Cold Comfort [Seasonal Event]

Jigano had smiled in understanding of Samuel's desire to hide away from the world sometimes - not realizing that it was, in fact, always - when the other man's quick caveat made his smile even wider. "Thank you, Samuel," he chuckled with a dip of his head in acknowledgment. "I like you, too." Skittish though the man could be, he had the natural spark to be something more... if given opportunity and, perhaps, a little nudge.

But there was no rush, and no reason that he had to grow through trauma instead of slow, steady encouragement.

"Card games and dice games both, in fact. Part of entertaining - and gambling, to make up for a slow night in tips,"he added with a wink. He didn't cheat, but he knew how - and how to spot it. And, alright, maybe sometimes he did cheat the cheaters, just to even the playing field... but never honest players. Never friends. "We could certainly trade what we know! Though we might need another person or two for some of them. No reason we can't play them outside of Long Night, though!" And maybe he could meet some of Samuel's other friends that way, too.

Samuel's vehement objection was surprising and sweet, enough to earn a lopsided smile as the bard replaced a floorboard gently before going to gather more moss from the bag for both of them. "I've been looking into it," he assured his friend gently. "The books like that aren't common. And even if you die in the book you just get returned to the Atheneum." Usually. There had been some items - coats, gloves, packs - left behind in a way that seemed unsettlingly reminiscent of how Samuel's belongings had been abandoned before their own return. But he wasn't going to scare his friend with that information! "And if I do get snapped up again, well, I'll just enjoy the story through to its end. But... thank you Samuel. Really. I'll keep your offer in mind, though I'd hate to put you at risk by being the one who made a noise."

"Tips...?" Sam responded, wondering what exactly Jigano had been doing which earned him tips. Presumably something in a bar given the proximity to games - either he was a waiter or a bartender, or something more salacious. He didn't dare ask more in case it was the latter, which he assumed would be very awkward to discuss.

He lifted up the last floorboard by the door to let Jigano stuff in the moss while he tried to remember where his cards were. Most likely buried under some pile of books, decidedly less important.

"...I see. But I do not just mean the books. The place is open to the outside. A m-monster could still get in. You couldn't barricade it all." He tried not to picture his friend being ripped apart among the shelves, but it was hard to get the image from his mind. "You need a small space. So you can know it is sealed."

Jigano seemed receptive enough to his offer, promising to keep it in mind. "It is fine. You can still make some noise. You still breathe and walk and if you have people with you, whisper. If you need to be here, you can be. And you have helped towards it, af-after all." He inclined his head to motion down at the moss beneath the floor.

Taking a little more of the moss in his hand, he walked to the window and moved aside the curtain, plugging in the crack with the moss. It was clear the curtain was not moved often, dust and cobwebs behind it hurriedly brushed away by Sam's hand. He had missed it in his earlier cleaning spree due to fear of the sun, and hoped Jigano wouldn't mind too much.

"Yes?" Jigano tilted his head at Sam, then chuckled as he realized his friend's confusion - well, some of it. "Ah. Yes, I took a position at the Rathskeller as their bard-in-residence. Songs and stories to entertain the drinkers." He grinned in satsifaction, finishing the last floorboard and sitting back to review their progress. There was still some moss left, surprisingly enough and he stayed kneeling as he watched where Sam went with it next.

His friend's concern was truly touching, though Jigano still was't sure how seriously to take the Long Night fears just yet. "What sort of monsters?" he asked curiously, pushing himself to his feet and brushing his knees off. "What do they look like? How big are they?"

Seeing Sam packing the moss in around the window frame, Jigano took another handful of his own and set to work on the other side, wedging it in tight. His eyes noted the dustiness, and compared to the cleanliness of the little area by the fire it caused a brow to arch curiously. "You know, a little sunlight would probably be good in here, especially when the days are so short," he suggested helpfully.

"Oh. A bard." Sam acknowledged, trying to not think of Jigano in the way he had imagined anymore. He supposed the role of a bard made much more sense, after all. Jigano seemed full of interesting stories, and was charismatic enough to tell them in song or otherwise.

Jigano's question made him pause, fingers trailing on the cold window and making trails in the condensation. "...Well...I've never seen them myself. But I've heard things. Of g-giant wolves with hundreds of teeth. Huge. My mother used to talk of a huge dragon that would fly over the town, b-but I don't think that one is true." Saying all of this out loud, it sounded like children's stories, but he knew something prowled the streets in the LongNight.

All thoughts of monsters fled when Jigano made his suggestion about the light though, Sam instantly frowning deeply and looking back into the room. He had assumed Jigano had known about him, couldn't not see it - In Sam's mind he was a waxy corpse, his skin pallid and pale and his motions stiff.

"...I...um. Oh. I thought you kn-knew..." Any confidence or grace he had picked up ran from his voice as he confessed to his greatest shame. "I can't be in the sun. E-ever. I am...I am...I have to go to the Gods. They call it Ascended." Sam made himself drag his eyes up to Jigano to see if this would garner any kind of reaction. "...I heard somewhere some c-call it Bloodfiend, but I don't like that."

He was a bit bemused at his profession garnering so little response, but then, Samuel probably preferred to read his stories rather than have them sung or performed. Jigano could hardly blame him for that, so he simply nodded without losing his smile.

The monsters of Long Night did sound like children's stories, the way his friend described them, but sometimes even children's stories could have a kernel of truth at their core. "Do you ever see any tracks after Long Night is over?" he asked, eyes bright with curiosity as he tucked the last of the snow moss around his side of the window. "Any chunks of strange fur, or scales in the snow?" He paused, forehead wrinkling in thought. "Actually... how do you know when it's ended, if your windows are all closed over? Or does it always start and end on the same date each year, like a solstice?"

He hadn't expected his friendly suggestion to be met with such a fierce frown, and he opened his mouth to apologize, but Sam spoke first. And what he said... Jigano tilted his head to the side, confusion evident at first. A sickness? he thought. A sensitivity to the light? I've heard of such things, rare, but... But then the Gods were involved, and a term he'd overheard murmured in passing without understanding its source. Still he looked simply interested and a little sympathetic at something that seemed to make his friend so unhappy, but the last word...

"Bloodfiend?" he repeated, shocked at the crassness of the term and unable to reconcile the word 'fiend' with the meek bookmaker in any context. "Like some sort of... of vampire?" He shook his head, frowning, though not at Sam. "I'm... I admit, a little surprised but... I suspect there's something lost in translation. Why don't we have more tea and... could you tell me more about what it means to be Ascended?"

"No tracks...and I always just wait until I hear other people walking outside. I-I don't know how people know...I suppose they just see the light." He said all of this rather sheepishly, not sure how he'd forgotten something so simple as when to know the LongNight was over. Truthfully, since he often stayed inside for days at a time anyway, it was not a particularly special time of year for him.

Jigano's head tilt wasn't the worst reaction he could have gotten, he supposed, but he still flinched at the repeat of the word 'bloodfiend'. Then Jigano brought up yet another new term for his condition (just how many of these words were there?). Vampire.

The invitation to sit back down was welcome. Sam immediately pulled into himself, pouring a little more tea and hugging the cup in to his chest, as if he was trying to make himself as small as possible.

Once Jigano had also sat, he began to speak almost right away, too nervous about revealing this to wait. "I never wanted to be Ascended. It..it was my family. They wanted me to do it b-because it's meant to make you stronger but I don't feel strong." He tried to take a deep breath, calm himself. "...You need to...replenish. That's what they call it. The fluid inside you. Because it's not blood, not anymore. I have to go to the shrines and they h-help me to do it. ..Or I c-could drink from somebody. But I don't want to."

Exasperation flickered in Jigano's thoughts at Samuel's lack of curiosity, but the weight of tradition could be oppressive, difficult to throw off even for someone willing to bend the rules. Sam... was not, in his experience, a rule-bender. If the traditions said to stay inside, then the bookmaker would - and be glad of the excuse to stay curled up with a pile of good books!

Letting out a breath that had almost been a sigh, the bard was distracted by what his friend had to say-- about himself. Ascended? Bloodfiend? A vampire? Samuel? Something clearly wasn't right there, but it would be foolish to jump to conclusions too soon with someone who had been a friend to him so far. Returning to the chairs, Jigano dusted his fingers off and glanced back at their handiwork while his host poured the tea. The house was, hopefully, a little safer now, and he felt a little relief at having helped someone who had been kind to him.

Sitting down, Jigano helped himself to another cupful of the tea - more aromatic and delicious now that his sinuses had finally cleared out. Sam didn't give him a chance to get comfortable, however, launching straight into a stuttered description that had the bard listening with bemusement as much as curiosity.

And then the silver brow went up. "A fluid that's not blood... but that can be replenished by drinking the blood of someone else?" He tilted his head, brow wrinkling a little as he tried to work out the mechanics of it. "So someone is expected to... to cut themselves, open a vein on their wrist, for instance, and let you lap it up like a kitten with milk?" Sam as a vampire? Well. As a... vegetarian vampire, perhaps. And the lorekeeper was far too curious at the moment to be properly afraid of the gentle, unassuming man across from him. "And how do they help you at the Shrine, if you don't mind my asking? How often do you need to go? Are there priests there?" The shrine he'd visited had been an empty place, echoing with power but lacking acolytes - at least, at the time he'd spent there. He should have been wary, or at least cautious of his friend now. But... this was Sam. And even if there was a connection to blood, and an aversion to sunlight, he wasn't evil. On that much, Jigano was almost certain.

A kitten with milk? Something about the phrase made Sam wrinkle his nose. It was hardly as if he lavished the blood he had to drink, when he did. He had certainly never asked anyone to cut themselves for it - he warily looked over Jigano as if he was about to pull out a knife and make a mess of his chair right that second.

"I don't drink blood. Wh-when I can help it. I don't like doing it. I've never made anyone hurt themselves for me." Honestly, he was a little hurt at Jigano for making such an assumption, his voice taking on a hurt, defensive tone.

"No priests. I wouldn't like it if there were." Drinking was something he found shameful, only ever wanted to do under the cover of night and away from anyone who could see. "Y-you go to the shrine and drink from...I..." He bit his lip and chewed it this way and that, trying to describe it. "...There is a voice, then there is something to drink from. I-I don't know how else to describe it. But I don't hurt anybody."

Jigano blinked, realizing too late that he had come across as more than a little rude. Bowing his head over his teacup gravely, he glanced up at Sam from beneath frosted lashes. "I'm sorry," he said, genuinely contrite. "I never meant that you would hurt anyone, Samuel. I spoke without thought, and I didn't mean to insult you. That it was done to you... that you didn't choose it for yourself... well." The bard sighed, sipping his tea as he took in the new information. "I was speaking more along the lines of some other hypothetical Ascended, friend."

He tilted his head at the other man's inability to describe what happened during the... ritual? He was starting to get used to how vague the bookmaker could be, but this was particularly bad. The more upset something made him, the less coherent he was on the details...

So Jigano set his cup down, giving a little shake of his head. "I would like to hear more about what it is to be one these... Ascended," he said, tasting the word with cautious curiosity. "It sounds like there are some similarities to the vampires of my world, but you are proof of just how many differences there are as well. But... we don't need to talk about it now. Not if it makes you uncomfortable to speak of it," he finished gently. "Perhaps if you found that deck of cards we could play a hand or two instead?"

"R-right. A...hypothetical...hm. I have met some other Ascendeds. I have not liked any of them. So I suppose I un-understand." Sam could definitely imagine Archebold drinking blood 'like a kitten with milk', so he supposed Jigano's suspicion was probably healthy in the long run. Not all Ascendeds had anxiety and a kind heart.

Still, he was relieved when Jigano dropped the subject. Slowly lowering his legs and relaxing, defences down, he nodded at the suggestion of cards. Finding them was another matter than agreeing to playing them, but after a few minutes digging about in dusty corners and underneath old books, he found a slightly battered old pack themed around birds.

Laying them out on the table before them he taught Jigano an old easy game, one he had played as a child with his sister; more similar to Snap than anything more complex one might find in an inn. The simple game and joy of having some company easily passed a couple of hours on until the sky was truly dark outside.