Konoha (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lumberlady) wrote2018-02-05 08:44 pm
lumberlady) wrote2018-02-05 08:44 pm
Noctium | IC Inbox
« konoha »
TEXT ✧ AUDIO ✧ VIDEO ✧ ACTION
KONOHA ✦ JINBARESIDENCE ✦ Emerald Park
GEMBOND ✦ Emerald
"Ah, am I doing this right... ? Hello! This is Konoha! Please 'leave a message'!"
INFO ✧ PERMISSIONS ✧ KINKLIST ✧ VISUALS
no subject
He was cleverer than he seemed.
[ Estinien, who’d seen through some of his deceptions. Still, it’s obvious Cardan has a hard time believing in Konoha’s optimistic take.
He is quiet for a while, his fingers tapping restlessly against the table. It’s difficult, all of a sudden, not to feel spent. He wants to curl up and go to sleep, or else drink until passing out becomes inevitable. Sure, Jude may come back and find him so, but that future seems far away, and part of him welcomes it anyway. It is better than the hollow sting of guilt beneath his ribs when he thinks of Konoha, sitting across from him, or the hot seed of shame growing in his throat.
He had been so angry. And for what? What would it have changed to know?
His mouth thins. The long fingers twist, and the wood of the table bulges and splinters apart, nearly spilling the remaining wine. Out of the split, a young tree branch shoots forth, unfurling green leaves; more branches split from this one as it thickens, widens. Buds form, then flowers -- the room fills with an aroma both sweet and overwhelming -- and then the flowers wilt and turn to fruits which grow round and plump. They resemble a mix of persimmons and oranges, if not for the golden shimmer of their skin.
Once the branch is heavy with the fruits’ weight, Cardan plucks the largest one. The entire process takes less than the space of a minute. He will offer it to Konoha, his expression shuttered. ]
Everapple.
[ It smells cloyingly sweet, with an undercurrent of something else, like a fruit that’s started to ferment. ]
In case you wanted to share my intoxication.
[ Because it seems unfair that she remains sober when he’s indulging. ]
no subject
A fruit she has never seen before.
But she accepts it, when he offers it. Lifts it to her face and inhales, slow and deep. The smell is sweet... but the sort of sweet that was almost too ripe, like it might be a trick hiding something just a bit rotten. And for another moment... She thinks: Is this some sort of test?
Her dark eyes open back up with a flutter of dark lashes on warm cheeks, fixing Cardan across the table with a searching look. Didn't he tell her... on that beach, when she'd forgotten what she meant to tell him... Hadn't he said that she shouldn't trust faeries? Hadn't she heard about the food and what it could do to humans?
But what she actually asks is very different.]
... Do you want me to eat this, Cardan?
[Because she also remembers what her answer had been to his warning about trusting fae. It was too late to discourage her from trusting him. So though she didn't need to find comfort in drunkenness, though she would rather feel the pain of loss, at least most of it, in a state that is real and unblinded...
She seems poised to put it to her lips if he said that he did.]
no subject
And he thinks that maybe she owes him some solace. With this they can be even. With this, all can be forgiven.
Jude would, perhaps, have a different viewpoint.
But though Cardan is no stranger to fear, he has never been glamoured, has never been ensorcelled in the way that mortals can be. To him, Faerie fruit tastes only like sweetness and rot -- not like bliss, not like pliancy, not like intoxication. Losing control over his mind -- it is a fear he does not know and cannot fully understand, much as he might try. And so, in response to her question, he can only be honest: ]
Yes.
[ His eyes on hers are steady. Yes, he wants her to eat it. He can sense that she’s unsure even though she seems ready to do so, and still -- here, in the give and take, in the negotiation of it, he finds a sort of familiar equilibrium. ]
no subject
She doesn't know.
But this feels like a test. At the very least, like something far more important than just biting a fruit or not, and Konoha... finally drops her gaze from his eyes down to the apple-like, persimmon-like fruit in her palm. It wasn't her fault... for not remembering that she hadn't told him of Estinien's departure. It was this place's fault. And yet... She still feels guilty, for being the one to deliver that pain, even as simply the bumbling messenger.
And he couldn't lie with something that simple. He wanted her to eat it, and though she could only guess as to the reason... She'd told him that she trusted him, and she wasn't going to take that back.
So she brings the fruit to her lips and takes a bite, sharp teeth making quite work of the skin and flesh, a well of aromatic juice left glistening on her lips and the tips of some fingers.]
It's sweet.
[Almost too sweet for her tastes.]
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[ Is it perverse, that he feels calmer the moment she takes that first bite? ]
Humans seem to like that.
[ But she's not human. He watches her, his expression shuttered. He's... curious. A part of him is curious to see how it might affect her. He imagined -- as with the alcohol -- that it would only take partway, that she would only feel a little of the heady effects.
But the part of him that he likes least also remembers the way Jude's eyes had gone wide and dark, remembers the pliant look on her face. It's jarring -- an unpleasant memory, and his hand twitches with the sudden desire to tell Konoha to stop, but he cannot take it back. He had only given her a choice; it was not his to take from her.
Instead, he takes another swig of his own drink and draws his fingers across a gold-tinged leaf. It pulls to his touch, like magnet to metal. ]
What duties did he have back home? Estinien.
[ Since she'd mentioned he had business to tend to. Estinien had never been particularly forthcoming with his past, and so Cardan knows strikingly little about his home. But if anyone could ferret it out of a man that taciturn, surely it would be Konoha... ]
no subject
[The way he talks about it, maybe it isn't... But for some reason, she doesn't feel that invested in the answer. It's just words that start to roll off her tongue and halfway out... she isn't sure why she asked. It was sweet, too sweet, half rotted in scent, but it was...
Good. Good enough to take another bite.
Cardan is correct in his thinking, at least. Not only that not being human might save her from the full effects of his world's everapples, but also... that she had a gift when it came to making people feel comfortable enough to tell her things. Even people as taciturn and private as a certain shared acquaintance of theirs. Is it the fact that he has gone that makes her not think twice about answering that question? Is it because she needs to make up for the accidental sin of causing him pain with her delayed announcement?
She doesn't know, and that doesn't seem to bother her. Not when her expression has gone a bit docile, her gaze a bit distant. Perhaps just from recollection.]
Well, he's a "dragoon", isn't he... ?
[That's a word that meant something to people from other worlds, she knew, some sort of soldier. Between words, she nibbles on the fruit in her hand, not quite seeming to notice or care that the juice is running down her wrist.]
He has to fight the dragons... that destroyed his village... and made his homeland so cold and icy...
[What a sad tale that had been, the image he had slowly and carefully spun for her in the steppes of Primavera when her hands had been full of flowers and the mists had cloaked the land in comforting silence. Dragons...]
They sounded terrifying... He's so strong...
no subject
Estinien had never mentioned fighting dragons. Cardan flashes back to a time in the woods, when he himself had become serpentine, when the runes behind his and Estinien's ears had called to each other... it seems, now, that perhaps that meeting was even more complicated for his partner.
For his friend. ]
He had told me that the dragons were like the Folk. Old, immortal magic. Alien to his people.
...he'd said that they would sometimes sing.
[ His gaze flickers to somewhere far, for a moment, going unfocused. When he looks back at Konoha a moment later, some of the manic ferocity will have left his face. For all the mistakes that had led them (him) here, this...
This feels a little better. ]
no subject
But perhaps it's easy enough to pretend.]
Mmm... He called them natural disasters that would just... happen sometimes... That his grandfather told them stories about them... but that they weren't quite real to him until they destroyed his village...
[She should be more obviously sad to say that. Her brow should furrow, her lips ought to turn down, sympathy clear on her face, but... The everapple is delicious, and how cold she be anything but content with that?]
But I suppose not every dragon was bad, either...
[Just like with any race.]
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Cardan feels an uncomfortable sort of kinship to the dragons, just then. ]
It is different.
[ He doesn't elaborate for a moment, electing to, instead, frown at his mostly empty goblet. It's difficult to find the words to express it, which, if he were more sober, he would blame on the drink. ]
Not just good or bad-- it's different. I did not know it in Faerie. Jude grew up alongside us, and even though we told her she was beneath us, in action and thought she is as fey as I am. So I thought. So I think, still, more often than not.
But there is a difference. We love differently. We-- weigh actions on different scales. [ He raises his hands as if to illustrate, a little helplessly. ] I still do not understand it, sometimes: what mortals are thinking, why you do the things you do.
I wonder if his dragons were the same.
no subject
She would have said that it made sense, because you are what you’re raised in, what you’re told, and if your culture is just that different from another’s then there will be gaps and struggles to understand. But what she says instead is,]
Mmm… I don’t know. Sometimes things are different.
[Another bite, another little hum.]
Jinba and humans can be really different… and faeries… and I guess dragons…
[But on that, she is just guessing because,]
I don’t know… He didn’t say. We talked about his village more… Cute little… cute little Estinien herding livestock…
[That was a much sweeter image. Before the fire and the ashes.]
no subject
And that means that the everapple had worked just as expected. Which is fine.
It's what she agreed to, is it not? There was no trick, no intent to be unfair on his part. She could have said no. She could have asked questions.
She could have mistrusted him.
He can feel his own pulse pounding in his head. He would like, very much, to think about cute little Estinien herding livestock. He would like to not see the glittering trail of juice as it snakes over her wrist and down her forearm. It hardly matters. She will sleep it off, and all will be well tomorrow. ]
Konoha.
What do you feel like?
[ He's trying not to sound sullen about it, and only succeeding partway. ]
no subject
Rather than try to puzzle out the whys and every how… she just started off with acceptance. They were just different sometimes. That was fine, most of the time, even if there were certain lines…
Oh, a question! Attentive to anything directed her way, she blinks her eyes back open to look at Cardan. How did she feel?]
Me? Good… ?
[She might have forgotten why she shouldn’t feel good, but… There was something, she remembers, because it’s why his voice is like that… Right-]
But also… kind of bad… ?
[Weird to say as that was worn the slightly vacantly pleased look on her face, honest as ever as answers just spill from her lips.]
Estinien promised he would help me with my heats… now he’s gone… and Cardan’s mad and won’t hold my hand…
[He was all the way across the table… and she almost reaches but she notices the juice and has to pause to lap it off her skin. Couldn’t let it stain his nice table…]
How should I feel… ?
[If he’d just tell her…]
no subject
His sigh is resigned. ]
...I will hold your hand.
[ Even though he's getting up as he says it. He doesn't go far, at least-- only ducks into the kitchen, pulling out a jar. ] If you will can still bear to, after this.
[ This being him coming back, but not to sit this time. This time, he leans over her, jar still in hand, his face shuttered. ]
Open your mouth.
[ If she does -- and why wouldn't she? -- she will find him shaking a few crystals of salt onto her tongue. And if he tenses in anticipation of the spell being broken, it's only because he doesn't know what Konoha's anger looks like, doesn't know what to expect from her.
It's strange. By Faerie law, he's done nothing wrong. He dreads her reaction anyway. ]
no subject
Perhaps they could have had plenty of fun. He could have drunken himself under the table and a Konoha intoxicated in her own way would have let him. She would have laughed obligingly at all his jokes and talked about anything and everything he wanted until he didn’t want to anymore, and any request he had whether it had been companionship or willing blindness or distraction or wallowing she would have gladly tried to meet it.
Instead, she just waits a bit dumbly with a little smile on her face because he said he’d hold her hand and that made her happy. He asks her to open her mouth and why wouldn’t she? She tips her head back and obeys, even helpfully sticks out her tongue just a bit for the salt crystals to dissolve upon.
But something else dissolves with it, and slowly… more awareness returns to Konoha’s dark eyes. Her pupils return to their proper size, her gaze focuses on Cardan… and pieces fall into place, if not a bit blurrily and unsure. So that’s what they did… those sweet, sweet things. Faerie food.
For a half second she almost misses how distant and nice everything had seemed. But only half a second. Konoha had never been one to refuse to face things for how they were, no matter how people sometimes guessed otherwise.
She closes her mouth and swallows the rest of the salt taste down… and then holds out her hand.]
…
[If she was angry, if she was planning on having words with him over essentially drugging her… Perhaps they were yet to come.
For now, she just curls her fingers in the air and stares at him expectantly, quiet and reserved, the full reaction locked away as tightly as a woman like her could manage.]
no subject
It's almost fine, waiting. The silence of their breathing in the room. It's almost bearable.
He catches the movement of her hand in his peripheral vision. Frowning, Cardan looks over -- and, for a moment, freezes, studying her face. She looks only calm, and his tail twitches and then begins beating in an anxious rhythm against his leg. When has he ever not been able to read Konoha? It's disquieting.
But he did not lie. And whatever his fate, he supposes it's only fair he submit to it. He unfolds his arms from the defensive posture he'd inadvertently taken while waiting, and closes his fingers around her warm brown hand, feeling the familiar callouses against his skin.
His shoulders stay tense, and his tail stays anxious. Like a dog with a torn-up slipper, he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. ]
no subject
She knew just as well as anyone what could happen with such a thing in callous or cruel hands.
Hers, though... once Cardan obliges her request (demand?), they're as gentle as they always are when Konoha laces her fingers with him and squeezes. The link of synchrony would make her feelings a bit clearer, perhaps. The sadness of missing Estinien and remembering he was gone. The longing for comfort, a balm for the loneliness she feels in a world without the person she loves most. The disappointment she feels... But as to why she feels it-]
... Would it have made you feel better? If I just went along with anything you wanted?
[Would that really have been satisfying? Not knowing if she was actually happy or just going along with his suggestions and whims? Would it have cured the ache of losing a friend to potentially manipulate another?
She doesn't want to think so.]
You don't need to give me something like that... For me to talk with you about anything.
[What a world he must have come from, she thinks... That he might use an everapple and then make conversation, like it might be the only way someone would open up or be honest.]
I'm sorry if I made you think that wasn't true.
[So perhaps she isn't angry. But perhaps what she was... was a little worse. Or rather... a little less simple.]
no subject
He has no good answer for her. Not right away, anyway. His own expression is shuttered, even as he remembers -- too late -- that Synchrony shows too much in instances like these.
He is hurt, and angry, and horrified, and... ashamed, too, there's that, and that's the worst of them, is it not? It only deepens as she speaks -- the shame and the regret, too.
But it's not like he's suddenly changed. It's not like the man who gave her the everapple is not the same man who's holding her hand now.
His mouth twists. ]
...I wanted to be on an even playing field.
[ That's the truth of it. He could justify it more -- could tell her that he didn't think she'd get too addled, that everapple would just affect her as liquor does him, but-- that's all peripheral. ]
You didn't want me to drink. My wife doesn't, either.
[ He tries not to make it an accusation. It's just fact, is it not? He knows it's because they care, because they think he's hurting himself, but-- ]
I know that I am a difficult man to love. I want to be better. But--
[ His voice breaks off. The words are hard to find: they stick to his teeth like taffy, ball up in his throat in a hard lump. He makes himself look at her, with eyes that are just a touch too bright, and if his grip on her hand is suddenly hard, he doesn't seem to notice.
When he speaks again a few seconds later, he seems to have composed himself again. It's different from what he'd meant to say, only because the other thing, the thing that made him react so strongly, is so awkward to put into words. ]
It was wrong, to offer you that and not tell you what it could do. I will never trick you like that again. You have my word.
no subject
People don’t change in a day or a night or even several many. Konoha knows that. Exacting change is hard, even if she thinks wanting to change isn’t. Honestly, it’s enough for her to feel that undercurrent of shame to be willing to forgive him, even if it might be labeled too naive or too trusting by others.
Her hold on him shakes just a little bit as her other hand comes to cup his between both hers, so pale and unmblemished in comparison to dark and calloused. He’s a faerie, she understands what it means that he offers her his word, but the words she chooses first-]
But we’re not playing, Cardan.
[No, she knows it’s just an expression, “the playing field”, but right now…]
I… I’m sure Jude doesn’t want… We don’t want you drinking for the wrong reasons. That’s all…
[For fun, to share loose lips and high spirits in good company… how different that was than the drinking she’s seen him do before in Lunatia, like he seemed poised to do now.]
If you make me an asebi seed, I’ll make a wine so strong even a jinba can get drunk off it… and if you want to drink together, another time and another reason, I’ll down so much of it that I can’t walk straight…
[Perhaps a promise that equaled allowing him to feed her everapple, if you considered that technically asebi was straight poisonous to horses and in jinba simply produced lighter damage that mimicked drunkenness, but she doesn’t actually know that and it’s not the important part, what’s important is-]
This isn’t Cardan’s home…
[That faerie court that seemed beautiful but also dangerous, where one little sliver of weakness or the truth about ones emotions could be used against you.]
If you’re sad that someone you cared about left you can just be sad, and if you’re mad you can just be mad… drinking that away doesn’t even work, it’ll still be there…
[Konoha’s voice cracks as she stumbles over what she’s trying to say. That he didn’t need alcohol to mask those feelings. That it didn’t do any good to drink them “away” because they didn’t leave so easily as that.
And speaking of easily… She swallows, abandoning the more polite third-person speech of her native tongue for the more intimate first.]
I don’t think you’re difficult to love at all…
[Konoha’s eyes are the bright ones now, her hold on him the tight one, a confusing mix of her own emotions and belated, creeping realization of how much could go wrong with an everapple threatening to be tears on her cheeks.]
So won’t you just… just trust me with that? If not me, then someone else, but-
[With real feelings undulled by drink, with weaknes, with vulnerability, with whatever it was he was trying to drown in a bottle. Even if it were dark or shameful… to do otherwise would mean to just let it fester and rot, so-]
Please… ?
no subject
He swallows, and reaches out with his free hand to cup her warm cheek. ]
Look what I have done to you, even while dull with drink. How can I trust myself without?
[ ...but that's not the whole of it. That's not what pricks at him most keenly, not the thing that's so hard to admit. He looks away, trying to clamp down on it all, trying to stay at least halfway composed. ]
I want to be what you ask me to be. But if I cannot-- [ another swallow, more compulsive, and is it not ridiculous that after all this time, after all the things he's seen and done, this is what makes his eyes burn? ] --if I cannot, is that truly so terrible?
[ He doesn't know. Maybe it is. There are moments in his past that he's ashamed of, times that drink has driven him to such bottoms as are hard to recount; surely this will become one of them. But he knows, too, that this is a habit he cannot just shrug off, not even when it hurts him, not even when it hurts those he loves.
And is this not who he is, in the end? If he's truly not unlovable, if there's parts of him that can be redeemed, then maybe this, too--
He will let go of her face, abruptly, to wipe at his own, equal parts embarrassed and surprised at the hot wetness that soaks into his sleeve. How long has it been since he's cried? ...decades, surely. To have it be such a thing as this... ]
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It isn't hard for her to care about Cardan after everything they've encountered. It isn't difficult at all to lean into the cup of his palm even knowing he had just given her something that would have potentially made her willing to do anything at all. She presses into his warmth just as easily as she had the day before, rubbing against his skin with an aching clench in her chest as she listens to the words bit by painful bit from his throat. Opens her mouth... but then his hand is gone and there's tears on his cheeks.
She's never seen Cardan cry. It stuns her for a moment, sitting there staring... before her brow furrows, her lips twist into a conflicted bite... and she reaches out. It looks like an embrace for half a moment, or perhaps she's going to gently wipe those tears from his face, but... no, not quite. Her fingers curl in his shirt and pull him closer, only stopping when she can straighten up and press her forehead up against his. She doesn't nuzzle or move at all once she does, it's a solid, silent presence, as her palm turns upward to the sky.
Something she's only mentioned in passing, before, as a custom she'd learned since joining Gonta on the mountain. The way free jinba treated each other, the way they acknowledged other people as theirs. Their herd. Their friends. Their spouses. Their children. Someone who belonged, who you were connected to no matter where you might go- and for that brief moment, connected physically.]
If you can't... then you can't.
[Konoha wasn't going to decide what people truly could and could not do. Even after Lunatia and now Sumarlok, even with the people she's known in her "travels" the longest... There was still so much she could not know. But even still... She whispers softly in the now narrow space between them, not bothering to stop the sympathetic tears and belated reaction that blur her own vision.]
But not trying... I do think not trying would be terrible.
[What comes of that effort... That was for the future. And right now, Cardan is angry, and sad, and all she thinks she can do is just be there. Just press her forehead up against his a little firmer.]
no subject
Her forehead presses against his, and Cardan blinks away tears, uncertain of what's happening. It feels deliberate, but what is she doing? She raises her arm, and he...
He thinks he remembers.
He thinks he knows what she's doing, and why... Why? She had told him it was a special thing, a jinba custom, reserved for those closest to one's heart. And if that is true, if this is what it means, then this must be--
For some time, he only stares, uncertain, like an animal caught in a clearing. For some time, he only lets her words sink in, lets the gesture settle over him like a blanket of sudden warmth.
For some time, he says nothing. Then: ]
All right.
[ His voice is steadier than it was. And a part of him wants to hold her close, but instead he will... follow her lead, carefully, raising his arm to turn his own palm up to the sky in a mirror of hers. Because if she claims him, then he will claim her just as well -- as his, as family, as someone whom he loves even if it seems impossible that they should meet each other, that people so different as them should have grown this close.
He finds his voice again, finds a steadiness in the firm press of forehead on forehead, and though his lashes are still damp, the tears on his own face are drying. ]
Then I will try.
[ This, he can do. This, he can promise. ]
no subject
For a moment, she simply stays there, her eyes closed, just breathing in the space between them, remembering with a sense of irony and bewilderment that they had met so innocuously that very first time. A quick exchange at a farmer's market, a question about produce... to think it could have ended there, and instead... here they are. It feels like so many others have come and gone, but... they remained.
There is nothing shameful Konoha has ever found in crying or shows of weakness, but finally, with a little nuzzle up against his forehead, she moves her hand back from palm-up in offering to instead gently user her thumb to wipe his tears away, trailing slowly along his cheekbone and into hair so that she can gently pull him into a more conventional embrace. Nodding against his temple, she tries to encourage him to bury his face in her shoulder, a safe place to either leave more tears behind while "hidden" or to leave them dabbed away on her kimono.]
Say, Cardan...
[He said he would try, and that is all she will ask of him, which means what's left...]
How awkward a face do you think Estinien would make if he saw us acting like this... ?
[Is her question, soft and almost wry, as her hand strokes slow and heavy through his hair. How had she first met Estinien... ? Ah. Jellyfish. They'd talked on the network about jellyfish.
And she can see it now, how terribly uncomfortable their no-longer-shared companion might look to see other people so emotional in different ways about his return home. How if they looked close they might see past the feelings of unworthiness to something sincere and possibly touched. It's almost funny... Just a little bit.]
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That he does not fully deserve it is beside the point.
Her question prompts a chuckle... and then a deeper laugh as the imagery sinks in-- ]
Oh, he'd be a man at the height of constipation. The emotional kind, mind you.
[ Stupid Estinien, not being around to torture with their friendship. Truly, it is unforgivable.
But right here, right now, perhaps it is alright. After all, would Cardan not have done the same--? Would either he or Konoha have stayed when they could leave?
Cardan cannot say he's happy about it. But here, with Konoha's warm scent in his nose and her strong arms around him, perhaps he understands, a little bit, just what she means. What she's been trying to tell him all this time. He closes his eyes and breathes her in, his arms tight around her, and just for a moment, lets himself be. ]