Reading is fundamental (OPEN)

R E M I Remi interpreted the silence as uncomfortableness on the bard's part, which was of course understandable. Swallowing down his guilt and dismay at having spoken so out of turn, Remi watched silently as Jigano's pale lashes fluttered downwards as the man paused to read more. Biting the inside of his cheek the alchemist waited with a held breath to see if he'd just ended their conversation with his stupidity and admitted occasional aggressiveness. Grinning both in relief and at Jigano's light-hearted quip, Remi's smile grew slouchy as he chuckled. Bland certainly was a good word for the food, and the world as it happened. The ground was blandly coloured, the sky blandly diluted, and even the animals (capricious as they could be) seemed bland as well. Though this sort of academic exposition was not normally what caught the alchemist's attention, he listened intently.  "Mort.." Remi mumbled tonelessly, swallowing down hard the lump that had suddenly bloomed in this throat. "Nature, life and ... " Pale eyes shining with fear, Remi's lips fell open slightly. "Then Mort is the god of death?" Oh how many things were suddenly falling into place. Ludo constantly trying to lead him to his death ... no wonder he said the alchemist would meet Mort if he followed through. "Ludo spoke of Mort." Remo said quietly, the heat that had previously filled his cheeks now turning cold and making them look all the more red for it. Indeed his eyes were wide with remembered panic and fear, so unlike the predator he'd just admitted to being. Startled slightly by Jigano's question, Remi's lips fell back together as he blinked gawkily a few times. "Ahh—" He began trying to remember the specifics of the encounter. "Ehm.." Uncomfortably Remi ran a hand backwards-to-front through his curls and found himself unable to meet Jigano's gaze. "That first encounter...when we were bound and naked, when Frey released the bindings they wanted us to..." Pausing, his breathing growing ragged with distress making his oddly-accented punctuation of the words sound all the more emphatic, he struggled to continue. "..one of the women there was a virgin and—" Helplessly the words broke off as Remi's gaze rose from the feather he'd been staring at again, afraid to find Jigano's gaze (surely critical and disgusted). "I did not though, much as Frey made me feel compelled to." He managed finally, his happy face suddenly quite cheerless. "And so this time around, when they appeared to Rexanna and I naked, I merely asked if sex was what was required to ... to trade? If that was what they wanted from us, in exchange for information." Stage set, the alchemist could finally answer the bard's actual question. "They said they did not want meaningless sex, but passion, desire, pleasure, and heat, and raw want and need and love.  They said they took my love as a tribute, and that if I wanted it back I would have to return with something they wanted, and to not return without something which would please them." So saying with his face red with shame and eyes shiny with anguish, Remi fell silent.