Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
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Nate was more diplomatic about Sam, which came as a bit of a surprise. From what Bastien had heard of their relationship, an explosive fight in the middle of the Ground's streets being one example, he had expected to hear an answer filled with far more vitriol. "I understand. I love my Rexanna because while we are married, she understands and shares my need for an exciting, varied life."
Sunjata. "Oh! I had a wonderful naked frolic with him on the beach a while ago. A fine young man." Bastien grinned and leaned in to paint more details, the smile remaining. "I did not know he had become a sheriff. Is he tough enough for that kind of work, do you think?"
Noticing Nate's limp brush he took it and replaced it with a smaller one now dipped in a dark blue. "Draw a pattern in this area." He instructed, tapping a shape with his foot. The question as for where he'd learnt all of his secrets...Bastien puffed out his cheeks. "Well, I went to an art college for a formal education, very briefly. I stayed three months." He laughed, shaking his head. "It was not for me."
It had seemed like a mad decision then, dropping out of what had been a long held dream. "...Honestly? I painted and worked and gathered people like me around me, and the philosophy made itself. There are plenty of people in Venice that were disgusted by my ideas, that believed art should only be portraits of the noblemen and perhaps, if one is feeling particularly bold, a study of some flowers." Rolling his eyes, Bastien knelt to dip his brush back in the paint before standing up to add in the beginnings of a smiling face into the work.
Bastien's response about excitement just has Nate nodding, a somewhat distant smile on his face. He's only heard of Rexanna as the queen, and as a fellow ascended. He can only assume she is closer to Sam, judging by the way her looks towards him shifted from warm and smiley to cold glares, but he doesn't say anything on the matter. It wasn't as if he actually knew her, and he was used to people disliking him.
"A naked frolic?" That has his brow raising, at least one of the descriptions something he would never have expected to be applied to Sunjata. Though, if it's a double entendre... Nate his gaze flick up and down Bastien, then shrugs, moving on. "I know he's got experience, so I'm not worried about him. Not in that way at least." Maybe he should be more worried about the other mans physical health though, given his track record, the scars that had piled up.
As a new brush is pressed into his hand, a new task coming along with it, Nate turning back to the wall to add new lines of paint. In theory. It takes him a long time for brush to actually touch wall, and he tries to brush it off as distraction, head tilted towards Bastien as the man explains his background. There's a rough laugh when he talks about dropping out, Nate finally shifting to work on the wall. His pattern is hesitant, faltering at the beginning, but growing soon in smooth, abstract shapes. If you squinted, it almost looked like words, though what they said was impossible to decipher. "Sounds like what you supposed to do was a slog." He offered after a moment, impressed with how easily Bastien seemed to have left that world when it didn't suit him.
There's a pause where his brush falls still again, and Nate leans back to look up at the other man. "Wait, Venice? Like... Venice Italy?"
Nate repeated the words 'naked frolic' with some clear surprise and Bastien laughed, shaking his head. "Oh, no, we did not have sex. Not that I would turn the man down if he offered, but...no no, we simply danced nude in the spray of the rainbow road. It was quite magical." A much needed reprieve from the oft-dreary and hard life in the Hollowed Grounds; Bastien seemed to think this was entirely normal, smiling at the fond memory.
"Experience? He has been a sheriff before?" With Outlanders coming from all different walks of life and worlds, it was certainly possible; speaking of other worlds, Nate seemed to recognise some of his.
At first he just nodded, eager to continue his ramble. "Yes, Venice, Italy. So-" His brush paused and he turned to stare at Nate, words slowly faltering. "Wait, you are from Earth? Oh, I thought I would not meet any more of us! Do tell me where." Excited to hear (and hoping it might be Europe) Bastien painted the wall without really looking at it.
Naked frolic hadn't exactly brought sex to mind, though it was a fair bit easier to imagine than Sunjata, naked and dancing anywhere. Nate found himself nodding, tucking the information away to bring up at a later date. {sat}"Something like it." Nate confirmed the experience, though he was clearly unwilling to say more in a story that wasn't his.
Bastien confirmed that yes, he meant Venice, Italy, and a wide grin broke over Nate's face, only growing as the other man slowly grew silent, and turned to look at him. "I'm from Earth." He says brightly, his own brush falling still again. "I'm from America, but I've got family in Italy. Not, uh, in Venice, but... closer than anything else here, right?"
"Something like it...ah..you mean his time as arbiter. He told me of his past; it sounded most troubled." So did most people's here, though. Bastien had wondered before if the Voice specifically chose those with hard lives to come to Caido, though then he wasn't sure why he had been selected. In comparison to a lot of the Outlanders he'd met, his life had been a positive paradise prior to arriving in the Hollowed Grounds.
Nate was not the first person Bastien had met from Earth, though it was always pleasant to meet someone with a shared past life. "Indeed! I...do not know much about America, I must admit. I have never been keen on the British and do not intend to go where they gather." He laughed with a shake of his head and added a few more daubs to his painting. "What is your family name? Perhaps I will know them."
A bright smile spread over Nate's face, glad he didn't have to dance around someone elses past too much. "Exactly that." He nods. "He's... I'm worried it might be a bit dangerous to get back into the position, y'know? But..." A sigh leaves him, then a shrug, his focus moving back to the wall. "All I can do is trust him, and tell him when he's getting outta line, right?" It would have to be enough.
There's a moment where all Nate can do is blink at Bastien, wondering what the British have to do with anything, but foggy history lessons kick in, and he laughs again, nodding. "America is it's own thing, when I'm from. We had a whole war about it and all." Another bright laugh, and then he focuses back on his little pattern, glad for the easier conversation. "It's Marino, on my mothers side. Came from the south, uh... Sicily?" Who even knew if what he knew and what Bastien knew matched, given how far back the other man seemed to be in history.
"Mhm." Bastien nodded, finding himself relating to Nate's struggle: after all, how many times had he waited for Rexanna to come home, unsure if she'd be half-dead by the time she came through the door? It certainly wouldn't be the first time. "It hurts to know the one you love may come into harms way, but you cannot chain them. Love can only be love in freedom...even with all the pain. It is a part of it."
He was beginning to add lines and details now, the painting taking form nicely without too much work, colours and lines forming a smiling painter and flowers. "..Independence? It was just a rumour in my time. How wonderful." Actually, if he thought about it, he remembered hearing about that from someone else: but he'd heard so much about Earth in different times it was sometimes difficult to keep up.
"Ah...no, I do not know Sicily well. Your mother, she was an Italian then? Did she have any good dishes you miss? I find I miss the food of my home more with each passing day."
Honestly, it's not a comfort to know that he's not the only one struggling with this particular burden. It was easier to write off as some kind of overactive worry if he was the only one who went through it. Not wanting to seem ungrateful for the attempt at comfort though, Nate nods, a smile on his lips.
Nate leaned back again, taking in the small amount of work he'd done, the much more impressive swath that Bastien had done, and turned to look up at the other man. "When exactly was your time?" He'd only met one other person from Earth, though he wasn't exactly asking everyone he met their tragic backstories. It was interesting, now that it had come up.
"My mother wasn't really, but her parents, my grandparents, came over from Italy." The explanation came easily, Nate all too eager to explain the better parts of his family, his childhood. "My nonna taught me and my brother to cook, when we spent summers with her. Arancini were my favourite, but she made a meatloaf too, ah..." He snaps as he tries to bring the words to mind, clouded over by years. "Fal... Farso magro, I think?"
There wasn't any comfort to be given in this situation, really. In Caido people died at an alarming frequency and Bastien had had to accept (though he had never really, in his heart) that one of them could well one day be Rexanna, who willingly threw herself into the worlds problems at a moments notice.
"When I was brought here, the year was 1736." Bastien told Nate, sure that to the young man he seemed like a part of ancient history. "An exciting time to be alive in...I was sure change would happen in tremendous ways by the end of my lifetime...of course, I will never know, now." It was something he was sad about sometimes, that he'd never be able to see Earth's developments from here, would never know how the culture of his beloved home changed.
Hearing Nate speak of Italian food brought a smile to Bastien's face and he nodded, dramatically clutching at his heart. "Ah..! You make me home sick. You say she taught you: could you make those things for me?"
Nate lets out a low whistle as Bastien gives him a year, so distant seeming to him that he actually has a little trouble trying to imagine it. "History wasn't exactly my best subject." He offers, half apology. Not that it's his duty to fill in the other man, but, it still feels a little shitty. "What was it like in your time?" Maybe a subject change would be a little more lighthearted.
Though Nate's not really one for dramatics, unless he's the one performing them, there's something warm about how Bastien carries them out. I'll be able to whip you up something." Comes the easy offer, a wide grin splitting Nate's face. "It's won't be as good as nonna's, but that won't really matter anyway, will it?" A bright laugh leaves him, for once not filled with a bitter resentment about something he'd lost ascending. There was something about making food for someone else that just made it worth more, with or without taste. "Do you have a favourite? I might be able to work out something specific."
The whistle Nate gave brought a wry, almost sad smile to Bastien's face. He had always been a modern man in his time, someone looking to the future...to know that he seemed like a relic to so many people who had come here from Earth was painfully ironic. "It is hard to sum up a whole era, hm? The Venice I knew was...alive. Corrupt, but intensely vibrant, full of artists and good hearts and celebration despite the war and uncertainty in the world. There were those that sought to ruin it for the rest of us...but they were easy enough to ignore. Moreso if you had some money and power." Which he had managed to achieve, something he was still proud of.
He was surprised to hear Nate actually offer to make him a dish. "Oh, my friend. Anything you could make me from my dear home would delight me; just tell me a time and I will come: I would even eat scraps of bread if they tasted like the ones made in Italia...!" True, he wouldn't be able to fully taste it, but even the smallest hint of spiced tomato or warm crusty bread would be blissful.
05-18-2020, 07:33 AM (This post was last modified: 05-18-2020, 07:34 AM by Nate.)
The nights have lost their minds
There wasn't much that managed to grab Nate's attention completely, but the other man had managed it, a first hand experience in an era he'd never be able to see, in a country he wanted to know, it was hard to pass up. Even if the description brings a crooked smile to his lips, his head shaking. "I think we might have lost some of the artists, at least in my neck of the woods, but it doesn't really sound like too much has changed." Maybe that was an oversimplification, but it was nicer to believe they had more in common than anything else.
A bright smile spread over his face, Bastien not helping narrow things down in the most charming way. "You'll have to give me some time to get back into practice. I haven't cooked much since..." He trailed off, the answer obvious without having to be said out loud. What was the point in cooking if you didn't need to eat? But already, his mind swirled with plans, and it wasn't like he didn't have a willing guinea pig at home, who could tell him if things actually tasted right.
For the moment though, he focused back on the painting, following Bastiens direction while dreaming of fresh bread, and bidding the man farewell as the piece came together, glad for the reignited passion in his chest.
