lumberlady | Noctium

[she has a three month old, Constantin, your IBS doesn't scare her... she will just start quietly adding herbs for nausea to the dishes and see if that does anything.........]

is amazing berry from not i 's world
called is BLUEBERRY
is best one.
next best one is also amazing berry
called is STRAWBERRY
not like BLUEBERRY, because color is not hay color.
i no know why is called this.

Purely to make us wonder, I imagine.

I am making a note to purchase muffins with the best kinds of berries in them as we sepak.

then
you make note of this

and i will make note for next rice dishes

and
i hope you will tell me again how is taste
i am happy to hear

i will send pickle
please give to doctor if you can not make eat

I see my passionate protests do not overrule your wife sense! Alright! I will try one pickled dish, for the sake of an honest review.

[and ah, yes, the real reason to be in a relationship: make him eat the food you don't want... it makes sense.]

yes
that is right CONSTANTIN
i 's wife sense is much powerful
so thank you for recognizing !

i send cabbage and radish
you can pick which.

[it's a perk]

I am defeated! I shall take my failure with grace.

And I will be sure to secure a review of every dish, no matter who tries them.

thank you, CONSTANTIN.

[ It stings, seeing Konoha try to joke it off. Because he knows what she's doing -- has done it so many times himself, prone to smiling as he is when he's nervous. It stings because he's the source of her discomfort, and it stings more because despite it all, it feels wrong. Despite it all, he can't let go of his anger quite so easily.

He doesn't smile back, but when he speaks, he will attempt for a more neutral version of the truth. ]

I do not trust myself to be sober.

[ The bottles are set down with deliberate gentleness. On an after-thought, he waves a hand to spirit over a plate of fruits -- a Primavera specialty akin to pomegranates, engineered to be easier to crack along the seam.

It's difficult to face her when he finally does, sitting down in the chair opposite. The distance between them is too small. He feels too exposed. Better not to speak until some wine is in his belly, until he feels more like his old self again, and not this version stretched too thin by wrath. ]

[Perhaps their smiles in those painful, nervous moments were for different reasons, his born from a cutthroat need to present an image of confidence and unworried power and hers born from a need since youth to present herself as harmless and gentle, no threat to the less physically powerful around her and certainly not an animal, see, she emotes just like a human... But the result was still the same.

A smile, strained in trying for sheepish, that falters a bit at his answer.]

Come on, Cardan, I can't let Lady Jude come back and find you passed out on the table...

[Before he can, she claims the glasses, popping the cork from the bottle she'd brought and mimicking the behavior she's observed from people more cultured than herself to let the drink "breathe" before she pours him a glass. Not a full one. But first is a toast, not a drinking contest, surely he'd respect that at least before trying to down it like a shot...

And once she slides his glass back over, she takes up the one she's poured for herself, lifting it slightly in hopes he might mimic the gesture.]

Let's drink... ?

[Hopefully justa little. To Estinien. Together, where she can keep an eye on him.]

Edited (wow i was sleepy when i wrote that tag oops) 2021-08-13 11:36 (UTC)

Warring clans in Briton are a common occurrence, yes. Even my betrothed's family warred against mine hundreds of years ago.

[ It wasn't as if Bran the Blessed was ever fond of Gwyn ap Nudd, anyway. ]

At the very least... it sounds lovely. It isn't about how pretty or decorative it is, it's- [ She's refusing to sniffle, so she takes a big breath and sighs. ]

Living to see that day come, yes? It wouldn't be as frightening as mine, no, my arrangement has existed even before I was born at the insistence of my grandfather.

[Making it about living to see the day is... a bit morbid, if not technically partially? valid?, but-]

More about, ah... Just being able to marry someone I love, really...

[Because it wasn't like not being nobility excluded you from matches arranged by family... But in her case-]

Or, well, being able to get married at all, that, too... There weren't any jinba men in my village.

[And humans weren't exactly... clamoring to marry jinba, so.]

But you said you love your betrothed, right... ? So you get to be lucky, too.

[Otherwise, it would feel too cruel to say these kinds of things to her.]

[ In all of their relationship, one truth has been universal: tails are traitors. His betrays him now, still, sweeping back and forth like an angry cat's even while he keeps the rest of himself studiously calm.

He does not want to toast. He does not want to be polite or respectful of social mores. He does, in fact, want to pick up that bottle and down it as quickly as possible.

But he was a prince before he was a king, and if he had to thank his brother for anything, it was the manners that had been beaten into him, and the ability to perform them regardless of his own feelings. And so he raises the glass, his gaze on hers solemn. Perfectly composed, if it weren't for the tap-tap-tap of the tail against the leg of his chair.

He's going to leave the toast to her. Anything that comes out of his mouth is going to be cruel. ]

[It is the first time since she’s known him that Cardan had given her nothing. Konoha stares across the table expectantly, hoping that he, who had always been able to impress her with the flowery capacity he has for beautiful and clever words, might say something… But he doesn’t.

So what can she say?]

To Estinien…

[She defiantly keeps her chin up, raising it with her glass and a small tremble in her lip but not her hand. She knew how to steady her hand when required.]

May he return safely to his world… fulfill all his duties left undone… and find some happiness.

[Hopefully that was fitting enough, for a man who had been so bound by role and the tasks yet unfulfilled. If it were just something forced upon him… but no, he’d had his own reasons for wanting to see them done.

So she hopes he can, even if she (if they) will miss him. Hopes it makes him happy, even though he had made himself into a man that pretended he could survive without happiness.

But even though Cardan goes along with the toast, though he drinks, drinks more and faster than she’d like to see by virtue of having brought his own bottles to the table and bypassed her attempt to control the flow of wine…

She can’t stand drinking in silence. Can’t stand the only sound being the traitorous rhythm of a tail on a chair leg. Can’t stand not trying, between one glass and another, to start… something. Anything.]

I suppose… if he ends up back here again he’ll have forgotten us once more…

[Ah… no, maybe she should have gone with something lighter… But despite her want to keep Cardan from a darker sadness… It wasn’t like she didn’t feel it herself.

Sad.]

…

[ It may seem, for a moment, like he does not intend to answer. But he will set his goblet down. The wine has helped; it blunts the sharp sting between his ribs, makes him less of a beast liable to lash out in its pain.

For a moment, he only focuses on his breaths. One, two, one-- and he can hear Konoha’s, too, in the silence between them. Her presence in any room is outsized. ]

He barely knew me.

[ He knows he sounds bitter. It’s selfish to come back to this.

Cardan is a selfish man. ]

My friend was lost to me in Lunatia.

[ He can’t look at her; he’s afraid she’ll see too much, and just as afraid of the guilt that threatens to crash over him. Instead, Cardan looks at his empty goblet like it has answers to his misery. ]

When did you know?

[ Has she told him already? He doesn’t remember. ]

[It's always seemed like a very fine line to Konoha, between the warmth of a helpful drink and the burn of an unhelpful one. If she could just... somehow keep him in the former...]

I'm sorry.

[It wasn't anything to do with her, but that didn't mean she still wasn't sorry for the truth of it, lacking any sort of prickly pride that might prevent her from saying such a thing. Certainly not to him, about a man they both had known. Once.

And if talking about it might somehow allow him to release the sorrow she'd thought they'd addressed and accidentally forgotten on the beaches of Marilla...]

At Camp Whitegrave.

[Tentatively, she refills his goblet for him. Just half, as her voice rambles on softly. It wasn't like she wasn't sad herself... She'd just already had time to process it. That, and she hadn't broken her phone.]

When the spirits appeared, and I heard the little hooves... I thought- I thought it might be Komatsu.

[So freshly ripped from her world and her family's side... Konoha hadn't been able to give up hope yet. Hadn't been able to stop herself from stumbling from her bed and into the snow, desperately following the sounds into the wood.]

When it wasn't... Estinien's spirit was near there, too. He found me, and I was so glad to at least see a familiar face, but...

[Her voice trails off a moment, marked with a sip of wine, pointless as the alcoholic beverage was.]

He didn't know who I was. But he still helped me. Still held me when I cried.

[Even without the memories, without Lunatia... He'd found some kindness for her as a stranger once more. And that... Of course she'd have preferred to not be the only one yet holding on to experiences once shared, but. At least he'd still been that man, at his core.

Surely Cardan knew what that was like. The strange tug between feelings, how painful to see not a spark of recognition in someone's eyes. And though she doesn't ask in words, she looks at him in invitation for his own account. For anything, if he'd just share it and not bottle it up in place of the wine.]

[ It is not the question he had been asking for an answer to; he had meant to ask about when she’d known that Estinien was first gone. He goes a little pale when he listens to her recount the story, a little stricken with the cruelty of it. Inadvertently, it reminds him all too keenly of all the things she’s lost. Of all the things she’s mourning.

Little hooves replays in his head with a heartbreaking clarity.

It’s shame that pricks at him when she asks her own question, wordless as it might be. How pointless his own story is -- how little he’s sacrificed, and how ready he was to be callous despite knowing her pain. It’s difficult, suddenly, to contend with the fact that he deserves none of her kindness.

He swallows, staring down at his hands around the goblet. ]

You think I’m being destructive.

[ He tries not to say it like he’s being defensive, but the edge of it bleeds through, just a little. Cardan deems himself a good actor, but it is difficult to conceal himself against someone he’s close to. ]

I was worse than this. For most of my life, I have been and done much worse. And in Lunatia--

[ He has to grit his teeth a little. It’s a long-winded start to the story, the point of which isn’t supposed to be about Cardan. ]

Before Jude arrived, I had never eaten so little and drunk so much. Folk are resilient -- we won’t die from something like that -- but suffice to say my state was best described as “pathetic”.

There was a night -- several, really -- where I couldn’t get up the stairs. [ Pathetic indeed. He’s not beyond feeling embarrassment, nor the warm spread of a flush on his face. ] And he… showed up. A man I had met all but twice. I do not even know how he’d found me, but he carried me upstairs, and gave me food he had brought, for me, and ate with me.

As I told him about my family.

[ Specifically, about how horrible they all had been. He will omit that part. ]

...and then he brought me ice cream. I didn’t know what it was. He showed me how to eat it.

Can you imagine? This serious, humorless, dutiful knight licking a frozen dessert. Trying to cheer me up. I wasn’t certain I hadn’t dreamt it.

[ He pauses, staring into the distance. He’s unwilling to admit the next part. It hurts and feels pathetically vulnerable all at the same time.

...he tries to put it as laconically as possible, but there is strain in his grip on the goblet. ]

I thought this time, I might get the chance to do the same for him. To show him something good this world had.

[If Cardan had looked at her with confusion, if he had asked his question again with a different word stressed or a single word added, Konoha might realize her mistake. She'd have to rephrase her answer and admit that... she had found out not too terribly long after she and Cardan had been together, when what they'd done (or at least, she suspected that was the reason) had triggered her heat earlier than she'd expected. Estinien had promised he would help her, since the gem transformations reliably made of him a man capable of sating those physical needs, and yet when she contacted him... He hadn't answered. He'd always answered.

If it was Cardan, she could admit those circumstances.

But instead, without noticing her error, she is listening to a much different story. He accuses her of thinking him destructive, and she can't actually deny it. She's worried, because she might not have ever seen him so drunk he couldn't get up the stairs... But she has seen him so drunk he was on his back in the grass, and that... had been when Jude was there with him.

As he tells the story, she listens raptly, hating that he is on the opposite side of the table and too far to comfortably reach. She's seized with desire to take his hand, but... perhaps as he is now, it would only invite rejection, and in turn, the sense of guilt she catches a glimpse of when she mentions her daughter. Maybe it's for the best.

Her fingers still curl, wishing they were curling around his instead.]

Just because you've been worse before... Doesn't mean anyone who cares about you wants to see you anywhere even close to "pathetic"...

[She knows already that his hurt would feel all too much like her own, perhaps especially because it stemmed from a man they had both cared about in different ways, from a miscommunication she blamed herself for. But he asks her to imagine it, Estinien, stoic and serious and occasionally somewhat awkward around things that normal people who didn't know the losses he had didn't struggle with... licking at ice cream.

And it makes her smile, just a little. Almost laugh, even, when she honestly, seriously, tries to imagine it. Thinks of what he'd looked like at that festival bonfire, when he'd insisted on testing the food before she sampled them in case they were contaminated, and she insisted on the drinks in exchange. His face when he'd bitten into one of the stranger offerings...]

... I can imagine it, I think.

[But more importantly... She turns her gaze back towards him. Perhaps it could sound selfish, that he was concerned for not being able to fulfill that role in return instead of being glad that he'd been able to return to his world, but... She also knew how seriously his kind took debt. And more importantly... It didn't seem selfish to her, to feel sorry for not having the opportunity to repay a kindness you'd received.]

... Cardan is a really good actor. Way better than me.

[For better or for worse? But what she wants to say is-]

But I don't know if you're perfect... I don't know... if Estinien couldn't tell you wanted that, even if you didn't tell him you remembered him from somewhere else.

[Even if it hadn't been as much as he'd hoped for.]

Konoha? Is this a good time to call?

[Someone has just discovered Chiron's absence. And someone knows that the first thing that the centaur would want him to do is check in on his roommate and keep an eye on her for the remainder of the time they both are present in this world.]

[A stab of guilt strikes a jinba some miles away. She'd meant to contact people, to reach out once she'd realized Chiron was gone to tell his students, his fellows, but-]

LORD EL-MELLOI
hello
yes i can speak now

How are you holding up?

[He's not going to remind her about the II. Not now. She was closer to Chiron than he was, so...]

[She's so sorry... the II is so hard to remember... Why isn't it Lord Go-El-Melloi...]

Me... ? I'm alright.

[Which is a lie and honestly sounds like a lie even though she tries to pass it off like she doesn't know why he's asking... But of course she knows, and she doesn't even bother trying to keep up the ruse, instead following up with a little sigh,]

I'm not the one who vanished, so...

I know...

But in many ways it's harder to be the one left behind. [There's a deep ache in his voice that he doesn't bother to disguise. He knows what having a relationship, any sort of a relationship, with a Servant means.] How do you feel about takeout?

… That’s true, I guess.

[The bad thing about voice is that she can’t disguise the threat of emotional spill in her voice. She should have stayed with text maybe…]

I just can’t… When other people leave I can say “they have a duty to see to back home”, or “they have someone waiting for them”, but Chiron…

[…]

Take-out like… food?

... is back on the Throne.

[He'll let that hang to encourage her to continue. He doesn't know what she knows. So he has to handle this gently.]

Yes, food. Have you tried Indian?

… is back on the Throne.

[And she almost wishes she didn’t know. Because that… ? To lose everything and become some… some blank, summonable slate again? It seemed so cruel… to them, to him.]

… No, I don’t think I have. What’s it like?

Noctium | IC Inbox

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Voice; sometime soon after Chiron's departure

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