Flowerbirth had brought new life to the world within the bubble, and a burst of industry to the human inhabitants. It had also brought feelings of hope and renewed determination to help his friends prepare for the coming celebrations – as well as the planned assault on the spire. There was danger there, and the weary Loreseeker was spending more and more hours of each day poring over Safrin’s texts and the Atheneum’s relics trying to find information to help the warriors who were going to confront the beast and give them a better chance at winning.
Sometimes a man needed a break to refresh his mind and spirit, however, and to remind himself what he was fighting for. So it was that a white-haired human and a pale-furred gryphlet made their way through the woods, walking a path familiar to them both. Isuma bounded ahead, chasing beetles and butterflies in the mild spring sunshine with distracted abandon while Jigano strode along behind her, occasionally stopping to examine a plant growing along the way. Most he left alone, but some he plucked, gathering a small bouquet – green and yellow and white – as he went along.
This time he scooped Isuma onto his shoulder as they passed from woods to fields, approaching the farm on two legs rather than four – though he dearly wished for his vulpine nose to track where Rory was. Still, when his initial knock at the front door didn’t get a response he moved on to the workshop. Upon seeing it ajar, and no dogs leaping to attack, Isuma Reep!ed excitedly and demanded down so she could bound across the space between and wriggle into the room to greet Rory with excited squeaks of joy. Jigano followed more sedately but with a grin as he hid his bouquet behind him and rapped courteously on the doorframe before nudging the door open. ”Rory?” he called out, softly. ”Would you mind some company today? I wanted to work on something for the Fiat Lux and I hoped you could give me your opinion of it.”
He didn't know what to do with himself.
Early Flowerbirth used to be a pleasant time of hope and restoration, of looking forward to Fiat Lux and the calmer days of summer. Coming out of the Long Night and restoring normalcy, by repairing what had been broken in the dark. Going over the fences. Releasing the goats. Watching the first snowdrops push through the melting snow. Waiting, for the first baby goats to be born. Brushing horses (and dogs) for hours on end, watching clumps of winter fur drift around in the spring breeze.
But not this year. This year, he did not step out of that door into the first tentative, rosy dawn; this year he came on foot from the Settlement. This year he didn't know if he'd ever get back his two best ponies. This year he found all his floorboards loose, nails pulled out, dogs hungry and whining but happy to see him.
This year, he had lost his soul to something, and he didn't know how to get it back.
He went through the motions, but it was mechanical. He looked for himself in the shadows and under dust, but his strange mood lingered.
Displaced.
His trademark greatcoat hung over a disused desk in the workshop, bits and pieces sticking out the pockets. He hadn't touched it since he'd put it there. Couldn't bring himself to patch it up.
Day by day the scabs from the bite wound healed to fine, pale points, and the burn scars snaking up his neck and onto his face lost their glistening, wet look. His hair was stuck in a braid a few days too old, mussed and tangled.
And his sister was nowhere to be found. If she'd been back any time after Long Night, he hadn't noticed, and no one he asked knew where she'd gone.
Slowly, he worked on his orders. Slowly, he completed them. Slowly, he delivered them.
He just didn't take much joy in it.
Not in anything.
That day he'd left his workshop door ajar, listening to the sound of ponies (Esaia and Talys had been outside the pen one morning, happily eating the hay he kept putting out for them) and goats and birdsong, breathing in the scent of spring sometimes pushed in by the wind. A couple of different projects lay scattered around him, but when Isuma came in the door, he wasn't touching any of them. He sat with his chair tipped back, his feet on the bench, whittling a piece of wood into nothing. Just shaving off one layer after the other.
It took him a couple of seconds to convince himself it was worth paying attention to her; not because he didn't want to, but because he had sort of forgotten how to move. Slowly he brought the chair down on all its legs and took his feet off the bench. "Hey there," he greeted the owlkitten, holding out the hand with the bit of wood to her, trying to use the tip of his index finger to scratch the side of her face.
The knock on the doorframe was not a surprise, considering the little visitor he had on his floor. Rory closed his eyes, brought his knife-hand up to his face and rubbed his knuckles across his eyes. The door groaned slightly as it was pushed open, and he tried to chase the shadows away. ”Rory?”
He didn't want Jigano to see him like this, but seeing as he'd been like it for weeks, that sort of equated to not wanting to see Jigano at all, which wasn't true.
Besides, unless the guy was blind, he had already seen Rory's rather defeated pose, so he might just as well strike another. With a sigh he straightened up, letting his hands hang uselessly between his knees. "I don't mind," he said, trying to keep the tired note out of his voice, but his measure of success was questionable. "What is it you're doing?"
Getting Isuma to sit still for skritches was usually easier, but she had a strong desire to be in Rory's lap and so she quivered for only a few seconds while he rubbed at her face. Wriggling like a young cat on the hunt she blinked her large eyes up at him, then gathered her haunches and jumped, little wings flapping with effort. The wings didn't do much, a few fledgling feathers only just beginning to replace her hatchling down, but her hindquarters had a surprising amount of spring in them, and if Rory allowed it she would end up balanced precariously on his knees before she flapped a final time and tumbled forward into his lap, peeping proudly at showing off her new trick.
Jigano's entrance was more sedate, but his smile faded as he took in Rory's weariness and general state of dishevelment. The white-haired man's eyes held circles as well, but there was still a lightness to his step. He was tired, but not defeated, in contrast to the leatherworker's worn-down pose. His thoughts flickered swiftly as he changed what he had come to say and do, and instead of a quietly happy approach he made a solemn one instead. When he reached Rory's chair he sank to one knee - and then revealed the bouquet, held together by a white ribbon. He proffered the collection of yellow dandelions, flowering chamomile, and fresh mint as somberly as if to a prince.
"First, a welcome home gift," he said, a small smile finally cracking his facade. "For Talys and Esaia. I hope they're well?" He had seen them as he'd come around the side of the house, and been relieved that his friend's faithful ponies had made it through the rest of Long Night safe and sound, but perhaps talking about them would bring a little spark back to his friend's tired eyes.
It felt like the distance between him and the little exuberant gryphon could be measured in years: eternities, even, stretching out in the middle of his workshop—as if the hand he extended passed through the rest of his life, and would come out old and wrinkled, and it would turn out he'd been sat there for decades, just trying to reach the owlkitten. Like he was losing his life in that moment, and would find out no one else had. Just him, done, aged, gone.
But time flowed as it normally did for her. She grew impatient with his scratches, moving closer, wiggling as she calibrated her jump. Rory felt the same distance stretch in his heart again, as if his very body had stilled, his eyes blinking slowly, and he somehow expected her to freeze in mid-jump.
Displaced.
She didn't freeze. Of course she didn't. She jumped neatly onto his knees, and then tumbled more securely into his lap, coming up against his waist. Before Long Night, or even during it, he would've laughed, maybe picked her up and wiggled her around, told her he was proud of her, or any other thing he told cute baby creatures.
But now he merely gave her the shadow of a smile, a sad echo of another time, and it was barely even that: just a softening of his eyes, one corner of his mouth barely higher than the other. If he had been left alone with her long enough, gazing into her owl's eyes, perhaps it would've rattled something in him back to life, but as it was, Jigano came through the door and Rory struggled with whether to put on a facade, or .. put on less of a facade ...
He ended up watching the white-haired man with a rather empty expression, as if he wasn't sure what he was seeing, or where he was seeing. For the split second Jigano stood before him he noticed, rather absently, that Jigano was, indeed, rather tall.
Then the other man had dropped to one knee, and held out a small, aromatic bouquet of early flowers. Rory found himself stuck again with the sensation of not quite remembering how to move: he merely looked at the flowers for what felt like an eternity, his eyes barely moving from the white ribbon and the hands clasped around them. He wanted to take them, to say something, to compliment the smell, anything.
For a split second, he had the insane urge to kiss Jigano.
Then he managed to give his head a little shake—though spasm was more like it—and reached out to put his knife-hand on the one wrapped around the flowers. "They're alright," he said quietly. "They were a little skittish for the first few days."
Isuma didn't understand why Rory wasn't happier to see her, turning her head and peeping up at him in concern when his smile was so small and sad. Setting herself to rights she turned to blink a welcome to her companion, sending her worry through the bond even as it echoed back. Jigano could see the hunter's ennui, and it tugged sharply at his heart that he hadn't come to visit sooner. Seeing that emptiness where warmth and laughter and tears and anger had once burned so brightly.
He set aside his own weariness, at least for the moment, and hoped his gesture would spark... something in his friend. A flash of humor, of annoyance, of emotion that he could tease and coax into a warm flame again. But Rory remained withdrawn, his spark banked and dulled even as the abandoned care for his appearance became clear now that the fox was so close.
As Rory's hand settled on his he had the urge - wild, impulsive, unfamiliar - to pull the hunter to his feet and into a tight embrace. To give him the comfort and support his gentle scratches had given to the fox for so many months. In some ways they had lost that closeness, and in others it had merely changed, no less then Jigano had done when he shifted from fox to man in the Infirmary.
"Will you introduce me to them, please?" he asked, his voice equally soft but warm as he looked up into Rory's blue eyes, seeing his own reflection in them and worrying all the more. "Esaia and I never met, formally. And I don't know if they'd recognize me... like this." He tilted his head in unconscious echo of Isuma, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. He was achingly aware of the hand on his, skin to skin, warmth and calluses and the small knife Rory still held. Isuma, meanwhile, had turned to examine the piece of wood in the human's other hand, trying to take it in her beak and chew on it to see how it tasted.
Rory had both lost and been lost before; he knew that he had felt like this before, adrift in a currentless sea, apathetic as he stared up at a wan, uninteresting sky. He knew what it was like to return to a house that felt haunted in reverse: empty, and the shadows you saw were only in your own mind, for each time you turned, you saw that there was nothing—no one—there. He knew that days and days would pass, and bit by bit, he would figure life out again. Day by day, getting up would be easier. Eating would be easier. Going on would be easier.
He had goats to tend to. Kiddings to oversee. Ponies to groom. Things to plant. Fiat Lux to look forward to. A business to run.
He couldn't stay like this forever, and even though he knew that he wouldn't, he also knew that he was wasting daylight, wasting precious time being stuck in this melancholy, strange wasteland. Flowerbirth was such a busy time, he couldn't not do all the things—
Jigano's hand was warm beneath his. Jigano .. deserved more than this lost, lost creature; deserved the man who would sigh and scratch his chin and complain softly about how shitty he felt and ruefully comment on his apathy and then.. get off his ass and do something. Not just sit there with a gryphon on his lap and a knife in his hand and...
Something tugged on the piece of wood he very much hadn't been carving, and Rory, as if he was a beast ten times his size, moved his head rather slowly to peer at what was going on.
Unsurprisingly, he had a young gryphon chewing on it. He blinked, what passed for silent laughter in a man who had forgotten how to conjure visible emotions, and tugged back on it a little. Not because he was annoyed, for he wasn't, but to give her a little resistance. Something to fight, even though he didn't have much of that in himself anymore.
It almost seemed as if he hadn't heard Jigano, for he stayed like that for a couple of seconds, just tugging on the bit of wood, before rather abruptly seizing a moment when the gryphon's hold on it was very loose to work it out of her beak and hurl it out the workshop door. It was a strange and sudden movement from the silent man, but there was no aggression in it. If anything, it was just a ploy to get Isuma off his lap.
"Alright," he said, as if he hadn't not responded for several seconds, and stood up (had Isuma not left his lap, he would just gently lift her up and deposit her on the floor). His hand felt colder now that it was no longer touching Jigano's, and he let the knife clatter to the workbench. It laid there among the chaos of his thoughts.
His hand twitched, as if he contemplated reaching for Jigano's hand again, but what he ended up doing was merely walking forward, as if he was going to walk into Jigano if he didn't move out of the way—more the way one might herd an animal rather with any sort of force behind it, and anyway...
He wasn't going to ram his friend.
He was just—his hands were trembling, he noticed, and he didn't really know where he was looking, a stranger in his own skin, his body an unfamiliar burden—
Waking up was always hard. He stopped where he was (whether that was before Jigano, or to the side of him, or .. anywhere, really), though it was more of a stumble to a swaying standstill. His blood was rushing and what he saw of the world seemed far away.
"I'm sorry," he heard himself say, his voice rather distant. "I don't feel too well."
Surprise surprise, that's what happens when you don't bother to eat and then suddenly stand up.
Tug? Isuma liked playing tug-of-war, which made the bland-tasting piece of wood far more interesting. She stretched out across Rory's lap and set her beak into the toy happily, making the tiny, fierce squeaks of a mighty huntress - but she didn't pull too hard, as if sensing the human's weary apathy. She put just enough strength into her pulls to keep Rory from losing interest, and every once in a while she paused to blink a golden eye up at him, to see if he was having fun, too.
Jigano waited patiently, recognizing the weariness in Rory's eyes and in no hurry. He wanted his friend out in the sunlight, mostly, and the fresh air, among the animals who loved him. A gentle reminder of those who cared for him, and the healing that light could bring after the dark hours of Long Night. Hurrying the man would earn him no favor, however, and might make the quiet hunter dig his heels in and refuse. He could be a stubborn man, the fox had learned on the hunt where the white-haired man had received the silvery tracing of scars on his left shoulder.
But the fox could be stubborn, too. And the gryphlet had magic of her own that she could work on the Abandoned.
He flinched when the hunter moved suddenly, caught by surprise and more wary than the enthusiastic gryphon who reep!ed her joy and leapt from Rory's lap with wings flapping. The wings didn't do much, but she hit the floor at a bound, chasing the skittering toy and startling a laugh from the bard. He stood belatedly, caught off-guard by his friend's sudden rise, and started to back away with an unconscious grace. He was confident in every step he took, even without being able to see where he was going, and he kept blue eyes on Rory's handsome face, bringing the bouquet a little helplessly in front of him to hold with both hands so he didn't try to reach for something neither of them knew how to ask for.
It was almost like a dance, except one of them wasn't dancing. Rory was just... moving, in a mechanical, slogging way that broke Jigano's heart. And then he wasn't moving and his face was pale and the bouquet had fallen from the bard's hands forgotten as he closed the distance between them, catching at Rory's shoulders and trying to steady him, if the hunter would allow it. "It's alright," he said automatically, soothing away whatever guilt had prompted the needless apology. "You can lean on me, if you need to. Do you want to sit down again... or should we head to the house?" To someplace he could lie down, where Jigano could stoke up a fire and get him water or food or medicine or... or whatever the hunter needed, and never mind the way his own heart was racing, thundering in a rush of worry he couldn't fight back, not this time. Isuma scampered over, peeping her concern as well as she caught her Bonded's intense wash of emotion, and the gryphlet turned golden eyes to Rory in confusion.
He was light-headed, faint, unsure; some strange feeling crawled between his skin and his flesh, and gravity's pull nearly seemed impossible to resist. Briefly he wanted to let his head snap back and his body collapse, but it seemed like too much effort, and besides, then he would have to get up again.
The blood sang through his ears.
He realized that part of the reason why he hadn't collapsed in some sort of half-faint was because hands held his shoulders, keeping him steady, allowing him to stay upright as his body oriented itself again. "It's alright," the voice said, much closer, almost close enough to feel, but it wasn't. It wasn't alright. Rory was a pathetic mess, and he hated that it was Jigano, of all people, who was here to mop him up. Hadn't he done enough of it already? Carrying a half-dead Rory to the Temple during Long Night?
All he needed was to breathe. To wait for his heart rate to go down, and for his brain to realize that they weren't dying, and.. Oh, yeah. Eat.
More seconds ticked by, and as some sense of normalcy returned to Rory, he realized that he was leaning against Jigano, though perhaps not quite in the way it had been meant. He was hemmed in by the hands on his shoulders, but leaning significantly to the left.
He felt self-conscious in a way that had him wanting to run away, but instead he merely pulled a shaky grimace and righted himself, cheeks flushing slightly. "I, uh... I just need food, I think," he managed to say. His mouth felt a bit weird and cumbersome, and his hands still trembled, but the blackness that had roared at the edges of his awareness was gone.
Slowly, he dropped onto one knee, and reached out to pick up the discarded flower bouquet, giving Isuma self-conscious grimace in the process. Then, still very carefully, he straightened up again. The bouquet seemed to have survived the fall, and he held it gently in his hands, looking at it for a while before peering into Jigano's face instead.
The sharp lines. Sharp angles. Such a distinct face; such blue eyes. He looked .. tired. Worried. Before he knew what he was doing, Rory had reached out, to put the back of his fingers against his cheek. He still felt weird and tingly and a little distant and unfocused.
"This is very sweet," he said, obviously meaning he flower bouquet, but forgetting that Jigano wasn't in his head, and as he forgot to indicate it by looking at the flowers, or even giving them a shake, well... "I'm just sorry I made such a mess of the reception."
After being the small one for so long, it felt strange and a little gratifying to be taller of the two of them, and the stronger for a change. He was too worried about Rory’s weakness to bask in the moment, however, a flutter of anxiety spiking his blood pressure as the hunter sagged against him and he took more of the blond’s weight than he expected. His grip, initially light, firmed on his friend’s arms and he tensed to hold them both steady. For one moment his wild heart urged him to slide his arms around the man, to hold him close in a protective embrace until Rory could walk again but—
He wasn’t quite brave enough to follow through, and as he agonized over the decision Rory recovered enough to pull away, leaving the memory of his warmth behind and a cold shiver where it was now gone. Jigano couldn’t meet his eyes, looking down between them at the bouquet on the floor as he felt unfamiliar heat reddening his cheeks. ”Yes… food. Of course,” he repeated, all his silvered words deserting him in the aching what-if of the moment that had just passed.
And the guilt that he would even think of taking advantage of a weak and unsteady friend like that.
He didn’t know what to do with his hands, he realized, as Rory slowly reached down to the floor. Isuma peeped quiet concern and padded forward to gently nuzzle at the hunter's fingers, more honest in her emotions than her silly human was at the moment. Jigano watched them both, biting his lip as he fought the urge to help Rory rise again, and then again to stop himself from reaching out to cup his friend’s hands around the flowers. The silly flowers he’d gathered for the horses, knowing how much the hunter cared for the ponies and grateful for all they owed the pair after their Long Night ride.
He folded his hands together instead, trying to find the calm center of his meditations in the reflection of a stray sunbeam off of blond lashes. He wasn’t ready when Rory looked up, blue eyes catching him as surely as any hunter’s snare, trapping him so he couldn’t look away. He drew in a breath that didn’t quite shake as he tried and failed to find the confidence that he usually wore with such ease, to find the words that usually danced so lightly from his agile tongue.
On Long Night he had been unable to speak because his mouth had still tasted of blood.
Now he couldn’t do so because his blood fizzed with light, and he found himself relaxing at the touch of fingers to his cheek. He knew that caress in foxform, and it eased some of the strange tightness in his chest. He let his eyes fall closed and tilted his head into the light pressure of Rory’s hand, a small smile ghosting at the corners of his lips. ”Yes,” he agreed, and he wasn’t talking about the bouquet, though he opened his eyes again with a proper grin at the apology. Rory was reacting again, awake and aware and alive again, and Isuma reep! happily at their feet as she caught Jigano’s joy. ”I’ll forgive you, if I can join you for lunch,” he suggested slyly, sensing that the best way to get Rory to eat would be to give him someone else to feed as well.
He gave the little gryphon a smile after the grimace, this one real, his mouth changing shape. As he grabbed the fallen flowers he extended a finger, rubbing it by the side of her beak again, trying to assure her that everything was alright with him. He was hungry and perhaps a little low on quality sleep and he had too much on his mind, but he wasn't sick, or dying, or about to faint.
He was just lost.
Worried.
Feeling like he had lost some significant part of himself in the week-long darkness, somewhere in between opening his door and nearly dying, and he didn't think he could ever get it back. Stressed about Flowerbirth and some impending attack on the Spire, one he knew nothing of, hadn't asked Remi, there hadn't been enough time, he was so, so tired but the crops needed planting and—
Then he was looking into Jigano's face again, drawn in by the clear blue of his eyes. His cheek was warm against cold fingers; the fire Rory had built in the workshop had died a while ago, and the temperature was not optimal for fine-motor precision work anymore. He let his thumb stroke across the skin, taking the moment when Jigano closed his eyes to drink his face in with unabashed wonder and hunger—
His gaze fell to Jigano's chin when those blue eyes fluttered open again, his heart skipping a beat like a thief found out. He saw the grin, and he was acutely aware of how close they were standing, his fingers on his cheek and there was only one way out of it. He caught a straying lock of white hair, tucking it behind Jigano's ear and chuckling at the sly comment. "Of course," he responded, letting his hand trail down Jigano's arm to his clasped hands. "It won't be anything amazing, though." In fact, Rory had lived on a sub-par diet for many, many days. He was out of bread, and hadn't baked any new, nor gone to town to buy from Amalia. The last time he'd had a proper, cooked meal was the stew Wessex made for him, the first proper night after Long Night. Since then he'd subsided on cured meat and anguish.
Bouquet in one hand—and possibly Jigano in the other, if he accepted the silent invitation—Rory led the way out of the workshop and into the spring world beyond. He blinked owlishly in the sunlight, heading up towards the homestead and through the door. Within, it was surprisingly neat, considering how badly he had been feeling lately. The kitchen was mostly clean. He'd washed up the pot at some point, probably intending to cook but then never getting around to it.
But if he was going to avoid chopping his fingers off, he needed to eat something before he could even think about putting anything together. He handed the flowers back to Jigano, abandoning him in the too-cold house—Rory was shit at banking coals and he hadn't made a fire since last night, and with an apologetic grin he asked Jigano to light it—and disappeared somewhere, reemerging with a carrot in his mouth and a handful of different root vegetables in his hands. He put it all on the counter (except for the carrot he was eating, which he gave the more dignified position of being in his hand, so he could also eat it) and procured some dried herbs and strips of cured goat meat from some other place. Then he filled the pot with about enough water to not make it too soupy, tossed in the herbs he wanted, and set it over the hopefully-lit fire, before settling into the task of preparing the vegetables into stew-friendly bits—while trying not to eat everything at the same time.
03-20-2019, 09:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-26-2019, 05:49 PM by Jigano.)
Isuma purred happily as she was petted, rising up on her hind legs to follow his finger as Rory stood and pulled away. Reassured, she was content to turn her attention back to the discarded piece of wood, retrieving it while the humans talked.
And touched, Rory’s fingers chill but soft on smooth golden skin until the roughened catch of a calloused thumb brought the smile back to Jigano's face again. His blush was fading slowly, but for a moment it darkened again as he fought the urge to turn his cheek and kiss the hand that lingered there as if inviting the brush of his lips.
The moment passed as the hunter caught a stray tress and tucked it back as if he’d done it a thousand times before, fingers deft and sure and that single small action brought Jigano’s world to a halt, his breath catching and his heart skipping a beat. It felt so natural, so simple, so right and for a moment the lorekeeper trembled on the edge of falling back into his foxform in defense of the confusion and painfully sweet twist of emotion that left him tongue-tied and helpless beneath Rory’s touch. He would have done so, completely on instinct, had the hunter not held him to his two-legged shape by the trailing fingers that wouldn’t let him retreat.
He had never been so glad to be caught.
His fingers curled around Rory’s, slipping together in a gesture that was becoming as comforting as it was familiar as they learned each other’s grip and the way they fit together best. Together they slipped from the shadowy shop and into sunlight, a gryphlet gamboling around their feet with her wooden toy held proudly in her beak as her human let himself hope for the first time in too many years, unshadowed by the dead he carried in his heart.
He gave Rory’s hand a gentle squeeze before he released it, taking the flowers back with a smile that echoed the sunshine outside as he looked around his friend’s home for the first time. Lighting a fire was something he was glad to do, laying the wood and striking the sparks with a practiced hand as he coaxed the young flames to life. He could almost hear Yohgel’s laughter as he did it the ‘hard’ way, and for once the memory wasn’t awash in pain. Isuma followed Rory, as if to make sure he didn’t get lost again, and paraded behind him with the stick held in her beak in imitation of the carrot he held in his mouth when he returned. Jigano chuckled at the pair of them.
”Here,” he said companionably as Rory started chopping vegetables. ”Can I help with that? It’ll go faster with two. And you can maybe tell me about the farm while we’re at it?”
Once he noticed the gryphon's imitation of himself, he winked conspiratorially at her. He doubted her snack was as tasty, though; wood didn't taste well and wasn't very nutritious. He'd stick to his carrots, but she was welcome to the stick. It hadn't done him much good anyway—he'd meant to whittle a couple of charms, as he usually did for all holidays, but nothing had come out of it except shavings.
No: Jigano was a much better cure than whittling. He was a stray ray of sunshine in Rory's gloomy world, lighting up the dark, chasing the shadows from his eyes and heart. They weren't gone, and he knew that the moment he was alone again, he'd fall back into his bleak mood, but for now, he felt a little better, a little brighter. So he chose not to think of later. He didn't want what he had now to slip through his fingers, because then.. then he'd have nothing.
His hands trembled slightly as he began to cut the vegetables. He knew it was the low blood sugar. Knowing didn't make it go away though, and it'd take a while before his body would understand it had been fed a carrot, so he narrowed his tired eyes and concentrated on not getting his fingers in the way—
When Jigano was suddenly beside him, hovering helpfully. What he said made sense, and Rory knew that if the roles were reversed, he'd hate sitting by idly while someone did all the work. "Mmmh," he hummed in agreement, dropping his knife and producing another. Absentmindedly he felt its edge, deemed it sharp enough, and handed it to Jigano. "Here," he said, and shoved some of the vegetables his way, too.
But as for the request.. he didn't precisely understand it, or know what kind of answer to give, so he chopped up a potato in silence as he thought about it. "It was my mother's," he said after a moment, trembling fingers sweeping the potato pieces aside to make room for a turnip. "And I guess it's mine now, since.. well."
He wasn't ready to talk about Karlia. She was a good, strong woman, she had enough sense, knew enough about Long Night.. surely she was just staying away? But for what reason?
"So, yeah... It's me, the dogs, the ponies, and the goats." Rory and a pack of animals: as it always had been, and always would be. Mind-numb and tongue-locked by hunger, dumbfounded by the fact that Jigano was in his kitchen, and they were cooking. It was too normal, in some way that was difficult to grasp.
He felt like he'd done a shit job of answering the question, so he ducked his head and scraped his chopped-up vegetables into a bowl to carry them to the simmering pot, pouring them in along with the dried goat meat. His stomach gave a treacherous rumble.
Jigano set the bouquet on the kitchen table and nodded thanks as a knife was found and he was given some vegetables to cut up. It was... strange... to be preparing food beside someone. The fire was starting to crackle merrily and while the house was't yet warm there was an air of coziness to the moment that left him bemused as he began to slice more potatoes. Rory was a warm, solid presence beside him and Isuma was playing on the floor with her stick and he didn't know how to feel about something that he hadn't known since childhood. Moments like these happened to other people, not wanderers like him. Not heroes who had lived long enough to become villains.
But... maybe with Rory...
He glanced over as his friend started talking, seeing the shake in his hand and fighting the urge to cover that hand with his own. He wasn't used to these impulses, this warmth that filled him when they touched, but he knew the hunter had his pride as surely as Jigano himself did, and though he kept a surreptitious eye out to make sure the knife didn't slip he made himself focus on his own portion of the ingredients. Rory's words came slowly, the sweet voice gone rusty with disuse, but he listened closely all the same.
His mother was gone, then, or else the farm would still be hers. There would be other times to ask about that, but today was for brighter things - or at least, not-sad ones. There was enough sadness in Rory without bringing up painful memories when he had just begun to wake up again. He nodded in understanding, but let Rory speak at his own pace. He didn't follow when the blond man took the fruits of their labor - or rather, the vegetables of it - to the pot, but stayed where he was, slowly turning the knife over in his fingers as he looked from his friend to the gryphlet splayed out on the floor and ferociously chewing at her stick with fierce delight. "That sounds..." he might have said 'lonely' but the word felt too honest in that moment. "...quiet," he said gently instead. He set the knife down on the cutting board and moved to the table, leaning against the back of a chair as he watched the fire and the man in front of it. "I suppose the goats mostly take care of themselves? I counted three ponies when we were in the barn," he added, glancing fondly to Isuma. "Talys I already knew, and Esaia I met..." over Long Night, in darkness and the red light of luxere antlers, clinging to the pony's back as Amalia urged her towards the Settlement "but the third, a gelding I think? was new to me." His lips quirked into a wry smile. "Not that I know much about horses... I've always walked everywhere I needed to go. I barely know how to sit on a pony, much less ride one properly."
He supposed that quiet was one way to describe it, but not in the literal sense: there was always a sound, somewhere. The shuffle of bodies. Warning barks. Whinnies. The rustle of something. Just the sound of animals breathing, living, existing. If it was well and truly quiet, he was worried.
But quiet as in calm, free of people: yes.
Few had reason to come out to Rory's farm, unless they really needed to get hold of him, for one reason or another. Mostly it had to do with leatherworking. On occasion, ponies—everything from 'needing one' (some reasons good, some reasons bad) to having a behavioral issue to medicking it.
Rory rather preferred it that way.
Once the ingredients were all in the pot Rory put the bowl back on the counter, then folded himself down on the floor, so that he sat with his legs crossed. The heat of the fire lapped against half of him, and cold as he was—his body had no fuel to burn for heat, after all—he gladly soaked it up. He just wished the stew would be done instantly, so that he could eat.
But it would take a while. Too long. Forever.
So he watched Jigano's face instead, his eyes darting away once to rove across his body, the way he leaned against the chair, before returning to the wry smile forming on his lips. And.. Jigano did not know how to ride?
It wasn't exactly surprising. If he had to guess, most people in the bubble couldn't—ponies were a luxury item, and the only reason Rory had some was because his mother had had 'em, and they'd kept breeding them to make sure that wouldn't change. Talys was out of his mother's favorite, a bay mare who had passed away some years ago.
"I could teach you to ride, if you'd like," he offered, thinking of his childhood, how it smelled of horse, of being barely strong enough to hold onto their thick, unruly manes, but kept safe by the arms encircling him. "It's.. such a freedom..."
He loved it when they ran. He loved being bareback on Talys, chasing some figment of their imagination, her body strong and warm beneath his.
"But the gelding would be Bakshi. He's old, and a bit of an idiot." Still, he said it fondly, a bit of a smile playing about his face. "A neighbor picked him up for fieldwork, which he really isn't suited to, so he ended up with me instead."
|
