I will refrain & be the song [SEASONAL EVENT]

remi Took a fall from a windy height, I only knew how to hold on tight & pray for love enough to last all night The alchemist nodded gently. It was hard not to interpret Sam as being frightened all the time because of his speech, but he'd take the man at his word. As he listened, Remi's face was a gentle canvas of concern and genuine care. His pale eyes flit around Sam's face, from his pale lashes scattered over blue eyes, to his freckles and pale skin, then to his lips that Remi knew would be perfectly room temperature. "Why embarrassed, Sam?" Remi asked, his fingers spinning the cup as he idly wondered if reaching across to try and take the other man's hand would do any good. On the one hand Sam wouldn't feel it and he'd already expressed that somehow Remi made him uncomfortable. On the other though, surely the gesture itself would be something? But something was not always good enough. And so Remi merely nibbled the inside of his lip and dropped his eyes. "I would like that. I suppose to be friends we should know something about one another?" With a charming and boyish smile, Remi ran a hand through his curls as he extended the other towards Sam. "Hi, I am Remi, and...I am not from around here." He chuckled with a bright grin.

Remi seemed to warm to his suggestion, which gave Sam cause for something rare: a wide, genuine smile spread across his face. Even when Remi questioned his embarrassment, something that would normally send him spiralling into stammering explanations, he just shrugged and made a vague hand gesture that communicated very little. He laughed at Remi's reintroduction and leaned forward to take the hand, bridging the gap between them already feeling like a step in the right direction. He couldn't feel the contact quite right, but he tried to give a good, confident handshake. "I'm Samuel Wordsworth. I...am from around here." With a further little giggle he continued: "B-but I think the Outlanders are fascinating. So many stories. I've...I've been trying to write them all down. Into books." Isla's medical knowledge and Ronin's song already filled a couple of slim volumes he had for notes, to be written up better later. "I..I know you have a shop here. Did you do alchemy before? W-where you came from?" Samuel The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; At one stride comes the dark;

remi Took a fall from a windy height, I only knew how to hold on tight & pray for love enough to last all night Sam's smile seemed to transform his entire face into something all together captivating and handsome, and it was met with an immediate smile in return from the alchemist. But then again Remi was often found with a smile on his face and so his was perhaps not as remarkable as Sam's in that regard. The brushing off of his question went silently acknowledged. If the bookmaker did not want to elaborate, far be it for Remi to press. Besides, given how everything had happened, Remi thought he could probably fill in the details about what had made the man feel awkward. Remi's hands were strong and well-calloused from all of his time spent writing and tinkering, though whether Sam would be able to feel that or not he couldn't say. Still, the handshake made him chuckle as well and relax slightly, feeling as though the ice was suitably broken now. "A fitting last name then." Remi winked coyly hearing that Sam liked to write down stories. "Mmmhmm." Remi said with a gentle bobbing of his head. "Though...In Northaven I was originally conscripted as a weapons-maker—" This he said with a bit of an unhappy frown, "—but alchemy has always been at the heart of what I do. I grew up the son of a traveling merchant, which is why I suppose I sound the way I do. He was ...ahh, not a good man. The things he sold were of little value or were disguised to be something else. And so I found myself learning how to make things from a young age to try and compensate for his bad business practices." Remi shrugged as if this story was nothing, his words without judgement or malice. Yes his father had been terrible, but Remi was not the sort of hold a grudge no matter how deserving. "What about you? Always a writer of stories?"

Sam wondered if the appropriateness of his name had always been so obvious to everyone except him; Jigano had commented on it too. He wondered if it was worth making a bigger deal of it on his stall. Imagining Remi as a weapon maker was hard. The other man seemed so gentle, so careful. But while Sam didn't understand that, he understood bad fathers more than most people. Emphatically, he nodded along with Remi's tale of his childhood. "I think your occupation is much more worthwhile than...sc-scamming people. Like that." "Me? Oh. Well..." Sam cringed, looking off to the fire, which was not lit at the moment. "I wanted t-to be. But my parents didn't like it. They wanted me to be more...um...present. Was the word they used. Like my sister. She liked going out-outside and playing and...all of that. I wanted to stay in with books." He motioned behind himself to the several large piles of books behind his chair. "I met a book seller. As a teenager. He...showed me all of it. It's his stall, really, but he...he died, so..." A stifled, sad quiet took over for just a second before Sam pushed it out. "So can you turn things into g-gold? That's meant to be a part of alchemy, right?" Samuel The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; At one stride comes the dark;

remi Took a fall from a windy height, I only knew how to hold on tight & pray for love enough to last all night Remi chuckled and nodded. "I do as well. But as a boy it was simply a means of providing food for myself. There were many nights that I ate rats—" Pausing, his phrasing intentional, Remi clarified: "—as a hawk, and even more that I slept under our wagon without a blanket or any means of keeping warm. I am not sure where I would be if it turned out I was not good with my hands." The alchemist had no idea what it was like to be compared to a sibling for he had none (well, that he knew of. Given his father's philandering there were bound to be half-siblings out in the world he was ignorant of), but his smile was sympathetic nonetheless. "I was not allowed books when I was younger. Nor really when I was older, either." The alchemist said with a bit of a mischievous smile. "Northaven was...a strange place." "I am sorry to hear that." Remi said gently, but not overly consolingly. He did not want their budding friendship to be drudged down by memories of the lost. He was sure the pair of them could drown in their sorrows if they did. "Ah, my crucial flaw." Remi said, leaning back and placing a hand over his heart as if wounded. Indeed he theatrically scrunched his eyes and tilted his head back as if in pain, before leaning forward with a boyish grin."No, sadly I cannot turn things into gold. Or rather, I have never tried. But I can do this—" Raising his hands, he indicated that Sam should cup his beneath. Wiggling his fingers, a few golden coins poured from his hands into Sam's. "But you are right. I suppose I should work on my transmutation if I am to continue calling myself an alchemist." He quipped cheekily, flashing his friend a wink.

As difficult as Sam's own childhood had been, he had never had to deal with the pain of poverty. The stories Remi told made him frown in sympathy, but he had little to add. Oddly, he was slightly surprised to hear Remi had been able to be a hawk in childhood. He wondered if Remi had been a chick then, and had had to learn to fly like a baby bird. "Not...allowed books? Whyever not?" He hadn't been allowed books by his parents, but it hadn't been something insisted upon by the place he lived like Remi seemed to be implying. He smiled wide at Remi's overacted sorrow, glad they'd somehow gotten to a point where they could make jokes. But his laughter changed to amazement when Remi produced coins from apparently nowhere and dropped them into his hands. Sam spent a while just looking at them, almost unable to believe how real they were. "W-wow. I...that was amazing. I wish I could make things. I mean, I c-can make things, but not like that." He mimicked what Remi had done, turning his hands upside down and for a moment visualising coins falling down. "So what do you do in your store?" Samuel The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; At one stride comes the dark;

remi Took a fall from a windy height, I only knew how to hold on tight & pray for love enough to last all night "Well. My father could not read and so he never saw the point. My mother read to me as a boy before she died, but after that..." The alchemist bridges his hands and shrugged. "...my father would try to sell the books I got my hands on. I tried writing a short story for myself once, but he took that as well, passing it off as some unknown but wildly important author." Remi was almost tempted to make coins fall out of Sam's fingers as well but refrained. He thought there might have been a moment where the ascended thought he'd done it himself, and that seemed far too cruel a trick to play on a man who already seemed so unhappy in his own body. "Mostly I experiment." Remi replied with a shrug. "It is strange not having things I am actually meant to be producing actually. I have all this spare time and am unsure how to fill it. I was working on a sort of...a device to let you view the stars." The word was telescope, but of course Remi didn't know that. A sideways and sad smile tugged at his lips even as he smiled. "But that was a project I was working on with a friend...and it does not seem as important to complete now that he is no longer around." Then, glancing around, Remi suddenly brightened. "Is there anything I could make for you? For your books, or your stall?"

"Th-that you could write so well for him to make that trade is impressive." Any of the stories Sam had written as a child had been long lost, not worth saving tales about generic adventures of dull heroes. He didn't quite understand what Remi meant about his device. Sam could already view the stars simply by looking outside. Maybe in Northaven it had been dangerous to look at the night sky...? He considered telling Remi that it was safe, but didn't want to burst his bubble about his invention, especially not when he mentioned a loss right afterwards. "Oh, I-I'm sorry...Someone...from before here?" The question was surprising. Sam tried to consider it. No, he didn't really need anything for the stall, but... "I have...recently...b-been thinking of making my stall a real shop. In a building. So I could have more shelves, a-and the books would get damaged less. So...maybe when I do that. If it's alright. I could ask you for something." Samuel The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; At one stride comes the dark;

remi Took a fall from a windy height, I only knew how to hold on tight & pray for love enough to last all night "I never said they were any good." Remi corrected with a grin. "But that is the thing about calling something genius...others are slow to criticize and show their own ignorance. But then again my father was a very good liar." Nodding thoughtfully, Remi decided he agreed. The Loren that had come through...the Loren who had burst into his shop that day only to leave him just as quickly...well. Perhaps it was simply better to think of the man as having never come over at all. "Yes. Something like that." The alchemist agreed with a nod. "Oh? That sounds like a wonderful idea. There is an abandoned building next to my shop, if you like." The alchemist suggested casually, though truthfully, given that Sam had only moments ago said he was considering just ignore Remi forever, thought that perhaps it wasn't the best idea. Even so, Remi would be pleased to be neighbours. Especially if Sam kept the same strange hours that he did. "If I can help setting up at all, let me know as well. It does not just need to be when it is complete. But yes, you can ask me for anything." He added with a lingering smile.

Sam nodded at Remi's words on genius. They showed a soft intelligence that he quite admired; Sam knew he himself was smart but he always struggled to get the words across in the right way. Something like that. He didn't ask anymore, but Sam frowned. The way Remi said it implied something deeper. Just how many complicated relationships did the other man have? Sam was exhausted with just the one. "An abandoned shop..?" Suddenly, what had just been idle daydreams came crashing into possible reality. The idea of being able to start on his project soon and have it be with Remi, next to someone whom he liked and admired rather than opposite the butcher and the tanner who smelled and gave him dirty looks...it was captivating. "..I...I think I might do that. T-take the shop. Thank you." It felt for a moment as if he had said everything there ever was to say and he would never be able to think of a conversation topic again. Sam drained the last of his tea from his cup and stared at his feet for a little while, bending his toes and considering if he felt it any less than he had before. "Thank you for coming to see me." He eventually said, smiling over at Remi. Samuel The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; At one stride comes the dark;

remi Took a fall from a windy height, I only knew how to hold on tight & pray for love enough to last all night With a grin Remi nodded. Tristan who owned the stall on the other side of the alchemist had been noticeably absent as of late. While Ronin's guildhall was only a short way up the road, it would be nice to actually have some life at his end of the street. Having drained his cup a while ago, Remi watched with interest as Sam finished his, wondering what it was like for the ascended. With a small hum in the back of his throat, Remi nodded obligingly with a warm smile. "Well I will not take up anymore of your time. You know where to find me if you think of anything that you need. And of course I can assist with setting up your new shop." He added with a wink. Rising, he gently pushed in his chair and gave Sam a small nod of his head. "See you soon, Sam." He said after a moment with a lingering sort of smile. Things certainly did not feel quite as awkward as they had when he'd first arrived...but there was still something. Something that Remi couldn't quite put his finger on. Still, he smiled warmly as he shrugged on his wintery clothing and left the book-maker's home. ~Fin