere. He did not push back further though, content to chew on the finality of it all - that it just wasn't that easy. As a child it had always seemed like the adults had everything under control and knew all the answers, but after becoming grown himself, he quickly realized no one knew what the fuck they were doing. Communication was a frequent reason for the faults, which was a marvel since they all spoke the same language. It all came down to trust, which was hard to offer when so many people proved themselves selfish.

He sighed quietly as he leaned against the rock beside Lena. He crouched down, finding a particularly good stick on the ground, and traced lazy designs in the dirt as he scanned the area around them for flowers. "I have some apples in my bag, if you want some," he offered.

Kaisel

// I'ma fucking blow all the ashes down //

Lena

Some days it seemed like they knew and understood everything. And with others, as soon as the chaos brimmed wide and far, it was as if they’d never had a hold on anything. She could sympathize and understand the confusion; the turmoil remained an unsettled portion in her ribcage for as long as Starfall had existed, and before, when war churned against their souls. But their contributions would have to be the flowers themselves – determination waged there, in the thick of exploration.

When there was nothing to behold there, she drew out a piece of paper, and began composing other portions – things she didn’t want to reflect upon either, but a task just the same. “Oh, that would be very nice. I think I have some jerky too.” She went exploring through her bag, snagging t the portions, granting some to Mittens, whom immediately gravitated to the nuances, before passing over more to Kaisel. “Have you already written a poem to Vox?” A light inquiry, but a question just the same – wondering how others had catered to this whim.

sunlight on mist; summer lightning
your choices outweigh your substance